by Temre Beltz
That being said, I’m not giving you my address just yet. And even if you don’t have a lot of faith in the Winds of Wanderly, I do. In all my years at the manor, they haven’t forgotten us yet, and Tragicals are nothing if not the forgettable type.
I hope you really will consider my idea about being friends (that is, of course, if you aren’t cooking up plans to eat me). And don’t feel bad if you don’t know a thing about being a friend. I don’t either.
Yours truly,
Birdie Bloom
PS: I’m real glad you mentioned my first letter arrived as a cupcake. Wow, a cupcake! Your last letter arrived as a ravenous crow, only this time it didn’t chase me around, but slurped Mistress Octavia’s pet scorpion right off my shoulder! The timing was pretty perfect, because I was on the brink of being attacked.
Despite what the letter predicted, Agnes wasn’t cackling on the floor with a bellyache.
Not even close.
Agnes was dumbfounded.
It takes a lot to dumbfound a witch.
Especially a witch as ancient as Agnes Prunella Crunch.
With Agnes in such a state, it was perhaps the worst time ever for someone to knock upon her door (on average, Agnes received approximately one wayward visitor every 3.75 years), but so it goes.
BAM-BAM-BAM!
Agnes’s cabin door coughed and sputtered out a heap of dust beneath the visitor’s heavy hand. Quick as a whip, Agnes coiled her fingers toward her cauldron and conjured a loud round of thunder and several electrifying lightning bolts. Whoever was outside would hear such a racket and flee for their lives!
BAM-BAM-BAM!
Or maybe not.
Agnes sighed. Though she didn’t feel a hint cackly, she tilted back her head and emitted her most gruesome, threatening, evil “YEHAHAHAHAW!” It was better than she expected. Certainly all that practicing late into the night when boredom was its thickest had paid off. She brushed her hands briskly together with a satisfied little smirk. She wondered if she might even peek out the window to see the sorry sap sprinting wildly away. But she took one step, merely two, when—
“YEHAHAHAHAW!” blasted right back at her.
Agnes’s breath caught in her throat. Only a witch could produce a cackle like that, but why would a witch be visiting her?
Agnes slunk toward the door. She opened it a crack. The first thing she saw was a bloodshot eye blinking at her. Without waiting for an invitation, the brazen visitor smacked the door against Agnes’s cheek, thrust it wide open, and strutted29 into Agnes’s cabin.
Agnes’s small, stony heart sank. The last witch in all of Wanderly she wanted to deal with was Rudey Longtooth. Rudey tossed her stringy green hair over her shoulder. She shuffled her boots through the inch-thick layer of dirt atop the floor and brushed her big ol’ nose along this shelf and that. She even went so far as to wrap her grimy hands around some of Agnes’s potions and slosh them about.
Agnes stomped her foot. She slammed the door to her cabin so hard her jar full of cockroaches erupted into a hissing fit. “Stop touching my things!” she said.
Rudey whirled about to face Agnes. Agnes, as always, found it hard not to stare at the exceptionally long black tooth that stuck out of Rudey’s mouth and burrowed into the soft skin of her lip as if she was a beaver with dental problems.
“Oh, are you worried about this?” Rudey asked. She lifted the potion high overhead and threw it down against the ground with a loud crash! “Oops,” she said with an unbecoming snicker. Almost immediately, a purple haze rose from the floor.
“You numbskull!” Agnes said. “You don’t have a clue what you’re doing!”
Agnes tried in vain to keep her nose above the purple cloud, but it was no use. In less than two seconds, both she and Rudey had their feet caught up in a jig. Rudey had loosed a dancing potion, and despite their snarling faces and evil glares, the two could not help but join hands with each other and do-si-do around the room! Spurred on by the two pairs of witchy boots tap-tapping against the ground, Agnes’s cauldron drummed up a merry pink glow, and the bones in her treasure trunk clacked out an irresistible beat.
“Ishkaboo-pishkamoo-sickycoo-fi!” Agnes yelled.
The purple haze spun about itself like a tornado and dove into an empty vial on Agnes’s shelf. The two witches’ feet skidded to a halt, and they hastily let go of each other’s hands and wiped them on their skirts in disgust.
“Now, tell me why in the world you are traipsing about my cabin!” Agnes said.
Rudey snarled. She reached beneath her purple Council cloak and pulled out her shiny golden badge. She shoved it toward Agnes’s face.
“Ha! Shows how much you know. Everybody who’s anybody is talking about it. I’m the newest appointed Council member. I’m now your witchy representative, and I make trouble on your behalf. Since I’m the newest appointed Council member, I thought it would only be downright obnoxious if I paid each and every witch a little visit and made ’em shiver in their boots.”
Though Agnes wanted to heave each time Rudey proclaimed “newest appointed Council member,” she instead zeroed in on that one despicable rule that had been causing her so much trouble.
“Oh, yeah? What about Witches’ Manifesto Rule Number Six—the one that says no small talking between witches allowed? Ha! Does this mean you have to go tell on yourself?”
Rudey Longtooth stomped her foot. “Don’t be ridiculous! This is different. This is Council business.”
“Who do you think you’re calling ridiculous? Don’t forget I’ve known you since you were six, when you were getting your kicks by lining snails up and setting their shells on fire.”
Rudey paused. A smile flickered across her face. “Oh, that was a fair bit of fun, wasn’t it? It still tickles me black to watch a snail—ha! A snail of all things—try to outrun scorching flames. But I’ve got bigger things to scorch now. All thanks to the Chancellor, because I’m the first witch EVER to serve on the Council.”
Agnes directed her attention to digging the remnants of yesterday’s dinner out from beneath her jagged fingernails. “Guess the Chancellor’s even more harebrained than I thought,” she muttered beneath her breath.
But Rudy heard her, and she lunged at Agnes. She wrenched the handle of her beat-up broomstick against Agnes’s throat. “Watch yourself, witchy!” she said with a hiss. “The Chancellor knows exactly what he’s doing. In case you haven’t noticed, the Triumphants in Wanderly expect a certain amount of happy endings. Those won’t come about unless people like us dish out the bad endings to those miserably waiting for them. In short: it’s time to get wicked! And lucky for you, I’m here to assist with that.”
Agnes met Rudey’s stare dead-on. “The day I take advice from you is the day I start flossing my teeth morning and night.30 Anyways, I’m over the Triumphants. They’re obnoxious. Why should we care if they get their happy endings?”
“Because if we do that, if we follow those ten measly rules spelled out in the Manifesto, the Chancellor lets us get away with everything else.”
Agnes opened her mouth, but then closed it again. Rudey sort of had a point. It was nice not to have any manners. Nice not to follow any of the rules posted in shopkeepers’ windows. Nice to let loose a whole bunch of disruptive spells and watch the commoners throw their hands in the air and squeal.
Rudey smirked. “Now that I’ve got your attention, let’s discuss the real reason why I came: the Annual Witches’ Ball. You’ve never gone. Not once. This year”—Rudey cracked her oversize knuckles—“you’re gonna.”
Agnes’s head twitched. Her funny bone jerked. She fought to keep her witchy boot on the ground in light of the spasm in her big toe. As I mentioned before, Agnes had quite a volatile reaction whenever anyone told her she had to do something. Agnes’s voice was low and growly. “And whatcha gonna do to me if I don’t?”
Rudey clasped her hands against her chest. She tried to draw her lips into a pout, but her long tooth made it awfully difficult. “Oh, how adorable! You’r
e getting worked up. Oooh, it’s making me a wee bit scared, but that’s good. Hold on to that. That’s exactly the wicked the Chancellor’s looking for.”
“I don’t give a hoot what the Chancellor thinks is wicked!”
“Well, you better start hooting because I’ll report you to the Council. And if you think the Council’s full of a bunch of harmless Goody Two-Shoes, you’re wrong. The gal I sit next to during meetings—Octavia Foul-something or other—is as awful as they come. Her assignment is to torment a house full of little buggers all by herself! Can you even imagine?”
Agnes’s jaw dropped.
Rudey rolled her eyes. “Oh come on, you’re not gonna make me say it! Pooh, you’re gonna make me say it, aren’t you?” She heaved a great big sigh and expelled in one smelly breath: “Children. Ugh! Are you happy? Now I’m gonna have the heebie-jeebies all day long.”
But Agnes wasn’t confused about the meaning of “little buggers.” Every witch had their own code word for dealing with children, and Rudey was nothing if not a simpleton. What Agnes was chewing on and rolling about her tongue like a dislodged piece of beef was that name; that name that kept popping up in the girl’s letters; that terrible, awful name: Octavia.
A shiver rippled up and down Agnes’s spine.
The sort of shiver that precedes an evil act.
The sort of shiver Agnes hadn’t felt for a long, long time.
“Look, I’ve got about one thousand better things to do than sit in your piddly cabin. So let’s make it real simple: be a witch and go to the ball.”
But Agnes stepped in front of Rudey. “Funny, I didn’t know attending tea parties sponsored by the Council was a requirement to being a witch.”
“Oh, it’s hardly a tea party. But you wouldn’t know, would you? Maybe you’re too scared to come see for yourself.”
“Wicked witches aren’t scared of anything!”
Rudey raised her eyebrow. “You said it, not me,” she said.
With one last gnash of her black tooth, Rudey strutted past Agnes. As she did, she flung her hand against a shelf full of specimens and sent the whole lot of them tumbling toward the floor, clattering and rolling about.
Agnes’s hands clenched into fists at her sides, but before she could huff and puff a curse Rudey’s way, she was gone. The door to Agnes’s haunted cabin slammed shut.
Agnes was, again, all alone.
Behind her, the cauldron’s once merry pink glow had dulled down to a soft shade of blue. A stray dragon’s tooth and an almost-ready-to-hatch spider egg sack rolled near the toe of her boot. Agnes scooped them up and plunked them safely back on the shelf.
Crunch, crunch, crunch, went her boots through the thick layer of gravelly dirt.
Creak, creak, creak, sang her old rocking chair by the cauldron.
Swish, swish, swish. The Winds of Wanderly tiptoed forth, rustling softly about in the darkness.
Yes, yes, yes. The witch nodded.
Yes, yes, yes.
Agnes brandished her pen.
She ground her pointed teeth.
She reached for a piece of paper and began to scrawl.
Eight
A Triumphant and a Rat
It was only eight o’clock in the morning, and the manor was in a state of total chaos.
The chaos had begun the evening prior when Sir Ichabod plucked Birdie out of the dungeon at half past nine and Birdie emerged with nary a scratch. Even worse, according to Mistress Octavia, was the mysterious disappearance of Chewy. A fact that caused her to toss not one but three hot, buttered croissants so high and so hard that they stuck against the dining room’s vaulted ceiling and hadn’t ceased from drip-dropping specks of butter.
Travel through the manor had since become a greasy affair, and Sir Ichabod had spent the morning teetering from the top of several different ladders, none of which had been tall enough to reach the pesky croissants.
Moreover, instead of sleeping, Mistress Octavia had forced the Tragicals to traipse all night about the manor like zombies, peeking into every dark corner for a clue, any clue, as to the whereabouts of her “little pumpkin.”
A “little pumpkin” Mistress Octavia promptly forgot all about when she received The Message a mere thirty minutes ago. The Message went something like this: I’m on my way.
Boom!
That was it.
You don’t get a visitor for six years straight and then, all of a sudden, one is coming.
Now, you can only imagine how quickly Birdie stood on tiptoe to catch a glimpse of The Message writer’s penmanship because what if Ms. Crunch had found out her address and was coming to get them all? Fortunately, the penmanship was anything but spooky, scary, and bone-chilling. In fact, it was so polished and sophisticated, Mistress Octavia insisted the Chancellor’s assistant must have sent it on his behalf, which was why the manor was a flurry of activity.
Mistress Octavia wanted everything to be just so.
She wanted the place to ooze with dust and grime.
She wanted dirty spots on the Tragicals’ cheeks, for goodness’ sake, and why weren’t their gowns riddled with more holes?
To Francesca Prickleboo’s complete horror, Mistress Octavia mussed up her Popsicle orange braids and dished out two healthy scuffs on the toes of her shoes. “But—but I thought I was supposed to be a contented Tragical,” Francesca protested.
To which Mistress Octavia chided, “Content to look miserable. You’re far too tidy!” And so Francesca swallowed hard and had been diligently chewing her fingernails and using them to snag her black gown ever since.
Mistress Octavia paced back and forth in front of the Tragicals. She gripped her broken broomstick handle tightly.
“Now, children, I know it’s Wednesday. Wednesday is always Dramatic Arts Day.31 But I don’t want the Chancellor to get the wrong idea. I don’t want him to think this institution is all play and no work.”
Birdie didn’t know how anything in their dreary days could be considered play, but when Cricket cast a small and certain look in her direction, she remembered. She remembered the day Cricket had been forced to turn over a pocketful of paper scraps for fashioning a ball, and Birdie had been able to replace it with an entire sheet of paper. Of course, that had also been the day Birdie began her correspondence with a real live wicked witch, but try as she might, she simply couldn’t bring herself to tell Cricket. She couldn’t think of a single way to smooth out the prickly edges of the word “witch.” Worst of all, she couldn’t imagine a single scenario in which the recent, hopeful spark in Cricket’s eyes wouldn’t be snuffed out completely.
Mistress Octavia continued on, “And so we shall be studying instead a subject more appropriate for a house full of bad endings; today I shall conduct a FOG class.”
The Tragicals all groaned. Not out loud, of course. The Tragicals never did anything out loud. They groaned on the inside, because FOG stood for none other than “Ferocious, Ominous, and Gruesome.” It was a hopelessly dreary subject consisting of Mistress Octavia presenting the Tragicals with the worst of Wanderly and then speculating precisely how many were likely to die in such a manner. So far, Birdie’s least favorite scenario was stumbling into the den full of wolf-size fire ants.
Mistress Octavia narrowed her eyes. “Before instruction begins, I want the Chancellor to have a full and complete picture of my teaching. Therefore, you will be stationed in the Dark Hallway when he first arrives. Upon Sir Ichabod’s signal, you will proceed to trudge into the Instruction Room as you have never trudged before. And take heed: if anyone should choose to engage in any mischief, punishments will abound.”
With that, and an unnerving swish of her hand, Mistress Octavia disappeared down the hallway like a black tornado—whirling and wheeling about and making sure everything in her wake looked absolutely awful.
Birdie sucked up a breath. The five-year-old whose hair was thick with mats—Birdie was certain her name was Amelia—collapsed along the stone floor for a nap. The rest of the
Tragicals, however—and most especially the ones who were near the age of sixteen—remained wide-eyed. Certainly the Chancellor had promised to visit before, but as far as they knew, he had never sent an official Message about such a visit. What would it be like to look into the eyes of the one who proclaimed to all of Wanderly they were . . . nothing? The one who demanded the production of book after book after book to flood throughout the kingdom and ensure it would always be so?
The sixteen-year-old girl at the front of the line, the one with cracked eyeglasses whom Mistress Octavia always referred to as Martha but whose actual name was Mildred, opened her mouth, but then pressed her lips together tight. She glanced down the long line of children—as if to say, Come along, then—and began shuffling toward the Dark Hallway.
You are likely wondering how the Tragicals knew which Dark Hallway Mistress Octavia meant, because wasn’t every hallway at Foulweather’s Home for the Tragical dark? Indeed! But the Dark Hallway did not earn its name for lack of proper lighting. The Dark Hallway was instead a place of “dark” reminders. Its walls were lined on both sides with glaring portraits of the Council members. And every time the Tragicals trudged by, they were to remember precisely how doomed their futures were and the people put in place to guarantee them.
And so, as they trudged along, no one but Birdie thought much of the loud gasp that exploded from the back of the line. The furrowed brow and twisty mustache of Magician Slickabee’s portrait had caused just such a reaction on multiple past occasions. Birdie, however, paid attention because the back of the line was where Cricket trudged, and the gasp sounded unmistakably eight-year-old girlish, and Birdie was certain that gasps (however predictable) were the sort of thing a friend shouldn’t ignore.
She was right, because Cricket had skidded to a jarring halt. Her face was ghastly pale, and her eyes glistened. Birdie followed Cricket’s gaze to the place where Griselda Peabody’s portrait usually sniffed down at them. Except Griselda was gone. Hanging in her place was a drawing. A drawing on the piece of paper that had been torn out of Birdie’s storybook.