Winterhouse

by Ben Guterson

  Norbridge stroked his beard. “Very good,” he said. “Very good.” He cleared his throat; the sinking feeling returned to Elizabeth that she was about to get bad news.

  “I need to ask you a small favor, Elizabeth,” Norbridge said. He clasped his hands and looked at her with deep seriousness. “During your stay here, I’d like you to check in with me or Jackson twice a day. Will you do that? Just before breakfast, and then again in the evening after dinner before you go to bed. My room is on the first floor. And if I’m not around, just let Jackson know you’re checking in, and that will do.”

  Elizabeth was puzzled. She couldn’t help feeling the owner of such a large hotel would have much better things to do than get twice-daily updates from her; but she wasn’t about to contradict him.

  “Of course, I can do that,” Elizabeth said. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, yes,” Norbridge said. “Everything is fine. I just—well, I want to make sure you’re having a good stay and that all is well. So if you’ll do that for me—without fail—I would be most grateful. After all, you’re here on your own.” He held a hand out to Elizabeth so that they could agree to the arrangement. “Deal?”

  She took his hand. “Deal.”

  “Very good,” he said. “Well, don’t let me keep you from the library.” He pointed behind her. “Enjoy your time.”

  He was about to move away when Elizabeth said, “Was everything okay last night when that bellhop called you away?”

  Norbridge puckered his face as if stricken with confusion. “Last night?” he said, and then he brightened. “Oh, of course, last night. In the nighttime. Late. When we were strolling all about. It was very late, wasn’t it?”

  He stood nodding. He seemed to have lost track of the point.

  “Was everything okay, though?” Elizabeth said. “When you left me?”

  “Fine, fine,” Norbridge said casually. “Someone had left a coffeemaker on down in the recreation hall by the Ping-Pong table. We fixed everything right up.” He inhaled as though he’d brought a long speech to a close. “Well, enjoy the library.” And with that, he waved, strode down the hallway, and disappeared.

  Elizabeth stood for a moment after he was gone. He seems very nice, but very odd, she thought. And why does he want me to check in with him twice a day?

  * * *

  Leona gave Elizabeth a tour of the library, starting in the massive reading room with its oak tables and cloud murals on the ceiling. Next, she showed her the bulky cabinets of the card catalog in the very center of the main floor (“We don’t have a single computer in here,” Leona had said proudly, “and we don’t plan on getting one!”), and then she took her to the “special collection” room on the third floor, all the while sharing snippets of the history of the library. After twenty minutes, they sat in the office behind the checkout desk and sipped rose tea Leona had brewed. Five other people had come in and were browsing the stacks.

  “This hotel seemed enormous and ancient when I first came here,” Leona said, now that they were comfortably seated. “That was back in 1951 after my family emigrated from Uganda. I was eleven.” Miles perched on a wooden stand at the center of the room and bobbed his head. A row of pictures of famous structures—the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben and the Great Pyramid of Giza—hung on frames across the wall, and dried clusters of roses and lavender sat atop the shelves that lined the room. The space was dim.

  “Did you like it here right away?” Elizabeth asked.

  Leona sipped her tea and considered the question. “I was instantly smitten! I knew I wanted to live here, and I knew I wanted to run the library someday. Of course, when you’re a child, you think those sorts of things. But with me it was a certainty! A certainty! I became friends with Norbridge that first winter I was here, and then I came back whenever I could over the next many years. And when I went to school I studied library science—and what do you know?—I came back to Winterhouse and I’ve never left. I can’t think of anywhere else I would like to be.” She took another sip of her tea. “But I’ve been going on and on. Tell me, dear, what sorts of writers do you like?”

  They talked for half an hour, and it occurred to Elizabeth that she felt entirely comfortable with Leona, like speaking to an old friend. She wondered how it had happened that she’d let her guard down so completely.

  “Norbridge is pretty good with magic tricks, isn’t he?” Elizabeth said.

  Leona sat very still for a moment before nodding. “That he is,” she said. “It’s in the Falls blood.”

  “Strange birds!” Miles called out. “Strange birds!”

  “Miles, hush!” Leona said. “That’s enough!”

  “What do you mean?” Elizabeth said. “Were there other magicians in the family?”

  “Excuse me,” a man said, standing at the desk outside the door and peering in. “Can you help me find the art history section?”

  “I’d better get to work,” Leona said. She stood and looked to the man before giving a little bow to Elizabeth. “Plenty of time for more conversation later, but off I go now. It’s such a pleasure to meet you. Please explore as much as you like.”

  And with that, she winked at Miles and strolled out the door, leaving Elizabeth to follow behind her and make her way into the expanse of the library.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE HIDDEN BOOK

  RIDDEN

  REDDEN

  REDDER

  READER

  Elizabeth spent the next two hours wandering from section to section, from room to room, and up the three floors, climbing ladders and studying shelves, reading the names on the busts that sat in the windows and examining the huge paintings that hung along the walls. She opened the card catalog at random and found that Leona had written notes on almost every single card: Wonderful read, or Author didn’t do enough research, or Given to the Winterhouse Library as a gift by Mrs. Thornton Rhinestone, March 1960. There was one windowed stretch of walkway on the third floor lined with stained-glass pictures of authors: Cervantes, Melville, Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, and more. Elizabeth took out her little notebook and wrote the names under a new list with the heading “Famous Authors Whose Books I Want to Read Someday.”

  At a hallway on the third floor, Elizabeth stopped before the reference room, on whose closed door hung a sign that read BOOKS HERE TO BE ENJOYED IN THE LIBRARY ONLY; NOT AVAILABLE FOR CHECKOUT. She was about to move away and examine a painting on the wall opposite the door for a moment, when the feeling came over her so strongly it nearly clouded her vision. She put a hand out to make sure she didn’t stumble, and then she waited for whatever was going to happen next. A creaking sound echoed in the hallway; the door to the reference room banged open. Elizabeth shook her head and took a deep breath. Why in the world do these strange things happen? she thought, and then she stepped through the doorway into the room.

  It was as large as Aunt Purdy and Uncle Burlap’s house. The room was nine-sided rather than square, and its carpet was thick and soft, so that it was quieter than where she’d been, without an echo. She scanned the shelves, starting to her right as she entered, at history and geography, moving through the lower numbers and all the way to religion and psychology. She felt as though she should be extra quiet here.

  There was a rolling ladder just before her. She set her backpack on the floor, stepped up the ladder, and made her way to the top to see what she could find on the highest shelves, all the while glad she had the room to herself. It wasn’t the feeling she often had at her aunt and uncle’s house when she was doing something she knew she wasn’t supposed to do and that she might get in trouble for—spreading an extra bit of peanut butter on her bread, maybe, or using up the shampoo in her bottle faster than Aunt Purdy told her she could. It was more that she felt excited in some private way, as though about to open a letter addressed just to her.

  She found herself at the top rung of the ladder and at the highest shelf in the section. She studied the books: The Pyramids of Ancient Egypt; Drea
ms and What They Mean; Astrology for You! The titles seemed badly mixed up, Elizabeth thought, and this seemed odd given how orderly every other place in the library had been. As she scanned the row of books, she noticed they were loosely packed, and she felt certain a book or two must be missing. She scooted a length of books to one side, tamped them together, and saw that behind the row, in the space behind the books at the back of the shelf, one jacketless, frayed volume lay forgotten, as though it had been accidentally pushed there years before. Elizabeth fished it out and examined the title on its front and spine: A Guide for Children: Games, Secrets, Pastimes, and More.

  Interesting title, Elizabeth thought. She turned it over to look at its back, but there was nothing printed on its brown skin. It was the most average-looking, typical little book she could imagine. “Granger” was the author’s name next to the title. She opened the book: “Riley Sweth Granger” was the full name, and the publication date said 1897, but there wasn’t any of the other sort of information you would expect to find in the front of a book—no company name or city or anything. The book was well over one hundred years old, and something about this fact itself sent a thrill through Elizabeth.

  She examined the table of contents and found several pages of interesting entries: “How to make a Japanese square kite,” “How to make a wooden water-telescope,” “How to make a soap-bubble pipe,” “How to make a boomerang,” “How to build a snow-fort,” “How to organize a scavenger hunt,” and many others. But the last several entries struck Elizabeth as more than a little odd: “How to get extra dessert after dinner,” “How to fool your teacher into thinking you are smarter than you are,” “How to tell a story even the mayor of your town would believe.”

  What kind of a crazy book is this? Elizabeth wondered, and she found herself laughing aloud as she continued to read chapter headings: “How to hide a puppy in your house,” “How to make people think you come from another country,” “How to make adults think you’ve eaten all your vegetables,” “Five ways to avoid boredom if you’ve been sent to your room.” She climbed back down the ladder and sat examining the book for ten minutes, skimming here and there.

  Chimes sounded in the distance; lunch would be served in twenty minutes. Elizabeth considered that this book, because it was in the reference room, could not be removed from the library; but she found herself wanting to take it with her to read whenever she chose. What if Leona won’t let me check it out? she thought. Almost before she realized what she was doing, she dropped it into her backpack.

  Nobody’s looked at it for a long time, she thought, even as she tried to ignore a small voice inside her that said what she was doing was wrong. She was thinking how strange it would feel to sneak the book out of the library and past Leona, though that was exactly what she planned to do. I’ll bring it back soon, and no one will ever know. It’s not like anyone’s been looking for it.

  She departed the room, zigzagging across the broad carpet outside the reference room for fun, and then taking the stairs on the long staircase two at a time. As she scanned the second floor that was coming into view, she saw the man and woman in black, their backs to her, standing before a long bookcase and studying a book they had taken from the shelf. Elizabeth stopped jumping and began scurrying down the stairs to move quickly out of sight in case they turned around. When she reached the landing she looked again, but a bookcase was in the way now, and she could no longer see the couple.

  “Strange birds!” Miles cawed loudly, out of sight one floor below in Leona’s office. “Strange birds!” The sound echoed across the vast library.

  “Hush, Miles!” Leona said. She, too, was hidden in the office.

  “Strange birds!” Miles called once more.

  Elizabeth glanced into her backpack to make sure A Guide for Children was hidden beneath her other books, and then continued down the stairs.

  CHAPTER 11

  A BATTLE OF WITS

  WINS

  WINE

  WIRE

  TIRE

  TIME

  As Elizabeth approached the entrance to Winter Hall for lunch, she stopped to examine the enormous murals and the family tree; and then she noticed, within a painted scroll just beside the family tree, a poem she had overlooked earlier:

  The peaks rise high, the north reels on, and mist obscures the sky

  Where as one hid—denied the night!—the days of fall pass by

  In winter’s tempo we remain, but when fair spring returns

  Soon summer’s knit ’em, sky and storm, and scented heaven burns

  October ear and April eye catch distant zephyr’s song

  The airy cloud does wet hilltop—the ancient night is long

  First light, gong rang, erased the dark, the endless river crossed

  The pages, pendant, picture all—where faith is never lost!

  She thought of the poems she liked in Where the Sidewalk Ends and some of the ones in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The poem on the wall above her didn’t seem to make any sense, though as she read it and reread it, she felt a little bit the way she did when she was trying to solve a crossword puzzle or even when she’d helped the two men with their Himalayan puzzle the night before … as though there were something she might figure out.

  She examined the family tree itself for a moment, and she noticed something that seemed odd: Well over half the women who could be accounted for—Morena, Clarice, Serena, Lavina, Rowena, and Ravenna—had lived to be exactly one hundred years old.

  What are the odds of that? Elizabeth thought. One of the few women who hadn’t lived to one hundred was Norbridge’s wife. That’s strange, too.

  Another chime sounded, and she entered the hall to find Freddy waiting for her where they’d sat at breakfast that morning.

  “How’d you like the library?” he asked. She took a seat and they began to talk. He told her about the progress he had made on his Walnut WonderLog that morning, and she told him all about her time in the library, leaving out any mention of the book she’d found. When their food arrived, she decided to ask Freddy about something that had been bothering her.

  “Do you have to check in with Norbridge during the day?” she said.

  Freddy was working through his bowl of beef barley soup quickly. “Like let him know where I am or something?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No. I mean, sometimes he wants to know what I’m up to, but it’s not a regular thing. I just check in with him on our project, that’s all.” He pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “Why are you asking?”

  “He asked me to check in with him twice a day, and I thought maybe it was something he did with you, too.”

  Freddy shook his head. “Nope. Maybe it’s…” His sentence trailed off.

  Elizabeth couldn’t think what he might be about to say. “What?”

  “Well, he knows who my parents are, and all that. Maybe he just … I don’t know. You said it’s kind of mysterious how you got here. Maybe he just wants to make sure someone’s looking out for you.”

  Elizabeth wasn’t sure that added up, and she thought maybe it was occurring to Freddy that there was something very different about the two of them, that he was rich and had parents, while she was, well, the opposite of rich and didn’t have parents. For just a moment, she felt the way she often felt in Drere: She was the “niece” of the poorest people in town.

  “You know, I went down to the library late last night and I saw Norbridge in there looking at books,” she said, putting thoughts of her aunt and uncle out of her mind. “I could see him through the window. As if he was looking for something. And he was kind of distracted, too, when he was showing me to my room, and then one of the bellhops called him away for something that seemed serious.”

  Freddy closed his eyes for two seconds. “You can turn ‘serious’ into ‘or issue,’” he said.

  “Really, though,” Elizabeth said, “what do you think?”

  “Well, I think it’s odd,” Fredd
y said. “Two nights ago I went down to the kitchen to get some Flurschen because I couldn’t sleep, and then all of a sudden Norbridge turned the corner from the direction of the library. He looked surprised to see me.”

  Elizabeth didn’t know what to think. She hadn’t even been at Winterhouse a full day, but if Freddy thought there was something odd about Norbridge visiting the library so late at night, then maybe her intuition had been correct and there really was something to wonder about.

  “You think everything’s okay?” she said.

  “Probably,” Freddy said. “He’s always got a lot on his mind. It takes a lot to run Winterhouse.”

  Elizabeth thought back to Norbridge skimming through books and looking around with his flashlight. She decided to put it out of her mind for now.

  Freddy set his spoon down and held up a finger. “Hey, I brought something,” he said, and he reached into his pocket and pulled out some folded-up pieces of paper and two pens. He set everything on the table.

  “What’s this?” Elizabeth said.

  “Take a pen and some paper,” Freddy said. He scooted his bowl and plate out of the way, and then cleared Elizabeth’s place as well. “It’s word ladder competition time!”

  Elizabeth felt instantly delighted. “Ah, okay!” she said. “‘Time. Item. Mite.’ You’re on! How do we do this?”

  “You forgot ‘emit,’” Freddy said, and Elizabeth held up a fist in mock anger but said nothing. Freddy laughed as he unfolded a piece of paper and picked up a pen. “Let’s go with three-letter words to start, or else we’ll be here until dinner. I’ll choose the starting word, and you choose the ending one, and then we’ll begin. First one to solve is the winner.”

  Elizabeth took the other pen and a piece of paper. “Got it,” she said.

  Freddy wrote something at the top of his page and then held it up for Elizabeth to see: ICE.

  She wrote the word on her paper, thought for a moment, and then wrote a word near the bottom of her page: ART. As she held it up for Freddy to see, she said, “Ready, set, go!”