by Ann Hood
“Wait a minute,” he said, taking Maisie’s arm. “Take a deep breath,” he said.
She did. “So? It smells the same as always.” She added, “Nice.”
Felix walked to 1A. “Cinnamon,” he said. “From all the baking Mr. Soucy does.”
“Okay,” Maisie said, not sure what her brother was getting at.
She watched him continue on to 1B.
“Flowers,” he said, pointing to the wreath on the door.
At 1C he paused and took an exaggerated breath. “Christmas trees,” he said. “From the wood Dad always cut and left by the door for the fireplace.”
A look of understanding crossed Maisie’s face.
“Those are the things we smell when—” She glanced at Delila and stopped herself from finishing.
“When we travel,” Felix said.
“When we travel,” Maisie added, “it smells like home.”
CHAPTER 3
Lame Demon
As soon as Felix and Maisie walked into their old apartment, they both wished they hadn’t come in after all. Even though the hallway of the first floor of 10 Bethune Street had smelled exactly the same, nothing inside the apartment was the same. Apparently, Delila’s mother liked for things to match. The window that looked out on Greenwich Street and the D’Agostino supermarket used to have a bamboo shade on it. Now, heavy olive-green draperies hung over it. The living room wall was also green—“Celery!” Delila’s mother told them—and all of the furniture was green, too: a green-striped sofa and a green floral overstuffed chair and just green, green, green everywhere they looked. “Green is soothing,” Delila’s mother said.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Maisie and Felix’s old bedroom, with their twin beds separated by a scrim from one of their mother’s plays, had been converted into a frilly white concoction.
“It’s like we walked into a giant meringue,” Maisie whispered to Felix.
She was right. Everywhere Felix looked, he saw more white, more lace, more ruffles.
Delila flopped onto her white bedspread, and for a second she seemed to disappear into all that white. But then everything settled around her, and she stared out unhappily at Maisie and Felix.
“My room at home had a magnolia tree right out the window,” she said with a sigh.
Felix’s eyes drifted toward the windowless brick wall, which had been painted white, too.
“Around now,” Delila continued sadly, “that big old tree would be in full bloom.”
“Thanks for letting us look around,” Felix said, looking like he might actually run out of the apartment any second.
“Yeah,” Maisie mumbled. “Thanks.”
They declined Delila’s mother’s offer of pound cake and made their exit. To Felix’s surprise, once they got outside, Maisie burst into laughter.
“What’s so funny?” he asked her. He felt so sad about the loss of their beautiful home that he couldn’t believe Maisie had found anything to laugh about.
“Wait until we tell Dad what they’ve done in there,” Maisie said.
Their father had painted their old kitchen with cartoon images of food—smiling broccoli and dancing salt and pepper shakers, fat toast popping out of a toaster, and a percolator coffeepot. Delila’s mother had painted right over them in a green she called avocado.
“He’ll be furious,” Felix said.
Maisie shook her head, still laughing. “I think he’s going to laugh as hard as I am,” she said. “I mean, it’s so awful.”
Not sure why that was funny, Felix glumly took a seat on the uptown C train beside his sister. How could she not feel as terrible as he did about the fact that their home was really, completely gone?
When they opened the door to the apartment on West Eighty-Sixth Street, the smells of sausage cooking and chicken baking and fresh rosemary greeted them.
“No vegetarians here, right?” a woman wearing an apron said to them brightly. The apron had a statue on it so that the woman’s head looked like the head of the statue. The woman had long auburn hair that fell in perfect waves past her shoulders, green eyes like a cat, and a smile of dazzling white teeth. Agatha, Maisie and Felix realized with a sinking feeling, was gorgeous.
“I’m making the chicken I love from Orso. Do you know it? On West Forty-Sixth Street?” Agatha said. “It has sausage and olives and all sorts of yummy things in it.”
“Smells good,” Maisie admitted.
“It’s not good, Maisie,” Agatha said, flashing her shiny teeth. “It’s fantastic. Just wait.”
“Um,” Felix said, “where’s Dad?”
“Out somewhere,” Agatha said, stirring some tomatoes into the pan. “Oh, Felix, I saw that your coat’s buttons were hanging literally by a thread, so I sewed them for you.”
“Thanks,” Felix said through gritted teeth. Was there anything Agatha couldn’t do?
“I thought after dinner we could play Pictionary,” Agatha said in her cheerful, can-do voice. “Don’t you just love Pictionary?”
“Well,” Felix began, but Agatha had started to hum. Beautifully, of course.
“What’s that song you’re humming?” Maisie asked her.
“‘Crazy’? By Patsy Cline? I played her in a show a couple years ago. So tragic,” Agatha said.
“You’re an actress?” Felix said, feeling very possessive. Their mother had spent most of their childhood auditioning for plays and getting just walk-on parts, or—mostly—no parts at all.
“For a few years I acted, but then I went back to school for my PhD in art history, and that’s how I ended up at the museum in Doha, and that’s where I—”
“Met Dad,” Felix said. He noticed that Maisie was watching Agatha with something like wonder. He glared at his sister, but she didn’t seem to notice.
Agatha grated cheese from a hunk of Parmesan into the pan. “That’s right,” she said.
“Were you on Broadway?” Maisie asked.
Agatha waved her hand dismissively. “I had a few small roles. You know, Rent and—”
“You were in Rent?” Maisie asked, and the awe in her voice made Felix glare harder. Their mother had tried out for Rent. Three times.
“In daylights, in sunsets,” Agatha sang in her beautiful voice.
Unbelievably, Maisie joined in with her.
“In midnights, in cups of coffee,” they sang, Agatha holding a wooden spoon like a microphone.
From behind Felix, their father’s voice rang out. “In inches, in miles,” all three sang.
By the time they finished with a rousing, loud “Seasoooons of love!” Felix was ready to scream.
“Isn’t she great?” their father said, grinning at Agatha.
He unwrapped a thick eggplant-colored cable-knit scarf from around his neck. “She knit this for me on the plane ride over,” he said in a stage whisper.
Maisie oohed and aahed over the scarf, but all Felix could think of was their mother in her rumpled suits, lugging her heavy briefcase with papers overflowing from it.
The dinner was, of course, delicious. So was the dessert, something called tiramisu, which was Italian, too. Afterward, Maisie and Agatha beat Felix and his father at Pictionary. Then Agatha brought out a tray of chocolate truffles she’d whipped up, and took a ukulele off a shelf and played while they sang along. Felix joined in reluctantly on “Over the Rainbow,” but deep down he felt melancholy. Their mother was with the boisterous Bruce Fishbaum, and their father had ended up with a goddess. How traitorous to be won over by her charms, Felix thought.
Finally, Maisie and Felix got to go to bed. Agatha was staying the night with her best friend Lulu in Brooklyn, but before she left she brought them water and a book of poems by Shel Silverstein.
“These are such fun,” she said, placing the book on the night table between them.
As soon as she closed the door behind her, Felix said, “How can you be so nice to her?”
“What?” Maisie said through a yawn. “She’s great.”
; “Too great,” Felix mumbled.
“And I told you Dad would laugh when I told him how awful the apartment looked,” Maisie said.
He had laughed. Celery? he’d said. Avocado?
“Well, I’m glad you two find it so funny,” Felix said, rolling on his side away from Maisie. “I think it’s terrible.”
Maisie didn’t answer him. Instead, she chuckled.
Felix turned back over and there his sister sat, reading those Shel Silverstein poems and chuckling to herself. Of course Agatha would choose the perfect book for them, Felix thought miserably as he faced the wall again.
The next time he rolled over, Maisie had fallen asleep with the book open across her chest. She was so hard to figure out, Felix thought. He had been certain that Maisie wouldn’t like anybody their father went out with, especially someone as perfect as Agatha. Instead, she thought Agatha was great. Why, she seemed almost happy that their father had a girlfriend.
Felix sighed, wishing they were back in Newport. If they were at Elm Medona, he would try to figure out how to get into The Treasure Chest. Nothing like a little adventure to make the fact that your father has met the woman of everyone’s dreams seem not so bad. He closed his eyes. The next time they went into The Treasure Chest and picked up an item, Felix thought as he drifted off, they should choose more carefully. Obviously that hawk feather would bring them to the Old West. And if they’d looked more closely at that coin and seen the date, they would have known where they were headed. Or at least when.
Next time, Felix thought.
He looked over at his sleeping sister.
“Do you know what I wish?” he said, even though he knew she couldn’t hear him. Or maybe because he knew she couldn’t hear him.
“Hmmm,” she mumbled.
“I wish we could time travel right now.” Felix stared up at the ceiling, which was painted the color of the sky. Blue as the sky, he thought.
“I don’t want to be here,” he said softly. “I don’t want to be with Agatha, and I don’t want to be in Newport with Bruce Fishbaum.”
“Well,” Maisie said, surprising him, “would you like to be in a castle? With a moat and a jester and damsels in distress?”
“You heard me,” he said, half glad that she had, and half embarrassed.
Maisie was getting out of bed now, and she looked exactly the way she did when she was up to something.
“A big castle with serfs and maybe a dragon and lords and ladies,” she said.
“What are you talking about?” Felix asked.
She went over to her suitcase, which lay open in the corner. Felix watched her rooting around until she found whatever she was looking for.
“Ta-da!” Maisie said, holding out the crown.
“Where did you get that?” he asked.
“From The Treasure Chest.”
“But how—”
“Remember after that awful March Madness party?” she explained. “You found me in The Treasure Chest, right? But I had already tried to time travel by myself. I saw this and I thought that going to medieval times—you know, maybe with King Arthur and the Round Table, or someplace romantic and exciting—would make me feel better. I tried all sorts of ridiculous things to go.
Felix looked from his sister’s face to the crown and back again.
“Are those real jewels?” he whispered.
“I think so.”
“That crown is from The Treasure Chest, which means…,” he began.
“Yup,” Maisie said.
“Maybe there will be knights,” Felix said, climbing out of bed. “I would like to see real knights, and all their weapons and stuff.”
He reached out to take hold of one side of the crown, but Maisie pulled it closer to her.
“Wait,” she said. “I have to tell you something.”
“Now? Can’t it wait until we get back?” Felix said, frustrated. Now that he could leave Agatha and Bruce Fishbaum and his ever-changing life behind, he wanted to get on with it.
“This is kind of important,” Maisie said.
“Fine,” Felix said, dropping back onto the bed.
“The other day, Great-Uncle Thorne found me at the doorway to The Treasure Chest.”
Felix looked at her, surprised.
“I go there sometimes to see if maybe there’s a way to get in that we haven’t figured out,” she admitted. “Anyway, he went on and on about how dumb we are, how we don’t know anything about The Treasure Chest—”
“What else is new?” Felix said, wanting her to get on with it. Already he was imagining eating big turkey drumsticks with his hands, and drinking mead—whatever mead was—while a minstrel serenaded them.
“He said that the anagram actually could help us,” Maisie said.
That got Felix’s attention. “How?”
“It can give us background,” she said.
“You mean like we would know ahead of time who we were looking for?”
She shrugged. “He didn’t really explain.”
“How do we use the anagram to get background?” Felix said, feeling prickly. He wanted to go.
Maisie shook her head again.
“Maybe we have to just say it or something?” Felix offered. Why hadn’t Maisie gotten the specifics? He knew how Great-Uncle Thorne could be, but still, she could have at least found out what he was talking about.
“Maybe,” Maisie said.
She held the crown out, and Felix hurried over to her and grabbed on.
“Lame demon,” they both said hesitantly.
Before they could say it again, that familiar smell of gunpowder filled the room. Then they smelled cinnamon and Christmas trees and flowers. The wind whipped around them, and they were somersaulting through time.
CHAPTER 4
Ali‘i Girl
Except this time, something was different.
Very different.
Some kids like to go on carnival rides that spin around and around. Felix was not one of those kids. In fact, he didn’t like spinning at all. So when instead of landing like they usually did, Maisie and Felix started to spin, he found himself not only frightened but also yelping. A yelling blur flew past him, a blur he thought might be his sister. But she went by too fast for him to be certain. And Felix was picking up speed, too. He thought he might be sick, that fancy chicken of Agatha’s rising into his throat. Was this what lame demon had done? he wondered. Sent them out of control, unable to land?
“Feee…liiiiix,” Maisie called, her voice warped and whirling.
“Maisie? Can you grab my hand?”
He held his hand out and his sister bumped past it. Felix saw her trying to reach him, her own hand outstretched. But just like that, she was gone again.
Palm trees seemed to fly past. And grass huts. And a man holding a large conch shell. Felix remembered something his father had told him once, a way to keep from getting seasick. Look at the horizon. Keep your gaze on a fixed point. Felix tried that. He stared hard at a palm tree, even as it, too, spun out of control. To his surprise, it helped. The palm tree, at least, was clear and steady.
“Feee…liiiix.”
He heard Maisie calling, and once again he held his hand out to her. This time she caught it, and hand in hand they rode the cyclone.
“Well,” she said, “this is fun.”
It figured that his sister would actually enjoy being caught like this, in a vortex or spiral or whatever it was.
“What’s out there?” Felix asked. “What do you see?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Nothing?” Felix repeated. His heart started to race again. What if they had traveled so far back in time that there were no people even on earth yet? What if dinosaurs were roaming around?
“Kind of,” Maisie answered unhelpfully.
Felix could hear a sound in the distance, like people singing. No, he decided. It was just the sound of the gentle breeze. He realized he was sweating. A lot.
“It’s really hot in he
re,” he said.
“Ssshhh,” Maisie told him. She heard it, too. “I think there are people over there. Chanting.”
“You sure?” Felix asked cautiously. “It might be this wind.”
Around them, the wind whipped and blew. Maisie strained to listen to the sounds beyond the wind. She squinted to see what was out there.
Felix was right. It was brutally hot. Even the grass looked hot. When the people chanting came into sight, Maisie forced herself to focus. A group of half-naked men sat underneath trees or on mounds of straw. They were big men—tall and bare-chested—and though they did not look especially dangerous, Maisie did not think it would be a good idea to find that out for certain. Some of the men smoked pipes; some scooped white stuff out of bowls and ate it. These men listened carefully to the ones chanting, especially the tallest of the onlookers, who stood under a tree slightly away from the others, his head cocked as if to listen better. Maisie could see the top of a thatched roof beyond the group of men.
“There’s a house over there,” Felix said. His voice sounded funny, like that of someone shouting down a mountain.
“More like a hut, I think,” Maisie said. “A grass hut,” she added, excited. Where in the world did people live in grass huts? She smiled to herself. And when did they live in them?
“So we must be on an island somewhere,” Felix said, disappointed. “No knights. No damsels in distress.”
“No,” Maisie said, wondering what had gone wrong. A crown should take them to a castle, shouldn’t it? Maybe they had somehow gone back to Saint Croix, back to Alexander Hamilton. But that didn’t make sense. There hadn’t been grass huts there. There hadn’t been practically-naked people.
Now she saw that there wasn’t a grass hut. There were lots of them scattered beneath the trees, windowless, with thatched roofs. The biggest one stood in the middle, near the men.
“It’s like a neighborhood,” she said to Felix.
Just when Felix and Maisie thought they might be caught in the tornado forever, four things seemed to happen all at the same time.
A few drops of rain fell.