Ellen started on a picture of her goldfish. The teacher came over to their table.
“That’s good, Ellen,” she said. “I like those wiggly water weeds.” She looked at Mirror-Belle’s paper. “I see you’re painting two animals, Mirror-Belle. What are they? A dog and a cat?”
“No,” said Mirror-Belle, “a lion and a unicorn.”
“What an imagination you’ve got!” said the teacher.
“It’s not me who’s got the imagination, it’s them!” said Mirror-Belle. “For some reason they both seem to imagine they should be sitting on the throne instead of my father. They’re always fighting for the crown. It’s a wonder they haven’t torn each other to pieces by now.”
But the teacher had stopped listening and was looking instead at Mirror-Belle’s hands and arms. They were covered in yellow splodges.
“You’ve got an awful lot of paint on yourself, Mirror-Belle,” she said.
“Oh dear me,” said Mirror-Belle. “That’s not paint – I think I’m turning into gold again! I thought I was feeling a bit peculiar. I’ll have to have a dip in that magic river before I get solid.”
“I’m sure you’ll find the tap water in the cloakroom will do the job, Mirror-Belle,” the teacher said sternly. “And if you’re still feeling peculiar after that you can go to the medical room.”
“How could I get there if I’ve turned to gold?” asked Mirror-Belle, as she left the classroom.
Ten minutes later, when she still hadn’t come back, the teacher sent Ellen into the cloakroom. Ellen wasn’t surprised at what she found. Mirror-Belle had gone, and the cloakroom mirror was covered in smears of yellow paint. On the floor Ellen found a scrap of paper with some backwards writing on it. She held it up to the mirror and read:
Dear Ellen, Sorry I had to go. Love Mirror-Belle. P.S. Give Bruce Baxter and Stephen Hodge a kiss each from me.
Mirror-Belle never came back to school. The head teacher wrote a letter to Ellen’s mum saying, You only enrolled one child at our school, and we feel that your other child might fit in better somewhere else. Ellen’s mum thought this was rather strange.
“I wasn’t thinking of sending Luke to Ellen’s school – he’s too old, in any case,” she said.
Ellen made some friends at school and soon stopped feeling shy. But she never gave Bruce or Stephen their kiss from Mirror-Belle because they didn’t come anywhere near her.
Bruce and Stephen weren’t taking any chances. The new girl looked normal. As far as they could tell her crisps were normal. She said she was called Ellen. But maybe – just maybe – she was really Mirror-Belle.
Chapter One
The Magic Shoes
“Hey, you! Yes, you! Turn around, look over your shoulder,” sang Ellen’s brother, Luke, into the microphone.
Ellen was sitting in the village hall watching Luke’s band, Breakneck, rehearse for the Battle of the Bands. The hall was nearly empty, but that evening it would be packed with fans of the six different bands who were entering the competition.
As well as being Breakneck’s singer, Luke wrote most of their songs, including this one.
“It’s me! Yes, me! Turn around, I’m still here,” he sang. Then he wandered moodily around the stage, while the lead guitarist, Steph, played a twangy solo.
Steph, who never smiled, wore frayed baggy black trousers with a pointless chain hanging out of the pocket and a black T-shirt with orange flames on it. The solo went on and on.
“Steph’s so good at the guitar,” Ellen whispered to Steph’s sister Seraphina, who was sitting next to her.
“I know,” said Seraphina. She was two years older than Ellen and dressed very much like her brother, except that her T-shirt had a silver skull on it. “But I bet they don’t win. I don’t think they should have chosen this song. It’s not going to get people dancing. Steph wrote a much better one called ‘Savage’.”
Ellen couldn’t imagine Steph writing anything dancy, but she was quite shy of Seraphina and didn’t say so. Besides, she had just remembered something.
“Dancing – help! I’m going to be late for ballet!” She picked up a bag from the floor.
“You’ve got the wrong bag – that’s mine,” said Seraphina, who also went to ballet, but to a later class.
“Sorry.” Ellen grabbed her own bag and hurried to the door.
At least she didn’t have far to go. The ballet classes were held in a room called the studio, which was above the hall. Ellen ran up the stairs.
The changing room was empty. The other girls must be in the studio already, but Ellen couldn’t hear any music so the class couldn’t have started yet.
Hurriedly, she put on her leotard and ballet shoes and scooped her hair into the hairnet that Madame Jolie, the ballet teacher, insisted they all wear. Madame Jolie was very fussy about how they looked and could pounce on a girl for the smallest thing, such as crossing the ribbons on her ballet shoes in the wrong way.
Ellen was just giving herself a quick check in the full-length mirror when a voice said, “What’s happened to your feet?”
It was a voice that she knew very well. It was coming from the mirror and it belonged to Princess Mirror-Belle.
About the Author and Illustrator
Julia Donaldson is one of the UK’s most popular children’s writers. Her award-winning books include What the Ladybird Heard, The Snail and the Whale and The Gruffalo. She has also written many children’s plays and songs, and her sell-out shows based on her books and songs are a huge success. She was the Children’s Laureate from 2011 to 2013, campaigning for libraries and for deaf children, and creating a website for teachers called picturebookplays.co.uk. Julia and her husband Malcolm divide their time between Sussex and Edinburgh. You can find out more about Julia at www.juliadonaldson.co.uk.
Lydia Monks studied Illustration at Kingston University, graduating in 1994 with a first-class degree. She is a former winner of the Smarties Bronze Award for I Wish I Were a Dog and has illustrated many books by Julia Donaldson. Her illustrations have been widely admired.
Books by Julia Donaldson
The Princess Mirror-Belle series (illustrated by Lydia Monks)
Princess Mirror-Belle
Princess Mirror-Belle and the Party Hoppers
Princess Mirror-Belle and the Magic Shoes
Princess Mirror-Belle and Prince Precious Paws
Princess Mirror-Belle and the Flying Horse
Princess Mirror-Belle and the Sea Monster’s Cave
Poetry
Crazy Mayonnaisy Mum
Wriggle and Roar
Shuffle and Squelch
Poems to Perform (anthology)
Plays
Play Time
Plays to Read (a series for schools)
Picture books with Lydia Monks
Princess Mirror-Belle and the Dragon Pox
The Rhyming Rabbit
Sharing a Shell
The Singing Mermaid
Sugarlump and the Unicorn
What the Ladybird Heard
What the Ladybird Heard Next
These stories first published 2003 in Princess Mirror-Belle by Macmillan Children’s Books
This edition published 2015 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This electronic edition published 2015 by Macmillan Children’s Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-4472-9560-0
Text copyright © Julia Donaldson 2003
Illustrations copyright © Lydia Monks 2003, 2015
The right of Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monks to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Pan Macmillan does not have any control over, or any responsibility for, any author or third-party websites referred to in or on this book.
Y
ou may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Julia Donaldson, Princess Mirror-Belle and the Party Hoppers
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