Polly Shulman - The Grimm Legacy

Even with Aaron there, I felt spooked.

We heard a noise up front. The door was rattling, as if someone—or something—was trying to get in. I froze, then told myself not to be so silly. But I noticed Aaron looked alarmed too.

“Who’s there?” he asked loudly.

“It’s just me.” Anjali’s voice came through the door faint and muffled. “For some reason my key’s not working.”

“Hang on, we’ve got another one. You need two now,” I said. I held my clip to the door, sang the opening chant as softly and quickly and in key as I could, and pushed the door open.

“Thanks, Elizabeth,” said Anjali.

“Are you running a slip? What’s the item?” Aaron asked. He had that eager sound in his voice again, the way he always did around Anjali, and I remembered that I hated him.

“No, I—I think I forgot something last week. My . . . sweater. I think I left it in the back.”

It sounded like an excuse she’d made up on the spot. “I think I saw it back near the paintings. I’ll show you,” I said. Aaron got up to follow us. “You better stay here and keep an eye on the pneums,” I told him.

“If one comes, I’ll hear it thump.”

Boy, was he persistent! He just couldn’t keep away from her. “No, really, I—I need to talk to Anjali about something. Girl stuff again,” I said.

“Fine.” He sat back down.

Anjali and I walked back toward the wall of paintings. I stopped in front of the shoe section. “I know you didn’t actually forget your sweater. Is it the boots again?” I whispered.

Anjali nodded. She took the real boots out of her book bag and swapped them for the fakes, switching the tag. This time I found I could tell them apart easily. They might look exactly the same, but they gave off a different atmosphere. It was obvious—I didn’t even have to sniff. I wondered how I could ever have missed it.

“Can’t you make Marc stop taking them? He’s going to get in trouble. He’s going to get you in trouble—us.” I kept my voice down. I doubted Aaron could hear, all the way up in the front of the collection, but I had the feeling there were other ears listening all around us.

“Marc says it’s the last time.”

“Didn’t he say that before?”

“He has to pick up Andre. His mother’s working late.”

“He always has to pick up Andre.”

“I know. He says he’ll find some other solution.”

“Well, he’d better do it fast. Come on, you better get out of here.”

“Hey, you’re still wearing that!” Anjali touched the hot-pink yarn Jaya had knotted around my wrist. It was getting grubby, but it had lasted through quite a few showers. I nodded. Anjali said, “Jaya will be pleased.”

The door was opening as we got back to the front of the room. Ms. Callender came into the collection.

“Anjali? What are you doing here, honey? Didn’t I put you on Stack 9? Did I get mixed up?” said Ms. Callender. She consulted her clipboard.

“She came back for her sweater,” said Aaron helpfully.

Ms. Callender turned to Anjali. “Did you find it, honey?”

“Here,” I said, grabbing my sweater from the back of the folding chair and handing it to Anjali. Aaron frowned at me, but he didn’t say anything.

“Oh, so that’s where I left it,” said Anjali, a little too loudly. You’d think she would be better at lying, with a nosy little sister like Jaya. “Thanks, Elizabeth,” she said, putting on the sweater.

It looked ten thousand times better on her than on me. She had the right kind of figure for a sweater like that. Of course, I reflected, if she were wearing a paper bag, I would probably think she had the right kind of figure for paper bags. She had the right kind of figure, period.

Ms. Callender waved something at the lock—must be the master key, I thought—causing it to click open, and held the door for Anjali, who left with my sweater.

I was right to trust Anjali and Marc, wasn’t I? The suspicious look on Aaron’s face made me feel less certain than ever.

When Anjali was gone, Ms. Callender put a sheaf of papers on Aaron’s desk. “Aaron, Elizabeth, I have a big job for you. I need you to pull these objects off the shelves for me,” she said.

“What are they for?” I asked.

“These are items we’re . . . concerned about. I told you about the reports of objects like ours turning up in auctions and other collections? Some of these match those descriptions, or raised a red flag somehow. Dr. Rust and I want to examine them more closely. Send a pneum up when you’re done, okay? If something’s missing, make a note of it.”

“All right,” said Aaron.

“Thanks, hon.” Ms. Callender waved her key at the door again and left.

“So much for The War of the Worlds, ” I said.

Aaron shrugged. “I wasn’t getting that much reading done anyway. What was that all about with Anjali?”

“I told you, girl stuff. You really want me to spell it out?”

“Actually, yes.”

“Fine. Feel free to stop me whenever you like. When a girl gets to be a certain age, she experiences certain changes caused by something called hormones. These are chemicals that signal to the reproductive organs, causing the blood—”

“Okay, okay, enough! I get it—you’re not going to tell me what it was really about. Which half do you want?” He held out a clump of pages in each hand.

I took the ones in his right hand, and we each set off in opposite directions, pushing our carts down the rows of cabinets.

My half of Ms. Callender’s list was heavy on clothing: cloaks, helmets, dresses, buckles, veils, and the inevitable shoes. I found them all in their proper spots except one bracelet—when I went to look for it, all I found was a wooden bracelet-shaped place-holder tagged with a form saying the original had been missing since 1929. I made a note of it.

Nevertheless, I noticed something was odd about the items when I pulled them off the shelves. What was it? It nagged at me as I piled my first truckload on the table by the door and started on the paperwork. I filled out a slip for each of them, naming Ms. Callender as the requester. The paperwork took longer than gathering the objects had.

Aaron came back with a load—mostly musical instruments—and sat down to fill out slips.

“What should I put for Purpose of Loan ?” I asked.

“I’m putting Internal. They’re not actually leaving the repository.”

I picked up the next one, little metal binoculars. Something felt off about them too. “What’s wrong with these things?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know—they don’t feel right to me.” I put down my pencil and walked over to Aaron’s cart. “What about yours, are they wrong too?” I picked up a wooden flute and blew it. It made a raspy, woody note, like a cheap recorder.

“Stop!” Aaron shouted.

I lowered the flute. “What? What’s the matter?”

He looked terrified and puzzled. “That’s a dancing flute. It’s from the same section as the Pied Piper’s pipes. People can’t stop dancing when you play it. In some of the stories they dance themselves to death.”

“Really? I don’t see you dancing.”

“Thankfully! Maybe it takes a few bars to warm up? Or maybe you’re not a good enough musician?”