by Holly Grant
Praise percolated the audience. Everyone in the theater, Anastasia perceived, was staring not at Saskia in her Triumphant Debut as Vespertina but at the enchanted grove behind her. The confused trees stood a little straighter, smiles creeping onto their lips. Being a tree was suddenly special and glamorous.
A buzz throbbed within a blossom on the tree dancer nearest the wings, and then a fuzzy yellow bumble flashed across the corner of Anastasia’s eye. Impossible! Had that been a—
Saskia let out a shriek and stumbled to a halt. “Ouch!”
“Princess!” Madame Pamplemousse hissed from beside Anastasia. “Carry on! Grand jeté! Grand jeté!”
Saskia winced, and then she hippity-hopped offstage as the music dwindled and the curtains rustled closed. Pandemonium broke out. Dancers scrambled to change into their costumes for act two. Stagehands grappled with the trappings for the Winter Forest set, unrolling the snowflake-stenciled backdrop and lowering papier-mâché clouds from the rafters. If there was any chitchat about the unruly tree costumes, Saskia’s shrieks drowned it out.
“I’m telling you, a bee stung me!”
“Nonsense,” Madame Pamplemousse declared. “There aren’t any bees in the Cavelands. You froze up; that’s all there is to it.”
“Something out there stung me,” Saskia retorted. “Look at this welt!”
“I wouldn’t care if an alligator attacked you,” Madame Pamplemousse snapped. “True ballerinas don’t holler and stumble mid-pirouette. Why, I once broke my leg during A Midsummer Night’s Hopscotch, and I finished my pas de deux to critical acclaim!”
“But—”
“We don’t have time for a tantrum, Princess. Go change into your tutu for the Ice Waltz!”
Anastasia barely noticed the stagehands lugging props hither and thither. How had the Cavepearl Theater costumiers rigged up the sapling costumes to blossom? It had been—well, for lack of a better word, it had been magical. Anastasia squeaked as Madame Pamplemousse jostled past, hustling the ballerinas back onstage right before the curtains parted.
An enormous round mirror gleamed at the center of the proscenium. This mirror was supposed to evoke an icy pond, and the ballerinas glissaded across it with the slow swoops of ice skaters. Anastasia watched, entranced, as artificial snowflakes flurried from above. The illusion was lovely. It was lovelier than lovely.
“Stagehands!” Mezzaluna hissed. “No snow until the finale! Remember, Quentin Drybread’s saw solo is your cue!”
“But we haven’t dropped the snow yet,” protested a voice from above.
Anastasia’s eyes swiveled up to the catwalks, where two stagehands clutched bags of fake snow. And then she noticed—the papier-mâché clouds were moving. Their lumpy sides heaved like the flanks of snoring sheep, and from their swollen bellies twinkled silver-white crystals. The crystals waltzed down to alight on the ballerinas’ eyelashes and shoulders and tutus.
“Stop!” Mezzaluna said. “Rodrigo! Sam! Stop! You won’t have any snow left for Vespertina’s Ice Waltz!”
“That snow isn’t coming from us!” the stagehands replied.
Snowflakes blustered into the wings and onto Anastasia’s face, tingling cold against her nose and cheeks. How could artificial snowflakes be cold?
“Look at the stage!” Gus whispered.
Ice gleamed upon the glass pond. The dancers’ silk slippers skidded over the rime, sending them into hectic pirouettes.
“My gosh, this is realistic!” exclaimed a ballet-goer in the front row.
The snow was falling faster and faster, forming drifts around the fake pond. Gus’s teeth chattered, and clouds of foggy breath puffed from the ballerinas’ nostrils as they leapt and twirled. Saskia bravely executed a brisé volé to center stage as Quentin’s saw let out a melancholy wail.
“That’s our cue,” said Rodrigo (or Sam), and a cascade of artificial flakes mingled with the chilly snowfall.
“Too much snow!” Mezzaluna cried.
“But you told us—”
CREEE-ACK! Saskia lurched as the mirror fractured beneath her feet. In a flash and flutter of tutu and golden hair, the Loondorfer princess plunged straight through the glass pond. Water splooshed around her upflung arms. Anastasia startled; was that part of the choreography?
“What in caves?” Mezzaluna thundered. “Did the floorboards collapse under her? And where did that water come from?”
Voices buzzed in the wings:
“Did she fall through the trapdoor?”
“That stage doesn’t have a trapdoor!”
“Maybe a pipe burst!”
“There aren’t any pipes down in the orchestra pit!”
“Then a canal wall must have burst!”
“Is the orchestra pit flooded?”
And yet the musicians continued to play.
“Help me!” Saskia scrabbled at the edge of the hole, sloshing water onto the glass pond. A few determined dancers continued their pirouettes only to collapse, splay-legged, on the frost-mantled mirror; others skidded offstage as snow torpedoed down from the papier-mâché clouds.
“Witchcraft!” someone hollered. “It’s witchcraft! There’s a witch in the Cavepearl Theater!”
Screams rang out as frosty gales whipped through the theater. Morfolk scrambled from their seats to flee the blizzard-blasted auditorium, and ballerinas abandoned the stage like panicked rats jumping from a sinking ship.
“We have to help Saskia!” Anastasia shouted. She elbowed her way onstage and edged onto the mirror—but the mirror was gone completely; now it was pure ice—and inched toward the rift. Her feet slipped from beneath her, and she keeled forward and starfished onto the glacial pond.
“Help!” Saskia sputtered.
Anastasia wriggled forward, stretching out her hand. Saskia managed to lock her slick fingers around Anastasia’s wrist and then, with a CREEEEEAK, the ice cracked and collapsed.
After the first shock of cold, Anastasia forced her eyelids up, expecting to find herself somewhere in the orchestra pit among swimming flautists and panicked percussionists and abandoned tubas. But Anastasia saw none of these things. Instead the cool blue glow of frigid water surrounded her, vast in all directions. Saskia’s hair had come loose from its bun and streamed around her frightened face like the golden tendrils of a storybook mermaid.
Calm down, Anastasia mouthed, but her eyes widened as an enormous silhouette passed behind her cousin. What was that? The shadowy shape loomed closer. A dark spot turned into a nose, and two eyes materialized above it, and then two round ears above a furry white forehead. It was a polar bear.
As you will recall, observant Reader, Anastasia loved animals both great and small. She aspired to one day tend to their well-being as a dignified practitioner of veterinary medicine. At that moment, however, plunged into an arctic sea that had welled up from nowhere, Anastasia was none too pleased to see an enormous member of the species Ursus maritimus paddling her way. A scream escaped her lips in a flurry of bubbles. Saskia twisted and spotted the bear, and then, in a fresh burst of terror, latched onto Anastasia with the ferocity of an octopus in a jujitsu match. They struggled.
Many harried swimmers, in their flails of panic, drown both themselves and their would-be rescuers. Anastasia wrestled to extricate herself from Saskia’s clutches. Her lungs burned. How long had she been underwater? Cold water and fear trickled down her throat; she and Saskia would both drown, and if they didn’t drown, the polar bear would munch them for an intermission snack. The great beast swam closer…closer…but Anastasia was too weak to wriggle any longer. Her head lolled and her limbs went slack as the last bits of oxygen dwindled from her bloodstream. The pond went dark as the depths of a moonless midnight, and so did Anastasia’s mind.
“ANASTASIA! ANASTASIA, WAKE up!”
Anastasia coughed and shivered. She was no longer underwater. Nor was she inside a polar bear’s belly. She was sprawled upon the Cavepearl Theater stage, snow melting from her braids. Gus and Ollie and Quentin and
Pippistrella and Penny and Baldwin and Wiggy and Lord Monkfish and even Claudio Mezzaluna and Miss Ramachandra and a gaggle of theater folk and a muster of Royal Guards were gathered around her, and they all let out sighs of relief as Anastasia sat up. Penny grabbed her into a hug, and Pippistrella nuzzled her ear.
“The polar bear,” Anastasia croaked. “Where did he go?”
“He’s stomping around backstage!” Signor Mezzaluna wailed. “That horrid beast is chomping and bashing and clawing all our lovely handiwork!”
“Claudio!” Baldwin chided. “Show our polar visitor a little respect!”
“I thought ‘our polar visitor’ was going to eat me!” Anastasia said.
“On the contrary,” Baldwin said. “That bear saved your life. Once he’s calmed down, we’ll give that bear a medal! We’ll make him a peer of the realm!”
“After you fell into the pond, I couldn’t even see you,” Gus explained. “You sank so fast. But then the bear splashed up, and he nudged you back onstage with his nose.”
“Oh.” Anastasia blinked. “What about Saskia? Is she okay?”
“She is,” Wiggy replied. “She’s right over there.”
Saskia huddled stage left, trembling beneath her mother’s coat. Ludowiga knelt beside her, combing bits of ice from her soggy blond hair.
Anastasia blinked around the theater. Every last member of the audience had cleared out. Fluffy white drifts mantled the proscenium and the aisles and cushioned the velveteen theater seats, but flakes no longer gusted from above. “It’s stopped snowing.”
“Indeed it has, but the entire city is in an uproar,” Wiggy said. “There can be no doubt about it: there’s a witch in Nowhere Special.”
“And that witch is going to pay for spoiling Saskia’s Triumphant Debut!” Ludowiga screeched. “Who worked on these sets?”
“Why, quite a lot of people, Princess,” Claudio Mezzaluna replied nervously. “Myself, and my apprentices, and Miss Ramachandra and her students.”
“Miss Ramachandra?” Ludowiga echoed. “The same Miss Ramachandra who was up in Dinkledorf the day of the magical clouds? The same Miss Ramachandra who chaperoned the field trip whence Jasper Cummerbund went missing?”
“That’s me,” Miss Ramachandra quavered.
“So you’re the witch!” Ludowiga leapt to her feet. “What did you do with Jasper, you rotten magic-monger? Did you arrange for one of your witchy accomplices to snatch him from the lanes of Dinkledorf, or did you simply cast a disappearing spell?”
“No!” Miss Ramachandra cried. “I would never have hurt Jasper. And I’m not a witch! I’m not!”
“Then prove it,” Ludowiga said. “Shift. Whether you’re a Shadow or a wolf or a bat or a blasted squirrel, shift and prove you’re a Morfo.”
Miss Ramachandra quailed. “I can’t shift. Not anymore. The doctors say it’s a psychological block—but I was a bat once, I swear—”
“Lies!” Ludowiga screamed. “Your Mommyness, have this witch locked in the dungeon!”
“No!” Anastasia cried. “Miss Ramachandra can’t be a witch!”
“Haven’t you learned yet that people aren’t always what they seem, you little fool?” Ludowiga snapped. “And witches are particularly devious! Posing as a bumbling art teacher was the perfect way for this crafty imposter to wriggle herself into the Cavelands!”
“But I am an art teacher!” Miss Ramachandra protested. “I’ll show you! I’ll show you my students’ macaroni mosaics!”
“Macaroni means nothing,” Ludowiga spat. She wheeled to Wiggy. “This was an assassination attempt! Witch Ramachandra must have been planning this for months—hexing the theater and cozying up to Anastasia until she had the entire royal family together where she could strike them all at once!”
Wiggy stared at Miss Ramachandra, her face grave. Then she twitched her little finger, and the Royal Guards descended upon the art teacher.
“Stop!” Anastasia shouted. “Please, Grandwiggy! She isn’t a witch!”
“I’m innocent!” Miss Ramachandra howled, kicking her legs. “Help me! Someone, please help me!”
“Miss Ramachandra, you can morph if you believe!” Anastasia screamed. “Think happy thoughts! THINK HAPPY THOUGHTS!”
But Miss Ramachandra was, perhaps, too rattled to think happy thoughts. The guards hauled the hapless lady away in the blink of an eye, and the stunned Morfolk were now left shivering, knee-deep in witch snow. Tears brimmed Anastasia’s eyes and froze her lashes.
“I’m calling an emergency Senate conclave,” Wiggy said. “Miss Ramachandra may have allies nearby; we’re voting on the Militia Bill tonight.”
“After this debacle, its passage is assured, oh-most-moonbright Queen,” Lord Monkfish intoned. “I’ll send out the announcement.” He departed, wading through the snow.
“Come.” Wiggy gestured at the elder Merrymoons. “Let’s away to the Senate Cave.”
“What about the girls?” Penny asked. “Anastasia and Saskia have suffered a terrible shock! We need to take them home and get them into a hot bath.”
“The guards will escort the princesses home, and the royal maids can tend to their needs,” Wiggy said. “Princesses, get to the palace.”
“But—”
“Shhh.” Penny patted Anastasia’s cheek. “Go home and get warm and go to bed. Everything will seem much better tomorrow.”
“Indeed it will. By tomorrow, Witch Ramachandra won’t be Witch Ramachandra anymore,” Ludowiga sneered. “She’ll be dead.”
You might suppose that the discovery of a witch in Nowhere Special—a witch masquerading as a Pettifog art teacher, no less—would warrant an academy closure of at least a day or so. However, just like clockwork, school resumed on Monday.
“Stiff upper lip,” Marm Pettifog commanded. “We can’t cancel classes until the world is rid of witches, can we? School would be closed forever!”
“Sounds good to me,” Ollie grumbled.
“I heard that, Drybread,” Marm Pettifog barked. “And being a lot of ignoramuses won’t help you one bit in a witch invasion. All the more reason to soldier on with today’s Applied Navigation exam.”
Neither huzzah nor hooray from Jasper Cummerbund punctuated this declaration, because Jasper Cummerbund was still missing. Miss Ramachandra had kept mum about his whereabouts, even after three rounds of s’mores, the Crown’s weapon of choice in interrogations. As you may already know, sapient Reader, s’mores are the closest thing in existence to truth serum. Secrets are best spilled whilst eating s’mores, and Queen Wiggy had discovered centuries earlier that culprits stuffed full of s’mores couldn’t resist confessing their darkest crimes.
But Miss Ramachandra maintained her innocence of Morfling-snatching schemes, cloud-and-snow-and-polar-bear hocus-pocus, and witchery in general. If she didn’t spill the beans soon, the Crown would move on to non-marshmallow, far less pleasant interrogation techniques.
Anastasia shivered. Wiggy had refused Ludowiga’s demands for a hasty execution—so far. How long would the Crown’s inquisition last? Could Miss Ramachandra really be a witch? It felt wrong. But after a broody weekend spent kicking around the facts, Anastasia had to admit the evidence was there. Miss Ramachandra had been on the spot when the clouds danced above Dinkledorf. Jasper Cummerbund had gone missing under her watch. The Sugarplum Bat sets she worked on went haywire.
And Miss Ramachandra couldn’t morph. She had given the Dreadfuls an explanation for that, but it could very well be a lie. Witches were liars, after all. Calixto Swift had seemed a friendly, fun-loving fellow, and look how that turned out.
“Anastasia! Pay attention!” Marm Pettifog scolded. “Now, each of your quads will be quizzed on five different destinations. Not all the destinations are the same, so don’t try to cheat by following your classmates! Speaking of cheating, it’s forbidden to accept help from anyone, and that includes bats.” She glared at Pippistrella, lodged beneath Anastasia’s braid. “No bats allowed during the exam.”
&n
bsp; Pippistrella squeaked sadly but dislodged herself from her mistress’s hair and fluttered to the stalactites. Saskia’s bat-in-waiting glided to join her.
Marm Pettifog swifted around the classroom, delivering five envelopes into the sweaty hands of members of the various row teams. Gus received the Dreadfuls’ envelope. “Those are your first goals,” Pettifog said. “The ninth-grade coxswains stationed at each checkpoint will give you a ribbon upon your arrival and reveal your team’s next destination. You must collect all five ribbons to pass your Applied Navigation exam, and you must do so within two hours.”
“But what if a witch is lurking in one of the tunnels?” Taffline shrilled.
Marm Pettifog smiled nastily. “Which scares you more: the possibility of a witch, or the reality of flunking and contending with me?”
On this sinister note, she sent the fifth graders into the canals. The Dreadfuls had scrambled aboard their boat before Gus had even ripped open their envelope.
“Where are we supposed to go?” Anastasia panted.
“Um”—he fumbled with the page folded inside—“Bumbershoot Square!”
“Easy,” Ollie scoffed. “That’s where we docked before the Dinkledorf field trip, remember?”
The Dreadfuls flurried their oars, navigating their pink Pettifog vessel across Old Crescent Lagoon and into the Spelunker Straits. “Pull…pull…harder on starboard!” Ollie puffed.
“Ollie! You’re a natural steersman!” Gus praised.
A grin lit up Ollie’s pink face. “Well, Quentin and I have rowed a lot with Uncle Zed. Look, there’s Gardyloo Bridge! Now we head down Bumbershoot Gutter….”
“Look! It’s Q!” Anastasia cried as the docks in Bumbershoot Square came into view. Quentin sat on a small chair at the edge of the pier, strumming a wobbly tune from his musical saw. He perked when he glimpsed the Dreadfuls.
“Congratulations!” He saluted them. “You’ve reached your first goal!” He set aside his saw and rummaged in his jacket, pulling forth a pink ribbon and a scrap of paper. “Your next destination is…Mudpuddle Cavern.”