The Witch's Glass Page 2

  Penny frowned, her gaze twitching to the stack of cold pancakes on Anastasia’s plate. “You haven’t touched your breakfast, child. My goodness, you don’t look well at all. Should you stay home from the academy today?”

  Most children would leap at the opportunity for a day off from school, but Anastasia did not make this leap. Despite the collywobbles curdling her tummy and the headache hammering her brain and the mustache bristling upon her upper lip, she was bursting at the seams to get to school. This was not, as you might think, because Anastasia was an especially diligent scholar. She wasn’t.

  Nope; Anastasia yearned to hightail it to Pettifog Academy for a different reason entirely. She was anxious to see her friends, aka the League of Beastly Dreadfuls. In the grand tradition of all great secret societies, the Dreadfuls had a Matter Most Urgent to discuss. They needed to work out the nitty-gritty of a Secret Mission of Life-and-Death Importance.

  “I’m fine,” she fibbed. “Dr. Lungwort’s Miracle Fizz really helped.”

  “Oh, good,” Penny said.

  “Splendid stuff, that fizz,” Baldwin declared. “Just a sip peps me full of get-up-and-go.”

  Anastasia nodded, even though Miracle Fizz had nothing to do with the moxie now propelling her school-ward. Her get-up-and-go issued from something far more potent than any potion or pill: a mixture equal parts love and fear, the powerful combination of which has propelled many brave souls directly into the waiting arms of Doom.

  “Ready to go?” Penny asked.

  Squaring her shoulders, Anastasia patted her mustache with her napkin. “Ready.”

  HOW DO YOU travel to school, dear Reader? Do you walk? Do you ride there in a car? If you, perchance, descend from an illustrious family of acrobats, do you torpedo to school from the barrel of a cannon? For the first six years of her educational career, Anastasia had jounced to Mooselick Elementary in a yellow school bus. However, those days were long behind her. She now sailed to school in a glossy black gondola. A gondola, as you may already know, is an elegant boat.

  As her aquatic chariot pushed off from the dock, Anastasia snugged into the cushion of its velour seat and stared at her new home. Just as she had not always traveled to school in a fabulous boat, neither had she always lodged in a magnificent palace rising from the gleam of an underground lagoon.

  That was another of the secrets that had simmered so deep inside Anastasia that she had had no idea of its existence. She was a princess. She had learned this gobsmacking fact just a few months earlier, shortly after discovering the heretofore-unknown branches of her family tree. Anastasia’s surname wasn’t really McCrumpet at all; it was Merrymoon, and the Merrymoons were royalty. Anastasia’s grandmother Wiggy was Queen of the Cavelands, and that made Baldwin a prince, and Ludowiga and Penny and Saskia and Anastasia were princesses. Anastasia even had a lady-in-waiting, although that lady was a little brown bat. Her name was Pippistrella, and she was roosting under Anastasia’s braid at that very moment.

  Anastasia’s father was a royal, too. However, he didn’t bunk at Cavepearl Palace. Nor did he bunk in the humble family abode back in Anastasia’s hometown of Mooselick. Unfortunately, those two depressing facts constituted the sole information anyone had regarding Fred’s whereabouts. He had vanished without a trace, you see, on the same fateful day two CRUD snatchers lured Anastasia into their sordid pink station wagon and whisked her off to their ramshackle, authentically Victorian kidnapper lair.

  Had CRUD Watchers seized Fred as well? Or was he in hiding? Was he wandering the globe, scouring the earth for Anastasia? Nobody knew. Nobody even knew whether he was alive. And the one person in the world endowed with a curious, infallible ability to locate Fred was missing, too. That person, as it happened, was Anastasia’s grandpa Nicodemus.

  Remember that Secret Mission of Life-and-Death Importance I mentioned a few pages ago? As you may have already guessed, Anastasia’s vanished father and gramps centered at the shadowy heart of that very mission.

  Anastasia unbuttoned her satchel and tugged forth her Cavelands history textbook. Nestled within the heavy tome’s pages was a picture of Nicodemus Merrymoon, and at this picture she now peered. A curious design of concentric circles and stars gilded the elder Merrymoon’s hand. Anastasia swallowed. Could Nicodemus’s extra-special tattoo really illuminate the path to Fred?

  Boohooohoooooohooooooo…

  “The lagoon’s been downright woebegone this morning,” observed the black-clad figure at the gondola’s stern.

  “Oh, Belfry, you know the lagoon doesn’t have feelings.” Penny smiled at the gondolier. “Odd drafts sometimes pipe through the Cavelands. There are so many tunnels and holes and passages down here that the acoustics produce some strange noises.”

  “Like a great big French horn.” Baldwin nodded. “Tootling away with us inside!”

  Ooooo…ooooo….Melancholy ululations rose from the silvery lake, sending shivers down Anastasia’s spine until the gondola glided from Stardust Cavern into the murky maze of canals beyond. The twenty-minute cruise to Pettifog Academy took them through pitch-dark ducts and tunnels a-twinkle with chandelier-lit windows, beneath clouds of squeaking bats, and past Morfolk-crowded plazas.

  “Awooo! Hey, Roger!” Baldwin hollered at a white wolf trotting across a limestone bridge. “Don’t forget our whist game next Thursday!”

  The wolf rounded his fuzzy lips into a howl and then padded into a coffee shop.

  “Old Crescent Lagoon,” Belfry announced. “Pettifog Academy.”

  “Have a lovely day, dear,” Penny said.

  “Thanks, Aunt Penny.” Anastasia pulled a wig over her head. Pettifog Academy required its students to wear a school uniform, and that uniform included a curlicued white wig of the sort gentlemen sported in George Washington’s glory days. The wig was itchy and hot, and Anastasia considered it her nemesis. Nemesis is a fancy word for enemy.

  Two of Anastasia’s other nemeses came into view as the gondola neared the dock. Cousin Saskia simpered at the center of a cluster of girls, and Marm Pettifog glowered at her pocket watch, marking the seconds until she could ring her handbell and summon the schoolchildren to another day of misery. Anastasia’s gaze ricocheted among the crowd outside the academy until it settled on three other Pettifoggers. Oliver and Quentin Drybread and Gus Wata—the Beastly Dreadfuls—stood apart from the other students, their wigs bent close in a huddle.

  Anastasia hopped up to the dock. “Bye.”

  “Belfry will come to fetch you after school,” Penny said. “Baldwin and I have extra meetings in the Senate Cave today.”

  “If Dellacava and his supporters keep quibbling over the Merrymoon Militia Bill, we’ll have plenty of these long nights,” Baldwin groused. “Oh well. Farewell, my girl. Give old Pettifog what for.”

  Marm Pettifog was Baldwin’s nemesis as well. He shot a dirty look at the starchy schoolmistress, and then he winked at Anastasia. “Put a thumbtack on her chair in my honor.”

  “Anastasia! Peeps!” Ollie tugged Quentin and Gus toward the pier. “We were just talking about our mission. I say—” he broke off. “Anastasia, did you know you have a mustache?”

  Anastasia clapped her palm over her mouth, blushing.

  “Does this mean you morphed today?” Quentin asked. “Congratulations!”

  “Did you shift into a bat? You’ve always struck me as a sometimes-bat,” Ollie said.

  “I’d rather not discuss it,” Anastasia muttered from beneath her fingers. “It didn’t go well.”

  “At least you morphed,” Gus encouraged her. “I never will.”

  “Really?” Ollie yawped. “Why not?”

  Gus shucked his wig, revealing the green snakes coiled amidst his dark tufty hair.

  Only a few gorgons lived in Nowhere Special, and Gus Wata was one of them. His mother was another. As you already know from peeking under Gus’s wig, gorgons have snakes growing from their scalps. And that, dear Reader, isn’t even the strangest thing about them! Just one glim
pse of a lady gorgon’s face would transform you into a lump of stone. Mrs. Wata wore a sack over her head almost all the time because she didn’t want to petrify her friends and family. She was very thoughtful in that regard.

  Gus didn’t have to mask his face, however, because male gorgons didn’t pack the same wallop as their female counterparts. They couldn’t petrify anyone, even if they wanted to. And now Gus informed them, “Gorgons can’t morph.”

  “But you’re still half Morfo,” Anastasia protested. “Just like me!”

  “My snakes aren’t,” he said. “They’re one hundred percent gorgon.”

  A striped fellow near his ear yawned.

  “Your clothes don’t morph with you when you shift,” Gus went on. “Well, my snakes are attached to me. They can’t morph, so neither can I.” He replaced his wig, tugging it firmly in place.

  DING DING DING DING DING DING DING!

  Ollie grimaced as the last toll jangled from Marm Pettifog’s handbell. “I wonder what tortures old Pettifog has planned for us today?”

  Heavy wooden spiral staircases dominated the academy’s cavernous front lobby, and these staircases twirled up to various classrooms, including the candlelit chamber where Marm Pettifog tormented Anastasia’s fifth-grade class. Still clasping her upper lip, Anastasia took her seat beside her cousin-nemesis. Saskia leaned over and drawled, “Mumsy told me all about your little episode this morning. It sounds like the only thing you got out of morphing was that lovely new mustache.”

  Taffline Plimsole, one of Saskia’s loyal minions, giggled.

  “Why are you covering it up?” Saskia crooned. “Worried your gorgon boyfriend won’t want to kiss you?”

  “Gus is not my boyfriend,” Anastasia mumbled.

  “Anastasia!” Marm Pettifog said. “Stop whispering! Class has begun, and I have two important announcements. First: next month our class shall go on a field trip to Dinkledorf.”

  “Are we going to the Dinkledorf Chocolate Museum?” Ollie cried.

  “Or the fondue farm?” asked Jasper Cummerbund.

  “Or the snowshoeing camp?” asked Parveen.

  “None of the above,” Marm Pettifog said. “We shall visit the Yodeling Museum.”

  The Pettifoggers harrumphed and slumped in their seats.

  “Yodeling is an important part of Dinkledorfer culture,” Marm Pettifog admonished. “And Dinkledorf is our gateway to the world abovecaves. As you get older, you’ll be going to Dinkledorf with greater frequency. As you know, many Morfolk live in Dinkledorf now, passing as humans. If you sorry lot are to pass as Dinkledorfers, you’ll need to know about yodeling. Dinkledorfers love yodeling.” The headmistress shuddered.

  “Chocolate is also an important part of Dinkledorfer history, Marm Pettifog,” Ollie said hopefully.

  “Stuff your face on your own time, Drybread.” Marm Pettifog whisked around the room, scattering permission slips. “Make sure your parents sign these. Anyone without a permission slip shall remain at Pettifog Academy and muck bat guano from the science cave.”

  Gus’s head drooped.

  “Pay attention, Wata,” Marm Pettifog said. “I’m about to make my second announcement, and it’s of utmost importance! Ahem. Today we begin our Practical Survival unit.”

  Practical Survival? What did that mean? Several children leaned eagerly across their desks, as though Marm Pettifog had just proclaimed a Pettifog pie-eating contest.

  “I’m pleased to tell you that we’ve hired a new fencing instructor,” Marm Pettifog said. “Your lessons commence next week. And this morning, you’ll start Applied Navigation.”

  “Hooray!” shouted Jasper Cummerbund. “Hooray! Hooray! HOORAY!”

  Many teachers would be delighted to think their assignments inspired joy in their young pupils. Marm Pettifog was not delighted. It was all the same to her whether her students liked or lumped their schoolwork, so long as they remained quiet and obedient. “Shut it, Cummerbund,” she snapped. “As I was saying: for the remainder of the academic term, your rowing sessions shall be devoted to learning the central zones of the Nowhere Special canal systems, and some of the secret passages up to Dinkledorf.”

  “HUZZAH!” Jasper howled.

  Marm Pettifog rolled her eyes. “You can’t always count on a gondolier or parent to shuttle your sorry rumps around town, and you need to know where to go in the event of…a witch attack.”

  A few children squealed, and Anastasia’s stomach executed a wobbly somersault.

  Witches! The word alone hammered a spike of sheer terror into the heart of each and every Morfo in the world, whether tiny tot or battle-hardened knight. Witches haunted Morfo dreams. Witches prowled the darkest annals of Morfo history books.

  Once upon a time, Morfolk and witches had lived together peacefully in Nowhere Special. Nowhere Special was the perfect spot for peculiar sorts to go about their business without attracting the suspicion of humans. Sadly, this hunky-dory state of affairs was not to last.

  It started with the cheese. Hard cheese turned to jelly, cream cheese thickened into tasteless cement, and stinky cheese didn’t stink anymore. It smelled of peppermint. The Great Cheese Blight only lasted a few weeks, but then a rash of fever pox pimpled Nowhere Special. Everyone was itchy and sweat-sodden for months.

  Suddenly, nothing seemed to go right. Wigs frizzed. Underpants pinched. Gondolas sank and clocks ran slow or fast or not at all. A mysterious fire melted the Nowhere Special chocolate reserve, and a freak cold snap plugged half the town’s toilets with ice. Seeds of doubt began to sprout in Morfolk minds. Was it a run of bad luck? Or was it magic gone amok?

  And then came the deaths. A smattering of Morfolk perished of pox, which puzzled doctors and alarmed their polka-dotted patients. Then a Morfo fell to his doom from a witch’s balcony, and a weird sinkhole swallowed up two Morflings. After a Morfo baker choked on a donut he refused to share with a wizard, the Cavelands started buzzing with rumors of poisonous, deadly-as-dynamite magic. Suspicion festered. Fights erupted.

  Finally, one fateful day in 1756, a powerful warlock named Calixto Swift cast a spell so vile and villainous that Morfolk declared Perpetual War on witches. Queen Wiggy (aka Anastasia’s grandmother) banished witches from the Cavelands for good—or so the Morfolk hoped.

  “Marm Pettifog—” Parveen faltered. “Do you really think the witches will come back?”

  “They might, and they might not. There hasn’t been a witch in the Cavelands for over two hundred years, but that doesn’t mean a nasty witch won’t show up in that doorway”—Marm Pettifog indicated the classroom door—“tomorrow during Echolalia lessons.”

  Gasps wheezed across the cavern.

  “Should witches invade, you must be versed in fight and flight,” Marm Pettifog said. “The fencing lessons will prepare you to fight. Knowing the canals will prepare you for flight. Now, I don’t give two hoots about any of you individual sprats.” The headmistress glared at them. “However, I’ll be darned if any of you little twits croaks in a witch invasion under my watch. Pettifog Academy has a reputation to maintain, and blast me if the painful death of a student should besmirch it. Anyone who dies during school hours receives detention. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Marm Pettifog,” the students chorused.

  “Good.” Marm Pettifog rustled papers on her lectern. “Now, you’ll stay in your rowing teams, and your ninth-grade coxswain will guide you through the waterways. Your assignment is to memorize the routes through Nowhere Special, and you’d better! You won’t get to use maps during your final navigation exam.”

  “No maps?” Taffline protested. “But Marm Pettifog, the canal system is a maze!”

  “And lots of it goes through dark tunnels!” Parveen added.

  “You wouldn’t have time to consult a map during a witch attack, would you?” Marm Pettifog demanded. “You have to make a mental map. So pay attention during these rows—and no lollygagging! I don’t want to hear that any of you has gone rogue and spent your rowing
time munching taffy at O’Cavitee’s Sweet Shop.” Here her chilly eye fell upon Ollie, the most notorious sweet tooth at school. “If I find out that anyone has deliberately strayed from their assigned canal course, you’ll flunk Applied Navigation.”

  Anastasia gulped. Although she had been an average-to-goodish student back in Mooselick, she was woefully behind at Pettifog Academy. Her scores in Subterranean Geography and Morfolk Literature were rather poor, I am sorry to say. Her score in Echolalia, the squeaky bat language, was even worse. Our freckled hero now teetered on the brink of failing fifth grade.

  Mind you, even though Anastasia lagged behind her classmates in most Morfolk subjects, she had a scoop unbeknownst to even the brainiest Morfo scholar: the location of Calixto Swift’s secret study. Oh, but Calixto Swift had been an old slyboots!

  The war-sparking wizard had devised a hidden den in which to craft his strangest, most sinister spells.

  And within this mysterious hidey-hole, amidst who knew what sort of witchy badness, nestled all the Dreadfuls’ hopes for tracking down the missing Merrymoons.

  “One hour is just enough time to row to your destinations and back. If you return even one millisecond late, you’ll spend your afternoon scrubbing stalagmites in the loos.” Marm Pettifog smiled nastily.

  “That’s disgusting,” Ophelia Dellacava objected. “My daddy wouldn’t stand for that. He’s a senator, you know!”

  “I don’t care if your daddy is the Archbishop of Canterbury,” Marm Pettifog growled. “I don’t tolerate disobedient children, and I certainly won’t tolerate disobedient parents! Now get down to the docks!”

  “WHY ARE WE learning how to build fences?” Anastasia asked as the Pettifoggers clambered down the staircase to the lobby. “Are we going to build a fence to keep out the witches?”

  “Fences?” Gus’s eyebrows drew together in puzzlement. “Oh! No, Anastasia: we’re going to learn how to fence. With swords.”

  “Swords!” Anastasia exclaimed.

  “Yep,” Ollie said. “Duels, you know.”