Goldilocks Breaks In Read online

  And that explained why the guards had sounded so growly. Luckily, this bear was looking at something on a shelf across from where she was hiding, not at her. He was dressed in a dark blue guard uniform with short pants and a jacket. And when he turned sideways, she saw that the jacket had big brass buttons down the front of it. Quickly and quietly, she scooted backward, curling deeper into her hidey-hole.

  “Hic. Hic.” Holey hiccups! She’d come down with them at the exact wrong moment. That’s what she got for eating those doughnut holes in the middle of the night. Goldie clapped both hands over her mouth, but it was too late. The guard had heard her.

  He wheeled around. “Who’s therrre?” he growled in his loud, deep voice. When he glanced right at the hole in the wall, she thought she was in for it for sure. Oh, no! He was going to discover her, tell Ms. Wicked, and she’d probably find herself chained up in the school dungeon for rule breaking. Or worse!

  As more footsteps came running, the guard began to chuckle. Harrr! Harrr! He slapped his fuzzy knee as if he’d just heard the best joke ever.

  Two more bears appeared — a small one about her height and a medium-size one. They were in uniform as well. And, except for their different sizes, all three were identical. Hmm. There was something kind of familiar-looking about all of them.

  “What’s so funny?” asked the other two guards.

  The biggest guard’s laughter died away. “I hearrrd hiccups,” he said, “but then I realized I was in the H aisle. And there’s a box labeled HICCUPS rrright up there.” He pointed a shaggy paw toward the shelf just above Goldie’s hidey-hole.

  Phew, she thought in relief. Saved from discovery by a box of hiccups! Right when she had gotten a case of them herself.

  “Oh, Teddy, you’re such a goofball,” said the medium-size bear.

  “Shhh! No real names,” growled the big bear. “While we’re at the Academy, we only use the code names Principal W assigned us, remember? I’m Papa Bear. And you’re Mama Bear. And you’re Baby Bear. Got it?”

  “Got it!” said the other two guards, straightening and saluting.

  So Ms. Wicked was calling herself Principal W now, was she? mused Goldie. Even though the School Board had only named her the acting principal, and she was actually still a teacher?

  Just then the big Papa Bear guard’s stomach growled. “I’m hungry as, well, as a bear. We’ve checked all the sections. Let’s go get the boat and head home,” he told the others. “Principal W told us a special visitor will be waiting for us therrre, remember?”

  Special visitor? At this, Goldie’s ears perked up. Who could it be? Ms. Wicked herself? Another guard? Since the bears were taking a boat to get home, did that mean they were living on one of the islands in the Once Upon River? Maze Island? Heart Island? So many questions. And to her, they were like locks. She always wanted to pick them open to find answers!

  Moments later, she heard the library’s door open and shut. When all seemed quiet, she inched her way out of the hole, unable to bear another moment in hiding. Though disappointed that she hadn’t been able to find any clues to Principal R’s whereabouts, at least she now knew something about Ms. Wicked’s guards.

  And most importantly she hadn’t been discovered. Which was weird because that Papa Bear guard had been looking right at her when she was inside the hidey-hole. Why hadn’t he seen her, or at least smelled her? She’d heard that bears’ noses were better at sniffing out smells than people’s noses were. Even better than a bloodhound’s.

  As her feet found the floor and she stood again, her gaze fell once more on the label below the hole. “A hole lot of nothing,” she murmured to herself. Maybe that was the answer! No matter what got stashed inside this hole — including her — all that anyone outside it could sense was … well … nothing.

  Which was exactly what Goldie hoped to see as she wound her way out of the library, then raced upstairs. Nothing and no one. And it seemed luck was with her for she saw no guards, no teachers, and no students all the way up to the dorms.

  On the sixth floor, she had to cross an outdoor stone walkway that ran between all three of the Pink Castle’s towers to get back to her room. Outside, the night air was cool and the moon shone brightly in the sky above the pointy-top towers. One of them was a pale, frosty white — Pearl Tower. Another was a sparkly green — Emerald Tower. And the third was a dazzling red. That was Ruby Tower. Her dorm. Across the river at Gray Castle, the pointy tops of the boys’ dorm towers gleamed with jewel colors, too — Onyx, Topaz, and Zircon.

  She paused to peek over the side of the walkway. Below her, in a courtyard between the rest of the girls’ dorms on the fifth floor, she could just make out a tall, three-tiered fountain where a mermaid girl named Mermily always slept. Far, far below that, the moon’s reflection wavered on the waters of the Once Upon River. It was a beautiful and reassuringly peaceful sight, untouched by the troubling changes Ms. Wicked had begun to make at the Academy ever since she was appointed acting principal.

  When Goldie finally arrived at the door to Ruby Tower, she was relieved to see the key was still there, just as she’d left it. Though it was now school policy for students to be locked in their dorms at night, the key always remained stuck in the outside lock.

  To get out of the dorm that night, she had simply used her pearl-flower hairpin on the inside lock to push this key out. She’d caught it on a flat sheet of vellum she had shoved under the door and out onto the walkway, then slid the vellum back inside with the key lying upon it. Once outside, she’d put the key back in the lock so all would look undisturbed.

  As she reached for the key to unlock the tower door, she heard a commotion behind her. “Get back to your post!” someone shouted. She froze. Had she been spotted by a guard? Trembling, she glanced over her shoulder, but saw no one.

  A second voice called out, “Papa Bear assigned me to this spot. You’re the one in the wrong place. You’re supposed to be patrolling the sixth floor.”

  Phew. The voices were coming from the fifth-floor courtyard, not right behind her as she’d first supposed. And it sounded like Papa Bear must be the Head Guard, in charge of the other two bear guards down there and any others Ms. Wicked might have hired.

  Curious to know if these other guards were also bears, she risked a quick peek over the side of the walkway. The fifth-floor guard’s back was to her. But she could see at a glance that he wasn’t a bear. There was a fluffy orange tail with a white tip sticking out of the back of his uniform. A fox!

  Hearing footsteps on the stairs, she darted back to the tower door and fumbled with the key. For one heart-stopping moment, she couldn’t get it to turn in the lock. When it finally did, she leaped over the doorstep, and then shut the door softly behind her. Snick!

  All was quiet inside the circular dorm, which was ringed with little sleeping alcoves. The one Goldie shared with her roommate, Polly, was just to the left of the door, so she didn’t even need to walk through the common area at the center of the dorm to get to it. She pushed aside the decorative ruby-studded curtain at the entrance to her shared little bedroom. Then she shucked off her slippers, picked them up, and tiptoed inside.

  The moon shone through the window on the far wall, casting light on the multicolored braided rug that lay between the two canopy beds with pretty see-through fabric draped across their tops. Both beds were raised about six feet off the floor on tall bedposts to accommodate desks beneath them. As she bent to set her slippers next to her desk, one of them fell from her arms and thumped onto the floor.

  “Goldie?” Polly called out sleepily. “Is it morning already? Want me to make us a pot of tea?”

  The corners of Goldie’s mouth lifted into a grin. Her roomie was obsessed with tea. She couldn’t help it, though. She was one of the nursery rhyme characters brought here to Grimmlandia for protection long ago, and the first verse of her rhyme went like this:

  Polly, put the kettle on,

  Polly, put the kettle on,

  Poll
y, put the kettle on,

  And let’s drink tea.

  “Shh,” she told Polly. “It’s not morning yet. Go back to sleep.”

  Polly mumbled something that sounded like “Darjeeling or Earl Grey?” which Goldie knew by now were two popular kinds of tea. And then the girl rolled over and began to softly snore.

  Goldie bent to straighten her slippers. As she stood, her eyes chanced to fall on a pair of matching two-inch tall teddy bears nestled on either side of the candlestick on her desktop. Hey! Despite their teeny size, those teddy bears looked exactly like the bears in the library. Same cute ears. Same shiny brown fur. Same round, brown eyes. Only, her bears weren’t wearing uniforms. They also weren’t alive.

  She picked them up to look at them more closely. Weeks ago, both had sprouted from a magical tongue-twister plant she’d grown in Ms. Blue Fairygodmother’s Bespellings class. Each student in class had created one of the special plants as a decoration for a student-run festival out on Heart Island. A festival meant to raise funds for the always cash-strapped Academy. Goldie had been hopeful her plant might be judged the best at the festival and win a prize, but no such luck.

  She turned the small toy bears over in the palm of her hand. They were really quite cute if she did say so herself. After the festival ended, she’d retrieved her plant, intending to pick off and keep the stuffed bear blossoms and the fuzzy toy fox blossoms she’d grown. However, all had disappeared. Except these two. They’d been tucked under some leaves near the base of the plant and must’ve been overlooked by whoever had snitched the rest.

  Other students’ plants had been stripped of blossoms, too. They figured it must’ve been village children who’d plucked the cute blossoms from all the plants. But … wait a minute! Bears and foxes! Like those guards!

  Her mind raced, connecting the dots. Could Ms. Wicked have taken the magical blossoms? Back when Principal R was still around, had she cast a magic spell to make the blossoms larger and more alive, turning them into her own personal army of school security guards? Why would a teacher make plans to raise an army of guards before knowing the principal was going to disappear though? Unless … had she maybe been the very person who’d plotted the principal’s downfall? The thought was so alarming that it made Goldie gasp.

  Bong! Bong! Bong! The grandfather clock over in the Great Hall sounded the hour with twelve bongs. Midnight.

  “Orange spice? Chai? Black pekoe?” Polly murmured in her sleep. More tea flavors.

  “Shhh,” Goldie soothed, and her roomie went back to snoozing. She set the tiny toy bears back on her desk and moved to the ladder at the end of her bed. She’d left her room at midnight and had been in the library for a while, of course. However, another odd thing about the Grimmstone Library was that time could move much slower or faster inside it than in the rest of the Academy and Grimmlandia.

  Lucky for her, time had moved slowly inside the library tonight so that only a few minutes had gone by in the outside world. Which meant she was going to get a proper amount of sleep.

  After climbing up the ladder to her tall canopy bed, she snuggled under her blue-and-green-checkered comforter and was soon fast asleep.

  At breakfast the next morning, Goldie took a seat on a bench next to Polly, and across from Malorette and Odette at one of the two long dining tables that ran the length of the Great Hall. Two stories high, this Hall straddled the Once Upon River and connected the two castles at either end of the Academy. Colorful banners graced its walls, and bluebirds constantly flittered in and out of its high, open windows, which had beautiful diamond-shaped glass panes.

  “Ow! This stuff is too hot,” Goldie complained when she took a spoonful of her oatsqueal porridge.

  Polly’s long blond hair, done up in a perky ponytail, swished from side to side as she shook her head, eyeing Goldie’s bowl. “Don’t you ever get tired of eating porridge?” she teased in a friendly way as Goldie mixed a spoonful of brown sugar into the steaming hot oatsqueal. As usual, it made a shrill sound like a cross between a badly played violin and a whistle as she stirred the sugar into it.

  Goldie glanced over at the cup of tea Polly had just raised to her lips. “Don’t you ever get tired of drinking tea?” she asked in reply.

  Malorette and Odette both cackled. “She’s got you there,” Odette said to Polly, who blushed as pink as the roses painted on the side of her china teacup.

  “Yeah, you should talk,” Malorette added, giving her poofy black hair a pat. “You and your endless pots of tea.”

  Seemingly recovered from her initial embarrassment, Polly shrugged. “Tea is a very versatile beverage,” she said. “And there are endless varieties. Besides all the kinds of black teas, there are also herbal teas like chamomile, peppermint, orange blossom, and blueberry. I could go on and on about —”

  “Oh! Please don’t!” Malorette said, arching an eyebrow in a sarcastic way.

  Odette cackled again.

  “Huh? I was just —” Polly stopped, glancing over at Goldie for support.

  But Goldie had no idea what Polly wanted her to say. “What?” she said, wrinkling her forehead in confusion.

  “Nothing,” Polly said with a sigh.

  Goldie had a feeling she’d somehow let her roomie down. However, Malorette smiled at her as if suddenly greatly pleased with her for some reason. “Odette and I are going to take a boat over to Maze Island after school this afternoon. Want to come with?”

  “Me? With you guys? Sure,” Goldie said in eager surprise. No one at GA ever asked her to do anything with them. Well, sometimes Polly did, but she kind of had to because she’d gotten stuck with her as a roommate.

  Goldie stared at the two sisters, hoping this wasn’t some kind of trick where they wouldn’t show up, and then laugh at her for thinking they had ever meant to. But she’d take the chance. Besides, she’d already been thinking she should go over to that island to snoop around for security guard cottages.

  “Wait. Isn’t going there against Ms. Wicked’s new rules? She said no one could leave the school grounds,” Polly said, sounding a little anxious. Or maybe a little jealous? wondered Goldie.

  “Neverwood Forest and the rest of Grimmlandia are out of bounds,” said Odette. “But Maze Island, Heart Island, and the Once Upon River are all part of the Academy.”

  “Oh,” said Polly. She flushed again, as if she’d just suffered an embarrassing put-down.

  Fearful that she’d been unintentionally rude to Polly (what else was new?), Goldie tried to catch her roommate’s eye so she could smile an apology. But Polly was fixedly staring into her teacup. Even when Goldie nudged her elbow, her roomie wouldn’t look up. Then Mermily, who was sitting on Polly’s other side, started to talk to her, and the moment for apologizing was lost.

  “So we’ll meet you down by the boats after sixth period?” Odette was asking now.

  Goldie nodded distractedly. “Sure. I don’t have anything better to do.” That was true, but possibly not the best, most flattering reply she could’ve made.

  Malorette and Odette both did a double take. Great. Just great. I’ve done it again, she thought. What was wrong with her? Her mouth was like a volcano sometimes, erupting without warning. Her tongue flapped like a flag on a flagpole. See? She was even rude to herself sometimes. Argh!

  Ruefully, she recalled the gooseknob commenting that her bad habit of nearly always saying what she thought probably didn’t win her a lot of friends. Aside from Polly, who kind of had to be her friend since they were roommates, Malorette and Odette were the only other girls at GA who were halfway interested in hanging out with her.

  Yes, they were evil characters in literature, and maybe that didn’t say much for Goldie’s social skills. Still, fairy tales were made up of good and bad. You couldn’t exclude half of the characters from school or nobody’s story would make sense.

  She didn’t want to blow her chances at a new friendship, even one with evil characters. Worried the two sisters might take back their invitati
on, Goldie belatedly added, “I’m really jazzed about going to the island with you guys. Thanks. It’ll be fun!” It must’ve been the right thing to say because Odette and Malorette were suddenly all smiles again.

  Just then, trumpets blared. Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-tum! Two musicians had appeared on the second-floor balcony that overlooked the east end of the Great Hall. As soon as they lowered their long, thin, golden herald trumpets, the five shiny iron helmet-heads that sat on a wide, carved wooden shelf on the stone wall behind them began to speak.

  “Attention, scholars!” they chorused in formal-sounding voices. Their visors creaked and clanked open and shut as they spoke, and the colored feather that stuck up from the top of each one’s helmet bobbed up and down. “All rise for today’s announcements from the great and goodly principal of Grimm Academy!” they called out.

  Goldie stood, along with all the other students. The disembodied helmet-heads’ appearance was a bit startling, even in a place as magical as Grimmlandia. However, she’d now had three whole months to get used to the fact that they were, in fact, the GA School Board. And it was they who had made the decision to relieve Principal R of his duties after his disappearance and put Ms. Wicked in charge — for the time being.

  Click! Click! Click! The sound of high heels echoed throughout the Hall as Ms. Wicked stepped onto the balcony. Slender and tall, she had perfectly styled black hair piled high inside a tiara with points so sharp they looked like dragons’ teeth.

  This Scrying-teacher-turned-principal had no need of the small stepladder Principal R had always climbed to make himself visible above the balcony railing when he spoke to the students each morning. But then, he had been, er, was (she wasn’t really sure which was right since no one knew if he’d ever return), a gnome. No more than three feet tall, including his tall hat.

  “Good morning, students!” Ms. Wicked said in a clear, crisp voice. She smiled wide as her eyes swept the Hall.