If the Magic Fits (100 Dresses, Band 1) - Softcover

Schmid, Susan Maupin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 055353369X ISBN 13: 9780553533699

Verlag: Yearling, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

Try on a little magic with this lighthearted fantasy adventure! For fans of the Land of Stories and Descendants series.
 
Inside an enchanted castle, there’s a closet—a closet with one hundred dresses that nobody ever wears. Dresses like those need a good trying-on, and Darling Dimple is just the girl to do it. When she tries on Dress Number Eleven, something unbelievable happens. She transforms into the castle’s Head Scrubber! It turns out that each dress can disguise her as someone else. And Darling is about to have an adventure that calls for a disguise or two . . . or a hundred.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Susan Maupin Schmid writes in a little blue office in Iowa. She has a particular weakness for good coffee, good books, and beautiful dresses. Her closet doesn’t contain a hundred dresses—yet—but someday it will. Susan is also the author of Ghost of a Chance, the second book in the 100 Dresses series, and Lost Time, a middle-grade science-fiction adventure. To find out more, visit SusanMaupinSchmid.com and follow her on Twitter at @maupinschmid.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

 

 

I wasn’t born in a tower or in a golden chamber. I wasn’t born a princess or even a lady. But I was born in a castle built by dragons. Not that you would think so to look at it. Perched on the side of a mountain, the castle blazed like a diamond in the sun—majestic, but ordinary as castles go. You wouldn’t suspect that it had anything to do with dragons. Or magic. But it did.

 

My mother was an Under-chopper, working beside the Under-slicer in the castle kitchens, when she had me. My father was a sailor who’d been lost at sea. My grief-stricken mother spent her days chopping vegetables and sobbing. The day I was born, she kissed me good-bye, curled up her toes, and died. The Under-slicer, Jane, plucked me from my departed mother’s side. She squinted nearsightedly at my wrinkled red face.

 

“What a Darling Dimple!” she exclaimed.

 

I’m told I screamed at this pronouncement, but it did me no good. The name stuck. Everyone from the Head Steward down to the Stable Boys called me Darling Dimple. Never mind that I didn’t have a dimple. Nor was I particularly darling. My hair flew around like the white fluff of a dandelion. My skin was pasty, my nose stubby. My eyes were the color of water, which is to say they had no color whatsoever. Some folks said they were gray, some blue, some green. Roger, the Second Stable Boy, said they were yellow. But he didn’t know anything.

 

For all her nearsightedness, Jane taught me to read, write, count, and wield a whetstone. She had a soft spot for me the size of a plum pie. When I was small, I followed her around the kitchens. I’d hold a corner of her apron in one fist and a wooden spoon in the other. Just in case one of the cooks had a sudden need for a taster. As I grew older, I helped her: fetching vegetables from the bins, keeping count (if the Soup Chef said twelve onions, he meant twelve), and sanding the chopping block. At the end of the day, when every knife was sharpened, Jane took me upstairs to sit at the paws of one of the great bronze lions guarding the lower gardens. We gazed at the stars with the other Under-servants, dreaming of far away until it was time for bed. We slept in a room tucked under the kitchens where the air carried a hint of cinnamon and spice. But all that changed.

 

When I was ten and Jane’s eyesight had dwindled to the near end of her nose, she accidentally cut off the tip of her finger. The Head Cook retired Jane from his service. The Head Steward gave her a new position with the Pickers, who gathered flowers from the gardens and arranged them in great bouquets for the Princess’s tables. Jane was happy in the flower-scented sunshine. But I was too old to follow Jane around the gardens.

 

The Head Steward called me to his office. I stood quaking before his broad, polished desk. He sat ramrod-straight, drumming his desk with a pencil, his crimson uniform dripping with cords and tassels.

 

“Well, well,” he rumbled, “what shall we do with you?” Dark eyes studied me from under bushy eyebrows.

 

I gulped. I couldn’t very well say that I wanted to do something big, something important. Something grand. A grand job would be exciting, an adventure. Ten-year-olds weren’t offered grand jobs.

 

“Yes? Speak up.” His pencil beat the polished wood.

 

I caught my reflection in the surface. Some poor Under-duster spent hours slaving away with a rag and lemon oil to produce that sheen. I rubbed my elbow in sympathetic pain. I did not want to be an Under-duster—or an Upper-duster, for that matter. Dust was dust wherever it might be.

 

The Head Steward rustled through a stack of papers, then pulled one out, clearing his throat.

 

“I could do Jane’s job,” I blurted out. I imagined myself surrounded by the savory smells of roasting meat, simmering spices, and baking bread, happily slicing carrots for the casserole. It wasn’t exactly grand, but it wasn’t dusting either.

 

“Under-slicer, sir,” I added, in case he needed reminding.

 

He blew his great bushy mustache out with a snort. “Under-slicer! Under-slicer, indeed.” He wagged his pencil at my nose. “You’re too young for such a lofty position as Under-slicer.”

 

“I—I was a b-big help to J-Jane,” I protested, my vision of bubbling stews evaporating.

 

“You—girl—have to work your way up from the bottom just like everybody else.”

 

I repressed a groan—by bottom he meant the under-cellar. It was dark in the under-cellar. The Head Steward scribbled a note on a piece of paper. “Take this to the Head Scrubber,” he ordered.

 

I bobbed a hasty curtsy and trudged off, holding my note like a soiled rag. The Head Scrubber, or the Supreme Scrubstress, as those in the under-cellar called her, was famous for her lack of imagination, and she was my new boss. Scrubbing was the lowest job in the castle—and the least exciting.

 

The Supreme Scrubstress gave me a cot in a corner with a hook for my apron and a small wooden crate stamped artichokes, where I could keep my treasures. Had I any. Which I didn’t. So began my life in the under-cellar. The cellar was packed with barrels, stacked with crates, lined with racks of wine bottles, and stuffed with sacks of potatoes. There was enough to feed everyone who lived in the castle, both the court upstairs and the servants below. Under all that, down a rickety wooden stair, was the under-cellar, a place of oil lamps, cobwebs, fires burning in great hearths, and vats of steaming water for scrubbing. Pots and pans went to one side and laundry went to the other.

 

I worked on the pots side in a steamy, soap-bubbly nook. Lye, soot, and ash stung my nose, like notes in a strong perfume. Warmth from the steaming water colored my cheeks a rosy hue and curled my wispy hair. My fingers wrinkled like prunes. Even though I wore my apron and rolled up my sleeves, I was wet most of the time. Droplets condensed out of the steam onto my hair. Splashes from my vigorous scrubbing dotted my skirt. It had to be vigorous—the scrubbing—because the Supreme Scrubstress was apt to patter up behind one on tiptoe, brandish her monstrous wooden-handled sponge, and swat an unsuspecting Scrubber on the behind to emphasize the sort of vigor she required. Her swats packed a wallop.

 

“Dar-LING!” she called in her shrill voice. Hair from her unraveling bun writhed around her face like tiny snakes. Her second chin wagged with her outrage; the rolls around her middle jiggled with her displeasure. “Stop daydreaming and put some muscle into it!”

 

I’d bob my head and say, “Yes, ma’am. I’ll scrub harder, ma’am.” There was no point in arguing with her. Simply put, nothing less than well-applied elbow grease would dent the baked-on residue in the pots and pans. The sooner I worked my way through my share of pots, the sooner I could escape to the cool of the night air and indulge in a daydream or two.

 

I was lucky that I got to scrub pots—the cooks sent the pots down as soon as the food was ladled into the serving bowls and platters. I was skip-happy free once I’d hung up my apron. The poor dishwashers had to stay up until everyone had eaten and then wash their way through towering stacks of dishes, bowls, cups, and platters.

 

The first blaze of green spread over the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Yearling
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 055353369X
• ISBN 13: 9780553533699
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: eucomply OÜ; hello@eucompliancepartner.com; ; Pärnu mnt 139b-14; Tallinn; 11317; Estland