Sleeping Beauty Dreams Big Page 9

  “Okay, thanks,” she told the stable boy, giving him a wobbly smile. In a daze, she left the stables and wandered out to the lawn. There, she stood and swung around in a circle, not knowing what to do. She would miss Starlight more than she could say. And without him, she had no way to get to the Wall. That cupboard door wasn’t there anymore to transport her, and the Wall was too far away to reach by foot. She felt the chance for one last great adventure slipping away.

  But then determination surged anew inside her. There were still three more days before her twelfth birthday. Somehow she’d figure out a way to end her daredevil career on a high note!

  And suddenly, a new thought came to her. Yes! It was the perfect way to prove to Cinda and the others that they were wrong about her. She’d simply go to the Grimmstone Library, get the Grimm book with her tale, and show it to them.

  She was in no mood for a riddle, but after she roamed the halls and finally found the only doorknob in the school without the GA logo, it turned into a beaky gooseknob that demanded she answer one. It was super easy this time, though, as if the knob wanted to help.

  “Which candle burns longer — a pink candle, a blue candle, or a white candle?” it asked.

  “None of them,” Rose guessed. “Candles always burn shorter.”

  Snick! Without another word, the gooseknob magically changed itself into a round brass knob. Which meant she’d guessed correctly. A huge rectangle drew itself on the wall around the knob. It formed a door that stood several feet taller than her and was decorated with low-relief carvings of nursery-rhyme characters.

  The library door swung open. Once through it, Rose rushed to Section G. And there in front of a shelf, she found Pea! She was standing there, reading the Sleeping Beauty tale in the great Books of Grimm.

  When Pea looked over at her, her eyes were filled with a new wariness. “I just read your tale and …”

  A feeling of doom crept into Rose. “Let me see that book,” she said, hurrying over to take a look at her tale for herself. To her surprise, it actually was different now.

  “It’s just like Cinda and the others said,” she murmured in horror. The words in her tale indicated that she and her family had been inexcusably rude and purposely mean to the thirteenth fairy. In fact, not only had baby Rose spit up on the thirteenth fairy at her first birthday party, she’d supposedly even reached up with her tiny hand and slapped the fairy so hard that she knocked her right out of the air!

  Rose looked up at Pea, aghast.

  “This is awful! It’s like what happened with Rumpelst — I mean with Principal R’s tale. Mine’s been changed, too, don’t you see? Rewritten!”

  Pea’s forehead furrowed. “What are you talking about?” Her expression clearly seemed to say that Rose was either crazy or trying to trick her somehow.

  “Oh, I forgot you weren’t there. But Cinda and the others can tell you. Someone changed the principal’s fairy tale, and now mine, too. Do you really not remember how my tale used to read?” she asked Pea.

  Pea shook her head, the pretty, long green vines of her hair rustling.

  “Think about it,” Rose said, desperately trying to persuade her. “I was just a baby. How could I … why would I be so mean to a grown-up fairy?”

  She looked down at the third page of her altered tale. Right before her eyes, more words appeared, added by an unseen hand: Then the bad baby Rose bit the fairy — hard enough to leave a scar — and laughed!

  “What? No way!” she said, startled. She looked up at Pea. “Did you just see what happened?”

  “I did!” said Pea, her eyes rounding in shock. “New words wrote themselves into your tale. But … how can that be?”

  Rose sighed in relief. Finally! Someone believed her. She liked Pea and the other Grimm girls who’d befriended her, and couldn’t bear for them to go on thinking of her as evil. Even if she was still planning to leave here as soon as she could.

  “Look! It’s doing it again,” said Pea.

  Rose turned the book slightly so they could both watch her tale in the process of being rewritten: Finally, the thirteenth fairy felt she had no choice. Horrible little Rose had to be puni — The rewriting stopped abruptly, but it was too late. They’d both seen.

  “Punished,” said Rose. “That’s what it was about to write.”

  “Look at the ending,” Pea said suddenly. She jabbed her finger at a place farther down the page. “The curse the fairy put on you just changed, too.”

  “Oh, no! Now it says that when I fall into a hundred-year sleep, the whole Academy will fall asleep, too!” said Rose.

  Both girls gasped.

  “How is this happening?” asked Pea.

  “Quick, do you have a pen?” Rose asked. When Pea handed one over, Rose tried using it to correct her tale in the book. But the book wouldn’t allow her to write in it. “If E.V.I.L. can change the tales, why can’t we change them back?” she wondered in frustration.

  The girls just stood there looking at each other, neither having any clue. “We’d better get to class,” said Pea at last. Then she yawned. Poor thing never seemed to get enough sleep at night in that uncomfortable bed of hers.

  Just then, Rose’s stomach growled, which reminded her she hadn’t eaten lunch. On the way out of the library, they found some snacks in the nearby F section on a shelf labeled FEAST. There was French bread, fudge, and many other F foods. Munching some fruit, Rose and Pea headed out of the library only to discover that the halls were empty of students.

  “We must be late for fourth period,” said Rose, figuring everyone else must already be in class. “I’ve kind of been dreading our Comportment class after what happened yesterday.” Reluctantly, she started for the stairs that would take them down to the second floor.

  “Wait. Maybe we don’t have to go,” said Pea. She stopped a boy who had just appeared, having entered the hall from the twisty staircase. “We’ve been in the library,” Pea told him, when he drew close enough to hear. “What period is it now?”

  “Sixth,” he said easily, continuing down the hall without missing a beat.

  Pea grinned at her. “Know what that means?”

  Rose nodded, brightening. “Time sped up. It’s sixth period!”

  “Right! We missed Comportment. And fifth period, too! Don’t worry, though. Missing classes because of library time is always an excused absence.”

  “Grimmtastic!” Rose was disappointed to have missed fifth-period Sieges class, but on the bright side, she’d also missed Comportment.

  Pea laughed at how pleased she sounded, which made her feel happy. Things seemed back to normal between them. Now that she believed Rose hadn’t turned evil.

  As they headed down the hall, Rose remembered something. Her tower task was today! Looking over at Pea, she asked, “Um, do you happen to know where I can find the three Rub-A-Dub-Dub guys from the nursery rhyme? Ms. Jabberwocky said I’m supposed to help them sixth period on Wednesdays.”

  Following the instructions Pea gave her, Rose made her way to Gray Castle, then wound downstairs till she found herself in a dungeon. She went along a hall until she saw what looked like the side of a small actual ship sticking out of the wall. Had it been wrecked on the shores of Once Upon River and simply been built into the castle’s dungeon at some point? Looked like it. A small door had been cut into the ship’s hull, and a round lifesaver-ring hung up on it. There were two words painted in red on the ring: The Tub.

  Rose knocked once, then went through the door. Inside, she immediately saw three men no taller than she, all busily working in a neat, shipshape room.

  “I’m looking for the candlemaker?” she announced, drawing their attention.

  “I’m the butcher,” said the first man, who was sharpening knives. “I’m the baker,” said the second man, who wore a tall white chef’s hat. She wondered if he supplied bread and stuff like that to Mistress Hagscorch’s kitchen in the Great Hall. But then again, maybe she baked her own?

  She went up t
o the third man, who was working over a big black pot of boiling water hanging above the flames burning in the fireplace. “Hi. You must be the candlestick-maker,” she said. “I’m Rose. My tower task is to help you on Wednesdays, sixth period.”

  The candlestick-maker looked over at her and frowned. “That’s odd. I didn’t hear anything from the office about getting a helper. What are you supposed to do?”

  “Help you make candles?” she guessed. “But I have to be honest. I’m not really all that interested in candlemaking.”

  His eyes rounded and he gasped, as if he couldn’t believe anyone wouldn’t kill to have such a fabulous job. He stared hard at her. “Well, this is a curious ball of wax. Why would you be assigned as my helper then?”

  “The tower tasks often seem ill-suited at first, but almost always turn out to fit students they’re assigned to,” the butcher reminded him, still sharpening his knives. “She looks sharp as a tack,” he added, nodding toward Rose. “I’m sure she’s cut out for the job.”

  “I’m sure you’ll catch on easy as pie,” the baker encouraged her.

  “Right. That’s what —” Rose started to mention that the other Grimm Girls had said pretty much the same thing about tasks turning out to be a good fit, but then her throat tightened. She didn’t want to think about them and how their feelings about her had changed.

  To keep herself occupied, she watched the candlestick-maker tie six strings to a paddle and dip them into the steaming pot. After about a minute, he pulled the paddle up. The strings were now each covered with a coating of wax. So that’s what was boiling in that pot, she realized. Not water. Wax.

  “These strings are candlewicks,” the candlestick-maker explained to her proudly. He was obviously totally into candlemaking. “You pull them out and allow the wax to cool between dippings.” He lifted the paddle high, so she could see the newly wax-coated wicks dangling from it. “Dipping them into wax is a little tricky because the wicks float until they eventually get weighed down by more and more coats of wax. Don’t worry. You’ll get the hang of it. Just make sure …”

  Eager to try her hand at this new skill, Rose nodded and reached for the paddle. Before he finished speaking, she dipped the wicks in the boiling wax again. Unfortunately, when she drew them back up, they had a mind of their own. The newly-coated wicks bumped into one another, instantly sticking together. Instead of six waxy wicks, the paddle now held a tangled ball of waxy string!

  “Oh, no! I’m sorry. What did I do wrong?” she said, handing the paddle over to the candlestick-maker.

  “I was going to instruct you not to let the wet candles touch each other, but you …” He looked exasperated. “Look, what did your tower task slip say exactly?”

  Rose cocked her head, thinking, then told him, “It started out with the word candles but the rest of it was cut off by some crazy scissors in the Grimmstone Library,” she admitted.

  “Well, it’s plain as steak on toast,” said the butcher, overhearing.

  “Clear as egg white on a soufflé,” agreed the baker.

  “Indeed,” said the candlestick-maker, nodding. “I think you’ve come to the wrong place. You want the coach. Out on Gray Castle lawn.”

  “You mean the one who teaches Sieges class?”

  All three men nodded. “His name is Jack,” said the butcher. “Full name Coach Candlestick.”

  “As in the nursery rhyme, ‘Jack Jumped Over the Candlestick,’ ” said the baker.

  “A jumpy fellow, that one. Hops around like his feet are on fire at the slightest sound,” added the candlestick-maker.

  A light as bright as a candle went on in Rose’s brain. “Oh! I get it,” she said at last. “Thank you!” With a wave of farewell, she dashed off, making her way upstairs and outside Gray Castle. Her tower task was to help the coach with knight stuff? Well, that was more like it!

  In minutes, she was out on the lawn. The coach was standing in front of a row of full-size, person-shaped dummies stuffed with hay, and he was lecturing a small group of armored students on knightly skills.

  “Never assume you will hit your target. Because if you miss, you might wind up swinging your sword around and striking your own backside,” he was saying.

  Awesome! Just the kind of thing she hoped to learn about. Rose stood at the edge of the group, waiting till he’d finished his talk. When the students went off to practice, she ran up to him, but he was polishing his sword and didn’t see her.

  “I’m sorry I’m late!” she announced.

  At the sound of her voice, Coach Candlestick leaped high in the air, eyes as big as Mr. Hump-Dumpty’s egg-size ones. His nursery rhyme said he jumped over candlesticks, and based on how high he’d just leaped, he must be pretty good at it, she decided.

  “Never creep up on me like that! Especially when I’m holding a sword,” he scolded. Then he eyed her. “Aren’t you in my fifth-period class?”

  Rose nodded. “Yes, sorry. I missed it today because of time speeding up while I was in the library. Then I made a mistake and went to the candlestick-maker. But I’m here now because I’m your helper. I mean you’re my tower task. I mean —”

  Coach Candlestick’s eyebrows slammed together. “Sixth period is Advanced Knight Training. And there is no room for mistakes in this class. One teeny error and …” He lunged forward, jabbing his sword blade into the nearest hay-stuffed dummy.

  “Got it. Honestly, I’m so sorry!” Rose hoped he wasn’t going to kick her out of her tower task before she even got started. She rushed to convince him. “I want to be a knight someday. So I promise, I’ll be a very dedicated helper. I’m quite agile and brave and have an excellent sense of balance. I slide down banisters and never fall. I can ride my unicorn, no-hands. I even leaped around the tops of the shelves in the library my first day at GA.”

  Unfortunately, the coach looked unimpressed. “There’s a difference between being a daredevil and being a knight,” he told her bluntly. “However, I’ll give you a chance, since you were assigned to me. So listen, watch, and do your task. And maybe someday, if you learn to focus that energy and determination of yours, you’ll be admitted to Advanced Knight Training yourself.”

  With that, he began giving her instructions on the care of the armor and weapons. It seemed her task was going to involve a lot of polishing. That was okay with her. Because he’d said she could watch and listen to the training the whole time.

  “Now we will practice sheathing and unsheathing our swords,” the coach told the students a few minutes later. Rose kept her eyes peeled and her ears open. “The number one thing to remember is: Swords are sharp. When you pull one out, you could easily slice your arm. When you go to sheathe it, you could poke yourself by accident. There is no room for error, knights!”

  The time spent at her tower task slipped by in what seemed like only one second. At the end of class, the knights-in-training all gathered in a circle and swore an oath, which she guessed they did at the end of each class.

  “We promise to be loyal and brave,” they chanted. “And to protect Grimm Academy and all of Grimmlandia against evil.”

  “I do,” she murmured solemnly to herself as their words died away. Even though she wasn’t part of the circle and wasn’t a knight-in-training … yet, Rose memorized the words they’d spoken and played them over and over in her mind.

  Coach Candlestick was right. She had already learned a ton of stuff just watching, listening, and helping. In the days to come, she might learn sword fighting, using lances in tournaments, and other knightly stuff. Things were looking up. Suddenly, she wasn’t so anxious to leave the Academy. But how could she fix things so she could stay? She had to try. Because she’d just vowed to protect it!

  At dinner in the Great Hall that evening, Pea helped Rose explain to Cinda, Red, Snow, and Rapunzel about her Sleeping Beauty tale being rewritten. And then Rose filled them all in on the trip she’d taken to the Wall via the Cupboard.

  The girls hung on her every word, and once s
he’d finished, Red set down her fork with a clank. “I wonder if Ms. Wicked was trying to get rid of you? Maybe she knew where the mirror polish was in The Cupboard. Maybe she hoped you’d go through that door so the Dastardlies could somehow get you to go over the Wall from where you could never return.”

  Rose blinked, feeling a shiver sweep her. “Think she’d really do that?” And here she’d been worried she’d failed Ms. Wicked by not bringing back any polish!

  Snow groaned, rolling her eyes. “You don’t know my stepmom very well yet. But believe me, she is grimmbarrassingly mega-evil.”

  The six of them all looked at one another, eyes wide with worry. Pea reluctantly said her farewells and headed off just then, saying that she’d offered to help a girl named Mary Mary Quite Contrary with the pea patch in the Academy garden before it got dark. Rose promised to fill her in on the rest of their discussion later in their room.

  As the bluebirds flew down to pick up their trays, Rapunzel said, “This situation is getting out of control. We’ve got to do something. Fast.”

  “But what?” asked Cinda.

  “I think we need help,” Rose told the girls as they all stood to go. “Who do you guys trust most around here? Grown-up-wise, I mean.”

  “Not my stepmom, that’s for sure,” Snow put in, grabbing her sparkly blue school bag from the bench beside her before they left the table and exited the Great Hall.

  “Or Malorette and Odette,” added Cinda. “My stepsisters,” she added for Rose’s information. “They go here, and we know for sure they’re members of E.V.I.L.”

  “Thing is, it’s hard to know just who we can trust,” said Red.

  “We could tell Principal R at least,” said Rose. “He’s not in the E.V.I.L. Society, is he?”

  Rapunzel shook her head, her long, loose braids swaying with the motion. “Well, we’re pretty sure he’s not.”