by Ann Hood
“Where do you go, Miss Robbins?” Mrs. Witherspoon asked wearily.
Maisie glanced around the room. Everyone seemed to be staring at her, waiting.
“Uh,” she said.
“Miss Perkins is interested in doing a report on Neil Armstrong. Mr. Cooper wants to study Juan Tripp,” Mrs. Witherspoon said.
She leveled her gaze on Maisie. “I don’t suppose you have any ideas, Miss Robbins?”
Maisie grinned. “Either Brave Bessie Colman, Pancho Barnes, or Amy Johnson,” she said, naming the women pilots whose mementos were in her mother’s bedroom. Mrs. Witherspoon looked bewildered.
“They’re aviatrixes,” Maisie said smugly. “Female—”
“I know what an aviatrix is, Miss Robbins,” Mrs. Witherspoon said. “I’m just surprised that you know of so many.”
“Oh,” Maisie said, “you’d be surprised at the things I know.”
As soon as Maisie’s class entered the library, Felix grabbed his sister’s arm and pulled her into the stacks. His class was also doing a unit on aviation, and Miss Landers had brought them to the library to start researching their subjects, too. But Felix had looked up Dr. Livingstone instead.
“Malaria,” he whispered to Maisie. “Cannibals.”
Maisie shook her head. “Our unit’s on aviation,” she explained.
“Not the unit!” Felix said. “The Congo!”
When Maisie still looked confused, Felix said, “Dr. Livingstone. He went to Africa in 1871 to find the source of the Nile and he died there, just like every other explorer.”
“You mean Great-Uncle Thorne’s Dr. Livingstone?”
Exasperated, he said, “Yes, yes. That Dr. Livingstone. And I am not going to the Congo. No way.”
Images of Africa filled Maisie’s mind. She’d seen enough documentaries on the Nature Channel to have vivid images of herds of charging elephants and migrating wildebeests and prowling lions.
“I think it sounds kind of dreamy,” she said.
“This other guy? Stanley? He went to find Dr. Livingstone and got cerebral malaria, which is a million times worse than plain old malaria. Then he got smallpox!”
“I don’t think you can get smallpox anymore,” Maisie said, thinking of giraffes with their long eyelashes and long necks.
“Are you even listening to me?”
“I think it would be extremely cool to go to Africa,” she said firmly.
“Maybe now. On a safari or something. But not in 1871 when warring tribes are massacring one another, and crocodiles are eating people and—”
“Felix,” Maisie said, putting her hand on her brother’s shoulder, “you worry too much.”
With that, she turned and left the stacks.
Felix watched in disbelief as she walked away. He was certain of one thing: Great-Uncle Thorne would not be able to convince him to go to the Congo.
The shard had become a bit of a problem for Maisie, who had somehow become the person in charge of it. Sure, when it was cooler and she’d worn her polar fleece vest over almost anything, it had been easy to keep the shard in her pocket. But now that it was warmer, she almost never wore the vest, and she frequently found herself pocket-less.
That afternoon, before the Ziff twins arrived, she’d stared at the thing for some time, trying to figure out what to do with it so that it was safe and conveniently located should time traveling be in her future, which it was, thanks to Great-Uncle Thorne.
Maisie picked up the delicate white porcelain with the broken pattern of blue flowers on it and studied it closely.
What was that thing at the top?
She held the shard up to her eyes, closing one to focus better.
There, at the top, was the tiniest hole.
Maisie smiled, satisfied.
Tucking the shard into her fist, she went downstairs, all the way to the Kitchen in the basement. It smelled disgusting.
“What are you cooking?” Maisie asked, wrinkling her nose.
“Your great-uncle Thorne has requested a pot-au-feu for dinner tonight,” Cook said without bothering to look at Maisie.
“Pot-oh-what?”
Cook clucked her tongue and shook her head.
Maisie peered over her shoulder. Chunks of meat bounced around in a pot of boiling water, leaving a disgusting tan froth on their wake.
“Ugh!” Maisie said. “Are you boiling meat?”
“A pot-au-feu requires salting the short ribs a day in advance,” Cook said. “Then blanching them before braising. This,” she added, disgusted by Maisie’s ignorance, “is blanching, not boiling.”
“Whatever,” Maisie said, eyeballing the chopping board lined with all sorts of disgusting root vegetables, like turnips and . . .
“What are these?” Maisie asked, poking at the hard purple-and-beige vegetable.
Cook sighed. “Rutabagas,” she answered wearily. “Did you need something? Or have you come downstairs to critique my delicious preparation of a pot-au-feu?”
“Thread,” Maisie said. “I need some thread.”
Cook pointed toward a distant drawer where Maisie found spools of fine thread in every color imaginable. Her hand hesitated over first red, then purple, before settling on black. She pocketed the spool of black thread and headed out.
“Thanks,” she called over her shoulder.
“You will be returning that,” Cook said unpleasantly.
Back in her room, Maisie licked the end of the thread and twisted it so that it was narrow enough to fit through the tiny hole in the shard.
“Perfect,” she said as she held up her new necklace.
Maisie tied the thread in a triple knot at the back of her neck. The shard hung cool between her collarbones. Satisfied, she ran downstairs to greet the Ziff twins.
“You make a plan,” Great-Uncle Thorne told Maisie and Felix and Hadley and Rayne. “And then you execute it.”
They were all standing at the wall, right by where you pressed to make it open and reveal the stairs that led to The Treasure Chest.
He snickered at Maisie and Felix.
“That’s what you two never figured out,” he said, his voice full of disdain. “You went in there willy-nilly, picking objects up at random and stumbling through time.”
Insulted, Maisie put her hands on her hips and glared at Great-Uncle Thorne. “Well, nobody told us anything,” she said. “We had no idea—”
“I told you how to utilize lame demon, didn’t I? But still you just grabbed at anything—”
“It was a crown,” Felix said. “Not just anything.”
“—and you went where?” Great-Uncle Thorne continued as if Felix hadn’t spoken. “And for what purpose?”
“Why did you ask us to come here?” Hadley said.
Rayne, who had looked bored until now, came to life.
“Are you sending us on a mission?” she asked, her blue eyes shining.
“You see,” Great-Uncle said, looking dreamily at some distant point, “my sister and I would plan. We’d come back from a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where we’d fallen in love with a painting and we’d say, ‘Van Gogh. Let’s find Van Gogh.’ That was the fun of it, you see? To enter The Treasure Chest and, almost like a scavenger hunt or a puzzle, have to find just the right object to reach that person. That’s the way Phinneas wanted it. He loved games and puzzles, you know,” Great-Uncle Thorne added.
“So we’ve heard,” Maisie muttered.
“It was exciting,” Great-Uncle Thorne said sadly. “It was a challenge.”
Rayne had gone back to chipping the purple nail polish off her fingernails. But Hadley seemed thoughtful.
“You want us to go—” she began.
“To the Congo!” Felix blurted. “Where there’s malaria and cannibals and dangerous natives!”
; Once more, Rayne grew excited. “Now that’s an adventure. What do we need to do?”
“He thinks Amy Pickworth is there,” Maisie said.
“I know she’s there,” Great-Uncle Thorne said, pointing a finger at Maisie.
“You want us to find her?” Rayne asked at the very same time that Hadley said, “And do what with her?”
Great-Uncle Thorne leveled his gaze on each of them, one at a time. A chill ran up Felix’s spine when that gaze lingered on him.
“Bring her home,” Great-Uncle Thorne said matter-of-factly.
“But even if we find her, which seems pretty much impossible, she can’t come back with us,” Felix said nervously. “You need your twin with you.”
Great-Uncle Thorne nodded slowly.
Felix held up his hands. “Well then,” he said.
“All I know for certain,” Great-Uncle Thorne said thoughtfully, “is that you need your twin to get there.”
Again, he stared off at some distant place.
Then he looked at them again and his voice grew firm.
“I came back without my twin, didn’t I?” he asked.
Maisie knew that it was a rhetorical question, but she still said, “That’s right, you did.”
“Came back from where?” Hadley asked, trying to keep up.
“New York,” Felix explained. “We all went there, Maisie and me and Great-Uncle Thorne and—”
“And my bullheaded sister,” Great-Uncle Thorne interrupted. “For decades she carried a torch for that nincompoop Harry Houdini—”
“Your sister had a crush on Harry Houdini?” Rayne asked, interested again.
Great-Uncle Thorne banged his walking stick on the floor.
“Irrelevant!” he proclaimed. “All that you need to know is that Amy Pickworth can come back without her twin, just like I returned without that obdurate sister of mine.”
“Obdurate?” Rayne said, losing interest again.
“Oh! Look it up!” Great-Uncle Thorne said dismissively. “We have more to do here than improve your vocabulary.”
While Great-Uncle Thorne shouted, Rayne stepped forward, her palm facing outward as if she was ready at any moment to press that spot on the wall and go up those stairs.
“I’m coming upstairs with you,” Great-Uncle Thorne said quickly. “We’ll survey the objects and find the one that will get you to the Congo.”
“But surely that object is gone,” Felix said. “Phinneas and Amy took it with them to get there in the first place.”
Great-Uncle Thorne shook his head. “They hadn’t given the object to Dr. Livingstone when Amy disappeared,” he said.
“You’re wrong!” Felix said, his head swimming with too much information.
“I’m certain of this.”
Maisie’s face had that deep-in-thought look she got when she was thinking hard.
“Impossible,” she finally said. “Phinneas could not get back if they hadn’t given the object and received a lesson.”
Great-Uncle Thorne’s face twisted with anger.
“You are an idiot!” he said. “That’s why you have lame demon!”
“I thought it was—”
Great-Uncle Thorne pressed the wall, hard. As soon as it opened to reveal the staircase, he marched forward to the stairs, his ebony walking stick tap-tapping as he moved.
At the foot of the stairs he paused to face them.
“We will find the object that Phinneas brought back from that fateful trip to the Congo. You will choose a secondary object to bring along. And if and when things become . . . complicated . . . you will say lame demon three times with your hand on that secondary object and continue your travels elsewhere.”
“Complicated?” Felix asked. “You mean cannibals catching us or—”
“I’m not sure I want to do this,” Hadley said.
“Exactly!” Felix agreed.
“I’m in,” Maisie said quietly.
“Maisie,” Felix pleaded, “let’s discuss this calmly and rationally.”
“I’m in,” she said again, louder this time.
“Maisie,” Felix said, and even though he put on the look that usually softened her, this time she shook her head.
“I’m in, too,” Rayne said.
Felix didn’t like how her fingernails all had half-peeled-off purple nail polish. He didn’t like how she wasn’t looking at him.
“What?” Rayne asked him. “Don’t look at me so weird.”
Felix turned away, confused. All of a sudden, he missed Lily Goldberg. Lily Goldberg had not sent him one email or letter or anything since she’d moved away. At first, he’d missed her like crazy. Then she’d kind of faded into a happy blur. But standing here right now, seeing Rayne’s messy fingernails and listening to Great-Uncle Thorne’s big plans, the threat of the Congo getting closer every second, Felix wanted nothing more than to talk to Lily.
The others were following Great-Uncle Thorne up the stairs to The Treasure Chest and, for a crazy moment, Felix thought he might just walk away. They couldn’t do this without him, could they?
Great-Uncle Thorne paused on the stairs and swiveled his head so that he faced Felix below.
“What are you waiting for?” he bellowed.
Maybe because Felix always did what he was supposed to do, or maybe because everyone else was standing there waiting for him, he scurried to meet them.
Great-Uncle Thorne unclasped the maroon velvet rope and swept his arm to indicate they should all enter The Treasure Chest.
Once everyone had stepped across the threshold, Great-Uncle Thorne strode into the room and began to scan the cupboards and shelves.
An object caught Felix’s eye almost immediately. All of a sudden, he forgot about the Congo and Amy Pickworth. Instead, he remembered his aviation report.
At the end of the day, Miss Landers had made them write down the aviator they wanted to research and Felix chose Charles Lindbergh.
“Ah!” Miss Landers had said, flashing her dazzling smile at him. “Lucky Lindy!”
“Lucky Lindy?” Felix had said.
“That was his nickname,” Miss Landers explained.
Jim Duncan signed up for Baron von Richthofen, the World War I flying ace also known as the Red Baron. And Libby announced she would do her project on Chuck Yeager, the first man to break the sound barrier. Even Felix, who had trouble getting excited about the aviation unit because he was so worried about Great-Uncle Thorne’s mission, started to relax. Lucky Lindy, he thought, liking the way that sounded.
Now, right on the desk in front of him, surrounded by a seashell and a magnifying glass, was a compass. Not a regular compass, but the kind that fit into a dashboard of instruments on a plane. Maybe it belonged to Lucky Lindy, Felix thought. Hadn’t Great-Uncle Thorne said to be more deliberate about the objects they chose? When Felix reached for it, a liver-spotted hand grabbed his wrist, hard.
“No one is touching anything until we find what we are looking for!” Great-Uncle Thorne boomed.
“Um,” Maisie said, “what are we looking for?”
“How would I know?” Great-Uncle Thorne said dismissively. “When my sister and I wanted to visit King Tutankhamen, we came in here and we searched for an Egyptian object. Therefore—”
“Um,” Maisie said, “but how did you manage to get to this King Toot . . . Toot and . . .”
Great-Uncle Thorne slapped his forehead.
“Have you never heard of King Tut, you imbecile?”
“Of course,” Maisie said haughtily. “I just never knew his full name.”
“I think what Maisie was trying to say,” Hadley offered, “is how did you know that an Egyptian amulet or kartoush or whatever would get you to King . . . Tut . . . and not to, say, Cleopatra?”
Great-Uncle Thorne blinked. Then blinke
d again.
“I suppose we made a mistake or two,” he admitted. He chuckled softly. “Why, there was the time we ended up on the Mayflower instead of the Santa Maria. Now that was interesting.”
He looked at their blank faces and tsked.
“The Mayflower brought the Pilgrims to Massachusetts,” he said, his voice thick with contempt. “The Santa Maria was one of Columbus’s ships, along with the Niña and the Pinta.”
“Got it,” Rayne said, and she began to walk around the room, studying the objects that crowded every surface.
Maisie went to the other end of The Treasure Chest, scrutinizing an object carefully before deciding it wasn’t the right one.
“I think,” she said slowly, “that we aren’t looking for something African. We’re looking for something Dr. Livingstone needed to survive there.”
“Like malaria pills?” Felix asked, only half jokingly.
Hadley held up a map, brown with age and crisscrossed with faded blue lines.
“He might have needed this,” she said.
Immediately, Great-Uncle Thorne took it from her. He held it close to his eyes to better examine it.
“The confounded continent has changed so much over time,” he said, more to himself than to the children.
Everyone gathered around him, craning their necks to try to get a view of the map.
Everyone except Felix. He stayed put, and as soon as he was certain no one had noticed him, he tucked the compass into the pocket of his hoodie.
“Borders and names back then . . .” He shook his head. “It’s hard to make out some of the writing. . . .”
“Wait!” Maisie said, pointing to a particularly long line. “Right there. It says Nile River.”
“This might be the very thing . . . ,” Great-Uncle Thorne said.
With the compass safely in his pocket, Felix joined the others.
“I say we give it a try,” Hadley decided.
Great-Uncle Thorne studied the map, then studied the children’s faces, then studied the map again.
Finally, with a nod, he looked back up.
Maisie reached for the map, but Great-Uncle Thorne stopped her.
