The Grimm Legacy (27 page)

“He answered all my questions and boasted about everything. He had my willpower, so he thought he was safe. He always did like to gloat.”

“But wait a minute,” said Aaron. “How did Mr. Stone make the copies? I thought you couldn’t copy magic with a dereifier.”

“Not fully and permanently, but you can approximate it for a while,” said Ms. Callender. “They’re working on some pretty advanced dereifiers up at MIT. Wallace managed to make fairly convincing temporary copies. That’s why they lost their magic after too many people checked them out.”

“So if my mermaid comb is a fake, where’s the real one? Will I get my sense of direction back?” I asked.

“I think it’s in Hollywood now. I’m sure we’ll get it back eventually, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. They have deep pockets and stubborn lawyers. I’m sorry, Elizabeth.”

“I’ll take you wherever you need to go,” offered Jaya. “I have a great sense of direction.”

“Thanks, Jaya,” I said sadly.

“The sooner we get started, the sooner we’ll get it back,” said Doc. “Your sense of direction and everything else. You still have the Golden Key, Aaron?”

Aaron held it up.

“Good. Marc, will you carry the
kuduo
?” Doc started around the fountain, under two spouting streams, and led us through the winter wood, Polly flapping loudly overhead. We came to a high wall that seemed to circle around forever. Through a low wrought-iron gate I could see the flat, fluorescent white lights of Stack 1, the Dungeon. Aaron took out the Golden Key and opened the gate.

Polly settled on the top of the gate and looked at us expectantly.

“Not you, little roc,” said Dr. Rust. “I’m sorry, but you can’t go home with Elizabeth. You’ll have to stay here for now.”

“Crrrick,” said the bird, putting her head through the gate. She sounded angry.

“It’s nicer in the garden. And Elizabeth will come visit you,” said Dr. Rust.

“How will I get in?” I asked. “I mean out? Do I need to borrow the Golden Key? Or will my sneakers work?”

“You can use the Golden Key, when you can find it. It doesn’t always let itself be found.”

“Good-bye, Polly. I’ll come soon,” I said. “It’s not everybody who gets to be friends with a former terrifying monster who lives in a magical garden!”

Chapter 27:

A carpet ride

The rest of the weekend was something of a letdown. Not that I would have expected my parents to notice my adventure; I made it home in time to help with dinner, after all. But after being shrunk down to the size of a soda can and almost eaten by a rat, defeating a crooked art dealer, helping rescue a prince and a princess from an obsessed collector, and traveling to Nowhere and back, I almost resented being expected to peel potatoes. At the end of the fairy tale, the scullery maid usually gets a promotion.

Monday at lunch, Marc waved me over to sit at his table with the basketball stars and their girlfriends. “This is my bud Elizabeth Rew,” he said, draping his arm around my shoulders. “We work together after school. She saved my life when I got in trouble with the boss.”

“Hey, Elizabeth,” the team said, nodding at me. The girlfriends smiled politely.

Then they all went back to talking, and I felt very out of place. Still, it was the thought that counted.

After lunch, Mr. Mauskopf stopped me in the hall. “Nice work,” he said. “Lee Rust told me about your adventures. It would have been even better if you’d stopped Marc from stealing the
kuduo,
of course—the arrogance of princes! And you both should have come to me at once for help. But still, you and your friends rescued Lee from a tight spot and did the collection a great service. I’m proud of you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Mauskopf,” I said, blushing.

My phone rang that evening. “Elizabeth? It’s Jaya. What do you think I should do with all these princesses? There aren’t any princes to kiss them. But they’ve got to be bored out of their minds, just sitting there.”

“What does Anjali think?”

“She’s no use. She told my mom she was going to your house and went off to hang out with Marc.”

“Oh. I’ll ask Doc about the princesses next time I’m in the library.”

“Thanks. Do you think maybe I should play with them?”

I thought about it. If I were a doll, would I want a frenetic ten-year-old bumping me around as she acted out her fantasies? “Maybe you could play some music for them? Or put them where they can see the TV?” I suggested.

“My parents won’t let me have a TV in my room. Oh, I’ve got to go, my mom is calling.”

At the repository, I spent a long time looking for Doc’s office. “Did you get the mermaid comb back yet?” I asked when I finally found it. Then I noticed something odd. “Your freckles! They’re back,” I blurted out.

Doc nodded. “They’re what connects me to the Garden of Seasons. In the garden, they’re stars in the sky. Out here, they’re only freckles on my face.”

“That’s . . . cool,” I said. “How do you get star freckles?”

“They came when I took the job. Now, your sense of direction. I’m sorry to say we don’t have the comb back yet. I expect it will take at least a year, maybe longer. In the meantime, I thought you could use this. The board of governors approved the loan for as long as you need it.” Doc handed me a ring made of some gray metal—it looked like iron or steel—with a silvery, mirrory stone in it.

I put on the ring. “Thanks. What does it do?”

“If you think about what you desire, it shows where to go to find it. Try it.”

I thought about lunch. I felt the ring gently pulling me toward the door. I thought about my friend Nicole. The ring pulled me gently toward the door. I thought about the skating rink in Central Park. The ring gently pulled me toward the door.

“Whatever I think about, it pulls me toward the door,” I said.

“Are you thinking about things in this room?”

“No.”

“Good, then it’s working. You have to go out the door first before you can go anywhere else.”

That made sense. “Would it have led me to Anjali when we didn’t know where she was? What if I think about world peace? Not the school, I mean—the ideal. Will it lead me to where I can make it happen?”

“No. It’s magic, but it’s not a miracle maker. It just shows you a starting place, based on your own understanding of what you want. You have to do the real work. As the Akan proverb says, ‘Your beauty may take you there, but it’s your character that brings you back.’ ”

“Oh. Too bad. Well, still—thank you.”

“I thought it was the least we could do.”

“What about everybody else who borrowed the fake objects, the ones Mr. Stone made with the dereifier?” I asked. “Will they ever get their deposits back?”

Doc nodded. “They got them back already. You’re the only person who still had one of the replacements checked out after it went dead. I guess that’s because we gave you an extra day on your loan. The replacements were set to last through three patrons and run out on the fourth day after the third patron took them out.”

“Good,” I said. “And what about the real objects, the ones he copied? Did you find them?”

“Some of them. There were some at Wallace Stone’s apartment, waiting to be sold. We’ve been contacting his clients. Most of them were appalled to learn they’d bought stolen goods. They’re returning them. A few people are fighting, but we have some very good lawyers among our alumni. I’m confident we’ll get them back eventually.”

“Oh, I almost forgot,” I said. “Jaya Rao wants to know what to do with the princesses, the ones Gloria Badwin collected.”

“Ah, yes, the princesses. That’s quite a problem.” Doc sighed. “Tell her to bring them in and I’ll put them under a sleeping spell for now—I can use the Sleeping Beauty spindle. We’ll keep them here while we figure out what to do. Most of them would be pretty confused to find themselves in twenty-first-century America, even assuming we could disenchant them.”

“Won’t the Kiss of True Love work?”

“In theory, yes. But Gloria Badwin liked antiques. It may be hard to find someone who truly loves a princess who last walked the earth over a hundred years ago. On the other hand, they tell me true love lasts beyond the grave, so perhaps there’s hope.”

I wondered whether a ghost could administer the Kiss of True Love.

“Speaking of love,” Doc continued, “here’s the Golden Key if you want to visit that bird of yours. Bring it back before you leave the library.”

Anjali called me on Thursday to ask if I would take her to the basketball game on Friday. “You could come over here and hang out, maybe get caught up on homework, and have dinner with my family,” she said.

Jaya insisted on coming to the game with us. “If I hadn’t saved you, you would still be a puppet, and Merritt would be three inches tall. He wouldn’t be playing a lot of basketball then, would he? I want to see him play!”

“Oh, let her come,” I said.

Anjali sighed and shrugged yes.

Just before the game started, Aaron showed up. This time he was wearing a purple-and-white scarf, and he cheered whenever Marc scored. The game was satisfying but not that exciting—we were up by six points by the end of the first quarter and never lost the lead after that. When Aaron left to go to the bathroom after the third quarter, Katie from my French class leaned over to me and said, “Is that your boyfriend? Because he’s really cute.”

“Who, Aaron? No, he’s just a friend.”

“He is not! He’s
totally
your boyfriend,” said Jaya.

“No, he’s not. We work together after school.”

“Don’t listen to her. He likes her. They argue all the time, and he’s always putting flowers behind her ear.”

“Jaya! He does not!”

Katie smiled. “I get it. Cute but taken. Aren’t they always.” Back from the bathroom, Aaron sat down behind me. He put his hand on my shoulder and said in my ear, “You can lean on me; I don’t mind.”

I leaned back, my face aflame. Seemingly absently, he played with my hair. I wished I had a working mermaid’s comb; still, he seemed to like my hair okay as it was. Jaya smirked. I tried to watch the players and ignore her, but it was hard to concentrate.

A roaring all around me made me aware that the game was over and we had won. “You hungry?” said Aaron. “Want to go get something to eat?”

“I think a few of us are going to Jake’s Joint,” I said.

“You can come too,” said Jaya.

“You’re not coming, Jaya,” said Anjali.

“I am so!”

“No, you’re not. It’s late, and you don’t want Mom and Dad to get mad and say you can never come to a basketball game again.”

“Please? Just one soda?”

“I’ll take her home afterward,” I offered.

“Oh, all right, you can come, but only for one drink.”

Aaron walked next to me to the diner. He pulled out a chair for me.

“What a gentleman,” I said. “Is it safe for me to sit down? Or is an invisible elf going to pull my chair away at the last minute?”

“You never know until you try,” he said.

He didn’t pull the chair away, but he did eat my pickle a little later. “Hey!” I objected.

“Sorry—were you planning to eat that? It didn’t look like you were.”

“You could have asked.”

“You could have stopped me.”

“Lovebirds,” said Jaya, slurping the end of her soda.

“Okay, Jaya. That’s your one soda. Time to go,” said Anjali.

“But I’m not done yet!” protested Jaya, making loud bubbles with her straw to show there was still liquid in the glass. “See?”

“Stop making those disgusting noises, or I won’t take you to the game next time.”

“I liked you better as a puppet,” she said, but she got up and put on her coat.

I got up too. “Ready?” I said.

“You sure you want to take her, Elizabeth? I can do it myself,” said Anjali.

“No, that’s fine,” I said. “You stay here with Marc.”

“Come back afterward, then?”

I shook my head. “I have to get home. My stepmother will kill me if I leave the dishes till morning.”

Anjali made a sympathetic face.

“Thanks, Libbet,” said Marc. “See you Monday.”

Much as I usually hate having my name shortened, I didn’t object. If Marc Merritt wanted to give me an affectionate nickname in front of everybody who was anybody at Fisher, that was fine with me. Besides, it reminded me of the adorable Andre. “Give your brother a hug from me,” I said.

Aaron stood up and put on his coat too. “I’ll walk you,” he said.

“Yes, come on, Aaron!” said Jaya, winking at me.

“Thanks—but I can find my way okay now,” I said, dying of embarrassment.

“No, she can’t,” said Jaya. “You have to come with us.”

I didn’t argue, but I showed them both the desire ring once we were outside. Jaya wanted to try it on. “Hey, that’s neat!” she said. “Is Madison Square Garden really that way?”

“The subway is—you would have to take it downtown. Can I have my ring back now?”

We reached the Raos’ building. “Bye, Jaya,” said Aaron.

“Bye, Aaron! Bye, Elizabeth! Have fun!”

Aaron and I walked in silence to the subway. “I’ll see you next week,” I said.

“See you next week.” He looked as if he was going to say something else, but he didn’t.

“Okay, bye, then.”

“Bye.”

I had to concentrate very hard to get the ring to take me to the right train platform. Whenever I let my mind drift, I found it pulling me west—following Aaron as he rode the bus across the park.

The next week it was suddenly spring. The snow, already melting, gave a last sigh and trickled down the drains. Crocuses poked up their purple noses around the sidewalk trees. Teachers started talking about midterms.

On Wednesday, Ms. Callender put me on Stack 7, the art collection, with Josh. It was pretty quiet, which was good—I had a French dialogue to memorize. My ring kept wanting me to go upstairs, where Aaron was stationed on Stack 10, Science and Medicine, but when I went to look for him on my break, he wasn’t there. So I walked over to Central Park instead and communed with the snowdrops.

Saturday evening I was doing my math homework when I heard a tapping at my window. It sounded like a branch blowing against the pane. I glanced up and glimpsed a dark shape. A chill ran through me.

Don’t be ridiculous, I told myself—Mr. Stone is stuck in Nowhere and the dark shape that used to hover terrifyingly in windows is a friend now.

The tapping came again. “Polly?” I said, throwing the window open, “is that you?” I wondered how she got out of the Garden of Seasons.