The Accidental Keyhand Read online

  The buildings they sheltered connected to one another in a vast jigsaw puzzle that included open fields, pebbled courtyards, and gardens with tinkling fountains. A stone tower seamlessly gave way to a wooden farmhouse, which farther on became a timber and stucco hall, which fit snugly against an immense sort of palace heavy with stone carvings and glistening windows. Stone gave way to bamboo. Stucco gave way to mud bricks. At a great distance, beyond a band of gnarled trees and rough rock outcrops, Dorrie saw what looked like a sun-scaled sea.

  Voices in the hallway made her ragged breath catch, and she and Marcus turned frightened eyes on each other. The voices came closer; the knob on the door they’d used began to turn. In a blur, Marcus shoved the roll of paper he held down a thin brass tube with a flared opening that rose out of the floor nearby.

  “Can’t have a mission meeting without proper nourishment,” said a big-boned man with an extra wobbling chin as he came through the door carrying a laden tray. Curly puffs of reddish hair grew with a great amount of spirit from either side of his head, as if trying to make up for the fact that not a hair grew from the top. Two girls about Dorrie’s age trailed him, each holding their own trays.

  Seeing Dorrie and Marcus, they both stopped dead. The first girl wore an expression of great wonder and a yellow hair band that held back an abundance of dreds. The second stared at them with narrowed, suspicious eyes from beneath dark bangs, the rest of her hair having been cropped at the ears. Having lifted a sardine from one of the plates he carried, the man was in the process of dropping it in his mouth with great relish when the first girl nudged him.

  Catching sight of Dorrie and Marcus, he lowered the sardine. “Well, who in the name of Seshat are you?”

  His words rattled and buzzed in Dorrie’s ears.

  “Han…” slurred Marcus.

  Dorrie, who felt as though her brain had begun to spin inside her skull like a globe, gave Marcus points for quick thinking.

  “Solo,” added Marcus. He pointed at Dorrie. “Chewbacca.”

  Dorrie took some of the points she’d awarded Marcus back. Then, though she had never before fainted, Dorrie had a strong feeling, as her knees turned jellyish, that she was about to do just that.

  The man dropped the tray on the table with a crash and hurried forward, catching Dorrie just before she slumped to the ground. As he carried her to a couch, a young woman with the longest hair Dorrie had ever seen appeared in the doorway, a bouquet of flowers in her hand.

  “These zinnias will cheer up—” Catching sight of Marcus slipping to the floor, his eyes closed, she abandoned her thought and, tossing the flowers aside, hurried toward him, though not in time to keep him from landing with a heavy thud.

  “Slip shock, Egeria, I think,” said the man as the woman stooped over Marcus, feeling his hands.

  “Slip shock?” exclaimed the short-haired girl. “But there are not supposed to be any new archways opening for years and years.”

  “They’re soaking wet,” the man said as he gently laid Dorrie down. “They need warmth and cloversweet.”

  The short-haired girl spoke again. “But they might be enemies! Maybe even Foundation.”

  Dorrie’s heart began to thump wildly. She felt as though her blood was turning to ice water.

  “Manners, Millie,” said the man. “They could also be friends.” He held out his hand to Dorrie. “Phillippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim.”

  With great effort, Dorrie managed to get her hand into his.

  “I get called Paracelsus sometimes too, but Phillip does for most people.”

  “I’ll go get Mr. Gormly!” said Millie sprinting for the door.

  “Never mind Mr. Gormly,” said Phillip, sounding irritated. “Go get some dry clothes from the circulation desk, and Ebba, you’d better fetch Ursula. Tell her, ‘Slip shock.’” Both girls vanished through the door.

  “Slip shock has a way of sneaking up on a person after a trip in,” said Phillip, his thick eyebrows waggling. They sat over a pair of kindly eyes. “You’ll be right as rain soon enough. In the meantime, you may feel confused, deathly tired, and as though your arms and legs had been run over by mill wheels.”

  Dorrie thought he sounded quite cheerful about the whole situation.

  Together, Phillip and Egeria half walked, half carried Marcus toward another couch. As disoriented as she was, Dorrie couldn’t help noticing that Marcus was making their job a lot harder than it had to be by giggling, trying to stroke Egeria’s hair as if she were a cat, and gazing into her face as though he’d lost something in it.

  “Also, your brain may feel a bit overworked,” said Phillip, his voice still buoyant. “As if you’re listening to a foreign language and instantly translating it into your own. Which, of course, you are. Assuming your mother tongue isn’t Latin.” He looked at Dorrie thoughtfully as he helped lower Marcus onto the other couch. “You do bear a vague resemblance to a milkmaid I met in Umbria once.”

  Curling up in a ball on the couch, Marcus closed his eyes, sighing and mumbling. Dorrie didn’t know what to make of Phillip’s words, but it had occurred to her that the shapes his mouth made as he spoke didn’t match up with the words she was hearing.

  “I’ll go tell Mistress Wu what’s happened,” said Egeria, striding out of the room. She almost collided with a stout woman with black corkscrew curls who was carrying a basket in each hand, Ebba trailing after her. The woman set down the baskets. Giving Dorrie an efficient smile, she pulled a blanket out of one of the baskets and laid it on top of her.

  With quick movements, she dug in the second basket until she’d unearthed a lidded jar and a goblet. She poured out an amber liquid. “I’m Ursula,” she said, handing Dorrie the full goblet. “Drink this. It’ll help you recover.”

  Dorrie touched the rim of the goblet to her parched lips tentatively. If Passaic could disappear, what would happen to her if she took a sip? Would she turn into a toad or vanish in a puff of lavender smoke? Would she be Ursula’s prisoner for life? She hesitated and then, desperately thirsty, she drank, half waiting for webbing to grow between her toes. The cool liquid tasted of summer grass and the sweetness of flowers.

  Marcus stirred. Phillip hurried over to him with another blanket, while Ebba, looking shyly at Dorrie, began to tug on one of Dorrie’s wet boots.

  As Phillip spread the blanket over Marcus, a grin that Dorrie thought looked appallingly idiotic spread slowly over her brother’s face. He reached out his arms toward Phillip, his lips rummaging around in a kissy sort of way. Opening his eyes, he froze for a moment and then snatched back his arms, closing his mouth with a snap. “Dude, you are not the person I was dreaming about.”

  “My apologies,” said Phillip.

  “She was about seven feet tall,” Marcus said with soggy admiration. “With chocolate cherry, mermaid-forever hair and purple eyes.”

  “That would be our Egeria, though I’d have to say her eyes are more of a blue.” Phillip wiggled his bushy eyebrows at Ursula. “Might want to pour him a double dose.”

  As Dorrie sipped from the goblet, she saw for the first time that Ursula’s left eye nested in a birthmark that flowed like a spill of red wine across her eyelid and temple to disappear into her hairline. Dorrie automatically looked away.

  “It’s a birthmark,” Ursula said matter-of-factly, clock-spring curls bouncing around her pale face. “You can look if you’d like. Some people have noted it bears a startling resemblance to a sleeping cat.”

  Phillip snorted. “Yes, right before those charming commentators tried to set you on fire.”

  “Set you on fire!” repeated Dorrie, shocked.

  Phillip peered over Ursula’s shoulder at Dorrie. “Curiosity almost killed our lovely Ursula cat.”

  “More like a lack of curiosity,” sniffed Ursula.

  Dorrie decided they must be sharing a private joke.
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  Marcus worked himself more deeply into the cushions. “Maybe her eyes were more of a violet than a purple.”

  “There’s a hole in the ceiling over the baths!” announced Millie, tearing back into the room, her eyes ablaze. “There’s a room on the other side but it doesn’t look like a proper archway at all!”

  Phillip and Ursula stared at each other for a long moment, and Ebba’s eyes grew round.

  Millie tossed the clothing she held on a chair. “Oh, and there’s some weasel thing in the water swimming round in circles!”

  “Really?” said Ebba, letting go of Dorrie’s boot and clapping her hands together, her face bright. “A weasel? Are you sure?”

  “I don’t know,” said Millie, supremely indifferent. “It’s long and wet, and it’s showing its teeth a lot.”

  “It could also be a stoat or a marten,” said Ebba. “Did its tail have a black tip? A stoat almost always has one, and a weasel hardly—”

  “It’s a mongoose,” interrupted Dorrie, feeling more clearheaded.

  Everyone but Marcus stared at her for a moment.

  “Right,” said Phillip finally, turning to Ebba and Millie. “Well, go fish it out!”

  Ebba and Millie dashed away again. A hope crept through Dorrie. If the hole was still there, then no matter what she had seen through the window, perhaps Passaic was still on the other side of it. Poor, horrible Moe. She’d forgotten all about him.

  “Where are we exactly?” Dorrie forced herself to ask.

  Ursula gave Dorrie a keen, penetrating look as she poured a second goblet-full of liquid from the jar. “You don’t know?”

  Dorrie shook her head.

  Ursula looked intently at her a moment longer, then at Phillip, who nodded slightly as she handed him the goblet. “You are in Petrarch’s Library. I’m Ursula, director of the repair and preservation department here.”

  “The one for humans,” said Phillip, winking at Dorrie as he carried the goblet over to Marcus. “You wouldn’t want Master Al-Rahmi mucking about in your health with his whiffy glues and inks.”

  “Who’s Master Al-Rahmi?” asked Dorrie, feeling that she was navigating a maze.

  Ursula screwed the lid back on the jar. “Director of Petrarch’s Library’s other repair and preservation department. The one for books and scrolls and tablets, that sort of thing.”

  Dorrie set her goblet down. “But what is Petrarch’s Library?”

  Before Ursula could answer, Marcus sat bolt upright as though he’d just that moment solved the mystery of the universe’s existence. “Maybe she just smelled like purple.”

  Dorrie rounded on him. “That’s all you’re wondering about?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “What? No, you idiot!” She seemed to finally have his attention. “We fell through a floor into a swimming pool, and if you didn’t notice, that’s not Passaic outside that window!”

  He blinked at her. “Why can’t our library have a pool?” He sank back into the cushions. “And a girl with mermaid-forever hair.”

  “The Romans, bless them,” said Phillip. “Sheer genius mixing libraries and swimming pools.”

  “The Romans?” said Dorrie, feeling utterly frustrated. “What do the Romans have to do with anything? I just want to know where we are and—”

  “Oh my,” said a voice from the doorway.

  Dorrie turned to see a solid, broad-shouldered woman in a long, red silk tunic leaning on the doorframe and breathing like a spent racehorse, an enormous pillow of black hair atop her head.

  “Unexpected guests, I think, Mistress Wu,” said Phillip pleasantly.

  “Oh dear,” said Mistress Wu, mopping at her face with a handkerchief. “I came as soon as I could. Egeria’s moved the mission meeting into the Serapeum, so we shouldn’t be bothered here. What a simply terrible fall it must have been for them. Are they quite all ri—” She stopped mopping and talking, a look of pure horror on her face. “Oh, how awful of me,” she said, looking first at Marcus and then Dorrie. “How terrible to be spoken of as though one isn’t in the room. Do forgive me!”

  “I’m sure they’re over it already,” said Phillip. He turned to Dorrie, his eyebrows dancing. “Mistress Wu is the assistant to Hypatia, our director of administration, who is away in…on a trip at the moment.”

  A crooked cushion on a chair seemed to seize Mistress Wu’s full attention. Her hands had reached out to straighten it when Phillip cleared his throat. “They’re just wondering where they are at the moment.”

  Mistress Wu pulled her hands back, looking instantly devastated again. “Oh! Oh, of course you would!” She laid her hand on her heart. “Why, you must be almost mad with anxiety at this turn of events.”

  At Mistress Wu’s words, Dorrie, who had not in fact been feeling mad with anxiety, now felt its little flames set fire to the bottom of her stomach.

  “That is…unless you’re…um…well….no…no…you couldn’t…” The words she’d uttered seem to induce excruciating embarrassment in Mistress Wu. Rather than finish the thought, she pounced on the crooked cushion and straightened it with a kind of profound relief.

  Phillip took a seat and leaned toward Dorrie and Marcus. “Before we tell you about Petrarch’s Library, would you mind first telling us how you came to be swimming in our Roman bath?”

  Warily, Dorrie began. “We were chasing Moe—that’s the mongoose—through the Passaic Public Library.”

  “Naturally,” said Phillip, his eyebrows working up and down.

  “He got loose at the Pen and Sword Festival,” added Dorrie for clarification, so Phillip wouldn’t think they were nuts.

  “The what?” asked Mistress Wu.

  “The Pen and Sword Festival,” repeated Marcus, doing his part.

  The adults still looked confused.

  “It’s like a Renaissance fair,” offered Dorrie.

  “Like a market fair, you mean?” asked Ursula.

  “Well, you can buy pretend swords and pretend corsets and mead and stuff,” said Dorrie. “But mostly it’s for dressing up and pretending to be, you know, back in the Renaissance.”

  “Extraordinary,” said Phillip. “Go on.”

  Dorrie remembered the mop closet. “We chased Moe into this weird room in the back of a closet, and…the floor in the room just sort of exploded.”

  Marcus sat bolt upright again. “Then there was this beautiful girl!”

  “Yes,” said Phillip. “I think we’ve covered that part of the story.”

  “And we found ourselves here,” said Dorrie, feeling it was just as well that Marcus had skipped past their wanderings and the little matter of the page torn out of the book. “So what’s Petrarch’s Library?”

  Ursula began to repack her basket with brisk little movements. “Petrarch’s Library is the headquarters of a secret society.”

  “A secret society?” repeated Dorrie.

  Mistress Wu looked thoroughly unnerved and began to mop at her face madly again. “Ursula dear, I’m not sure Francesco would like us just blurting that out.”

  Ursula stopped rearranging the basket. “I don’t see how we can keep it from them, given the circumstances, do you?”

  Mistress Wu nervously twisted her handkerchief into the thinnest of sodden snakes. “I suppose we don’t have a choice, do we?”

  “A secret society of what?” said Marcus, who finally seemed to have recovered some of his senses.

  Ursula, firmly screwed the lid back on the jar of cloversweet. “Lybrarians.”

  CHAPTER 6

  THE LYBRARIAD

  Marcus snorted. “Librarians?”

  “The Lybrariad, by name,” said Mistress Wu, moving one of the busts on the mantel an inch to the left and then two inches to the right.

  “Why would a bunch of librarians need a secret society?” said Marcu
s, apparently feeling the full fog-clearing effect of the cloversweet. “Plotting revenge on people who don’t return books on time?”

  Mistress Wu paused in her bust shifting. “Oh dear, I suppose we really should do more in that area.”

  “But we have other much more important goals,” said Phillip.

  Dorrie looked from Phillip to Ursula. “Like what?”

  “Turning well-trained lybrarians out into the world, for one,” said Ursula.

  “You train librarians?” said Marcus, as though such a pursuit was a complete waste of a secret society.

  “That’s part of our work,” said Ursula, picking up the clothes that Millie had thrown on the chair. They turned out to be bathrobes. The first, a very large one made of red plaid flannel, she handed to Marcus. The second, a long one made out of a soft, light-blue nubby material with brown fur on the cuffs and collar, she handed to Dorrie.

  Dorrie thought of Amanda checking out books, and Mr. Kornberger helping her find things on the shelves, and Mr. Scuggans terrorizing patrons with his overdue notices. “But why would you need to train librarians secretly?”

  Phillip tore two hunks of bread off a loaf on the table and laid them on small plates. “Because lybrarians, at least the ones we train, are doing more than it looks like they’re doing.”

  “It looks like they’re doing the shushing thing,” said Marcus.

  “And with great panache, no doubt,” said Phillip, buttering the hunk of bread generously. “But in addition to trying to make the world a quieter place for those trying to read and think, our lybrarians are also trying to keep people from having their tongues cut out or being thrown into jail or set on fire for scribbling the wrong thing on a piece of parchment. Not to mention keeping their writings from being destroyed or locked away.”

  Dorrie stared at Phillip in disbelief, trying to imagine Mr. Scuggans putting down his fine announcement bullhorn long enough to even help someone eat a pie.

  “Where?” said Marcus. “I mean, where are people still getting their tongues cut out for saying stuff, and who’s still scribbling anything on parchment?”