The room Ava had stepped into seemed like it belonged in another shop entirely. Right in the centre there was a small gold spiral staircase that led both upwards and downwards. Another door – which was closed – looked like it led even further back inside the shop, and in one corner there was a small changing cubicle with a gold sparkly curtain pulled across the front.
The walls were beautifully painted with scenes from fairytales – Rapunzel in her white tower with her long gold plait hanging down, a red-lipped Sleeping Beauty lying on a massive four-poster bed, waiting for her prince to come and wake her up, and Prince Charming on a white horse holding a glass slipper on his way to find Cinderella.
Along one wall was a rail filled with exquisite-looking full-length dresses of every fabric, colour and design imaginable. Ava couldn’t help staring at them in awe because each one looked fit for a princess to wear. A second wall had shelves from floor to ceiling, each shelf holding a different piece of fairytale costume. The top shelf had velvet hats trimmed with fur and cone-shaped hats with fancy ribbons or flowing scarves attached to the peaks. The shelf below had beautiful bonnets and pretty straw hats trimmed with ribbon. The next shelf down was stacked with different gold, bejewelled crowns and tiaras. Then came a shelf filled with brightly coloured scarves and another piled high with pairs of gloves – black lacy ones, long white ones and colourful silk ones. The two bottom shelves contained nothing but footwear. There were brightly coloured dancing shoes decorated at the front with bows or silk flowers or miniature fans, soft slippers with embroidery around the edge, little pointy-toed ankle boots made of shiny red leather, knee-length boots with fur trimming round the top, rainbow-coloured sandals that had little jewels set into the straps, and there was even a pair of solid gold flip-flops (which didn’t look very floppy!).
Ava’s gaze fell on Marietta, who was crawling on her hands and knees on the floor searching under the skirts of all the dresses, calling, ‘Here, kitty!’
‘Her name’s Cindy,’ Ava said, squatting down to help look. ‘Are you sure she’s in this room?’
‘This was the last place I saw her, but I suppose she could have taken herself off into one of the other rooms by now.’
‘How many other rooms have you got?’ Ava asked in surprise, since the shop really didn’t look all that big.
‘Oh – I’ve lost count,’ Marietta replied vaguely. ‘It’s a bit like a Tardis, this shop – much bigger on the inside than it seems from the outside.’ She gave a strange sort of smile. ‘Now . . . where can your little cat have gone? I haven’t had any of the doors or windows open so she can’t have escaped that way. Of course she might be hiding because she’s trying to catch a mouse. There are an awful lot of mice in this building.’
Ava looked quickly around the floor, remembering what her mother had told her when she’d once asked how you could tell if a house had mice. ‘I don’t see any droppings anywhere,’ she pointed out.
‘Oh, the mice wouldn’t come in here! This is my fairytale room – they’d be afraid they might get turned into white horses or something!’ When Ava looked puzzled she added, ‘You know – like in the story of Cinderella where the fairy godmother turns the pumpkin into a golden carriage and the mice into four white horses.’
Ava didn’t know what to say to that, until Marietta smiled to show she had been joking. Ava smiled too then and said, ‘It’s an amazing shop. Where did you get all these beautiful clothes?’
‘Oh, different places.’ Marietta got to her feet and started to pull out some of the dresses to show Ava. ‘I made these ones,’ she said, showing Ava two dresses that were identical apart from one being pink and the other blue. They both had fitted bodices with high waists and long full skirts with underskirts beneath, and wide sleeves trimmed with gold braid at the cuffs.
‘You must be very clever,’ Ava said. ‘My mum can’t sew to save her life, and she says she really envies people who can.’
‘I use a special type of thread,’ Marietta said. ‘That helps a lot.’
‘Really?’ Ava waited to see if she was going to elaborate, but Marietta seemed to be finished with her explanation.
‘Even my Barbie doll hasn’t got dresses as beautiful as these,’ Ava said as a particularly stunning gold dress with gold beads sewn into the skirt caught her eye. ‘And she’s a Barbie princess, so her clothes are really gorgeous!’
Marietta laughed.
Ava was just going to ask her who actually bought these dresses when they heard a faint miaow coming from above their heads.
‘Cindy!’ Ava gasped.
‘Come on,’ Marietta instructed, leading the way up the gold spiral staircase. ‘She must have gone up to my fairytale-wedding section.’
‘Fairytale wedding?’ Ava queried.
‘Yes. You aren’t planning to be a bridesmaid any time soon, are you? If so then I’ve got just the right dress for you.’
Ava shook her head. ‘I’ve never been to a wedding,’ she said. ‘Except my mum and dad’s, but that was when I was a baby so I don’t remember it. Mum says it was just a small wedding, which was just as well because they split up a year later.’
Marietta paused on her way up the stairs. ‘It is very sad that your parents split up so soon. Do you still see both of them?’
‘I live with my mum,’ Ava explained, ‘and I don’t see Dad that often usually, but Mum’s just gone away and left me with him for the whole of the school holidays.’ She paused and added in a quieter voice, ‘This will be the longest time Mum and I have ever been apart.’
‘Are you missing her?’ Marietta asked sympathetically.
Ava nodded, biting her lip.
‘But now you and your father have the opportunity to get to know each other better,’ Marietta continued brightly. ‘That’s a good thing, isn’t it?’
‘Maybe,’ Ava said. Something about Marietta made Ava want to tell her more, and for a few seconds she totally forgot Cindy as she gushed, ‘Though I’m not sure he wants to get to know me better. Mum’s tried to arrange for me to stay with him for longer before, but he’s always been too busy. He spends half his time going off on long expeditions to places where he can do research for his books, and the rest of his time writing the books. Only I don’t reckon any of them can be any good, because none of them are ever for sale in the shops whenever I go with Mum to have a look.’
Marietta looked thoughtful. ‘What about you, Ava? Would you like to get to know him better?’
Ava frowned, thinking about her father, who always seemed so different from her friends’ dads, and much more distant.
‘Well . . . yes . . .’ she admitted. ‘The problem is, I’m just not sure how.’
‘Oh, you’ll find a way – don’t worry about that,’ Marietta said, smiling at Ava before continuing up the spiral stairs to the room above. ‘Oh, gosh,’ she blurted as she reached the top.
‘Wow!’ Ava gasped.
There were even more beautiful dresses in this room than there had been in the one below, but what really shocked Ava was the strange golden light bathing the room. It was as if a multitude of sunbeams were coming in from all different directions.
‘What is it?’ Ava whispered.
‘It’s a . . . well . . . a . . . a thing that happens here sometimes,’ Marietta murmured, ‘but I don’t know how it can have –’ She suddenly broke off as she noticed that one of the dresses on a nearby rack had slipped from its hanger on to the floor. She bent down to pick up the dress, which was a child-sized emerald-and-gold-coloured bridesmaid’s dress with a pretty beaded bodice and a full skirt decorated with big floppy gold bows. ‘Look. One of the bows has been pulled off,’ she said, pointing at a piece of loose gold thread on the skirt.
‘Cindy is always playing with ribbons and bits of string and things like that,’ Ava said excitedly. ‘And those bows are quite dangly, aren’t they?’ Forgetting all about the strange golden light, which was fading now anyway, she started to look around the room for her cat.
Over by the window she saw a work-table with a sewing machine on it, and she went across to see if Cindy might be hiding underneath. There was no sign of Cindy, but lying open next to the sewing machine was a rectangular music box. It was very like a music box Ava had at home except that the little plastic figure that twirled round inside hers was a ballerina, whereas this one was a fairytale princess. Hanging up on a stand next to the table was a not-quite-finished, absolutely-to-die-for raspberry-coloured princess’s dress with tiny rosebuds sewn on to it, that looked like it was meant for Cinderella herself.
‘I’m trying to make a dress exactly like the princess’s on that music box,’ Marietta explained. ‘What do you think?’
‘It’s beautiful,’ Ava murmured, briefly touching the dress, which was made of the softest, silkiest material she’d ever encountered.
She went back to searching for Cindy, but after several minutes Marietta gently interrupted her.
‘Ava, I don’t think she’s here any more,’ she said, still holding the dress that the bow had been torn from.
‘But she must be. We just heard her miaow, and I’m sure she pulled the bow off that dress!’
‘I know. I can’t find that bow and I think it might have got caught in one of her claws, in which case it could be said that she’s now wearing it.’
Ava frowned. ‘So?’
‘Well, the dresses in my shop aren’t the same as other dresses. Like I said before, they are made with very special thread – magic thread in actual fact.’
Ava gaped at her, wondering if she had heard correctly.
‘I know it must sound strange, but you see, the clothes in my shop give a certain magic power to certain people . . . and I’m guessing certain animals . . . who put them on,’ Marietta continued solemnly.
Ava felt unexpectedly giggly. Marietta had a weird sense of humour – that was for sure. ‘Do they make the people and animals invisible?’ she joked. ‘Like a magic cloak.’
‘No, no . . . not invisible,’ Marietta replied, completely serious. ‘If worn by the right person – a gifted sort of person, you understand – it can allow that person to . . . well . . . travel in rather an unusual manner. I’ve never seen an animal do it before, but I’ve heard that most cats – being such free spirits – are in possession of the gift too.’
Ava suddenly saw that Marietta wasn’t joking. ‘Look, I just want to find my cat,’ she blurted, taking a couple of nervous steps backwards. ‘If she’s not here any more, then where is she?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you! You saw how the room was bathed in golden light just now. Well, that was due to a magic portal opening up.’
‘Magic portal?’ Ava stared in amazement at Marietta because only that morning she had found some books on magic in her dad’s bookcase. She had opened up one of them and found a whole chapter on magic portals. According to the book, a magic portal was a kind of invisible magic gateway that linked two parallel worlds – or two different time periods within the same world. She had found it strange that her dad owned such books, but she hadn’t yet had a chance to ask him about them.
‘That’s right,’ Marietta was continuing calmly. ‘I know it sounds hard to believe, but many of the mirrors in my shop are magic portals. To be able to travel through one of them, a person who is able to travel – and very few of us are, Ava – has simply to look at his or her reflection in the correct mirror – the mirror that is the right one for the dress they have on – and the magic reaction will begin. To stop the magic, you simply have to turn away from the mirror . . . it’s quite within your control so there’s nothing to worry about . . . but of course if you don’t want to stop it, you must keep looking until the light gets so bright that it forces you to close your eyes. Then you will be transported through the portal.’
‘But . . . but . . . that’s just . . . it’s . . . ridiculous!’ Ava burst out.
Marietta shook her head, saying gently, ‘I promise you, it’s true, Ava. It must have been pure chance that made Cindy look at her reflection in the right mirror while she had the bow from this magic dress caught in her claw. And if you change into this dress, you’ll be able to follow her.’
‘Follow her?’ Ava practically choked on the words as she found herself noticing for the first time just how many mirrors there were in this room. As well as several full-length ones, there were about a dozen different wall mirrors – round ones, square ones, oblong ones, oval ones and even a hexagonal one. They were all different sizes and styles, some having antique frames while others looked more modern. And they were all gleaming at her invitingly.
‘Yes,’ Marietta said encouragingly, ‘though there is just one thing that might be a problem. You see, the very first time a person travels, they have to choose the correct mirror for themselves or the reaction will not happen. It’s a way of ensuring a person is truly ready, I suppose. I was ready when I was six years old – but for less . . . shall we say . . . less sensitive individuals . . . it can take much longer.’ She smiled. ‘I have a strong feeling that you are ready, Ava, but there’s only one way to know for sure. You must put on this dress and then – with no help from me – you must try and choose the right mirror. If you are successful you can then travel through the magic portal to the place where your cat has gone.’
Ava felt as if her head was starting to spin. ‘Stop it! You’re scaring me!’ she blurted. And without waiting for a response, she turned and fled down the spiral staircase, through the fairytale room and back through the beaded curtain into the front part of the shop.
For one awful, terrifying moment the front door didn’t budge when she tried the handle, but then she tugged harder and it did. Half stepping, half falling out into the street, she slammed the door shut behind her. And she didn’t look round as she ran as fast as she could back to her dad’s.