Sleeping Beauty Dreams Big

by Joan Holub

  “I say we go talk to him,” Snow said.

  Classes were over, so the first-floor hall was empty of students when they stopped by the trunkers so Rose could get her handbook before they headed upstairs to the Principal’s office on the fourth floor. She wanted to use it to study up on knight rules when she got back to her dorm that night. She was just about to say her trunker code when they heard voices drifting out from one of the classrooms.

  “Yes, Ludwig. We’re on it,” said one of the voices. It sounded familiar, but Rose couldn’t quite pinpoint who it belonged to. Still, she froze upon hearing the name of the banished Grimm brother, Ludwig. He was the head of the E.V.I.L. Society!

  “I’ve got the students in my classes searching for loopholes,” added another voice.

  The girls glanced at one another, eyes rounding in surprise.

  “That’s —” Cinda started to whisper. But when Rapunzel put a finger to her lips, Cinda fell silent. They’d all recognized the second voice as Ms. Wicked’s. Both speakers were apparently talking to E.V.I.L.’s leader.

  But how could that be if Ludwig Grimm was still on the other side of the Wall? Rose pointed across the hall and a ways down to a door that stood half open, indicating that she thought the voices were coming from Ms. Wicked’s room. The others nodded.

  Snow slipped something from her school bag and set it on her head. Her magic tiara. Be right back, she mouthed silently to them, handing her bag to Cinda. Without waiting for a reply, she pressed the center jewel on her tiara and immediately went invisible.

  Rose’s jaw dropped at this amazing feat of magic. Then the voices began again. Quickly, she, Red, and Cinda hurried over and flattened themselves against the wall just outside Ms. Wicked’s classroom door so they could listen in. Rapunzel went to the end of the hall to keep an eye out on the stairs and ensure that no one would unexpectedly catch them all spying.

  When they were in position, they heard Ms. Wicked say, “— and once her curse goes into effect on Friday, Grimmlandia will be ours to do with as we like.”

  “With the whole Academy asleep, there’ll be no interference for the next hundred years!” the other voice exulted. It was Ms. Queenharts, Rose suddenly figured out.

  “At last, we’ll break down the boundaries between our two worlds!” Ludwig’s voice cackled. “E.V.I.L. will take over.”

  They were talking about her curse, Rose realized with a start. They planned to use its fulfillment as a way to take over Grimmlandia and somehow merge it with the Nothingterror beyond the Wall. But something about their plan didn’t seem quite right to her. She was trying to put her finger on just what was wrong with it when Snow returned.

  The girls moved to huddle a short distance away so their whispers wouldn’t be overheard. “They’re talking to the big mirror on Ms. Wicked’s wall. And gazing into her crystal ball, too. But Ludwig just signed off to go break up a fight between a couple of Dastardlies,” Snow reported after she went visible again.

  “Mirrors are how they’re able to communicate with him and send him stuff while he’s banished to the Nothingterror,” Cinda explained in a low voice to Rose.

  “Yeah, remember how we told you E.V.I.L. stole some artifacts from the library a while back?” Red added quietly. “When the artifacts returned, they poured in through a magic mirror.”

  “Hide behind the door for a minute, you guys,” said Snow. “I’m going to create a diversion over in Mr. Hump-Dumpty’s room. If the two of them take the bait and go over there, zip into my stepmom’s classroom and see what’s up in that mirror and crystal ball if you can. I’ll keep them busy for as long as possible. But when you hear two crashes in a row in Mr. Hump-Dumpty’s room, run! It’ll be my signal that they’re coming back.”

  With that, Snow touched the jewel in her tiara and went invisible again. A minute later, they heard a loud thump coming from Mr. Hump-Dumpty’s classroom.

  “Did you hear that?” Ms. Queenharts hissed from somewhere inside Ms. Wicked’s room. “I think it came from Mr. Hump-Dumpty’s room. But he’s gone. I saw him leave earlier.”

  “Hmm. Let’s go check it out,” said Ms. Wicked.

  Rose, Red, and Cinda hid behind the door as the two teachers hurried over to Mr. Hump-Dumpty’s room. Then the three girls slipped inside the Scrying classroom to stare at the big mirror at the front wall. Wisps of air were forming all around them, long streams of ants passing out through the mirror to somewhere. Only they weren’t ants at all. They were little black letters, forming words and phrases. Cinda gasped and then clapped a hand over her mouth. Everyone’s eyes were wide as they gazed at the strange sight.

  “These streams look just like the ones I saw going over the Wall,” Rose whispered to the others. The streaming words said things like, “the king and queen’s daughter” and “christening” and “fairy gave her beauty.” She wrinkled her nose, thinking hard. “Why do these words sound so familiar? Oh! They’re from my fairy tale! The way it was originally written, I mean.”

  She reached out and tried to capture some of the streaming words. To stop them from leaving the realm through the mirror. But her hands passed right through them. It was like trying to grab air. Impossible!

  Giving up on that, she hurried over to gaze into the crystal ball on Ms. Wicked’s desk. It still displayed her Sleeping Beauty fairy tale.

  Meanwhile, as the word streams left the room through the mirror, other streams of words passed them, coming in. The phrases coming in were unfamiliar. And badly written. Things like, “the baby poked the fairy in her bodaciously beautiful fairy eye” and “poor adorable sweetest-fairy-ever thirteen.”

  “Think this is how E.V.I.L. is changing your tale?” Red whispered. “By stealing Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s words and replacing them with Ludwig’s?”

  Rose nodded. “I bet those horrible sounds I heard at the Wall were Dastardlies munching Jacob and Wilhelm’s words as soon as they crossed into the Nothingterror. It must be what the Dastardlies do. Destroy words. Maybe even imagination, too.”

  “If they keep that up, more fairy tales and nursery rhymes will soon be changed or lost forever,” said Cinda.

  Crash! Crash! When Snow’s two-crash signal came from the other room, the girls didn’t wait to hear the click, click of high heels coming toward them.

  Quickly, Rose grabbed another crystal ball from the shelf and switched it out with Ms. Wicked’s, hoping to fool her. Then she handed Ms. Wicked’s ball to Red, who put it in her basket as they all scurried back down the hall to join Rapunzel at the stairs. Snow joined them, too, and they raced up to the fourth floor, filling Rapunzel in on all that they’d seen and heard.

  “We knew Ms. Wicked was in the E.V.I.L. Society,” panted Cinda from beside Rose as the five girls finally entered the fourth-floor hall and made their way to the school office.

  “Yeah, but now we know for sure that Ms. Queenharts is, too,” said Snow as they reached their destination.

  “So you see what we meant about not knowing who we can trust around here,” Red told Rose. She reached out and rattled the office doorknob, then her face filled with dismay. “It’s locked!”

  Rapunzel let out a disappointed huff. “I guess we should have known Ms. Jabberwocky and Principal R would be gone. It’s after dinner. We’ll have to try and corner him after morning announcements tomorrow.”

  “So what should we do till then?” asked Red. “Time’s running out.” She glanced at Rose. “Not just for you, but for the whole Academy.”

  Rose leaned against the nearest wall and bowed her head. “I know, and I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. This is E.V.I.L.’s doing!” Cinda told her earnestly, and the others gathered around Rose, nodding reassuringly.

  “Still, I can’t help feeling responsible, since it’s my tale,” Rose admitted. “I’ve put everyone here in danger …” Suddenly, she stopped speaking and straightened. Because she’d just remembered thinking that E.V.I.L. had gotten it all wrong.

&nbs
p; “Hey! I just realized there’s a huge flaw in the E.V.I.L. Society’s plan!” she announced. “If the whole Academy falls asleep for a hundred years like my altered tale says, so will Ms. Wicked and Ms. Queenharts. And any other E.V.I.L. Society members, too.”

  Rapunzel gasped and looked at the others. “She’s right!”

  “Yeah, good point,” said Red. “The Society must have figured out how to avoid that, though.”

  “Think they’re planning to go hide somewhere else before the Big Sleep begins?” wondered Cinda.

  “Maybe. You guys could do that, too,” Rose urged as the girls began moving down the hall. “The whole school could. Or maybe I should go back home to the palace … except I don’t know if that would change things since my tale has been rewritten to say the Academy will fall asleep instead of the palace. Oh, this is all getting so confusing!”

  “Let’s take a closer look at Ms. Wicked’s crystal ball and see if that helps us figure anything out,” suggested Snow. Quickly, Red pulled the ball from her basket and the girls gathered around to study it.

  Rose groaned. “They’ve made more changes to my fairy tale. Now it says I actually stomped on the thirteenth fairy and called her rude names.”

  Rapunzel rolled her eyes. “That’s dumb. You were a baby. You couldn’t even speak!”

  “Hey! What’s that tiny asterisk?” asked Cinda, pointing.

  Rose looked more closely. “Hmm. That wasn’t there before. It’s at the end of the phrase E.V.I.L. changed to say the whole Academy will fall asleep if the curse takes effect.”

  As the other girls squinted at the words in the crystal ball, Rose ran her fingertip down to the bottom of the page, locating the corresponding asterisk there, almost hidden in a decorative border around the text. Printed in tiny letters following the asterisk were these words, which she read aloud: “except for members of the E.V.I.L. Society.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “Know what this means?” she said looking up from the ball. “It means that E.V.I.L.’s rotten plan has no flaw after all. They excluded themselves from my curse. They’re safe.”

  With heavy hearts and nervous anticipation, Rose and Pea met Red, Cinda, Rapunzel, and Snow for breakfast in the Great Hall the next morning. Their plan was to talk to Principal R after announcements. However, when the musicians blew their golden trumpets and the students all stood to face the balcony, he didn’t appear.

  Long minutes passed, then the School Board helmet-heads chorused: “Hear ye, hear ye! Important announcement! Principal R has disappeared. Therefore, he has been relieved of his duties as head of the Academy effective immediately. For the time being, Ms. Wicked will be acting as principal in his place.”

  Murmurs filled the Hall, quickly rising to an uproar. No one could believe the news!

  “The Rumpster’s gone?” Rose heard Wolfgang mutter incredulously from where he sat beside Red.

  “No more Grumpystiltskin?” Cinda said to the others.

  “What could’ve happened to him?” Rapunzel wondered aloud.

  Snow wrinkled her nose. “My stepmother is now Principal Wicked?”

  The trumpets sounded again. Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-tum!

  Along with everyone else, Rose looked back toward the second-floor balcony that overlooked the far end of the two-story Great Hall.

  Click! Click! Click! Wearing her trademark high heels, Ms. Wicked appeared on the balcony. Stepping up to the railing, she spread her arms wide and called for quiet.

  “Students of Grimm Academy! As you are no doubt thrilled to have learned, I will henceforth govern the school. Which means I’m allowed to change a few rules. So until further notice, no one will be allowed off the school grounds.” She smiled a wickedly beautiful smile that sent chills down Rose’s back. “For safety reasons only, of course,” she added with fake-sounding sweetness.

  Rose gasped, then in a whisper loud enough so the other five girls would hear, she said, “That’s to make sure everyone will be here to fall asleep if the curse takes effect.”

  “This means no venturing into Neverwood Forest,” Ms. Wicked went on. “No going home to visit your families.”

  “What about trips to Maze Island or Heart Island?” called out Snow’s crush, Prince Prince.

  “Those are officially part of the Academy, and will be allowed,” said their new principal. “However, outbursts such as yours are not allowed while I’m in charge here. Two demerits!”

  “Oh, no!” murmured Snow. Leaning out of line to glance back at Prince Prince a dozen seats back, she sent him a sympathetic glance.

  As students left the Great Hall for their first-period classes, rumors flew among them about where the principal could have disappeared to and why he’d been immediately removed from his duties. After first stopping off at her trunker, Rose reached Threads class to find that Red and Cinda were already there.

  “On the way to class, I heard a rumor that Principal R had one too many temper tantrums, so the School Board ordered him to take some time off for an Anger Management class,” Red told them.

  “And I heard someone say he had a fit over the spinning-the-straw problem and whirled around till he broke his leg,” said Cinda. “So he went to see a special doctor in another part of the realm until it heals.”

  “I heard that he got locked up in the Pink Castle dungeon for some crime,” Rose put in. “Maybe for selling off school valuables because the magic straw hasn’t worked out.”

  “I don’t know for sure about the leg part or the anger class,” said Cinda. “But I think Rapunzel would’ve mentioned seeing him in the dungeon if that were true. Her bedroom’s down there, so I think she’d notice.”

  “All I know is, I don’t like the new rules,” said Red.

  “Oh! My needle snapped,” said Cinda just then. By now, the girls had finished their crochet projects and moved on to stitchery. Ms. Muffet and Ms. Spider were teaching them to do a decorative scallop stitch.

  Cinda stood to go fetch another needle, but Rose stopped her. “Wait! I’ve got one.” She pulled the needle she’d found in the haystack from her pocket. She’d placed it in a small box, which she now handed to Red who handed it to Cinda. “Found it yesterday, and I was going to stow it with the sewing supplies here in class today. With all the excitement, I almost forgot.”

  Cinda took the needle, saying thanks. But after a moment, she huffed and said, “It won’t let me thread it.”

  “Let me try,” Red took it from her. Eventually, she gave up, too. “Must be enchanted or something. I can’t thread it, either.”

  “Weird,” said Rose. She took the needle from Red, and then poked one end of the thread toward the opening in the needle. It slipped right through.

  She looked at the others. “Beginner’s luck?” Suddenly the needle jumped from her fingers and hovered over her lap, like a buzzing bee.

  The girls stared at it. “Think maybe it wants to stitch something?” asked Cinda.

  “Here.” Red tossed the cloth she’d been using to practice the scallop-stitch over onto Rose’s lap. Instantly, the needle began stitching words upon it all on its own. GUESS MY NAME.

  Rose drew in a surprised breath, staring at the needle. “You have a name?”

  “Know what I think? I think that needle is your charm,” Cinda told her. “You know, like Snow’s tiara. The one that made her invisible yesterday?”

  “I agree,” Red told Rose, nodding. “Because charms only work for the person they’re meant for. Like my basket. It won’t fetch anything for anyone but me.”

  Cinda lifted her hem slightly to show she was wearing her glass slippers. “Yeah, and these only fit me and lead me places. No one else.”

  “Having my own magic charm would be grimmawesome,” said Rose. “But I’m not sure a needle is quite right for me. Even one with a name.” She heard the doubt and disappointment in her own voice. The other girls’ charms seemed much more fun and seemed to fit their personalities more than a needle fit hers.

  “She’s r
ight, come to think of it,” said Red. “I mean, a needle is about the sharpest thing there is besides maybe a dagger or scissors. And her curse will put her in danger of sharp things. Doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Also, I’m not really that good at sewing,” Rose put in. “And I’m not that interested in getting good at it, to tell you the truth.”

  “Yeah, Rapunzel’s not either,” Red sympathized. “I can imagine how she’d feel if she’d gotten a needle as her magic charm. Still, don’t worry. I’m sure it can do wondrous magic.”

  “And you’ll figure out all it can do as you go along,” said Cinda.

  “But first, it seems I’ll have to figure out its name,” said Rose. She stared at the needle, taking a guess. “Tweedle Needle?” The needle sewed the words: GUESS AGAIN. Rose looked at the other two girls, who offered guesses, too.

  “Stitchy?” suggested Cinda.

  “Pointdexter?” asked Red.

  For the remainder of class, as they worked, the three of them tried about a hundred more name guesses such as Needlenose and Silver. After a while it got silly and they were trying names such as Sew-Sew and Stick-em-up. But each time, the needle simply pointed to the words it had sewn: GUESS AGAIN. They’d come up with nothing by the time class ended, so Rose boxed up the needle and headed to her next class — Scrying.

  There, more rumors flew about the principal’s whereabouts until Ms. Wicked arrived to begin class. She didn’t address the rumors, but instead spoke to the students in a snooty tone, saying, “As you are all aware, I have been chosen from among all the teachers here to become principal of Grimm Academy. It’s quite an honor.” She caught sight of her reflection in her large wall mirror just then and paused to tuck a curl in place.

  Wait a minute, thought Rose. There was something different about that mirror today. It wasn’t as tall or as wide and its frame was all wrong. It wasn’t the same mirror that usually hung there! Had Ms. Wicked guessed that someone had been snooping in her classroom yesterday? Maybe. After all, they had taken her crystal ball, and the substitute probably hadn’t fooled her. To avoid anyone else tampering with her magic stuff, she must’ve moved that mirror somewhere safer.