“Elizabeth? You in there?” It was Marc’s voice. I crept out from behind the picture wall. He was standing at the end of the room, holding the door open with one long leg. “Hurry up, we can’t stay here,” he urged.
I felt a shiver of relief as I heard the door click shut behind us.
Marc took the stairs two or three steps at a time while I ran panting behind. I used to be in better shape when I still took ballet.
Marc waited for me at the third landing. “Come on, you’ll never make the team at that rate!”
“What team?”
He looked me over. “I don’t know, Girls’ JV Dawdling?”
“Where are we going?”
“Preservation.”
“Where’s that?”
“Top floor.”
“Can’t we take the elevator?”
“You can—Coach’d kill me if I do.” He took off again.
At last we reached the top of the staircase, with the corridor that led to the MER on the right and parts unknown—at least to me—on the left. There we ran into Ms. Callender. There was a frown on her friendly face.
“Elizabeth! Where have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you; aren’t you supposed to be on Stack 2?” she asked.
I didn’t know what to say—and even if I had known, I was panting too hard to say it. Fortunately, Marc stepped in. “Didn’t Ms. Minnian tell you? I’m supposed to take her to Preservation and get to work on the backlog of repairs,” he said.
“Oh. No, she didn’t mention that, but I’m afraid it’ll have to wait. Dr. Rust wants to see Elizabeth. I’ll send her up to help you when they’re done.” She made a note on her clipboard and said to me, “Go on down, honey, Dr. Rust is waiting.”
I guess she must have seen my dismay. She smiled and added, “Why the long face?”
“Did I do something wrong?” I asked.
“No, no. Just the opposite. There’s nothing to worry about. We thought you were ready for the next step, that’s all. Or at least, the next step toward the next step—or . . . well, I’ll let Dr. Rust explain. Go on downstairs, honey.”
“Okay.” I hurried away, still feeling uneasy.
Dr. Rust looked up when I tapped on the open door. “Ah, Elizabeth. Come on in. Sit down, sit down. Let’s see, you’ve been with us since January, right?”
I nodded.
“Martha Callender tells me you’re a good, hard worker, and Stan Mauskopf speaks highly of your character. I’ve heard good reports from one or two of the patrons as well. We think it may be time to give you a little more responsibility. Do you feel ready?”
Hardly. What I felt was guilty. Had Dr. Rust and Ms. Callender been discussing my noble character at the very moment I was sneaking around the Grimm Collection?
I cleared my throat. “That’s so nice of Mr. Mauskopf and Ms. Callender. What kind of responsibility?”
“Let’s discuss that after you take the test. That will give me the information I need to make a decision about what work would be right for you here.”
“Okay. What kind of a test? Sorting buttons again?”
Doc smiled. “No, this is a standardized test—multiple choice. Let’s find you a quiet place to work.”
We walked down the hall to a small office with a desk by the window. “Here you go,” said Dr. Rust, handing me a sheaf of papers held together with a binder clip. “You have forty-five minutes to complete the exam. Make sure you fill in each circle completely on the answer sheet. Do you have a number 2 pencil?”
“I think so.” I fished around in my backpack and brought out the pencil the homeless woman had given me, the one I’d used to outline my social studies paper. I’d come to think of it as my lucky pencil.
“Excellent. I’ll be back in exactly forty-five minutes.”
The questions on the test were bizarre:
7. A carpenter has three sons. The eldest builds a palace from alabaster and porphyry. The second builds a courthouse from granite and sandstone. The youngest builds a cottage from a walnut shell and a corn husk. How many nails do the three sons use?
❍ A. π
❍ B. Infinity minus one
❍ C. One too many
❍ D. One too few
8. A child offers you a choice of two caskets, one gold and the other lead. Which do you take?
❍ A. The gold one
❍ B. The one in the child’s left hand
❍ C. The one the moth lands on
❍ D. A river underground
I chewed my pencil and stared at the paper. I couldn’t imagine which answers were correct. I couldn’t even tell which were wrong, although on most multiple-choice tests I can usually cross out at least one or two right away. I had that terrible nervous feeling you get in nightmares, where you’re taking a test in a class you never signed up for.
A minute or two ticked by.
Well, I decided, there was nothing for it but to try my best.
I went through the questions carefully, filling in circles. I read each question, then shut my eyes, imagined the choices as vividly as I could, and let my heart decide. When my heart didn’t have an opinion, I left it up to my pencil.
At last I reached the end of the test, but there were still a couple of pages attached with the binder clip. The first one was a list of some sort: Paper towels, dish soap, pistachios, milk, sardines, cayenne . . . Doc’s groceries?
I turned to the next page. On top of the sheet, in the same typeface as the exam, was written: Repository Qualifying Exam Level Two, 209v04 Key. Beneath was a list of answers. They seemed to correspond to the questions on the exam I’d just taken.
Doc must have accidentally given me the answer key!
I felt a wave of guilt. But really, I told myself, how was Dr. Rust’s carelessness my fault?
Running my eye down my sheet, I saw with alarm that I hadn’t gotten a single answer right. The key called for all the safest, dullest answers.
I started to erase my answer to the first question, to change it to the one on the answer sheet. My pencil didn’t seem to like that. It made an ugly pink smear on the page, the color of an infected cut. The color, I thought, of cheating.
Feeling as if I’d had a narrow escape, I turned the pencil around and filled in the circle again next to my original answer: D, With all her heart. I was relieved by my decision, but I was disappointed too. Now that I knew I wouldn’t get the promotion, I realized how much I wanted it.
The door opened. “Elizabeth? All done?”
I handed Doc my answer sheet, along with the other papers. “I think you gave me the answer key,” I said.
Doc grunted. “Indeed I did . . . huh, so that’s where my shopping list got to. Sardines! I knew I’d forgotten something important. Now, let’s see how you did. CDD, ADC, BAB, CCB, ACB . . . Excellent. Almost a perfect score.”
“What do you mean, almost perfect? I only got one right!”
Doc smiled, freckles drifting across one cheekbone. “Only one wrong, you mean. This key is a list of wrong answers. You passed with flying colors.”
“I did?”
“Yes. Not only did you choose correct answers, but you did it without peeking at the key. Well done, Elizabeth Rew! And now, I’m pleased to present you with the key to the Grimm Collection. Guard it with care and use it with wisdom.” Doc unclipped the binder clip from the exam and put it in my hand.
“This is the key? A binder clip?”
“Exactly.”
“But . . .” Well, I thought, Anjali’s key was a barrette. Why shouldn’t mine be a binder clip? “How does it work?” I asked.
“Come downstairs and I’ll show you.”
“. . . Let me in and all is well,” I sang, pressing my binder clip against the door that had so frustrated me only an hour before. Doc was impressed by how quickly I’d memorized the rhyme—and by how calmly I’d taken the news that the room was full of genuine magic. Naturally, I didn’t explain that I’d seen it already.
I had more trouble with the exit tune, but I got it right after six or seven tries. My music teacher, Mr. Theodorus, would have been proud of me.
“What if I forget the exit song? Will I get stuck here?” I asked, remembering my panic and hoping it wouldn’t show. “Doesn’t that violate all sorts of fire laws?”
“Technically, I suppose. But if there’s a fire, the Grimm Collection is the place to be. As far as fires go, it’s the safest room in the entire repository—besides the Garden of Seasons, of course, if you can call that a room. You’ll see there are some pretty powerful objects down here, with powerful senses of self-preservation. And the guards we set on the door will keep out most natural threats.”
As if on cue, the door opened from the outside. I jumped, but it was only Ms. Callender. She hugged me. “Congratulations, Elizabeth! See, I told you there was nothing to worry about, sweetie. Gumdrop? Go ahead, take two—you deserve it. Did Dr. Rust show you around?”
“Not yet,” said Doc. “Want to help?”
“Of course! Where should we start? Let’s see . . . Elizabeth, do you have a favorite fairy tale?”
“Sure, lots of them. If I had to pick just one, though . . . I love ‘The Twelve Dancing Princesses.’”
“Then you’re in luck. This way.”
I followed Ms. Callender through the aisles to the shelves of shoes. I couldn’t stop myself from glancing nervously at the boots I’d just shelved. They were sitting right where I put them, looking dull and harmless.
“There you go!” With a flourish of her hand, Ms. Callender pointed to the twelve pairs of shoes I’d wondered about, the ones with holes in their soles.
“Those are the princesses’ shoes?”
She nodded. “Twenty-four of their shoes, anyway.”
“Can I touch?”
“Go ahead.” She picked up a purple silk pump and handed it to me. “Here’s the twelfth princess’s pair.”
The smell of magic was so strong in this room, and my nerves were so fluttery from everything that had happened, I couldn’t quite tell whether I was feeling my own excitement or actual magic. “Does it . . . I mean, is it . . .”
“Is it what?”
“Is it—you know—magical?”
“No, not the shoes.”
“Oh.” I was disappointed. Still, this wasn’t just any dancing shoe—it was the shoe that the youngest princess had worn to dance with the smart soldier who figured out how the princesses were sneaking out at night. Magic or not, that was pretty amazing.
“You don’t have the soldier’s cloak here, do you?” I asked. “The cloak of invisibility that he used to follow the princesses to the dance?”
Doc and Ms. Callender exchanged glances. “We’re not sure,” said Doc at last. “It’s supposed to be here, but nobody can find it.”
“Did it get misshelved?”
“I don’t know,” said Ms. Callender. “It might just be invisible.”
“Oh. But you have other magical things, right?”
“Yes, many.”
“Could I see one?”
“Of course,” said Doc. “Let’s see, what should I show you? . . . Do you remember ‘The Spirit in the Bottle’?”
“Is that the one where the student lets the spirit out of the bottle, and the spirit says he’s going to cut his head off, so the student tricks the spirit back into the bottle by taunting him and saying he doesn’t believe he’ll fit?”
Doc nodded. “That’s the one. Do you remember what the spirit gives the student in exchange for letting him out again?”
I shook my head.
“Come. I’ll show you.”
We walked down the aisles again, past rows of glass bottles, bowls of all shapes and sizes, dozens of spinning wheels, and on and on until we came to a chest full of cloths carefully folded and labeled. Doc took one out and shook it open. It was ragged and dirty.
“Wait, Lee! Test it first!” said Ms. Callender sharply.
“Don’t worry, I’m going to! That’s why I chose this bandage. I want to show her how very dangerous the objects in this room can be. Elizabeth, did you see the bottles we passed?”
I nodded.
“If you opened the wrong one without thinking, a spirit might come out and cut off your head.”
“Why couldn’t I trick him back into the bottle like in the story?”
“That only works once,” said Doc. “Our bottled spirits know better—they would never fall for that again. So don’t assume anything in here is harmless or manageable. Everything is dangerous in a different way, but everything is dangerous.”
Ms. Callender was nodding her round face in agreement. “Even the stuff that sounds safe is dangerous,” she said. “Like the pot in ‘Sweet Porridge.’ When you say, ‘Cook, little pot, cook,’ it makes sweet millet porridge. Sounds harmless, right?”
“Yes, I remember the story,” I said. Nobody told the pot to stop cooking until it had filled half the houses in town with porridge. The householders had to eat their way out. The story didn’t say whether anybody drowned.
“Okay, Lee. Show her the rag,” said Ms. Callender.
Doc took out a pocketknife, unfolded it, and—to my horror—made a deep cut across the base of one finger.
“Martha, will you do the honors?” Doc held out the rag. “I don’t want to drip blood over everything.”
“Sure.” Ms. Callender took the rag. “Elizabeth, do you have some small object you could spare? A penny or a pen or something?”
I felt in my hoodie pocket and found an acorn I’d picked up in the park a few weeks ago. “How’s this?”
“Perfect.” She rubbed it with the rag. Nothing happened. She turned the rag over and rubbed it again, with the other side. She held it up, smiled, and handed it to me.
It was heavy and cold, white-gray and shiny. It had turned to silver.
“Wow!” I said, staring. “It’s so—so cute! It’s like a perfect little silver acorn.”
“It is a perfect little silver acorn,” said Doc.
“Now give me your hand, Lee. Elizabeth? You watching?”
I had still been staring at the acorn, admiring the tiny silver scales on the cap, but I turned to watch the librarians. Ms. Callender had taken Doc’s hand and was rubbing it with the cloth.
The cut closed up as if it had never been there.
“Wow! Can I see your finger?” Doc held it out. I inspected it closely. I couldn’t see any sign of the cut.
“I remember the rest of the story now,” I said. “One side of the bandage turns things into silver, and the other side heals wounds.”
“That’s right,” said Doc. “And if Martha had used the wrong side, I would now have a silver hand. Pretty, but useless.”
“But that thing could save lives! Why is it here? Why don’t you give it to a hospital or something?”
“Yes, it could save lives,” said Doc. “But it would certainly also cost lives. Not just by turning people into silver, but by starting more wars than it could ever heal the wounds from.”
“I would say that’s the most important lesson of the day,” said Ms. Callender, folding up the cloth and putting it back in the chest. “Not only are the objects here extremely dangerous, but so is the knowledge of them.”
“That’s right,” said Doc. “Remember, Elizabeth: tell no one about the magic here. At best they won’t believe you. At worst, they will.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell a soul. But lots of people must know about the magic. You do, and now I do. And I’ve seen people take objects out of the Grimm Collection when I was up in the Main Exam Room. Who are they? Do they know about the magic?”
“Yes,” said Doc. “There’s a far-flung, exclusive community of people like us—now, people like you. People who recognize magic and wield it.”
“Do they borrow things from the collection? Magical items?”
“Yes, members of the community can earn borrowing privileges.”
“Even the pages?” Maybe I would be allowed to borrow magical items myself!
“Some of them.”
“Wow!” Imagine having a magic cloth that could change things to silver in your own home! Or a cloak of invisibility. “Can I take things out too?”
“Eventually, I hope. But that’s another step for another day. Give yourself a chance to digest what you’ve learned first.”
“All right,” I said. Thinking about everything that could go wrong, I wasn’t sure I was ready for that kind of responsibility, anyway.
“Aren’t you going to tell her about . . . you know?” said Ms. Callender.
“The thefts. Yes.” Doc turned to me. “Elizabeth, unfortunately there have been some thefts of Grimm objects recently. And now we’ve been hearing about items that sound like ours turning up on the open market or in private collections.”
“Somebody’s robbing the collection?” I said. “That’s terrible!”
“It is,” said Doc. “And they seem to be replacing the stolen items with fakes—some of them, anyway.”
“Oh, no!” I said. Fakes, I thought, like the unmagical boots Marc had me trade the real ones for! Was Marc . . . ? I shuddered away from the thought. “But what can I do?”
“We need trustworthy eyes down here. We need to be able to rely on everyone who’s working here. If you see anything out of place, please let us know.”
“Of course I will,” I said. “And how do you decide which pages to give the test to?”
“It’s a combination of things. Watching how you do your work in the repository. Recommendations from former pages and other members of our community, like Stan Mauskopf.”
“Although the page we had to fire recently did have a recommendation from Wallace Stone, one of our patrons,” put in Ms. Callender.
“I don’t want to blame Wallace,” said Doc. “He was devastated when I told him we had to fire Zandra. He took it hard. He’s one of our most generous donors.”
“What did Zandra do?” I asked.
“Besides spreading chaos, we caught her substituting a new vase for a valuable old one,” said Doc.
“A magic vase?”
“No, just a Ming dynasty vase on Stack 7. But that’s quite bad enough,” said Ms. Callender.
“Wallace Stone felt so bad about the whole thing that he donated a group of related porcelain to the repository. He’s an art and antiques dealer, and he’s done a great job helping us round out our collections,” said Doc. “He was especially generous after the Zandra incident. I told him we didn’t blame him, but he still wanted to make amends.”
“So Zandra’s gone now and things are still disappearing,” I said. “She couldn’t still be stealing, could she?”
“No, I don’t think so. But it’s unlikely she was working alone. A kid like Zandra wouldn’t have the resources to dispose of a Ming vase. Whoever was behind it must have found some other way in—into the Grimm Collection, which is even worse.”
“Anjali said there was another page who vanished. What happened to her?” I asked.
“Mona Chen. She was one of our best workers,” Doc said. “She passed all the tests with flying colors, and she had some really good ideas about how to keep the Grimm Collection call slips safer. We’re trying to locate her.”
“Where do you think she went? Did she return the key?”
“Yes,” said Ms. Callender. “She dropped it off with Lucy Minnian. She said her family was moving, but she didn’t say where, and it’s surprising not to hear from her at all. Most of our alumni, especially Special Collection pages, keep in touch.”
“Do you think she’s okay?”
“I hope so,” said Ms. Callender. “We’re putting out the word and hoping someone in the community will hear from her soon.”
“What do you mean, ‘the community’?”
“We’re a close group,” explained Dr. Rust. “Most of us librarians are alumni—former pages—and other alumni end up working in related areas. In other repositories, or academia, or research. Most of us”—Doc waved a hand at the shelves—“most people don’t want to give up their connection to all this.”
I could certainly understand that. And I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize my chance of being part of it. But all this talk of disappearing objects in this unnerving room was freaking me out, given Marc’s—what to call it?—irregularity with those boots. Marc’s irregularity, and the way I’d helped him.
“Well, Elizabeth, we are happy to have you here,” Doc said. “And please remember to keep your eyes open and let me know if you notice anything suspicious. Can you do that?”
I swallowed. “I’ll try.”
“Thank you. And congratulations on your excellent test results.”
“Yes, congratulations again, Elizabeth,” echoed Ms. Callender. “Now let’s get you upstairs to give Marc a hand in Preservation.”
As we walked past the wall of pictures, I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look. It was my own reflection in the Snow White mirror.
I didn’t move my hands, but my reflection in the mirror lifted her finger to her lips, gave me a wicked smile, and shut her right eye in a wink.