The Secret of the Key

by Marianne Malone

  “It’s a gift.”

  He shook his head, his mouth set.

  “We don’t need it,” Jack insisted.

  “I know—how about a trade?” Ruthie suggested. “I’d love to have one of your carvings.”

  “Doesn’t seem like an even trade,” Freddy replied.

  “It does to me.” Ruthie let the ring dial dangle in front of him.

  Freddy looked at it. “All right, then.” He ran around the corner and came back with the basket of his work. “Choose the one you like.”

  Knowing what was going to happen when they returned to room E9 made the choice bittersweet. Ruthie took the lively toad in her hand, wanting more than anything to keep it. But she knew there was no chance it would survive passing the threshold back to the twenty-first century.

  They said goodbye to Freddy and made their way back to the road.

  “That was nice of you to give him the ring dial,” Jack said as he and Ruthie approached the door to room E9.

  “It’s going to be cool to think of someone in the 1700s having something from me!” She held the toad up to look at it one last time, knowing that it would disappear from her hand the moment she reentered room E9. “I really wish I could keep it.”

  She was about to put her foot in the doorway when Jack grabbed her arm. “Hang on. I have an idea.”

  “What?”

  “Something I just thought of. It probably won’t work, but it’s worth a try. Wait here.”

  He ran through the doorway and Ruthie saw him in the room, looking for something, until he crossed to the right and she couldn’t see him anymore.

  Then all at once strange things started to happen. The room began to fade. She saw a vague image of him in the distance, walking into view, holding something.

  “Jack!” she screamed.

  She reached out toward the door but it was slipping off into the distance faster than she could react, moving away from her and getting smaller, shrinking to a tiny dot before disappearing completely. And then the patio and garden around her vanished, replaced by a few trees and rosebushes in front of her and a long rolling landscape beyond. She stood alone on the side of the road, clutching the wooden toad.

  RUTHIE HAD NO IDEA HOW long she stood there, frozen in panic. Calling for help wouldn’t work—what could anyone here do for her?

  A million thoughts raced through her mind. Jack must have done something to the animator in the room, whatever it was. He would figure it out shortly, she told herself. Surely the door would reappear exactly where it had been moments before. Ruthie kept her eyes on that spot, squinting for any glimpse of the wooden door frame.

  She thought she heard the tinkling bell sound that had always signaled that something magic was occurring. But it was only the trill of birds chirping around her, sounding foreign and odd, filtered through her growing anxiety.

  Ruthie attempted to breathe deeply and slowly, struggling to keep fear at bay. What if they had changed history somehow, and this was all part of something she didn’t understand and couldn’t have predicted?

  Was that the door appearing? No, it was the smear of tears forming in her eyes, distorting the view in front of her.

  Come on, Jack! Get me back!

  She checked and saw that the key was still safe in her bag. But could its magic help her? Could it transport her home in some other way?

  The clip-clop sound of a horse’s hooves came from around the bend in the road. In this state there was no way she could speak coherently or make explanations about her odd clothes. She jumped behind the nearest rosebush. Taking her eyes off the place where the door had dematerialized made her feel even more as though the last link to the portal—to her whole world—was gone.

  The horse and rider came into view, traveling at a leisurely pace. Get on with it, she thought. All she wanted to do was return to the spot where she’d been standing. What if—somehow—Jack was looking through the door at this very moment and couldn’t see her? What would he think? What would he do?

  Finally the traveler moved down the road and out of sight. She returned to what she hoped was the same place she’d been standing when this disaster started.

  After what seemed like forever, she heard bells. At first she thought they were coming from the church nearby. But then she realized it was the sound of magic in the air around her, tinkling and glittering.

  The animator is working again!

  A few more moments passed, and along with the ringing of the bells she heard Jack’s voice, small and frantically calling from somewhere far off. “Ruthie! Where are you?”

  The patio slowly reappeared around her; there were a few flickers, and then the hazy outline of a brick wall came into focus and gained substance, like a hologram solidifying. Then the door came rushing toward her, as though it might knock her down, stopping just inches away from her, with Jack standing right in the middle of it. He looked as terrified as she felt.

  “Ruthie!” Jack yelled before the doorway was fully solid. He leapt out to the patio.

  “What happened?” Ruthie managed to get out as her whole body unclenched.

  “I’m sorry! I forgot that we hadn’t figured out what the animator was yet. I picked up a vase from the mantel … I thought I could bring it outside. It turned out to be the animator,” Jack tried to explain.

  “But why?” Her rattled nerves still rumbled.

  “I had the idea that maybe we could put the toad in something old out here,” he explained, “since things that are the true antiques have the ability to go back and forth—like the ring dial,” Jack explained. “I thought maybe they might have a little extra power; you could put the toad inside something and it might work like a time-defying container. And you’d get to keep the toad.”

  “That’s pretty out there,” Ruthie said, rubbing her hands along her arms to check her solidity.

  “I realized what happened after I had the vase halfway across the room. But I had to run out to the corridor because people were coming. I’m really sorry!”

  “What took so long for the door to reappear?”

  “A tour group stopped in front of the viewing window, so I had to wait.”

  “No more messing with the animators, okay?”

  “Right.”

  Her heart rate returning to normal, Ruthie looked at the carving in her hand. “It would be incredible to be able to keep this.”

  They stood there silently, mulling the possibilities.

  “Your idea still might work. See if you can find another real antique—another vase or a box or something—and bring it out here.”

  Jack slipped back into the room. Ruthie didn’t like this, being alone in the eighteenth century while Jack was in the twenty-first, knowing how easily the connection between the two worlds could be broken. So she set the toad down and stepped inside the room. Jack quickly found another vase, an ashy white one with an ebony lid—one of a pair resting on two tall pedestals.

  “This seems old,” he said, and then they both walked out onto the patio. The vase transformed before their eyes from a crackled, delicate-looking antique to a brand-new vase, its surface glossy and smooth, the grayed glaze returning to its original ivory. Ruthie placed the carving inside and Jack put the lid back on.

  They crossed the threshold. As expected, the vase aged rapidly, looking as it had only moments before. Jack lifted the lid and peered into the dark interior. “It’s still here!”

  Ruthie inhaled. “I can’t believe it!” The vase had carried the toad safely through almost three centuries!

  “You know what this means?” Jack asked.

  “It means we can bring stuff back from the past,” Ruthie answered.

  “Every time we come here, we learn something else that the magic can do,” Jack observed.

  “I know,” Ruthie said. “But I’m not sure bringing things back from the past is a good idea. It doesn’t seem like we should be able to.”

  “Almost feels like cheating.”

 
“Exactly.”

  “But Freddy gave it to you. It’s not stealing,” Jack reminded her. “Maybe this is just a onetime thing … or maybe when we take it out …”

  Jack tipped the vase and the toad—now darkened and cracked with age—tumbled out into Ruthie’s palm.

  But something else spilled out with it.

  Next to the toad rested a letter written in elegant script on yellowed stationery.

  Jack picked it up and read aloud:

  February 20, 1939

  To whom it may concern,

  I am compelled to write. I have reason to believe that the key belonging to me is in your possession. You may feel your work in the studio gives you certain rights but this item was purchased on my behalf, paid for with my funds. I consider it to be one of my prize possessions.

  This is a most serious—dare I say dangerous—matter, as the key must be returned to its proper place in the looking-glass box. Do not try to search for the box; I have taken it with me to Santa Barbara, where it is secure in my vault. Upon my return to Chicago, I hope this matter will be put to rest.

  I remain anxiously,

  Narcissa Thorne

  Montjoie, Santa Barbara, California

  Ruthie took some moments to process what she’d just heard. “I can’t believe it!” she was finally able to say.

  “Check the key—is it doing anything?”

  Ruthie quickly looked inside her bag and saw flashes. She lifted the key for Jack to see.

  Ruthie exhaled loudly. “Now what?” This morning all she had wanted to do was explore a few rooms and secret worlds. Even though the letter was addressed to “To whom it may concern,” Ruthie felt like it was written to her and Jack. After all, they had possession of the key. And even though they hadn’t been the ones who had stolen it, it was loot that needed to be returned. But how? And to whom?

  “Almost there,” Jack said in the dark air duct high above the ceiling of Gallery 11.

  They were making their way to the American corridor and room A2, where the hourglass belonged. In this lightless tunnel Ruthie’s nerves felt brittle, and the words from Mrs. Thorne’s letter—a most serious and dangerous matter—repeated in her head. It was one thing to put the hourglass in its proper place. But how could they possibly return the key?

  The American rooms were set in an island in the middle of Gallery 11, and this was the way Ruthie and Jack traveled there. A crochet chain that Ruthie had made for them to climb up and into the duct also worked like a mountain climber’s rope to guide their way through the darkness. The dull glow coming from the back of the rooms finally appeared through the vent ahead of them.

  “When you get down to the ledge, go to the right,” Ruthie said, maneuvering out of the duct after Jack.

  “Okay,” Jack replied. To speed the descent, Jack was trying a new technique: instead of putting his feet in the loops of yarn, he placed them flat against the wall and grabbed hold of the loops with only his hands. His body was in a horizontal position, as if he were walking down the side of a skyscraper. “Try it, Ruthie,” he called up to her.

  It took more arm strength than their usual way, but it was also easier because she didn’t have to find the loops to place her feet into. It was more like rappelling down a mountain, except she didn’t push off too hard, making it something like a hop and a glide. “It’s faster,” Ruthie said, getting the hang of it. In no time they were on the ledge racing toward the New Hampshire room.

  Scouting for the way in, they eased themselves through a tight space in the framework. It led into a side room with a narrow staircase made of rich, glowing wood. From this vantage point, they peered into the main room.

  “What’s this room?” Jack asked.

  “Portsmouth, New Hampshire, around 1710. It’s a copy of a room from the house of a man named John Wentworth, according to the catalogue.”

  “I think it’s all clear,” Jack whispered.

  Softly they walked into the quiet space, trying to tell if the room was alive or not. The room was furnished simply, with everything made of wood, from the wide floorboards to an entirely paneled wall. The furniture too was wooden and had a heavier, blockier feel than the European rooms from the same era. A rustic chandelier hung over a table in the middle of the room, where they found some of the smallest items Mrs. Thorne ever created: a pair of eyeglasses, an open Bible that they could actually read, and a basket of knitting complete with ivory needles. Ruthie had seen them so many times from the gallery side that it was jarring to see them in front of her, just her size.

  Ruthie checked the view out the window. Even though it was hard to tell from across the room, she thought the scene was only a painted diorama: bare trees covered with snow and a drab winter landscape beyond.

  “Does it seem alive to you?”

  “Not sure … I hear something but I don’t know where it’s coming from.”

  There was another door on the same side of the room from which they’d entered. Ruthie opened it and saw that it was a dark closet. Looking at a big cabinet next to it, Ruthie said, “This is where the hourglass belongs. On the top.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The catalogue photo shows one right up there. I’m positive.” Ruthie took the hourglass from her messenger bag. She had just put it in place when they heard voices from the gallery.

  “Quick, in here!” Jack said. They fell into the closet and closed the door.

  Jack got his phone out of his pocket and turned on the flashlight function, aiming it around the small space. Just as in other rooms with closets, they saw garments hanging from hooks. “Looks like we can go exploring!”

  In the dim light, the clothes appeared to be very similar in style to what they had worn when they met Jack Norfleet on Cape Cod in the 1730s, although these clothes were made of heavy woolen fabric. There were two dark cloaks, one knee-length, the other longer. They guessed the shorter one would be for a male, the long one for a female. This time there were shoes too, and they looked like the kind Pilgrims had worn at the first Thanksgiving.

  “I think that door on the far side of the fireplace must be to the outside,” Jack said.

  “Let’s put these on over our clothes. The view out the windows is a winter scene, so if it’s alive it might be cold,” Ruthie advised. When they had the buttons buttoned and the shoes buckled, they cracked the closet door.

  “All clear,” Jack said. He headed straight for the door. Ruthie followed.

  The brass doorknob was stiff and took some effort to open, but he managed. The door creaked as he pulled it open.

  “What is this?” Ruthie asked when she looked through the door.

  Instead of a wintry landscape, they were looking into another stairwell, exactly like the one they had just been in, only now they were at the very top of the stairs. They proceeded down. A velvet rope barricade was stretched across the base so that no one could climb the stairs. They ducked under it. The stairwell opened to a furnished room that was almost identical to the one they just left.

  Like A2, this room had a low, beamed ceiling, one wall paneled in lustrous wood with a massive brick-lined fireplace, and a table in the middle of the room with carved wooden chairs. Some of the details were different, but the room was remarkably similar.

  “Weird,” Jack said. “This is déjà vu!”

  “It feels like we’re in another Thorne Room,” Ruthie observed.

  “But there are four walls—no big viewing window out to Gallery 11,” Jack added.

  “And why would Mrs. Thorne have built an almost identical room connected to the first?” Ruthie wondered. “It’s like she did two versions—”

  “Who’s that?” Jack interrupted. Through the small glass panes of a window on the far wall he saw people go by—people of their size, not the large humans looking in from the museum. They didn’t seem to be wearing eighteenth-century clothing.

  But they weren’t wearing twenty-first-century clothing either!

  The women wor
e dresses that fitted tightly at their waists, and they carried small handbags. Their hair was mostly short and stiffly styled, and they wore dainty little hats. The men had on dark suits, some double-breasted, and they all wore ties.

  And then a lady stopped and looked in—right at Ruthie and Jack. There was no time to hide, so they stood still.

  “What’s going on?” Ruthie asked.

  “Could this be some sort of parallel world?” Jack mused.

  “It looks so similar to the rooms—but who are those people?” Ruthie was thoroughly confused.

  Then a man and woman walked in from a different door.

  “Oh, this is new,” the man said, smiling at them.

  “Very charming,” the woman said.

  They admired the costumed Jack and Ruthie and then walked off the way they’d come.

  “What’s happening?” Jack whispered.

  A family came into the room with a young boy and girl who coyly wanted to touch the fabric of Ruthie’s cloak. She let them and smiled, not wanting to draw attention.

  When they left Ruthie said, “Obviously, A2 is not a portal to the eighteenth century! That stairway leading up to the Thorne Rooms door we came through—it must be part of the portal area.” Ruthie nodded toward it. “I don’t think anyone else can see it. No one’s going up. People aren’t even looking in.”

  “Let’s get out of these clothes and find out what’s going on,” Jack said.

  While the room was empty they quickly shed the heavy outer garments and shoes, tossing them in a big cabinet—just in time, as more people wandered through. In their own clothes and shoes, Ruthie and Jack weren’t dressed quite like these people, but at least they didn’t look like they were from the eighteenth century anymore.

  “Let’s see what’s out there.” Ruthie pointed to the door that the other people had used.

  When they looked through the door they found they were looking into yet another room.

  Neither of them recognized this as one of the Thorne Rooms, but it too could pass for one if made small. They walked in. The bare floor consisted of wide boards, and all the furniture was also made of dark carved wood. Another huge brick-lined fireplace took up most of an entire wall. An imposing bed filled one corner of the space, its canopy and curtains made of a rich red fabric. Through windows with diagonal leaded panes they saw a steady stream of people passing by.