The Secret of the Key

by Marianne Malone

  “I think there’s an exit on Randolph Street. If we keep going north we should find it.” Jack took his phone from his pocket. He made a few taps, pulling up his compass app. “That way.”

  They passed row after row of cars. Ruthie couldn’t help but think of all the others on the levels above them, and on top of that, the weight of Millennium Park itself, with its gardens and trees, sculptures and band shell. Her chest felt tight and her eyes played tricks on her, as though the space were closing in.

  Ruthie thought she should have been used to this by now; after all, she’d tunneled through the ductwork under and over Gallery 11. But she wasn’t. The exhaust fans, with their constant loud rumble, did nothing to quell the stagnant heat.

  Ruthie felt like a fugitive. But she was determined not to let anyone gain control of the animator. Having it meant freedom for Rivy.

  In another five minutes they spied the sign for the Randolph Street exit. Ruthie felt the space expand around her, but not from magic—from relief!

  They rode the elevator to the sidewalk, where the white vertical lines of the Standard Oil building across Randolph Street pointed upward to the blue sky. There was no man chasing them, the letter opener was safe in her bag, and Ruthie breathed normally for the first time in an hour. They sank down onto a nearby bench in the shade to cool down.

  “Next problem,” Jack said. “How do we get Oliver—and us—to the rooms without the ladder?”

  Ruthie thought for a minute. “I have an idea. Where’s the nearest store with school supplies?” she asked.

  “Monroe and Wabash,” Jack answered. “Why?”

  “Remember when Oliver told us how he and Rivy had climbed?” Ruthie asked, jumping up from the bench. “They used pushpins. We could do that!”

  They had to find a store and get back to meet Oliver at the museum steps at one o’clock. Ruthie led the way as they weaved through the pedestrians crossing Michigan Avenue. Jack was correct: there was a big pharmacy at the corner.

  They charged in and ran down the aisles until they found the right one.

  “Here,” Jack said, finding the pushpins first.

  He grabbed a package and they headed for the checkout. The line wasn’t too long. They paid the bill and were back out on the sidewalk. Jack checked his watch: twelve forty-five. They arrived at the steps of the Art Institute and waited for Oliver by the bronze lion on the north end of the steps.

  There were lots of people walking up and down the steps as well as sitting on them. Ruthie overheard a couple near them speaking in French. A day-camp group of seven-year-olds made their way up the steps.

  “Do you think he’ll be on time?” Ruthie asked.

  “Probably. You saw how neat his desk was. I bet he’s never late.”

  “Uh-oh,” Ruthie gasped. She thought she saw the maintenance man approaching the stairs. They ducked behind the lion, peering between the legs, but it was a false alarm.

  On edge now, they continued to scout the crowd. “Here he comes,” Ruthie said, and stood up. Oliver Brown was in the crosswalk. They ran down and greeted him at the base of the steps.

  Oliver noticed Jack’s black eye. “What happened to you?”

  Jack brushed off the question by saying, “Tripped. No big deal.”

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t be here,” Oliver admitted nervously. “I thought maybe I had imagined our meeting.”

  “It was real,” Jack reassured him.

  Ruthie thought how odd it was to see a grown man biting his lip like a small child. In fact, there was something boyish about him even in the suit and tie.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be. Are you sure this is going to work?”

  “Positive,” Jack said. “Let’s go.”

  THE ART INSTITUTE IS FREE for kids, but Oliver had to buy a ticket. He also had to leave his briefcase in the coat check. After he did, they went directly down to Gallery 11. Ruthie kept a careful eye out for the maintenance man, but for some reason she felt more secure walking with a responsible-looking grown-up.

  Oliver tensed as they approached the entrance; his pace slowed and he stiffened, like his legs were resisting.

  Entering the gallery, he took a deep breath and gazed around. “What do we do now?”

  Jack answered in a low voice. “We stay near that alcove over there, and when the coast is clear, I’ll hand the key to Ruthie. She’ll take your hand. Just hold on and don’t let go.”

  Oliver nodded.

  Finally it happened; Jack slapped the key into Ruthie’s left palm, she clasped Oliver’s hand with her right, and the magic spread like electricity through the three of them. The breeze blew and the space rushed up and away in every direction. Ruthie had never noticed before how the carpet loops seemed to grow like mushrooms in time-lapse photography. When the process stopped, Jack pulled Oliver down and guided him under the door.

  “You okay?” Jack asked on the other side.

  Oliver nodded uncertainly.

  “I’ll have to get big again, to set up the climbing system,” Ruthie explained.

  When she dropped the key and regrew, Oliver lost his balance momentarily as he witnessed Ruthie and the key enlarge on the floor in front of him.

  “The room that’ll take us to your sister is right up there,” Jack said, pointing to the glow coming from E4.

  “I can’t believe it’s going to happen. It’s been forty years. We may not even recognize each other.” Oliver sounded worried.

  Ruthie opened the box of pins and started pushing them into the wall, two staggered rows all the way up to the ledge. She looked at that juncture, wondering how they would manage it: the ledge jutted out from the wall, like the eave of a roof. She stuck a pin on the topside of the ledge and then foraged through her bag for some kind of string. She found a broken hair elastic, which she tied to the top pushpin and the one she stuck into the ledge. Like a climber’s rope, it would guide them up and over the protrusion.

  “I could lift the two of you if you don’t want to climb,” Ruthie offered.

  “No special treatment for me,” Oliver said. “I’ll climb if you climb.”

  “Let’s do this!” Jack said.

  Ruthie picked up the key. Oliver watched again in amazement as both she and the key shrank.

  Jack went first, reaching up to hold on to one of the gigantic pushpins and lifting first one foot and then the other. Each pin was about as big in circumference as a roll of paper towels but not quite as long. They were easy to stand on but somewhat harder to grab hold of. Oliver followed, and Ruthie brought up the rear. They all got the hang of it fast, and Ruthie admired Rivy’s invention.

  “Piece of cake,” Jack said after he climbed up a bit.

  Oliver agreed. “I remember doing this.”

  “This is helpful,” Jack called down to Ruthie as he approached the jog at the ledge and used her giant elastic. They were so small and light, the elastic gave barely at all.

  By the time Ruthie reached the top, Jack was already showing Oliver the wooden framework and pointing out the door that led into E4, the Belton House room.

  “Would you like to put this back?” Ruthie asked, bringing the letter opener from her bag.

  “Look at it!” Oliver said. The sparkles and glints brightened their faces in the shadowy space of the framework.

  “The magic’s warming up,” Jack explained.

  Oliver accepted the letter opener. Ruthie cracked the door and took a look inside. The room appeared dead, as she expected. “Jack’s got the ring in his pocket. As long as we keep it separate from the key, they won’t animate the room. You’ll do it with the opener.”

  Oliver nodded.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  They went in, and a look of recognition spread across Oliver’s face. Ruthie led him across the tapestry rug to the tall secretary. “We don’t have a lot of time. People will be coming by,” she urged.

  Almost like a sleepwalker, he approached.
He laid the letter opener on the writing surface, next to a silver candlestick. As soon as he did, the sound of the magic began, softly at first, then building until it filled the space, before subsiding.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “That was the sound of the room coming alive,” Jack said.

  Sure enough, a cloud passed in front of the sun outside the room, softly dimming the light that filtered through the window and onto the desk. A moment later it brightened as the cloud blew away on a breeze.

  “We need to move on,” Ruthie said, but just as she started toward the door to the patio, she stopped. “Listen.” It was the sound of the grandfather clock that stood in the corner, next to the door. It was ticking.

  “Cool,” Jack said.

  The air out on the patio felt good against her skin after the heavy heat of the city. Every time they’d gone back to the eighteenth century, Ruthie had noticed how fresh it was. After all, they were breathing air that had not yet been filled with fumes from factory smokestacks, car and truck exhaust, or even the black plumes from train engines. She had time to ponder this; Rivy was nowhere to be seen.

  “But she told you she’d come?” Oliver asked for the second time.

  “Yes. Just this morning.”

  “She’ll show up,” Jack added with confidence. “Belton House is right over there.” He pointed it out to Oliver. “Let’s wait in the spot where she sits with the kids.”

  Since none of them had donned eighteenth-century clothes, they didn’t want to wander too far from the portal. Oliver and Ruthie sat on the small bench, and Jack sat on the ground. Birds chirped in the trees. Oliver checked his watch and wiped his brow. His eyes darted from Belton House, up on the rise, back to the portal.

  At last a figure appeared in the distance.

  Ruthie jumped up. “There she is!”

  Oliver stood as well, but slowly, as though a great weight rested on his shoulders.

  “Oliver?” Rivy whispered, her voice tight. She looked almost as nervous as her brother. “Oliver!” Her hand went to her mouth and tears flooded her eyes. She reached out to touch his cheek, but then she took a step forward and threw her arms around him.

  Slowly his arms rose to embrace her, as if the gesture were new to him. Ruthie and Jack eased back. Ruthie blinked away tears herself, and a lump grew in her throat, which she gave up trying to swallow away.

  Rivy and Oliver sat on the bench together. “I wasn’t expecting you to be … so grown-up!” Rivy said.

  Ruthie and Jack leaned against a tree, watching them in silence but far enough away to give them some privacy. Ruthie saw more of a resemblance as they talked.

  After a while Jack nudged Ruthie and said softly, “I wonder if my phone camera will work.” He took his phone from his pocket and walked over to them. “Want a picture?”

  “What is that?” Rivy asked.

  “It’s a phone,” Oliver answered.

  “And a camera,” Jack added.

  Her eyes were wide in disbelief. “The future really did come!”

  Jack snapped a picture and showed it to her.

  “There’s so much you’re going to have to learn about when we get you home,” Oliver said.

  A slight frown formed on Rivy’s face. “But I …,” she began, and turned away. “I don’t know if I can.”

  “Of course you can!” Oliver turned to Ruthie and Jack. “Right? The magic will bring her back home.”

  “Yes. It will,” Ruthie responded. But she understood what Rivy was saying before it dawned on Oliver.

  “No, Oliver. I know the magic will bring me back. But …”

  “But what?”

  “It’s been a long time. I have a life here. As much as I longed to see you and understand what happened all those years ago, I don’t think I can leave the children. Not now, at least. They’ve been my family … this has been my world for almost all of my life!”

  Oliver’s back became rigid once more, his expression dulled. His pain crossed the air right to Ruthie’s heart.

  “When Ruthie and Jack found me several days ago, I thought my wishes had been fulfilled,” Rivy began to explain. “I had dreamed that someday the door would reappear and that my old life would be delivered to me.”

  “It has been!” Oliver contended.

  Rivy gently cupped her hand to his cheek again. “Don’t you see? My old life is just that. The old one. I have a new life here.”

  “I can’t believe this! What about me?” Oliver said, standing up and stomping his foot. “You left me once!” he shouted, and slumped back down on the bench. He remained silent for a moment before speaking again. “I’m sorry. You didn’t leave me. I understand that now.… I left you.”

  “You were only a little boy. I forgive you. But I’m sorry too. I was responsible for you. It was also my fault.”

  “No, it wasn’t!” Ruthie broke in. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault. None of us knows exactly what this magic power can do! It’s dangerous,” she said, hearing herself once again repeating the word that Mrs. Thorne had used.

  “Ruthie’s right,” Jack agreed.

  “Rivy, remember what we told you about animators in the rooms? You should know we put it back,” Ruthie explained.

  “What was it?”

  “A letter opener,” Ruthie answered.

  “I took it when I ran off,” Oliver confessed. “I thought it was a dagger.”

  “So that means the portal will be open for you from now on,” Ruthie reminded her. “You could come back if you change your mind. Whenever you want.”

  A lightness entered Rivy’s eyes and her brow softened. She lifted a linen handkerchief to her eyes, then turned to Ruthie and Jack. “I’m profoundly grateful that you found Oliver and brought him to me.” She hugged Oliver once more and then followed them to the portal.

  “Are you sure?” Oliver asked her.

  “The children are waiting for their afternoon lessons. They would miss me; they wouldn’t know what happened to me. We can’t have that happen—you know what that felt like,” she replied.

  “I understand.” He gave her a long embrace.

  Ruthie and Jack hugged Rivy goodbye, and the three of them walked through the door and into room E4. They crossed the room on their way to the corridor.

  “Hang on,” Jack said, and dashed back to the secretary. Barely lifting the letter opener from the writing surface, he slid it into one of the drawers. “It’s been gone from the room so long,” he explained, “I don’t want anyone to notice it and decide it doesn’t belong. And I really don’t want that maintenance guy to see it. Look,” he said, pointing through the window at Rivy walking back to Belton House. “It’s still alive out there.”

  “Good thinking,” Ruthie said. A subtle quake vibrated across her nerves as she thought of the consequences had Jack not taken this one simple precaution. She couldn’t bear to think of what else she might have overlooked.

  “I have to get my briefcase,” Oliver said in the lobby. Ruthie and Jack waited near the front doors while he stood in line.

  “That was … I don’t know … surprising?” Ruthie said.

  “I know,” Jack agreed. “It’s sort of like your birthday. Like there’s some present that you want really badly. And you get it and you’re happy, but the best part was waiting for it.”

  “I guess. But does that work when the thing you want is a person?”

  Jack considered this. “At least they both know they weren’t deserted by the other one. Neither one has to feel bad about that anymore.”

  “That’s huge,” Ruthie agreed.

  Jack shrugged. “I think they both have to get used to how their lives just changed.”

  Oliver returned from the checkroom. His face looked more relaxed. “I haven’t properly thanked you for what you’ve done.”

  “We were glad to help,” Ruthie said.

  “And I see now that my sister may never be able to come back. I can’t leave my life, so I shouldn’t have ex
pected Becky to be able to leave hers. I suppose I could think of it like she’s living overseas. People have family members all over the world,” he said, mentally putting the pieces in order, just like all the elements on his desk. “But knowing what happened and that we love each other is the most important thing.” Ruthie understood what he meant. She wasn’t sure what to say but was glad that Oliver accepted Rivy’s choice.

  Walking down the steps of the museum, Ruthie stopped. “I almost forgot!” She looked in her bag and found the two rings. “These are yours.”

  Oliver slipped the Brownlow family ring onto his pinkie and looked satisfied. Holding the mood ring in his palm, he chuckled. “Funny—when I was a kid I thought this was the really great one!”

  “Jack! Your eye! What happened?” Mrs. McVittie exclaimed. She listened in silence from her desk chair while Ruthie and Jack explained what happened. “You’re not going to like what I have to say.”

  “Tell us,” Ruthie said.

  “Of course, I’m very proud of you for what you did for Oliver and his sister. But I think it is time to stop.”

  “Stop what?” Jack asked.

  “Exploring the rooms. Going back in time. I’ve been worried about your safety. First, Ruthie nearly being stranded in another century.” She turned to Jack. “And now your eye—you could have been seriously injured. Or worse!”

  “But Mrs. McVittie—” Jack began.

  She shook her head.

  Ruthie didn’t say anything, but she knew Mrs. McVittie had a point. Things had gotten dangerous—she’d thought so herself. Their magical visits to the Thorne Rooms were no longer simply an exciting secret adventure—there were very real and frightening forces at work with the magic. Mrs. Thorne’s letter stated as much.

  The next several days dragged. As they worked, a silent chill floated in the shop air. Mrs. McVittie had put her foot down—they were to promise her they would never use the key again.

  Ruthie felt as though there’d been a cosmic shake-up, bits and pieces falling randomly and nothing landing where she expected. Rivy—who belonged in the twenty-first century—had to stay with the Brownlow children in the eighteenth. Even though Ruthie had felt satisfaction from ensuring that Rivy was no longer a prisoner in the past and made the choice to stay at Belton House of her own free will, that feeling was whisked away when she thought of Mrs. Thorne’s letter. Ruthie couldn’t imagine how they would ever fulfill Mrs. Thorne’s wish of putting the key where it belonged, in its “looking-glass box.” The responsibility weighed on her like the hot and heavy Chicago air.