Angel of the Battlefield

by Ann Hood

  “We started to fly!” she said, the idea slowly sinking in.

  “Maisie,” Felix said evenly, “that is not a good thing.”

  “You’re right,” Maisie said. “It’s a great thing. An amazing thing.”

  Felix studied the paper he was still holding. “It’s a list of names,” he said.

  “Thousands of them.”

  Maisie peered over his shoulder at the fancy, old-fashioned writing. One brief paragraph at the start and then all of those names. Despite the dimness of the room, Maisie could just make out some of the names: Benjamin Thacher. Henry Morse. James Ellis . . . they seemed to be in categories of some kind.

  “Oh! I get it!” she said. “They’re arranged by states,” Maisie said, pointing. “See?”

  Massachusetts. New York. Connecticut . . . The Mustang’s car door slammed shut, and the sound of their mother’s footsteps on the circular drive echoed in the still night.

  Felix dropped the paper back onto the desk. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  But Maisie picked the scroll up again and started to read the names to herself, her lips moving slightly as she did. John Dunlop . . . Jacob Hart . . . “Put it down!” Felix said. “We have only a few minutes to get into our beds and pretend to be asleep!”

  He was halfway down the stairs before he realized that his sister had not followed him. Felix ran back to find Maisie still standing exactly in the same spot, still reading the list of names.

  “Put it down!” Felix yelled again. “Mom’ll be in the house any second.”

  He could practically hear their mother struggling with the key. Luckily for them, the key was tricky and had to be put in the lock just so, with the door held just right, for it to work. That would slow her down at least.

  “Come on!” he said.

  Carefully, Maisie began to roll the paper and tuck it under her arm.

  “You can’t take it with you,” Felix said.

  “Why not? No one’s going to notice it’s missing.”

  “Look,” he said, starting to panic, “something happened to us just now. Something weird. What if it has to do with that piece of paper? You really want to take it into your room?”

  Maisie hesitated. “I don’t think it’s the paper. I think it’s something in this room. That’s why we’re supposed to stay out.” This was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her, and she just had to figure out what it meant. And how to do it again.

  “But we’re not allowed in lots of rooms,” Felix reminded her, afraid of what she might be thinking.

  “That’s because there’s something disintegrating inside. Like fragile rugs or rickety furniture. Everything in here is pretty solid. Something else makes them keep everyone out.”

  “We can come back tomorrow when Mom goes to work,” Felix said desperately. “But if we get caught in here now, we’ll never get to the bottom of it. They’ll probably padlock everything shut.”

  Maisie sighed. “Fine,” she said. She hated how logical Felix could be. “I just hope Mom doesn’t see us pop out of the dumbwaiter.”

  “There’s no time for that. We have to get over to the servants’ stairs. Fast.”

  Felix ran out, but Maisie stayed put. Something had caught her eye. She took the shard from her pocket and walked over to the Ming vase standing on its pedestal. Carefully, she fit it into the empty place where her shard belonged. But if her piece was back in its proper place, why was there still a hole in the vase, on the opposite side? Maisie put her finger in that hole. Did Felix also have a shard? Or did someone else?

  “Maisie,” Felix hissed from the doorway. “Come on!”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” she said. She popped her piece out and slipped it back into her pocket.

  They ran out of The Treasure Chest and down the stairs, stopping only to pull the wall back into place before racing down the Grand Staircase and past all of the empty rooms with strange shadows falling across their walls. Maisie reached the door—the one in the Dining Room that led to the back stairs. She tugged as hard as she could, but it didn’t budge.

  “Locked!” she called over her shoulder.

  Felix reached the door, panting.

  “We are so dead,” he said.

  He thought back to their tour with the Woman in Pink. She’d used a single key to open the door. He remembered thinking that it was a little strange that the key wasn’t on a ring or something. So where had that key come from?

  “I think the docent keeps the key hidden here,” he said, running his hand along the wall. He needed a light, a key, a miracle.

  “Found it!” Maisie said. “Under the rug, just like on TV.”

  She unlocked the door, careful to put the key back where she’d found it. But when she turned the handle, the door didn’t budge.

  “Push!” Felix said. He placed his own bony shoulder next to his sister’s, and the two of them pushed as hard as they could.

  The door flew open, sending them stumbling onto the staircase landing on the first floor. Just one flight below, they could hear the sound of their mother’s sensible heels moving closer and, clear as anything, they recognized the song she was humming: ABBA’s “Mamma Mia.”

  Maisie and Felix made it into the kitchen seconds before their mother opened the door and walked in.

  “Mamma mia!” she belted, finishing the song with a flourish.

  Then she saw them standing in front of her. They tried to make their breathing sound even and measured. They tried to appear innocent.

  Their mother looked at them, surprised.

  “You two are still awake?” she said.

  “Scary old house, Mom,” Maisie said. “We got frightened.”

  Felix nodded enthusiastically.

  Their mother studied their faces, one at a time, looking from Maisie to Felix and then back again.

  “Of course you did,” she said finally. “What was I thinking going out tonight? This place can seem pretty creepy.”

  She opened her arms and pulled the twins in for a hug. Their mother gave great hugs.

  “Now bed, please,” she said. “It’s late.”

  Felix had to count all the way to forty-nine before his heart finally slowed. But Maisie didn’t even try to calm herself. Tomorrow morning, as soon as their mother left for work, they would go back into The Treasure Chest.

  In the hallway between their rooms, Maisie and Felix paused.

  “I’m never going back in there again,” Felix said. “Ever.”

  Disappointment filled Maisie. “What? Of course you are.” Then she added, “We are.”

  Felix shook his head. “No way. You’ve talked me into crazy things before, but this time I’m not letting you.”

  “We started to fly!” she said as if he’d forgotten.

  “Exactly,” Felix said. With that, he walked into his room and firmly closed the door.

  Maisie leaned into the door and whispered, “Felix.”

  “No,” he said.

  “Just one more time?”

  “No,” he said again.

  She fingered the shard in her pocket. “What if I told you I know something? Something practically magical?”

  “Forget it, Maisie. I know that you don’t know anything magical. I know you’re just trying to get me to open this door and agree to go back into that haunted room.”

  Maisie sighed, good and loud so Felix would definitely hear her. “Fine then,” she said. “I won’t show you what I have in my pocket or tell you how that vase is magical or something.”

  She waited.

  The door opened slowly.

  “What do you have in your pocket?” Felix asked her suspiciously.

  Maisie reached in and took the shard from her pocket. She opened h
er hand and held it up for Felix to see.

  “You took part of that expensive vase?” he asked, his eyes wide. “I can’t believe you.”

  “Remember how the lady said the maintenance people must have swept up all the pieces?”

  Felix nodded.

  “Well, the vase in The Treasure Chest is missing a piece. A piece exactly this size and shape.”

  Felix considered what she said. “You mean they glued the thing back together?”

  “Oh, please,” Maisie said, exasperated. “That fast? No, you dope. The vase put itself back together somehow.”

  “Really?” Felix said. “That’s what you think happened? And you think I’m the dope here?”

  “I’m telling you. Something magical happened. That vase in there is the same one that broke.”

  “Well there’s one more reason I’m staying away from that room. Vases break and get put back together all by themselves. People fly. And who knows what else.” He turned and began to go back into his room.

  “Wait!” Maisie said. “There’s something else.”

  Despite his better judgment, Felix paused.

  “There’s another missing piece in the vase,” Maisie said.

  “I guess the magic didn’t work so great,”

  Felix said.

  “Really? I think someone else has a piece.”

  They stared at each other.

  “One more time,” Felix said, taking a big breath. “We’ll go back tomorrow morning, and that’s it.”

  Maisie smiled. “One more time,” she repeated.

  This time she went into her room and closed the door, leaving Felix standing there wondering who had that other piece and how in the world his sister had talked him into doing the very thing he had promised he would not do.

  Great-Aunt Maisie

  Maisie woke up late the next morning, ready to get Felix and go directly back into the mansion while their mother went off to her first day at work. Instead she found their mother sitting at the kitchen table wearing her ratty, peach, terry-cloth robe and doing the New York Times crossword puzzle.

  “What are you doing home?” Maisie said, surprised.

  “Nice to see you, too,” her mother said. She narrowed her eyes at Maisie. “Are you two up to something?”

  “Yeah. We’re watching Escape from Alcatraz to get some ideas.”

  “Funny, Maisie,” her mother said, sighing. She held up a mixing bowl. “Crepes?” she said.

  “Sure,” Maisie mumbled.

  Her mother went to the stove and began preparing the batter and the pan.

  “So, do you have the whole day off?” Maisie asked.

  “I’ve got to take care of a few things for Great-Aunt Maisie,” she said. “Once I start working, it’s going to be hard to run all of her errands for her. They let me get my office organized yesterday and deal with Great-Aunt Maisie today. That way I can hit the ground running on Wednesday as a lawyer at Fishbaum and Fishbaum! I was hoping to start on Thursday when you two start school, but I didn’t want to push my luck.”

  Maisie sighed. How could she wait twenty-four whole hours to go back in The Treasure Chest? She had hardly slept at all last night, her mind racing with possibilities. Would they actually be able to fly? And if they did, would they be able to fly out of Elm Medona, maybe all the way back to Bethune Street? Thinking about it now made Maisie tingle with anticipation.

  Until her mother said, “I thought we’d go visit Great-Aunt Maisie after breakfast.”

  “Great,” Maisie said flatly.

  “Now, now. Without her, I don’t know what we would have done.”

  “Stayed in New York, maybe? Where we belong?” Maisie said. There was almost nothing worse than visiting Great-Aunt Maisie in the nursing home.

  “Stop dwelling on the past,” her mother said.

  Thankfully, Felix came into the kitchen before their mother started her lecture about how lucky they all were to be there.

  When he saw their mother at the stove mixing batter, Felix felt relieved. He hadn’t slept well last night, worrying over all the terrifying things that might happen when they went back in The Treasure Chest. Hadn’t he smelled gunpowder in there? Hadn’t he heard gunshots? And when he remembered the feeling of his toes scraping the floor, then lifting just enough to have no floor at all beneath him, he shuddered.

  “She’s got the whole day off,” Maisie said to him. “They’re letting her start tomorrow.”

  “Really? That’s great,” Felix said, unable to hide his enthusiasm.

  Their mother kissed him on the top of his head. “I’m glad someone around here thinks so,” she said.

  He dipped a finger in the batter for a taste and managed to get some before she swatted him away.

  “Mmmm,” he said, licking his finger. “Crepes.”

  “Nutella?” their mother asked. “Or lemon?”

  “Nutella,” Maisie said, flopping onto one of the chairs at the table.

  “Lemon,” Felix said, sitting at the other end.

  Their eyes met across the red, enamel tabletop, and he shrugged.

  “Tomorrow’s another day,” he said.

  A few moments later, their mother slid crepes in front of Felix and Maisie.

  Maisie glared at her brother. “Tomorrow it is,” she said.

  The nursing home where Great-Aunt Maisie lived was called Island Retirement Center. It had a view of the bay from the big dining room and the family room, but the bedrooms where the residents spent most of their time were small and square and looked out on the parking lot. Great-Aunt Maisie’s room was painted a cheerful yellow color, and she had a vase full of peonies—her favorite flower—but the room still felt depressing. The smell of cafeteria food and rubbing alcohol lingered everywhere, and the sight of all those old people sitting in wheelchairs made Felix and Maisie sad.

  Today, with the low gray clouds and haze, the place looked even worse. To distract herself from how grim it was in there, Maisie counted how many people passed them using walkers, how many sat in the hall in their wheelchairs, and how many walked by on their own. The wheelchairs won. By a lot.

  In fact, Great-Aunt Maisie was sitting in a wheelchair, dressed in a red Chanel suit with the Chanel Red lipstick she always insisted the nurse put on her. Maisie hated the way the lipstick bled into the lines around her great-aunt’s mouth and that she got all dressed up like that just to sit in her room all day.

  In first grade, they had to make dolls with dried-apple faces. They used yarn for the dolls’ hair and got to fashion clothes for them out of scraps of fabric and ribbon, but those withered apple faces still looked sad no matter how cheerfully they were dressed. Great-Aunt Maisie kind of reminded Maisie of those apple dolls, which made her feel bad for her.

  When she told Felix that, he said she was being mean. “She’s old, and she had a stroke,” Felix said. “She can’t help it.” That was the other thing that made Maisie squirm: Half of Great-Aunt Maisie’s face pulled way to the left from the stroke, and when she tried to talk, it came out all garbled.

  “Be nice,” her mother whispered to Maisie as they walked over to Great-Aunt Maisie’s good side.

  Felix kissed the old woman on her good cheek, but Maisie hung back.

  “How’s the house treating you?” Great-Aunt Maisie asked, except, of course, it didn’t exactly sound like that.

  “The house is fine,” their mother said loudly, enunciating each word.

  Felix started to move away, but Great-Aunt Maisie grabbed his arm.

  “How do you like the house?” she asked him, her blue eyes penetrating his.

  Something about the way she looked at him made Felix think she knew what they had done. He glanced over at Maisie, but she was pretending to look at the orchids so she didn’
t have to look at Great-Aunt Maisie.

  “It’s great,” Felix said.

  “Have you been downstairs?”

  “Downstairs?” he asked. How could she know?

  “They had a lovely tour,” their mother said.

  “Have you been downstairs?” Great-Aunt Maisie asked him again, her eyes never wavering.

  “Uh. Yeah,” Felix said. He wished Maisie would pay attention, help him out here. She was a good liar when she needed to be.

  Great-Aunt Maisie smiled crookedly. “Yes?” she said.

  “They had a very good tour,” their mother said again, louder this time, even though Great-Aunt Maisie wasn’t at all deaf. “Why don’t we go to the dining room and have some lunch?”

  “Good idea,” Maisie said, relieved to get out of the room. She would eat a grilled cheese sandwich and one of those little ice creams that came in a plastic container with its own wooden spoon and be home in no time.

  But Great-Aunt Maisie still held on to Felix’s arm. “Elm Medona,” she said, and it was the clearest thing he’d heard her say since she had the stroke. She nodded at him. “Elm Medona.”

  “I’m afraid poor Great-Aunt Maisie is declining,” their mother said in the car after lunch. “She couldn’t understand anything today.”

  Felix disagreed. He thought she was trying to tell him something. But what? Elm Medona. He wrote it with his finger on the leg of his jeans. Why had she repeated it like that? And how had she figured out that they’d gone into the house on their own? She’d grown up there, so it made sense that she knew about whatever happened in The Treasure Chest.

  “Earth to Felix,” Maisie was saying. “Now Mom wants to take us shopping for school stuff.”

  Felix groaned.

  “Poor Great-Aunt Maisie,” their mother said again, pointing the car toward Warwick and the shopping mall there. “Well, at least she had a very interesting life.”

  Felix caught Maisie’s eye, but she had no idea that Great-Aunt Maisie had been trying to tell him something. Elm Medona, he thought. He’d always assumed it was just a particular type of elm tree.