Polly Shulman - The Grimm Legacy

“They’ll get her back themselves.”

“You think you can trust them? Maybe Doc’s in on it. Maybe they’re all in on it!” said Marc.

“Or maybe nobody’s in on it except you. You just admitted you stole the kuduo ! Get out of my way!”

“You think I would let my own girlfriend get kidnapped if I was in on it? Just calm down and think for a minute, Aaron! The point is, we know what to do, but if we tell the librarians, they won’t let us do it.”

“Aaron, he’s right,” I said. “You know he is. We have to rescue Anjali! Can we please just stop fighting and figure out how?”

Aaron glared at me some more, but he stopped trying to get to the door. “All right,” he said. “We’ll rescue Anjali. But the moment she’s safe, I’m turning Marc in.”

“Fine,” said Marc. “I don’t care what happens to me if Anjali’s safe. Let’s go get the Golden Key and rescue her.”

“Yeah, but how?” I said. “It’s in the Grimm Collection and they changed the locks. Our keys won’t work. Is there any other way into the Grimm Collection besides the door?”

Both boys looked stumped.

“Not unless you crawled in through the pneum pipes,” said Marc.

“Hey,” said Aaron. “That’s a thought.”

“Yeah, right,” said Marc. “You may be short, but you’re not that short.”

Aaron gave him a withering look. “We can use the shrink ray in the Wells Bequest. Ms. Minnian didn’t say anything about the other Special Collections, just the Grimm Collection—I bet my Wells key still works. I can shrink you down and send you into the Grimm Collection in a pneum.”

“There’s actually a shrink ray? That’s brilliant!” I said.

Marc nodded grudgingly. “I guess that could work,” he said.

I thought about it some more. “Okay, so that’s how we get into the Grimm Collection, but how do we get out? We would need somebody full size to send us back through the pipes.”

“Maybe we can use this Golden Key to get out. Any idea what it does?” said Marc.

“It opens a box. Nobody knows what’s in the box,” said Aaron.

“Then how do you know it opens it?” asked Marc.

“Didn’t you read the Grimm fairy tales? It’s the last one.”

“Right, the last story! Of course!” I said.

“Oh. I guess I must have skipped that one. Is it really boring, with lots of oafs and donkeys? I kind of skimmed those.”

“No, it’s really short. A boy finds a golden key in the woods. Then he digs around and finds an iron box. He unlocks it, but the story ends there, and you never find out what’s in the box.”

“I don’t see how that’s going to help us get out,” said Marc.

“Maybe the Golden Key unlocks more than just that one box,” I said. “Maybe once we’re inside the Grimm Collection, we can use something else to let us out. A genie or a wishing ring or something. Or we could put on the invisibility cloak and sneak out when a librarian comes in. I think we should use the shrink ray. I bet we can find a way out of the GC if we manage to get in.”

“All right,” said Aaron, picking up his backpack. “Let’s go.”

The shrink ray, a huge machine with streamlined curves, crouched like a gigantic rat in its own section of the Wells Bequest. Aaron picked up its long, curly tail and examined the plug at the end. “Where did I put that extension cord?”

I stared at the machine with rising apprehension as Aaron and Marc argued about who would shrink whom. The argument didn’t last long. Wells objects were really Aaron’s domain, as he pointed out. He was the only one who knew how to operate it.

“First we’ll send some useful stuff down to the GC in pneums, things like scissors and string,” said Aaron. “Then I’ll shrink the two of you so you fit in the pneums yourselves and send you down. Who wants to go first?”

“I’d better,” said Marc. “I’m stronger, so I can help Elizabeth get out of the tube.”

We packed a couple of pneums with supplies and stuffed a few more things in our backpacks. Aaron pushed a switch and the machine growled to life. He swung it around to point its nozzle at Marc.

“Hey! Aren’t you going to test it first?”

“If you want. What should I shrink?”

I handed him my sweater. It was a hand-me-down from Veronica, and it was too big. In fact, I had thought about trying to shrink it by putting it through the dryer.

Aaron pointed the shrink ray and fiddled with a knob. A green ray came whooshing out. The sweater writhed like a balloon losing air. In seconds it was down to half its size.

Aaron twisted another knob and the shrinking slowed down. So did the writhing—the sweater waved its arms slowly like something in an underwater documentary, kelp or a sea anemone.

I picked it up. It looked like it would fit a Barbie doll. I was amazed at how finely made it seemed, with its perfect little buttons and blindingly tiny stitches.

“Test the magnifying function—make sure you can get it back to the right size,” I said.

Aaron fiddled with the controls and turned the shrink ray on again. This time the light was red. The sweater puffed out, wrinkling into little hills. It looked like lava erupting undersea.

“Okay, stop,” I said.

“But it’s not done yet,” objected Aaron.

“Now! Stop!” I leaned over and flicked the switch to off. The light died down.

“Why did you do that? It’s only at 94 percent,” said Aaron.

“It was too big to begin with,” I said, putting on the sweater. It was still a little loose, but not nearly as bad as before. Maybe I would grow into it.

“Ready, Marc?” said Aaron, switching on the shrink ray.

The green light shot out, but Marc didn’t seem to be shrinking. “Is it working?” I asked.

Marc shrugged.

“Give it a minute,” said Aaron.

We gave it a minute. Nothing happened. Aaron fiddled with some knobs. Still nothing happened.

“I know!” I said. “It’s Jaya’s knot—it protects you, remember? I had to take mine off before Doc could remove my sense of direction.”

“Oh, right,” said Marc, tugging at the knot with his teeth.

“Not that way,” I said. “You’ll break your teeth. You have to tell it come off. In rhyme,” I added.

“Okay, knot, so here’s the gist: get your booty off my wrist,” Marc told it, rapping like a hip-hop star. The knot came off.

Aaron started the machine again. “Is it working now?” he asked.

“I think so,” said Marc. “I feel funny.” He sounded funny too.

“Look, it’s definitely working,” I said. Marc had reached my height and was subsiding slowly, twitching. “Are you okay?” I asked him.

“Yeah . . . it’s weird. It kind of tickles inside my bones, where I can’t scratch.”

“Enough?” I said. Marc was now the height of a soda can.

“Let’s check,” said Aaron. He switched off the shrink ray and put a pneum down next to Marc. “Can you fit in there?”

Marc slid the door open and tried to wedge himself in. “Too tight,” he said. His voice sounded tiny and higher than usual. He was like a doll of himself, with perfect little limbs and itty-bitty shoes. He stepped out of the pneum and stretched gracefully, like a tiny tiger. I wished I could take him home with me and keep him.

Aaron turned the ray on Marc again for a few seconds. “Better?”

Marc tried the pneum again; this time he fit. “Perfect.” He climbed back out.

Then it was my turn. I talked the knot off my ankle and went over to the shrinking spot. “Do your worst,” I said.

For a moment nothing seemed to happen. Then I felt the itching Marc had described. All at once the world looked as if I’d shaken free of it and was falling down, down, down through exploding space.