Polly Shulman - The Grimm Legacy

“I told him no thanks,” said Anjali. “But he sounded like he meant it about the bird, and the other patrons seemed to believe it. Those Russian guys who play chess all the time—they said they stopped playing in Washington Square Park because the bird tried to attack them. And right before Mona disappeared, I thought I saw something hovering in the sky.”

“Where? Did you tell Doc?”

Anjali shook her head. “Outside the repository. But it was gone too soon. I wasn’t sure what I saw.” She finished her robe and snipped off the thread with scissors. “Enough about all this. It’s too creepy. Hey, is there any fun stuff to work on?” she said with determined cheerfulness.

“Check the cabinet,” said Marc.

“Fun stuff?” I asked.

“Magic.” Anjali walked over to a large gray cabinet with double doors at the end of the room. “This is where they keep items from the Grimm Collection that need repair.” She unclipped her barrette, letting down a cascade of black hair, and pressed the barrette to the handle. “Open, friend, so I can mend,” she intoned. The door swung open. “Oh, we’re in luck! Table-Be-Set! Anybody hungry?”

“The French version or the German?” asked Marc.

“German. The French one’s out on loan, as usual.”

“Too bad. Well, better than nothing. I’m starving—I didn’t have time to eat after practice.”

“What’s Table-Be-Set?” I asked.

Anjali reached into the cabinet and pulled out a little wooden table. “Don’t you remember in the Grimm story ‘Table-Be-Set, Gold-Donkey, and Cudgel-in-the-Sack’? The table sets itself with food when you tell it to.”

“Why’s it in the repair cabinet? Is it broken?”

“I doubt it—it probably just needs a good cleaning, as usual.” Anjali consulted a piece of paper tied to one leg. “Yup. Somebody spilled beer or blutwurst or something. We’re going to have to scrub it, so we might as well have a snack first. Table, be set!”

In the twinkling of an eye, the table was covered with steaming dishes, so many of them that it bowed slightly in the middle and gave a little creak.

“Wow, that looks good! But isn’t this—I mean, should we be doing this?” I objected. “Aren’t we not supposed to touch anything magic?”

“It’s like milking a cow. The table gets antsy if it goes too long without feeding people. And we’ll have to touch it anyway, to clean it.” Anjali lifted the lid of a dish. A savory smell, heavy on cabbage, filled the room. “Want to start with the sausages or the potatoes?”

“Sausages, definitely,” said Marc.

“Okay . . .” She lifted more lids and poked around with a fork. “You can have blutwurst, zervelatwurst, bockwurst, plockwurst, leberwurst, knackwurst, and, of course, bratwurst. And what’s this? Weisswurst, I think.”

“Some of each, please,” said Marc.

Anjali handed him a plate piled with wursts. “What about you, Elizabeth?”

“Um, I’m not crazy about sausage—maybe just some potatoes?”

“Okay,” said Anjali. “ Kartoffelbällchen, kartoffeltopf, kartoffelkroketten, kartoffelbrei, kartoffelknödel, kartoffelkrusteln, kartoffelnocken, kartoffelpuffer, kartoffelklösse, or kartoffelschnitz? Or maybe some schmorkartoffeln ? Or just plain fries?”

“I don’t know—surprise me.”

“Here. Überbackene käsekartoffeln, my favorite. It has cheese.”

“Thanks.” It was delicious and very rich—tender potato slices, with a creamy cheese sauce. “How do you know all those names?” I asked.

“I looked them up. I wanted to know what we were eating.” Anjali peered under more lids.

“You know Anjali—she loves to look things up. Any spätzle ?” asked Marc.

“What’s spätzle ?”

“Sort of a cross between homemade pasta and dumplings,” said Anjali. “Oh, here’s hasenpfeffer ! I love hasenpfeffer !”

“What’s hasenpfeffer ?”

“Stewed rabbit with black pepper.” She dished herself a plate. “Mmmm! Don’t tell my parents—we’re vegetarians at home.”

“Can I have some of that too?” Marc handed her his plate.

“One thing I don’t get,” I said, taking another bite of cheesy potatoes. “If these magic objects are so strong and powerful, how come you don’t have people using them to take over the world? Or do you? Is that what the thieves are after?”

“I wondered that too, when I first got here,” said Anjali. “But a lot of them aren’t as powerful as they sound, to begin with, and we have modern technology now.”

“Yeah,” said Marc. “There’s magic swords and sticks that can beat people up, but that’s nothing compared to guns and bombs.”

“Or like the enchanted ram’s horn that lets you speak to someone miles away,” said Anjali. “Hello? Cell phone, anybody? Or the flying carpet. It’s nice, but it’s not like we don’t have airplanes. These things are amazing, collectors love them, but they wouldn’t be that much help conquering the world.”

“Yes, but surely there are some things in the collection that haven’t been invented yet. Like invisibility cloaks. Or what about the lamp in that Grimm story ‘The Blue Light,’ where the dwarf appears and grants wishes whenever the soldier lights his pipe with the magic light? That would be pretty useful for taking over the world.”

“Yeah, that’s true. But most powerful objects have minds of their own—I wouldn’t count on being able to control them.”

“I guess,” I said.

“Time for dessert?” asked Marc.

“Maybe we should do a little, you know, work first,” said Anjali, looking in the cabinet again. “Here’s a pair of flying sandals; it looks like they need a buckle replaced.”

“Flying sandals?” I said. “Like, actual flying sandals ?”

“Flying sandals,” said Anjali, holding them up. They had wings on their heels. They looked like the ones that had fluttered at me. I wondered how they’d gotten here so quickly.

“I can do that,” said Marc. He opened a cabinet drawer and sorted through buckles.

“And here’s the brimming bowl,” said Anjali, holding a stone bowl full of water, which was dripping from the bottom. “I need caulk.”

“Try the plumbing supply cabinet,” suggested Marc.

“Got it. Elizabeth, can you give me a hand?”

“Sure,” I said. I held the bowl over the sink while she worked on it. It seemed pretty incredible that we were using ordinary, everyday silicone gel to caulk an endlessly brimming magic basin.

“Thanks, Elizabeth, I think that’s good now . . . Merritt! What are you doing?”

Marc had taken off his shoes and was buckling on the winged sandals. “I have to make sure the buckle holds, don’t I?” He jumped up into the air and glided forward like an airborne ice skater. He made it look so easy. “Need anything from up here?” he said. I stared, my eyes wide. Bits of dust came raining down. I sneezed, rubbing the dust out of my eyes. “Sorry, Elizabeth,” he said. He did a loop de loop and landed with a flourish.

“Flying sandals!” I said. “Flying. Sandals. ”

“Want to try?”

“Really? Me?”

“Of course.”

“But—but don’t you need some special—I don’t know . . .”

Marc laughed. “You’ll get the hang of it; it’s not that hard. I’ll show you.” He unbuckled the sandals and handed them to me.

His feet were much bigger than mine, but the sandals still fit me. Magic, I thought. “How do I get them to work?” I said.

“Jump as high as you can and start the wings. You have to sort of flutter your heels.”