The Extraordinary Book of Doors

by Nydam, Anne

  The museum guard’s face cleared and she said, “Oh, that’s what that was. She went past the elevator. But you know you really can’t leave young children unattended.”

  “I know, Maria. We’re catching her.”

  “I’ll help,” said the guard, starting after the cat.

  “No! I mean, we’re fine, thanks. We’ve got her.”

  “Well, if you’re sure. But no wild stuff, all right, Chen?”

  “Of course. I mean, of course not. Thanks, Maria. Sorry.”

  They walked as quickly as they dared around the corner and into the medieval gallery, glimmering with golden treasures against dark walls.

  “My baby sister?” Polly whispered disapprovingly.

  “Well at least I thought of something,” Chen retorted.

  “Yeah. Something that was a lie. You’re going to get us in trouble.”

  “I’m going to get us in trouble?” Chen sputtered, “I’m going to get us in trouble? It’s your cat! You’re the one who brought your cat into an art museum, which, by the way, you still haven’t explained!”

  Polly just gave Chen a disappointed look and whispered loudly, “Uber! Here, Uber!”

  “Mommy,” came a piercing voice from beyond the next archway, “Mommy, look at the pretty kitty!”

  Polly strode to the side of the wide opening into the next room, flattened herself against the wall, and peeked cautiously around the left edge. Following her lead, Chen leapt to the right side and peered around, too. The gallery was full of Gothic sculptures: madonnas on pedestals, two large stone griffins on either side of an archway, and, beyond the archway, sitting primly on the platform in front of a carved marble panel, a calico cat. Coming toward them was a small boy staring back over his shoulder at Uber. His mother, pulling him by the hand, was looking at a text on her cell phone.

  “Inside voice, Mikey,” said the mother automatically, “Come on, sweetie, we have to get going.”

  “But I wanna pet the kitty!”

  “Mikey, you can’t pet the sculptures! Remember, we have to look with our eyes not our

  hands, right, sweetie?”

  Chen, staring horrified at Uber sitting in plain sight, murmured urgently, “Don’t look back, lady. Don’t look back…”

  “But Mommy, it’s a real kitty! I can pet a real kitty,” insisted young Mikey, still staring at Uber. Uber gazed back at him steadily, and flicked the black tip of her tail. “See, Mommy, it moved!”

  “Don’t look back,” muttered Chen, “Please, please, please don’t look back!”

  The mother, just about to pull her son through the doorway, finally turned and looked back at the boy. He pointed triumphantly at Uber.

  Chen held his breath. He heard Polly breathe, “Uh oh…”

  Uber remained motionless. Not even a whisker twitched.

  “That is a pretty sculpture, sweetie, but we’ll have to come back and look at it another time.” And they were through the doorway, and the woman nearly jumped as she saw Polly and Chen lurking on either side. She glared at them disapprovingly, dragged Mikey firmly past them, and headed out. Mikey’s whining voice trailed behind them, still insisting that he wanted to pet the kitty.

  “Whew,” Polly whispered. “That woman’s almost as oblivious as my mom. Not that my mom would ever make a mistake like that about art. Now let’s get Uber before we have any more close calls.”

  They turned back to the carved stone… but the platform in front of it was bare. In the silence they heard the faint tip-tapping of claws on the hardwood floor somewhere beyond the next room division.

  Chen groaned. “She’s heading right back around to where we came in. She’ll go straight past Josef again at this rate.”

  Polly didn’t reply but jogged into the next gallery. Chen, following, heard her croon, “Uber! Come here, you horrible beast. Come here, Uber!” Uber was poised beside a pedestal with a glass case on top. Polly was creeping softly up to her, holding out her fingertips. She had almost reached the cat when the first security guard stepped into the doorway to their left.

  Chen squeaked, “Hi, Josef!” Polly straightened up and whirled around, and Uber leapt lightly behind a large mosaic plaque standing next to the pedestal.

  “I like these ivory boxes, don’t you Chen?” Polly said innocently as Josef nodded at the two of them.

  “Now who’s lying,” whispered Chen, watching the guard wander back out through the door.

  Polly crouched down and looked around the base of the case again. “I’m not lying; I do like them. They’re round because they’re made from sections of elephant tusk, did you see? I think that’s cool. And I never lie.”

  “Never?” Chen said skeptically as he leaned over to look under the bench behind the mosaic.

  “It’s too much work,” Polly replied matter-of-factly. She snapped upright, clasped her hands neatly in front of her chest, and recited in a sing-song voice, “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” Then, just as abruptly, she stooped again and hissed to the cat, “Come on, Uber. Be a good girl now, and I’ll give you a treat. Come on…”

  Uber crouched warily under the bench as Polly and Chen reached toward her. Her tri-colored face made her look like a jester, Chen thought. Certainly she seemed ready for mischief. He could see her muscles tense, and then, just as Polly lunged at her, Uber leapt nimbly between the back of the bench and the pedestal base. She dodged between the two children and whisked behind the next pedestal with a loud and insolent meow.

  Josef, standing just beyond the doorway, turned to stare at them.

  “Meow!” said Polly, making Chen feel like a complete idiot just to be standing beside her. At this rate all the museum guards would think he was a loser, just when he was getting to know them – just when he was beginning to feel like maybe he belonged here.

  Josef grinned. “I guess you really are into cats, eh?”

  “Oh, I love cats,” Polly replied, smiling cheerfully back at the guard.

  Abruptly, she jumped toward the door and began shuffling slowly toward the last pedestal, on which was mounted a silver cross. For a moment Chen wondered whether she had suddenly decided she liked silver crosses as much as ivory boxes. Then he realized that there was method in her madness: Uber was sauntering across the floor and Polly was trying to walk so as to keep herself positioned between the cat and the guard in the next room. But as soon as the cat was behind the third pedestal, Polly went after her again.

  With another scrabble of claws on polished wood, Uber darted around to the far side. As Polly came after her, the cat circled, keeping the pedestal between herself and Polly. “You wretched little monster,” Polly muttered, “Come on!”

  Uber only mewed softly in reply and continued to circle.

  Chen looked to the left at Josef through the doorway, and then back over his shoulder at the Medieval gallery they had come through. An elderly couple strolled around a small tapestry and into view, walking slowly and reading all the labels. They nodded and smiled at the works of art as if greeting old friends.

  “This is it, Polly,” he whispered, “We’re surrounded.”

  She nodded, still circling the silver cross as the cat kept always to the opposite side. “This is it, Uber. No more playing around.”

  Uber’s white nose poked back around the edge of the pedestal. She fixed Polly with gleaming green eyes and finally stood still. Polly lunged, seized the cat, and scooped her up just as the elderly couple entered the room. Polly and the man and woman stood staring at each other, the couple hand in hand and Polly with a calico cat in her arms.

  After an instant Polly smiled cautiously and said, “Beautiful ivory carvings, aren’t they?”

  The man beamed back at her, and the woman said, “How lovely to see you young folks here enjoying the artwork!” Then they both turned to the thirteenth-century triptych beside the doorway and continued their stroll.

  “Your sweatshirt,” Polly hissed.

  “What?”


  “Give me your sweatshirt!”

  “Oh. Right.” Chen unzipped his red sweatshirt and draped it over the cat in Polly’s arms. Uber shrugged her head out from under and purred.

  “Shut up and get back under,” Chen told her, tucking the sweatshirt in around Polly’s arms. Uber squirmed and Polly shifted her grip.

  “We’d better hurry. I won’t be able to hold her like this forever.”

  They walked briskly into the room where Josef stood guard.

  “Seen all the cats you wanted to?” he asked.

  “Yes,” answered Chen, a little too fervently.

  Uber gave a muffled mew and the museum guard gave Polly an odd look. She was standing slightly hunched with her arms clutched to her stomach around Chen’s sweatshirt. She smiled weakly.

  “Polly’s not feeling great,” Chen said quickly, “We’re going to get going.” He pushed her out the door back into the corridor.

  A couple of the older teenagers were now standing beside the drinking fountain, and they began to laugh when they saw Polly walk by. Uber’s tail was poking out under Polly’s elbow, waving gently behind her as if Polly were the one with the calico tail. Chen tried to push it up out of view, but the tail just swept back out, tip twitching ostentatiously. He shoved it under the sweatshirt again, and again Uber flicked it back out behind Polly. The teenagers watched Chen and Polly hurry down the hall, Chen and the tail struggling the whole way, until they passed the escalators and the atrium and reached the Department of Prints and Rare Books. Chen unlocked the door and pushed Polly in before him.

  He looked at the clock. It was 2:55.

  “My parents will be back soon, but before you go, I want to see this magic Book you mentioned.”

  Polly nodded and picked up a leather-bound volume lying in the middle of the floor. It looked very much like The Extraordinary Book of Doors that Chen had found under the bench, except that when Chen took it from Polly he noticed that the embossed pattern on the cover was different. He flipped through a few pages and looked up at Polly.

  “When you open the pages with the key, they turn into real doors?”

  Polly nodded again, unwrapping Uber from Chen’s sweatshirt.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “From the estate of Ambrose P. Hinkelman III, whose great-grandfather collected Benjamin Franklin stuff. This was Benjamin Franklin’s Book.”

  “Really?”

  “His name’s inside the cover.”

  Chen opened to the inside cover and read Benjamin Franklin’s signature. After a moment he said thoughtfully, “It was already really old when Benjamin Franklin got it, though. It was printed in 1549, I think. At least that’s when mine was printed.” He crossed to the counter against the wall and picked up the Book he had found.

  Polly came to his side, Uber now slung over her shoulder, licking her paw after a kitty treat, and purring smugly. Polly said, “The door on your cover looks like the door that brought me here.” She opened the Franklin volume and turned pages until she came to the one she wanted. “Look.”

  The picture, labeled “Plate XXXII,” was an ordinary old-fashioned paneled door, much like the bedroom doors in Chen’s new house, except that the top panel was decorated with a serpentine dragon.

  “I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully, “That’s not a very distinctive door, is it. It could just be coincidence.”

  “I don’t think so,” Polly replied, “There aren’t any doors in this office that look like that, are there? And that dragon’s pretty unusual. No, I don’t think it’s coincidence. I think this door in my Book brought me to the door on the cover of your Book. That’s why I ended up in this office. The Books are linked.”

  Chen and Polly stared at one another. Chen thought, “I’m standing here with the weirdest girl I’ve ever met, and we’re talking calmly about magical Books. Which is clearly impossible.”

  Polly said, “I wonder if your Book has a door that links to mine?”

  Uber exclaimed, “Mrowr” and, taking them both by surprise, leapt off Polly’s shoulder and ran to the office door.

  “Uber!” Polly scolded, running after the cat and snatching her back up. She told Chen, “She must have heard something. She wouldn’t go stand there by the door if she didn’t think she was about to have an opportunity to escape.”

  “My parents must be coming!” Chen gulped, “You’ve got to get out of here!”

  “Hold Uber,” Polly ordered, and thrust the wriggling cat into Chen’s arms. As he struggled to keep his hold on Uber, Polly unzipped her hip pouch and dug around until she found the dull gold key that looked as old-fashioned and intricate as the one that had been printed on the spine of Chen’s Book and now lay on the counter beside it. Opening her Book once again to Plate XXXII, Polly stuck the key in the hole and turned.

  With a sort of flicker of light, Chen saw a full-sized paneled door superimpose itself over the wall of the Department of Prints and Rare Books. Then Polly opened the door, and Uber writhed free from Chen’s grip and bounded through the widening opening.

  “Uh, bye,” Chen said, rubbing the scratch Uber had left on his forearm.

  Polly grinned at him over her shoulder. “See you soon,” she said. Then she stepped through and closed the door behind her.

  “I hope not,” Chen thought, grimacing.

  He was still staring in amazement at the total absence of any sign of magical doorways when he heard the click of another lock behind him, and his parents entered their office.

  “Hello, Chen,” Dr Burr greeted him cheerfully, “Find anything interesting to do while we were gone?”

  He turned around, still feeling slightly dazed. “Yeah,” he answered emphatically, “There was a lot more to do than I expected.”

  “Good. Now, how about a snack?”

  V A Table of Contents

  Chen’s parents didn’t have much opportunity to examine The Extraordinary Book of Doors in the first weeks after Chen found it. Paul Connelly had checked the major databases of stolen art and seen no report that such a book was missing, and Robin Burr had taken another look at the woodcut illustrations, shaking her head in puzzlement at the different styles of the doors. But it was Chen who was making a more thorough study of the Book. He wasn’t allowed to take it out of the Department of Prints and Rare Books, but until school started at the end of August, Chen was stuck here all the time anyway. He decided to catalogue all the doors in the Book.

  Working at one of the computers in his parents’ office, Chen typed up a list of Roman numerals I through XLVII to correspond with the Plate numbers labeling each illustrated door. Then he started flipping through the pages until he found the picture he recognized: Plate XIX was the first door he had gone through. He typed

  XIX – stone room in garden

  After examining the nearby pages carefully he added

  XIII – fancy parlor in France

  XVII – alley in Italy

  Then he remembered that Polly had said plate thirty-two was the page that had brought her to the location of his Book. He flipped to XXXII and paused, frowning. This wasn’t the same image Polly had shown him. This door was statelier, with an elaborate wreath design carved in the center. It didn’t look like the cover of Chen’s Book… but it did look like the cover of Polly’s Book. He leaned back toward the computer and typed

  XXXII – Polly’s Book???

  “So now I’ve identified four doors out of forty-seven,” he thought. “It looks like I’ve got some exploring to do!”

  But he didn’t move.

  He wanted to be the sort of person who would stride boldly through these magical doors into the unknown, but was he really? His glimpses through the doors had left him more flustered than he’d like to admit, but he couldn’t hide the truth from himself. The idea of stepping out of his own world into the unknown was, quite simply, terrifying.

  It was true that nothing really dangerous had happened, but Chen’s imagination was all too skilled at coming
up with dangerous things that could happen. What if he got lost wandering from one doorway through another and another until there was no way back to Cleveland? What if someone stole his Book, or he lost it while he was in some far-off place where he didn’t even speak the language? What if he stepped out of a page right into the crossfire of a gunfight in the wild west, or a back-room assassination of crime-lords in Russia? Or what if he stumbled through a doorway that once led to the top floor of a seven story tower that was now long since fallen down. Would he step out into thin air and plummet to his death? And on top of everything else, this was all clearly impossible!

  But then Chen thought about Polly, who’d implied that she’d been through lots of magic doorways from her own copy of the Book. She seemed to take everything in stride… in stride wearing ridiculous polka-dot sneakers and mismatched socks, true, but in stride nonetheless. And surely if a weirdo like Polly could make her way through all those magical doors, Chen could handle it, too?

  “Maybe I’ll just peek through a few more pages next time Mom and Dad have a meeting,” Chen thought, “After all, if anything looks dangerous I don’t have to go all the way through.” He leaned back in his chair and turned the Book back to the first page to look at all the doors one more time. This time he was deciding where he’d like to go.

  By the next morning Chen had a list of the five doors he thought he might most like to try, but he still had not yet pulled the key from the spine again to make the keyholes appear. He told himself that he was waiting for a good opportunity, but the truth is that no opportunity would be good enough until he’d worked up a little more nerve. But this morning his parents were out, and he sat in their office holding The Extraordinary Book of Doors on his lap and knowing with a deep inner certainty that if he didn’t try out the magic now then he really wasn’t the kind of adventurer he wanted to believe he was.

  He tipped up the spine of the book and watched the glint of the overhead lights reflecting on the gilt key, half hoping that this time it wouldn’t become real. But for all his nervousness, he felt, too, the excitement rising in him. After all, this was magic! He had the opportunity to see things he’d never imagined before. Anything was possible! Beginning to smile, he ran his thumb over the stamped key, feeling for the raised edge. In a moment the key was in his hand, solid and heavy.