by Temre Beltz
So, Agnes had never gone to the Witches’ Ball before. She had never wanted to go to the Witches’ Ball before. But the niggling question that had been bothering Agnes worked its way up from her small, stony heart and into her thoughts for the umpteenth time. The question that, no matter how much pumpkin juice Agnes tossed back, she could not seem to be rid of: Why isn’t being a witch fun anymore?
She had even grown so desperate as to contemplate flipping back to the beginning of The Book of Evil Deeds and starting the useless set of spells all over again, just to have something to pass the time, but she couldn’t. She’d become so sickened at the sight of the book she’d torn it apart from cover to cover, whipped the shredded paper into a bit of a snow flurry for kicks, and then smoked the whole thing in her cauldron.23 Of course, she could have requested a new copy, but Agnes couldn’t stomach asking the Council for a chicken bone, much less a book.
Agnes sighed. Maybe it was time to stop being such a hermit. Maybe it was time to do what those other obnoxious witches did. Maybe she wasn’t at all bored of being a witch, but merely bored of being an underappreciated witch. Maybe she needed to win a prize.
Agnes glanced back at The Invitation in her lap. She zeroed in on the one line, and the one line alone that mattered: Make everyone sniff your witchy boots when you take top prize in the Witches’ Challenge, she read.
She scratched at the bugs nestled in her purple hair. She pursed her cracked, raisin-dry lips. She contemplated her most evil and most impressive curses to date: turning frogs into the flies they loved to snack on, turning a maiden’s lovely voice into a croaking horror, temporarily tingeing the sky a shade of phlegm green—Oh, those were all fine, but even without having once gone to the ball, Agnes knew fine wouldn’t win a top prize.
I need something outrageous, Agnes thought. Something no one would ever expect!
Boom! Crack! Pop! Fizzle, fizzle!
Agnes bristled.
She whirled around in the direction of her cauldron bubbling over the hearth. Something was amiss! Though she’d enchanted her cauldron to toss out periodic blasts of thunder and lightning, this was different.
Agnes crept closer. She lifted her arms high in the air and flexed her long, bony fingers. Whatever wild and woolly beast that dared to pop out would certainly meet its doom in the clutches of Agnes Prunella Crunch!
Agnes hadn’t a clue, however, what to do when the fluffy lemon meringue cupcake with the rainbow sprinkles floated down the chimney and hop-skipped merrily along the lip of her cauldron. Agnes’s jaw gaped. The cupcake hadn’t any teeth; it hadn’t any claws; it smelled ludicrously sweet! What was it doing in her cabin?
Certain the cupcake had taken a disastrously wrong turn and was instead destined for some place annoying like a fairy godmother soiree, Agnes bared her crooked teeth and waited for it to flee in distress.
But it didn’t.
In fact, the cupcake drew to a halt in front of Agnes’s humongous nose, skirted around her, and continued to parade about her haunted cabin in a way that caused the jars full of witchy things to recoil, hide, and possibly even cower because they had never seen such a thing.
Agnes’s eyes narrowed. No floating cupcake was going to brighten her horrid surroundings! She raised her hands and let loose a real satisfying zap that should have sent the cupcake whirring back up the chimney where it came from, thank you very much.
Instead, the cupcake shivered, shook, and in one obnoxiously glittery burst, transformed into a sheet of paper, which came to rest on the toe of Agnes’s witchy boot. Agnes looked down. Agnes blinked. The paper had writing on it.
Someone had responded to her letter.
Agnes bent her creaking bones and plucked the letter up by its top right corner. She dangled the paper in the air, twisting it this way and that, examining it ever so carefully. Despite the letter’s most peculiar entrance as a cupcake, Agnes couldn’t detect a single curse, hex, or booby trap.
She flipped it forward, backward; she shook it all about!
But it was no use. The letter couldn’t have come from a supremely crotchety old witch.
The letter was utterly devoid of magic.
Agnes’s shoulders slumped. Maybe even a plan as clever as writing to a witch wasn’t enough to get around the no-talking rule set forth in the Witches’ Manifesto.
That didn’t, of course, answer the question of who had responded to her letter, but if they didn’t have a drop of magic, then frankly Agnes couldn’t give a hoot.
“Bah!” Agnes exclaimed. “What a wicked waste of time this letter-writing business has been!”
She wrapped her craggy fingers around the letter. She was preparing for the deliciously satisfying riiiiiip that would mean good riddance, when she noticed the letter writer’s penmanship. It was . . . round and chubby. Every i was neatly dotted, and not a single t was without its crossbar. And . . . there was something else too. The barest whiff of a scent that was vaguely familiar; a scent that smelled almost, unmistakably like—
Agnes yowled and drop-kicked the letter.
It catapulted off the toe of her witchy boot and up toward the ceiling. It bodysurfed through the frothy layer of cobwebs and spun wildly down toward Agnes’s prized porcupine footstool. Instead of being pierced through, the letter sprang up in the direction of Agnes’s popping cauldron. Certain her cauldron would finish off the job, Agnes licked her lips in anticipation, but her cauldron chickened out at the last second and belched up a smelly gust that sent the letter spinning right back to Agnes!
“Aiiiiiiii!” she shrieked.
The letter skidded to a halt. It laid itself, once again, on the toe of her witchy boot. Agnes eyeballed the letter that smelled suspiciously of child. Witches were experts at sniffing out children. It was the sole reason their noses were so large and horrid. But it wasn’t for the purpose you might expect. Witches did not typically track children for the intent of wickedry, but instead, to keep a safe distance. Children always made a mess of everything. And the meddling little buggers usually traveled in groups, which meant incrementally more trouble.
Agnes ignored the annoying little twitch of her lip that sprang up once every twenty-two years or so when she felt a bit anxious. She supposed the letter would not go away of its own accord. She supposed it was best to roll up her sleeves and get it over with.
Agnes held the letter as far away from her face as her arm could stretch. She read:
Dear Ms. Crunch,
Hello to you too! I sure hope you weren’t waiting long to hear that, but I’ve never dealt with magical letters before or tried to send anything via the Winds of Wanderly. I’m not sure if delivery is an instant sort of thing or if it takes a few days.
I also think I should be up-front about something. It’s possible I received your letter by mistake. I say this for two reasons: (1) Not only is yours the first magical letter I’ve ever received, it’s also the first letter I’ve ever received (magic and letters are both forbidden where I live), and (2) your letter was all about a book, and for a kid like me, that’s sort of the last thing we like to talk about.
So, in order to clear up any confusion, here goes: My name’s Birdie Bloom. I’m about ten years old. And I’m a Tragical.
Please don’t let that last part scare you away. Most folks like to pretend Tragicals don’t even exist, but I have to tell you—even though your letter buzzed into the dungeon like a deadly hornet and chased me around for a spell, it’s now tied for first place as the BEST thing that’s ever happened to me.
If you’re wondering what you’re tied with, funny enough, it’s something I discovered on the same day I got your letter! That’s for sure got to go down in the record books, considering some Tragicals never experience one good thing in their whole lives. Anyways, the other thing I’m referring to is a book.
I know. It doesn’t make sense. I mentioned a moment ago how Tragicals hate books. But this book is different. I’m even wondering if it’s the same book you referred to in yo
ur letter. If it is, I’ve got a question for you: How could I have finished the book if it’s got no end?
Anyways, I’m dying of curiosity now. I can’t help wondering if maybe your copy has more writing in it, or if, like me, you’re wondering if it’s not just a good book, but a true book? I didn’t have a clue how I could find out such an answer on my own, but maybe we can find out together?
Of course, if you wrote to me by accident, it’s more likely than not you’ll want to forget any of this even happened. And I would understand. But if you do decide to write back, make sure to keep sending your letters by the Winds of Wanderly. If Mistress Octavia catches even a whiff of what I’m doing, she’ll shred your letter up into itty-bitty pieces, and I’d feel just awful if you were waiting on a response from me.
No matter what, thanks for this. Receiving your magical letter is enough thrill to last me a whole lifetime. I know my lifetime’s going to be shorter than most, but I think that’s still saying something.
Yours truly,
Birdie Bloom
Agnes Prunella Crunch brought the letter closer.
She scratched her head.
She tapped the toe of her witchy boot.
Her first letter of the early morning, The Invitation, leaped suddenly off her rocking chair and smacked against her cheek. Agnes scowled and snatched it up. She held both letters out in front of her, one in each crooked hand. She couldn’t decide which was worse.
But neither could she deny an idea was starting to brew.
A deliciously wicked idea, because she was, after all, a witch.
Five
When It Rains, It Pours
It was a typical Tuesday morning at Foulweather’s Home for the Tragical.
Birdie and the other Tragicals had woken to the sound of Sir Ichabod shuffling in between their beds while shaking a knapsackful of rattlesnake tails in their ears. Shortly after, he had conducted a raffle to see whether it would be a morning upon which the Tragicals received breakfast. (It was not.) And just then, with stomachs grumbling, the children were nearly through with their daily trudging practice.
Trudging was serious business.
The Tragicals had to achieve the right slump. Their knees had to be bent just so. It is harder work than one might think to look wholly miserable (especially for the fifteen-minute duration Mistress Octavia demanded). It was, however, a wee bit easier today considering Mistress Octavia had roused them at two o’clock in the morning for one of her infamous Villain Drills, and several of them remained half asleep.
Villain Drills were not for the purpose of avoiding danger, but rather for the purpose of flocking to it. It takes a great deal of training to run headfirst toward one’s doom instead of dodging it at all costs, and Mistress Octavia was convinced the sleepier the Tragicals were, the easier it would be to produce a response that was nearly automatic. It remained to be seen whether Sir Ichabod Grim agreed with her, as he too was a reluctant participant in the spectacle—being dragged out from his nook in the kitchen pantry and dressed up as anything from a scavenging pirate to a meddlesome magician.
In sharp contrast to the other Tragicals trudging beside her, Birdie was not at all tired. She couldn’t be. After days, weeks, months, and years of everything in the manor being the absolute same, for once, things were different. She had a book. She had received a letter (a magical one!). To cap it all off, the other night while she was brushing her teeth, Cricket had brushed lightly against her and whispered, “Anything?”
To be sure, the word “anything” could pertain to, well, anything, but Birdie was certain Cricket was referring to whether Birdie had received a response to her letter. And it almost didn’t matter that she hadn’t, because the very thought—the very idea—that Cricket was hoping the same thing as Birdie, that they were doing something together, warmed her from her head to her toes.
This was the thought Birdie held near as the Tragicals trudged into the Instruction Room. While her classmates looked hopelessly at the walls painted in shades of black, blacker, and blackest, Birdie snuck a glance in Cricket’s direction. While her classmates’ gazes flickered briefly toward the drapery-clad windows they’d never once seen out of, Birdie even attempted to smile at Francesca Prickleboo (never mind Francesca’s returning glare). While her classmates filled the space that was woefully empty, save for the collection of lonely little desks, Birdie instead counted the Tragicals themselves. There were seventeen of them (eighteen, including herself). Seventeen . . . Had there always been so many? Could there really be seventeen chances for finding a friend? Surely even a Tragical couldn’t thwart those odds.
Of course, Mistress Octavia always managed to put a damper on everything.
She stood poised at the front of the classroom with her arms crossed and her fingertips drumming against her pointy elbows. She tapped the toe of her black, high-heeled boot against the stone floor; she tilted her head and—
Birdie leaned forward in her chair.
She squinted, trying to get a better look at Mistress Octavia’s hair. She shook her head as if her eyes were a bit out of focus. But they weren’t. She could see quite clearly. And the undeniable conclusion presented itself: Mistress Octavia’s hair was not perfect.
For most every other individual in the world, a rumpled hairstyle was expected every now and again (thank goodness). But Mistress Octavia was obsessively tidy about her hair. She always wore it slick and smoothed back. Never once had a single hair toed the line of being arguably “out of place” (even when it had been covered with blueberry mush). And so, to see not just one but—Birdie counted them—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 unruly hairs was no small thing. It was its own miniature rebellion.
But why?
And then, Birdie noticed the air. The air in the manor was unusually heavy. It was almost even a bit damp. It was the sort of condition that caused even the slickest of hair to curl up and frizz. The sort of condition that, if Birdie recalled correctly from the book titled Natural Disasters Never to Avoid, was the precursor to a possibly severe rainstorm.
Birdie flipped about in her seat. Had any of the other children noticed? Were any of the others as mystified as Birdie by Mistress Octavia’s hair and the inclement weather? But, as usual, her fellow classmates’ expressions remained frustratingly blank. If they noticed, they didn’t let on. They merely looked to be settling in for another long, mindless day of Oaths practice.
Mistress Octavia prowled up and down the classroom as if she spent her evenings mimicking her ravenous wolf pack.24 She looked each of the children hard in the face. Then she whipped her broken broomstick handle out from behind her back and whacked it against Cricket’s desk without any warning at all.
The children jumped.
The Tragicals always reacted in such a way when Mistress Octavia brought forth her broken broomstick handle, because why couldn’t she get a proper sort of pointer? Something that wasn’t laden with splinters and snapped in a manner crudely enough to hint at a Stage 3 temper tantrum?25 Not to mention, in Wanderly, only witches and housekeepers dealt with broomsticks. The Tragicals were terrified enough by the witches they routinely encountered in storybooks, and they needn’t one additional reminder that likely half of them would meet their Tragic Ends at the hands of one.
Mistress Octavia jabbed her broken broomstick handle toward the blackboard, where she had written: “When faced with a fatal threat, I will not fight back or retreat under any circumstances.” Directly below that, in large, glaring letters, was written: “DRAGON.”
“By now, I assume each of you has memorized the content of Tragical Oath Number Five. Indeed, for some of you, your sixteenth birthday looms just around the corner, and you will at last have the chance to commit your name to this very important document and pledge your allegiance to the good of Wanderly.”
Birdie’s stomach turned. Her stomach always turned when Mistress Octavia mentioned signing the Tragical Oaths, which she did as often as she could. The Tragical Oaths were, after all
, the whole point of Foulweather’s Home for the Tragical. The Tragical Oaths were comprised of ten requirements that made a Tragical a Tragical. The Chancellor insisted it wasn’t merely enough to treat the Tragicals as such; they had to accept their roles (and thereby, their certain doom) by voluntarily signing their name to them. The payoff, however, was big. Every child who chose to sign the Tragical Oaths was released from Foulweather’s Home for the Tragical.
As in they were set free.
At least that was what the Tragicals assumed. But for every Tragical who signed the Oaths, not one had ever returned to the manor. Not one had ever written a letter. Not one had ever been heard from again.
Mistress Octavia’s broomstick slipped below Tragical Oath Number Five to point at the word “DRAGON.” She licked her lips. Her eyes gleamed.
“During last night’s Villain Drill, only three of you were pathetic enough to try to hide beneath your beds. But tell me, would the result have been the same if you found yourself face-to-face with something as terrible as a dragon? How will you compel yourself not to run away as Tragical Oath Number Five demands?”
In response to Mistress Octavia’s question, one hand was raised high. It rippled proudly through the air like a parade flag. It belonged, of course, to Francesca Prickleboo. She waited on the edge of her seat with her lips pursed and her eyes glued to Mistress Octavia. But Mistress Octavia hardly looked interested. Her gray eyes continued to scan the room. And when another hand rose in the back of the classroom, she hastily shouted, “You!”