by Holly Grant
“It’s completely natural,” Penny reassured her. “Some Morflings run around gobbling moths, and others crave cheese—”
“Like your auntie here,” Baldwin said. “And I started howling uncontrollably.”
“He did it abovecaves once,” Penny said.
“Fortunately, it was during the Dinkledorf Annual Yodeling Competition, so nobody took notice,” Baldwin said.
“Oh, but they did!” Penny said. “You won first place!”
Baldwin patted his mustache, reflecting pleasurably upon this triumph.
“What about Dad?” Anastasia asked. “Did he do anything strange?”
“He gnawed on sticks,” Baldwin said. “Constantly.”
Anastasia pondered this. “Muffy does that, too. The vet said it keeps her front teeth from growing too long.” Her thoughts moseyed to the conversation she had overheard the night before. “Do you think Dad might be hiding as a guinea pig somewhere? Maybe he’s in a cage at the Mooselick Pet Shop.”
Penny flinched. “Er—that’s a possibility, dear.”
“Do you think anyone can find him?” Anastasia persisted. She ached to ask about the mysterious, missing Nicodemus—whoever he was—and his wonderful compass, but she also knew from following Francie Dewdrop’s sleuthing adventures that good eavesdroppers didn’t admit to listening at doorways. Not if they could help it, anyway. It would put the kibosh on future snoopery. If people start worrying about being overheard, you see, they clam up. They whisper. They close doors before spilling the beans.
But maybe she could nudge her aunt and uncle into mentioning the mystery man.
“Anyone?” Anastasia repeated.
Baldwin lowered his fork. “The Crown has a specialized Counter-CRUD unit, Anastasia. Our best spies are scouring the United States for any trace of your father. If anyone can track Fred, they’ll do it.”
“I want to look for him, too,” Anastasia said, her voice growing loud and wobbly. “I don’t want to waste my time squishing into crinolines and trying on wigs. Not while my dad is missing.”
“We know, dear.” Penny reached across the table and covered Anastasia’s hand with her own. “But you simply cannot go abovecaves right now.”
“I’m sure CRUD already has your mug shot plastered on every single Most Wanted Morfolk poster from here to Mooselick,” Baldwin said. “Listen, there’s nothing you could do that our spies aren’t already doing. I know you’re brave and clever and resourceful—you escaped two CRUD Watchers, for Pete’s sake! But our spies have been doing this stuff for years. A few of our agents are sometime-wolves, you know. They’ll sniff your dad out. Literally.”
Anastasia nodded, but the gears in her mind whizzed. Maybe, for now, she couldn’t do anything abovecaves. But if Nicodemus Last-Name-Unknown-for-Now was in the Cavelands, perhaps she could find him. And if Wiggy was right about his compass, it would lead them straight to Fred.
“Your dad wouldn’t want you to worry and mope, Anastasia,” Baldwin said. “Leave the worrying to us. Your aunt here is a virtuoso worrier.”
Penny nodded. “You have enough to think about, with moving to a brand-new home and meeting a brand-new family and adjusting to royal life.”
Anastasia frowned. “Do those maids have to help me get dressed and take a bath every morning? It was mortifying.”
“Peep!” Pippistrella complained from the chandelier.
Penny sighed. “I’ll talk to Ludowiga.”
“I don’t need a bath every day,” Anastasia haggled. “Once a week, tops. And do I really have to wear a wig?”
“Well, I’m afraid that is a must,” Penny said. “At school, anyway. It’s part of the Pettifog uniform.”
“Pettifog?”
“Pettifog Academy for Impressionable Young Minds,” Penny clarified. “Today is the last day of winter break, so you’ll be starting tomorrow.”
Anastasia groaned. “Really?”
“I know it seems rushed, but you’ve already missed two months of school,” Penny said. “Besides, I’m sure you’ll make all sorts of lovely new friends.”
“I just want my old friends,” Anastasia said quietly.
“Perhaps you’ll see the Drybread brothers at Pettifog Academy,” Penny suggested. “Quentin did say he would meet us again in Nowhere Special.”
“Speaking of Nowhere Special,” Baldwin said, “we’re taking you on the Grand Tour today, my girl. So finish those pancakes, posthaste—merriment awaits!”
7
Nowhere Special
“THE LAGOON IS very mopey today,” Belfry announced. “Woebegone, one might say.”
“Booohooooo.”
Anastasia peered over the edge of the gondola, watching the reflections of candle flames skate across the lake’s silver skin. Thoughts rattled her brain like the candy innards of a tortured piñata. What would Pettifog Academy be like? Would she ever learn how to loo in a crinoline? Would she learn to speak Echolalia? On the other hand, perhaps she didn’t really need to converse with her bat-in-waiting. Pippistrella was sound asleep again, snoring beneath one of Anastasia’s braids.
“How much do bats sleep?” she whispered.
“It depends,” Penny said. “Pippistrella is a little brown bat, and I think they can sleep up to nineteen hours a day.”
Belfry guided the gondola into a tunnel.
“Why didn’t Grandwiggy eat breakfast with us?” Anastasia asked.
“Wiggy usually rises very early,” Penny said. “She eats in her chambers and then goes to work.”
“Work? But she’s the queen!” Anastasia envisioned her grandmother, in stiff lace collar and crystal crown, demonstrating vacuum cleaners cave to cave. “I thought queens just sat around and drank tea.”
“The queen has a lot of responsibilities, Anastasia,” Penny said. “She spends most of her time reviewing laws and meeting with Congress and diplomats.”
“What about Saskia? She wasn’t at breakfast, either.”
“Ludowiga has been taking her meals in her private suite for centuries. I imagine Saskia dines with her.”
Baldwin harrumphed.
“While we’re on the subject of private quarters,” Penny said, “there are places in Cavepearl Palace where you shouldn’t wander, dear. Wiggy’s office is strictly off-limits, of course, and so are her chambers.”
“But the palace is your home, too,” Baldwin said. “We want you to feel comfortable there.”
“How long will it be my home, exactly?” Anastasia asked. “Am I ever going back to Mooselick?”
“Oh, Anastasia. I don’t know.” Penny plucked nervously at one of her buttons. “I’m not sure what the future holds. For now you’re safe in Nowhere Special. CRUD has no idea about the Cavelands—thank goodness.”
The canal widened. Glass globes flickered over gondolas moored by doorways, and burning chandeliers made windows wink. Wrought-iron balconies scrolled along the tunnel walls, and ladies in fancy dresses munched cinnamon buns and watched them pass.
“This is the Upper East Side of Nowhere Special,” Penny said.
“Posh,” Baldwin added. “Lots of Ludowiga’s ritzy friends live in this neighborhood.”
The conduit spat them into a large cave. Across the dome, the lagoon lapped at the edges of a wide plaza swarming with people.
“Dark-o’-the-Moon Common,” Belfry announced, angling them toward a dock clustered with gondolas. The boatmen all wore white wigs. Some of them were singing, and several were smoking pipes and chatting.
“The black boats are private gondolas, and the green ones are water taxis,” Penny said. “As you’ve already seen, much of the Cavelands is connected by the canal system. There are pedestrian tunnels, of course, and some bridges, but there are also places you can only get to by boat.”
“Can’t people just turn into bats and fly?”
“Ah, but what about clothes?” Baldwin said. “You couldn’t very well flap off to tea and arrive in your birthday suit!”
“Besi
des, not all Morfolk shift into bats,” Penny added, boosting Anastasia up to the pier.
The plaza’s damp cobblestones gleamed beneath its old-fashioned lamps, and murky puddles mirrored the dark shapes of bats whirring above. Hundreds of people crowded the common, clutching shopping bags and pushing baby buggies and perusing the windows of little shop caves. Many of them carried umbrellas to protect their wigs from the droplets sprinkling from the plaza’s snaggletoothed vault.
Anastasia had worried about looking silly in her fancy gown, but the crowd frothed with crinolines and lace collars. “Does everyone dress funny in Nowhere Special?”
“You have to remember, dear, Morfolk live for centuries,” Penny said. “Fashions don’t change very swiftly in the Cavelands.”
“We’re still wearing eighteenth-century duds down here.” Baldwin tugged the edges of his cravat.
“Look!” Anastasia cried, hopscotching toward a cylinder of stones. “A wishing well!” She leaned over its curve, hoping to spot the glimmer of wished-upon coins down below, but the mossy stones pitched into gloom.
“Careful.” Baldwin crooked his forefinger under Anastasia’s collar and tugged her back. “I’m not sure how sturdy that old thing is.”
Two wooden joists extended from the well’s sides to support a little roof, and a bucket dangled on a rope coiled around a central rod. Anastasia twisted the crank, lowering the bucket a few feet. “Can I have a penny to throw?”
“How about your aunt Penny?” Baldwin quipped.
“We don’t have pennies down here,” Penny said, ignoring him. “We have lunamarks, queenlies, quartzes, and pinklies.”
“Besides,” Baldwin said, “you wouldn’t want to send a coin down this well, anyway.” He pulled her to the far side of the well and tapped a bronze sign bolted to the roof.
BE-CAREFUL-WHAT-YOU-WISH-FOR WELL
“Nobody wishes on this well anymore,” he said. “The wishes haven’t been coming out right for centuries. The last person to make a wish here was Ralph Dundermooth, the poor sod.”
“What happened to him?” Anastasia asked.
“He wished he never had to hear another whoopee cushion. He tested whoopee cushions at a factory, you see,” Penny added hastily. “And he was getting tired of it.”
“Baffling,” Baldwin said. “How anyone could tire of that job, I will never understand.”
“Anyway, a few days after Ralph tossed his lunamark down the well, his wish came true: he went deaf. He didn’t hear anything after that.”
“A real shame, because he was a brilliant composer in his spare time,” Baldwin said. “And then there was Countess Pewter-Pimple. Remember that, Penny? She wished for a man to sweep her off her feet, and that very night a mugger knocked her down and stole her necklace! Broke her wrist, too.”
“Do you really think the well made those things happen?” Anastasia contemplated the pile of mossy stones. “Those things might have happened anyway.”
“Maybe,” Baldwin allowed. “But I wouldn’t risk it.”
“Maggots here! Get your piping-hot maggots here!” called a man by a steel cart that resembled a hot dog stand. “Delicious, hot maggots, three quartzes and a smile!”
Pippistrella rustled against Anastasia’s braid and chirped.
“But you just had breakfast,” Penny said.
“Squeak prrrp!”
“Oh, all right.” Penny rummaged in her purse. The maggot man winked and handed a little paper sack to Anastasia.
She wrinkled her nose. “They look a little like popcorn.”
“Peepity-peep!”
Anastasia plucked out a maggot puff and gave it to Pippistrella, who began crunching by her ear.
“The wig shop is down Crescent Way,” Penny said, leading them to a narrow corridor twisting off the plaza. They passed a haberdashery (hat store, that is) and a beauty parlor and a watchmaker’s before halting by a window bristling with masses of hair. A model ship topped a lofty pompadour, a swarm of silk butterflies garnished a bouffant, and a complete twenty-three-piece tea set nested within the squiggles of a stonking great coiffure.
“The uppercrusters all try to outclass each other with bigger and better wigs,” Baldwin said. “They decorate them like birthday cakes. They trim them like Christmas trees.” He shuddered. “They bear an uncanny resemblance to poodles, don’t they? You ladies will have to soldier on without me. I’ll be at the limericker’s across the lane.”
“Coward!” Penny called after him. “Oh well. Come along, Anastasia; let’s get your wig.”
8
Sir Marvelmop
A BLAST OF SICKLY-SWEET air twitched Anastasia’s sinuses into a tremendous sneeze, shivering a cloud of face powder from her cheeks.
“Ah! A sneezer, have we?” a tiny man shouted, dashing from behind his counter. “My nostril wigs will cure that!”
Anastasia coughed. “It’s just the perfume.”
“It isn’t perfume,” he chuckled. “It’s hair spray. We use it by the gallon here. Aphrodite’s Cement, we call it.”
“Oh,” Anastasia said, her eyes watering.
Sir Marvelmop grasped her hand. “Many people cry upon beholding my beautiful hairpieces. Don’t be ashamed, my dear! Let the tears flow. Now, what can I get for you? I have wigs for every need!”
“But does anyone really need a wig?” Anastasia asked.
Sir Marvelmop burst into another round of laughter. “How droll! Oh you jest!”
“Sir Marvelmop,” Penny spoke up, “this is the Princess Anastasia. Did you get the message we were coming?”
Sir Marvelmop jumped. “Princess Penelope! I didn’t see you standing there! And this…this is the Princess Anastasia?”
Anastasia nodded.
“Dear me!” He eyeballed her. “You’re sure?”
“Quite sure,” Penny said. “And she needs a wig for school.”
“I suppose…well…we’ll see what I can do. If anything,” Sir Marvelmop ruminated.
“I thought you were the Michelangelo of wigs,” Anastasia said.
Sir Marvelmop drew himself up. “Michelangelo used the finest materials for his sculptures. Marble from Carrara, pure and unblemished. You, my dear”—he grimaced—“are rather freckled.”
“There’s nothing wrong with freckles,” Penny protested. “And what do freckles have to do with a school wig, anyway?”
“I was merely commenting upon artistic media,” Sir Marvelmop sniffed. “Well, Princess Anastasia, sit down. I call this the Miracle Seat. Upon this hallowed tuffet, I have united countless pates with wigs.”
Anastasia perched on the ruffled ottoman, glumly regarding her reflections in the vanity’s angled triple mirror. Sir Marvelmop rested his fingertips on her shoulders. “Choosing your wig is a matter of the greatest importance,” he rhapsodized. “But we should hardly call it a choice, really. It’s more like destiny.”
“Maybe it’s my destiny not to wear a wig,” Anastasia suggested.
“Don’t be absurd!” Sir Marvelmop pulled a tape measure from his waistcoat pocket and cinched it across her temples. “Hmmm. All righty. Gigi! Fetch me Washington, Ben Franklin, and Little Bo Peep’s Missing Sheep!”
“Yes, Sir Marvelmop,” warbled a voice from the depths of the shop.
“Marm Pettifog has strict rules about her students’ hairpieces: small, white, and curled,” Sir Marvelmop said. “Very traditional. Ah, thank you, Gigi.”
The shop assistant staggered forth, clutching several round cartons. Sir Marvelmop eased the lid from the top box, rustled aside the tissue paper, and lifted out a curly white wig. He lowered it onto Anastasia’s coconut with all the solemnity of an archbishop crowning a queen.
Anastasia blinked at her reflection.
“No!” Sir Marvelmop yanked the wig from her head and flung it at Gigi. “Give me the Washington!”
“Yes, sir!”
Marvelmop crammed the Washington over Anastasia’s brow, regarded it with a frown, and chucked it aside. “No!
The Petite-Marie!”
Anastasia scalp prickled as Sir Marvelmop squashed wig after wig over her ears.
“Terrible! Bring me the Corkscrew!”
“Monstrous! Gigi! The Bo Peep!”
“Yes, Sir Marvelmop!”
“Intolerable!” Sir Marvelmop snatched the Bo Peep from Anastasia’s head. “Gigi! Roll out Rapunzel’s Terror!”
“Sir Marvelmop!” Gigi blanched. “No!”
“Get it, and quickly!”
Gigi scurried off.
“Rapunzel’s Terror?” Anastasia said nervously. “That’s a strange name for a wig.”
“It’s not a wig, Princess,” Sir Marvelmop said. “It’s a—”
“A guillotine?” Anastasia peered past him at the contraption Gigi now wheeled from a dark corner.
“Precisely.” Sir Marvelmop flung the Bo Peep upon its chopping block. “Prepare for le Grand Thwack, you mediocrity!” He yanked a cord on Rapunzel’s Terror, and its blade shot down. KRRR-WHOMP! A tangle of squiggles lolled to the floor.
“There,” Sir Marvelmop panted. “I feel better now.”
Gigi bowed her head, tears drizzling her cheeks.
“Why,” the wiggier cried, spying a jumble of curls on the vanity, “what’s this? Let’s try this one on you, my dear.” He eased the wig over Anastasia’s noodle, and then he clasped his hands together and danced in delight. “Brilliant! Sublime! Oh, this is the one!”
“Isn’t this the Ben Franklin?” Anastasia asked.
“So it is,” Sir Marvelmop beamed. “And I deem it perfect for you! Gigi, box it up! Now, Princess, you simply must see my brand-new armpit wigs,” he went on. “They’re all the rage—”
The bell on the shop door jangled as a man scuttled in, pulling a skinny child behind him. Anastasia contemplated this boy in wonderment, astonished that someone her age would wear a wig outside of Pettifog Academy. The wig looked like it had tangled with a blender and the blender had won.
“Princess Penelope!” the man cried. “I haven’t seen you for—well, it must be over a decade now. Angus, mind your manners! Say hello to the princess!”
