The Metropolitans

by Carol Goodman

  I will make you powerful, so powerful that you can go back to the Mush Hole and take Jeanette out of that place. Why not? These people are not really your friends. They’re just like the people who put you in the Mush Hole—

  “Shut up,” Joe screamed out loud. There hadn’t been any noise for a few minutes, so he walked softly into the bushes and found Walt squatting on the ground, his arms wrapped around his knees.

  “How ya doin’, sport?” Joe said, sitting down next to him.

  “Okay, I guess . . . I knew things were bad over there. I’ve heard my uncle Sol and his friends whispering, and there were rumors about the camps. But this . . .”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”

  Walt shook his head. “No, I had to know. The world has to know. People just can’t sit by and let this happen. We have to do something.”

  “We are. We’re finding out where they plan to attack New York and stopping them.” Joe put his hand on Walt’s shoulder, and Walt sat up straighter. It’s like it says in the book, Joe thought, we are stronger when we use our powers together, like when we joined hands in the Great Hall. When Kiku had asked them to picture themselves floating, Joe had remembered how he’d felt when he first came to the city and he found out his brother wasn’t at the boardinghouse. Lost. Alone. Cut off from everything and everyone that he knew. He had found the park and hidden in the wooded parts. That first night he had huddled in the cold, so hungry that he felt himself leave his body and float over it. He had looked down at himself and thought he didn’t even recognize this boy anymore.

  Then one of the tramps had given him a half-full can of beans and showed him how to read the signs that other tramps left for each other. The tramps had invented a whole language and a brotherhood—a brotherhood of the lost. He’d thought that might be the closest he ever got to feeling like he belonged anywhere since going to the Mush Hole. But then when he joined hands with Madge and Walt and Kiku in the Great Hall, he’d felt connected to them. How long would that last?

  “You’re right,” Walt said now. “We should get back to the girls and read that next clue. You know Madge, she’ll be chomping at the bit.”

  “Yeah,” Joe said, thinking that he did know Madge even though they’d only met yesterday.

  Walt began to get up, but Joe saw that he was still shaky, so he got up first and held out his hand to Walt. He was afraid Walt wouldn’t take it, that he’d think it meant he was weak, but he did—and Joe felt a bolt of power shoot through his arm. Walt sprang to his feet, bouncing on his toes and squeezing Joe’s hand so tight, Joe thought it would break.

  “Didya feel that?” Walt asked, grinning, but then the smile slipped from his face. He was looking over Joe’s shoulder.

  Joe spun around and saw the silhouette of a man in a trench coat and fedora slipping into the shadows.

  “It’s him,” Walt growled. “That monster!”

  Joe could feel the heat coming off Walt, and when he turned, he barely recognized the mild-mannered boy from Brooklyn. His fists were clenched, biceps bulging, his chest puffed to twice its former size. He was growing before Joe’s eyes, muscles coiling for a spring.

  He was going after Mr. January, and Joe had a feeling that for all Walt’s superhuman strength, he’d still be no match for “that monster.” “Hold off,” Joe said, reaching for Walt’s arm to hold him back. “You can’t take him on yourself.”

  Walt flung up his arm to fend off Joe’s restraining hand—and his clenched fist rammed into Joe’s jaw so hard that Joe heard his teeth click together and he tasted blood. He didn’t mean to do it, was Joe’s last thought as he fell to the ground, and once again he felt himself floating free of his body.

  * * *

  “Do you think it’s true?” Madge asked. “The things Joe said about what’s going on over in Europe?”

  “If Joe said that’s what the words mean, then it must be.”

  “I didn’t mean that Joe would lie about it,” Madge said miserably. “It’s just so . . . unbelievable. That human beings could treat other human beings like that. Imagine knowing that could be happening to your family—”

  “My mother’s in Japan,” Kiku blurted out. “She went to stay with my grandmother because she was sick, and now that we’re at war with Japan, they’ll never let her back in the country. And you heard what they were saying on the street about ‘bombing those yellow devils to hell.’”

  “Oh!” Madge cried. “I didn’t know. I hadn’t thought about it like that. . . . I guess I wasn’t thinking very much at all. When this is all over and we find Dr. Bean and Miss Lake, I bet they’ll know how to help your mother.” She reached over and squeezed Kiku’s hand, and Kiku felt a jolt of electricity pass between them.

  “Then we’d better work on finding the book,” Kiku said, squeezing Madge’s hand back. “Why don’t we read the clue to find the next chapter? Maybe we’ll have it figured out before the boys come back.”

  “Do you think we should? Aren’t we supposed to read them all together?” Madge asked.

  “That’s just the chapters,” Kiku said. “I don’t think it applies to the clues. Here.” She picked up the page and read it aloud.

  These pages lie

  In wood where none may go,

  Beneath the page where heroes die,

  And all you see and know

  May be a lie.

  “Well, that’s a gloomy little ditty,” Madge said, making a face. “Remind me not to ask Sir Peanut Brittle to write my Christmas cards.”

  “It’s certainly puzzling,” Kiku said, wrinkling her brow. “Wood could mean a picture frame or the furniture in Decorative Arts. And there are lots of heroes depicted in paintings, but what does he mean by all you see and know may be a lie?”

  “Beats me,” Madge said. “Hey, maybe Joe could ‘hear’ what Sir Peanut Brittle meant. Come to think of it, maybe Joe can read the rest of the coded message and we won’t even need to find the other chapters. I’m going to go find him. He and Walt have been gone awhile.”

  “Mmmm,” Kiku murmured. She was staring at the pages they had just read through.

  “I’ll bring the boys back,” Madge said. “Maybe you should drink some tea. You look a little . . .” Madge searched for a word that wouldn’t hurt Kiku’s feelings. The truth was Kiku looked the way Madge’s father did after he’d had a couple of drinks down at the tavern. Her eyes were glassy and remote. “. . . peaked,” she said, choosing a word her mother would use when Madge was overtired.

  “Mmmm,” Kiku murmured again. “You do that.”

  Madge rolled her eyes and left Kiku staring at the pages of the old book, which she seemed to find more interesting than Madge. No one wanted her around tonight. She seemed to keep saying the wrong thing. The nuns at school were always telling her, “Think before you speak, Margaret!” but everything she thought leapt straight to her lips. Talking was the way she thought things through.

  “And you’ll figure this thing out,” she said aloud as she walked down the hallway to the exit door. As she opened it she remembered that Joe had the key but she didn’t. If she went out and didn’t find the boys she couldn’t get back in—but that wasn’t going to be a problem. She saw Joe right away. He was lying unconscious on the ground, and Walt was nowhere to be seen.

  17

  TROMPE L’OEIL

  KIKU BARELY NOTICED when Madge left the room; she was too busy staring at the pages of the Kelmsbury. She wasn’t reading it—she knew she wasn’t supposed to do that. She was only looking at the pictures, specifically the ones in the margins where the artist had painted the dense undergrowth and intertwining branches of the Hewan Wood. She noticed sparks of gold paint in among the deep green and leaned closer to make out a figure drawn in delicate gold filigree. And then, as she stared at the figure, it moved.

  The figure was slithering from branch to branch.


  Kiku blinked. It was a trick of the eye, she told herself. A trompe l’oeil. Her father had shown her many examples in the museum.

  She looked closer. The figure was a small person with catlike eyes, pointy ears, and an elfin face. A fairy. As she stared at it, the fairy blinked its eyes and slipped over the edge of the page and onto the next.

  Kiku stood up quickly, upsetting the chair she’d been sitting on. It clattered to the floor so loudly she was afraid the guards would hear it and come. She waited for a moment, breath held. She was seeing things. She should go find the others. Where were they? Why had they left her here all by herself? Hadn’t Dr. Bean said it was dangerous to read the Kelmsbury alone?

  But this was rereading. They’d already read this chapter together. And that gold fairy was perhaps an important clue that only she was supposed to see. Maybe this was part of her power. Not just to vanish—but to vanish into a painting where she could see things that the others couldn’t.

  She sat back down at the table and turned the page. The next page showed Guinevere chasing the dove and Arthur chasing her, and the one after that showed them arriving at the castle. But what had happened to Morgaine and Lancelot in the woods? Why hadn’t the writer shown that part of the story? Was it because they weren’t as important?

  Kiku turned back to the page where they had split ways. The picture on the center of the page followed Arthur and Guinevere, but the margins were full of drawings, too, and those, she saw now, followed Morgaine through the woods, where she met the gold fairy who gave her something—something too small to see.

  What could it be? And why didn’t the book tell this story? Why was Morgaine’s story in the margins, when, quite frankly, it looked more interesting? Or maybe Morgaine’s story was in the next chapter.

  She turned to the last page where Sir Bricklebank had penciled in the next clue and read it again.

  These pages lie

  In wood where none may go,

  Beneath the page where heroes die,

  And all you see and know

  May be a lie.

  It wasn’t even a good rhyme. The first and last lines ended with the same word—although, Kiku realized now, the word didn’t mean the same thing in both lines. One meant to lie down, and the other meant to tell an untruth. And what kind of painting told an untruth but a trompe l’oeil? There were quite a few trompe l’oeil paintings in the museum and many painted on wood—but only one that she knew of that was made entirely of wood.

  That must be where the chapter was. She could tell the others when they came back.

  Or she could go get it now herself. She could turn herself invisible and go find it. She’d have it here waiting when the others finally decided to come back.

  She gathered up the pages and weighed them down with the dagger and, for good measure, a heavy brass globe. As she placed it on top of the last page, she thought she saw the gold fairy wink at her—but that could’ve just been another trick of the eye.

  The most famous example of trompe l’oeil in the museum was the studiolo of Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, brought from Gubbio, Italy, two years ago and installed in the Italian Renaissance gallery. It was one of Kiku’s favorite places in the museum, a tiny room lined in wood panels designed to look like the cabinets and bookcases of a Renaissance study. But what was so special was that the cabinets were made to look like they were open so you could see what lay inside them.

  Only it was a trick. The books and lutes and other objects were all illusions fashioned out of strips of wood—intarsia, it was called. It was done so cunningly that it seemed as if you could reach out a hand and pluck one of the books from a shelf. Kiku had stared at them for hours trying to understand how the craftsmen had created the illusion. She remembered now that when the studiolo was being installed she would often find Sir Bricklebank there as well. He had told her he thought there might be hidden compartments in the panels. He could easily have placed a chapter in one of those.

  She passed Mr. Carson napping on a sarcophagus in the Egyptian galleries, and Jenkins sitting on a bench in the Great Hall, but neither of them saw her, even though Jenkins looked right at her. She padded softly into the Medieval galleries and stopped in front of one of her favorite tapestries. It was called Hawking Party and showed a man and lady seated on the same horse and another lady seated on her own horse with a hawk perched on her hand. A man in a flowing orange shirt and brown leggings stood before her, holding out his hand. What Kiku loved most about the tapestry was the millions of flowers and plants stitched all over the dark green wool so that the figures seemed to be floating in a sea of woodland flowers. If she squinted her eyes, she could imagine herself surrounded by that magical forest. She could almost smell the ferns and trees—

  Kiku turned away from the tapestry and found herself on a forest path. She was inside the tapestry. Standing in front of her was a small person, a few inches shorter than herself, dressed in a tattered gray-green tunic that looked like it had been stitched from leaves and was the same color as the person’s skin. She couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl. It smiled and revealed a mouth full of sharp, pointy teeth. Then it turned and skipped down the path, disappearing around a bend.

  She should go back. If she followed the path back the way she’d come, she would come back to the museum—wouldn’t she?—but if she went on, she might never find her way back. It had been a mistake to come looking for the Kelmsbury alone. As punishment she might be lost in this twilight land forever.

  Or perhaps this is the only path to find the chapter and you are the only one who could find it.

  The voice had a point. She remembered once coming upon Sir Bricklebank standing in front of a painting of a woodland scene. When she had asked him what he was looking for, he’d said, “The way back in.”

  So perhaps Sir Bricklebank had been in these woods before and perhaps he’d hidden the third chapter here.

  Taking a deep breath to calm the beating of her heart, she walked forward and rounded the bend. The little green person was just disappearing around the next bend. Kiku walked faster to catch up, afraid of being lost in these woods. There was no way of telling direction; the light filtering through the leaves was even all over, as if it didn’t come from the sun, and the trees all looked alike. And somehow she had gotten off the path. She was crossing a field of bluebells. In the center of the field was a tiny stone cottage. The green person was sitting on the front step, chewing on a stalk of grass. It laughed at Kiku when she arrived, panting for breath, and cocked its thumb over its shoulder. “Go on,” it said in a surprisingly husky voice. “He’s waiting for you.”

  Kiku stepped inside the one-room cottage. She had thought she was beyond surprise, but she was amazed to find herself in a beautiful room paneled in fine wood, fitted with cabinets holding rare musical instruments, books, globes, and even a parrot in a cage. All of which she’d seen before. She was inside the studiolo, only what were tricks of the eye in the museum version were real here—as real as the old man in tweed who sat on a bench, paging through a book.

  “Sir Bricklebank?” she asked.

  The old man looked up from his book and smiled. “Ah, you’re Mr. Akiyama’s daughter, aren’t you? Only you’ve grown since I saw you last.”

  “You’ve been missing for two years,” Kiku said.

  “Two years?” He pulled a pocket watch from his vest pocket and frowned. “But I’ve only been here an hour. . . . Never mind. I knew the risks when I came. Oh dear, you haven’t had anything to eat, have you?”

  “No!” Kiku shook her head.

  “Then you should be fine.” He gestured to a cup of tea and a plate of cookie crumbs. “My host offered me refreshments when I came, and I’d forgotten the rules, but no matter. I am content to remain here. There’s an excellent selection of books in the Duke’s collection.”

  “So this is the studiolo from the mus
eum?”

  “In a manner of speaking. It was crafted by a magician in the Duke of Montefeltro’s employ to coexist in our world—or perhaps I should say your world—and another world, a world some would call Faerie.”

  A snorting noise from below caused Sir Bricklebank to pause. He looked down at the green person, who was squatting on a footstool, thumbing through a copy of Virgil’s Aeneid. “Oh, excuse me; my friend Moth objects to the use of the term Faerie as too whimsical. Moth prefers Avalon, although frankly I don’t see how that’s much better. At any rate, we could talk all day, which would be several years in your world, about the physics of alternate universes and be none the wiser. Tell me what is happening in your world that has brought you here.”

  Kiku, unsure of where to begin, decided to start with the attack on Pearl Harbor, then went on to tell Sir Bricklebank about her meeting Madge, Joe, and Walt, what Dr. Bean had told them about the Kelmsbury, the dead spy, her father’s abduction, the attack on New York, and how they had found the first two chapters.

  “Ah, so my clues worked! I designed them, you see, so only the four true knights could follow them.” He chuckled. “I’ll bet Dash and Vivian were peeved they couldn’t find the chapters.”

  “I think they were a bit . . . concerned,” Kiku said cautiously. “Why didn’t you want them to find the Kelmsbury? I mean, we’re all on the same side, right?”

  “Oh, yes, of course!” Sir Bricklebank exclaimed. “But Dash can be a bit of a know-it-all. If it had been up to him, he wouldn’t have given you the chapters. So I had to hide them in a way that only the true knights would be able to find them. And here you are!”

  “But have I ruined it all by coming here alone?”

  “Not at all. You were meant to come by yourself, just as Morgaine . . . oh, but you haven’t read the third chapter yet. You’ll see. Even the closest of friends aren’t meant to do everything together, and the best friendships are those that allow us to grow as individuals. But then you’re used to being on your own, aren’t you?”