The Dastardly Deed

by Holly Grant

  “Rolf! Guten Tag!” Penny yelled, staggering over to him.

  “Guten what?” Anastasia echoed.

  “She’s speaking German,” Baldwin chuckled. “We’ve landed in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, girl. A nip of brandy to celebrate!” He plucked Anastasia’s cocoa mug from a nearby cushion of snow. “Yoo-hoo! Würfel! Here, boy!”

  Penny finished explaining something to Rolf in German and then beamed over at Anastasia. “This,” she said, “is our niece.”

  “Anastasia!” A smile twitched Rolf’s blond beard. “Guten Tag, little one! It’s an honor to meet you. An honor!”

  “Thanks,” Anastasia said. “It’s an—um—honor to meet you, too.”

  “Want a sip, Penny?” Baldwin asked, pushing the mug beneath Würfel’s barrel and twisting the nozzle. “Lovely stuff, brandy. Warms the entrails.”

  “My entrails are just fine, thank you,” Penny sniffed.

  “I wouldn’t have found you if it weren’t for Würfel,” Rolf said. “The visibility is awful.”

  “Do you think we can still snowshoe to the village?” Penny asked.

  “Not a chance,” Rolf replied. “The drifts are already too high. It’s supposed to storm like this for days—you should probably stay at my house until it clears up. And,” he added, grinning at Penny, “I have a delicious fondue planned for dinner—enough cheese for an army of mice!”

  “Fondue?” Penny nibbled her lower lip. “Oh dear. That is tempting…but Wiggy is waiting for us, and she’ll worry if we don’t show up. Isn’t there some other way into town? I thought you had a dogsled in your barn.”

  “You’d be welcome to it, except all my huskies are down with a flu,” Rolf apologized. “I’ve got them tucked into bed right now, poor fellows. And Würfel never pulls the sled. Arthritis.”

  “A dogsled, you say?” Slugging back the last of his brandy, Baldwin lurched through the drifts to hunker on the opposite side of the mangled Japanese screen. His hat whizzed over the top. Then his scarf sailed over, and next his jacket and snowsuit and sweater and pants and even—Anastasia gasped—a pair of red long johns.

  “Baldwin, what are you doing?” Penny protested. “You’ll freeze to death!”

  “Naooot at aoool!” Baldwin howled, galloping from behind the screen. But he was no longer a strapping six-foot-tall specimen of manly manhood; he was, as you have perhaps already guessed, in the form of a big ginger wolf. Würfel grumbled and charged, and he and Baldwin somersaulted through the snow, yodeling and yelping and catching snowflakes on their long pink tongues. It looked like a lot of fun. Anastasia’s heart pattered with new, strange stirrings of hope that she, too, one day would metamorphose into a wolf.

  “Genius!” Penny said. She collected Baldwin’s clothes (minus the long johns) and shoved them into a suitcase. “Let’s get you harnessed up, Baldy. Anastasia, do you have everything?”

  Anastasia squinted. Spotting the strap of her satchel, she yanked it from a snowdrift and slung it over her shoulder. “Yep.”

  “My barn’s this way.” Rolf lifted his lantern and turned to trudge back whence he came. They tramped after him. Well, to be accurate, Anastasia and Penny slogged behind Rolf, and Baldwin and Würfel loped and leapt in joyous doggy fashion. Within a few minutes the shadowy blur of a barn appeared through the flurrying flakes.

  “Beware of cow pies,” Penny warned Anastasia as they struggled through the door into a musty shed smelling of hay and animals and manure. A few cows eyeballed them grumpily as Penny and Rolf dragged a dogsled from a nearby stall.

  “Moo,” Anastasia said.

  The cows stared at her, steam puffing from their damp nostrils.

  Soon Anastasia and Penny were swaddled in heavy blankets, huddled together in the dogsled as Rolf adjusted a harness around Baldwin’s furry torso. Anastasia trembled and edged closer to her aunt. Her hands and feet were numb, and she still felt a little wobbly from the balloon’s crash landing.

  “There.” Rolf snugged a leather strap through the final buckle. The bells on the harness jangled softly. “Just leave the sled once you get there,” he said, swinging the barn door open. “I’ll go fetch it after the storm.” He held out the lantern, and Baldwin grasped its handle between his wolfy jaws.

  “Thanks ever so much, Rolf,” Penny said. “We’ll have to meet for a game of Scrabble soon. I still remember your triumph of ’97. Quirked. Twenty-one points.”

  “That was a good word.” Rolf chuckled. “And I have some others up my sleeve. I’ll get you with zincify next time.”

  “I’ll zincify you.” Penny tugged the pompon on Rolf’s long knit hat. “All right, we’re off! Auf Wiedersehen!”

  Baldwin galloped forth, the lantern swinging from his muzzle.

  “Bye, Würfel!” Anastasia called.

  Würfel’s barks chased them into the snow and darkness until they grew fainter and fainter and finally petered out completely.

  “The village isn’t far,” Penny said. “Perhaps fifteen minutes. Thank goodness our destination is on the tippy edge of town. I doubt many Dinkledorfers will be out in this storm, but we wouldn’t want anyone to see us arrive in a wolf-drawn sleigh.”

  Snowflakes blurred the outlines of pine trees. Anastasia’s head lolled. She closed her eyes and listened to the chiming sleigh bells: jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle…

  “Wake up, dear,” Penny murmured. “We’re here.”

  “I think my eyelashes froze together.” Anastasia blinked. A narrow cottage appeared through the snow, nestled amongst the pines. Wooden lace trimmed its snowcapped roof, and white Christmas lights twinkled around its frosted windows. It looked just like an oversized gingerbread house. It looked, Anastasia thought, just as a grandmother’s house should look: snug and sweet and straight out of a storybook.

  Penny hopped from the sleigh and tromped to Baldwin’s side, peeling off her mittens and setting to the task of unfastening the harness. “Anastasia, dear, can you grab the suitcase?”

  Leaving the sled cached in the pine grove of shadow and snow, the trio galumphed through the drifts to the gingerbread-y chalet. Wolfy paws whirling, Baldwin scrabbled a path up the steps to the front door. Penny produced a key from her pocket and coaxed the lock open. “In you go.”

  The floorboards creaked beneath Anastasia’s galoshes. Baldwin padded in behind her, nudging the lantern into her hand. She held it aloft, illuminating the darkened cabin.

  Cheese! Slabs of cheese the size of dictionaries! Cheese wheels large as tractor tires! Lumps of luminous white cheese glowing beneath the curved lid of a glass case! Cheese stacked from the wooden countertops to the rafters; cheese crammed in every nook and cranny! Beauteous, splendiferous, magnificent cheese!

  “Ahhh!” Penny gazed about with all the awe of Aladdin beholding a treasure trove. “Heaven!”

  Anastasia crinkled her brow. “This is Grandma Wiggy’s house? Is she a sometime-mouse, too?”

  “No, dear.” Penny smiled. “Didn’t you see the sign out front?…Oh, it must have been iced over. This is Die Munter Maus.”

  “Dee…what?”

  “The Merry Mouse. It’s a cheese shop.”

  “Dinkledo-oo-owoorf is kno-ooown for three things,” Baldwin said. “S’moo-oo-res. Snoowoo globes. And cheese.”

  “This cheese is some of the finest in the world.” Penny stroked a nearby wheel as though it were a beloved pet Persian. “See this, Anastasia? Merry Mouse Gruyère. Oh, it’s delicious! I would trade all the cheddar in Mooselick for a gram of Merry Mouse. The milk comes fresh from Rolf’s cows, you know.”

  “Does Rolf own this shop?”

  Penny shook her head. “No. The Dinkles do. They’re a family of master cheesemongers. In fact, Dinkledorf is named after them! This store was founded in the eighteenth century by Klaus Dinkle, history’s greatest cheesemonger.” Penny’s cheeks, already pink with cold, turned even pinker. “He used to send me boxes of lovely cheese balls. So delicious! And he was such a good dancer. Oh, how
that man could clog-stomp. Better than anyone for miles.”

  “But, Aunt Penny…,” Anastasia puzzled. “If Klaus Dinkle lived three hundred years ago, how could he have sent you cheese balls?”

  “Morfolk live long lives,” Penny said. “Most of us live centuries.”

  Anastasia goggled. “How old are you?”

  “Two hundred and seventy-six.”

  “Crumbs! You’re ancient!”

  “Your father is even older than me, dear,” Penny chuckled. “By four years.”

  “I’m the baby oow-oof the family,” Baldwin piped up, padding behind an enormous barrel brimming with cheese balls. “I’m awooonly two hundred and seventy-three. Penny, I’ll take my clo-oothes now.”

  Penny fished his gear from her suitcase and tossed it to him.

  “Avert yoo-oour eyes, ladies.”

  “One of the—er—trickier aspects of metamorphosing is that your clothing doesn’t change with you,” Penny explained.

  “I had high hopes with the invention of spandex,” Baldwin called. “I thought maybe a Morfolk tailor could design a suit that would fit both my human and wolf forms. But we conceded defeat after I ripped through five prototypes.” He eased from behind the wooden cask, fully dressed. “Hmm. Maybe we should take a cheese ball for the road.”

  “When you say human form,” Anastasia said slowly, “do you mean you’re not a human?”

  Penny hesitated. “We do have many human qualities…but no, we’re not exactly human.”

  “I guess you couldn’t be,” Anastasia pondered. “Not if you live for hundreds of years!”

  Penny sighed. “I’m sure it must seem very strange to you, Anastasia, but all creatures have different life spans. Butterflies only live a few weeks, and tortoises can live over a century.”

  “How long will I live?” Anastasia asked.

  There was another uncomfortable pause.

  “We don’t really know,” Penny finally answered, squeezing Anastasia’s shoulder. “You’re the only half Morfo we’ve met.”

  “The most important thing about life,” Baldwin said softly, “is the quality, not the quantity.”

  Penny nodded. “In that respect, life is very like cheese.” She patted one of Anastasia’s braids. “Now come with me, dear. We have something interesting to show you.” She weaved through the cramped aisles to a little door at the back of the shop. She opened the door and started down a staircase, and Anastasia and Baldwin followed her to a long room with a rocky ceiling and rocky walls. Wooden racks lined this cellar, their shelves sagging beneath great hulking wheels of cheese.

  “Is this—a cave?” Anastasia cricked her neck to peer around the peculiar bunker.

  “Indeed it is!” Penny said. “A cheese cave.”

  “Cheese needs to ripen and age,” Baldwin said. “And this cave is chock-full of splendid minerals and bacteria just right for flavoring the cheese.”

  “And it’s just the right temperature,” Penny said.

  “It’s cold,” Anastasia chattered.

  “People have been cave-aging cheese for thousands of years,” Penny thrilled.

  “Switzerland is laced with these wonderful caves,” Baldwin said. “These hills and mountains are just like Swiss cheese: full of holes.”

  “That’s interesting,” Anastasia said politely. “But why are we here, exactly? Are we getting a snack before going to Wiggy’s?”

  Baldwin’s eyes twinkled. “There’s more in these caves than cheese, my dear girl. See this rack?”

  “Ye-es,” Anastasia said.

  “It looks just like all the other racks in this cellar, doesn’t it? But it’s different. It’s more than just a rack of cheese.” He pushed on the second and third shelves, and the entire case shifted inward an inch or so. Then he released his hands, and the case pivoted to reveal a fissure in the cave wall. “It’s also a secret door.”

  The secret door was more of a hole, really. It was rather like an enormous mouse hole. However, for Anastasia, an aspiring detective-veterinarian-artist, the curious cranny triggered all sorts of snoopy gumshoe instincts. She knew from reading Francie Dewdrop mysteries that hidden portals opened onto mysterious and magical places. In The Case of the Buccaneer’s Cipher, for example, Francie discovered an intriguing hallway behind a bookcase, and that hallway led to a chamber full of stolen Aztec gold.

  “Take a look,” Baldwin said.

  Anastasia crouched to poke the lantern closer, letting its pale lamplight spill out onto a spiral of stone steps.

  “Where does this go?” she breathed.

  “That,” Baldwin said, “is the way to Grandmother’s house.”

  4

  Stardust Cavern

  BEFORE ANASTASIA COULD ask “Why is there a secret stairwell in the Merry Mouse cheese cave?” or “Why would Grandma Wiggy be down there, wherever there is?” or even “When are we going to take a bathroom break?” Penny stooped to scramble into the hole. “Come along, dear!”

  Anastasia waffled just one heartbeat, and then she shifted her satchel between her shoulder blades and climbed into the stairwell. Baldwin squeezed in after her, reaching back to pull the cheese case snugly behind them.

  “This staircase has exactly ninety-nine steps,” Penny said. “And they’re narrow and steep, so please be careful.”

  “My friend Basil once fell down the whole shebang,” Baldwin said. “Ah, what a night that was! We had some wonderful fun at the Dinkledorf pub before he broke his arm.”

  There wasn’t a railing, so Anastasia steadied herself by sliding one palm along the stairwell’s clammy, curving inner wall. Down, down, down they went. Zither, whoosh, swizzle, hummed their snow pants. The air was cold and damp and left a strange, gritty taste on Anastasia’s tongue.

  “Where are we going, exactly?” she asked.

  “Nowhere Special,” Penny said.

  “It must be a little special if we have to take a secret staircase to get there,” Anastasia reasoned.

  “No, dear. Nowhere Special. It’s the name of the city we’re going to,” Penny said. “We’ll be safe from CRUD there.”

  “An underground city?” Anastasia squeaked.

  “A secret underground city,” Baldwin corrected her. “It’s a shame we don’t have s’mores and a campfire, because the history of Nowhere Special is long and fascinating and just dripping with delectable secrets.”

  “It’s dripping, all right,” Anastasia observed as a chilly droplet fell from the rocky ceiling and splashed on her nose.

  “We’re coming to the bottom,” Penny said. “Ninety-eight…ninety-nine…”

  The stairwell yawned into a low, craggy cavern. In this cavern was a man, sitting on a little chair and examining his fingernails by the glow of a lantern perched on his knee. When he saw them, he jumped up and clicked his heels. “Salutations!”

  “Hello, Belfry!” Baldwin called. “How have you been this past decade?”

  “Very well, Your Most Excellent,” Belfry said. He was wearing a tri-corner hat, a stiff black suit with trousers that ended just below his knees, and white hose, and his long hair was arranged in sausagey white curls tied back in a black bow. He looked, Anastasia thought, rather like paintings she had seen of George Washington.

  “Presenting our Most Excellent Niece, Anastasia!” Baldwin said, clapping her shoulder. Belfry bowed at the waist. Then he turned and pressed his lantern into the darkness, illuminating a boat bobbing in a canal behind his chair. The boat was long and black. It was just wide enough for two people to squeeze in side by side, provided neither one had a very large bottom.

  “Last one in is a rotten egg!” Baldwin crowed, taking a long-legged leap into the craft and nearly capsizing it in the process. “Here, Anastasia; alley-oop!”

  “Keep your hands and feet inside the gondola,” Belfry intoned as she squished in next to Baldwin. “The eels have been particularly active tonight.”

  “Eels?” Anastasia yawped.

  “Electric eels,” Bel
fry added somberly.

  Penny hopped to the seat in front of them, and Belfry followed, hanging his lantern on a hook curling from the boat’s prow. “Virgil!”

  A dark shape detached itself from the shadows and fluttered to land on the tip of Belfry’s hat, swinging to dangle upside down.

  “Is that a bat?” Anastasia gasped.

  “There are lots of bats down here,” Penny said. “I’m glad you like animals so much!”

  Belfry untethered the boat and grabbed the handle of a long oar, and they glided into the gloom.

  “Your Most Excellent?” Anastasia whispered to Baldwin. “Is that how people say sir down here?”

  Baldwin shrugged and smiled.

  “Mind your heads,” Belfry cautioned as the gondola slid into a tunnel.

  “There are tunnels all over the Cavelands,” Penny said. “Some of them link to the aqueduct system, and some of them are dry.”

  Faint greenish light gleamed ahead, and it grew brighter and brighter until the channel blurted them into another cavern, and Belfry bellowed, much like a trolley conductor announcing stops, “Bacon Grotto.”

  Big rock formations bristled from Bacon Grotto’s vault. “Those are stalactites,” Baldwin said. “They take thousands of years to form. They’re even older than your aunt here, Anastasia!”

  “Oh, Baldwin!” Penny rolled her eyes. “But it’s true that they’re old.”

  “They start with just a bitty drop of water on the ceiling,” Baldwin said.

  “There’s a little bit of mineral mixed in,” Penny explained. “Each drip leaves behind a smidgen of limestone, and over time the limestone builds up to form those spikes.”

  “What about those?” Anastasia asked as they passed some crags steepling from a stone ledge.

  “Stalagmites,” Penny said. “When the stalactite dribbles onto the cave floor, it splashes and leaves some limestone behind. Eventually the drops grow upward into a stalagmite.”