The next Saturday, Ms. Callender sent me down to Stack 2 with a hand truck of returns from the City Opera costume department. I had spent an hour packing sequined gowns in muslin dust bags and telling myself that at least it was more glamorous than putting away my own laundry, when a high, insistent voice interrupted me. I looked up and saw a little boy.
He looked like somebody, for a joke, had made an exact copy of Marc Merritt in miniature. He was dressed just like Marc, in jeans, a hooded sweatshirt, and bright white sneakers. He had the same big brown eyes and the same long, curly eyelashes. His cheeks were rounder, his skin a deeper brown, and his arms and legs proportionally shorter, but he had the same firm chin and the same determined frown.
“I gotta go,” he said.
“Go where? Where’d you come from?” I asked.
A crazy thought crossed my mind. Maybe there really was a shrink ray in the Wells Bequest, and Marc had gotten caught in it. Maybe this was Marc.
“I gotta go,” said mini-Marc again. “Gonna have a accident.” He danced back and forth from one foot to the other.
“Oh! You mean the bathroom?”
He nodded vigorously.
“Okay, hang in there. This way.” If finger acid was bad for the collection, I could only imagine what urine would do to it. I hurried him down the hall to the ladies’ room.
Unfortunately, there was an icon of a person in a triangular skirt on the door. “That’s the girls’ room,” he objected.
“Yeah, but I can’t take you into the boys’ room—I’m a girl. It’s okay; they have toilets in here too. Come on.” I held the door open.
He hesitated, then followed me in.
“You want me to help you?” I asked. He nodded. Feeling ridiculous for even entertaining the thought, I really, really hoped this wasn’t Marc. How embarrassing would that be?
Of course, a shrink ray might make a guy smaller, but it wouldn’t turn him into a three-year-old. I found that comforting at first, until it occurred to me that a time machine might.
Don’t be silly, I told myself.
“All done,” said mini-Marc.
I buttoned him up. “Let’s wash your hands,” I said, lifting him up so he could reach the faucet. Then he wanted to use the hand dryer for longer than seemed entirely necessary.
“Come on, buddy, I’ve got to get back to work, and your mom’s going to wonder what happened to you,” I told him.
He reluctantly let me lead him out into the hall. Once there, he started charging down it. I ran to catch up. “Hey! Where are you going?”
“I gotta find my butter.”
“Okay, kid, hold your horses. Where’s your mom? Maybe we should take you to Ms. Callender.”
“I gotta find my butter! Butter! Butter!”
“Hey, calm down, sweetie. What is it? Are you hungry?” I knelt and took him by the shoulders. He shook me off and started stomping his feet.
“Where’s my butter? I want my butter!”
“Andre? Andre, where are you?” Marc Merritt appeared as if by magic at the end of the hall. He was full size. I felt a wave of embarrassment for having imagined that he’d been tampered with by a shrink ray.
The kid—Andre—ran to him, his little feet thudding like pneums, and threw himself against Marc’s legs, crying, “Butter!”
Marc knelt down and hugged him. “Brother yourself! Where’d you go to? Didn’t I tell you to stay put? You scared me! Don’t ever do that, okay?”
“Sorry, Butter. I hadda go,” explained Andre. “The girl taked me.”
Marc looked up as if noticing me for the first time. The look was not altogether friendly. He often looked arrogant, but this time I felt as if he was accusing me of something.
“I took him to the bathroom,” I said. “He said he was going to have an accident. So he’s your brother?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s Andre. Thanks,” he said, thawing a little. “Say thank you to Elizabeth, Andre.”
“Thank you, Libbet,” said Andre.
“Did you wash your hands?” asked Marc.
“Yeah, I like the wind thing. It goes fffffffffff, fffffffffff, fffffffffff. It’s the girls’ room. They have toilets there too.”
Marc swung him to his shoulder as lightly as if he were lifting a kitten, not a solidly built three-year-old. “Okay, bro, let’s get you to day care. Say bye to Elizabeth.”
“Bye-bye, Libbet,” said Andre, waving at me.
“Bye, Andre.”
“Thanks, Elizabeth,” said Marc, more warmly this time. “Thanks for taking care of him. Sorry for the trouble.”
It felt good to have Marc Merritt thanking me. I watched as he carried Andre off down the hallway.
I noticed he was wearing the brown work boots again. Were they his? I found myself wondering. Or were they the mysteriously misshelved ones? Stop it, I told myself. If I wanted to make friends, I needed to be more trusting.
I finished putting away the opera gowns and trundled my hand truck back to the staging area. Aaron was sitting at his usual desk. He was mending something under a bright lamp, which cast the usual sharp shadows across his cheekbones.
“Anjali?” he said, looking up.
“No, just Elizabeth,” I answered, slightly testily.
His face fell. “Oh. Hi, Elizabeth.” I could hear the disappointment in his voice. How flattering.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m darning a sock,” he said, holding it up to show me.
“What’s that lump inside it?”
“A sock egg.”
“A sock egg? I didn’t know socks hatched from eggs.”
“Only the best ones do. I can’t wear the cheap kind, the ones that grow on trees. They give me blisters.”
“Riiiiight, okay. Is that from the Grimm Collection?” I asked.
“Of course not. It’s just an ordinary sock egg,” he said shortly.
“I meant the sock.”
“Why would it be? And why do you keep asking about the Grimm Collection?”
“Because it makes you mad, and you look so funny when you snarl,” I said. “Is it? The sock, I mean. From the Grimm Collection.”
“No, it’s from my sock drawer. It got a hole. My toe was poking through—it was very uncomfortable.”
“Oh.” I was kind of impressed, despite myself. How many guys would bother to sew up a hole in their sock? “Seriously, what’s a sock egg?” I asked.
He reached into the sock and pulled it out. It looked like an ordinary chicken’s egg made of wood. “You put it in the sock to stretch it out where the hole is so you can sew it up more evenly,” he said.
“I see,” I said. “That’s kind of a clever idea. I wonder who thought of it. Do you think the first sock eggs were real eggs?”
“No way. Too fragile. That would be pretty gross, if you broke an egg in your sock.”
“So what do you think the first ones were?”
He shrugged. “Round stones, probably. If you’re really curious, you could take a look at the egg collection.”
“The Egg Collection? Is that like the Grimm Collection?”
He snorted. “Of course not. I just meant the various eggs in the repository.”
“There are eggs here?”
“Sure, lots of different kinds.”
“Hard boiled? Over easy?”
“Ukrainian Easter eggs. China eggs for tricking hens into laying. Ostrich eggs with scenes painted on them. Even a few fossilized dinosaur eggs.”
“Wow, what do those look like?”
“Big and round.”
“Could you use them to darn socks?”
“If you had giant feet.” He looked at my feet and grinned.
I’m a little sensitive about the size of my feet, and I felt myself begin to blush.
To cover my embarrassment, I said, “How do you know they’re dinosaur eggs and not giant eggs from the giant bird?”
“What giant bird?” Aaron sounded alarmed.
“The one that’s supposedly following people around and stealing their objects.”
His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Who told you about that? Marc?”
“No, Anjali.”
“Oh. Well, she shouldn’t be talking about that. And you certainly shouldn’t be joking about it!”
“Why not? Do you honestly believe there’s a giant bird stealing things?”
“Maybe. But it’s nothing to joke about, anyway.”
“Elizabeth?” said someone behind me. This time it was Anjali.
“Anjali!” Aaron said again, his voice full of pleasure like a kid who hears the ice-cream truck. He hadn’t sounded like that when he was talking to me. I decided I hated him.
“Hi, Aaron, mind if I borrow Elizabeth for a minute?” Anjali asked.
“What do you need her for? Maybe I could help you instead,” said Aaron hopefully.
“It’s girl stuff,” said Anjali. She drew me into a dark corner near the *V room. “I need your help with something . . . personal,” she said.
“Of course! What is it?”
“It’s those boots again. I need you to help me get them downstairs to the GC before someone requests them. Ms. Minnian is expecting me up on Stack 6 right now. She sent me down here to pick up that hand truck.”
“Okay,” I said, though I didn’t understand why Anjali couldn’t just put the boots on the return truck with the rest of the stuff for reshelving. “Wouldn’t it be better to have Aaron do it, though? He knows his way around the Dungeon, and he’s obviously dying to help you.”
“No—don’t tell him! He’d decide it was his duty to tell a librarian. He hates Merritt, for some reason. You’ll keep it a secret, won’t you? Promise?” She sounded terribly alarmed.
“Of course,” I said. I didn’t exactly see what Marc had to do with it, but returning the boots didn’t seem like such a big deal to me. After all, putting something back in the right place wasn’t like stealing it. Besides, I was flattered that Anjali wanted me to help her—and even more flattered that she trusted me to keep her secret.
“Thank you, Elizabeth! I really owe you.” She handed me a plastic shopping bag. I peeked in and saw the familiar boots. “Take these down to Stack 1,” she continued. “They go in the Grimm Collection, I *GC 391.413 S94. Can you remember that? Here, I’ll write it down. There’s another pair that look just like them where these are supposed to go. Switch the boots and bring the other pair up here, Stack 2. They go in that aisle with the rest of the boots, call number II T&G 391.413 S23, like it says on this tag. Remember to switch the tags too.”
“Okay. So I can just walk into the Grimm Collection? It’s not locked?”
“No, you need a key. A key and a password.”
“Is that the key you were talking about in the MER? The one I don’t have yet?”
“Yes, the Grimm Collection key. It’s irreplaceable, and I’m not supposed to give it to anyone. You’ll take really good care of it, won’t you?”
“I promise.”
“Then here.
Anjali took a barrette out of her hair and handed it to me.
“What’s this for?”
“That’s the key.”
“This is a key?” I turned it over. It still looked like a barrette.
“It’s . . . disguised. For security. When you get to the Grimm Collection, hold it against the door and sing this:
Out is out and shut is shut,
Turn the key and crack the nut.
Push the door and break the shell:
Let me in and all is well.”
Anjali had a sweet, high singing voice.
“What’s that, some kind of voice recognition thing?” I asked.
“Something like that. Sing it back so I know you know it. You have to get the tune right.”
“Maybe you’d better write it down, so I don’t forget,” I said.
She scribbled hastily. “Don’t lose this! I could get in big trouble if the wrong person finds it.”
I sang the rhyme until I got it right, feeling pretty silly. No surprise Mr. Theodorus never picked me to do solos in chorus. “Will the door know my voice?” I asked.
“It responds to the words and the tune, not the voice. It only works when you have the key, though.”
“Anjali,” called Aaron from the front of the stack.
“Boy, that’s some sophisticated security! How does it work?” I asked.
“Anjali!” called Aaron again. “You still back there?”
“Just a moment, I’ll be right there!” she yelled back. She looked worried and impatient. “I can’t explain now,” she told me. “Listen, though, this is important. Don’t touch anything! That stuff looks harmless, but a lot of it’s seriously dangerous.”
“I’ll be careful,” I promised.
“Good. Now hurry. But don’t get caught! If you do, blame me—say I told you Doc wanted you to do it. I’ll back you up, and there’s a chance they’ll believe us. But please, don’t get caught.”
“Anjali?” Aaron loomed toward us through the gloom. “Ms. Minnian needs that hand truck. I can help you bring it up if you want.”
“I’m coming,” she said. “Thanks a million, Elizabeth, I owe you,” she whispered, and followed Aaron down the hallway.
Then I was left alone with the mysterious boots. Clipping the barrette in my hair for safekeeping, I twisted one of the timers that controlled the lights. To the sound of its buzzy ticking, I took the boots out of their bag to get a better look. There was nothing much to see: a pair of plain brown leather boots, old-fashioned, a little scuffed, the heels worn. Much too big for me, probably, if Marc could wear them—I have big feet for a girl, to my sorrow, but nowhere near as big as a basketball player’s. But when I held the boots up to my feet, they looked as if they might fit. Weird. I was tempted to try them on to see, but the ticking of the light timer reminded me that Anjali had said to hurry. On an impulse, I brought the boots up to my nose the way the patron had done upstairs, scolding myself as I did it: Eww, Elizabeth, what’s the matter with you, sniffing old boots?
To my surprise, I smelled something.
Well, I had expected to smell something—old leather, old wool, maybe old feet—but not this. The smell was faint, but the sensation was powerful, flooding over me like a memory of . . . of what, though? Summer rain on cement? Rye toast at my grandmother’s? Something floral and fragile, like individual soap bubbles . . . no, something thick, like milk . . . but briny . . . no, lemony . . . I took deeper and deeper sniffs, chasing the smell farther and farther out of my mind’s reach like a splinter you pursue hopelessly through the sole of your foot with a needle and tweezers. The sensation was almost as painful. Raw oysters? Marjoram? Jet exhaust? Wood?
The timer ticked its way to the end and the light snapped off, startling me with darkness. I stuffed the boots in their bag and hurried down to Stack 1, the Dungeon.
I expected something spooky, but despite its sinister name, Stack 1 looked bright and ordinary—far less dungeony than Stack 2. Fluorescent tubes lit the aisles, humming slightly, as if bored. The usual metal cabinets stretched out to the right and left, interspersed with the usual file drawers and oak desks. The dumbwaiters whirred at the staging area, just as they did on all the other stacks, and the occasional pneum thumped through the tubes. The only difference I could see between the Dungeon and the rest of the library stacks was a number of areas fenced off with metal gratings, like the bicycle storage locker in the basement of my old school, and some closed doors.
A coat hung on a hook in the staging area, but there was nobody in sight. I’d better put the boots away before whoever it was came back, I thought. But which way was the Grimm Collection? I checked the wall map. There were several rooms marked off at the ends of the stack, like the *Vs on the other floors: *GChr, *LC, *GoS . . . There, that must be it, *GC, at the far west end. I hurried down the aisle.
I half expected to find a spectacular entrance in the spirit of the Tiffany windows and the carved front desk, but the door to the Grimm Collection was as unremarkable as the rest of the stack. Just a plain metal door like all the others, rather scuffed, with *GC Grimm Coll stenciled on it in shiny black paint.
I pressed down on the handle—it was the standard bar type, the kind they use to make doors easier to open for people with disabilities—but it wouldn’t budge. Feeling foolish, I took the barrette out of my hair and pressed it against the door. “Out is out and shut is shut, turn the key and break the nut. Push the door and crack the shell: let me in and all is well, ” I sang under my breath.
I tried the handle again. Nothing happened.
I sang it again, louder. Still nothing.
Was Anjali playing some kind of mean trick on me? But she had sounded so sincere, so genuinely panicked. Hearing footsteps in the aisle, I started to panic myself.
I was pretty sure I’d gotten the tune right. Maybe I’d gotten the rhyme mixed up? I got out the slip of paper to check.
“Out is out and shut is shut,” I sang, my hand on the handle. “Turn the key and crack the nut. Push the door and break the shell: let me in and all is well.”
This time I felt a tiny click. When I pressed the handle, the door opened, just as it was supposed to. I slipped in and pulled the door shut behind me.
The room looked ordinary, with the same standard-issue metal shelves and cabinets as the rest of the library, the same fluorescent lights. And yet something was different here. Behind the usual buzz of the fluorescent lights and the pneumatic tubes, I heard another, deeper hum.
Then I noticed the smell. It was the same smell I’d noticed in the boots. Or was it? I stood just inside the door sniffing the air, mesmerized. Raw pumpkin? Mineral oil? Blood?
A pneum whizzed through a pipe in the ceiling, startling me. I remembered what I was doing there. I had boots to shelve and no time to lose.
The shoe section—*GC 391.413-391.413099—filled a whole aisle. Those Grimm brothers, or whoever had continued their collection, apparently had quite a thing for footwear. Most of it was in pretty rough shape. On a low shelf I counted twelve pairs of fancy little slippers with holes in their soles, like the ones in my favorite story about the twelve dancing princesses.
Could they be those shoes, the ones that had inspired the story? Could the dancing princesses have been real, like Marie Antoinette?
I felt a shiver run through me, like the one I’d felt looking at Marie Antoinette’s wig. Not that their story made factual sense as the Grimm brothers told it, of course—it couldn’t actually be true, with its cloak of invisibility and its magical forests with gold and silver trees. But why couldn’t the princesses themselves have once been girls like me, living girls who loved to dance? Somebody with real feet had worn holes in those shoes—they looked as battered as my last year’s ballet slippers. I wished I could show these to my mother. She’d be as amazed as I was.
Nearby was a series of worn-out shoes with iron soles, all gaping at the heel. Above them, glass slippers. Hadn’t Dr. Rust told me they didn’t have Cinderella’s? These looked as though they could have been hers. They were far, far too small for me, anyway. Was there a real girl who inspired the Cinderella story too? A real Cinderella! Was I dreaming this?
More metal shoes, including some awful-looking iron ones, stained with what looked like old blood. Ugh! Just rust, I hoped. Pair after pair of boots. Wooden clogs carved like little boats, with dragons for figureheads. A pair of sandals with worn straps and tired-looking wings on the heels, folded like a sleeping pigeon’s. When I reached out to touch the wings, to see if the feathers were real, they fluttered, startling me. I pulled my hand back, remembering Anjali’s warning—though surely it was just a draft of air.
The decoy boots were right where Anjali said they’d be, in the second cabinet under call number I *GC 391.413 S94. Except for the number on the tag, they looked just like the ones in the plastic bag I was carrying. If I got the tags confused, I would never be able to tell them apart.
Maybe by smell? I sniffed the boots I’d taken from the cabinet. They smelled of leather and dust, with cheesy undertones of feet. I put them down and sniffed the pair Anjali had given me. Now the mysterious smell was so strong my eyes watered.
I switched the tags and put Anjali’s boots in the cabinet. It felt right, like a puzzle piece clicking into place. That made me feel better about what I was doing. My promise to Mr. Mauskopf and his warning about the thefts had been eating at me; switching the boots seemed so sneaky. But clearly the boots with the strong smell were the right ones, the valuable ones—and I was helping return them, not steal them. That couldn’t be so wrong, could it?
I heard a slight noise. Footsteps! Someone was coming!
As quietly as I could, I shut the cabinet and looked around for somewhere to hide.
Against the wall were some metal mesh sliding walls, like the ones that held the paintings on Stack 7. I slipped behind them and stood as flat and still as possible, trying to look like a painting.
I was only just in time. Peering around a picture frame and through the mesh, I saw Ms. Minnian, the skinny, bespectacled librarian, come striding down the aisle in her flat, pointy shoes. She stopped right in front of the cabinet where I’d just put the boots.
She opened the cabinet and took out the boots. She stroked them with her fingertips, frowning, then brought them to her nose for a sniff. Still frowning, she lifted her head and sniffed the air.
I had a horrible feeling she was sniffing for me.
I froze and held my breath.
To my relief, Ms. Minnian shut the cabinet and walked back up the aisle. She paused again at another cabinet, then continued on toward the door. I heard it click shut as she left.
I let out my breath but stayed behind the picture wall for a minute, just to make sure she wouldn’t come back.
When I reached the door, though, I found my relief had been premature. I was locked in.