Snowflake Freezes Up Read online

  Talk about a dumb move! She rushed down the hall. What was she going to do with it?

  The library! She would simply take the broken mirror to the M section herself.

  Since there had been many students in the office, it was unlikely anyone would note her disappearance when they unfroze. If she stashed the mirror fast enough, they might think another troll had taken it to the library. Anyway, they’d have no reason to assume she’d been responsible for freezing them, right? Yeah!

  Lucky for her, the library hadn’t moved yet. It was still just a few doors down from the office. And even luckier, its door was still propped open.

  “Thank grimmness!” Snowflake muttered. At her words, the library’s brass doorknob morphed into a face. A goose face with a beak. Ignoring it, she zipped past into the Grimmstone Library.

  “Honk! Wait! Free entry is only for mirror-toting trolls. You, however, must answer a riddle before entering!” the gooseknob protested.

  “Shh! Sorry! I’ll answer two riddles next time. Promise!” she hissed over her shoulder.

  The gooseknob honked at her several more times, but finally gave up. Snowflake felt kind of sorry for the knob. It had an important job to do — guarding the library’s contents — and didn’t get much respect for trying to do it. Probably because it was a bit annoying at times. Often more than a bit, actually.

  Snowflake lugged the mirror frame past the A section and into the library aisles, which stretched so far into the distance that she could see no end to them. Row after row of shelves and little rooms were filled with who knew what.

  The Grimm brothers, Wilhelm and Jacob, had built this library to protect their books and books written by many other great authors as well as various artifacts.

  Although Ms. Wicked’s mirror frame wasn’t particularly heavy, it was unwieldy. Snowflake’s arms and shoulders ached from carrying it already, and she was only up to Section B! There, she passed shelves with boxes, bats, balls, blankies, binkies, boo-boos, and bye-byes.

  As she scurried along, a snow-white goose zoomed high overhead. Two more swooped in from the left, and a fourth flew in from the right. They were all going in different directions. A net dangled from each goose’s bright orange beak. Some of the net bags held books. Others held random objects such as paintbrushes, lamps, or alphabet blocks that were being delivered to various sections of the library. If the geese noticed her, would they report her activities to the librarian?

  Snowflake switched to dragging the mirror instead of carrying it. Which looked pretty suspicious. She’d never make it to M. Why hadn’t she just left this frame in the office? Well, she was stuck with it now. Luckily, in Section C, she noticed a cart with wheels. Thank grimmness! After setting the mirror frame on it, she pulled it to M in no time and set it with the stack of Ms. Wicked’s other mirrors.

  Phew! Glad to be rid of it, she turned back and headed for Section F, which ended against a side wall. All along the library walls, there were whole rooms that had been lifted out of actual houses — or fabulous castles. It was amazing that all this stuff could fit in here. At times, the Grimmstone Library seemed bigger than the school itself. And no wonder! She’d heard it could magically make itself as big or as small as it chose.

  Eventually, she entered Section F. Some of the rooms along the library wall here were decorated with furnishings such as chairs, tables, lamps, rugs, and wallpaper. One room had a sign on the door that read: A ROOM OF UPSIDE DOWN, with upside-down furniture stuck on its fluted ceiling. The Room of Mistakes had a door that had by some freaky fluke of fate been hinged in sideways.

  If someone really wanted to, they could probably live in one of these rooms. And little did anyone know that Snowflake secretly did exactly that!

  Still a dozen or so aisles away from the room she had appropriated as her own, she let her gaze wander to the huge chandelier and magnificently decorated ceiling above. How did the Grimm brothers build this library to support such an enormous roof? she wondered for the grimmzillionth time as she admired the architecture. And what kind of magical support structure allowed this place to grow bigger and smaller on a whim?

  She was so busy looking up that she didn’t notice Ms. Goose until it was too late to duck her.

  “Snowflake!” The librarian stood before her, blocking the aisle and wearing her trademark frilly white cap and spectacles. Her crisp white apron had a curlicue L embroidered on its front bib. L for librarian, of course.

  “Still researching your nursery rhyme?” Ms. Goose asked. “You are a dedicated student! Any luck finding which rhyme is yours?”

  Relieved that the sharp-eyed librarian didn’t seem to suspect anything was up, Snowflake shook her head. “No, there are a lot more nursery rhymes than I thought. I’ve been through all the ones you wrote — the Mother Goose ones. But there are tons of others besides those. It’s not going to be easy.”

  Another part of the reason she’d been sent to this academy was to do research to find out which character she was in literature. At least that’s what the grandmother back at the orphanage had told her. She hadn’t said if that information was considered necessary to protect Snowflake or to protect others from her. Maybe no one was sure … yet.

  Even if she didn’t like what she ultimately found out about herself, she wanted to know. And this was her big chance. Everything she needed to learn her identity was likely right here somewhere on the Grimmstone Library shelves.

  “Don’t worry, something in this library will jump out at you one day,” Ms. Goose told her as if reading her mind. “Something that fits. Then you’ll be filled with recognition. You’ll just know.”

  Snowflake shrugged. “Well, that hasn’t happened yet. But I’ll keep digging.” She began sidling off, in a hurry to get away. Ms. Goose was nice, but a little too clever and a little too much in her business. There were things she didn’t want this librarian to figure out. Like that Snowflake spent way more time — day and night — in this library than anyone realized!

  Flap! Flap! At the sound of beating wings, a shadow fell over them both. They backed away to allow a winged goose as big as a horse to swoop down from above. Once it landed, the librarian hopped on its back. She and the goose lifted off the ground a few feet, but then hovered in place a moment.

  “I know you’re worried you might turn out to be the evil character in your tale or nursery rhyme,” Ms. Goose said, surprising her. “But remember, you were sent to Grimm Academy because both good and evil characters from literature are welcome here. There’s a place for everyone.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Snowflake said skeptically. Everyone knew it was better to be good than evil. Ms. Goose was just trying to make her feel better.

  Most of the time she felt totally normal. But she could tell that her powers were growing stronger. It scared her that she didn’t know how to control them or even what those powers were exactly. What if she never found out who she was and why she had these powers? What if everything just got worse and worse and worse? What if, instead of summoning albino bees and freezing people into temporary statues whenever she got upset, she discovered she had the power to call forth Dastardlies from the Dark Nothingterror or something really awful like that? How would this librarian — or any of the others at GA — like her then?

  “Well, keep trying. And let me know if you need help finding anything. My filing system can be a trifle loosey-goosey at times,” Ms. Goose told her with a quick wink.

  “Okay.”

  Flap! Flap! Within seconds, Ms. Goose was airborne and flying across the library.

  Once she was gone, Snowflake darted farther into Section F. Finally, after looking right and left to make sure no one was watching, she turned a doorknob and scooted into her room. The one she had chosen as her temporary bedroom, anyway. She more or less camped out in here after school and all night. No one knew about her hideaway, not even Mary Mary Quite Contrary, the roommate she’d been originally assigned to (but bailed on).

  A tall stack of nursery
rhyme books she had borrowed from the library sat on a footstool in her room. She grabbed one of them and climbed atop the pile of feather-filled mattresses set on a sturdy futon that served as her bed. At night, she usually tucked herself between the two mattresses at the top with only her head sticking out so that she could scooch down to hide if Ms. Goose came around unexpectedly. Once or twice she’d had to stifle a sneeze caused by an escaped feather in order not to get caught.

  Luckily there was an F for fountain in her room. It bubbled merrily and helped disguise any noise she made. Plus it came in handy as a shower. She’d hung the few gowns she’d brought from the orphanage on hangers she’d scored from Section H along a pole she’d gotten from Section P. Plus she’d rounded up other things she needed, like soap and towels from the S and T sections of the library. Food was easy to come by. She was in the F section after all!

  Lying on her bed now, she opened the book of nursery rhymes she’d selected and skimmed through it, looking for a hint of anything that fit, as Ms. Goose suggested. She wasn’t expecting to find any such thing, but suddenly, she sat up straight, stunned.

  Under the simple title of “There Was a Little Girl,” authored by some guy named Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, she read this rhyme:

  There was a little girl

  Who had a little curl

  Right in the middle of her forehead;

  And when she was good

  She was very, very good,

  But when she was bad she was horrid.

  Could this be her nursery rhyme? Was she horrid? Snowflake wondered. Those girls in her village who’d been stung by the albino bees she’d magicked up that day would probably say so. Sigh. She didn’t have a curl in the middle of her forehead, though. She had longish bangs that sometimes got wavy, especially in damp weather. Sadly, this was the closest F for fit so far, though. She bookmarked the page, then scrambled down to set the book in a far corner of the floor in her stack of F-for-feasible books (which meant those containing rhymes that might possibly turn out to be hers).

  The only other nursery rhymes in her stack so far were there simply because they contained half of her name in them. Like this one Ms. Goose herself had penned:

  Mary had a little lamb,

  little lamb,

  little lamb.

  Mary had a little lamb,

  Its fleece was white as snow.

  Okay. Maybe the connection was slight. She didn’t have a lamb or anything. She would keep looking for other nursery rhymes. And in the meantime, she’d wait to show anyone the horrid one till she’d considered it some more.

  Meanwhile, back in the principal’s office …

  Still trapped inside his glass globe, Jack Frost zipped over and nabbed the broom the fake snowman was holding. Then he rushed back to poke the tip end of the broom’s handle into the crack that had formed when the globe had gotten knocked onto the floor. He had just begun to work the handle like a crowbar to widen the crack when he heard someone shout, “Look out!”

  Huh? He paused. He couldn’t see anything — his globe had rolled into a dark corner. But during the next few seconds, he became aware that an eerie silence had settled over the office. Sounds were muffled inside his globe, but he could usually make out the dull roar of voices and people moving around. For several minutes, as he went back to widening the crack in his globe with his makeshift crowbar, there was none of that.

  Then, suddenly, a weird, whirling noise that sounded for all the world like a wild windstorm started up. It only lasted a few moments. Gradually the muffled sounds of voices and movement began again.

  Strange, thought Jack. What was going on out there? He shook his head to clear it, causing the two tassels on his knit cap to whack the tiny snowflakes inside the globe and send them flying. Then he went back to work, and the fracture started to widen.

  Crrack! Jack pushed through. In seconds, he was out of the snow globe. He was free! He zoomed upward, doing quadruple somersaults in the air and flitting joyfully around the office.

  “How did that bat get in here?” yelled Principal R, pointing up at him.

  The dragon lady squinted at Jack. “That’s not a bat. I think it’s an uffish brownie!” she shouted.

  “Or maybe a pixie,” suggested a tall boy wearing a crown.

  “Or a leprechaun,” added a girl wearing a four-leaf-clover necklace.

  “You’re all wrong!” Jack Frost exclaimed huffily. “I’m a sprite! The Grimm brothers trapped me in that snow globe over there on the floor, and I just now escaped.” He grinned gleefully at the principal. “So what do you think of that, Rumpelstiltskin?”

  Frosted faux pas! It had not been a good idea to rile the GA principal by speaking his actual name. Especially since Jack had overheard students say that doing so was against school rules. Too late to call back his boo-boo, though.

  The principal had already begun to hop around and shake his fists angrily. The single straw poking up from his hatband fell to the ground, and he picked it up. Jack couldn’t help noticing that the straw gleamed as bright as gold in the principal’s grasp. Without much to do within the limited range of his snow globe, Jack’s senses had become very finely tuned, and there wasn’t much he didn’t notice!

  The boy in the crown went over and picked up the cracked snow globe. He handed it to Ms. Jabberwocky. “Looks like that sprite is telling the truth.”

  “Bandersnatch! He broke out of this, you mean?” she said, studying the globe. “I whiffled this thing out of the library only this morning to use as a paperweight.”

  “You what?” yelled the principal. “The brothers Grimm must’ve trapped him in there for a reason. Quick! He has to go back inside it. Get him, Ms. J!”

  Following orders, Ms. Jabberwocky whipped out the tip of her tail. Whack! Taken by surprise, Jack Frost found himself lassoed. As her tail held him captive, the others in the office discussed how best to stick him back in the snow globe and repair its crack.

  No! He wouldn’t let himself be imprisoned again. He wanted to be free! Plus, he needed time to find an evil substitute for Ms. Wicked. Someone with magic more powerful than his who could help him achieve his destiny. Quickly, he made something up to convince everyone to release him.

  “Did you ever think that maybe the Grimm brothers put me in that snow globe so Ms. Jabberwocky would find me on the very day you needed me most?” he demanded.

  “Why would we need you?” scoffed the principal. Having quickly calmed down, he stuck the piece of straw back into his hatband. Now when he held it, it didn’t gleam gold, however. It had only gleamed in the principal’s hand when he had gotten furious. Interesting. Putting two and two together, Jack got an idea.

  “You need me because I can spin that straw of yours into gold,” he claimed quickly. “I can’t reach the spindle, though, so you’ll have to do the spinning while I sit on your shoulder giving directions.”

  Although no one seemed to buy this at first, Jack Frost persisted until he persuaded them to give it a try. Once Principal R was at the spindle, Jack perched on his shoulder and intentionally called him “Rumpelstiltskin.”

  The inevitable temper fit occurred. And, lo and behold, the straw gleamed more brightly again. Plus, it lengthened endlessly in the principal’s hands, as he was suddenly able to spin it into a pile of gold! Principal R, the dragon lady, and the students gathered around to stare in amazement at the heap of spun gold they thought Jack Frost had created.

  “Callooh! Callay! This will bring the realm frabjous wealth!” shouted Ms. Jabberwocky.

  “Wait a minute,” said Principal R. He frowned with suspicion, then brushed Jack off his shoulder. Again, the principal tried to spin the straw into gold, but all by himself this time. However, he was calm now, so he couldn’t do it.

  The principal stood and spoke to Jack. “Okay, I’m convinced. You spun the straw into gold. As a reward, you may go free. But only if you agree to spin more gold for us whenever we need it.”

  Jack Frost quickly
agreed to do so, as long as the principal continued to help. And he made an additional bargain. “Allow me to search the Academy for a talented teacher or student with special skills. Someone I can train to spin the straw, too!”

  The principal nodded. Running GA took a lot of time after all. It would save him some work if others could help Jack spin. A deal was struck.

  Little did Principal Rumpelstiltskin know that he was the only one who could spin the straw into gold. And that he could do it without a sprite sitting on his shoulder. It was his temper that somehow gave the principal the power to spin gold. But only Jack Frost held that secret, and he wasn’t about to tell anyone. He hoped his ploy would allow him time enough to find a truly, frostastically wicked teacher or student to boss around, er, become a sidekick for.

  When Snowflake woke the next morning, she fetched some fruit and French toast for breakfast from the F-for-food shelf right outside her room in the library. Most students ate in the Great Hall, but not her. It would be unwise to do so, since that could lead to chatting with others, which could lead to making friends. Not that she didn’t ever get lonely, mind you. She did. But this was just the way things had to be.

  After breakfast, she headed out to first-period Sieges, Catapults, and Jousts class on the lawn outside Gray Castle. Before she could reach the river and take a boat across to that side of the Academy, however, she heard a voice over in the Bouquet Garden yell, “Ow! Ow!” And then, “Stop! Stop! Come out of there!”

  Thinking someone was hurt, Snowflake ran over. In the garden, she found Mary Mary Quite Contrary hunched over her flower bushes, apparently talking to them. Mary Mary, of course, was supposed to have been Snowflake’s roommate.

  “What’s wrong?” Snowflake asked her.

  “Something pricked me,” said Mary Mary.

  “Like a thorn?”