“Say whaaaa?” Mena’s mind was doing somersaults and her friends looked equally baffled.

Ashlan turned up her nose in her snooty manner, her smile only mystifying them more. She held out a page torn out of the Dularectory. There was a blacked-out portrait next to a name scrawled in what-appeared-to-be magic ink. “Maggie McGill?” Mena read aloud.

“The one who penned the book that houses the Unwritten Kingdom, Rainy,” Ashlan said like it was common knowledge, “And quite a reclusive writer at that. Notice how the ink is trained to avert the eyes of anyone who reads it?”

When Mena tried to read it, everything but the name blotted out. Remembering how rude Ashlan was over the last week or so, suddenly Mena’s confusion suddenly changed to anger. “What does this have to do with you, Ashlan?”

“Mmm,” Ashlan said shrugging her shoulders, “Probably not much. I overheard you guys talking about an ImPrism Book and I figured I’d put my immense brain power to work.”

“An ImPrism book?” May asked, equally interested.

“I’m glad the kumquat asked,” Ashlan remarked, and pulled the book out of Mena’s handbag. “This book is so powerful; it can trap entire realms with that prism on the cover. Taking high honors, they actually let you go in the Ancient Magic section and research things like that.”

“But why do you care so much?” Mena asked belligerently, her eyes bugged out over Ashlan.

Ashlan turned aside and crossed her arms, a braggart smile on her face. “If you’re really going to rescue a whole kingdom, I’d like to get credit too as future valor sorceress.”

“I think you simply wanted to get close to Mena again,” Janus said softly (but loud enough that Ashlan’s ear perked up.)

Immediately her demeanor changed. A streak of redness shot across Ashlan’s tanned face. “No, what are you talking about dead eyes?! This is for me. Me, me, me…”

“Me…na,” Janus smirked. Ashlan looked like she was about to lose it when Mena exclaimed, “You’ve been nothing but rude to me, Sunny. So, thanks for the help but no thanks” and turned away from her ex-roomate.

Ashlan turned pale, and the room was silent until a loud creak echoed through the room.

“Huh?” said the stern voice of a middle-aged woman. “What are you students doing in here?”

Everyone turned around to see Mrs. Cumberson, a look of utter annoyance on her face. Surprisingly, the Safety Officer from Mothers Against Phantom Possession accompanied her with the less fortunate looking mothers too.

Righteous fury glowed in Mrs. Cumberson’s eyes, and her cheeks puffed out. She looked like an angry warthog about to charge. Everyone recoiled but May, strangely enough. “There is no reason for you children to be in here. Especially when the trial of the millennium is taking place. Students should be in their quarters, or in Mena’s case, in the court room.”

Like she had been caught with her pants down, Ashlan shaded red from disobeying the rules of the school. Mena tried her best to wiggle out of Cumberson’s wrath. “I’m sorry, Mrs. C. I thought this was the bathroom and…”

“Extra detention for all of you,” Cumberson howled, leaping up and down. “Now get to where you belong THIS INSTANT!”

Everyone started to leave, but May stayed put. “Mena, everyone else. Stay right where you are. I don’t think this is my mummy.”

“What?!” Cumberson gasped, clutching her chest. “How dare you insult me like that. I’m your mother, and for that, extra lashes with a wet noodle…and not the kind with parmesan cheese either.”

“Oh yeah?” May puffed out her cheeks to match Cumberson’s volatile wrath. “How do you explain this?”

May pulled out a kumquat and thrust it in her mother’s face. “What are the properties of this fruit?”

Cumberson, for the first time, flinched and stepped back herself. “Well, it’s a circular and…uh fruity and..”

May face flopped into an enormous smile. Her glasses shined and she flashed a grin. “My mummy said it was always an excellent remedy for skin care. Especially for the acne covered teenage face.”

“Perhaps that slipped my mind,” Cumberson muttered and took a step back.

May moved closer and closer. “But did this slip your face!”

She whipped out Mena’s Absolutely Fabulous Magic Mirror and held it to the Safety Officer’s face. Everyone gasped. The Safety Officer looked the same, only her face was a peculiar shade of green. Mena recognized her immediately: Karen the witch. May held it to Cumberson’s face and much to her surprise, it reflected a beautiful, round, light green face. “Why,” Cumberson said in a familar raspy crone’s voice. “I look 500 years younger.”

Mena knew that voice too. It was Bubbel’s.

“Bubbel and Karen?!” Mena exclaimed.

Bubbel stomped the ground and muttered, “And we would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for not knowing the finer properties of Kumquats.”

“Where’s Toila?” Mena asked, referring to the third witch in the trio.

“She’s the one who wrote you that vile death threat,” Bubbel chuckled. “It was intended for that mischievous lioness who ripped the page out of the Dularectory, but it seems to have found you instead.”

“But who are those women behind you?” Janus asked in her flighty voice.

“Oh, these are simply some trolls we put in mom drag,” Karen said, before both her and Bubbel laughed evilly.

“Figures,” Janus remarked casually.

There was a puff of smoke, and when it cleared, Karen and Bubbel stood in their black robes and light green faces.

“Come now dearies,” Bubbel said, pulling her withered green fingers closer. “Give us Anguish’s book back and these trolls won’t beat you into a troll pudding surprise.”

“Ew…” Ashlan said, holding her hand to her face.

Bubbel cackled. “Was that truly a revolting image for you, dearie?”

“No,” Aslan replied snidely. “I said that about your face.”

Bubbel howled and stomped her feet. “We’ll see who’s so pretty when you’re curb stomped. Get them, my uglies.”

“But I’m not ugl…” Karen started, but Bubbel shushed her. “You’re the ugliest of them all.”

Karen sighed, and her and the trolls converged on the four girls. As they backed away, May stepped forward. “May,” Mena cried as she walked backwards. “What are you doing?”

May put on her brave face, glaring directly at the wicked witches. “I’m making myself useful. I will finally become the pure heroine that Leo and every man lusts for”—May gave a confident wink—"And I’m doing it on my own terms.”

May whipped out ten kumquats from her robe, and chanted, “Ready, aim, fire, pass, launch ten kumquats into directly into their…butt.”

The kumquats zoomed like oversized tennis balls, nailing Bubbel, Karen and several of the trolls directly in face, causing them to stumble over like a succession of bowling pins. “Thank you, May,” Mena said, as they turned towards their only escape: the oversized Dream Deposit.

“Not a problem, BFF,” May winked back. “Those witches may be scary, but they ain’t as scary as my mummy.”

Ashlan and Mena dove into the darkness of the Dream Deposit, not knowing what awaited them down below. Much to her surprise, when Mena reached the bottom and landed on a pile of dead dreams, the dire, cobweb covered stone cellar from last semester was now transformed into a swinging bachelor pad. The floors were a plush, velvet red. A wide yellow and blue checkered dance floor dazzled their eyes in the middle of the cavernous basement. Up on a stoop was an enormous hot tub full of orange and red liquid that sizzled and steamed a gargantuan, silver giant. As soon as he saw Mena, his cragged toothed smile broadened and the orange lights in his eyes illuminated brightly.

“Why if it isn’t the fine lass Mena,” he said in craggily yet posh voice. “Come to join me for a spot of tea this fine winter vacation?”

“Hi Rocksworth!” Mena said, forgetting her urgency for a second. “I’m digging your new pad!”

“Why Miss Mena,” the golem said happily. “If you hadn’t fallen down here like a lost dream, none of this would have been possible! It’s as much yours as it is mine!”

Janus appeared out of thin air in the basement, and Ashlan jostled her, reminding her that they had to escape before…

Bubbel and Karen appeared before Mena’s eyes, their faces dripping with kumquat juice. “Good heavens,” Rocksworth exclaimed, his recoil rocking the lava tub. “Who are they?”

“What did you do with May?” Mena demanded.

“Oh, the chubby one, dearie?” Bubbel snarled. “She’s got to be a troll souffle by now. Now cough up that book. It belongs to our leader, not you.”

“Never,” Mena screamed, grasping the book, but the grown witches were closing in on them.

“Well, rainy,” Ashlan said with a sigh. “It’s time to admit, that maybe I wanted one more adventure together. It’s hard though, putting up a front for the Tesselations and all…”

Ashlan closed her furry paw on Mena’s hand and suddenly, there was a sound of flapping pages and a loud wind. “Mena,” she exclaimed. “The book?”

Mena, Ashlan and Janus turned around to see the book housing the Unwritten Kingdom flap open and a red, green and purple vortex emerged from it. A vacuum suction pulled everyone inside, including the two witches, before closing on itself.

When Mena opened her eyes, she found herself floating in a blueish-green void. Fragments of stone floated by her, and soon, her friends did too. Much to her relief, Bubbel and Karen were nowhere to be seen. “Where am I?” Mena asked softly.

“You,” a solemn female voice resounded from the distant void, “Will soon be in New Brushwick the Kingdom of Imagicnation—a land where certain people once had the ability to draw whatever they desired and it appeared before them.”