Rapunzel Cuts Loose, page 10
part #4 of Grimmtastic Girls Series
“In a moment. When I have what I want.”
“What do you want?”
The witch eyed her. Then she drew in a sharp breath and pointed a bony finger into the distant sky. “Those!”
The three Grimm girls gasped as artifacts slowly began floating toward them through the shadowy trees. They drifted one by one into the clearing, all coming from the direction of the Academy. First came a queen chess piece gleaming white in the darkness. It was followed by a toy rabbit and cockle shells. The witch held her bag open and the objects dropped inside, one after the other.
“Q, R, S. They’re in alphabetical order,” Rapunzel murmured. And they looked familiar. She glanced back at her friends. “My w-i-g-g-l-y hair touched each of those things in the library yesterday. It must’ve been choosing them.”
“Choosing them for me. And for a certain society I belong to!” The witch let out a huge cackle that echoed throughout the forest.
Cinda gasped. “She’s helping the E.V.I.L. Society!”
She and Snow stepped toward the witch as if hoping to somehow stop her. Immediately, the rampion stalks rustled. Vines slithered lower, curling like snakes around their feet and ankles. “I can’t move!” said Snow.
“Me neither,” said Cinda. “We’re trapped!”
Rapunzel felt the vines ensnare her ankles as well. She looked back at the others. “Moving will only make it worse,” she warned them in a whisper. “Stay still for now.” As a girl, she’d watched from her high window many times as the witch had used this trick to trap passing strangers and make deals that cheated them out of riches or information.
“You’re right, little Grimm girls, I’m collecting artifacts for E.V.I.L.!” the witch crowed as the objects continued to fall into her bag. Next came a T and a U — a teacup, then an umbrella. The bag magically expanded as it filled. “They’re my ticket to fame.”
“Fame?” Rapunzel’s brows rose in confusion.
The witch shot her an irritated glance. “What’s my name?” All three girls stared at her blankly.
“You don’t have a name,” Rapunzel replied after a few seconds of silence. “You’re simply called the witch in my fairy tale.”
At her words, the witch’s sour expression turned angry. “Exactly! The Witch. But you girls do have actual names, don’t you? Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm saw to that when they wrote your tales. Evil characters always get the short end of the stick, yet we’re the most important characters in any story, if you ask me. Well, E.V.I.L.’s leader has figured out how to fix all that so it’s fair. By stealing artifacts!” She darted over to stand in a new spot and held her bag wider. A violin playing a dreamy melody dropped into it.
“But how will stealing artifacts get you a name in the great books of Grimm?” asked Snow.
“Simple, dear girl.” The witch rushed over to catch two more artifacts that drifted in from the forest. A pocket watch and a ball of yellow yarn, Rapunzel noted in alarm. Only a Z artifact was left to reach the end of the alphabet!
“Soon the wall will break open and our leader will step through it,” the witch went on. “He’ll overtake the Grimmstone Library and rewrite the books of Grimm. And the nursery rhymes and folktales, too, while he’s at it. Readers everywhere will be easily convinced that the evil characters — who will all be given names — are the ones to admire in the tales. Not the goody-two-shoes characters like you.”
“No way!” argued Cinda.
“Get used to it!” ranted the witch. “Soon we evil characters will be the stars, not the likes of you.” She paused. “For example,” she said to Rapunzel, “I plan to change the name of our fairy tale.”
Rapunzel’s jaw dropped. “No, you wouldn’t … you couldn’t …”
“Yes! And I’m going to call myself Wonderful Witch Twitch,” the witch said proudly. “That’s the name I’ve chosen for myself in the new improved tale the Society will write. However, you’ll only be mentioned as the girl with long hair. The tale known as Rapunzel will change forevermore to a new title, The Wonderful Witch Twitch and the Rotten Long-Haired Girl. How will you like that? Not much, I bet!” The witch threw back her head and let out another horrible cackling laugh that sent chills up Rapunzel’s spine.
The three girls stared at one another in horror. “If you change our tales, it could lead to an epic Grimmlandian disaster you didn’t anticipate and won’t at all like,” Rapunzel warned.
Snow nodded. “Even a little change could have a ripple effect. Like dominoes falling one after another, the stories will come apart when their morals don’t make sense anymore.”
“Which would be dastardly for good and evil characters alike,” added Cinda. “Dire, in fact!”
Now they all three sounded as worried as Mr. Hump-Dumpty. But with good reason. The witch’s plan was major bad news.
“So be it,” hissed the witch, not seeming to care. Just then, a small ceramic zebra dropped into her bag. Kicking up her heels with joy, she snatched the bag closed. Then she eyed Rapunzel. “We have twenty-six artifacts now. One for every letter in the alphabet. Letters make words. Words make stories. And stories can be changed with strong enough magic — Grimm family magic. Soon the wall around Grimmlandia will open. And at last, our leader will take his rightful place within the tales.”
Huh? thought Rapunzel. What did that mean?
The witch didn’t linger to be questioned. She rubbed a gold ring she wore on her left hand. Rapunzel couldn’t recall her ever wearing such a ring when she’d lived in the tower. But for some reason, it looked familiar.
Before she could get a better look at it, the witch disappeared in a cloud of black smoke, taking the tower and artifacts with her. Only she left the cat behind, standing in the flattened area in the middle of the rampion patch where the tower had once stood.
Meowww!
“Mordred!” Once the witch departed, the vines fell away from the girls’ ankles, and Rapunzel scurried over to him. Luckily, he was unharmed. Scooping him up and holding him close, she followed her friends as they dashed out of the rampion patch, heading for shore again. The torches had died out, and only the moonlight filtering through the trees allowed them to find their way back to the swan boats.
Once there, Rapunzel sat cuddling Mordred while Snow and Cinda paddled toward the Academy. She murmured sweet words to him as they crossed the river. Over at Heart Island, fireworks began, lighting up the night sky. That meant the play had ended and the festival was closing for the day.
Upon their return to the Academy, Mordred leaped away and dashed ahead to Rapunzel’s room, none the worse for his adventure. The girls found Red and they all gathered in the dungeon, sitting on Rapunzel’s bed.
“Lucky for you guys, there will be another performance of our play in the school auditorium in a few days,” Red informed them right off the bat.
“Oh, good! I feel so bad we missed seeing it!” Cinda replied, her blue eyes wide with distress.
“Me, too!” said Snow. “It’s just awful. Not your play. I’m sure it was great. I just meant that it’s too bad we —”
“I understood what you meant,” Red said, grinning a little at Snow’s consternation.
“We wouldn’t have missed it for anything. Except we were busy trying to foil a witch’s evil plot,” Rapunzel added.
“What?” said Red, instantly alarmed. Quickly, the other girls explained all that had happened since they’d last seen her. “If the tales get changed so that evil wins, well, that’s just wrong!” Red pronounced, sounding worried.
“Yeah. Readers will start to believe that good characters like us acted badly and that evil is actually good!” said Cinda. “Which is what the witch hopes!”
“Ooh! I almost forgot.” Red pulled the mapestry out of her basket. “I checked this thing right after the play. And look! The X moved from the island over to Neverwood Forest!”
The girls crowded around eagerly as she unrolled the mapestry. However, to Red’s surprise, the X was right there where it had always been — on Heart Island. “Weird. I thought for sure — but I guess I was wrong.”
“Or maybe the X moved because we did? Or because Mordred did. Or the tower. Or the swan boat we took over there,” mused Rapunzel. “But that would have to mean that one of us has the treasure, or that …” She stopped talking, confused.
“Or any of a dozen possibilities,” Snow put in. The four Grimm girls talked and talked, but by bedtime, they still hadn’t figured out why the X might have temporarily moved or what to do about the witch and the Society’s evil plot. Hoping the answers might lie in the library, they decided to meet there the next morning.
Hours later, in the middle of the night, Rapunzel suddenly awoke and sat up in bed. The four cats on her comforter stirred, blinking at her. Over on the windowsill, Mordred lifted his head. Quickly, she counted on her fingers. Twenty-six. Twenty-six artifacts had been collected by E.V.I.L. There were twenty-six letters in the alphabet. But E.V.I.L. had collected two P artifacts — Jack and Jill’s pail and Peter Peter’s pumpkin. Which meant that a missing letter and its corresponding artifact had yet to fall into their grasp!
Unable to sleep, she hopped out of bed and began to pace, thinking hard. As she walked, she combed her hair with her new charm. What powers does it possess? she wondered.
“I hope I find out before too long,” she murmured. Long. Long. The word seemed to hum in the air around her. Suddenly, the teeth of the comb started growing longer. And longer. She dropped it, leaping back, and watched it grow as tall as she was. What had just happened? Did the comb think she had commanded it?
“Short,” she whispered uncertainly.
Instantly, the comb’s teeth shortened to normal length again. She picked up the comb from the floor and gazed at it in wonder. “That was grimmazing!” she told it. “I wonder what else you can do?”
But it seemed she was not destined to find out. For, suddenly, the comb disappeared from her hand. Poof! That lying witch! She must have used her magic to steal it back again.
Sunday morning, while everyone else headed to Heart Island for the second day of the festival, Red, Cinda, Snow, and Rapunzel met in the Grimm brothers’ room in the library.
The objects there seemed unusually restless. Small wind-up toys zoomed across the floor, knocking into each other like bumper cars. A mechanical toy monkey sat alone in a corner, frantically clapping its cymbals together. And over on the shelf of musical instruments, the flute and harmonica were playing an eerie, discordant duet. At the same time, the great books of Grimm were pulling themselves out of the shelves, flipping upside down, and then sliding back in again, over and over.
Gazing around at the strange scene, Rapunzel announced to her friends, “I realized something important last night. The witch found twenty-six artifacts. But two of them started with P. And when Cinda and I were in here yesterday, a hand reached out of the coat of arms. And a voice asked for the X. It wanted the X artifact that E.V.I.L. is missing! I’m pretty sure it’s the —”
“Xylophone?” Cinda guessed, pointing toward the shelf of musical instruments where it sat.
The other three Grimm girls turned just in time to see its two mallets rise in the air. Then they skimmed up and down the xylophone’s bars, creating a cascade of ascending and descending notes.
“I think so. On Friday, my hair put a spell on each artifact the witch wanted, simply by touching it,” Rapunzel explained. “But because we brought the xylophone in here instead of leaving it on the main library shelves, the room’s extra protections must have kept it from being stolen. Even the geese helpers in the library won’t come inside this room.”
“I get it. So you don’t think any E.V.I.L. members will come in here either?” asked Red.
“Maybe not,” said Rapunzel.
Snow set the Handbook she’d brought with her on top of the Grimm brothers’ big desk. “I bet you’re right. My stepmom once told me this room gives her the creeps. She refuses to get anywhere near it.”
“Which means that this is probably the safest place in all of Grimmlandia,” said Rapunzel. “A place where evil can’t go. We’ve seen the leader try to enter this room through the coat of arms. But he couldn’t, remember?”
“What do you think the witch will do when she realizes the X artifact is missing?” asked Cinda.
“If we can think of something to stop her and E.V.I.L., maybe we won’t have to find out,” said Red. Suddenly, her attention was caught by something on the opposite wall. Slowly, she asked, “Hey, what did that ring you said the witch was wearing look like?”
“It was gold with jewels and had a letter engraved in its center,” Snow told her.
“Like those?” Red pointed at the seven gold-framed portraits hanging in the center of the wall opposite the desk.
The girls turned to study them. All the faces looked similar, as if they were related to each other. And on the hand of each person pictured was a matching gold ring!
“Yes! The ring the witch was wearing looked exactly the same,” said Rapunzel. “I thought it seemed familiar. Must’ve been because I’d seen it in these paintings.”
“So these portraits … are they all Grimms?” asked Cinda.
Snow opened her Handbook to History class and found a chapter titled “The Grimm Family.” She pressed on a word, causing a bubble to rise and hover a foot above the page. There were seven faces in the bubble, each one labeled with a name. The girls compared them, matching the names and faces in the bubble to the portraits on the wall.
“That’s Jacob and Wilhelm on top, of course,” said Red. Everyone in Grimmlandia knew what they looked like. There were likenesses of them carved on buildings and fountains in every village, and portraits of them hung in museums throughout the realm. “And we know that’s their sister, Charlotte the Enchantress, from when she was a lot younger than she is now.”
“The others are Friedrich, Carl, and Ferdinand,” Snow told them. “So the one under that drape must be …”
As she spoke, Red went over and lifted the drape covering the central painting. Cinda, Rapunzel, and Snow gasped at the sight of the face she revealed. “Eek! It’s him!” yelled Cinda and Snow at the same time.
“Who?” asked Red.
“The nose-eyeball guy I saw in here on my first day at the Academy,” Cinda explained.
“And I saw him on my stepmom’s door that time,” Snow confirmed.
“He’s the only one not wearing a ring,” noted Rapunzel, pointing to his hand.
“Could the witch have his?” Cinda wondered.
As they were talking, Snow began thumbing through her Handbook again. “It says here that one Grimm brother disappeared from Grimmlandia years ago. His name was Ludwig.”
“Ludwig,” whispered a woman’s voice at the same time. At the sound of the disembodied voice, the girls shrieked in alarm and looked wildly around the room.
“Who said that?” Rapunzel whispered.
Red pushed aside a few papers and discovered a crystal ball sitting on the desktop. “It’s Grandmother Enchantress!” She pointed to the ancient-looking face of a woman that gazed at them from within the ball.
The girls crowded around the desk. “How did her crystal ball wind up in here?” asked Cinda.
“Shh! She’s trying to tell us something,” said Snow as a pink sparkly mist began to spin around the face inside the ball.
“I moved … crystal … here…. It’s … only safe place … now … evil … growing stronger,” rasped the Enchantress. Her voice was weak and faded in and out, making it hard to understand her. “A meeting … E.V.I.L. Society … today … Heart Island.”
“When exactly?” asked Cinda. But the sparkly mist had faded away from the crystal ball, and the Enchantress said no more.
“I’m confused,” Snow said. “How could Ludwig be the leader of the Society? The Grimm brothers are all long dead, aren’t they? I thought only Charlotte … that is, Grandmother Enchantress, was still alive.”
“Maybe they’re like the library,” suggested Rapunzel. She quoted Ms. Goose: “Magical, movable, timeless.”
“Or maybe they just all disappeared into the Dark Nothingterror,” Cinda said in a small voice. There was a brief silence as everyone digested that horrible thought. The Nothingterror was the area beyond the wall that surrounded Grimmlandia, and was a terrible place said to be filled with beasts and dastardlies.
“Listen to this,” said Snow, consulting her Handbook again. “Ludwig didn’t just disappear. He was banished to the other side of the wall. This says he was a talented artist, but not as famous as Jacob and Wilhelm. So he grew resentful and jealous of his brothers’ fame. And he harbored a prejudice against fairy-tale characters, especially the ‘good’ ones. He was basically the black sheep of the Grimm family!”
“We have to find out what’s going on in that E.V.I.L. meeting on the island today. But the Society isn’t going to be happy with us if they catch us spying. We’d better take something to bargain with just in case,” said Red.
“We know what they’ll want,” said Cinda, glancing toward the xylophone.
They all followed her gaze. “No! We can’t give it to them. Can we?” asked Snow.
“Hmm. Maybe we can,” said Rapunzel. Quickly, she told them what she was thinking, and they worked out a plan.
A few minutes later, the girls scurried out of the room to pick up the ball gowns and slippers they would wear to the ball later that night. While in the library’s S section for their slippers, Rapunzel brought everyone to a halt to take a look at the Spells to Foil Fairy-Tale Crooks book she’d discovered on Friday.
“Eew,” said Cinda, scrunching her nose at the chapter titles in the table of contents. “I’m not sure I could hook or cook anyone, no matter how evil they were. Not even a witch or a troll.”
“Me, neither,” said Rapunzel. “But could we try this?” She showed them another chapter in the book and they all crowded around to skim it together. Excitement filled everyone’s eyes as she snapped the book shut, because what she’d read just might help them stop the witch! She put the book away and they picked up their slippers.
