Polly Shulman - The Grimm Legacy

I lifted the flute again.

“Stop!” Aaron grabbed my hand. “Weren’t you listening? Are you trying to kill me?”

His hand was cold. I shook it off. “Let go, I’m not going to play it.” I brought the flute to my nose and sniffed. It smelled like old, slightly dusty wood. “Does that smell right to you?” I held it out.

He sniffed it and shrugged.

I sniffed it again. “I think that’s what’s wrong with these things—they don’t smell right.” I sniffed a cymbal; it smelled like brass. A bellows smelled like dusty leather. On my own cart, a coat smelled like wool, a linen shift like fabric softener, and a gold pin like nothing at all.

“What’s this supposed to do?” I asked, holding up a glove that smelled a little musty.

Aaron checked the list. “It makes your hand strong.”

I put it on.

“Don’t do that! You could get in big trouble. You know we’re not supposed to use the stuff!”

“Doesn’t matter—I have a feeling it’s not going to work anyway,” I said. “Thumb wrestle?” I held out my gloved hand. He took it and pinned my thumb immediately. I wiggled and struggled, but I couldn’t get it free.

“Quit waving your elbow around, that’s cheating,” he said.

“Okay, okay, let go. Clearly this glove isn’t working. I think these things are fakes.”

“Let me try it.”

I handed him the glove, and he put it on. He pinched the corner of the metal desk, trying to dent it; nothing happened. He punched the wall. “Ow!” he said, shaking his hand. The wall appeared undamaged.

I sniffed my way through my cart. A few of the objects gave off that mysterious, shifting scent, but most smelled of nothing much.

“What are you doing?” asked Aaron.

“Sorting out the fakes. Those are okay, but these smell wrong—I mean, they smell normal. There’s no magic in them.”

“You can smell magic?”

“Can’t you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’ve never tried.”

I handed him a comb that smelled like oyster shells—no, wet marble. “Try this one; it’s pretty strong. Can you smell it?”

He sniffed and shook his head. “I don’t smell anything. I think you’re right, though. It has that shimmer.”

“What shimmer?”

“It’s—you know—the color. It’s sort of . . . It’s hard to describe. It’s like the colors are sort of buzzing. Like there are more colors than just the ones you see.”

I squinted at the comb, but I couldn’t see anything funny about the color—it looked like a plain mother-of-pearl comb to me. I held out my hand. “Here, give, I’m going to try it.”

He held it out of my reach. “Bad idea! Combs can be deadly! Remember Snow White?”

“Oh, is this Snow White’s?” Snow White’s stepmother, I recalled, paralyzed the princess with a poisoned comb. I didn’t want anything more to do with that family, especially after my recent chat with the mirror. “Where’s it from?”

Aaron consulted Ms. Callender’s list. “It says it’s a mermaid’s comb,” he said. “Mediterranean. Abalone.”

“Oh. Well, that’s all right, then. Mermaids just sit on rocks combing their hair and enticing sailors to their doom. It should be safe—there’s no water for you to drown in. Hand it over.” I held out my hand again.

“Shouldn’t you do a little more research first?”

“I’m feeling lucky. What’s the worst that can happen? You’ll act all lovesick puppy about me instead of Anjali?”

Was he blushing? “Yeah, right.” He gave me the comb. “Go wild. But don’t blame me if your hair turns into seaweed.”

I ran the comb through my hair. It felt great, like a tingling herbal massage. I combed for a while, practically purring with pleasure. I shook my head out and combed from one side and then the other. I bent over and combed from the nape of my neck to the top of my head.

“Having fun?” said Aaron.

“Mm, it’s great! Are you in love with me yet?”

He snorted. “In your dreams.”

“Seriously, has anything happened? Does my hair look any different?”

He shrugged. “Still looks like hair to me.”

I brought a fistful around to my eyes, but it didn’t look particularly different. It felt different, though. Thicker, silkier, somehow floatier, the way your hair feels on the perfect hair day, just after you’ve washed it and before it’s quite dry. Like a slow-motion shampoo commercial.

“You don’t have a mirror, do you?”

Aaron snorted again. “In what, my handbag? I’m a guy, remember?”

I thought about looking for a mirror in the collection, but I dropped the idea immediately. Even if I found one that wasn’t evil, how would I know whether any apparent changes in my appearance were the result of the comb’s magic or the mirror’s?

“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t tell for sure, but I think it worked.”

“Yeah,” said Aaron, “I think so too.” To my surprise, he reached out and ran his fingers through my hair. “It’s nice . . . It’s a nice . . . color.” Then he quickly pulled his hand back and turned away.

After a pause, I cleared my throat. “So, um, what do you think this means?”

“Means?” He blushed beet red.

“I mean,” I said quickly, “are all these dead objects substitutes for ones that got stolen? But if so, then why do some of them smell like magic?”

“Oh. Oh . . . I don’t know. Maybe you’re right—maybe the dead ones are fakes. Or maybe someone took the magic out of them somehow?” He started going through my piles, picking up the objects one by one and holding them to the side of his face, tilting them this way and that way to inspect them. He held out a silk coin purse. “This one’s shimmering. You had it in the fakes pile.”

I sniffed it. “Oh. You’re right. It’s very faint, though. What is it?”

He consulted the list. “Silk purse. English Midlands. Sow’s ear.”

“I wonder what it does?” I turned it upside down and shook it. Nothing came out.

“I don’t think it does anything. I think it’s just an impossible object—haven’t you heard that expression, ‘You can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear’?”

I nodded and put the purse in the pile of magical items. I hadn’t, in fact, heard that expression, but I didn’t feel like giving Aaron yet another thing to tease me about.

“What’s the difference between the ones that work and the ones that don’t?” I said.

Aaron looked at me like I was an idiot. “Um, the ones that work work, and the ones that don’t don’t?”

I felt my cheeks redden again. “I meant, is there any other difference? Do the useless ones have anything in common? Is there a pattern in the paperwork?”

“I don’t see any, do you?”

I shook my head.

Aaron finished filling out slips and went back for another cartload. I continued to write, sniffing the sow’s ear purse absently. No, it really didn’t smell like much. I squinted at it sideways, imitating Aaron, but the color—a fleshy pink, like the inside of a shell—still looked perfectly normal. On an impulse, I held the purse to my ear. I heard waves and whispers, like when you listen to a shell, but nothing definite.

I took my half of the list and went for another load. This time two objects were missing, a perfume flask and a ring.

I was starting to fill out my third slip when Aaron came back, his face grim. He was holding the boots Anjali had just returned. “Where have I seen these before?” he said. The teasing Aaron was gone. He sounded mean.

I shrugged.

“Don’t play dumb! I thought you were just a sucker for Marc, like Anjali, but now I’m starting to think maybe you’re actually in on it. Maybe I should warn Doc.”