Snowflake Freezes Up Page 4

  “Yeah, I guess, I guess. Sort of like that,” said Mary Mary. She had a tendency to repeat words and phrases, Snowflake had noticed. Sort of like her name was a repeat.

  “Where’s the thorn? Want me to help get it out?” Snowflake asked. She stepped closer to Mary Mary and looked at the place on her arm she was rubbing. She didn’t see any blood there, only a fading reddish mark.

  “It’s fine now,” the girl said. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

  “Oh, good. Must not have been that bad of a prick after all,” Snowflake commented. She glanced around. “Who were you talking to in the bushes a minute ago?”

  As if she hadn’t heard Snowflake’s question, Mary Mary abruptly dived into a clump of chrysanthemums. “Stop that! Stop that!” Mary Mary cried. She was yelling at the flowers!

  It wasn’t unusual for Mary Mary to be quite contrary (as the name of her nursery rhyme suggested) with GA students. But she had always acted kind and loving toward these flowers she grew anytime Snowflake had passed by her in her garden. So why was she so mad at them?

  “Shush!” the contrary girl suddenly ordered Snowflake.

  Huh? Was Mary Mary mad at her now, too? Maybe that shouldn’t have come as such a surprise, knowing her contrary nature. In fact, this girl seemed to have taken a special dislike to Snowflake from day one. Or so Snowflake had thought when Mary Mary had acted so annoyed about everything the morning they’d met in Emerald Tower and learned they were to share a dorm room. That was why she had told this garden girl she’d make other arrangements. And on her own, she’d promptly found a room for herself in the library.

  Mary Mary was glad she wasn’t rooming with her, Snowflake was almost certain. But she hoped this girl wouldn’t ask where she had ended up staying because Snowflake didn’t want anyone to know she was sleeping in the library.

  Just then, both girls heard a rustling in the bushes nearby. “Aha! There he is. Come out, come out, you naughty, naughty nibbler!” yelled Mary Mary.

  Nibbler? Who in the world was she talking to?

  “You guard this area, and I’ll go over there and flush him out,” Mary Mary instructed, pointing to the rustling bushes.

  “Flush who out?” asked Snowflake. Reluctantly, she did as asked even though Mary Mary was too intent on her objective to explain.

  While waiting to see what would happen, Snowflake admired and sniffed the flowers surrounding her. An extraordinary variety of them grew here in the Bouquet Garden — roses, tulips, lilies, daisies, carnations, orchids, and dozens more. Unlike most flowers, though, these actually bloomed together in attractive combinations. Every bush grew numerous ready-made bouquets that contained many types of flowers. So with a single flick of your wrist, you could pick a beautifully arranged bouquet anytime you wanted.

  Caring for this garden was Mary Mary’s special task. All the students at GA were assigned a “tower task” at the start of their year. However, Snowflake hadn’t been given hers yet.

  What was Mary Mary doing over there? Snowflake needed to get to class. “I really have to —” she started to say, easing away.

  “Aha! Gotcha, you little chrysanthemum muncher.” Mary Mary reached into the mums and pulled out … a white bunny! A mischievous-looking one that had been eating her garden, apparently. He wriggled out of her grasp and bounded across the clearing toward Snowflake.

  “Quick, get him!” shouted Mary Mary. For some reason, her eyes appeared strangely glazed. Or was that just a trick of the sunlight?

  Before Snowflake could make a move toward the pesky bunny as instructed, he leaped right into her arms! He twitched his ears and wiggled his nose at her as if saying hello. “Hi, cutie pie,” she murmured to him. A second later, he leaped away again and escaped back into the bushes.

  “Leaping lagomorphs!” muttered Mary Mary. With a sigh of annoyance, she gave up on the bunny for the moment and went back to tending her flowers. While she was bent over her hydrangeas, Snowflake snuck off to class.

  First-period Sieges, Catapults, and Jousts was just getting started when she finally arrived. Coach Candlestick had instructed them to practice lobbing hay bales with catapults all week. A few days ago, Snowflake’s had made it all the way from shore to land on Maze Island in the middle of the river.

  Normally, this class moved indoors on Fridays. But today, they would remain outside. Some students would shift to catapulting items other than hay bales, while others would switch to new skills.

  As they loaded, aimed, and fired various objects from the catapult, everyone was abuzz about an announcement Principal R had made at breakfast. Apparently, sometime after Snowflake had left the office to return the mirror frame to the library, a sprite named Jack Frost had appeared to spin the principal’s magical straw into gold. And now this sprite planned to select someone at GA that he would train in the art of gold spinning to assist him in making more.

  “Any pumpkins left?” asked a student named Goldilocks, who was next up at the catapult.

  Snowflake and the others hunted around and came up with one. As it was passed to Goldilocks, Snowflake reflected that she’d never met a sprite and didn’t really know what one looked like. She listened carefully, but her classmates hadn’t been introduced to this Jack Frost and didn’t seem to know anything about him.

  Still, his arrival was mildly interesting news. But the really good news was that no one was talking about her putting a big chill on everyone in the office yesterday! Distracted by the sprite, they must not have taken time to wonder what had happened to them or to the missing mirror frame, she decided in relief. Or maybe they had no memory of being frozen at all.

  Boing! Everyone cheered as Goldilocks catapulted her pumpkin in a high arc to land in the river with a plop! After recording her distance on her student log, she remarked, “I wonder how that sprite is going to choose who is most trainable?”

  “I heard he’s giving tests,” replied Rapunzel, the Grimm girl who’d found the magic straw in the first place.

  “Tests?” Snowflake’s ears perked up, and not in a happy way. She listened closely, wanting information that might help her avoid this test. After all, hadn’t she been tested in Principal R’s office only yesterday? She’d already shown she couldn’t spin straw into gold.

  As if he’d read her mind, Prince Foulsmell (who actually wasn’t at all stinky, thank goodness), said, “But Principal R already tested everyone. None of us could change that straw into gold.”

  Rapunzel shrugged. “I guess Jack Frost thinks his test will somehow find people that Principal R’s trials didn’t discover.”

  They began making funny guesses about what the sprite’s test would be like. “Maybe we’ll have to balance the straw on the tip of our noses and walk around the spindle three times,” suggested Foulsmell.

  “Or maybe Jack Frost will want to see who can flick that magic straw the farthest,” said Goldilocks.

  “Or he could drop it in one of our hay bales, and whoever finds it aces the test!” said Rapunzel. Soon, everyone was laughing, including Snowflake.

  “Snowflake!” Uh-oh. Coach Candlestick had noticed her laughing and goofing around and was waving her over. When she was at his side, he looked at a list on his clipboard and said, “Let’s see, you’ve been on the catapult all week, right? Let’s try something new. Are you up for masketball?”

  Snowflake wrinkled her nose and shook her head. That was a game where you wore masks and shot balls at hoops that moved around. She liked watching the game, but not playing it.

  “Okay. How about candlestick jumping?” he queried hopefully. That skill was part of his nursery rhyme, she knew, and he had a team of students that competed in the sport.

  “Jump over an open flame?” She shook her head harder. Definitely no.

  “Jousting? Swordplay? You can’t do catapulting all semester,” he informed her.

  Just then, Snowflake had an idea. “Who builds them? The catapults, I mean. Could I design a new one here in class?”

 
The coach punched a cheerful fist in the air. “Sure! I like the enthusiasm!” He looked down at his ledger and wrote two words by her name: catapult testing.

  She frowned. Testing? Well, she supposed testing was part of building a catapult, so whatever.

  She hadn’t really studied how the catapults worked before, but now she did. After a while, Rapunzel wandered over to ask what she was doing, and Snowflake explained.

  “Need any help?” Rapunzel asked eagerly.

  “That’s okay,” Snowflake replied, shaking her head. She didn’t notice when Rapunzel shot her a look of disappointment. Because Snowflake’s mind was preoccupied, and not only with catapults. For some weird reason, she couldn’t stop thinking about that cute bunny.

  All during the rest of her morning classes, she kept wondering if he would be all right on his own. She was so concerned for his welfare, in fact, that she stopped by the Bouquet Garden before lunch just to check on him.

  Luckily, Mary Mary was nowhere in sight when Snowflake returned to the Bouquet Garden. Neither was anyone else.

  “Here, bunny, bunny,” she called softly, while peeking under bushes. “You okay in there?”

  A pale pink nose poked out of some leaves. Then whiskers followed. And a mischievous face. Then the whole bunny hopped out. Snowflake sat down cross-legged in the grass, and the bunny jumped into her lap. She cuddled him. His snow-white fur was like velvet. When she tried to pet his ears, though, he twitched them away. “Okay, got it. You don’t like having your ears touched.”

  In seconds, the bunny was asleep in her lap. Snowflake had always had a soft spot for animals. She used to pet all the cats, dogs, cows, and even chickens in her village when she’d walked to and from school. And this bunny was adorable.

  Suddenly, she heard footsteps. Mary Mary was coming! Snowflake gently pushed the bunny off of her lap and shooed him back into the flower bushes again. “Quick! Hide.”

  The bunny obeyed, scampering away in the nick of time.

  Mary Mary made a sour face when she saw Snowflake rising from the grass. Or maybe that was her pleased expression. It was hard to tell the difference sometimes with this contrary girl.

  “Oh, it’s you,” Mary Mary said. “I thought I caught a glimpse of that bunny a second ago. Did you see him, too?” she asked, poking around in the bushes.

  “Um, no, I …” Snowflake began. She wasn’t going to get that cutie patootie bunny in trouble! But then … Boing! The bunny leaped from the bushes and into her arms. As Mary Mary frowned at her, probably suspecting she hadn’t been telling the truth, Snowflake set the critter down and backed away. “Um, well, I guess I’ll be heading off to lunch now.”

  She walked off through the garden. The bunny followed her. “You’ll go back to your hideout if you know what’s good for you, mister fuzzy ears,” she scolded him.

  Mary Mary hurried over and scooped the bunny up. She held the flower-chomping rascal out to Snowflake and said, “Here, take him. I don’t want him anywhere near my garden.”

  “What? No!” Snowflake backed away, shaking her head. “I can’t.”

  She didn’t dare get her heart involved with this bunny, much as she might like to. In just the few seconds she’d held that long-eared furry bundle of mischief, she’d been drawn to him. Wanted to cuddle and play with him. But how could she take care of a bunny when she had no idea what her future held? What if her powers got her kicked out of GA the same way they’d gotten her booted out of her village?

  She didn’t even have a real, permanent room to keep this bunny in right now. Plus, she knew nothing about caring for rabbits. Back in the orphanage, they’d never been allowed any kind of pet. No! She shook her head again, turning to go.

  “If you don’t take him, I’ll give him to the hunters in the forest,” singsonged Mary Mary.

  Snowflake froze in her tracks, then whipped around to stare at the girl. Whoa! That was a super-mean thing to say, even for Mary Mary. What was up with this girl? Did she really hate bunnies that much? She gazed into Mary Mary’s eyes, puzzling anew over the odd glazed look that had come into them that morning and still remained.

  “Cute bunny!” said a new voice. It was a Grimm girl with long blond hair, wearing a pink dress and glittery glass slippers. “You’re Snowflake, right?” she said as she came into the garden. “I’m Cinderella, Cinda for short.”

  Snowflake nodded in response. She’d already figured out the girl’s identity and fairy tale. Those glass slippers were a dead giveaway.

  Cinda reached out to pet the bunny Mary Mary still held. He wiggled his ears cutely. “Is he yours?” she asked Mary Mary.

  “No.” Mary Mary looked at Snowflake then, waiting for her to say something. When she didn’t speak up immediately, Mary Mary turned away with the bunny. In the direction of the woods!

  Snowflake gasped. Was that contrary girl really going to carry out her threat to deliver the bunny to some hunters? “Okay, I’ll take him,” Snowflake offered quickly. Whereupon Mary Mary stepped over to her and plopped the bunny in her arms.

  Fritzwibbles! What was she going to do with a bunny? Snowflake thought. She was sure she’d just made a huge mistake.

  “You guys can head out of my garden anytime now,” Mary Mary prompted in irritation, her glazed eyes moving between Snowflake and Cinda. “I’ve got stuff to do here before lunch. You’re keeping me from doing it.” To their surprise, she smacked a ladybug off a leaf. Surely a horticulturalist like her knew they were good for gardens? The red, spotted little bugs ate sap-sucking aphids.

  Cinda grinned at Snowflake and rolled her pretty blue eyes. “Somebody’s in a bad mood,” she murmured, but quietly so Mary Mary wouldn’t hear.

  “Yeah, a really bad mood,” agreed Snowflake. Taking the hint, though, she and Cinda headed out of the garden together and across the lawn toward the entrance to Pink Castle.

  “You’re new, right?” Cinda asked her.

  “Um … yeah,” Snowflake replied. At the same time, she glanced distractedly over her shoulder at Mary Mary. She wondered if Cinda had noticed Mary Mary’s glazed expression and thought the girl was acting weird, too. But before she could ask, Cinda spoke again.

  “So that bunny is yours?”

  Snowflake looked down at the bundle of fuzzy cuteness snuggled in her arms. Suddenly, she thought of a way to fix her pet problem before she got too attached. “Not exactly,” she told Cinda. “I’m trying to find a good home for him. Would you like a pet by any chance?”

  By now, the girls had reached the Pink Castle drawbridge and started across it. “Me? Thanks, but I can’t take him. Honestly, my glass slippers are enough like pets for me. I have to clean them, polish them, and take them out for walks regularly or they get stir-crazy.” Just then, the slippers she was wearing executed a little dance step, whirling her around. She let out a beautiful trilling laugh. “They have minds of their own sometimes!”

  Cinda’s glass slippers were her magic charm. Which meant they had special powers. Snowflake had heard that the slippers fit only her and could lead her to locate things she was searching for. Charms only worked for one particular person — the person they were intended for. Not every GA student had a charm, though. It could take years before you found your own special one, or it found you.

  “Well, do you know anyone who might want this bunny?” Snowflake asked as he wiggled his whiskers and nuzzled her neck. Aww. What a sweetie!

  “Hmm.” Cinda cocked her head as they entered the school. “Not really. Why don’t you ask around at lunch?”

  Although Snowflake had always avoided hanging out with other students, this suggestion made sense. Maybe she would find someone willing to take this little guy off her hands. She couldn’t keep him hidden for long in the library. And she couldn’t let him loose in the garden again. Mary Mary might just carry out her threat to give him to hunters.

  “Good idea,” she told Cinda.

  The two girls made their way to the majestic Great Hall at the center of the A
cademy. It was where the principal made announcements, meals were served, and fancy balls (as well as the occasional class) were held.

  When they entered the Hall, some girls waved Cinda over to their table. “I’m going to say hi to my friends. Catch up with you in line in a sec, okay?” she told Snowflake.

  “Sure.” Even in her hurry to unload the bunny on someone else, Snowflake took time to admire the architecture of the Hall as she walked onward. This was the first time she’d been in here, since she normally ate alone, foraging for food in the library. Fascinated, she studied her surroundings now while she had the chance.

  Two stories high, the Great Hall was also long and wide. Through the double rows of large arched windows on both sides of the Hall, she could see blue skies with fluffy white clouds. Birds flew in and out of the windows, sometimes swooping low to peck food crumbs from the stone floors.

  Snowflake soon turned her attention to the students around her. Many were already seated at the two long tables on opposite sides of the room. Covered with white linen tablecloths, the tables stretched from one end of the enormous Hall to the other. What was the best way of finding a worthy prospective student who would give the bunny a good home? Walking up and asking kids she’d never met if they wanted a pet might be a little awkward.

  While she was pondering what to do, she spotted a bunch of students holding silver trays up ahead in the lunch line. Prince Dragonbreath was there with a group of guys. It sure hadn’t taken him long to make friends. She headed for the line, hoping to convince someone there to take care of the bunny snuggled in her arms.

  “So which fairy tale are you from, Dragonbreath?” she heard Foulsmell ask as she came up behind the boys. Since there were so many boys whose first name was Prince around the Academy, most just went by their last names.

  “Haven’t been assigned to one yet,” Dragonbreath replied.

  “Assigned?” repeated a boy named Prince Prince. “You mean you don’t already have a fairy tale?”

  Snowflake had been wondering the same thing. Was this dragon boy tale-less like her?