“No. It’s magic, but it’s not a miracle maker. It just shows you a starting place, based on your own understanding of what you want. You have to do the real work. As the Akan proverb says, ‘Your beauty may take you there, but it’s your character that brings you back.’ ”
“Oh. Too bad. Well, still—thank you.”
“I thought it was the least we could do.”
“What about everybody else who borrowed the fake objects, the ones Mr. Stone made with the dereifier?” I asked. “Will they ever get their deposits back?”
Doc nodded. “They got them back already. You’re the only person who still had one of the replacements checked out after it went dead. I guess that’s because we gave you an extra day on your loan. The replacements were set to last through three patrons and run out on the fourth day after the third patron took them out.”
“Good,” I said. “And what about the real objects, the ones he copied? Did you find them?”
“Some of them. There were some at Wallace Stone’s apartment, waiting to be sold. We’ve been contacting his clients. Most of them were appalled to learn they’d bought stolen goods. They’re returning them. A few people are fighting, but we have some very good lawyers among our alumni. I’m confident we’ll get them back eventually.”
“Oh, I almost forgot,” I said. “Jaya Rao wants to know what to do with the princesses, the ones Gloria Badwin collected.”
“Ah, yes, the princesses. That’s quite a problem.” Doc sighed. “Tell her to bring them in and I’ll put them under a sleeping spell for now—I can use the Sleeping Beauty spindle. We’ll keep them here while we figure out what to do. Most of them would be pretty confused to find themselves in twenty-first-century America, even assuming we could disenchant them.”
“Won’t the Kiss of True Love work?”
“In theory, yes. But Gloria Badwin liked antiques. It may be hard to find someone who truly loves a princess who last walked the earth over a hundred years ago. On the other hand, they tell me true love lasts beyond the grave, so perhaps there’s hope.”
I wondered whether a ghost could administer the Kiss of True Love.
“Speaking of love,” Doc continued, “here’s the Golden Key if you want to visit that bird of yours. Bring it back before you leave the library.”
Anjali called me on Thursday to ask if I would take her to the basketball game on Friday. “You could come over here and hang out, maybe get caught up on homework, and have dinner with my family,” she said.
Jaya insisted on coming to the game with us. “If I hadn’t saved you, you would still be a puppet, and Merritt would be three inches tall. He wouldn’t be playing a lot of basketball then, would he? I want to see him play!”
“Oh, let her come,” I said.
Anjali sighed and shrugged yes.
Just before the game started, Aaron showed up. This time he was wearing a purple-and-white scarf, and he cheered whenever Marc scored. The game was satisfying but not that exciting—we were up by six points by the end of the first quarter and never lost the lead after that. When Aaron left to go to the bathroom after the third quarter, Katie from my French class leaned over to me and said, “Is that your boyfriend? Because he’s really cute.”
“Who, Aaron? No, he’s just a friend.”
“He is not! He’s totally your boyfriend,” said Jaya.
“No, he’s not. We work together after school.”
“Don’t listen to her. He likes her. They argue all the time, and he’s always putting flowers behind her ear.”
“Jaya! He does not!”
Katie smiled. “I get it. Cute but taken. Aren’t they always.” Back from the bathroom, Aaron sat down behind me. He put his hand on my shoulder and said in my ear, “You can lean on me; I don’t mind.”
I leaned back, my face aflame. Seemingly absently, he played with my hair. I wished I had a working mermaid’s comb; still, he seemed to like my hair okay as it was. Jaya smirked. I tried to watch the players and ignore her, but it was hard to concentrate.
A roaring all around me made me aware that the game was over and we had won. “You hungry?” said Aaron. “Want to go get something to eat?”
“I think a few of us are going to Jake’s Joint,” I said.
“You can come too,” said Jaya.
“You’re not coming, Jaya,” said Anjali.
“I am so!”
“No, you’re not. It’s late, and you don’t want Mom and Dad to get mad and say you can never come to a basketball game again.”
“Please? Just one soda?”
“I’ll take her home afterward,” I offered.
“Oh, all right, you can come, but only for one drink.”
Aaron walked next to me to the diner. He pulled out a chair for me.
“What a gentleman,” I said. “Is it safe for me to sit down? Or is an invisible elf going to pull my chair away at the last minute?”
“You never know until you try,” he said.
He didn’t pull the chair away, but he did eat my pickle a little later. “Hey!” I objected.
“Sorry—were you planning to eat that? It didn’t look like you were.”
“You could have asked.”
“You could have stopped me.”
“Lovebirds,” said Jaya, slurping the end of her soda.
“Okay, Jaya. That’s your one soda. Time to go,” said Anjali.
“But I’m not done yet!” protested Jaya, making loud bubbles with her straw to show there was still liquid in the glass. “See?”
“Stop making those disgusting noises, or I won’t take you to the game next time.”
“I liked you better as a puppet,” she said, but she got up and put on her coat.
I got up too. “Ready?” I said.
“You sure you want to take her, Elizabeth? I can do it myself,” said Anjali.
“No, that’s fine,” I said. “You stay here with Marc.”
“Come back afterward, then?”
I shook my head. “I have to get home. My stepmother will kill me if I leave the dishes till morning.”
Anjali made a sympathetic face.
“Thanks, Libbet,” said Marc. “See you Monday.”
Much as I usually hate having my name shortened, I didn’t object. If Marc Merritt wanted to give me an affectionate nickname in front of everybody who was anybody at Fisher, that was fine with me. Besides, it reminded me of the adorable Andre. “Give your brother a hug from me,” I said.
Aaron stood up and put on his coat too. “I’ll walk you,” he said.
“Yes, come on, Aaron!” said Jaya, winking at me.
“Thanks—but I can find my way okay now,” I said, dying of embarrassment.
“No, she can’t,” said Jaya. “You have to come with us.”
I didn’t argue, but I showed them both the desire ring once we were outside. Jaya wanted to try it on. “Hey, that’s neat!” she said. “Is Madison Square Garden really that way?”
“The subway is—you would have to take it downtown. Can I have my ring back now?”
We reached the Raos’ building. “Bye, Jaya,” said Aaron.
“Bye, Aaron! Bye, Elizabeth! Have fun!”
Aaron and I walked in silence to the subway. “I’ll see you next week,” I said.
“See you next week.” He looked as if he was going to say something else, but he didn’t.
“Okay, bye, then.”
“Bye.”
I had to concentrate very hard to get the ring to take me to the right train platform. Whenever I let my mind drift, I found it pulling me west—following Aaron as he rode the bus across the park.
The next week it was suddenly spring. The snow, already melting, gave a last sigh and trickled down the drains. Crocuses poked up their purple noses around the sidewalk trees. Teachers started talking about midterms.
On Wednesday, Ms. Callender put me on Stack 7, the art collection, with Josh. It was pretty quiet, which was good—I had a French dialogue to m
emorize. My ring kept wanting me to go upstairs, where Aaron was stationed on Stack 10, Science and Medicine, but when I went to look for him on my break, he wasn’t there. So I walked over to Central Park instead and communed with the snowdrops.
Saturday evening I was doing my math homework when I heard a tapping at my window. It sounded like a branch blowing against the pane. I glanced up and glimpsed a dark shape. A chill ran through me.
Don’t be ridiculous, I told myself—Mr. Stone is stuck in Nowhere and the dark shape that used to hover terrifyingly in windows is a friend now.
The tapping came again. “Polly?” I said, throwing the window open, “is that you?” I wondered how she got out of the Garden of Seasons.
“Hey, Elizabeth.” It was Aaron. He was sitting cross-legged on a flying carpet.
“Aaron! What are you doing there?”
“I just was wondering, what are you up to?”
“I’m doing my math homework, why?”
“Want to come for a ride?”
“You mean now?”
“No, yesterday. Of course I mean now.”
“Um . . . sure.” I put on an extra sweater and hauled the window open wide.
Aaron mushed the carpet up against the side of the building and held out his hand. “Careful,” he said.
His hand was cold but steady. I stepped out and sat down quickly. The carpet wobbled like a water bed.
“Okay?” asked Aaron. “It’s easier to keep your balance if you stay low.” He sent the carpet into an upward glide.
I lay down and looked up at the sky. A fullish moon made the clouds glow. Aaron lay down beside me on his side. I turned over on my side too. He put his arm over me awkwardly, then took it away. After a minute I moved back and leaned against him.
“Are you warm enough? I brought blankets.”
“I’m fine. Where are we going?” I asked.
“Anywhere you like. Green-Wood Cemetery? Battery Park? The Hudson?”
“How about The Cloisters?”
“You got it.”
The wind blew my hair back and ruffled the carpet fringe. I turned over on my stomach and peered over the edge, watching the buildings zip past underneath us. Aaron put his arm over my back again.
“So what did you leave as a deposit? For the carpet, I mean.”
“My sense of humor.”
“Come on. That’s the oldest joke in the repository.”
“Naturally it would be, since I’ve lost my sense of humor. I can’t tell a funny joke now, can I?”
“Your sense of humor doesn’t seem any different to me. What did you leave as a deposit?”
“My powers of persuasion.”
“No, you didn’t. You got me to come with you.”
“That didn’t take much persuasion.”
“Come on. What was it really? Your firstborn again?”
“No way. I’m never leaving my firstborn again as long as I live. That was too horrible.”
“Yeah, I saw,” I said. “It looked so . . . vulnerable.”
Aaron nodded uncomfortably. He moved his arm away. I changed the subject. “What’s that down there? The East River?”
“No, silly, the Hudson. I guess that means you didn’t get your sense of direction back?”
“Doc says they’re working on it. The ring helps, but it’s not the same thing,” I said.
“Too bad.”
“Yeah. It’s okay, though, my sense of direction was never all that hot . . .” We passed over a necklace of lights strung across the river. “What’s that down there?”
“The George Washington Bridge.”
“Oh, of course . . . So if you got your firstborn back, you must have returned the Snow White mirror?”
“Yeah—I couldn’t get that horrible thing out of my bedroom fast enough,” said Aaron. “Here we are. Hang on, I’m taking us down.”
Peeking out again, I saw The Cloisters—the museum of medieval art that sits on a hilltop in Fort Tryon Park, at the northern end of Manhattan. Aaron put his arm around me and held me tight against the carpet as we banked and glided down toward the castle-like cluster of buildings. We landed with a gentle bump in the high garden overlooking the river.
The still air was mild after the wind of our flight. The moon made the bare trees look as if they’d been cast in silver. Shadows played across Aaron’s face, emphasizing his cheekbones. His lips were a beautiful shape.
He brought out a thermos. “Want some cocoa?”
“Sure, thanks.”
I sniffed at my cocoa. There was something in it besides chocolate. Cinnamon? No, vanilla? Not quite . . . “What is this smell?” I asked. “You didn’t enchant the cocoa, did you?”
He gave an evil chuckle. “What, you’re worried it’s my secret aphrodisiac? And now that I’ve got you alone . . .”
My heart pounded. I hit him on the shoulder. “Come on, what is it really?”
“Ginger.”
“Oh.”
We sipped in silence for a while, watching the lights across the river.
“So what did you really leave as a deposit?”
“My ambition.”
“You? Never.”
“My sense of t-t-timing?”
I shook my head. “Uh-uh.”
“My most precious memory—of the moment I met you?”
“Fine, don’t tell me.”
He put down his cocoa mug, took the empty mug out of my hand, and put it down. He leaned forward—much too far forward—and fell, taking me down with him. “My sense of balance,” he whispered into my hair.
I pushed at him. “Ow, get off, you’re on my arm.”
He shifted his weight but didn’t move away. “My inhibitions,” he whispered into the other ear.
Then he kissed me.
He tasted of chocolate and ginger and apples. Spring air, books. New grass. Magic.
“Hey, you’re not bad at that,” I said.
“Neither are you.”
He kissed me again. Then I kissed him.
“You know,” I said, “you almost let a rat eat me.”
“I’m glad it didn’t.”
Shadows went across the moon. I pulled a blanket around me. We kissed again.
The trip home went by like a flash. I lay back in Aaron’s lap looking at the sky while he stroked my hair back from my forehead. His hands were cold, or maybe my face was hot.
“Aaron?”
“Mmm?”
“What was it really? The deposit.”
“My color vision.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I figured I don’t use it much at night anyway.”
“Oh. So why didn’t you just say so?”
“Because you’re so much fun to tease.”
“Oh, I’m fun to tease?”
“Yes, you’re fun to tease.”
“Mmm.” We kissed again, this time upside down.
The carpet slowed down and gave a little bob. Aaron looked up. “Too bad. We’re here already,” he said.
I sat up. There was my room, with my desk lamp still on. I knelt and pulled the window open. “Well, thanks for the ride,” I said. “This was . . . fun.”
“Yeah, it was.” He put out his hand and helped me through the window—which wasn’t strictly necessary, but I didn’t mind.
I put my head back out the window. “Bye, Aaron,” I said.
“Bye, Elizabeth. Maybe we can hang out in the daylight sometime,” said Aaron. “You know, I don’t think I know the color of your eyes.”
“Yours are brown. With gigantic red blood vessels at the corners. And you have cavernous nostrils, they look like a bear’s den, and a monster hangnail on your right index finger. Or is it your left?”
“Shut up,” he said, kissing me one last time.
I leaned out the window and watched him until the carpet vanished over the rooftops.
I would like to say the prince and princess lived happily ever after, along with the swineherd and the scullery
maid. And, in fact, things did get easier for Anjali and Marc—thanks to Jaya, who spilled the beans by answering Anjali’s phone in front of their parents and telling Anjali her “boyfriend” was calling. After some recriminations—Mr. and Mrs. Rao thought Anjali should have mentioned Marc’s existence herself—they invited him over for dinner and pronounced him a “nice young man.”
“They’re just using reverse psychology,” Jaya told me. “They think Anji’s dating Merritt to rebel, so if they tell her they approve, she’ll get bored and break up with him.”
“How do you know they don’t just actually like Marc?” I said. “He’s pretty likable.”
“I know my parents. They’re crazy for reverse psychology. They’re always trying it on me.”
“Maybe that’s because you’re so perverse.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes you are, silly, you just proved it.”
“I think I know my parents better than you do, Elizabeth Rew!”
“Whatever you say,” I told her. I was glad the Raos allowed Anjali to date Marc, no matter why—and even gladder that she still went to the basketball games with me, even though she no longer needed me for cover.
As for the swineherd and the scullery maid, I was so used to the princess being somebody else, I had trouble getting used to being the heroine of my own story. In a few short weeks, I had gone from having nobody to eat lunch with to having a basketball-game buddy and even—wonder of wonders!—a boyfriend. It took me a while for my self-image to catch up with my new status. But “happily ever after” doesn’t begin to describe it. Not a week goes by when Aaron and I don’t have three or four little squabbles and at least one full-out fight.
Still, for a smug, pigheaded ogre, he’s pretty darn cute, and he hasn’t stuffed me in a paper bag and fed me to a rat again—at least, not yet.
And my sense of direction? I’m still waiting.
a cognizant original v5 release october 09 2010
Acknowledgments
If ever a book had a fairy godmother and a Prince Charming, they were Christina Büchmann and Andrew Nahem. I’m deeply indebted as well to the assorted witches, magicians, and librarians without whom my mice and pumpkins would never have had a chance of transporting anyone anywhere: my editor, Nancy Paulsen; my agent, Irene Skolnick; my mother, brother, father, and stepfather, Alix Kates Shulman, Ted Shulman, Martin Shulman, and Scott York; and David Bacon, Yudhijit Battacharjee, Mark Caldwell, Elizabeth Chavalas, Cyril Emery, Vida Engstrand, Rob Frankel, Erin Harris, John Hart, John Keenum, Katherine Keenum, Sara Kreger, Shanti Menon, Christina Milburn, Friedhilde Milburn, Laura Miller, Laurie Muchnick, Alayne Mundt, Lisa Randall, Maggie Robbins, Bruce Schneier, Jesse Sheidlower, Andrew Solomon, Greg Sorkin, Jaime Wolf, and Hannah Wood. Thanks also to my tenth-grade social studies teacher, the late Ira Marienhoff, who stopped me in the hallway one day with the words, “You! Polly! You look like a young lady who needs a job. Call this number.” And to Stanley Kruger at the New York Public Library, who hired me when I did.
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