Snow White Lucks Out

by Joan Holub

  “What’s the matter?” Red asked anxiously as all four girls came to a halt. “Stub your toe on a cobblestone?”

  “No, I was in such a hurry to get away before Ms. Wicked and Mr. Hump-Dumpty caught us that I didn’t stop to put my slippers back on.” The girls glanced down to see that Cinda was in fact walking in her stocking feet. She held up a single glass slipper. “And I just realized I must’ve dropped my other slipper back there somewhere. I don’t know why I have such trouble holding on to both slippers. It’s just like after Prince Awesome’s ball.”

  She’d dropped one then, too. Understandable, though. She’d been in a hurry to get away from the ball. Because her gown had begun shooting off fireworks! She hadn’t gone back for the slipper, but Prince Awesome had returned it to her later in a sweet scene that had made the girls who’d been there to witness it smile and sigh happily.

  “I think I lost it before we came in here, which means it’s still outside the tunnel. If those teachers see it, we’ll be caught!” Cinda turned and raced back up the tunnel, going after her slipper.

  “I’ll help you look for it,” said Rapunzel.

  “Wait!” Snow called to them just as they reached the tunnel door and were about to turn the knob. She looked at Red. “Use your basket!”

  “Hurry! I hear footsteps coming,” whispered Cinda, hopping from one foot to the other. Sure enough, there were sounds on the basement landing right outside the narrow black door. Click. Click. Step. Thump. Step.

  “A tisket, a tasket,” Red said in a rush. “Fetch Cinda’s missing glass slipper, basket!”

  Heart pounding, Snow counted the words after tasket on her fingers. Good, there were six of them — the required number for the basket to work its magic properly.

  Red lifted the hinged lid of her basket. “Got it!” she said, handing the missing slipper to Cinda. Just then someone rattled the knob of the narrow tunnel door. Cinda jumped back, staring at it in horror. She and Rapunzel turned and zoomed back to join Snow and Red.

  “It’s locked,” the girls heard Mr. Hump-Dumpty say.

  “No problem. My handbag can always find a key,” Ms. Wicked replied in a sly voice.

  “She can conjure just about anything she wants out of that purse,” Snow warned the others in a whisper.

  “Aha! Here we go,” said Ms. Wicked. A key rattled in the lock.

  The girls froze in place, holding their breath. Snow reached into her pocket for her lucky agate. It was gone! Too late, her fingers discovered the hole in her pocket. Her stomach plunged down to her toes. Without a lucky charm, she felt like a knight without his armor. A book without a cover. A turtle without its shell. Basically, she figured they were doomed!

  Just then, Red whispered something to her basket. Rapunzel elbowed her and put a finger to her lips.

  “The key!” they heard Ms. Wicked say. “It disappeared from my hand!”

  Now it was Red’s turn to nudge the other girls. She opened her basket’s lid wide enough for them to see inside it. She’d gotten the key! That’s why she’d been whispering a moment ago. She’d been giving her basket instructions to nab it.

  Ms. Wicked conjured a second key and tried again, but Red used her basket to take that one, too. After Ms. Wicked lost a third key, Mr. Hump-Dumpty spoke up. “I’m heading back upstairs. It’s too damp down here for an egg like me,” he said. “Besides, I gave you the page you wanted. Let’s go.”

  The page she wanted? What was that all about? Snow wondered.

  Ms. Wicked let out a frustrated sigh. Then she raised her voice slightly as if she’d somehow sensed that the girls were listening. “Whoever we heard had better take care with what they know. Because students who disobey school rules don’t fare well.”

  Click. Click. Step. Thump. Step. As the pair left, the girls all looked at one another with wide eyes. They began backing down the tunnel. Then they turned and dashed all the rest of the way to Rapunzel’s room.

  “Do you think she guessed it was us?” whispered Cinda breathlessly as they reached the heavy iron door that led into the room. The door had a barred window in it since, creepily enough, the room had been used as a prison cell at one time.

  “She can’t prove it,” said Snow, trying to sound braver than she felt. After all, it was common knowledge that Rapunzel roomed in the dungeon. And her stepmom knew that Rapunzel was one of Snow’s BFFs.

  We’re safe for now, though, thought Snow as the girls all pushed through the door. Phew! Somehow, even without the help of a lucky clover or agate, she and her friends had lucked out. Then again, maybe the salt she’d thrown over her shoulder before she’d left her room was what had kept them safe. That, and Red thinking to use her basket to snatch those keys, of course!

  As soon as the girls entered the room, three of Rapunzel’s cats — she had five of them — padded over and began to rub up against everyone’s legs.

  Luckily, Snow wasn’t allergic to animal fur, just fruit. She reached down to pet Shadow, a gray cat that was super soft and fluffy, as Rapunzel hurried to light a small oil lamp. Once the lamp blazed to life, Snow straightened and glanced around to see if Rapunzel had made any changes to her room lately.

  For a dungeon room, it was really cute — in a goth kind of way. Black lacy curtains hung from a second barred window at the far end. Below the window sat Rapunzel’s bed. The thick goose-down comforter on top of it was covered in a black duvet. Raven and Midnight, two practically identical black cats, were curled up together in the middle of it.

  A black-and-white checkered rug lay on the floor beside the bed, and across from that were a black-painted desk and an armoire. Tasseled black-and-white pillows of various shapes and sizes were scattered about the room. But the most awesome thing was what Rapunzel had done with the cold, stone walls.

  “Those murals are grimmcredible!” Cinda declared as Mordred, a black cat with a white star on his forehead, threaded between her legs. Since she’d only started at the Academy recently, she’d never been down to the dungeon before, Snow realized. Cinda turned toward Rapunzel. “Did you paint them yourself?”

  Rapunzel nodded, flashing Cinda a pleased smile as she scooped up Moon, her only white cat.

  The murals really were grimmcredible. Painted in various shades of black, silver, white, and other dusky colors, they showed a forest scene at night. As bats and owls flitted through a moonlit sky, heavy-limbed trees swayed below them.

  Snow sat on the edge of Rapunzel’s bed, sinking into the thick comforter. Stretching, Midnight unwound himself and came to snuggle in her lap. The other three girls grabbed pillows and sat on the rug.

  “So much for treasure-hunting,” said Cinda. Yawning, she flopped onto her back.

  “Too true. That was kind of a bust,” agreed Rapunzel.

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” said Red. She set her basket in her lap and tossed the keys she’d taken from Ms. Wicked to Rapunzel, who took them and tossed them over to her desk. Then she gave Cinda the glass slipper she’d lost. As Cinda slipped on both shoes, Red pulled out the mapestry and unrolled it on the rug. Immediately, Mordred slinked over and lay on top of it before she could study it. She left him there for now, petting him.

  “I can’t believe your stepmom was willing to lie and say that you’d stolen the pipe,” Rapunzel said to Snow.

  “That’s just the kind of evil thing my stepsisters would do to me,” Cinda added.

  “Yeah,” Snow said softly. A lump rose in her throat as she ran her hand down Midnight’s soft back. She would never, ever trust her stepmom again!

  “She won’t do it, though, right?” Red said uncertainly. “She’ll pin the blame on Wolfgang instead?” She didn’t sound very happy about either idea.

  Snow raised and lowered her shoulders in an unsure way. “Guess we’ll see.”

  Cinda sat up, her forehead furrowed in thought. “Let’s try to figure this thing out. We know Grandmother Enchantress is working to stop E.V.I.L.,” she said slowly. “And from what we overheard on t
he stairs just now, it doesn’t sound like Principal R is a member of the Society. I wonder if he knows Wolfgang is helping the enchantress?”

  “He might,” Red said with a frown. “But how would that help Wolf —”

  “I see where Cinda’s going,” interrupted Rapunzel as Moon jumped up to go chase a tassel that had moved on her cushion. “If Principal R knows, or finds out, that Wolfgang and the enchantress are working against E.V.I.L., then he won’t punish Wolfgang, no matter what he’s done.”

  So do Cinda and Rapunzel both buy Wolfgang’s spy story? Snow wondered. Looks like I’m the only one who has doubts about him!

  Cinda tilted her chin. “But Grumpystiltskin would have to do something if Ms. Wicked told him that Wolfgang stole the Pied Piper’s pipe from the library, wouldn’t he? Or else Ms. Wicked would suspect that both he and Wolfgang are working against the Society.”

  The girls all fell silent, thinking. Then Cinda yawned. “Well, it’s really late.”

  Everyone nodded, all looking confused and a little disheartened. Rapunzel lifted Mordred off the mapestry and gave him a hug. As she set him aside, her eyes fell on the mapestry. “Too bad the stitchery of the castle isn’t large enough or detailed enough to show which floor the X is on,” she said.

  At this, Cinda’s slippers, which she’d taken off her feet and set on the floor beside her, began to fidget. Suddenly, they leaped from the floor onto Rapunzel’s bed, scaring Mordred so badly that, giving a yowl, he jumped down from the bed and hid under it. After tap, tap, tapping at the edges of the mapestry, the slippers then leaped to the floor again and raced to Rapunzel’s door to kick at it. “Do you suppose they’re trying to tell us something?” Cinda asked.

  “Like maybe they know where we should be searching?” added Red.

  Suddenly, they were all wide awake again.

  “I say we follow Cinda’s slippers and see where they want us to go!” Snow exclaimed.

  After a chorus of “me toos,” all four girls jumped to their feet and headed for the door. Rapunzel grabbed the oil lamp to take with them. “I’ll be back soon,” she assured her cats. Then she waited till the other three girls were out before shutting the door behind her.

  Cinda had put on her glass slippers again, and they merrily danced her down the tunnel. The others hurried to keep up as they trailed her all the way through the tunnel door, then up a flight of stairs to the first-floor landing. There the slippers once more kicked at the door. Luckily, Ms. Wicked and Mr. Hump-Dumpty weren’t around to hear them this time! Slipping through the first floor door, the girls followed as the glass slippers led them along the curved hallway.

  It felt weirdly empty and eerie here this late at night, thought Snow. So quiet and still. And dark. She really hated to think about the grimmzillion demerits they’d get if they were caught. They’d already had one narrow escape!

  Cinda’s slippers danced their way to Mr. Hump-Dumpty’s classroom. Then, without pause, they waltzed Cinda over to his desk. And there they stopped. “Here?” she asked them. They gave a little stamp as if to say yes, and then stood still again.

  There was a book open on top of Mr. Hump-Dumpty’s desk. The girls gathered around as Cinda picked it up. “Do you think this is what we’re meant to find?”

  Red took a quick look at the mapestry she held, then said in an excited voice, “Must be. The golden thread path is fading away.”

  Rapunzel held the lamp closer to the book. It had a cracked brown leather cover, and its yellowing pages were covered with elegant, flowing handwriting. “Dear Diary,” she read aloud from the first page.

  “This must be the diary Ms. Wicked and Mr. Hump-Dumpty were talking about!” declared Snow. She flipped through it. “It’s not my stepmom’s handwriting. Do you think it’s Mr. Hump-Dumpty’s?”

  “It looks really old. Like it was written a long, looong time ago,” said Rapunzel.

  “And whoever wrote it must have gotten straight A’s in Calligraphy and Illuminated Manuscripts,” Red noted.

  Cinda flipped through a few more pages as the other girls looked on. The written entries told about classes at Grimm Academy and gave details about homework assignments and about students whose names the girls didn’t recognize.

  “Check inside the front cover for a name,” Snow suggested.

  Cinda flipped back to the beginning. “I found something! It says, This diary is the property of Lotte G.”

  “Lotte G.?” Red repeated. “Does that name ring a bell for anyone?” The other three shrugged.

  As Cinda began to flip through the book again, something caught Snow’s eye. “Wait! Let me see that thing.”

  After Cinda handed her the book, Snow held it upside down, grasping the cover in either hand so that the pages fanned out as they dangled from the spine. Then she eyeballed the pages, looking for the slight gap she’d noticed only moments before. She flattened the book on the desktop again and pointed to a ragged tear inside the book that ran the length of the spine. “There’s a page missing,” she announced. “It’s been torn out.”

  She looked up at the others. “Mr. Hump-Dumpty said my stepmom got the page she wanted, remember?”

  “Yeah! So what was on that torn-out page?” Red asked. Her eyes went to Snow.

  “Don’t look at me,” Snow said. “My stepmom doesn’t tell me anything.” She started to add, And I don’t tell her anything, either. But just then the girls heard thumping sounds out in the hallway.

  “Shh,” cautioned Rapunzel. After turning down the lamp, she crept to the door and peeked out its small glass-pane window. “It’s Wee Willie Winkie,” she reported back. He was the night custodian, but he also kept an eye out for students wandering around past bedtime.

  “Demerits, here we come,” Snow groaned softly.

  “Shh! Get down,” said Cinda. They all dropped to a crouch behind the desk, just in case. As soon as Mr. Winkie pushed past Mr. Hump-Dumpty’s room, sweeping the wide hall with his broom, the girls all breathed a sigh of relief.

  Red frowned. “I bet there are clues in it leading to treasure. And now Ms. Wicked has them.”

  “Let’s take the diary with us to study, though, just in case there are any other pages with clues she overlooked,” Rapunzel suggested.

  “But Mr. Hump-Dumpty will notice it’s missing,” Snow protested.

  “Well, but it’s not really his,” Red pointed out. “It’s Lotte G.’s.”

  “And my glass slippers led us right to it,” added Cinda. “They and the mapestry wanted us to find it.”

  No one could argue with that logic, so Red slipped the diary into her basket for safekeeping. Then, before Wee Willie Winkie could round the circular hallway and come upon them as they made their escape, the girls crept out of the room, closing the door softly behind them.

  Once out on the first floor landing again, Snow, Cinda, and Red said good-bye to Rapunzel and started back to their rooms on the sixth floor so they could get some sleep before Thursday’s classes.

  When Snow returned to her room, she put on her pajamas and took the ladder up to her bed. Yawning, she took her blue bag from under the bedcover and pulled the fake mapestry from it. Even though she was super tired, she was determined to get some more work done on it. Only when she looked down at it, she gasped. It was already half finished! The entire blue area of Once Upon River and most of Neverwood Forest were completed. Who could have done this?

  She looked over at Jill in the bed across the room. No way. Her roommate didn’t sleepwalk. And even if she did, she wouldn’t have climbed up on Snow’s bed, searched out her bag, and worked on a needlepoint project. Besides, the threads would be invisible to her! No. The only explanation that made any sense was that Snow had sewn it herself before Cinda had come to wake her at midnight. She must have been half-asleep while she sewed, and that’s why she’d forgotten what she’d done. Yes. That had to be it.

  In spite of her late night, Snow woke up early the next morning. She checked the fake mapestry again
, first thing. No, she hadn’t been dreaming. It was half finished. In fact, it was more than half finished. Had even more gotten done overnight? Weird! But Grimmlandia was a magical place. Maybe some random magic had done this for her. That was lucky!

  Remembering that her clover necklace was missing, she tucked the mapestry back inside her blue bag with her GA Handbook, and then searched the whole room. When she didn’t find it, she tried scouring the Pearl Tower common room. No luck.

  “Try to remember when you last saw it,” Cinda advised her at breakfast when Snow finally told her friends that her lucky necklace was missing. Then she yawned. They were all tired from last night.

  Snow set down the hot cross bun she’d been nibbling on. “Well, I showed it to Prince after History class yesterday because I found out he has a lucky coin.” She thought for a minute. “And I’m pretty sure I had it during Scrying class after that.”

  “I wish I could remember if you had it on while we were out on Maze Island,” Rapunzel said. “But I can’t.” No one else could recall if Snow had had it on then, either.

  Red’s basket, which sat on the bench beside her, began to jiggle as if trying to get their attention. Her face lit up. “Maybe my basket can fetch it!”

  “Oh, that would be so perfect!” Snow said in relief. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of asking you to try that last night.” The offer made her extra happy because it meant Red must still be her friend if she was so willing to do this favor, right?

  “A tisket, a tasket, please fetch Snow’s clover necklace, basket,” Red said. She waited a few seconds before eagerly pulling down on the basket’s handles and opening its hinged lid.

  Red looked in one side and Snow leaned over to look in the other side. The rolled-up mapestry was there. So was the diary the girls had taken from Mr. Hump-Dumpty’s desk. Keeping the lid low so that no one nearby could catch sight of those things, Snow stuck a hand inside the basket and poked all around for her necklace. Eventually, she gave up, hugely disappointed. “It’s not there.”