Everything had gotten so complicated. Having the key now felt like a burden to Ruthie. What should they do with this piece of magic? To whom should they return it? It was such an old mystery, and most of the people involved were long gone. If only she had been able to meet Mrs. Thorne, to ask her what to do. She wished she could go back in time and talk to …
“Jack!”
Dear Mrs. McVittie,
We hope you won’t be too angry with us. You are right, the magic is dangerous, and we know that now. But we have to figure out what to do with the key. So we are going back to the rooms one more time for answers. We are going to look for Mrs. Thorne. We promise to be careful and hope you understand.
Love,
Ruthie and Jack
Ruthie and Jack slipped the letter under the door of Mrs. McVittie’s shop early Thursday morning.
The night before, they had finally put the pieces together. They could not be certain they had it right; it was like doing a jigsaw puzzle without having a picture of the final product. But the letter and address—Montjoie, Santa Barbara, California—reminded Ruthie of something she’d read in the catalogue. The entry for room A35 (a California room from 1935–40) noted that Mrs. Thorne knew about Santa Barbara because many of her friends spent the winter there, away from the harsh cold of Chicago.
Ruthie reminded Jack about what had happened on Monday in front of room A35: the key had flashed when they’d stood near that room. She did an Internet search and discovered that Mrs. Thorne in fact had a winter house in Santa Barbara, designed by the same architect who had helped her plan many of the miniature rooms. The house even had a name, Montjoie. She printed the address and a map.
Ruthie had a hunch that A35 would lead them to Mrs. Thorne.
They made their way into the corridor and up to the room, then peeked inside through a door painted in soft green with shimmering gold. It was a living room with a high, beamed ceiling, stucco walls, and dark wood furniture. Another door opened into a back room, and one more led to a stairway going up. The warm glow of the California sun shone through a glass patio door, bouncing off the glazed tile floor. The room was alive!
Hoping to determine what animated the room—and looking for clues that would lead them to Mrs. Thorne—they picked up any item that looked truly old. Finally, on a table near the patio door, Jack found it: a small wood figurine of an Indian goddess in a flowing gown, standing on a lotus petal. He picked it up, and as soon as he did, they heard the faraway bells—like the sound was playing backward. The light in the room became almost imperceptibly bluer, colder. Ruthie hadn’t exactly noticed the slight scent of honeysuckle until it evaporated and the air in the room went stale.
Jack set the small statue down, and the room came back to life.
Ruthie opened the patio door and took a few steps out into the sunshine, but Jack had his eye on a fat gold-embossed book. He picked it up and flipped it open to the middle. It turned out to be an old naturalist’s book, filled with illustrations of plants and animals, describing their habitats and behaviors. Some of the creatures were fanciful and odd. The tome was just the kind of thing Jack could have spent hours looking over. But he had to stop and put it down because he heard voices nearby in the gallery.
Backing up a few steps and pivoting at the same time, Jack was moving too quickly and tripped over his own feet. To save himself from falling he grabbed one of the yellow curtain panels hanging on either side of the door. But the curtain came down, rod and all! The entire treatment landed in a heap.
There was no way to fix it quickly and the voices were getting closer. The only option was to drag the entire pile, curtains and rod, to the patio.
“What happened?” Ruthie asked when she saw Jack hauling the felled curtain.
“I tripped but I got out just in time,” he answered. “I can’t believe I broke part of a Thorne Room.”
“It’ll be okay,” she said, feigning calm, though this rattled her even more. She helped him shove everything out of sight behind some plantings.
A low stucco wall enclosed the patio. Not too far off they saw the town of Santa Barbara and the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean beyond. In the other direction rose the mountains, dotted with houses. One of them, Ruthie hoped, was Mrs. Thorne’s.
They took a good look at the map before they left the patio, then found a couple of street signs to locate their position. They estimated that they were a little over one very winding mile from Montjoie. They left the invisibility of the patio and walked briskly uphill.
The air was warm but not hot and the sweet smell of honeysuckle was more intense outside. Ruthie saw why: lush vines of it climbed and hung over fences in most yards. A few old-fashioned cars were parked here and there and palm trees swayed overhead.
The gravel road twisted and turned back on itself, like a mountain path. After about forty minutes a vehicle passed by them—a pickup truck with big, bulky fenders. The silver chrome of the bumpers and front grill sparkled in the sunlight, and the spare tire was plunked right on the side. The back contained gardening tools and a dog. The pooch gave them a friendly yip and the driver slowed and smiled at them.
“Need a lift?”
Ruthie and Jack thought of their promise to Mrs. McVittie to be extra careful. Ruthie answered, “No, thanks. But do you know how far the Thorne house is?”
“You’re almost there—top of the rise, just follow me. I’m on my way to work.”
“I can’t believe it! We’re actually going to meet her!” Ruthie said to Jack as the truck pulled ahead of them.
“We don’t know for sure that she’s there,” Jack reminded Ruthie. Because of the California climate, they didn’t know what time of year they’d entered. Maybe Mrs. Thorne was back in Chicago.
They arrived at the top of the hill. Two white pillars supported a wrought-iron gate with a big M in the middle. The gardener waited for them by the gate. “Are you here to see Mrs. Thorne’s granddaughter?”
Ruthie answered truthfully, “No, we’re here to talk to Mrs. Thorne about her miniature rooms in Chicago.”
“Come with me and I’ll ask if she’s available.”
“He’s so nice,” Ruthie whispered to Jack, feeling more hopeful with every step.
The driveway turned and in front of them they saw the house. It was tall and stately, painted cheery yellow and trimmed in white. The gardener brought them to the front door.
“Wait here,” he said, pointing at his dirty work boots. “I’ll go round back.”
Ruthie’s heart thumped in her throat. “I’m nervous.”
“Me too,” Jack admitted.
The door opened. They had seen a few pictures of Mrs. Thorne: the oil painting of her as a young woman hanging in Gallery 11, and a black and white one in the catalogue when she was nearly eighty years old. The woman who opened the door was neither young nor old. She wore a belted dress of pale blue with a white collar. Her hair was short and softly curled.
The woman smiled politely and said, “Yes?”
“I’m Ruthie Stewart and this is Jack Tucker, and we’ve come from Chicago—”
“A really long trip,” Jack interjected.
“Yes, an extremely long trip, to talk to Mrs. Thorne about her miniature rooms.”
The smile vanished and the woman peered into their faces intently. She took in their clothes, their shoes, Ruthie’s messenger bag.
“I am Narcissa Thorne.” Her voice cracked almost imperceptibly. “Come in, please.”
She turned and they followed her inside into a living room with huge windows looking out to the ocean.
“Please have a seat.” Mrs. Thorne motioned to a sofa while she sat in a chair next to it. “I believe that you have indeed come an extremely long way to find me,” she said, making a point of repeating Ruthie’s word. “Do you know what year it is?”
“Nineteen thirty-nine?” Jack responded.
She took a deep breath and shook her head. “Nineteen forty-one. I was so hoping someone w
ould come—sooner. But now the worst has happened: two children have found me.”
Ruthie looked at Jack, and he looked back at her. In 1941 the rooms had been finished only the year before, and they were touring the country. Mrs. Thorne had written the letter just two years earlier. But they had not stumbled upon the letter for nearly three-quarters of a century!
“So … you were expecting someone? Who?” Jack asked.
“I don’t know precisely. I hoped it would be someone I know. Anyone from my studio who had access to the key.”
Ruthie chose her words carefully. “Do you know why we’re here?”
“You have the key,” she answered. “And what year did you come from?”
Jack answered, and added, “Late June.”
“Oh, dear! It’s worse than I could have imagined. All those years!” She had been sitting up straight, with the same perfect posture she had in the oil painting, but with this news she fell back in the chair, her hands raised to her temples.
“Yes,” Ruthie began, “we found it last February—”
“Please, stop. We have to be very, very careful.”
“Why?” Ruthie asked.
“Since you have the key and you are here in front of me, it means you understand about the time travel. Did you come through room A35?”
“Yes,” Ruthie answered.
“And this is not your first time travel?”
“That’s right.”
“And you must have found my letter?”
“Yes,” Ruthie said. “Hidden in a vase in one of the European rooms.”
“In miniature?” she asked, astounded.
“Yes.”
Mrs. Thorne shook her head. “I left it in the studio.”
“We don’t know who took—or stole—the key in the first place,” Ruthie said.
“Yeah, I just found it on the ground in the corridor a few months ago,” Jack added.
“But …,” Ruthie began, but then stopped, having remembered that the rooms hadn’t even been installed in the Art Institute yet. “You can’t possibly even know about the corridor.”
“That’s correct. And even if you knew who took the key from my studio, I would not want you to tell me. We can’t do anything that will change the course of the rooms’ history—for your sake.” She looked at them, her mouth tight. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“We do,” Ruthie nodded. They had altered the course of history once before, writing Jack out of existence, and Ruthie had desperately raced against time to correct their blunder and bring him back. Some small misstep now could have similar terrifying consequences!
“I didn’t know—until now—if whoever took the key knew of its magic. I was deliberately vague about that in my letter, hoping someone just took it as a piece of jewelry.” She paused and shook her head. “Too much time has passed since the key left my possession. Many lives could be impacted by what we do today—including yours! You mustn’t tell me anything today that will change my behavior in the future. Even if you think it might help someone.”
There was a deep silence in the room except for the far-off sound of the ocean breaking on the beach.
“In your letter, you said you had a vault. Could we put the key there?” Ruthie asked.
“No. I thought I could—if someone returned it right away. But now … you must take it with you, don’t you see?”
And then it sank in. They couldn’t leave it here. If they did, it would change what had already happened. Mrs. Thorne would have the key from 1941 onward, causing a chain reaction of events. Jack would never have found the key, they would not have helped Sophie or Louisa, Kendra’s family history would be completely different, Dora might still be stealing from the rooms, and the little boy at the fair would have been killed by the tram. Ruthie didn’t want to undo all the good they had done! Her brain felt like it was being turned inside out as she tried to solve this puzzle.
“I understand your dilemma. I wrote the letter hoping that whoever had taken the key would return it immediately, before so much … so much history had occurred,” Mrs. Thorne said gently. “I’ve thought long and hard about it. Let me tell you what I know about the key.”
The archives had it partially correct. Ruthie and Jack had read that one of Mrs. Thorne’s craftsmen, A. W. Pederson, had found the key in an old dollhouse from Denmark. What they didn’t know—and what Mrs. Thorne proceeded to tell them—was that she had been searching for the key for years. She had learned of its existence from other collectors in her travels around the world. She was determined to find it, to know if the legend about its magical powers was true. It became her obsession and fueled her passion for miniatures.
Ruthie and Jack sat rapt. Narcissa Thorne was able to tell them many things that had happened up until 1939. She felt it unsafe to mention anything past that date, when she had lost possession of the key. It took a lot of concentration for Ruthie and Jack to speak as carefully. Once Ruthie even put her hand over Jack’s mouth to stop him.
“But I learned quickly that the power was dangerous and had to be used rarely, if at all. I hope you two have learned the same lesson.”
“We’ve been really lucky,” Jack said.
“I have a question,” Ruthie began, the puzzle still missing some pieces. “We found some other objects—a metal slave tag, a ring, and a coin—that were also magic. Do you know anything about them?”
“There is an old man in a shop in Paris—I will not tell you his name—who has kept track of as many of these objects as possible. He calls them talismans, and they facilitate time travel in various ways. The key works in my miniatures and can sometimes activate other antique objects. There are other portals, but he would never tell me where they are.”
Ruthie wanted to speak up and mention the animators, but she remained silent.
“It has been his life’s work,” Mrs. Thorne continued, “to keep a list and to collect them if he can. I don’t know about the tag and the coin. But I believe you. No one knows how many objects have been imbued with the power. Some—like the key—seem to be more powerful than others. Those of us who have hunted down these talismans have learned the magic is ancient. It comes from the special metal alloy. The key becomes magic when mixed with one other element.”
She stopped.
“What?” Jack was not going to let her leave it at that. “What other element?”
“A spell,” Narcissa Thorne answered.
“A SPELL?” RUTHIE AND JACK asked simultaneously.
“We heard Duchess Christina mention a spell,” Jack blurted out.
Mrs. Thorne rose from her chair. “Come. Let me show you something important.”
They followed her out of the room and into a paneled library. She walked to a set of bookcases and put her hand on a brass handle that appeared to be on a drawer between two shelves. She pulled hard, and instead of a drawer opening, the entire section of bookcase moved, revealing a hidden vault behind it.
“Awesome!” Jack exclaimed.
Set in the wall was the circular dial of a walk-in safe made of a steely-colored metal. Mrs. Thorne dialed the combination and opened the substantial door. She lifted a single item from the top of a file cabinet.
“The key belongs in this.”
It was a box, about four inches square and covered in mirrored glass. Old glass, to be sure, the kind that has gray streaks breaking through the bottom layer and clouding the mirror. Mrs. Thorne opened it and they saw the interior was also mirrored. A crimson pillow lay inside.
Ruthie felt heat from her messenger bag. She opened it and the key flashed.
“This is called a looking-glass box. Somehow—who knows how or in what century—the key was separated from the box. It was my goal to reunite them. And I did, until the key went missing from my studio.”
“Why did you want to reunite them?” Jack asked.
“To stop the magic,” she said. “When I first heard of this legendary key, I thought time travel would be an ext
raordinary adventure. I know better now. Time travel is too dangerous, and the key can so easily fall into the wrong hands. That it disappeared on my watch has weighed heavily on me.”
She lifted the pillow to show them that words had been etched into the old glass underneath. It was quite difficult to read.
“That is the spell.”
“What’s the spell supposed to do?” Jack asked.
“When the key is in the box and the spell is spoken, it should both turn on and turn off the magic.”
“Do you know if it works?” Ruthie asked.
“My friend in Paris insisted that it would. But I wasn’t able to make it work when I had them together in my studio. Perhaps the conditions weren’t right. Or perhaps the key and the box have been separated too long. And because I didn’t know if the person who took the key was aware of its powers, I thought it best to bring the box here.”
Taking a long look, they were able to make out the words and read the spell.
TALL WILL BE SMALL
AND
BREAK
THE TIES OF TIME
UNTIL
WHAT WASN’T
IS
WHAT ISN’T
AND
THEN IS NOW
NOW IS THEN
AND
SMALL WILL BE TALL
“It’s like a really confusing poem,” Ruthie said. “Or a riddle.”
“Should we try it now?” Jack asked.
“No!” Ruthie exclaimed.
“Ruthie is right; it’s too risky. Since I wasn’t able to make it work in my studio, I think there may be something I don’t understand about it. If someone from my studio had come—and sooner—I might have taken the chance. But I won’t with you. Suppose we were unable to rekindle the magic? I could not live with myself knowing that I had trapped you in 1941.”
The Secret of the Key Page 14