by Holly Grant
“Oh yes.” He chortled. “Although, unlike you, I was willfully naughty. Oh, the havoc I wreaked beneath these hallowed stalactites! Suffice it to say that I spent many an afternoon writing I will nots on this very blackboard.”
Anastasia wiped her eye and grinned.
Marm Pettifog clicked back into the classroom, followed by Penny. “You are released from today’s detention, Princess,” the schoolmarm said. “I shall accept (for now) that you didn’t mean to cheat (even though you did), and that you didn’t deliberately invoke witches.”
“Oh,” Anastasia mumbled. “Thank you.”
“Your aunt has promised to help you catch up with your classmates,” Marm Pettifog said. “But you’re going to have to work hard. You’re on academic probation, Morfling. Do you understand what that means?”
Anastasia shook her head.
“It means that you have the next few months to prove you’re a capable fifth grader. If your grades are sufficient, then you may enter sixth grade with the rest of your classmates at the end of this term. And if your grades are poor”—Marm Pettifog smiled ghoulishly—“then you’ll repeat fifth grade with me.”
Anastasia shuddered.
“Good day to you all.” Marm Pettifog pulled a gruesome red pen from her pocket and sat down at her desk. “I have essays to grade.”
Baldwin hustled Anastasia from the room. “You’ve officially survived your first brush with Marm Pettifog, my girl. This calls for ice cream.”
Anastasia heaved a sigh of contentment as she climbed atop one of the stools lining the long marble counter at the Soda Straw. Stalactites spiked the ceilings, but the cavern otherwise looked much like the old-fashioned ice cream parlors portrayed in TV shows from the 1950s. The floors were checkered black and white, and stained-glass lamps beamed jewel-toned candlelight atop lacy iron tables. Of course, soda shops abovecaves didn’t have fruit bats dangling from low-hanging dripstone, lapping smoothies from crystal goblets. And soda shops abovecaves didn’t normally count wolves amongst their clientele.
“Hey, Roger!” Baldwin greeted a waggy-tailed customer hunkered over a banana split. “Awoo!”
Roger lifted his ice-cream-frosted muzzle. “Awoo!”
A white-haired man emerged from a nook behind the counter, wiping his palms on his apron. “Well, hello, Princess Penny—Baldy! You old rapscallion! I read in the Echo you got back three days ago, and it’s taken this long for you to visit?”
Baldwin chuckled. “Anastasia, may I present Hoshi Yukimori, the world’s greatest ice creamer, and also one of my greatest friends?”
“Anastasia!” Mr. Yukimori’s face lit up. “Anastasia the Brave? I’ve heard all about you, my dear! Good for you, escaping those poisonous kidnappers!”
Anastasia blushed. “Thanks.”
“Now, what strikes your fancy?” Mr. Yukimori handed her a menu.
Anastasia studied the photographs of Guzzlylicious Soda Fizzers, Chocolate-Covered Moths, and Moon-Over-My-Mango Smoothies. “Fermented Fruit Parfait?” Anastasia asked.
“It’s like booze for bats,” Baldwin explained. “Gets ’em potted.”
“Electric Eel Ice Cream?”
“Zaps your taste buds. That’s what I’m getting,” Baldwin said.
“I’ll just have a chocolate sundae,” Anastasia decided. “And a jar of moths for Pippistrella, please.”
“And one Limburger Milk Shake for me,” Penny said.
“Coming right up!” Mr. Yukimori bustled behind the counter.
Baldwin snared Anastasia into a friendly noogie. “A sundae will help you forget your troubles.”
“I’m terribly sorry, Anastasia,” Penny apologized. “We should have prepared you a little better before you started school. We should have told you about—about—”
“About witches?” Anastasia pressed.
“Let’s go somewhere a bit more private.” Penny slid from her stool and led them to a booth squidged into an alcove.
“So witches are real?” Anastasia asked, scooching across the vinyl seat. “They actually exist? And they do magic?”
Even in a secret, subterranean ice cream parlor, with Pippistrella swinging from the lamp and a wolf licking ice cream from a crystal dish, Anastasia found it hard to imagine.
“Yes.” Penny fiddled with one of her buttons. “And many, many years ago, Morfolk and witches lived together in harmony.”
“Sort of,” Baldwin said.
“Sort of,” Penny agreed. “After the witch hunts of the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries, we all moved down to the Cavelands. Morfolk weren’t working magic, of course, but if a human saw one of us changing into a bat or wolf or shadow, you can guess what they’d think. Quite a few Morfolk were executed as witches back then.”
“So we all came to the Cavelands in the 1700s, and things were okay for a little while,” Baldwin said. “But then the witches started brewing deadly dangerous spells. Very worrisome to us Morfolk.”
“I read about that in my history textbook,” Anastasia said.
“How very resourceful!” Penny praised. “The first step in the path to knowledge is very simple: open a book.”
Anastasia nodded. Penny had festooned the Mooselick Library with posters bearing that and other inspiring quotes. “But what I don’t understand,” Anastasia said, “is that Morfolk seem pretty magical, too.”
Penny smiled. “We can do some remarkable things, but we aren’t magic.”
“Changing into wolves and bats and mice is magic!”
“Anastasia,” Penny said, “other creatures in the animal kingdom metamorphose, too. Like butterflies and moths. They only do it once, but they’re much simpler organisms.”
“Order up,” Mr. Yukimori announced, unloading confections from his tray.
“Ah, Hoshi!” Baldwin saluted. “You’re a gentleman and a peach and a peer of the realm.”
Mr. Yukimori winked and departed.
“Go on, Aunt Penny,” Anastasia prompted, plucking a moth from the jar and handing it up to Pippistrella.
“Now, there are magical items all over the Cavelands from when the witches lived here,” Penny said, “but, in general, Morfolk do not use magic. We don’t have the—the same talent for it.”
“Talent!” Baldwin scoffed.
“Some of the things those witches did were marvelous, Baldy.” A flush crept into Penny’s cheeks. “I feel the same way about witches as you do, but you have to admit they created wonderful things.”
“Hmph.”
“A wizard made Cavepearl Palace,” Penny pointed out.
Anastasia jolted. “Really?”
“Yes.” Penny shifted uneasily. “Calixto Swift, one of the greatest sorcerers who ever lived.”
“We live in Calixto Swift’s old house?” Anastasia gasped.
“Well…yes.” Penny sipped her milk shake. “But I’m getting away from the original point, which is that Morfolk tried to outlaw certain spells. Dangerous spells. The witches said no.”
“Cheeky blighters,” Baldwin grumbled.
“So there was a lot of friction.”
“It wasn’t just the magic problems,” Baldwin said. “It also had a lot to do with the silver mines.”
“Yes,” Penny agreed. “There used to be a silver mine near Nowhere Special, controlled by the witches. They use silver in their magic, you see.”
“And silver is, as you already know,” Baldwin said, “deadly poisonous to Morfolk.” He took a whopping great lick from his triple-scoop cone. “Ouch! Just like swallowing a sparkler!…Mmm, this is a good batch!”
“So Morfolk and witches started quarreling, and hostility just festered in the Cavelands,” Penny said. “Screaming in Congress.”
“Bar brawls,” Baldwin said.
“General nastiness. And then…” Penny’s voice trailed off.
“And then Calixto Swift locked Nicodemus in a magic trunk,” Anastasia said. “The Dastardly Deed.”
“Right,” Baldwin gruffed. “The
villain.”
“My book said being locked in a trunk was somehow worse for Nicodemus, because he’s a Shadowman,” Anastasia said. “Why?”
“Shadowfolk don’t need to eat or breathe,” Penny replied shakily.
Anastasia’s eyebrows drew together. “But Ollie’s a Shadowboy, and he’s always hungry!”
“Sure,” Baldwin said. “Shadowfolk like sweets and snacks like everybody else. But they don’t need food to survive.”
“Anyone else trapped in the Silver Chest would have starved or smothered by now,” Penny said. “It would be awful, but it would end. Poppa will go on suffering….”
Baldwin’s mustache bristled. “He’s been stuck in that lousy box since 1756.”
“I was only sixteen when all that happened,” Penny said softly.
“And I was thirteen,” Baldwin said. “But it feels like it was yesterday. Oh, Anastasia, how I wish you could meet Poppa. You two would be closer than biscuits and butter.” He sniffled.
Anastasia squeezed Baldwin’s forearm, lapsing into silence. She was no stranger to the worry and woe linked to a lost father. And, she now realized, both her dad and her gramps were missing. She pondered the way Gus Wata’s eyes lit up whenever he mentioned Grandpa Baba. Gus and his grandpa, she reckoned, were closer than biscuits and butter. It would be nice to know Nicodemus—the real Nicodemus, not just stories about a long-lost noble. He certainly looked friendly in his portrait.
“There’s a picture of Nicodemus in my textbook.” Anastasia watched her aunt and uncle closely. “I noticed a drawing on his hand. It looks like a compass…with Fredmund written in the middle.”
“Poppa got tattoos of compasses with all our names,” Baldwin said. “So he could always find us.”
“But how could a tattoo work like a compass? Compass pointers move. Tattoos stay still.”
“Ah, not Poppa’s tattoos,” Baldwin said. “The ink was enchanted by…well, by Calixto Swift, of all people. He and Pops were great pals before the Dastardly Deed.”
“That’s why it was so very shocking,” Penny said. “Calixto was like an uncle to us before—before all that. He put on the most wonderful puppet show for my eleventh birthday. He even gave me one of the puppets—he made them himself.”
Anastasia, herself almost eleven, did not think a puppet show sounded particularly wonderful. The only puppet show she remembered had starred a gaggle of cotton athletic socks with googly eyes. She hoped Penny did not plan a similar spectacle for her upcoming birthday.
“Have you ever seen anyone get a tattoo, Anastasia?” Baldwin asked.
“Of course she hasn’t!” Penny said. “Why on earth would she have been to a tattoo parlor?”
Baldwin shrugged. “School field trip?”
Penny gave him a withering look.
“The tattoo artist puts a little ink on his needle, and he sticks it into the skin,” Baldwin explained. “He does it over and over. The design is actually a zillion of those little dots added up. And every time the needle pricks the ink into the skin, a drop of blood comes out.”
Anastasia wrinkled her nose.
“So Pops’s tattoos were inscribed not only with enchanted ink, but also father’s blood,” Baldwin said. “Very powerful stuff. Those compasses will always point to Fred, and Penny and me, and”—he made a face—“Loodie.”
“So Nicodemus could find my dad now,” Anastasia pressed, her heart thumpity-thumping.
“Sure,” Baldwin allowed. “Except no one knows where Pops is, either.”
“Good heavens, those fruit bats are getting rowdy.” Penny frowned across the cavern. “They’re going to—oh, I knew it.”
A crystal goblet toppled from the bat party’s table, spattering bits of rotten banana and mango across the marble floor. Mr. Yukimori stalked across the soda shop clutching a broom and dustpan.
“They’ve been at the fermented fruit,” Baldwin said. “Those bats are sozzled.”
Pippistrella peeped primly, as if to say, “Disgraceful!”
“After the Dastardly Deed, we drove the witches from the Cavelands,” Penny went on.
“What happened to Calixto Swift?” Anastasia asked.
“Dead,” Baldwin said. “The first witch to die.”
“Maybe he told someone where he hid the chest,” Anastasia suggested. “Maybe it’s a big Swift family secret and his great-great-great-whatever-grandchildren know about it. We have to ask them! They could tell us where Nicodemus is, and then Nicodemus can find Dad.”
Penny twiddled her button. “I don’t think so, dear. Wiggy interrogated Swift’s relatives—the ones we could catch before they fled—back in the eighteenth century. And they wouldn’t tell us anything.”
Anastasia’s mind whizzed like a detecting machine oiled with dozens of Francie Dewdrop mysteries. Francie knew how to squeeze information from people. She squeezed so expertly that her suspects didn’t even realize they were leaking clues. It made sense, Anastasia mused, that a bunch of witch prisoners in the midst of a war wouldn’t blab secrets to the Morfolk queen. But mightn’t a witch descendant, feeling cozy over a cup of tea (Francie always ferreted out juicy clues during teatime), gossip about their great family secret?
“Maybe someone would tell us something now,” Anastasia persisted. “Maybe, if we invited some Swift witches over for tea—or s’mores—”
Penny shook her head. “Morfolk and witches don’t associate. We’ve been mortal enemies for over two hundred and fifty years.”
“Witches are bad, Anastasia,” Baldwin stressed. “They’re magic-hoarding, silver-mining murderers. You’ve never been through war, so you can’t understand. We’ve lost family…comrades….”
“Like Klaus,” Penny whispered. “My cheesemonger friend.”
Baldwin slammed his fist on the table, rattling the dishes. “Those scoundrels used all kinds of awful magic on us. That’s how Wiggy lost her eyelids, you know—burned off with a silver spell. And she had them replaced with glass, so she can always watch for the return of the witches even as she sleeps.”
“We will never reconcile,” Penny said.
“Ever,” Baldwin swore.
“But what if—” Anastasia protested.
“No what-ifs,” Baldwin decreed. “I know you want to find Fred, but put any thought of finding him with Poppa’s tattoo right out of your noodle. Upon my mustache, I wish we could—you have no idea how I wish it! But believe me, plenty of brave and able Morfolk have died looking for the Silver Hammer and Chest. Tangling with witches and their magic only brings death and destruction.”
“Baldwin’s right, dear,” Penny fretted. “Anastasia, we know how—er—curious and persistent you can be. But you must promise us not to snoop for clues leading to Nicodemus. Any hunt like that could tangle you up with magic, and magic is dangerous.” Tears streaked her cheeks. “We’ve already lost so much. If anything happened to you, it would simply break our hearts.”
“Promise us,” Baldwin insisted. “No Francie Dewdroppery, girl.”
Anastasia’s shoulders sagged. “I promise.”
“Good.” Penny sighed. “Besides, we don’t even know where witches live now. They’re hiding, you understand.”
Anastasia stared into the ice cream puddling at the bottom of her bowl, forefingers on each hand firmly crossed beneath the table. She loved Penny and Baldwin, but she loved her dad, too. Father’s blood is powerful stuff. Well, so was daughter’s blood, and the heart and mind this blood fueled. Her own compass—not a scientific gizmo, not a magical tattoo, but something deep and internal and strong, like a goose’s instinct to fly south in winter or a humble seed knowing when to make the great leap into flowerhood—now pointed straight to her new mission: tracking down her father through Nicodemus.
13
Know Your Enemy
IT IS A maddening fact of life: while you may have a plan of the absolute top-most importance, a million silly chores pop up as hurdles to your great endeavor. Perhaps you are a great invento
r, but your glorious doohickey languishes in your laboratory while you vacuum the carpets for an upcoming visit from Granny. Or perhaps you are a great explorer itching to discover a new island, but first you must see the dentist about getting a cavity filled.
Or maybe, like Anastasia, you are an aspiring detective-veterinarian-artist heck-bent on finding your newly lost father by way of your long-lost grandfather, but a mountain of schoolwork blockades your way.
At least, Anastasia pondered, she had a wonderful study spot. A magnificent study spot. The sort of study spot that kindled the special, cozy, open-a-book-and-fall-in region of the bibliophile brain. Cavepearl Library was a big, long cavern with roaring fireplaces and squishy leather chairs and behemoth wooden tables glittering with magnifying glasses and microscopes and all other kinds of neat doodads. Dozens upon dozens of Baldwin’s beloved cuckoo clocks roosted on the walls.
And, of course, Cavepearl Library was brimful of books: large, important books with gold letters on their spines, and humble little volumes that peeped out from between them, and magazines and scrolls and scientific journals, and even (and most important, in Anastasia’s estimation) a complete set of all the Francie Dewdrop novels ever published. These books lined the cavern walls from stalagmite to stalactite, and rolling ladders ran in tracks along the floor so the intrepid bookworm could scale stories of rungs to retrieve an album from the tippy-top shelves.
Penny, the most intrepid bookworm of them all, now perched at the zenith of one of these ladders. “I’m so pleased that young Angus Wata is interested in astronomy,” she called, tugging a volume loose. “I’m going to make a nice research list for you two!”
“Thanks,” Anastasia said, but her eyes were on the Francie Dewdrop collection. How might Francie approach the Mystery of the Missing King? It was a cold case, which is detective jargon for an old, unsolved mystery. Cold cases are especially tricky, because the clues have moldered or dried up. For example: Nicodemus had disappeared centuries earlier. Time had likely swept away any sort of physical evidence. Calixto Swift was long dead, and his descendants were who knew where.
