“Well, the youngest princess did notice. She heard him breaking twigs in the forests of silver and gold and diamonds.”
“Okay, so maybe she was less stupid than her sisters. But she still had that dancing obsession like the rest of them. She wore out her shoes dancing every night. You wouldn’t waste all your nights like that, would you?”
“I couldn’t afford to,” I said, thinking of how much I’d enjoyed my dance classes with Nicole and my friends at my old school. But no more dance classes and no more old school, with Dad spending our money putting my stepsisters through college. “Which brings us back to the shoes in this collection. Why so many?”
“I don’t know. There weren’t any cars back when the Brothers Grimm were collecting stuff. Maybe they thought about shoes a whole lot because they had to walk everywhere and their feet hurt.”
“That’s an interesting theory. You think maybe other stuff was just as important, but the Grimm guys only noticed the shoe aspect? Like, they missed whole stories about hats and scarves because their feet hurt?”
Aaron laughed. “Yeah, I bet you’re right. There are a few hats here, but not nearly as many as the shoes.”
“So how did you get this job, anyway?” I asked.
“My science teacher.”
“Why’d he pick you?”
“For my brains and good looks, obviously.”
“Yeah, right. My social studies teacher picked me, but I can’t really figure out why.”
“For your brains and good looks, obviously.”
“Um, thanks.” Had Aaron just complimented me? Wow.
“Seriously, though,” I said. “Why us? I can’t believe my luck to be in a place like this. You know how when you were a little kid reading fairy tales, you always dreamed that the magic was true? Why are we the ones who get to find out it is?”
Aaron nodded slowly. “I know,” he said. “For me it was science fiction, but yeah, that’s exactly how I feel too. How can we be so lucky? Is it really just affinities, like Doc says?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, the things you’re drawn to. The things you find compelling. Like the way I’m always trying to figure out how stuff works. Or with you, you always seem to be looking closely at everything. You see how objects relate to each other. It’s as if, for you, the whole world is alive.” He paused, then added with a little smile, “Except maybe invisible chairs.”
Wow, had he noticed that about me? That was pretty observant. “You know, you’re right,” I said. “I think I got that from my mother. She cared about objects, but not in a material way. She was always looking for the souls in things. She had this great antique doll collection—she treated them as if they were alive. Like she knew they had a past.”
We reached the end of the room and turned back toward the door. As we passed the rack of paintings, I felt eyes on my back, as if the figures in the paintings were looking at me.
Even with Aaron there, I felt spooked.
We heard a noise up front. The door was rattling, as if someone—or something—was trying to get in. I froze, then told myself not to be so silly. But I noticed Aaron looked alarmed too.
“Who’s there?” he asked loudly.
“It’s just me.” Anjali’s voice came through the door faint and muffled. “For some reason my key’s not working.”
“Hang on, we’ve got another one. You need two now,” I said. I held my clip to the door, sang the opening chant as softly and quickly and in key as I could, and pushed the door open.
“Thanks, Elizabeth,” said Anjali.
“Are you running a slip? What’s the item?” Aaron asked. He had that eager sound in his voice again, the way he always did around Anjali, and I remembered that I hated him.
“No, I—I think I forgot something last week. My . . . sweater. I think I left it in the back.”
It sounded like an excuse she’d made up on the spot. “I think I saw it back near the paintings. I’ll show you,” I said. Aaron got up to follow us. “You better stay here and keep an eye on the pneums,” I told him.
“If one comes, I’ll hear it thump.”
Boy, was he persistent! He just couldn’t keep away from her. “No, really, I—I need to talk to Anjali about something. Girl stuff again,” I said.
“Fine.” He sat back down.
Anjali and I walked back toward the wall of paintings. I stopped in front of the shoe section. “I know you didn’t actually forget your sweater. Is it the boots again?” I whispered.
Anjali nodded. She took the real boots out of her book bag and swapped them for the fakes, switching the tag. This time I found I could tell them apart easily. They might look exactly the same, but they gave off a different atmosphere. It was obvious—I didn’t even have to sniff. I wondered how I could ever have missed it.
“Can’t you make Marc stop taking them? He’s going to get in trouble. He’s going to get you in trouble—us.” I kept my voice down. I doubted Aaron could hear, all the way up in the front of the collection, but I had the feeling there were other ears listening all around us.
“Marc says it’s the last time.”
“Didn’t he say that before?”
“He has to pick up Andre. His mother’s working late.”
“He always has to pick up Andre.”
“I know. He says he’ll find some other solution.”
“Well, he’d better do it fast. Come on, you better get out of here.”
“Hey, you’re still wearing that!” Anjali touched the hot-pink yarn Jaya had knotted around my wrist. It was getting grubby, but it had lasted through quite a few showers. I nodded. Anjali said, “Jaya will be pleased.”
The door was opening as we got back to the front of the room. Ms. Callender came into the collection.
“Anjali? What are you doing here, honey? Didn’t I put you on Stack 9? Did I get mixed up?” said Ms. Callender. She consulted her clipboard.
“She came back for her sweater,” said Aaron helpfully.
Ms. Callender turned to Anjali. “Did you find it, honey?”
“Here,” I said, grabbing my sweater from the back of the folding chair and handing it to Anjali. Aaron frowned at me, but he didn’t say anything.
“Oh, so that’s where I left it,” said Anjali, a little too loudly. You’d think she would be better at lying, with a nosy little sister like Jaya. “Thanks, Elizabeth,” she said, putting on the sweater.
It looked ten thousand times better on her than on me. She had the right kind of figure for a sweater like that. Of course, I reflected, if she were wearing a paper bag, I would probably think she had the right kind of figure for paper bags. She had the right kind of figure, period.
Ms. Callender waved something at the lock—must be the master key, I thought—causing it to click open, and held the door for Anjali, who left with my sweater.
I was right to trust Anjali and Marc, wasn’t I? The suspicious look on Aaron’s face made me feel less certain than ever.
Chapter 13:
I lose a thumb-wrestling match
When Anjali was gone, Ms. Callender put a sheaf of papers on Aaron’s desk. “Aaron, Elizabeth, I have a big job for you. I need you to pull these objects off the shelves for me,” she said.
“What are they for?” I asked.
“These are items we’re . . . concerned about. I told you about the reports of objects like ours turning up in auctions and other collections? Some of these match those descriptions, or raised a red flag somehow. Dr. Rust and I want to examine them more closely. Send a pneum up when you’re done, okay? If something’s missing, make a note of it.”
“All right,” said Aaron.
“Thanks, hon.” Ms. Callender waved her key at the door again and left.
“So much for The War of the Worlds,” I said.
Aaron shrugged. “I wasn’t getting that much reading done anyway. What was that all about with Anjali?”
“I told you, girl stuff. You really want me to spell it out?”
“Actually, yes.”
“Fine. Feel free to stop me whenever you like. When a girl gets to be a certain age, she experiences certain changes caused by something called hormones. These are chemicals that signal to the reproductive organs, causing the blood—”
“Okay, okay, enough! I get it—you’re not going to tell me what it was really about. Which half do you want?” He held out a clump of pages in each hand.
I took the ones in his right hand, and we each set off in opposite directions, pushing our carts down the rows of cabinets.
My half of Ms. Callender’s list was heavy on clothing: cloaks, helmets, dresses, buckles, veils, and the inevitable shoes. I found them all in their proper spots except one bracelet—when I went to look for it, all I found was a wooden bracelet-shaped place-holder tagged with a form saying the original had been missing since 1929. I made a note of it.
Nevertheless, I noticed something was odd about the items when I pulled them off the shelves. What was it? It nagged at me as I piled my first truckload on the table by the door and started on the paperwork. I filled out a slip for each of them, naming Ms. Callender as the requester. The paperwork took longer than gathering the objects had.
Aaron came back with a load—mostly musical instruments—and sat down to fill out slips.
“What should I put for Purpose of Loan?” I asked.
“I’m putting Internal. They’re not actually leaving the repository.”
I picked up the next one, little metal binoculars. Something felt off about them too. “What’s wrong with these things?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know—they don’t feel right to me.” I put down my pencil and walked over to Aaron’s cart. “What about yours, are they wrong too?” I picked up a wooden flute and blew it. It made a raspy, woody note, like a cheap recorder.
“Stop!” Aaron shouted.
I lowered the flute. “What? What’s the matter?”
He looked terrified and puzzled. “That’s a dancing flute. It’s from the same section as the Pied Piper’s pipes. People can’t stop dancing when you play it. In some of the stories they dance themselves to death.”
“Really? I don’t see you dancing.”
“Thankfully! Maybe it takes a few bars to warm up? Or maybe you’re not a good enough musician?”
I lifted the flute again.
“Stop!” Aaron grabbed my hand. “Weren’t you listening? Are you trying to kill me?”
His hand was cold. I shook it off. “Let go, I’m not going to play it.” I brought the flute to my nose and sniffed. It smelled like old, slightly dusty wood. “Does that smell right to you?” I held it out.
He sniffed it and shrugged.
I sniffed it again. “I think that’s what’s wrong with these things—they don’t smell right.” I sniffed a cymbal; it smelled like brass. A bellows smelled like dusty leather. On my own cart, a coat smelled like wool, a linen shift like fabric softener, and a gold pin like nothing at all.
“What’s this supposed to do?” I asked, holding up a glove that smelled a little musty.
Aaron checked the list. “It makes your hand strong.”
I put it on.
“Don’t do that! You could get in big trouble. You know we’re not supposed to use the stuff!”
“Doesn’t matter—I have a feeling it’s not going to work anyway,” I said. “Thumb wrestle?” I held out my gloved hand. He took it and pinned my thumb immediately. I wiggled and struggled, but I couldn’t get it free.
“Quit waving your elbow around, that’s cheating,” he said.
“Okay, okay, let go. Clearly this glove isn’t working. I think these things are fakes.”
“Let me try it.”
I handed him the glove, and he put it on. He pinched the corner of the metal desk, trying to dent it; nothing happened. He punched the wall. “Ow!” he said, shaking his hand. The wall appeared undamaged.
I sniffed my way through my cart. A few of the objects gave off that mysterious, shifting scent, but most smelled of nothing much.
“What are you doing?” asked Aaron.
“Sorting out the fakes. Those are okay, but these smell wrong—I mean, they smell normal. There’s no magic in them.”
“You can smell magic?”
“Can’t you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’ve never tried.”
I handed him a comb that smelled like oyster shells—no, wet marble. “Try this one; it’s pretty strong. Can you smell it?”
He sniffed and shook his head. “I don’t smell anything. I think you’re right, though. It has that shimmer.”
“What shimmer?”
“It’s—you know—the color. It’s sort of . . . It’s hard to describe. It’s like the colors are sort of buzzing. Like there are more colors than just the ones you see.”
I squinted at the comb, but I couldn’t see anything funny about the color—it looked like a plain mother-of-pearl comb to me. I held out my hand. “Here, give, I’m going to try it.”
He held it out of my reach. “Bad idea! Combs can be deadly! Remember Snow White?”
“Oh, is this Snow White’s?” Snow White’s stepmother, I recalled, paralyzed the princess with a poisoned comb. I didn’t want anything more to do with that family, especially after my recent chat with the mirror. “Where’s it from?”
Aaron consulted Ms. Callender’s list. “It says it’s a mermaid’s comb,” he said. “Mediterranean. Abalone.”
“Oh. Well, that’s all right, then. Mermaids just sit on rocks combing their hair and enticing sailors to their doom. It should be safe—there’s no water for you to drown in. Hand it over.” I held out my hand again.
“Shouldn’t you do a little more research first?”
“I’m feeling lucky. What’s the worst that can happen? You’ll act all lovesick puppy about me instead of Anjali?”
Was he blushing? “Yeah, right.” He gave me the comb. “Go wild. But don’t blame me if your hair turns into seaweed.”
I ran the comb through my hair. It felt great, like a tingling herbal massage. I combed for a while, practically purring with pleasure. I shook my head out and combed from one side and then the other. I bent over and combed from the nape of my neck to the top of my head.
“Having fun?” said Aaron.
“Mm, it’s great! Are you in love with me yet?”
He snorted. “In your dreams.”
“Seriously, has anything happened? Does my hair look any different?”
He shrugged. “Still looks like hair to me.”
I brought a fistful around to my eyes, but it didn’t look particularly different. It felt different, though. Thicker, silkier, somehow floatier, the way your hair feels on the perfect hair day, just after you’ve washed it and before it’s quite dry. Like a slow-motion shampoo commercial.
“You don’t have a mirror, do you?”
Aaron snorted again. “In what, my handbag? I’m a guy, remember?”
I thought about looking for a mirror in the collection, but I dropped the idea immediately. Even if I found one that wasn’t evil, how would I know whether any apparent changes in my appearance were the result of the comb’s magic or the mirror’s?
“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t tell for sure, but I think it worked.”
“Yeah,” said Aaron, “I think so too.” To my surprise, he reached out and ran his fingers through my hair. “It’s nice . . . It’s a nice . . . color.” Then he quickly pulled his hand back and turned away.
After a pause, I cleared my throat. “So, um, what do you think this means?”
“Means?” He blushed beet red.
“I mean,” I said quickly, “are all these dead objects substitutes for ones that got stolen? But if so, then why do some of them smell like magic?”
“Oh. Oh . . . I don’t know. Maybe you’re right—maybe the dead ones are fakes. Or maybe someone took the magic out of them somehow?” He
started going through my piles, picking up the objects one by one and holding them to the side of his face, tilting them this way and that way to inspect them. He held out a silk coin purse. “This one’s shimmering. You had it in the fakes pile.”
I sniffed it. “Oh. You’re right. It’s very faint, though. What is it?”
He consulted the list. “Silk purse. English Midlands. Sow’s ear.”
“I wonder what it does?” I turned it upside down and shook it. Nothing came out.
“I don’t think it does anything. I think it’s just an impossible object—haven’t you heard that expression, ‘You can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear’?”
I nodded and put the purse in the pile of magical items. I hadn’t, in fact, heard that expression, but I didn’t feel like giving Aaron yet another thing to tease me about.
“What’s the difference between the ones that work and the ones that don’t?” I said.
Aaron looked at me like I was an idiot. “Um, the ones that work work, and the ones that don’t don’t?”
I felt my cheeks redden again. “I meant, is there any other difference? Do the useless ones have anything in common? Is there a pattern in the paperwork?”
“I don’t see any, do you?”
I shook my head.
Aaron finished filling out slips and went back for another cartload. I continued to write, sniffing the sow’s ear purse absently. No, it really didn’t smell like much. I squinted at it sideways, imitating Aaron, but the color—a fleshy pink, like the inside of a shell—still looked perfectly normal. On an impulse, I held the purse to my ear. I heard waves and whispers, like when you listen to a shell, but nothing definite.
I took my half of the list and went for another load. This time two objects were missing, a perfume flask and a ring.
I was starting to fill out my third slip when Aaron came back, his face grim. He was holding the boots Anjali had just returned. “Where have I seen these before?” he said. The teasing Aaron was gone. He sounded mean.
I shrugged.
“Don’t play dumb! I thought you were just a sucker for Marc, like Anjali, but now I’m starting to think maybe you’re actually in on it. Maybe I should warn Doc.”
Polly Shulman Page 13
