Storybound

by Marissa Burt

  Snow peered out from the shop window and watched Peter and Una’s carriage drive away. She shouldn’t have introduced Una to her mother like that in class. Una had noticed something. And now Una knew that Snow cared what people thought about her mother. Snow had tried not to mind, to brush it off as easily as she ignored Aunt Becky’s diatribes. But, no matter what she did, no matter how often she blew off their weekly teas or glared at her mother during class, she actually wanted other people to like her mother. Maybe if everyone else could accept her mother’s reasons for leaving her days-old daughter on someone else’s doorstep, Snow would be able to, too.

  Well, what did Una care anyway? It’s not like Una’s family was something special. No one had come to settle her in at Perrault. And whenever Snow asked her about her family, Una just changed the subject. Maybe Elton was on to something. Maybe Una did have something worth hiding.

  At least now she could tell Elton she had tried to talk to Una. Snow had decided to follow Aunt Becky’s demands to the letter. She would report to Elton if that was what it took to show her gratitude to the Wottons. But she would camp out under the stars before she actually gave him any useful information.

  What could she say? She guessed she could tell him that Ms. Fairchild seemed to be on the lookout for a new costume. That ought to keep Elton busy for a while.

  A salesgirl appeared next to her. “Do you like the gown, miss?”

  Snow set down the fine dress she had been admiring. “It’s cheaply made,” she said. Snow would never admit that she couldn’t afford such a dress. Perhaps she would wait until it went on sale. The giant cuckoo clock in the square chirped the hour. She frowned up at it. Why the Wottons chose to live in Heart’s Place was beyond her. The saleslady had moved on to the crowd of tittering girls, who now were ogling two boys dressed as gentlemen. Snow breezed out of the store. She wouldn’t have said good-bye even if she’d had the time.

  She painstakingly made her way down the crowded main street and, glancing over her shoulder, took a hard right. What Una had implied stung, because it was true. Not because her mother was part of a coven, which, come to think of it, was likely. No, it was the ever-present mystery of who exactly Professor Adelaide Thornhill was. Where had she been for the past thirteen years?

  Her aunt and uncle knew nothing. Horace had been nearly a year old when they opened the door one winter morning to find a baby girl inside a basket and a note from Becky’s sister that read, “I’ve named her Snow, for my heart has turned to ice.”

  Snow passed between tall buildings with clotheslines strung between them. Neighbors shouted noisily out the windows to each other, and Snow could hear the sound of a baby wailing. But the farther she went, the quieter it got. There were only closed doors, and even these got fewer and farther between as she walked. The cobbled route zigzagged through forlorn little squares, and Snow chose turning after turning without hesitation.

  A heart of ice. There was the ugly truth. Her own mother’s heart was cold toward her. And whatever she said, however much she claimed to want to make amends, all Snow could ever see in her mother’s sad face was a woman who had abandoned her daughter.

  Around one more bend, under a weathered stone archway, and she was there. Only the residents who had lived in Heart’s Place longest knew about the subway that went directly to the City Hub. And she had arrived just in time, too. She studied the little group around the station. A few scattered passengers, a group of children flocking around a tall redheaded girl with a snub nose, and the cloaked figure she knew was her mother.

  Every weekend she could, Snow followed her. So far, all her mother ever did was take the same train to the same street in the City Hub. But tailing her for the past term had given Snow more than just an activity to help her endure her horrible weekends at the Wottons’. It had given her questions. And Snow wanted answers. When her mother boarded the train, she pulled up her blue hood and got on behind her.

  Chapter 15

  The carriage dropped them off in a plastic booth that Una thought looked exactly like a city bus stop. Cars and taxis whizzed by on the street outside. Tall buildings stretched up on either side, blotting out the sunlight. Peter kept fidgeting, crinkling the paper of his polka-dot bag and looking around like an excited tourist.

  “How do we get into the Vault?” Una asked.

  “Well, there’s this thing called a safe-deposit box,” he said importantly. “My father has one key.” He held up the old-fashioned-looking key he had stolen from his father’s study that morning. “And we go to the Vault, and they have another key. That way only the person who owns the box can open it, see?” He said this in little more than a whisper, as if it were some great secret. “You can put whatever you want to keep safe in it. Important papers. Money. Or, in my father’s case, books.”

  “A bank transaction?” Una said. “You mean the Vault is just a boring old bank in the middle of a city?”

  Peter didn’t bat an eye. “Let’s hope it is boring. If the Talekeepers catch us with the old Tales, we’ll be in trouble. Even worse, if my father finds out.” He checked the small paper in his pocket again. “Forty-second and Fifth. Come on, then.”

  Una had to walk fast to keep up. At last she would get her hands on some books. She was itching to read something, anything. They passed a cat and dog chatting amiably over a milk shake in the shop on the corner. Peter stopped to ask a samurai carrying a briefcase for directions. The man pointed off to the left, and soon Una and Peter were there.

  The skyscraper looked like a giant slab of black marble and took up the entire city block. Dark glass covered the steep sides that, from Una’s spot on the sidewalk, seemed to lean into the overcast sky. She followed Peter through the revolving doors into a pale foyer. In the center of the room was a giant circle etched into the white tile.

  “Peter, look!” she said, and pointed with her toe. In the center of the circle was an image of a sword piercing a stack of books, just like she had seen at the statue of Archimago.

  “So?” He went back to scanning the directory posted on the far wall. “There it is. The fifteenth floor.”

  “Don’t you think it means something?” Una asked as they waited for the elevator. Outside each elevator stood a guard clad in a dark suit and matching sunglasses.

  “Of course it does,” Peter said as the elevator doors opened. When they had closed again, leaving them alone, he continued. “Archimago built the Vault after the Unbinding. That’s his symbol.”

  Once they were on the fifteenth floor, he took off around the corner. They went up to the front desk, and Peter presented the Merriweather key. The bank manager took the key and disappeared. A moment later he returned with a stern-faced woman. She consulted a clipboard and pinched her lips together before addressing Peter and Una.

  “The Merriweather box?” She raised one very thin eyebrow and looked at Peter, who held his ground. “Very well.” She ticked something off on a chart and led them down a hallway with floor-to-ceiling white tiles, her heels breaking the cavernous silence with their staccato clicks. Una tried to peek at the chart, but the woman whisked it out of view.

  She finally stopped at a giant metal portal sandwiched between two more guards. The door had a huge padlock on it, which was apparently just for show. Instead of producing an equally giant key to unlock the door, the woman placed her palm on a shiny panel to the right of the door. The door’s seal hissed open. “Wait here,” she ordered, and disappeared inside.

  Soon she returned, wheeling a cart with a large metal box on top. Tiny white letters marked the box MERRIWEATHER. The cart had one squeaky wheel, which stuttered as the woman led the way down another immaculate hallway. Spaced at regular intervals were bright red curtains. She stopped at the third one of these and pushed it aside to reveal a wood table. She frowned at Peter and Una. “Do your parents know you’re here?”

  Peter gave her a winning smile. “We have the key, don’t we?”

  The woman didn’t look happy. “I s
uppose that’s true,” she said as she heaved the box onto the center of the table. “You have ten minutes.” She inserted her master key, twisted it once, and left Peter and Una alone in the small compartment.

  Click, click, went her heels as she walked away. With shaky fingers, Peter put his own key into the lock, turned it, and nearly jumped at the loud hiss as the box opened.

  Four large books were fitted snugly into the box, their bindings so weathered with age that they looked brown.

  “You do it,” Peter said. He looked as though he thought the books might bite him.

  Una had to use both hands to pick one up, and she laid it flat on the table. Ever so carefully, she pulled back the crumbling cover. The title page was blank. She slid a finger under the next page. Blank. And another, blank. Abandoning care, she picked up the volume and paged through to the end. There was no writing, not a single speck.

  “Are you kidding me?” Una asked. The rest of the books were blank as well. She tried flipping one upside down.

  “I don’t know what to think,” Peter said, who had grown bolder. He ran his fingers all around the binding of another. “I mean, what’s the point of forbidding us to read books if there aren’t any Tales written in them?”

  “Well, if these were some of the ones Archimago and his Talekeeper friends were supposed to keep safe, they didn’t do such a great job.” Una held one of the books up to the fluorescent ceiling bulb. All the pages stayed stubbornly bare. She sneezed, and tiny particles of dust floated down onto her forehead.

  Peter whispered every concealment charm he could remember from Beginner’s Enchanting, but nothing happened. He tried tapping one of the books with his finger and even hopped up and down on it.

  “What help is that going to be?” Una asked after he had tried unsuccessfully to tear a page out of one of the books.

  “I don’t know. Maybe there’s a special trick to getting it to reveal its secrets,” Peter said, tugging hard on the cover.

  Una heard the clicking of the bank manager’s stilettos. They stopped outside the cubicle. Una tried to grab three books at once and ended up dropping them all. They landed on the white tiles with a thud.

  “Do you need any assistance, young man?” the woman’s voice drifted in.

  “Nope,” Peter managed, glaring at Una. “Everything’s fine.”

  “Sorry,” Una mouthed, and waited for the clicking shoes to walk away. They didn’t. The bank manager wasn’t going to leave.

  “It sounds like you’re having trouble,” she said. Peter silently motioned for Una to come closer. He crammed one book into the polka-dot bag.

  “We might as well put the others back,” Peter whispered. “They’re no good to us blank anyway.”

  Una looked longingly at the three other worn volumes as she arranged them back in the drawer. Peter was right, of course. The books were heavy and big. They would have trouble hiding just the one.

  “Are you finished?” The woman’s strident tones interrupted the moment. “I’m coming in.”

  Peter slammed the lid shut and twisted his key just in time. The bank manager frowned down at them as she clicked the lock into place. They followed the squeaky cart back to the Vault. Click, click, went the woman’s heels. Squeak, went the cart. With every sound, Una’s nerves tightened. What would happen if they got caught taking a book with them? She hoped Peter had a plan.

  One of the security guards and a wizened old woman got onto the elevator with them. The old lady had a brightly printed scarf wrapped around her head, and her shoulders bent under a thick woolen shawl. “First floor, please,” she said in a reedy voice.

  They rode in silence for a while. Peter stared fixedly at the lit numbers on the elevator panel. Una could feel the old woman’s eyes on her. She cleared her throat and pretended to study a wad of chewing gum mashed into the elevator floor.

  “If you are too fond of books,” the old woman whispered in Una’s ear, and the words sounded like they would catch in her throat.

  Una felt her face flush. “Excuse me?” How could the woman tell she liked books? Did she know they had a book with them?

  The old woman’s face was hidden by the shadows of her scarf. Her throaty chuckle took Una off guard. She reached out a wrinkled hand and patted Una’s shoulder gently.

  “Never mind, dearie. Just humor an old woman.” The elevator dinged open on the sixth floor, and the security guard got out. Once the doors closed, the woman turned to Peter. Her gnarled fingers patted the square shape in the polka-dot bag. “I knew you were fond of books,” she said with a sly grin.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Peter said.

  This didn’t seem to bother the old lady at all. “That’s for sure. Young people of today don’t know anything about the old days.”

  “Oh, but we want to!” Una said. “Do you remember anything about the Muses?” She peered closer at the woman’s wrinkled face.

  “Yeah, do you remember what it was like when they killed everyone?” Peter scowled. “And it’s not our fault we don’t know anything about the old days,” he said to the lady. “No one will tell us.”

  “Aye,” the woman said. “I remember. And I remember the day my parents disappeared, too. They were asking too many questions about the new Tale Master.” She rubbed her hands together briskly. “The days of the Muses were dark days, to be sure. But trading one form of tyranny for another isn’t freedom.”

  Peter’s mouth dropped open. “What do you mean?”

  The old woman smiled at him. “You’re the Merriweather boy, aren’t you? You have the look of your father.” She pulled a weathered piece of parchment out from under her shawl and handed it to him. “Tell him that Story would do better with a King. You must remember that the roots of the tree are buried deep in Story’s soil,” she said, and leaned in so close that Una could see her toothless smile. “Schoolchildren should always learn their Backstory.” The elevator doors opened. “Have a nice day,” she said, and disappeared into the lobby.

  Una peered over Peter’s shoulder while he unfolded the paper. She gasped and snatched it out of his hands. In the middle of the page was the same tree she had seen on the bottom of Griselda’s paper. “Hurry up, Peter. We have to catch her.”

  But the old lady was nowhere to be found.

  “She knows something about the King, I’m sure of it,” Una said as they made their way outside. “You can’t pretend you didn’t hear her, or that it’s just a coincidence about the trees.”

  “Right, Una. An old crone knows all the secrets of Story.” Peter rolled his eyes. “I wonder how she knows my father. Too bad I can’t ask without him knowing I was at the Vault.”

  They reached the end of the block, and Peter heaved a great sigh of relief. “No one’s following us. We made it.”

  Una tucked the paper back into her pocket and tried a different approach. “Have you ever talked to any other characters who were alive back then?”

  “Not really,” he said. “Most retired characters live in the country. Trix is probably the oldest person I know, but even she was just a baby back then.”

  “Well, if you don’t know any old people, where else could we learn the Backstory?” Una prodded.

  “I’ve told you before. The Museum is our best bet.” Peter pointed to a sandwich shop. “I’m starving. Let’s get something to eat.”

  Una followed him in. “Maybe the Museum will have something about the King.” It was in that instant, when Una realized that she didn’t want to admit her theory to Peter, that she knew she truly believed it. She had gone from speculating to knowing, the kind of knowing that pricked her thumbs, that the King was real—and that he had something to do with what was happening in Story.

  They ate most of their meal in silence. Peter had told her before they sat down that anyone could report them for what they had done, and it seemed to Una that everyone was watching them. The man with his daughter. The woman in the green uniform. The cashier who rang them up. S
he tried to concentrate on her food.

  Peter popped another french fry into his mouth and washed it down with some orange soda. “I can’t believe we just broke the law!” he whispered. He sounded halfway horrified and halfway delighted. “No one in my family has ever committed a crime. All of them—and the Merriweathers go way back, further than anyone can remember—have been law-abiding, upstanding citizens. The model of character lineage.” He tilted back his cup to get at the ice.

  “So far as you know,” Una said. “Maybe they haven’t always been the Heroes you think they were. Just look at your parents.” She took a bite of her fish sandwich and stared out of the shop’s window. That was when she saw Snow. She would recognize her saunter anywhere. And that bright blue cape.

  “Look who else is visiting the City,” she said to Peter. The saunter slowed as the blue cloak came to the end of the block, and Snow ducked under an awning, scanning the crowd. When the cluster of people crossed at the crosswalk, Snow hurried on.

  “She’s tailing someone!” Peter peered out the window.

  “Well, come on,” Una said as she made for the door. “Don’t you want to know why?”

  For five blocks they followed Snow, who kept straining to see past the cluster of people the next block up. Then, right in front of an outdoor café, Snow came to a dead halt and stared ahead of her. A tall woman clad all in gray was crossing to the opposite side of the street.

  “She’s following her own mother?” Una asked. For it was Professor Thornhill who ducked down a crooked little alleyway that snaked off to the left.