The Dastardly Deed

by Holly Grant

  “After the First Declaration of Perpetual War,” Marm Pettifog droned, “all witches and witch-sympathizers were driven from the Cavelands, and the Crown’s Inquisitors investigated some non-Morfolk during a period of anti-magic hysteria. Such groups included…”

  Attention drifting, Anastasia dipped her pen in her inkwell.

  “…The Weird Ones…”

  She drew a circle of stars on the back of her hand.

  “…a group of fortune-tellers who claimed…”

  She inked a crescent moon inside the circle.

  “…The Wish Hags, a trio of troglobites skilled in brewing potions, although not themselves witches…”

  In small letters, Anastasia wrote F-R-E-D.

  “Anastasia!” Marm Pettifog wheeled from the chalkboard.

  She jumped. “Yes, Marm Pettifog?”

  “Of all the students in this class, you know the least about Cavelands history. Do you suppose that is because you pay the least attention?”

  Saskia raised her hand. “Marm Pettifog, I think we princesses have a royal duty to know history, because we’re the ones who will make history.”

  “It’s everyone’s duty to know history,” Marm Pettifog said. “But your cousin is right, Anastasia: no subject wants to think the queendom’s crown sits on an empty head. And I suspect the gap betwixt your ears is in dire need of padding. Now quit daydreaming and doodling, and focus on your notes.”

  “Yes, Marm Pettifog.” Ignoring Saskia’s titters, Anastasia diligently scribbled in her notepad: Wish Hags—Troglobites (?)—Brew.

  Jingling and jangling, twirling and twinkling, a caboodle of music boxes caroled a merry cacophony behind the window to Drybread & Drybread’s. Little wooden ballerinas spun en pointe, and snow globes glittered in the candlelight. Anastasia pancaked her palms against the glass. “It’s beautiful!”

  “Thanks,” Ollie said. “We spent ages getting everything ready.”

  “Did your dad make all of these?” Anastasia asked.

  “He tunes all the music boxes, and he carves all the figurines,” Quentin said. “But the snow globes come from Celestina Wata.”

  “Gus’s aunt,” Ollie reminded Anastasia.

  “What’s she like? I’ve never met a real artist before,” Anastasia said.

  “Aunt Teeny’s pretty nice.” Gus shrugged. “Really quiet, though. And she doesn’t visit all that much—she spends every waking minute in her workshop.” He pressed his nose to the window. “That mouse music box is so realistic—I can almost see its whiskers twitch!”

  “Mouse music box?” Ollie peered over his shoulder.

  “There are lots of mice running around in there,” Anastasia said. “I didn’t see them at first.”

  “Dad must have brought them down from our apartment,” Ollie said. “We live above the shop, you know.”

  “Come on.” Quentin pushed the shop door open. “I have to be at orchestra practice in half an hour. Hi, Dad!”

  “Hello, hello!” Mr. Drybread called from a workbench piled with springs and cylinders and other mechanical bits and bobs. “Now, is this Anastasia?”

  “Yep.” Ollie beamed.

  “I’ve heard so much about you, dear! Ollie and Quentin told me all about your adventures in that asylum.” Mr. Drybread waved a screwdriver. “Got nibbled by a few leeches, didn’t you? Well, you showed those kidnappers in the end, by Jove!”

  “And this is Gus,” Quentin said.

  “Oh, I remember Gus!” Mr. Drybread said. “Second place at the Pettifog science fair every year! Speaking of that, Ollie told me you’re here to work on your science project?”

  “That’s right,” Gus said.

  “Well, I’ll leave you to it. Just make sure you don’t take your mice in the house, Ollie—your mother almost had a nervous breakdown this morning. From now on, the mice will lodge in the shop.” Mr. Drybread returned his attention to a pile of gears.

  “Let’s go into the listening booth,” Ollie whispered. “It’s soundproof.”

  He led them to a small glass cubicle nooked in a corner. Squashing everyone in at once was much like a round of Telephone Booth, an old game in which high-spirited teenagers struggled to stuff as many of their friends as possible into a calling box.

  “Tell us quickly, Anastasia,” Gus wheezed.

  She told them about the queen’s chain-mail bed and the vanity, and then she told them about Aisatsana. “And she wants me to—”

  “Wait,” Ollie interrupted. “You actually talked to your reflection?”

  “I have to see that mirror,” Gus said. “I wonder what my reflection’s like?”

  “Well,” Quentin pondered, “he’ll be your opposite. And his name would be Sugna.”

  Ollie hooted. “That sounds like an old lady’s name!”

  “I wonder whether Sugna can petrify people?” Gus said.

  Ollie’s eyes rounded. “You’d better stay away from that mirror, Gus. Who knows—Sugna might turn you into stone!”

  “I bet your reflection hates cupcakes, Ollie,” Anastasia mused.

  Ollie shook his head. “Shadowfolk don’t have reflections.”

  “Really?” Anastasia gasped. “I knew you couldn’t cross over mirrors, but I didn’t know you don’t show up in them.”

  “It’s very sad,” Ollie said mournfully. “I’d love to have a mirror-twin.”

  “Believe me, you’re not missing out on much,” Anastasia reassured him. “Aisatsana is a pain. She knows how to get into the Cavern of Dreams, but first she’s making me take a mirror to this place called Zero Cavern.”

  “Zero Cavern!” Quentin said.

  “But it’s forbidden!” Ollie exclaimed. “And besides, hardly anyone knows where it is. Do you know, Q?”

  “Nope.”

  “And I can’t ask Penny or Baldy,” Anastasia said. “They’d get suspicious.”

  “Attention,” Quentin murmured, hastily cranking a music box. “Here comes Dad.”

  Ollie cracked the door to the listening booth.

  “Enjoying those tunes?” Mr. Drybread asked pleasantly. “But you’re not neglecting your project, I hope?”

  “Not at all,” Gus said. “We’ve done a lot of work already. We’re in the research phase.”

  “And how is that going?”

  “Good,” Gus said. “Did you know that some scientists spend their whole lives studying whiskers?”

  Mr. Drybread’s forehead crinkled. “Like the whiskers on your mice?”

  Gus nodded. “Whiskers are really special things. They’re super-sensitive, and each one grows out of a special follicle packed with nerves. And when something touches the whisker, it jazzes those nerves and sends a signal to the mouse’s brain.”

  “Fascinating! I had no idea!” Mr. Drybread said. “Well, carry on.”

  “Quick thinking, Gus,” Anastasia said as Mr. Drybread bustled away.

  “Did you make up that whisker stuff?” Ollie asked.

  “No. It’s all true.” Gus pulled a book from his backpack and flashed its cover. “I got this in the Pettifog school library.”

  “The Wonderful World of Whiskers,” Ollie read.

  “You know that mice have super-acute hearing, right?” Gus asked. “This book says that whiskers are so keen they pick up sound vibrations. Like antennas on an old radio.”

  “Maybe they don’t like listening to music all day,” Anastasia fretted.

  “They seem to like it just fine. I think they’re having a grand time,” Quentin said.

  Sure enough, the mice were at that moment gathered round a music box jingling Christmas carols. Anastasia squeezed from the booth to peer at their whiskers. The rodents had them all twitched forward toward the music box, the way clever flowers turn to follow the sun.

  She ducked back into the booth.

  “Back to Project Zero Cavern,” Ollie said. “We have to find out where it is.”

  “Ahem.” Gus cleared his throat. “I’ve been there.”

 
“You?” Anastasia goggled at him. It was difficult to imagine Gus escaping his overprotective parents’ clutches long enough to visit the loo, let alone to sneak into a cavern forbidden to all. It occurred to her that his shy and scholarly demeanor concealed a staggering genius for mischief. He had devised a way to sneak past the Royal Guard Bat—and now this!

  “What’s it like?” Ollie asked.

  “Well,” Gus admitted, “I didn’t actually go inside. I peeked in from the door. A couple of gondoliers were in there, floating around like astronauts. They were laughing like crazy.” He scrunched his face, remembering. “I think they might have been drunk.”

  “But the Zero Cavern is forbidden!” Ollie cried.

  “Why?” Anastasia demanded.

  “It’s a witch’s house! And it’s full of bad magic!”

  Some of the enthusiasm drained from Gus’s face. “Used to be a witch’s house, back before the Perpetual War. It isn’t, you know, naturally zero gravity; it’s enchanted. Mrs. Honeysop—the old witch who lived there—had arthritis or something, and she cast a spell so she could float around without crunching her knees. And now I guess the magic affects certain Morfolk…um…badly.”

  “It warps their bones!” Ollie cried.

  “My teacher last year told us that some kinds of magic change over time, the way milk spoils.” Now Gus looked nervous. “I guess that’s what happened in Mrs. Honeysop’s cave.”

  “Our dad told us about a kid who went in there and came out with his neck stretched like a giraffe’s,” Quentin said.

  “I heard that, too,” Gus said. “But maybe it’s a story to scare kids from going in.”

  “If the cavern is forbidden to everyone, there must be a reason,” Anastasia pointed out.

  “Sour magic!” Ollie shuddered.

  “Where is Zero Cavern, anyway?” Anastasia asked Gus.

  “In Sickle Alley,” he said. “It’s really close to the Cavepearl Theater, actually. There’s a little crawlway off the far corner of the backstage area, and it connects with Sickle Alley.”

  “The Cavepearl Theater!” Quentin perked up. “Well, that makes everything easy, doesn’t it? You can come along with me to orchestra practice and slip away to run your mirror errand.”

  “But my dad is coming to pick me up soon,” Gus said.

  “And so is my aunt,” Anastasia said.

  “Oh.” Quentin lapsed into thought. “Well, we’ll have to do it sometime this week, because Friday is opening night of The Flinging Fledermaus. No more practice after that; only performances.” He sighed. “I would just go to Zero Cavern myself, Anastasia, except Shadowfolk can’t carry mirrors.”

  “That’s all right,” Anastasia said. “Aisatsana said I have to go, because the mirror has to reflect me. Wait! The opera starts this Friday? We’ll all be there, right?”

  The Dreadfuls nodded.

  “So that’s when we’ll go to Zero Cavern!”

  “But how can we sneak off when our families are around?” Ollie asked. “Everyone will be watching.”

  Quentin leapt as though a red-hot poker had scorched his bottom. “Except for the part when no one’s watching!”

  “Brilliant!” Gus said. “Brilliant, Quentin! I know just what you’re thinking!”

  “Well, tell us, too,” Ollie complained. “We can’t all be brilliant, you know.”

  “Bellagorgon has a big solo at the end of the opera,” Quentin explained. “Everyone has to blindfold themselves—so they don’t look at her and turn to stone.”

  “And that’s when we’ll sneak out.” Gus grinned.

  It was a daring plan. A downright dangerous plan. A bold-as-brass humdinger of epic proportions, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

  Anastasia loved it.

  “The Gorgon’s Aria lasts nineteen minutes exactly,” Quentin said. “It’s the longest solo in the history of opera.”

  “That should give us enough time to get to Zero Cavern and back, if we hurry,” Gus calculated.

  “I won’t be able to join you, because I’ll be sawing away in the orchestra pit,” Quentin said. “But I can let you in the backstage door at the beginning of the aria. My saw stuff doesn’t start until about four minutes in.”

  Bzzzt! The gears in the musical clocks all shifted and they launched into a hullabaloo of various tinkling melodies. Quentin squinted through the glass wall. “Four o’clock! I’ve got to go!” He scrambled from the booth and snatched up his saw case, bumping into Penny as she came through the shop door. The Dreadfuls piled out of the cubicle to greet her.

  “Hello, dears!” She kissed Anastasia on the top of her head and scratched the snoozing Pippistrella’s chin. Then she withdrew a parcel wrapped in brown paper from her capacious purse. “Ollie, I brought a little present for you.”

  “Oooooh!” Ollie tore back the wrapping. “Thank you, Princess! I’ve always wanted a…well, what is this, exactly?”

  “It’s an exercise wheel for your mice,” Penny said.

  Ollie plonked the wheel onto a counter. “Let’s see if they like it. Here, Sprinkles.” He lifted a spotty mouse and set her in the metal curve.

  Sprinkles took a careful step forward. Then she began walking faster and faster. The wheel whirled on its stand.

  “Well done, Sprinkles!” Ollie cheered. “You’re a real athlete!”

  “Most mice are,” Penny said. “How’s your project coming along?”

  The Dreadfuls smiled.

  “It promises,” Gus said, “to be a great success.”

  21

  The Gorgon’s Aria

  “WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE POOP ON MY TEA TRAY?”

  Penny glared at the offending swirl nestled betwixt her teacup and cookies.

  “Not me!” Anastasia said.

  “Peep!” Pippistrella declared.

  “Er.” Baldwin cleared his manly throat. “There’s a chance it might have been me.”

  “Baldwin!” Penny scolded. “You can’t just go around leaving poop all over the place!”

  “Of course not.” Baldwin hung his head and stared at his shoes. Perhaps he spotted his handsome reflection in their shiny black toes, because he licked his fingers and smoothed his mustache, then winked.

  “A specimen like this merits the greatest of care.” Pinkies crooked, Penny lifted the lump and contemplated it with frank admiration. “Ah! I could gaze at this for hours!”

  “It’s a beauty!” Baldwin agreed.

  “Magnificent!” Penny said. “One of the finest I’ve ever seen. I would simply be devastated if anything happened to it.” She bustled over to a glass cabinet wedged between the paleofungus and paleozoology bookshelves and carefully placed the blob on a small velvet cushion. “There! And in the future, Baldy, if you take out my poop, please be sure to put it back where you found it!”

  Baldwin rolled his eyes. “Your aunt, Anastasia, is perhaps a little too protective of her petrified poop collection.”

  Penny reached into the paleodungus case and adjusted a squiggle on its pedestal. “These specimens are very rare,” she said primly. “The pterodactyl scat you left on the tea tray is seventy million years old!”

  “Sorry, Penny,” Baldwin said. “I’m just so distracted. I can’t wait for The Flinging Fledermaus!” He patted his vest and glanced around. “By the way, has anyone seen an errant blueberry scone?”

  “Good grief, Baldy! It’s in here!” Penny excavated a jam-smeared crumpet from the poop cabinet. “Well, at least we know why you left fossilized dung with the tea things—you just mixed them up. Poor Baldy! You are distracted.” She carefully shut the glass chest. “Anastasia, did you know that you can learn all kinds of things about somebody by examining their poop?”

  “Ugh. I don’t think I want to know that much about anyone.”

  “Oh, but it’s terribly instructive.” Penny’s eyes sparkled with scientific zeal. “I knew an archaeologist who discovered the most astonishing thing in an ancient Egyptian chamber pot….”

 
“Scree—ee—pip!” A courier bat glided into the library.

  “Wiggy’s ready!” Baldwin cried. “And miracle of miracles, so are the Loondorfers! Let’s go!”

  The queen’s gondola was a splendiferous vessel indeed, gold-painted and limousine-long, with a sort of miniature pointy house sprouting from the center. This fanciful floating pagoda was bigger than the biggest dollhouse you have ever beheld but still rather a pinch for several ladies with massive crinolines, plus Ludowiga’s titanic wig. Anastasia squirmed within the puff of skirts, the mirror hidden in her satchel jabbing her ribs.

  “You’ll remember this night for the rest of your life, Anastasia,” Baldwin said. “Oh, the drama! Oh, the intrigue! Laughs and tears and the occasional fart joke—The Flinging Fledermaus has it all, and then some!”

  “I do hope, Princess, that you’ll remember our discussion regarding the proper way to applaud,” Ludowiga said.

  “Give it a rest, Ludowiga,” Baldwin groaned. “Who made you the expert on clapping, anyway?”

  “Congress,” Ludowiga snapped. “They recognize that I have the finest manners in the Cavelands.”

  “Your manners are fine indeed,” Baldwin concurred. “Finer than a frog’s hair—why, I can’t see them at all.”

  “Here, Anastasia,” Penny interrupted, pulling a length of silk from her purse. “You’ll need this blindfold for the Gorgon’s Aria. You’ll petrify if you so much as glimpse Bellagorgon’s face.”

  Anastasia accepted the blindfold, worry pickling the scones in her belly. What if the Dreadfuls got caught sneaking out of the theater? What if her skeleton warped in Mrs. Honeysop’s soured magic? She shivered.

  “Don’t worry, cousin.” Saskia shot her a syrupy smile. “If you turn into stone, we’ll find a use for you. You’d make a charming doorstop.”

  “Enough.” Wiggy smoothed her skirts. “We’re here.”

  Morfolk in fancy dress thronged the theater entrance. Their faces turned in tandem as the gold litter anchored to disgorge its royal passengers.

  “There’s the Halfling princess!” Whisper though it was, Anastasia’s spry young eardrums snared the comment. She blushed so hard her freckles sizzled.