The Secret of the Key

by Marianne Malone

  “Okay. Let’s do it.”

  Ruthie went back for the key and shrank. Then, tiny, she raced to Jack.

  “Eww,” Jack exclaimed as Ruthie got closer. A centipede had just slithered out from the shadowy corner and was now stuck. Though only five or so of its hundred legs were on the glue, it couldn’t free itself. It wriggled its hideous loose end. Ruthie could barely look.

  “Get me off this thing!” Jack insisted, reaching out for Ruthie.

  She took hold of his hand and tossed the key to the side, and the magic started. With a violent snap, the trap pulled off Jack’s shoes and yanked at the seat of his pants. The tray rose and fell, the centipede flipping and flapping like the tail of a kite in a gust of wind. When they reached full size, the trap was only attached to the edge of Jack’s right shoe. He reached down and, careful not to touch the creepy-crawly that was still frantically fighting the glue, he pulled the trap off. The glue stretched like taffy before it snapped free. When he took a step, the sole of his shoe was still a little sticky, as though it had chewing gum stuck to it, and made a slight noise as he walked.

  “Sorry about that,” he said.

  “At least we got you unstuck. C’mon.”

  Ruthie grabbed Jack’s hand and in no time they were scrambling up the ladder to E4.

  The door was almost directly behind the folding screen, so they scooted in and slipped the period clothes they’d left there over their own. Ruthie peered around the screen to make sure they could walk across the room unseen.

  Ruthie lifted the letter opener from her bag. “Let’s put it on the secretary.”

  They proceeded across the room and set the sterling object on the desk. As soon as they did, it gave a little flash, and the magical bells rang out, the air itself sparkling with sound. The view through the window transformed from the dull flat colors of tempera paint to the rich greens of a living landscape. Fluttering leaves shimmered in the sunlight.

  “Now the room will always be alive—even without the key and ring,” Ruthie said with satisfaction.

  It appeared to be late morning. Jack checked his watch and they exited to the patio. “I hope it doesn’t take us too long to find Rivy.”

  “We should go to the house first and look for her there,” Ruthie suggested.

  “No need,” they heard. It was Rivy, coming around the brick wall. “I’m here.”

  She grinned and gave them both hugs. Then she noticed Jack’s eye.

  Before she could ask what happened, he said, “I tripped and fell on my face. It doesn’t hurt.” He had developed a major shiner.

  “How did you get here so fast?” Ruthie asked.

  “I was around the corner with the children, doing our reading. I’ve come every day since we spoke … hoping that you would return,” Rivy explained, her voice brimming with joy and relief. “I sensed the portal opening just moments ago. It was odd—I felt a slight tingle, a shiver almost. I came around and there it was!”

  “And the Brownlow kids—can they see it?” Ruthie asked.

  “It doesn’t seem so. I have only a few moments, though, before I must get back to them. Did you … find Oliver?”

  “We did!” Ruthie burst out.

  “He wants to see you,” Jack said.

  “We came to tell you we’re going to bring him here in a couple of hours. Can you be here then?” Ruthie asked.

  “Of course!” Rivy clasped her hands together, her eyes beginning to glisten. “Is he … oh, never mind. I have so many questions—but I’ll be able to ask him myself!”

  She hugged them again. “I’d best be getting back now.” Then she disappeared around the corner.

  “That was easy,” Ruthie said. They reentered the room, dropped the period clothes behind the screen, and were about to head for the corridor when Ruthie stopped. “I want to try something.”

  Ruthie still wanted to make sure she understood how the room had become animated without the letter opener when they had first entered several days ago. They experimented with various combinations. When they left the ring on the ledge in the corridor, the room stayed alive. When they left both the letter opener and the ring on the ledge, the room remained dead.

  Jack replaced the ring with the key while Ruthie looked out the window. “Completely dead.”

  “Interesting,” Jack commented. “It’s like the key is some kind of master switch.”

  “It can make certain things animators,” Ruthie said. “But not everything.” She shuddered to think that she had considered leaving the ring with the Brownlow children at Belton House. Partnered with the key, the two objects became a temporary animator. Had they left the ring, separating it from the key, the portal would have closed. They too would have been captured by the past and might have never even understood why. The words from Mrs. Thorne’s letter played once more like a recording in her head: a most serious and dangerous matter.

  “Do you want to check anything else?”

  She was about to say no when she heard two men speaking. She couldn’t make out what they were saying but the voices were coming from the corridor!

  “Quick!” Jack said, and rushed past her, out the door and into the framework.

  Ruthie followed but as soon as her right foot passed from E4 into the framework, she felt a wind gust and her foot felt funny. She was beginning to grow! She instantly pulled back. Jack turned to see her standing in the doorway of the room.

  “I’ll grow—I’m not holding the key!” she whispered. The magic allowed her to be in the rooms or out in the past worlds without having the key. But once she left the room, even amid the wooden slats of the framework, she had to have the key with her or she would regrow. Ruthie could hardly believe her carelessness. She kept the door ajar so she could see Jack, but stood behind the folding screen, safely hidden from the viewing gallery.

  Jack stood on the corridor side of the door. Through the framework they eyed two men wearing maintenance workers’ clothing. They had a flashlight aimed at the floor and they had just turned the corner, walking toward them.

  The men stopped, right at E4.

  “How many did you put out?” one man asked.

  “Five or six,” the other answered. “All empty.”

  One of them leaned against the ledge as he spoke—at the exact spot where Jack had left the key and letter opener.

  “If he sees the letter opener, he’ll see the key,” Ruthie said as softly as she could. “You have to get them. I can’t—I’ll grow as soon as I’m on the ledge.”

  “I have an idea.”

  With the man’s back still toward them and his body blocking the other man’s view, Jack edged his right foot around the slat and out to the ledge. He reached the key and pressed his foot down on it. When he lifted his foot and pulled it back, the key had attached to the sticky spot on the sole of his shoe!

  Ruthie grinned widely as her panic receded. Jack pulled the key from his shoe, then tiptoed over and handed it to her. She plunked it safely in her bag. Now she was able to go out into the framework with him. She pointed to the ledge again. Jack shook his head. The letter opener was too big and heavy for his gummed-up shoe to lift, and it was also farther away. Maybe their luck would hold and the men would leave without noticing it.

  The men’s conversation continued. They were on to the usual debate about the White Sox versus the Cubs. The man closest to the ledge became more animated and gesticulated broadly as he spoke, lifting his elbow off the ledge several times, then returning it to almost the same place. But then he did it again, and his elbow came down on the letter opener.

  “What …?” He turned to find out what had poked his skin. With some difficulty he picked up the shiny miniature with his bulky fingers. “Hmmm. What’s this?” He held it up and shone a flashlight on it. That was a good thing; adding the extra beam of light drowned out the magic glow emanating from the silver. “Looks like this belongs inside one of the rooms—not out here.”

  “Hey—what’s that?” the other
man said. Shining the flashlight on the ledge had also illuminated the ladder, which they hadn’t noticed in the darkened space.

  They inspected the ladder, looking at it and then at each other in disbelief.

  “Maybe we have a prankster in the department,” the first man said.

  “We should see to it that the curator gets these.”

  The first man dropped the letter opener into his breast pocket and then bunched up the ladder, putting it into his pants pocket before going to the door.

  “We have to get the letter opener back!” Ruthie whispered frantically, already whipping off the eighteenth-century clothes. Jack did the same.

  “Don’t worry. We have the ring and the key. Technically that’s all we need.”

  Jack was right—technically. They would be able to reunite Oliver and his sister. But the only way to keep the portal open for Rivy permanently was with the letter opener. The ring only worked in combination with the key, and they couldn’t leave the key in the room without also losing their ability to come and go—and shrink—as they pleased. Without a true animator in the room, Rivy would no longer have a choice about leaving her eighteenth-century life. She would have to come back with them or continue to be imprisoned in the past. Ruthie—or whoever had the key and the ring—would be her jailer, in control of the lock. It was an impossible situation.

  They peeked around the wood slats and saw the door to Gallery 11 close. “Come on!” Jack said. They tossed the key to the floor and leapt into the air. The chase was on.

  RUTHIE AND JACK JUMPED OFF the ledge and grew in midair, but they had to shrink again to exit the corridor. Waiting for a chance to grow, they peered under the door at the alcove. Lots of people had suddenly entered the gallery. They heard the workmen, but the sound of the men’s voices diminished the farther from the alcove they walked.

  “I can’t hear them anymore,” Ruthie whispered. “We’re going to lose them!”

  They didn’t have the luxury of waiting for the perfect chance.

  “Now!” Jack said, and they slid under and out. He grabbed Ruthie’s hand and she dropped the key just as a young child turned around. The boy—about six—stood with his mouth gaping. Jack bent to scoop up the key while Ruthie put her finger to her lips, hoping that would keep him quiet.

  “Sorry,” Jack called as they dashed off.

  Outside Gallery 11, the men were nowhere to be seen. Ruthie and Jack bounded up the stairs, trusting that was the path the men had taken.

  On the main floor of the museum, Ruthie and Jack looked to the right, toward the Michigan Avenue lobby.

  “I don’t see them. We weren’t that far behind them,” Ruthie panted.

  They headed left, going deeper into the museum.

  “There they are,” Jack said, resisting the impulse to point. They sped toward the men and then slowed to tail them at a good distance. They didn’t want to draw their attention.

  “How are we going to get the letter opener?” Jack asked.

  “I’m thinking. All I know is we can’t lose sight of them.”

  They entered a long hall-like gallery. They passed stone Buddhas and statues of other eastern deities, looking serene, perched on their platforms and pedestals.

  The men stopped. Ruthie and Jack stopped as well. One of the men looked at his watch and said something. The two men parted, one continuing on to the eastern end of the museum, the other going toward the large plate glass doors of the new wing.

  “Which guy has the opener?” Jack asked.

  “I think it’s that one.” Ruthie pointed to the man going through the doors. “I bet he’s leaving the building now.”

  “Then what?”

  Ruthie shook her head—she hadn’t the slightest idea.

  They crossed the broad, sunlit lobby of the new wing. Instead of going to the exit, the man took a left at the coat check. Ruthie and Jack did the same.

  The man walked past the coat check counter before disappearing through a door. Authorized Personnel Only, the sign read.

  Jack stepped up to the counter. “What’s through that door?”

  The coat check attendant responded curtly, “It’s off-limits.”

  Jack turned back to Ruthie and nodded toward a nearby bench, where they would be able to see anyone coming in or out of the coat check.

  “What if he leaves the letter opener and the ladder somewhere in that off-limits area?” Ruthie worried.

  “It’s possible,” Jack said.

  “Yeah, but what if? Suppose we follow him out of the building and the opener’s not in his pocket.”

  “Hey,” Jack whispered, and elbowed Ruthie. “There he is!”

  The man had come back out and was exiting the far end of the coat check carrying a lunch box. They jumped up from the bench and followed.

  The man took the stairs up to the third floor, where an outdoor bridge delivered people to Millennium Park. The entrances and exits of the museum marked the limits of the magic’s power to keep things shrunken. They would see the opener grow in his pocket—if he still had it.

  The door closed behind them and the man stopped in his tracks. A small lump formed under the fabric of his shirt.

  “Huh?” he mumbled with a start, and put his hand to his chest, the lump growing. In seconds the top half of the letter opener stuck out from his pocket.

  The man pulled the full-size metal object from his pocket. The hot midday sunlight bounced off the polished blade and he blinked multiple times.

  Without thinking or hesitating, Ruthie exclaimed, “You found it! Oh, thank you, thank you!”

  “What—what’s going on here?” the bewildered man stammered.

  “I lost it in the museum!”

  “It belonged to her grandma,” Jack improvised. “Thanks!”

  “I didn’t … it wasn’t …” was all the response he could muster, standing there scratching his head. “I’ll be darned.”

  Ruthie put her hand out for it.

  With a suspicious glare the man said, “Hold on, not so fast. I don’t like the smell of this.”

  “It’s true! I brought it here with me. It must have fallen out of my bag. Please give it back.”

  “It’s hers!” Jack insisted.

  Fumbling with his lunch box, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the wadded-up climbing ladder. “Is this yours too?”

  “Never seen that before,” Jack jumped in. “What is it?”

  “Please!” Ruthie implored. “I need my letter opener.”

  By now several people had noticed the odd scene. The man gripped it even tighter.

  “Prove it’s yours,” he demanded.

  “The markings. I know the markings!”

  “You do, do you?” the man asked skeptically.

  “There’s a lion, and a lion’s head with a crown, and the number 925 stamped on the back,” Ruthie answered.

  He squinted to read the stamps and then looked at Ruthie. “And you just happened to bump into me?”

  “I know—pretty lucky!” Jack responded.

  “Where’d you lose it?”

  “I’m not exactly sure,” Ruthie sniffled. “The last time I know I had it was near the front staircase.”

  “And what about—you know—the size thing? How’d you do that?” he demanded.

  “What size thing?” Jack asked.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Ruthie echoed, tipping her head to one side.

  The man looked down at Ruthie as she wiped away a tear.

  “No. This is going back to the curator. You can bring it up with her.”

  He started to walk away and Jack made a swipe for the opener, grabbing it before the man knew what happened. He darted off, the downward slope of the bridge giving him plenty of momentum.

  The man glowered at Ruthie and she took off after Jack.

  The man yelled something and started to chase them. Ruthie and Jack made it to the end of the bridge, down the short ramp, and onto a sidewalk. Going to the left would d
irect them to the giant bean sculpture and they might be able to get lost in the crowd. Or they could go straight, into the evergreen-enclosed prairie garden, and find cover in the tall grasses. They hesitated for a split second and then dove for the maze-like garden. They sped along the pathways.

  From somewhere behind them the man yelled, “Where are you?” Ruthie’s heart pounded; this was no game of tag.

  Since they couldn’t see him, they figured he couldn’t see them either. They were right about that until they crossed a small bridge over a man-made creek that split the garden in half. The bridge raised them just enough for him to catch a glimpse of their heads.

  “Aha!” he shouted. He was closer than they had reckoned.

  “Quick!” Jack pivoted to the right. “I know how we can lose him.”

  Several yards ahead were stairs leading out of the park and to Monroe Street. They tore down them, taking multiple steps at a time. Jack darted to the right and Ruthie followed.

  There, not twenty feet away, was an entrance to the underground parking garage with three huge levels of endless parking. They ran into the small lobby, past the pay machines, and down a stairwell to the lowest level, not slowing at all. They dodged down a row of cars and ducked between a parked SUV and the wall. Ruthie thought her lungs would burst. They huddled and tried to quiet their breathing. When he got back his wind, Jack peeked out.

  After a minute or two, the man came out of the stairwell, panting hard. He stood, looking all around. Then he put his hands on his knees, as though he’d finished a marathon, and it appeared he had given up. He turned around and pushed the button for the elevator. He got on and the door closed.

  “I can’t believe we did that,” Ruthie rasped. “Let’s wait for a few minutes.”

  “Okay.” Jack gave her the letter opener and she put it in her bag.

  Ruthie startled at the sound of footsteps. They froze as the echoing clip-clop of shoes on concrete grew louder. But it was only a woman far down the row, walking to her car.

  “Do you know your way around?” Ruthie asked.