Polly Shulman

by The Grimm Legacy (v5)

  I wrapped the barrette carefully, taped it inside a pneum, and slipped it in the pipe. The vacuum sucked it away with a whoosh like a sigh of relief.

  Anxious and bored, I distracted myself again by strolling around. Something moving behind me caught the corner of my eye. I spun around and froze.

  Whatever it was spun and froze too.

  To my relief, I saw it was just me—my reflection in a large mirror hanging on the picture rack. Did I really look that haggard and grim?

  I made a face at myself. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” I said.

  My own lips moved in the mirror and I heard a voice just like mine answering:

  “You have to ask, Eliza Rew?

  Then listen up: it isn’t you.”

  I think of myself as a pretty savvy person. I grew up in New York City; I’ve seen a thing or two. I’m not the sort of girl who confuses fairy tales with reality. But as soon as I heard the mirror speak, I knew I wasn’t imagining things—it really was magic. I knew it the way you know which way is up, the way you recognize your mother’s voice, the way you know to pull your hand away from a hot stove before your brain registers the pain. My heart began pounding with excitement—excitement, but not doubt.

  As soon as I had accepted this, other things started dropping into place in my mind. I could almost hear them, a light, sparkling clatter like ice crystals falling in a frozen street. The moving freckles, the ensorcelled door—all magic. My heart beat hard with the thrill of it. The boots too. That must be why Marc had borrowed them, why it was so important that I get them put back. And the smell, that vivid, shifty smell: the smell of magic.

  I stared around me. Everything—everything here must be magic! Boots, books, tables, telescopes—everything must have some special power! And the mirror itself . . . I turned back to it. My reflection was scary, a cold, cruel smirk. That couldn’t really be what I looked like—could it? I might not be the fairest of them all, but at least I was sure I didn’t look evil. Was it making me look like that on purpose?

  “Don’t call me Eliza. My name is Elizabeth,” I snapped through my fear. I had always hated Eliza. That’s what my stepsisters called me to tease, usually in a fake English accent.

  The mirror didn’t answer this time.

  If the mirror really was the one from Snow White’s stepmother, no wonder it was so unpleasant—it had the excuse of belonging to somebody wicked. My skin prickled. But the Grimm stories weren’t all witches and poisoned apples. Some of them described good fairies and friendly magic, like Cinderella’s godmother. Were there any benevolent objects here?

  Now the sense of magic all around me began to feel frightening, oppressive. No wonder Dr. Rust had called the objects here “powerful”!

  I looked around again. On the sliding wall near the opinionated mirror hung several other mirrors and a dozen or so pictures, including one of a ship, one of a dragon, one of a hideous, leering old man, and one so dark and murky that I couldn’t make it out. None of the paintings looked particularly benign, and the dark one was positively threatening.

  Anjali seemed to be taking her sweet time rescuing me. Was there anything here that could help me escape? A flying carpet, maybe? I couldn’t quite believe that I was thinking seriously about a flying carpet. But even if I found one, I was still trapped—not much use in flying a carpet indoors.

  I thought about other magical devices from fairy tales. What a lucky chance I’d written that paper about the Brothers Grimm—or was it just chance? Who would have guessed all those childhood hours I spent daydreaming over fairy-tale books would pay off !

  There was the cloak of invisibility from “The Twelve Dancing Princesses”—if the repository had it, perhaps I could hide by the door and slip out next time a librarian came in. Mom and I loved that story, with the trapdoor in the floor of the princesses’ bedroom that they snuck through every night to go dancing with twelve handsome princes. The girls danced until they wore holes in their slippers. I especially envied the youngest princess. She had an active social life, plenty of masculine attention, and big sisters who actually wanted to hang out with her—even if she did have to share her room with eleven of them.

  Of course, there were other magical items that would be more efficient than an invisible cloak. There were tons of wish-granting objects in fairy tales. Usually they came loaded with three wishes; the trick was to formulate the wishes carefully. When I was little, I used to spend hours planning my wishes for just this day.

  Which would be better: a cure for cancer? Universal happiness? Peace for all nations, forever? The people in the fairy tales always seemed to waste their wishes on ridiculous things like sausages or turning each other into donkeys and back into people again. Sometimes, though, the wishes would backfire. Someone would wish for a sack of gold and it would fall on their head and kill them.

  So even if I could find a wishing ring, I wasn’t sure I would have the courage to use it. What if I wished to leave the Grimm Collection, only to be carried out in a body bag?

  The whole thing was too freaky! I wanted to get away from this magic-soaked room and think about it calmly somewhere safe and normal, somewhere that smelled of daily life—like dust and dinner—not the shifting reek of enchantment. And in real life if I had been granted three wishes, I knew exactly what I would change—I would wish my mother alive, my father himself again, my best friend, Nicole, still here instead of in California.

  I glanced behind me at the mirror. It was still smirking.

  Where on earth was Anjali? I sent that pneum at ten to three.

  Hey, that rhymed. I said it out loud:

  “I sent that pneum at ten to three.

  Where on earth is Anjali?”

  My reflection raised an eyebrow and answered,

  “Liz, are you addressing me?

  She’s right where she’s supposed to be.”

  “No, as a matter of fact, I wasn’t addressing you, I was addressing the painting next to you,” I lied. “And don’t call me Liz either. I’m Elizabeth.”

  The mirror didn’t respond, but I noticed some movement in the neighboring picture as the murky shapes inside the frame started to change form in a random, incomprehensible way. It was nothing like any video effects I’d ever seen on a movie or computer screen—more like the forms you see when you press your hands against your closed eyes or the images from a dream that fade as you try to remember it the next morning.

  To my astonishment the shapes in the middle resolved themselves into a picture of Anjali, hard at work in the Main Examination Room. I felt almost dizzy watching her slide briskly on her stool, popping pneums into pipes. It looked very busy up there; no wonder she couldn’t get away.

  “Wow! Can you show me anything I ask for? Like, I don’t know, my friend Nicole?” I said.

  No response; still Anjali.

  Rhyme, maybe? “Picture, picture, on the wall, please can you show me my friend Nicole?” I tried.

  My reflection in the Snow White stepmother mirror rolled her eyes with bored scorn.

  “Okay, sorry, that didn’t really rhyme, did it?” I said. I thought about it for a while.

  “Picture, help me reach my goal

  Of communing with Nicole.”

  That worked. The picture did its dizzying thing again, dissolving Anjali into random geometric forms that shuffled themselves darkly, then brightened into a new scene: Nicole shopping with her new friends in California, trying on clothes and laughing silently—at least, I couldn’t hear them. I could imagine the squeals and peals, though. It was like watching some horrible reality show with the sound off. It made me feel more lonely and helpless than ever.

  “Thanks, that’s quite enough of them!

  Show me Anjali again,” I said.

  Nothing happened. Bad rhyme, I guess.

  “Please, just show me Anjali.

  She’s the one I need to see.”

  More swirling, then Anjali at the pneum station agai
n. Then I heard a click and a creak: the door was finally opening. But it couldn’t be Anjali coming to free me if she was upstairs in the MER.

  “Enough! Turn off,” I muttered to the painting. Fortunately, it accepted the almost rhyme and quieted to murk as I hid behind the picture wall.

  Chapter 8:

  A multiple-choice test and a binder clip

  “Elizabeth? You in there?” It was Marc’s voice. I crept out from behind the picture wall. He was standing at the end of the room, holding the door open with one long leg. “Hurry up, we can’t stay here,” he urged.

  I felt a shiver of relief as I heard the door click shut behind us.

  Marc took the stairs two or three steps at a time while I ran panting behind. I used to be in better shape when I still took ballet.

  Marc waited for me at the third landing. “Come on, you’ll never make the team at that rate!”

  “What team?”

  He looked me over. “I don’t know, Girls’ JV Dawdling?”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Preservation.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Top floor.”

  “Can’t we take the elevator?”

  “You can—Coach’d kill me if I do.” He took off again.

  At last we reached the top of the staircase, with the corridor that led to the MER on the right and parts unknown—at least to me—on the left. There we ran into Ms. Callender. There was a frown on her friendly face.

  “Elizabeth! Where have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you; aren’t you supposed to be on Stack 2?” she asked.

  I didn’t know what to say—and even if I had known, I was panting too hard to say it. Fortunately, Marc stepped in. “Didn’t Ms. Minnian tell you? I’m supposed to take her to Preservation and get to work on the backlog of repairs,” he said.

  “Oh. No, she didn’t mention that, but I’m afraid it’ll have to wait. Dr. Rust wants to see Elizabeth. I’ll send her up to help you when they’re done.” She made a note on her clipboard and said to me, “Go on down, honey, Dr. Rust is waiting.”

  I guess she must have seen my dismay. She smiled and added, “Why the long face?”

  “Did I do something wrong?” I asked.

  “No, no. Just the opposite. There’s nothing to worry about. We thought you were ready for the next step, that’s all. Or at least, the next step toward the next step—or . . . well, I’ll let Dr. Rust explain. Go on downstairs, honey.”

  “Okay.” I hurried away, still feeling uneasy.

  Dr. Rust looked up when I tapped on the open door. “Ah, Elizabeth. Come on in. Sit down, sit down. Let’s see, you’ve been with us since January, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Martha Callender tells me you’re a good, hard worker, and Stan Mauskopf speaks highly of your character. I’ve heard good reports from one or two of the patrons as well. We think it may be time to give you a little more responsibility. Do you feel ready?”

  Hardly. What I felt was guilty. Had Dr. Rust and Ms. Callender been discussing my noble character at the very moment I was sneaking around the Grimm Collection?

  I cleared my throat. “That’s so nice of Mr. Mauskopf and Ms. Callender. What kind of responsibility?”

  “Let’s discuss that after you take the test. That will give me the information I need to make a decision about what work would be right for you here.”

  “Okay. What kind of a test? Sorting buttons again?”

  Doc smiled. “No, this is a standardized test—multiple choice. Let’s find you a quiet place to work.”

  We walked down the hall to a small office with a desk by the window. “Here you go,” said Dr. Rust, handing me a sheaf of papers held together with a binder clip. “You have forty-five minutes to complete the exam. Make sure you fill in each circle completely on the answer sheet. Do you have a number 2 pencil?”

  “I think so.” I fished around in my backpack and brought out the pencil the homeless woman had given me, the one I’d used to outline my social studies paper. I’d come to think of it as my lucky pencil.

  “Excellent. I’ll be back in exactly forty-five minutes.”

  The questions on the test were bizarre:

  7. A carpenter has three sons. The eldest builds a palace from alabaster and porphyry. The second builds a courthouse from granite and sandstone. The youngest builds a cottage from a walnut shell and a corn husk. How many nails do the three sons use?

  ❍ A. π

  ❍ B. Infinity minus one

  ❍ C. One too many

  ❍ D. One too few

  8. A child offers you a choice of two caskets, one gold and the other lead. Which do you take?

  ❍ A. The gold one

  ❍ B. The one in the child’s left hand

  ❍ C. The one the moth lands on

  ❍ D. A river underground

  I chewed my pencil and stared at the paper. I couldn’t imagine which answers were correct. I couldn’t even tell which were wrong, although on most multiple-choice tests I can usually cross out at least one or two right away. I had that terrible nervous feeling you get in nightmares, where you’re taking a test in a class you never signed up for.

  A minute or two ticked by.

  Well, I decided, there was nothing for it but to try my best.

  I went through the questions carefully, filling in circles. I read each question, then shut my eyes, imagined the choices as vividly as I could, and let my heart decide. When my heart didn’t have an opinion, I left it up to my pencil.

  At last I reached the end of the test, but there were still a couple of pages attached with the binder clip. The first one was a list of some sort: Paper towels, dish soap, pistachios, milk, sardines, cayenne . . . Doc’s groceries?

  I turned to the next page. On top of the sheet, in the same typeface as the exam, was written: Repository Qualifying Exam Level Two, 209v04 Key. Beneath was a list of answers. They seemed to correspond to the questions on the exam I’d just taken.

  Doc must have accidentally given me the answer key!

  I felt a wave of guilt. But really, I told myself, how was Dr. Rust’s carelessness my fault?

  Running my eye down my sheet, I saw with alarm that I hadn’t gotten a single answer right. The key called for all the safest, dullest answers.

  I started to erase my answer to the first question, to change it to the one on the answer sheet. My pencil didn’t seem to like that. It made an ugly pink smear on the page, the color of an infected cut. The color, I thought, of cheating.

  Feeling as if I’d had a narrow escape, I turned the pencil around and filled in the circle again next to my original answer: D, With all her heart. I was relieved by my decision, but I was disappointed too. Now that I knew I wouldn’t get the promotion, I realized how much I wanted it.

  The door opened. “Elizabeth? All done?”

  I handed Doc my answer sheet, along with the other papers. “I think you gave me the answer key,” I said.

  Doc grunted. “Indeed I did . . . huh, so that’s where my shopping list got to. Sardines! I knew I’d forgotten something important. Now, let’s see how you did. CDD, ADC, BAB, CCB, ACB . . . Excellent. Almost a perfect score.”

  “What do you mean, almost perfect? I only got one right!”

  Doc smiled, freckles drifting across one cheekbone. “Only one wrong, you mean. This key is a list of wrong answers. You passed with flying colors.”

  “I did?”

  “Yes. Not only did you choose correct answers, but you did it without peeking at the key. Well done, Elizabeth Rew! And now, I’m pleased to present you with the key to the Grimm Collection. Guard it with care and use it with wisdom.” Doc unclipped the binder clip from the exam and put it in my hand.

  “This is the key? A binder clip?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But . . .” Well, I thought, Anjali’s key was a barrette. Why shouldn’t mine be a binder clip? “How does it work?” I asked.

  “Come downstairs a
nd I’ll show you.”

  “. . . Let me in and all is well,” I sang, pressing my binder clip against the door that had so frustrated me only an hour before. Doc was impressed by how quickly I’d memorized the rhyme—and by how calmly I’d taken the news that the room was full of genuine magic. Naturally, I didn’t explain that I’d seen it already.

  I had more trouble with the exit tune, but I got it right after six or seven tries. My music teacher, Mr. Theodorus, would have been proud of me.

  “What if I forget the exit song? Will I get stuck here?” I asked, remembering my panic and hoping it wouldn’t show. “Doesn’t that violate all sorts of fire laws?”

  “Technically, I suppose. But if there’s a fire, the Grimm Collection is the place to be. As far as fires go, it’s the safest room in the entire repository—besides the Garden of Seasons, of course, if you can call that a room. You’ll see there are some pretty powerful objects down here, with powerful senses of self-preservation. And the guards we set on the door will keep out most natural threats.”

  As if on cue, the door opened from the outside. I jumped, but it was only Ms. Callender. She hugged me. “Congratulations, Elizabeth! See, I told you there was nothing to worry about, sweetie. Gumdrop? Go ahead, take two—you deserve it. Did Dr. Rust show you around?”

  “Not yet,” said Doc. “Want to help?”

  “Of course! Where should we start? Let’s see . . . Elizabeth, do you have a favorite fairy tale?”

  “Sure, lots of them. If I had to pick just one, though . . . I love ‘The Twelve Dancing Princesses.’”

  “Then you’re in luck. This way.”

  I followed Ms. Callender through the aisles to the shelves of shoes. I couldn’t stop myself from glancing nervously at the boots I’d just shelved. They were sitting right where I put them, looking dull and harmless.