3

The Cheesemonger’s Secret

OBSERVANT READER, HAVE you ever beheld through the round window of an industrial washing machine the cataclysm of its spin cycle? Anastasia had, and she felt like a sweater churning through the belly of a particularly zesty washer as the world around her kaleidoscoped with scarves and boots and snow as they all went cartwheeling helter-skelter from the basket and down to the ground below.

“We’ve landed,” Penny groaned. “Are you all right?”

“I broke the Japanese screen.” Anastasia pulled her head from the smashed panel that had, not one minute before, been a lovely scene of a stork wading through a lily pond. “But I’m okay. Just dizzy.” Her stomach lurched as she staggered to her feet, and she wondered where the HMB Flying Fox Official Vomit Receptacle might be. She could dimly discern the basket smashed in the snow several yards away.

“Does anyone know where the compass is?” Penny asked.

“The balloon’s over there,” Baldwin piped up from a nearby snowdrift. Penny waded to the wreck of wicker splinters and began digging through the snow with the intensity of a squirrel seeking its favorite nut.

“Ruff! Ruff!”

“Baldy, is that you?” Anastasia asked.

“No,” he said, “but I hear it, too.”

Fear surged through Anastasia. As an aspiring detective-veterinarian-artist, she normally loved all beasts of the animal kingdom. However, as the old saying goes, Once bitten, twice shy, and while Prim and Prude’s vicious poodle platoon hadn’t actually managed to chomp Anastasia, they had tried. She hugged herself, shivering. “Do you think it’s a guard dog?”

The barking grew louder.

“What if it’s a poodle?” Baldwin quavered, wallowing through the snow to Anastasia’s side. “You know I’m poodleophobic.”

“That’s not a poodle!” Penny leapt up. “Würfel! Würfel!”

“Fur…full?” Anastasia asked.

“No. Würfel. He’s—”

Before Penny could properly reply, a shaggy torpedo of doggy smell knocked Anastasia back to the ground. Something wet and warm rasped against her cheek. She opened her eyes just in time to observe a large glob of slobber splash down to her chin from the grinning jaws of an enormous Saint Bernard. A small barrel with a faucet was riveted to his collar.

“Würfel!” Penny danced a jig of delight.

“You know this dog?” Anastasia croaked as Würfel slopped her face with another canine smooch.

“Indeed we do!” Baldwin said. “Ah, Würfel, you’re wearing your barrel. Fine fellow!” He patted Würfel’s fluffy pate. “Man’s best friend. Penny,” he called, “be a dear and find the brandy snifters, won’t you?”

Würfel bounded out of sight into the whirling snowflakes, announcing the felled balloonists’ arrival with a volley of barks.

Anastasia wiped her face with the back of her mitten. “Do I have any freckles left?”

Baldwin stooped and peered solemnly at her cheeks. “Yes. Quite a few.”

“Look!” Anastasia pointed at a golden glow bobbing toward them.

“That must be Rolf,” Penny said.

“Who’s Rolf?”

“A Morfolk farmer,” Baldwin said. “He and Penny have been friends for ages. We were supposed to land in his field, and it appears that we have. What fabulous navigation!”

The light brightened until they could see the silhouette of a man approaching through the bumbling snowflakes, Würfel trotting by his side. “Penelope? Baldwin?”

“Rolf! Guten Tag!” Penny yelled, staggering over to him.

“Guten what?” Anastasia echoed.

“She’s speaking German,” Baldwin chuckled. “We’ve landed in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, girl. A nip of brandy to celebrate!” He plucked Anastasia’s cocoa mug from a nearby cushion of snow. “Yoo-hoo! Würfel! Here, boy!”

Penny finished explaining something to Rolf in German and then beamed over at Anastasia. “This,” she said, “is our niece.”

“Anastasia!” A smile twitched Rolf’s blond beard. “Guten Tag, little one! It’s an honor to meet you. An honor!”

“Thanks,” Anastasia said. “It’s an—um—honor to meet you, too.”

“Want a sip, Penny?” Baldwin asked, pushing the mug beneath Würfel’s barrel and twisting the nozzle. “Lovely stuff, brandy. Warms the entrails.”

“My entrails are just fine, thank you,” Penny sniffed.

“I wouldn’t have found you if it weren’t for Würfel,” Rolf said. “The visibility is awful.”

“Do you think we can still snowshoe to the village?” Penny asked.

“Not a chance,” Rolf replied. “The drifts are already too high. It’s supposed to storm like this for days—you should probably stay at my house until it clears up. And,” he added, grinning at Penny, “I have a delicious fondue planned for dinner—enough cheese for an army of mice!”

“Fondue?” Penny nibbled her lower lip. “Oh dear. That is tempting…but Wiggy is waiting for us, and she’ll worry if we don’t show up. Isn’t there some other way into town? I thought you had a dogsled in your barn.”

“You’d be welcome to it, except all my huskies are down with a flu,” Rolf apologized. “I’ve got them tucked into bed right now, poor fellows. And Würfel never pulls the sled. Arthritis.”

“A dogsled, you say?” Slugging back the last of his brandy, Baldwin lurched through the drifts to hunker on the opposite side of the mangled Japanese screen. His hat whizzed over the top. Then his scarf sailed over, and next his jacket and snowsuit and sweater and pants and even—Anastasia gasped—a pair of red long johns.

“Baldwin, what are you doing?” Penny protested. “You’ll freeze to death!”

“Naooot at aoool!” Baldwin howled, galloping from behind the screen. But he was no longer a strapping six-foot-tall specimen of manly manhood; he was, as you have perhaps already guessed, in the form of a big ginger wolf. Würfel grumbled and charged, and he and Baldwin somersaulted through the snow, yodeling and yelping and catching snowflakes on their long pink tongues. It looked like a lot of fun. Anastasia’s heart pattered with new, strange stirrings of hope that she, too, one day would metamorphose into a wolf.

“Genius!” Penny said. She collected Baldwin’s clothes (minus the long johns) and shoved them into a suitcase. “Let’s get you harnessed up, Baldy. Anastasia, do you have everything?”

Anastasia squinted. Spotting the strap of her satchel, she yanked it from a snowdrift and slung it over her shoulder. “Yep.”

“My barn’s this way.” Rolf lifted his lantern and turned to trudge back whence he came. They tramped after him. Well, to be accurate, Anastasia and Penny slogged behind Rolf, and Baldwin and Würfel loped and leapt in joyous doggy fashion. Within a few minutes the shadowy blur of a barn appeared through the flurrying flakes.

“Beware of cow pies,” Penny warned Anastasia as they struggled through the door into a musty shed smelling of hay and animals and manure. A few cows eyeballed them grumpily as Penny and Rolf dragged a dogsled from a nearby stall.

“Moo,” Anastasia said.

The cows stared at her, steam puffing from their damp nostrils.

Soon Anastasia and Penny were swaddled in heavy blankets, huddled together in the dogsled as Rolf adjusted a harness around Baldwin’s furry torso. Anastasia trembled and edged closer to her aunt. Her hands and feet were numb, and she still felt a little wobbly from the balloon’s crash landing.

“There.” Rolf snugged a leather strap through the final buckle. The bells on the harness jangled softly. “Just leave the sled once you get there,” he said, swinging the barn door open. “I’ll go fetch it after the storm.” He held out the lantern, and Baldwin grasped its handle between his wolfy jaws.

“Thanks ever so much, Rolf,” Penny said. “We’ll have to meet for a game of Scrabble soon. I still remember your triumph of ’97. Quirked. Twenty-one points.”

“That was a good word.” Rolf chuckled. “And I have some others up my sleeve. I’ll get you with zincify next time.”

“I’ll zincify you.” Penny tugged the pompon on Rolf’s long knit hat. “All right, we’re off! Auf Wiedersehen!”

Baldwin galloped forth, the lantern swinging from his muzzle.

“Bye, Würfel!” Anastasia called.

Würfel’s barks chased them into the snow and darkness until they grew fainter and fainter and finally petered out completely.

“The village isn’t far,” Penny said. “Perhaps fifteen minutes. Thank goodness our destination is on the tippy edge of town. I doubt many Dinkledorfers will be out in this storm, but we wouldn’t want anyone to see us arrive in a wolf-drawn sleigh.”

Snowflakes blurred the outlines of pine trees. Anastasia’s head lolled. She closed her eyes and listened to the chiming sleigh bells: jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle…

“Wake up, dear,” Penny murmured. “We’re here.”

“I think my eyelashes froze together.” Anastasia blinked. A narrow cottage appeared through the snow, nestled amongst the pines. Wooden lace trimmed its snowcapped roof, and white Christmas lights twinkled around its frosted windows. It looked just like an oversized gingerbread house. It looked, Anastasia thought, just as a grandmother’s house should look: snug and sweet and straight out of a storybook.

Penny hopped from the sleigh and tromped to Baldwin’s side, peeling off her mittens and setting to the task of unfastening the harness. “Anastasia, dear, can you grab the suitcase?”

Leaving the sled cached in the pine grove of shadow and snow, the trio galumphed through the drifts to the gingerbread-y chalet. Wolfy paws whirling, Baldwin scrabbled a path up the steps to the front door. Penny produced a key from her pocket and coaxed the lock open. “In you go.”

The floorboards creaked beneath Anastasia’s galoshes. Baldwin padded in behind her, nudging the lantern into her hand. She held it aloft, illuminating the darkened cabin.

Cheese! Slabs of cheese the size of dictionaries! Cheese wheels large as tractor tires! Lumps of luminous white cheese glowing beneath the curved lid of a glass case! Cheese stacked from the wooden countertops to the rafters; cheese crammed in every nook and cranny! Beauteous, splendiferous, magnificent cheese!

“Ahhh!” Penny gazed about with all the awe of Aladdin beholding a treasure trove. “Heaven!”

Anastasia crinkled her brow. “This is Grandma Wiggy’s house? Is she a sometime-mouse, too?”

“No, dear.” Penny smiled. “Didn’t you see the sign out front?…Oh, it must have been iced over. This is Die Munter Maus.”

“Dee…what?”

“The Merry Mouse. It’s a cheese shop.”

“Dinkledo-oo-owoorf is kno-ooown for three things,” Baldwin said. “S’moo-oo-res. Snoowoo globes. And cheese.”

“This cheese is some of the finest in the world.” Penny stroked a nearby wheel as though it were a beloved pet Persian. “See this, Anastasia? Merry Mouse Gruyère. Oh, it’s delicious! I would trade all the cheddar in Mooselick for a gram of Merry Mouse. The milk comes fresh from Rolf’s cows, you know.”

“Does Rolf own this shop?”

Penny shook her head. “No. The Dinkles do. They’re a family of master cheesemongers. In fact, Dinkledorf is named after them! This store was founded in the eighteenth century by Klaus Dinkle, history’s greatest cheesemonger.” Penny’s cheeks, already pink with cold, turned even pinker. “He used to send me boxes of lovely cheese balls. So delicious! And he was such a good dancer. Oh, how that man could clog-stomp. Better than anyone for miles.”

“But, Aunt Penny…,” Anastasia puzzled. “If Klaus Dinkle lived three hundred years ago, how could he have sent you cheese balls?”

“Morfolk live long lives,” Penny said. “Most of us live centuries.”

Anastasia goggled. “How old are you?”

“Two hundred and seventy-six.”

“Crumbs! You’re ancient!”

“Your father is even older than me, dear,” Penny chuckled. “By four years.”

“I’m the baby oow-oof the family,” Baldwin piped up, padding behind an enormous barrel brimming with cheese balls. “I’m awooonly two hundred and seventy-three. Penny, I’ll take my clo-oothes now.”

Penny fished his gear from her suitcase and tossed it to him.

“Avert yoo-oour eyes, ladies.”

“One of the—er—trickier aspects of metamorphosing is that your clothing doesn’t change with you,” Penny explained.

“I had high hopes with the invention of spandex,” Baldwin called. “I thought maybe a Morfolk tailor could design a suit that would fit both my human and wolf forms. But we conceded defeat after I ripped through five prototypes.” He eased from behind the wooden cask, fully dressed. “Hmm. Maybe we should take a cheese ball for the road.”

“When you say human form,” Anastasia said slowly, “do you mean you’re not a human?”

Penny hesitated. “We do have many human qualities…but no, we’re not exactly human.”

“I guess you couldn’t be,” Anastasia pondered. “Not if you live for hundreds of years!”

Penny sighed. “I’m sure it must seem very strange to you, Anastasia, but all creatures have different life spans. Butterflies only live a few weeks, and tortoises can live over a century.”

“How long will I live?” Anastasia asked.

There was another uncomfortable pause.

“We don’t really know,” Penny finally answered, squeezing Anastasia’s shoulder. “You’re the only half Morfo we’ve met.”

“The most important thing about life,” Baldwin said softly, “is the quality, not the quantity.”

Penny nodded. “In that respect, life is very like cheese.” She patted one of Anastasia’s braids. “Now come with me, dear. We have something interesting to show you.” She weaved through the cramped aisles to a little door at the back of the shop. She opened the door and started down a staircase, and Anastasia and Baldwin followed her to a long room with a rocky ceiling and rocky walls. Wooden racks lined this cellar, their shelves sagging beneath great hulking wheels of cheese.

“Is this—a cave?” Anastasia cricked her neck to peer around the peculiar bunker.

“Indeed it is!” Penny said. “A cheese cave.”

“Cheese needs to ripen and age,” Baldwin said. “And this cave is chock-full of splendid minerals and bacteria just right for flavoring the cheese.”

“And it’s just the right temperature,” Penny said.

“It’s cold,” Anastasia chattered.

“People have been cave-aging cheese for thousands of years,” Penny thrilled.

“Switzerland is laced with these wonderful caves,” Baldwin said. “These hills and mountains are just like Swiss cheese: full of holes.”

“That’s interesting,” Anastasia said politely. “But why are we here, exactly? Are we getting a snack before going to Wiggy’s?”

Baldwin’s eyes twinkled. “There’s more in these caves than cheese, my dear girl. See this rack?”

“Ye-es,” Anastasia said.

“It looks just like all the other racks in this cellar, doesn’t it? But it’s different. It’s more than just a rack of cheese.” He pushed on the second and third shelves, and the entire case shifted inward an inch or so. Then he released his hands, and the case pivoted to reveal a fissure in the cave wall. “It’s also a secret door.”

The secret door was more of a hole, really. It was rather like an enormous mouse hole. However, for Anastasia, an aspiring detective-veterinarian-artist, the curious cranny triggered all sorts of snoopy gumshoe instincts. She knew from reading Francie Dewdrop mysteries that hidden portals opened onto mysterious and magical places. In The Case of the Buccaneer’s Cipher, for example, Francie discovered an intriguing hallway behind a bookcase, and that hallway led to a chamber full of stolen Aztec gold.

“Take a look,” Baldwin said.

Anastasia crouched to poke the lantern closer, letting its pale lamplight spill out onto a spiral of stone steps.

“Where does this go?” she breathed.

“That,” Baldwin said, “is the way to Grandmother’s house.”