I went looking for Mr. Mauskopf on Monday. Evidently he’d been looking for me too. “Elizabeth,” he said. “When do you next work at the repository?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Good. Will you give this to Dr. Rust for me?” He handed me a largish package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. “Put it in Lee’s own hands. It’s very important. Do not entrust it to anyone else. Can you do that?”
“Sure.”
“And don’t open it.”
“Of course not!” As if I would open someone else’s mail!
“Thank you, Elizabeth. How are you getting on at the repository?”
“It’s fantastic—I love it. They gave me a key to the Grimm Collection.”
“Yes, Lee told me. Congratulations! They don’t give out those keys lightly, you know. If things go well, you’ll have borrowing privileges soon too.”
“Really, you think so? That would be so awesome! I can’t believe the things they have in the collection!”
Mr. Mauskopf smiled. “No, I couldn’t believe it at first either. You understand what an honor it is to be asked to take care of them, don’t you? An honor and a responsibility. It’s not always easy.”
“Yes, I know. Mr. Mauskopf, a strange thing has happened. Remember how you said you’d heard the rumors about an enormous bird? I think we saw it—me and the other pages, Marc and Anjali and Aaron. It was hovering near the skylight at the repository, and then when I went over to Anjali’s apartment, I thought I saw it again.”
“You saw the bird! Tell me, how big was it?”
“Bigger than me. It was definitely no ordinary bird.”
Mr. Mauskopf looked worried. “I’m glad you told me. If it makes you feel better, I’ll have a word with Griffin. I’ll tell him to keep an eye on you.”
“Griffin? Your dog?” I wanted to ask what good that would do, but it seemed too rude.
“That’s right. And I think you’d better take this.” From his shirt pocket, with two long, bony fingers, Mr. Mauskopf plucked something small, brown, and smudgy, which he held out to me. It was a feather.
“Thank you. What—what do I—?”
“Keep it safe, and when your need is great, give it to the wind. And remember to take care with that package.”
I wanted to ask him more, but the second bell rang and I had to run or be late for French.
Mr. Mauskopf’s package was too wide for my backpack, so I carried it under my arm, clutching the string with my gloved fingers. A faint smell rose from it, like swimming pools, reminding me of summer. Swimming pools and bananas . . . no, something else. Tire swings, maybe? I walked downtown along Fifth Avenue beside the park, trying to tease apart the shifting components of the magic smell and watching the sinking sun paint the snow with purple shadows. It felt good to be walking; the cold pinched life into my cheeks. A flock of crows passed overhead, silhouetted against the sunset. Something odd about the birds caught my eye, and I stopped and looked up. One seemed too big to be a crow. A hawk? I couldn’t see it any longer, but I had a bad feeling, like at Anjali’s. I picked up my pace, craning my head behind me.
Then the enormous bird appeared again. It spun and swooped, coming right at me. I started to run.
Something even bigger than the bird appeared from behind a clump of trees, crossing the sky. It didn’t look like the bird—it was the wrong shape, more rectangular, like a horse or a lion. They were both coming at me fast. I panicked, running faster while looking at them over my shoulder instead of where I was going. I crashed straight into someone, hard, and my package went flying. I landed facedown in the snow, but at least I was alive and had only been hit by a human.
“Are you all right?” A man stood over me, holding out his hand. He pulled me to my feet.
“I’m so sorry!” I said, brushing off snow. “I’m okay—did I hurt you?”
He smiled, a crooked smile amid a neatly trimmed little beard. “No, no, I’m fine. You were in quite a hurry.” He bent over to pick up the envelopes and packages we had dropped, and I recognized him—he was the creepy little man from the Main Exam Room who liked to stare at Anjali.
“Yes, I—” I looked around for the bird, or birds. No sign of either one. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
“No harm done.”
“Is that my package?” I asked. He was carrying several largish packages like the one Mr. Mauskopf had given me, wrapped in brown paper.
“No, I don’t think so—but I do seem to have one or two too many.”
“Mine was addressed to Dr. Rust at the New-York Circulating Material Repository,” I said.
“Well! Isn’t that a strange coincidence! I was just on my way there myself.” He showed me one of his packages, addressed to Dr. Rust. “I thought you looked familiar. You’re one of the pages, aren’t you? I’ve seen you in the repository. I can take your package along to Dr. Rust with mine.”
“No!” It came out panicky and rude. “No, thank you, that’s okay. I need to take it to Dr. Rust myself.”
“It’s no trouble, and it’ll get there faster. I’m on my way to the repository right now. I assure you, it will be safer with me.” He hesitated. “Tell me, do you work in the Grimm Collection?”
“What? Why do you want to know that?”
“Ah, you do. Don’t worry, you’re not spilling any secrets. I know all about the collection,” he said reassuringly.
“I still need my package,” I said.
“Yes. Well. About that . . . I don’t mean to frighten you, but there have been some thefts of Grimm items. Some members have reported a—well, a large flying creature—menacing them or even snatching items out of their hands. And I think we both saw what was following you.”
“You saw the bird!” I said, shivering. “Is it gone now?”
“For now, yes. But I really think you’ll be safer if you let me take charge of your package. You may have something that the creature is after.”
“Why wouldn’t it just follow you then?”
He smiled. “It might. But I’m older and more experienced with . . . well, with these sorts of situations. I can take care of myself. And I would feel really terrible if anything happened to you.”
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s nice of you. But I just can’t. I promised I would take the package to Dr. Rust himself. Can I have it back, please?”
He shrugged. “Here you go, then.” He handed me one of the packages. Like the one Mr. Mauskopf had given me, it had Dr. Rust’s name in brown ink on the wrapping and was tied with string. But something wasn’t quite right. I sniffed it. It smelled like wet brown paper . . . and firecrackers . . . and skunk cabbage . . . Like magic, but the wrong magic.
“This isn’t it,” I said.
“Of course it is.”
“No, you must have gotten them mixed up. Mine is that one.” I pointed to the package under his arm.
“No, this one’s mine,” he insisted.
“Let me see it.” I took hold of it with both hands. He hung on as I pulled it toward my chest. The top button of my coat, the button Anjali had sewn on for me, pressed against his hand as he grabbed for the package.
The man’s fingers uncurled slowly, trembling a little, as if against his will. He snarled. For a moment I had the awful feeling he was about to . . . I don’t know, attack me somehow.
Then he pulled himself together. He picked up the package he’d tried to give me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just trying to protect you. But I can see you’re a stubborn young lady. Brave too. Be careful. I hope you can keep yourself safe.” And he strode away through the snow.
I locked my bedroom door when I got home and put the package on my desk. I couldn’t shake the creepy feeling the encounter had given me. I looked the package over. The snow had smudged the brown ink on the brown paper wrapper, but I could still recognize Mr. Mauskopf’s handwriting. It was his, wasn’t it? I hadn’t been mistaken and taken the wrong package? I sniffed at it. It smelled magical to me, with summery magic: a little piney, a little salty, carnations. But the other package had clearly been magical too. Maybe I should open it and see what is inside, I thought.
No sooner had the thought occurred to me than a passionate desire to do it swept over me. I knew it was foolish. What would be the point? I had no idea what was in Mr. Mauskopf’s package, so opening this one wouldn’t tell me if this was the right one. I would break my promise for nothing. But my curiosity was so strong I could hardly bear it. What if I just opened a corner and peeked in? Almost against my will, my fingers crept toward it.
“Stop it, Elizabeth!” I said out loud. I locked the package in my desk drawer, slammed my mind shut, and concentrated on French irregular verbs.
The next day at the repository I tapped on Dr. Rust’s open door.
“Do you have a moment? Mr. Mauskopf asked me to bring you this.”
“Excellent, thank you.” Doc turned it over and looked at the blurred address and the wrinkled wrapping. “You didn’t open it, did you?”
“No,” I said, feeling obscurely guilty, as if I had. “I dropped it, though. In the snow. I hope it didn’t get damaged. I had a hard time getting it here—I wanted to talk to you about that.”
“That’s to be expected.” Doc took out a paper knife—it looked like a small dagger—and slit the wrappings. Inside was a plain wooden box. “Let’s take a look first, shall we?”
I craned forward. Doc lifted the lid, revealing a stack of paper dolls. Before my startled eyes, layer after layer sprang to life, puffing into three dimensions and leaping out of the box. They threw themselves into the most beguiling acrobatics, dancing around the room like Doc’s freckles on fast-forward.
A pair of the acrobats balanced a pencil across the stapler and used it as a seesaw, catapulting each other into the air. Another pair shimmied up the desk lamp and cannonballed into the water carafe below. A third pair unrolled tape from the tape dispenser and stuck the other end to the desk lamp. They held both ends of the tape tight while half a dozen of their friends took turns cavorting across in a series of leaps, flips, and cartwheels, like gymnasts on a balance beam.
“I see you were telling the truth,” said Doc.
“I was. But how can you tell?”
Doc smiled. “Try to get them back in the box.”
“All right.” I turned to the little people. “Enough, now. Back in the box with you,” I told them.
Ignoring me, they lined up to dance the Virginia reel.
“Come on, now. Back in the box!” I held it open near them, as invitingly as I could.
Still ignoring me, they began prancing up and down the desk.
Quickly, before they could get away, I picked up the head couple and put them gently in the box. But the lid wouldn’t close—their heads were too thick. I had to let go and try to pick up another pair. But they wouldn’t let me catch them at all. They joined hands and skipped just out of my reach.
“I give up,” I said at last.
“Feisty little critters, aren’t they?” Doc took a thin stick out of a drawer and tapped the dancers with it one by one. As soon as the stick touched them, they lost their girth and fluttered down to the desk, paper thin again. Doc stacked them in the box and snapped the catch shut.
What a good thing I hadn’t opened the box! Or let the man with the beard take it. “Dr. Rust? Did a man bring you a package yesterday that looked just like this one?” I asked.
“I was out yesterday, but I did get some packages—I often do. One or two of them might have been wrapped like this one. Why?”
“I ran into a man on the way home from school yesterday when I was carrying this package. Literally ran into him. I dropped the package, and he tried to take it. He said he was on his way to give you some other packages just like this. When I told him to give it back, he said he was a repository member and it would be safer for me to let him give you the package. He tried to switch them, but I wouldn’t let him.”
“That was the right decision.”
“But there actually was a flying creature following me. We saw it a few days ago too—me and Anjali and Marc and Aaron. Did Ms. Callender tell you?”
Doc nodded. “Yes, she did. That’s very serious! Did the man tell you his name?”
I shook my head.
“What did he look like?”
“Short, with a beard. I’ve seen him in the Main Exam Room.”
“Will you come and find me if you see him again?”
“Of course. Why do you think he wanted my package so badly? Do you think he’s the guy who’s stealing things from the Grimm Collection?”
“I wish I knew. But right now I’m more concerned about the creature. Can you describe it?”
“It definitely looked like an enormous bird. It was bigger than me and it came flying right at me. But then another huge bird—or something, I couldn’t see too clearly—showed up and then I bumped into the guy with the beard, and then the bird or birds were both gone. Do you think the man was right—were they after the package? Would they have hurt me?”
“I’m very glad they didn’t, at any rate. Probably the man was right and they were after the package.”
“But what were they?”
“The bird sounds like the one we’ve heard about before. This is the first I’ve heard of the other creature, though. Was this the first time you saw them?”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the bird before—through the skylight in Preservation and through Anjali’s window.”
“What did Stan Mauskopf have to say—did you tell him?”
“Just that I thought I had seen the bird—but that was before it chased me and I got a better look and the stuff happened with the package.”
“Did Stan give you a charm or a ward or anything?”
“No . . . well, yes, I almost forgot; he gave me a feather.”
Doc’s face brightened. “Good—that’s just the thing. Make sure you keep it with you. I’m sorry about all this. I knew it would be challenging for you to bring me the acrobats, but I had no idea it would be dangerous too. You can be proud of yourself. You’ve passed a harder test than we intended.”
“What do you mean? What test?”
“For borrowing privileges.”
“You don’t mean—the Grimm Collection?”
Doc nodded. “Stan asked you to bring me the dancers to see whether you’re responsible enough to be trusted to take care of Grimm items outside the repository. Clearly the answer is yes.”
“You mean it? I can borrow things now? Magic things?”
“Yes. Whenever you feel ready.”
“Can I take out anything I like? Even, like, I don’t know—a genie bottle?”
Doc smiled. “I wouldn’t go straight for the genie bottles right away. The Grimm objects can be pretty tricky. Best to start with something small.”
“All right. Thank you!” This was so exciting!
“Meanwhile,” said Doc, “given the recent thefts and that bird, I’ll be changing the door codes and the procedures. Librarians have master keys, but you pages will need two keys to get in, yours and another page’s—Anjali, Aaron, or Marc—as well as the key song. You’ll have to go down there in pairs so you can keep an eye on each other. Never lend your key to anyone, and let me know if anyone asks to borrow it.”
“I will. I’ll do everything I can to keep the collection safe,” I said fervently.
I hoped I could keep myself safe too.