by Holly Grant
The boy stared at his feet. “Hi.”
“Anastasia, this is Mr. Wata,” Penny said.
“Princess Anastasia!” Mr. Wata exclaimed. “We read all about your arrival in the Cavelands in this morning’s edition of the Nowhere Special Echo.”
“What?” Anastasia gasped.
“There was a two-page spread detailing your glorious escape from CRUD! Angus and I clipped the article and pasted it into our scrapbook right after we finished our cornflakes.”
“But how did the Echo get the story so soon?” Penny asked.
“Those reporters are intrepid indeed,” Mr. Wata declared. “And it makes a gripping story. The Echo said you had to use a chamber pot for two months, Princess. What an ordeal!”
Anastasia wilted within her petticoats, envisioning the citizens of Nowhere Special hashing out her bathroom woes over their coffee and donuts.
“Speaking of ordeals,” Mr. Wata said, “we’re here to get Angus another wig. This is his third one this month!”
“Angus Wata!” Sir Marvelmop wailed. “Your wig is a wreck! Did those wayward serpents of yours get hold of it again?”
“Serpents?” Anastasia asked.
The boy’s shoulders sank. “Yeah,” he mumbled, pulling his wig off to reveal, sprouting from his dark tufty hair, a den of striped green snakes.
“Don’t worry,” Penny murmured in Anastasia’s ear. “He’s a boy gorgon. Harmless.”
“Harmless!” Sir Marvelmop sputtered. “Just look at my wig! Those serpents have no appreciation for art.”
“They’ve been coughing up hairballs all morning,” Mr. Wata said. “Sick tummies, poor things.”
“I thought they looked sort of—er—flopsy,” Anastasia said.
“They’re always like this,” Angus muttered. “They’re apathetic.”
“Now, son,” Mr. Wata coaxed, “don’t say things like that. I’m sure your snakes will perk up one of these days! Perhaps when you blossom into a young man! Speaking of puberty, shall we get you some deodorant while we’re out? I know you have that powder to keep your feet from smelling, but what about your armpits?”
“Dad!” Angus protested.
“Sir Marvelmop has armpit wigs,” Anastasia piped up. “I don’t know if they help with sweating, though.”
“My armpits are fine!”
“We’ll see about that,” Sir Marvelmop huffed. “Angus, get thee to the Miracle Seat!”
“More like the Tuffet of Shame,” Angus whispered.
Anastasia sneaked him a sympathetic smile. “It was nice to meet you.”
“Nice bat, by the way.” Angus slunk to the tuffet, and Anastasia and Penny escaped the wiggy lair.
They found Baldwin deep in debate at Ye Olde Limerick Shoppe, a pothole packed with books and parchment rolls and inkwells.
“I say it exists! We just haven’t found it!” Baldwin thumped a writing desk with his fist.
“You’re off your nutter!” the limericker retorted. “Everyone knows: there is no rhyme for orange!”
“Baldy,” Penny called, “we got the wig.”
“Peebles, we’ll resume this conversation later.” Baldwin stomped back out to Crescent Way. “How was your wig expedition?”
“We ran into Mercurio Wata and his son,” Penny said. “Anastasia got her first glimpse of a gorgon.”
“Well, well!” Baldwin chuckled. “Just thank your lucky stars you glimpsed a boy gorgon!”
“Why?” Anastasia asked. “What’s wrong with girl gorgons?”
“A lady gorgon is a dangerous creature indeed,” Baldwin explained. “If you look at one’s face—whammo! You turn into stone! And there’s no cure for it. That’s it. You’re done. Lawn decoration. Glorified hat rack. And”—he lowered his voice—“for those unfortunate folks short on looks: gargoyle.”
“Male gorgons can’t petrify anyone,” Penny said. “I expect it’s rather sad for them.”
“Why would anyone want to turn people into stone?” Anastasia demanded.
“It comes in rather handy at times,” Baldwin said. “I wouldn’t, for example, mind turning Prim and Prude Snodgrass into two nasty little lawn gnomes. I’d put them on a dock somewhere abovecaves.”
“Why a dock?” Penny asked.
“Seagulls.” Baldwin smiled meaningfully.
“Angus’s dad isn’t a gorgon,” Anastasia puzzled.
“His mother is,” Penny said. “She’s that opera singer we mentioned—Bellagorgon.”
“But how does Mr. Wata look at her?”
“He doesn’t. Apparently he walks around the house blindfolded, or she wears a bag over her head.”
“I heard Mercurio was covered with snakebites for the first year of their marriage,” Baldwin said. “Such a romantic story.”
“It doesn’t sound romantic to me,” Anastasia said. “It sounds painful.”
“Speaking of painful…” Baldwin pulled his pocket watch from his waistcoat. “It’s almost time for your first finishing lesson with dear old Loodie. We’d better head back to the palace.”
9
The Great Banana Catastrophe
“ET. I. QUETTE.”
Ludowiga spat each syllable as though it were a pebble aimed at Anastasia’s forehead. “Etiquette is essential. Etiquette separates us from the hoi polloi.”
“The…what?” Anastasia glanced at Saskia. Her cousin perched on a frilly chair across Ludowiga’s sitting room, nibbling from a bowl of raspberries and cream. “The…who poo?”
“You’re a princess, Anastasia, as bizarre as that seems to both you and me,” Ludowiga went on. “And you’re going to learn to act like one.”
Anastasia squirmed, trying to ignore the pantaloons wedgie bedeviling her behind.
“First we shall address your walk and posture.” Ludowiga sipped from a teacup. “When you came in here, you hunched along like a sloth with gout. Have you not noticed how Wiggy and Saskia and I glide? Saskia, demonstrate for your cousin the bearing befitting a royal.”
“Yes, Mumsy.” Saskia put down her raspberries, stood up, and waltzed across the parlor.
“Note the proud carriage of her swanlike neck!” Ludowiga said.
Saskia pirouetted and returned to her chair.
“Of course, Saskia has a natural talent for walking,” Ludowiga said. “But fortunately for you, Anastasia, there are ways to train the weak of ankle and lubberly of foot. Sampson!” She snapped her fingers. “Bananas!”
A footman hustled forth, bearing a cluster of bananas. Ludowiga expertly shucked two. She then tossed the fruit into a nearby fireplace and flung the peels at Anastasia. “Remove those beastly galoshes and stand on these, slippery side down.”
Eyeing her aunt’s talons, Anastasia did as told.
“Shoulders back! Nose up! Clench your derriere! Now: glide!”
Anastasia shambled on her banana slippers, wondering whether she resembled a swan.
“Why is your head bobbling like that?” Ludowiga demanded. “Sampson! Books!”
“Yes, Your Highness.” Sampson fetched several encyclopedias from a shelf and began stacking them on Anastasia’s pate. Her neck wobbled.
“Walk without letting them fall,” Ludowiga said. “This will strengthen your sinews.”
“But, Aunt—” The heavy tomes seesawed. Anastasia reeled, trying to center the weight.
As you may already know, erudite Reader, the great physicist Sir Wally Bracegirdle calculated the slipperiness of banana peels in his great experiment of 1795, “Banana Skins: The Coefficient of Friction Thereof.” After years of study (and countless sprained ankles), the dauntless Bracegirdle determined “Banana skins = slippery as heck.”
Anastasia was to arrive at this conclusion much more swiftly. The peels skidded under her feet and she careened into her aunt with the cataclysmic impact of a meteorite crashing into a china shop. Ludowiga’s fanciful chair capsized and both princesses tumbled to the floor in a panic of screeching bats and splashing tea and thudding book
s and ripping silk.
“My goodness!” said Sampson. “My gracious!”
“My wig!” Ludowiga screamed. “Give it back, you imbecile!”
Anastasia stared at the mass of curls latched, like an enormous clinging opossum, to the buttons fastening her jacket. Then she raised her gaze to Ludowiga. “Aunt! You’re bald!”
“Of course I’m bald!” Ludowiga flared. “I want my wigs to fit properly, don’t I? I shave my scalp every week.”
Anastasia scrambled to untangle the hairpiece. “Sorry.”
Ludowiga crammed the mop back over her ears and hopped to her feet. “De-wigging a royal is tantamount to treason, Princess! Sampson! My Slappers!”
Sampson brandished a platter loaded with dozens of slim white gloves. Ludowiga’s manicured claw hovered above the tray for a moment before snatching a heavy velvet number. “When we royalty are offended, we must respond accordingly. Bring your freckled snoot over here.”
“But I didn’t mean to—”
“Stand up!” Ludowiga seethed.
Anastasia stood, flinching. Clutching the glove, Ludowiga wound her arm back as though preparing to pitch a baseball. Then she cracked her wrist forward, expertly walloping the mitt across Anastasia’s nose.
“Ow!”
“Excellent hit, Your Majesty!” Sampson praised.
“Well done, Mumsy!” Saskia cheered.
“That was a good one,” Ludowiga agreed, looking pleased.
“It feels like a bee stung me!” Anastasia moaned.
“There’s an entire art around glove-slappery,” Ludowiga said. “I’ve perfected my technique for centuries.”
“I’m rather good at it, too, Mumsy,” Saskia chimed in.
“Yes, cherub, you are. I’ll never forget your first slap—with a mitten, it was. Only two years old and you whacked Nanny’s sniffer red as a cherry!”
“She learned not to boss me,” Saskia said smugly.
“But—but that’s mean!” Anastasia stammered.
Ludowiga pinched her lips. “How else do you expect to command respect, Princess? If you let the underlings get too comfortable, they’ll forget what’s what.”
“Besides,” Saskia giggled, “I like to see their noses turn red.”
Anastasia snuffled and touched her own throbbing proboscis.
“You’ll learn the virtues of slappery in due time,” Ludowiga said. “But today’s lesson is officially over. Now, kindly remove yourself from what’s left of my parlor, and do try not to destroy anything on your way out.” She kicked one of the banana peels into the wreckage of china slivers and puddled tea.
“Um. Right.” Anastasia nabbed her galoshes and backed toward the door.
“Bye, cousin.” Saskia popped a raspberry into her mouth. “See you at school tomorrow.”
10
Pettifog Academy for Impressionable Young Minds
AFTER THE MANIFOLD indignities Anastasia had suffered at the hands of Ludowiga and Sir Marvelmop, she was almost glad to escape to Pettifog Academy.
Almost.
She canvassed the students gaggled outside the academy entrance, scouring the sea of blue Pettifog uniforms for any trace of Ollie or Quentin. However, she spotted neither hide nor hair of the Drybread brothers. Crumbs. Anastasia tightened her arms around her notebooks. She wouldn’t know a single soul at Pettifog Academy except Saskia, and Saskia, Anastasia decided, didn’t count. Her cousin had sailed to school in a separate gondola, and now whispered at the center of a bewigged clique. The coterie burst into a chorus of giggles and turned their heads to peek at Anastasia.
“You’ll have a grand time,” Baldwin reassured her. “Grand!” He thumped Anastasia on the back, sending her notebooks leapfrogging from her arms to splash in the canal. The papers fanned across the murky green water, and then an eel clamped down on the edge of a purple binder and spirited it away.
“Oops,” Baldwin said.
Anastasia swiveled her gaze back to her future classmates. “They’re staring.”
“Well, of course they are,” Penny said. “You’re the new Cavelands princess. Everyone’s going to be very curious about you!”
A brittle woman in a blue dress emerged from the academy entrance. She produced a hand bell from her skirts, held it over her white-wigged head, and swung her arm maniacally. DING DING DING DING DING! The schoolchildren groaned and turned to file inside.
“All right, my darling,” Penny coaxed, “off you go!”
“If Saskia gives you any trouble, just bite back,” Baldwin advised.
“I’ll remember that.” Anastasia hopped from the gondola and dragged her feet to the school door, where the woman in blue waited.
“You must be Princess Anastasia,” she said. “I’m Marm Pettifog. I will be your teacher for the remainder of the school year. I also happen to be the founder and headmistress of this fine educational institution. You’ll soon learn that I have a reputation for being a bit of a tyrant.”
“Oh,” Anastasia croaked.
“It’s a reputation for which I worked very hard,” Marm Pettifog went on. “It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both. Machiavelli said that, and he knew a thing or two about running a tight ship. Now, tell me: are you a weeper?”
“I—I don’t think so,” Anastasia pondered. “I mean, sometimes I cry—”
“I get it. So you’re a hard nut to crack, eh? We’ll see about that.” Marm Pettifog smiled confidently. “Now, don’t think I’m going to give you any special treatment because you’re a princess, because I won’t. Here at Pettifog Academy, all students are equally lowly.”
Anastasia gulped and nodded.
Marm Pettifog consulted her watch again, then rang the bell in Anastasia’s ear. Pippistrella jolted awake and burrowed under the Ben Franklin in terror.
“You’re late!” the schoolmarm barked. “Get to class.”
Anastasia straggled behind Marm Pettifog into a cavernous lobby paneled in dark mahogany and overgrown with a veritable forest of carved spiral staircases. They hiked up one of the dizzying flights to the second story and squeezed through a narrow arch into a craggy, candlelit classroom.
“This is your new schoolmate, Anastasia Merrymoon,” Marm Pettifog announced. “Anastasia, you may take the chair beside your cousin.”
Crumbs again. Anastasia sidled between the desks. Either her galosh caught on Saskia’s frilled ankle, or Saskia’s frilled ankle caught on her galosh; either way, Anastasia executed a superb nosedive right into a diorama, crushing a model castle crafted from tongue depressors.
“My history project!” wailed one of the Morflings. Anastasia cringed. It was the gorgon boy from Sir Marvelmop’s wig shop. She jumbled the sticks back into the diorama, noting that she had also smashed its label: CAVEPEARL PALACE: ARCHITECTURAL MARVEL.
“Sorry,” she mouthed.
“Anastasia, off the floor,” Marm Pettifog said. “We don’t have nap time at Pettifog Academy.”
The children giggled as Anastasia peeled herself from the science project and crept to her seat.
“All right, class,” Marm Pettifog said. “Open your Echolalia primers to chapter forty-five. I hope you all studied hard over the winter holiday.”
Anastasia rummaged in her satchel for the thick purple textbook and flipped to “Squeak! A Bat in the City.” Vocabulary words mottled the page, bedecked in squiggles and dots and all sorts of symbols:
And so forth.
“Turn to lesson two. We’ll go down the row. Parveen, number one.”
“Peep-quee-crIIIck!”
“Correct. Jasper, number two.”
“Squee-peeEEEp-squee!”
“Good. Did you practice over break?”
“Yes, Marm Pettifog.”
As the interrogation snaked around the room toward Anastasia, her palms began to sweat. Perhaps, scholarly Reader, you have suffered nightmares in which you find yourself at the end of a school semester, in a class you can’t remember, on the precipice of an im
portant test for which you are utterly unprepared. Perhaps, in these terrible dreams, you find yourself clad in underpants only. While Anastasia’s pantaloons were firmly in place, she otherwise felt she had been transplanted into one of these dark night terrors.
“Saskia, number ten.”
“Peep-peep CREEeeee squeak!”
“Excellent. Excellent pronunciation,” Marm Pettifog declared. “You would all do well to follow Saskia’s example. Listen to the EE in her CREEeeee. Perfect.”
Saskia fluttered her eyelashes.
“Anastasia: eleven.”
Anastasia stared at the hieroglyphics scrawling the page. “Um.”
“Well?”
“Peep squeeee!” Pippistrella chirped in her ear.
“Peep squeee?” Anastasia ventured.
“Princess!” Marm Pettifog glared over her spectacles. “Accepting help from your bat is cheating. Did you just cheat?”
“I—I was just—” Anastasia floundered.
“Cheating is not tolerated in this school. That’s detention for you, and your little bat, too. Now, go to twelve.”
Anastasia swallowed. A grandfather clock loomed in the corner, clucking its golden tongue. Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.
“Marm Pettifog, I don’t speak Echolalia. At all.”
The schoolchildren rustled, and a few twisted back in their seats to stare at Anastasia.
“Excuse me,” Marm Pettifog said. “I don’t think I heard you correctly. Did you just say that you don’t speak Echolalia?”
Anastasia juddered her chin, scrooching down in her chair.
“This is unheard of,” Marm Pettifog said. “A Morfolk child—a princess, no less—who doesn’t speak a peep of Echolalia? How do you communicate with bats?”
“I don’t,” Anastasia said. “I’ve only been down in the Cavelands for two days, Marm Pettifog. Pippistrella and I—”
“Have at least worked out a way to cheat at lessons. Well, I shall certainly speak to your parents about this.”
“She doesn’t have parents.” Saskia’s voice was syrupy with fake sympathy. “Nobody knows anything about her human mom, and her dad disappeared months ago.”
