Spellbound: The Books of Elsewhere

by Jacqueline West

  Rutherford shrugged. “It can be hard to adjust,” he said. “But I just tell myself that everything is temporary. Wherever I am, I won’t be there for long.”

  Olive nodded, but somehow this thought made her sad.

  They both turned back to their books, and for a moment, the library was quiet, even the fern.

  Olive coughed uncomfortably. Rutherford, crosslegged on the floor, went on thumbing through a big green book. Olive coughed again, and this time the cough went on and on, until her eyes started to water and Rutherford turned to look up at her.

  “I—um. I . . . I mean,” Olive said, and coughed again. “That thing I told you. About this house?”

  “Yes?” said Rutherford.

  “Don’t—don’t tell anyone, okay?”

  Rutherford gazed at her very seriously. He nodded. “I give you my word. I’ll even take an oath, if you want me to. I could sign something, or I could lay my hand on a holy book—”

  “No, that’s . . . You don’t have to do that,” said Olive. “Just keep it a secret.”

  “Certainly. I vow not to tell a soul,” said Rutherford. Then he stood up and gave Olive a low, courtly bow before plopping back down with the green book.

  “Interesting,” he murmured a moment later.

  “What’s interesting?” asked Olive, who was feeling almost (but not quite) friendly toward Rutherford, now that he’d promised to keep her secret.

  “This book claims that Captain Kidd was the only pirate known to have buried his treasure.” Rutherford gazed up at the ceiling. “I wonder if your witches might have buried their treasures, like the grimoire, somewhere. But I suppose, being witches instead of pirates, they would have used a disappearing spell instead. Have you seen any evidence of disappearing spells?”

  Olive wondered how a person could see evidence of something that had disappeared. She shook her head. “No. They didn’t—”

  She stopped midsentence. Because the McMartins had made things disappear.

  They had made people vanish forever. They had made men and women and children disappear just as completely as if they had been buried. They had hidden things where no one else could find them—no one but Olive. Maybe everything she was searching for had been hanging right in front of her face . . .

  Rutherford didn’t seem to notice that Olive had trailed off. He was still sitting on the floor, skimming through a dusty book (and Olive was still staring off into space, thinking, with her mouth hanging open) when Mrs. Dewey came to take Rutherford home.

  “I’ll help you search again tomorrow, if you want,” Rutherford offered, getting up and pushing a heavy blue volume back onto the shelf.

  “That’s okay,” said Olive, as loudly and quickly as she could. “I—I’ll let you know if I need help. Thank you.”

  “All right. You know how to summon me.” Rutherford stopped at the door where Mrs. Dewey was waiting, fastened his gauntlets, and gave Olive another long bow in farewell.

  “Help look for what?” Olive heard Mrs. Dewey ask as she and her grandson headed into the hall.

  “Oh, we were doing some research on the history of dinosaurs in this area. What particular species lived here, when they became extinct . . .”

  The voices faded away, and Olive breathed a sigh of relief. He was gone. The whole room seemed to brighten, as though the air itself grew lighter. Rutherford had kept her secret—so far, anyway. And now it was their secret. Maybe that would be enough to balance the equation.

  Olive glanced up at the trails of afternoon sunlight slanting through the windows. A beam struck the frame around the painting of the dancing girls, and suddenly the whole frame flared and glittered as though it had been electrified, its golden sparkle lighting the way forward. The idea that had formed in Olive’s mind began to flare and sparkle too. The spellbook’s hiding place was so obvious! Why hadn’t she thought of it before?

  Just then, something greenish, damp, and feline belly-crawled out of the potted fern. “So, the spy is gone at last,” it gasped, struggling across the floor.

  “Harvey!” Olive scrambled down the ladder. “I thought it was you.”

  “I can’t fight it any longer,” the cat wheezed, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling like a bad Shakespearean actor. “I only regret . . . that I have but one life . . . to give to my country.”

  Olive crouched beside him, putting one tentative hand on his fur, which was stiff with green paint and coated with leaves. “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” Harvey whispered. “But the time has come . . . for a BATH.” And then he collapsed dramatically in the middle of the rug.

  7

  THAT NIGHT, HORATIO curled up in his usual spot at the foot of the bed. Harvey, still smelling strongly of cat shampoo, headed down the hallway to the pink bedroom, to guard the entrance to the attic. Mr. and Mrs. Dunwoody both peeped in to wish Olive sweet dreams. Then the hallway lights clicked off and the house settled down into sleepy darkness.

  With her head on the pillow and Hershel tucked under her chin, Olive listened to the low creaks and groans of the old stone house, and to the twigs tapping softly on the window glass. All of this was familiar now. Inside her own bedroom, Olive felt almost safe, even in the darkest part of the night. But she sensed that while she and her parents went to sleep, the house never did. It was always awake. Watching. Olive wasn’t sure if this was a good or a bad thing—if the house was watching out for her, or if it was watching her.

  She lay very still, waiting, repeating the words to catchy songs over and over in her head to stay awake. After she had gone through “I’m Henery the Eighth, I Am,” about twenty-five times (she lost count somewhere around thirteen), she sat up very slowly and blinked out into the darkness over Hershel’s fuzzy head. She had a plan: a plan to make Morton her friend again, and if her hunch was correct, to find the spellbook too.

  The room was silent. Horatio was a motionless lump of fur. Even the distant white glow of the streetlamps had faded above the sleeping street.

  Olive slid her legs to the edge of the mattress, careful not to bump Horatio. The big orange cat didn’t stir. The floor felt cold against the soles of her feet, but, as usual, none of her six pairs of slippers were waiting by the bed where they belonged. She slunk across the room and slipped out the door into the hall.

  The floorboards creaked as Olive tiptoed past the paintings of the bowl of strange fruit and of the church on the craggy hill. She hurried by the dark, open doorways of the bathroom and the guest rooms, trying not to imagine anyone jumping out at her, any voices whispering her name from the shadows inside. But it was hard not to.

  By the time she reached the front of the house, she was nearly running. She darted through the doorway into the pink room.

  Harvey was asleep on a chair before the painting of the old stone archway that was the entrance to the attic. His head hung limply over the edge of the seat.

  As gently as she could, Olive tapped the cat’s front paw.

  Harvey sat bolt upright. “The royal fleet awaits your command, Majesty!” he declared.

  “Shh!” Olive hissed. “Harvey, I need your help. I know where something I’ve been looking for might be hidden.” She stared into the cat’s wide green eyes. “Will you help me?”

  “I’m afraid you have mistaken me for someone else, Your Majesty,” said Harvey, straightening himself on the cushioned seat before taking a regal bow. “Perhaps you do not recognize me after my long months spent at sea. It is I, Raleigh, Sir Walter Raleigh. And I am at your service.”

  “Okay, Sir . . . who did you say?”

  “Sir Walter Raleigh. Explorer, writer, soldier, and all-around Renaissance man.”

  “Okay, Sir Walter Raleigh,” said Olive. “But we have to be very, very quiet. No one else can know about this mission. You’re the only one I can trust.”

  The cat gave a delighted nod.

  “All right,” Olive breathed. “Now, we’re going to go out into the hallway, into the painting of Linden Stre
et, and we’re going to find Morton.”

  “Ah yes, the good Sir Pillowcase!” said Harvey with growing excitement. “We will navigate the straits and join our comrade!”

  “Sure,” whispered Olive. “You navigate. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Sweeping an imaginary cape over his shoulders, Harvey leaped from the chair and flounced toward the door. Olive tiptoed after him.

  She followed Harvey’s fuzzy silhouette back down the hallway. In front of the painting, he offered her his tail, and together they clambered through the frame into the misty field below Linden Street.

  They found Morton sitting on the lawn of the house next door to his own, which in Olive’s world belonged to Mrs. Dewey. He was yanking up a row of white tulips and flinging them into the air, where they spun end over end like floppy batons. Then they zoomed back toward the ground, bulbs first, and planted themselves neatly in their waiting holes.

  “Morton, what are you doing?” asked Olive as she and Harvey stopped in front of him.

  Morton gave her a look that said this question didn’t really deserve an answer. He pulled up the next tulip.

  “Where are your friends?”

  Morton shrugged. “Somewhere. Maybe they’re at home. With their families.” He threw the tulip into the air. It flipped over twice and dove back toward the ground like a lawn dart.

  Olive wanted to say, “Are their families invisible too?” but looking down at Morton’s face, she decided not to. Instead, she crouched down on the dewy grass. “Hey, Morton,” she began. “Do you remember that book I asked you about?”

  Morton pulled up another tulip and didn’t answer.

  “I think if I could find that book, I might learn how to help you get back home.”

  Morton looked at her out of the corner of one eye. “Real home?”

  “Real home,” Olive repeated. “If the McMartins had a book of magic spells, they probably kept it in a magical place. I think that book is hidden in a painting somewhere inside this house.”

  Morton’s round face turned skeptical. “Maybe.”

  “So . . .” said Olive, trying to sound as though she really didn’t care, “will you help me look for it?”

  “Oh,” said Morton, trying to sound as though he really didn’t care either, “. . . I suppose I could.”

  “Excellent!” boomed Harvey. “An agreement has been reached between Good Queen Bess and the noble Sir Pillowcase. Now, onward, to explore the colonies!” And he charged off down the misty street, with Olive and Morton struggling to keep up.

  Once they had all wriggled through the frame, they stood uncertainly in the hallway, glancing around at the dark, open doorways. “Where should we start?” Morton whispered at last.

  Olive closed her eyes. She thought about the book. She imagined its cover, black or brown or red or green. She imagined the feeling of its pages. Maybe they would be heavy and soft, almost like cloth, or maybe they would be fine and delicate and nearly transparent, crinkling one over another like sheaves of tissue paper. And, very faintly, very gradually, something in the house began to guide her. It leaked out of the walls and rippled up through the floorboards into the soles of Olive’s bare feet. She could feel it turning her in the right direction, like the spinning arrow in a board game.

  “I don’t think it’s downstairs,” she whispered back. “Let’s start up here.”

  They threaded their way along the hall, Harvey trying to stay in the lead, even though he didn’t know where they were going, and Olive and Morton walking behind, tiptoeing on each other’s shadows.

  They began their search in the guest bathroom, which had only one small painting. With Olive holding on to Harvey’s tail, and Morton holding on to Olive, they tugged each other through the frame. The woman in the painting, who was perpetually posing with one toe in the water of an old-fashioned bathtub, let out a little shriek when a splotchy cat and two pajama-clad children dropped through the frame onto her slippery tile floor. She plunked down into the water, towel and all.

  “Pardon us, good lady,” said Harvey grandly, “but we must explore your bathroom, for the glory of England.”

  “What!?” bubbled the woman.

  Olive crouched down to look under the bathtub while Morton checked the corners. The room inside the painting was quite small and bare, and in just a few seconds, the three explorers were clambering back out of the frame, leaving the dripping lady huffing angrily behind them.

  “No book there,” whispered Olive. “Let’s check the blue room.”

  The blue bedroom was dark and grim, full of things like hat racks and shoe stands and dressers with rows of heavy, creaking drawers. On one wall there hung a painting of a ballroom where people in evening clothes danced to the music of an orchestra. But when Harvey, Olive, and Morton came stumbling through the frame, the people stopped dancing. A few last tweets and blats came from the orchestra as one by one the musicians lost their places and gaped at the intruders.

  “Be at your ease,” said Harvey with a generous wave of his paw. “No doubt you are awestruck by the presence of the great Sir Walter Raleigh and the most splendid Queen Elizabeth.” He gestured to Olive, who tugged uncomfortably at her penguin pajamas. Harvey glanced over his shoulder at Olive and Morton, and said out of the corner of his mouth, “These ruffians know not how to bow to their queen. Shall we have them all beheaded, Your Majesty?”

  Olive shook her head vehemently. “Um—actually,” she began, while all the painted eyes of the crowd swiveled toward her, “excuse us, but have any of you seen a book in this room?”

  The crowd started to murmur.

  “I saw one!” shouted one man from the corner, pointing, but the book he’d seen turned out to be only the big book of sheet music on top of the piano.

  “I saw one too!” shouted another man, but he turned out to be talking about the same book as the first.

  “Okay,” said Olive loudly as more and more people joined in, proclaiming that they too had seen the book of sheet music on top of the piano, “has anyone seen a different book? Not the one on top of the piano?”

  There were some confused mumblings, but no one else spoke up.

  “All right, then,” said Olive. “Thank you for your help.”

  “Jiminy,” whispered Morton as they landed one by one on the blue bedroom’s carpet. “Those people weren’t very bright.”

  “You speak the truth, Sir Pillowcase,” Harvey agreed.

  “Well, they’re just paintings,” said Olive. “They’ve never been out of that one room. I’m sure they don’t have to do much heavy thinking.”

  Morton looked down at his toes and didn’t answer.

  “I mean,” Olive hurried on, “they’re not like you, or like the other people Aldous trapped in the paintings, who used to be real, but who aren’t—I mean, you haven’t always been just—I mean—”

  But Morton was already stalking across the room toward the polished wooden door of the closet.

  “Morton . . .” Olive pleaded.

  Morton ignored her. He stepped into the closet and slammed the door behind him.

  Olive sucked in a breath through her teeth. Had her parents heard? She and Harvey exchanged glances.

  “I shall ensure that no adversarial vessels have entered the straits, Your Majesty,” the cat whispered, dashing out into the hall.

  “Morton,” said Olive to the closed closet door. “Come out of there.”

  There was no answer. Olive pulled on the knob, but the door wouldn’t budge. Morton was obviously holding it tight on the other side. “Come on, Morton,” she said. “We’re wasting time.”

  The closet was silent for a moment. It seemed to be thinking. Then a muffled voice from inside said, “Why can’t I just stay out here? If the Old Man is gone, how come we all can’t just come out again?”

  “Morton, you’re not alive.” Olive paused. “Anymore.” The closet didn’t argue, so Olive went on. “People would notice that you don’t get any older, and your s
kin looks funny, and you don’t eat anything. And bright light burns you. You wouldn’t be safe out here.”

  “I could live in the closet,” said Morton stubbornly. “Or everybody from the painting could just live in this house with you.”

  Olive tried to imagine this. “I don’t think that would work,” she said at last. “My parents would tell all the scientists from the college about you, and they’d all want to do tests on you and dissect you and genetically clone-splice you or something.”

  The closet got very quiet.

  Olive leaned her head against the wooden door. “Morton . . .” she began, as gently as she could. “I—”

  But his voice interrupted her. “There’s a painting in here.”

  Olive frowned. “Why would anyone hang a painting in a closet?”

  “It isn’t hanging. It’s leaning. I can feel it. Look.”

  The closet door swung open. Morton stepped out of the darkness, shoving aside a few musty wool coats and pointing to the closet’s back corner. There, lit by a beam of watery moonlight, a picture frame glinted around a painted canvas.

  On their knees, Olive and Morton dragged the painting out into the blue room for a better look. Inside the heavy frame was a picture of a ruined castle, its stones crumbling beneath a night sky.

  “Do you think it’s one of his paintings?” Morton whispered.

  “Well, I know how we can find out for sure,” Olive whispered back as Harvey swaggered into the bedroom to announce that the coast was clear.

  A moment later, the three of them were climbing through the picture frame, into a cool, damp, mossscented night. So it was one of Aldous’s paintings—one that Olive had never explored before. While they teetered across the mossy rocks that led down to the moat, she wondered how long it had been waiting in the closet, and who had put it there in the first place, in a spot where no one would ever get to look at it.