Polly Shulman - The Grimm Legacy

Well, I’d started—no stopping now. “An enormous bird. It’s supposed to be following people around and stealing things.”

To my surprise, Mr. Mauskopf nodded gravely. “Yes, I’ve heard that too. Have you seen this bird?”

“No . . .”

“Did the page who told you about the bird see it? Anjali was her name, right?”

“She said she didn’t.”

“Hm. And have you seen or heard anything else that concerns you?”

“Well . . . I heard that there was a page who got fired.”

Mr. Mauskopf paused, as if trying to decide how much to say. “That’s right. Dr. Rust had to fire one of the pages. She tried to take a vase without signing for it or leaving a deposit. But that’s not all. Apparently, some more objects have disappeared since Zandra was let go, and I’ve heard of objects similar to the ones in the repository turning up in private collections.”

“Do they think another page is still stealing stuff?” This was alarming. “Or is it the bird, like Anjali said?”

“Nobody is quite sure what is happening. I have trouble believing that a gigantic bird, even if it exists, could get into the repository on its own and steal things. There must be people involved. So keep your eyes open for anything suspicious, and if anybody approaches you and asks you to remove any items outside of proper channels or even if you just get an uncomfortable feeling, please come to me or Lee Rust right away. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said. I had an uncomfortable feeling right now about the whole thing, in fact, but I didn’t think that was what he meant.

“Thank you, Elizabeth.” He turned to go.

“Hey, wait a minute, Mr. Mauskopf. Can I ask you a question?”

“Certainly. As the Akan proverb says, always ask questions.”

“Why are you and the librarians always quoting Akan proverbs, anyway?”

“Oh, that. It’s sort of a private joke. One of the pages when I worked there was descended from the Akan people—your friend Marc Merritt’s uncle, in fact. He liked to quote the proverbs, and the rest of us picked up the habit. I’ve always thought the proverbs chimed nicely with the Grimm stories. Was that your question?”

“No, but it’s connected—to the Grimm stories, at least. What is the Grimm Collection? Does it have anything to do with the Grimm fairy tales?”

“The Grimm Collection! Did one of the librarians tell you about that?”

“I overheard one of the pages talking about it with Ms. Callender, and then everybody got all weird when I asked about it.”

“Ah. Well, then I’d better let Dr. Rust explain. Don’t worry, if you do a good job at the repository, you’ll learn about all that soon enough. I have every confidence . . . Griffin, stop! Griffin! I’m sorry, Elizabeth, I . . . must run . . .” Mr. Mauskopf crashed through the snow after the big dog, who was urgently pursuing some important matter.

The following Tuesday, I planned to leave school as quickly as possible, hoping to get to the repository and see Dr. Rust before my shift started. But I passed the gym on my way out and paused to watch the basketball team practicing. The coach was making Marc do defensive drills with three of the guys.

Marc looked as if there were wings on his feet, he moved so lightly and stayed aloft so long. He even smiled at me from midair before he turned to snatch the ball out from under Jamal Carter’s nose, making my heart jump too. I smiled back, but he was no longer looking at me.

When I got outside, it was snowing hard, flakes creeping under my coat collar where the top button was still missing. I really needed to sew on the new one, but I wasn’t that good at sewing. I put my head down, turning it as little as possible to keep from exposing my neck as I hurried to the library. I shouldered the heavy door open. Through my steamy glasses I saw Anjali behind the circulation desk again. She waved me upstairs.

Marc was at the time clock, punching in ahead of me.

“Hey, Marc. Didn’t I just pass you in the gym? How’d you get here so quickly?” I asked, sticking my card in the clock to be chomped.

“I walk fast.”

“That fast? You hadn’t even finished basketball practice.”

“Long legs,” he said dismissively, heading for the stairs.

Was I prying? Had I annoyed him? I put my card back in the rack, kicking myself.

Ms. Callender sent me down to Stack 2. “It’s going to be a slow night with this weather,” she said. “You might as well sweep the shelves.”

“Okay—is there a broom down there, or a brush or something?”

She laughed, her cheeks bunching up into balls. “It’s not that kind of sweeping. Ask a page to show you. Marc or Aaron. Gumdrop?”

“What?” Was this a new endearment—had she gotten tired of “honey”?

“Gumdrop?” She held out a bag.

“Oh, thanks.” I took a green one and rode the elevator down, chewing.

When I got to Stack 2, Aaron was at his usual desk, reading; Marc was nowhere in sight.

“Hi, Aaron. Where’s Marc?”

“Downstairs, why?”

“Ms. Callender said one of you should show me how to sweep the shelves.”

Aaron looked irritated. “And you’d prefer Merritt, is that it?”

“No, I just—he came down the stairs ahead of me; I thought he’d be here.”

“Great. Another member of the Marc Merritt fan club.”

“No . . . well, of course I think he’s cool and all, but I’m not actually in the fan club,” I said.

Aaron gave me a look that, in other lighting, would probably have suggested that he couldn’t believe he was stuck on Stack 2 with such an idiot. Under the desk lamp’s dramatic highlights and shadows, though, it suggested that he was an ogre about to eat me.

“I mean,” I explained, “most of the kids in the fan club are a lot younger.”

The highlights and shadows shifted. Now he looked like an ogre who was going to choke up the idiot he had eaten.

“Some of their little sisters are in it too,” I said.

“You can’t be serious! You mean there’s an actual Marc Merritt fan club?” he said.

I was starting to get irritated myself. “Of course there is. I’m sure you could join, since you take such an interest. All those girls would probably enjoy having an older guy around, even if it’s just you.”

Aaron stood up and said coldly, “Sweeping the shelves means making sure there’s nothing out of place. Check the labels and look for gaps between items or for anything that doesn’t belong where it is. Make a note of any anomalies you find. You start on that end and I’ll start on this.” He strode off into the darkness.

I spent a painstaking hour examining shoes, rows and rows of them, enough to keep every homeless toe in the city toasty. Did you know that in seventeenth-century France shoes were one-shape-fits-both-left-and-right? Or that ancient Egyptians gave their mummies shoes made of papyrus and palm leaves? Or that in fourteenth-century Poland, shoe toes grew so long and pointy that fashionable gentlemen looked like they were wearing snakes on their feet?

I didn’t find anything out of place in the shoe section. There was a gap where a patron had borrowed a pair of size 12-D pumps, but I found a call slip for it on file.

Checking a row of platform shoes from Renaissance Venice, I turned the corner and was surprised to find Marc Merritt with a pair of brown work boots in his hand.

“Oh, so you are working on this stack today?” I said.

“No, I’m down in the Dungeon,” he said.

“What’s the Dungeon?”

“Stack 1.”

“So what are you doing up here, then?”

“Returning these.”