by Temre Beltz
Still, there’s no place like home, is there? And in that case, I’ll just have to see what I can do. It would be helpful if you could let me know whose magic sent you away in the first place? If you haven’t noticed, there’s sort of a magical hierarchy in Wanderly, and it makes a difference whether you tangled with a witch or a magician or were reprimanded by a Council member.
As for payment, it would only be fair, right? And for an unusual wish like this one, especially considering the additional effort of utilizing the Winds of Wanderly, I’m going to open the bidding at one hundred grubins (paid up front, of course). Though it would warm my heart to do it all for free, the kingdom of Wanderly can’t run on nothing.
Sparkles and Smiles,
Fairy Dash
Pippa tried to swallow. But the knot in her throat was simply too big. Almost as big as the term “one hundred grubins.” Pippa didn’t think her father earned that much for six months’ worth of work as a book peddler, and it sure didn’t seem like there were many money-earning opportunities on Triumph Mountain.
Maisy frowned. “I’m not trying to be critical—honestly, I’m not—but did that letter seem a bit . . . odd to you? I mean, not all fairy godmothers are really rosy-cheeked, are they?” she asked, her hand grazing across her own cheeks.
“I was a bit more concerned about the ‘one hundred grubins’ part,” Pippa said with a sigh. “I had no idea how expensive wishes were. I might not have bothered to write if I did.”
“Yeah, about that—” Maisy began, but she was very rudely interrupted by a high-pitched, shrieking cackle.
“The witch!” Pippa cried, whirling about. “Oh, the witch! She must have arrived! She must be here right now! Doesn’t the castle have an alarm system or something?”
“An alarm system?” Maisy echoed. She thought for a moment and then shook her head. She dipped her hand into her apron pocket and whipped out a large wooden spoon. “I’ve got this though. Think that’ll help?”
“Well, considering that witch likely arrived on an entire broomstick, a wooden spoon doesn’t seem like much, but it’s better than the nothing I’ve got.” Pippa reached out and linked arms with Maisy. “Are you ready?”
But Maisy shook her head. She pulled gently away from Pippa’s grasp. “That’s awfully kind of you, Pippa, but I’d get in big trouble from Mistress Peabody,” she said.
“For helping me?”
“That’s not how she’d see it. She’d say you were helping me.”
Pippa frowned. She couldn’t imagine how Triumphants could be called on to save the entire kingdom if they weren’t allowed to help the person standing right next to them. “But isn’t helping others the whole point of being a Triumphant?”
Maisy looked genuinely confused. “Is it? Anyhow, don’t worry about me. I’ll slip out through the back hallway, and if this witch is anything like the last one who visited, trust me, you’ll be just fine.”
But when a second unnerving cackle rolled near, Pippa’s pulse began to race.
“If you say so,” Pippa said. “And please remember not to say anything about—”
“About what?” Maisy grinned, and with her spoon held high, she scurried away.
Pippa moved toward the dining hall’s main entrance and opened the door the merest crack. She froze at the sound of voices before realizing they weren’t at all witchy, but young and girlish. Swinging the door wider, she saw seven-year-old Anastasia walking hand in hand with three-year-old Viola.
“Come on,” Anastasia urged the little girl. “We’re almost there, and if we hurry we might get a seat up front.”
A seat up front? Pippa couldn’t fathom why that would be desirable, especially for the smallest Triumphant of all, but she rushed to catch up with the girls nevertheless. Traveling in numbers seemed to be the wisest thing to do when a cackling witch was afoot.
When the girls reached the classroom, Pippa’s heart soared. Mistress Peabody was back just as Pippa had hoped! She was posted at the front entrance and armed with her dazzling smile. She was dressed head to toe in shades of green complete with a small veiled hat that Pippa assumed was the latest fashion even if it looked like a giant spinach leaf poised on her head. Mistress Peabody didn’t say a word about her frustrating absenteeism, but maybe she planned to make up for it with a spectacular lesson. She ushered the girls in while exclaiming in a breathy voice, “Welcome, welcome, girls! Seats are first come, first served, and I wouldn’t linger. They’re filling up quickly!”
Pippa peeked over the heads of the other Triumphants and gasped. The witch was actually inside the classroom! She was seated on a chair positioned at the front of the room, wearing a whole mess of black: a black cardigan with ratty sleeves and a whopping mud stain; a black blouse with buttons made of bone; five layers of wrinkled and rustling black skirts; black tights riddled with holes; and high-heeled black witchy boots missing a few brass hooks. Her hair was a deep shade of midnight blue and her nose, as Pippa had expected, was very, very large.
The witch’s gaze flickered up. She seemed to look right at Pippa. She lifted her hands; she cracked her knobby knuckles. Pippa was certain she was about to shout out some horrible curse, but instead she just . . . yawned.
Anastasia looked over her shoulder to see if Pippa was following along, but when the two girls took their seats in the front row, Pippa vehemently shook her head. She plopped into the last row of seats beside the boy with the glasses, Ernest.
Ernest’s eyes brightened. “Oh, hey there,” he said. He nodded in the witch’s direction. “Looks like it’s going to be a wicked day of instruction, doesn’t it?”
As if on cue, the witch counted out one-two-three on her bony fingers. She sucked up a deep breath, let loose yet another impeccably bone-chilling cackle, and promptly folded her hands in her lap, waiting. Patiently.
Pippa was horrified. “What is wrong with her?” she whispered in Ernest’s direction.
“Wrong with her?” Ernest repeated as if he didn’t quite understand the question. But as he surveyed the witch, he gave a little nod. “I suppose her clothing is a bit disheveled, but I think that’s only to be expected coming from a place like the Dead Tree Forest.” He shivered. “I’ve heard it’s terribly dusty there, and—”
“Not her clothes, Ernest. Her clothes may be the only thing that makes sense. I’m talking about the way she’s acting. She’s sitting. Patiently. In a chair. In a classroom filling up with juicy children—”
“Ugh! That’s disgusting, Pippa,” Ernest said, wrinkling his nose.
“Of course it is. Haven’t you ever heard those child-eating witch stories? Witches are the worst!”
Unfortunately, Mistress Peabody chose that moment to shut the classroom door. Everyone grew still and quiet and Pippa’s words echoed loudly back and forth like a bouncy ball. She cringed, expecting Mistress Peabody to scold her for speaking so rudely, but instead Mistress Peabody turned her dazzling smile up a shade brighter.
“You are right, Bettina, witches are certainly the worst. Without the Triumphants of Wanderly to protect the helpless citizens, our kingdom would be one of chaos and strife. It is imperative that we carry on the traditions of the heroes who came before us, and that is why today we will be practicing on the real thing.”
Bettina?!
Pippa’s hand immediately shot straight up in the air. Though she was miles away from home, saddled with an unwanted destiny, beneath the care of an unreliable Triumphant, and in the presence of a peculiar witch, she did find herself in a classroom. And in a classroom, Pippa knew precisely what to do. There were rules and structure and clearly defined channels for fixing such harrowing problems as repeated misidentification.
“Oops!” Mistress Peabody said with a knowing smile and a pointed nod at Pippa’s outstretched hand. “In a Triumphant classroom we’re all leaders, Bettina. There shall be no raised hands, or any rules at all, in this classroom.”
Pippa felt as if she’d been stung. She slowly lowered her hand
. She sat forcibly on top of it. The raising of hands was a fundamental of every classroom, and this was going to be a hard habit to break.
Of course, then Prudence Bumble unhelpfully piped up, “Real Triumphants don’t need such things as rules. Rules are for simpletons, Bettina.” She stifled a giggle and exchanged smug glances with Bernard.
At the front of the classroom, three-year-old Viola almost fell out of her seat pointing in Pippa’s direction. “That’s not Bettina!” she insisted.
“Of course it’s Bettina, dear,” Mistress Peabody answered sweetly without bothering to look her way.
Pippa sucked up a breath. She spoke loudly and boldly out of turn though she didn’t relish it one bit. “I told you already, I’m Pippa.”
The witch at the front of the room snickered. Like she found the whole snafu amusing. But, just as quickly, she changed her expression back to one of boredom.
“Well, then, I suppose Pippa it is,” Mistress Peabody said tightly. “Now,” she went on, “it’s not every day that we have a real, live wicked witch in the classroom. Thank you for joining us today, Ms. Bonecrusher.” Mistress Peabody arched her eyebrow expectantly at the students, and they all chimed in monotonously, “Thank you for joining us today, Ms. Bonecrusher.”
Ms. Bonecrusher, however, was busy flossing her teeth with what appeared to be a midnight blue hair she had plucked from her head. She pulled the hair out repeatedly to examine the contents.16
Mistress Peabody cleared her throat. Loudly. When Ms. Bonecrusher finally looked up, she tossed the hair over her shoulder and dutifully rolled out another cackle.
“Who would like to be the first student to subdue Ms. Bonecrusher this morning?” Mistress Peabody asked brightly.
No one popped out of their seat.
“Come on, children, don’t be shy,” Mistress Peabody coaxed. “You are Triumphants, after all.”
Pippa thought she heard the witch snort at the word “Triumphants,” but there was so much nervous shuffling going on among the students that it was a bit hard to tell. Finally, however, Prudence rose ceremoniously from her seat. She inched slowly down the aisle as if wanting to ensure that every single pair of eyes was on her. When Prudence drew up in front of Ms. Bonecrusher, she struck a grandiose pose only to have Ms. Bonecrusher speak first.
“Hello, Bettina,” she said with a devious snicker.
A look of indignation flashed across Prudence’s face. “No one ever said I was Bettina. I’m Prudence Bumble. Weren’t you paying any attention at all?”
But judging by the gleam in the witch’s eye, it was clear she had been paying attention and was very much enjoying irking Prudence.
Prudence thrust her fists at her sides and stomped her foot on the ground.
She whirled in Mistress Peabody’s direction. “That—that witch—is mocking me!” she shrieked.
Mistress Peabody, hands trembling, pulled a crinkled piece of paper from the pocket of her dancing skirt. She tried in vain to smooth out the edges. “No, no, that can’t be,” she said, shaking her head. “Mocking is definitely not on today’s agenda.”
Prudence rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to Ms. Bonecrusher, who seemed to be growing more invigorated by the second. “Apologize, witch!” Prudence insisted.
“Apologize, witch!” Ms. Bonecrusher mimicked back in a hilariously identical tone.
The students gasped. Prudence’s cheeks flamed. Pippa gulped and leaned in to Ernest. “Is this the way villainous visits usually tend to go?” she whispered.
Mistress Peabody, meanwhile, sashayed anxiously toward Ms. Bonecrusher. She waved the crinkled agenda beneath her nose. “Yoo-hoo, Ms. Bonecrusher! You must not have reviewed this very carefully. Please do take a minute to—”
Ms. Bonecrusher wrenched the agenda out of Mistress Peabody’s hands. She smiled a gruesome witchy smile and ripped the agenda right down the middle. “Sometimes plans change,” she hissed.
The classroom erupted into chaos. Mistress Peabody sprinted toward her desk and began frantically tossing things over her shoulder while mumbling something about “emergency restraints” and “proper screening, my pointed toe.” Prudence, losing every ounce of her prior bravado, tried to dash away, but Ms. Bonecrusher yanked her backward by the hem of her cape.
With Prudence gripped tight in one hand, Ms. Bonecrusher turned to face the class. “Are there any other Bettinas in the room?” she boomed.
Prudence jabbed her finger in Pippa’s direction. “Over there!” she said in between great, heaving wails. “She’s the one that started all this!”
Pippa’s stomach dropped. She sank a bit lower in her chair. “But I’m not even a Bumble!” she cried.
To which Bernard blurted out a few desks away, “Bumble? Who said anything about a Bumble? My last name’s Rumble,” and pulled his cape entirely over his head as if that were a sufficient hiding spot.
“Bernard!” Prudence admonished.
Beside Pippa, Ernest leaped suddenly to his feet. His face was ghastly pale and beads of sweat rolled down his forehead. “STOP!” he shouted.
Ms. Bonecrusher’s eyes flashed. “What did you say?” she asked, eyeing Ernest as if he were a small bug.
“What are you doing, Ernest?” Pippa whispered fervently.
“W-what we’ve been trained to do,” he said, sliding his glasses up along the bridge of his nose.
Pippa was terribly worried about Ernest, but she couldn’t help marveling at his bravery. She waited to see what he would do. The witch waited to see what he would do. Even the walls of Castle Cressida sucked up a dusty breath and waited to see what he would do, but after a full ten seconds of waiting, and with all eyes on him, it appeared that Ernest had already done what he was going to do.
“Mistress Peabody taught us that ‘stop’ is the most powerful word in Wanderly . . . if it comes from a Triumphant, that is,” Ernest explained rather weakly.
Apparently Ms. Bonecrusher didn’t agree because she slapped her knee and howled with laughter. The Triumphants all turned to Mistress Peabody for an explanation, but she was still furiously tossing items out from her desk, standing in a heap of rubble, and mumbling distractedly to herself. Thankfully, Castle Cressida hadn’t stopped paying attention. In one big creaking, moaning, groaning display of effort, it dipped into its pool of ailing resources and did what it could; i.e., it managed to throw off an entire sheet of ultra-sticky, ultra-tacky wallpaper aimed straight for Ms. Bonecrusher.17
The witch never had a chance. Wallpaper, as it turns out, is a surprising foe. She threw her hands over her head for protection, Prudence wriggled away to freedom, and the wallpaper wrapped cleanly around Ms. Bonecrusher like a witchy burrito. She teetered and bobbled about, but with her arms pinned against her sides, she toppled helplessly onto the floor. Rolling to and fro, Ms. Bonecrusher worked herself into a proper rage, hissing and spitting and cursing and doing all the witchy things Pippa had expected from her at the start. The witch, it seemed, had a well-defined set of teeth after all.
What Pippa couldn’t understand was why Ms. Bonecrusher had ever bothered to act otherwise. Mistress Peabody seemed to think it had to do with that agenda she was waving about, but if the details of a villainous visit were worked out beforehand, what was so heroic about that?
Mistress Peabody cleared her throat. She lifted her gauzy green skirts and leaped gracefully over the wallpapered, and still hollering, witch. Though her eyes were a bit glazed over, she exclaimed, “Excellent job, Ernest! You performed just as we practiced. Why don’t you visit the Chest of Unnecessaries for a well-deserved prize, hmm?”
Pippa was stunned. Mistress Peabody acted as if it was all fun and games and the class hadn’t been one breath away from being cursed by a wicked witch. Still, Pippa couldn’t keep her eyes from following Ernest as he stepped to the front of the room and kneeled beside a plain wooden chest. Pippa noticed Prudence watching him too. She looked positively pea-green, as if she thought Mistress Peabody should have g
iven her credit for subduing Ms. Bonecrusher, when really the true hero among them was Castle Cressida.
Ernest reached into the chest and carefully pulled something forth. He was still a bit pale-faced, but he grinned broadly when he held the shiny, new baseball bat over his head like a trophy. The rest of the Triumphants clapped politely, while Ernest exclaimed, “Just what I always wanted, my sixth baseball bat!”
Pippa didn’t know how something could be what you always wanted when you already had five of them, but perhaps the Chest of Unnecessaries was used to piling heaps of rewards on the Triumphants.
Suddenly, Pippa’s heart thumped.
If the Chest of Unnecessaries liked extravagant gift giving, maybe there was still hope. Maybe the Chest of Unnecessaries could give her the grubins she needed to pay her fairy godmother and return home. Once she did, Pippa would be all too glad to put the business of heroes—if there even was such a thing—far, far behind her. Now she just had to wait for the perfect opportunity.
Six
Magician’s Assistant, Anyone?
On the southernmost fringe of the Swinging Swamp, standing in a field of impossibly tall, marshy grass buzzing with gnats, Oliver tilted his head up and eyed the gloomy, three-story exterior of Master Von Hollow’s mansion. He was tempted to wheel around and sprint right back in the direction he came from, thank you very much, but that certainly wouldn’t bring him any closer to his hat. Nor would it silence Master Von Hollow’s tattling murder of crows that had already gotten a good look at him.
There was no guarantee that paying Master Von Hollow a visit would further Oliver’s desperate mission, but at least it was something more than sitting around at Razzle’s School for Meddlesome Boys and waiting for a letter from a girl.
At the time, the venture of letter writing had seemed so promising. Genius, even! Not to mention, every time Oliver thought back to how the Winds of Wanderly—the Winds of Wanderly—had swept into the depths of the swamp and took notice of him, he stopped in his tracks and marveled.