The Accidental Keyhand Page 9

  Francesco marched heavily back to his desk. “That would be a wonderfully simple solution.”

  The man in the doorway raised an eyebrow at Dorrie. “If you’re going to start a sword fight, best not to do it with a blunt-tipped practice foil.” He gestured quickly for her to lower her sword. Hastily, not knowing why she trusted him, Dorrie brought the tip of her blade down.

  The newcomer’s eyes fell on Mr. Gormly. “Ah, Mr. Gormly, I see you’ve agreed to serve in the new position of official Peeping Tom.”

  Though Mr. Gormly simply examined his fingernails, Francesco’s eyes flashed. “Security guard in the service of the Lybrariad, if you please, Savi.”

  “A travesty,” said Savi.

  “A necessity in these days,” growled Francesco.

  “I came to talk to you about Kash.”

  “I’m busy at the moment.”

  “Perhaps you’ve noticed that he has not yet returned from his mission.”

  “And perhaps you’ve noticed that there’s a gaping hole over the baths that looks nothing like an archway. In fact it looks like someone or something blew it into existence with a barrel of cosmic gunpowder.”

  “Hence the interrogation.”

  “Call it what you will. We have to consider the possibility that someone or some organization, possibly even a reborn Foundation, has succeeded in forcing a way into Petrarch’s Library. Kash’s intelligence warned us of just that possibility.”

  Savi looked Marcus and Dorrie over. “Funny, I would have expected the sword of a Foundation operative to be a touch sharper.”

  Francesco glared at Savi. “Spoken like a true cavalier.” He gripped the pommel of his sword. “Make light of the danger if you must, but the security of the Lybrariad and its mission rests on my shoulders.”

  “But we’re not a danger!” burst out Dorrie.

  “So you say,” replied Francesco grimly. “And yet, your little knitting needle there was found in the Reference Room.” His eyes found Dorrie’s again, pinning her with their intensity. “What did you want there?”

  “We were just looking for a way out!” cried Marcus.

  “I’m not sure I can afford to believe that.”

  Savi gave a hard little laugh. “Beware that in trying to oppose the Foundation, you don’t join its ranks yourself, Francesco D’Avila.”

  Francesco’s face drained of all color. He blew a hard breath through his nose. “Tread carefully around my honor, or you’ll lose yours altogether.”

  A dangerous light seemed to flicker in Savi’s eyes. “If my honor and I must ever part, and I don’t intend that they shall, you will not be a factor.”

  “If you’re quite through,” said Francesco, “I have a job to take care of here.”

  His low tone sent ripples of fear through Dorrie’s limbs.

  “What about the whole ‘innocent until proven guilty’ thing?” cried Marcus.

  “It’s not fair to maroon us just because you don’t believe us!” cried Dorrie.

  “She does have a point,” said a new voice.

  “Hypatia,” said Francesco, in a tone of surprised reverence.

  Dorrie turned to see a woman with a headful of dark, loose curls streaked with gray gliding through the doorway, with Madame Wu panting behind her. Madame Wu stopped for a moment to straighten a stack of books on a file cabinet.

  “May I?” said Hypatia, gesturing at Francesco’s chair.

  “Of course,” he said, giving her room to pass. As she settled into the chair, Francesco eyeballed Madame Wu. “In my absence, you should have informed Mr. Gormly immediately of last night’s events.”

  “Phillip and Ursula and I really didn’t think it…”—here Madame Wu glanced back at Mr. Gormly—“necessary.”

  Francesco pulled at one side of his moustache. “I’m not sure any of you did any thinking at—”

  “If you please, Francesco,” interrupted Hypatia. She looked from Dorrie to Marcus with a patient, penetrating expression. Dorrie tried to keep breathing evenly and not stare at the thin silvery scars that meandered over Hypatia’s dark face.

  “What interesting circumstances in which to meet you. I’m Hypatia, current director of Petrarch’s Library.” She glanced at Francesco. “I know you have concerns, Francesco, and understandably so, but let’s not jump to conclusions.”

  Dorrie looked into Hypatia’s calm green eyes, wanting to trust her. “We weren’t after anything in the Reference Room. We just wanted to find a way back out.”

  A small smile played on Hypatia’s lips. “And who can blame you, really?”

  Francesco dug his hand into Dorrie’s bag and pulled out a red book. “And how do you explain your possession of this?”

  Mistress Wu gave a little gasp.

  “I know it’s overdue,” said Dorrie, wondering if these lybrarians shared Mr. Scuggans’s abhorrence of irresponsible borrowers. “I was going to return it yesterday.”

  Hypatia looked at Dorrie oddly. “Overdue from what library?”

  “The Passaic Public Library,” said Dorrie. Even as she spoke the words, Dorrie uncomfortably absorbed the fact that the book, though red like the Passaic Public Library’s copy of The Three Musketeers, in no other way resembled it. This book looked old, its leather cover cracked. Faded gold symbols had been dug into the leather to spell out a title. They weren’t letters Dorrie even recognized. Francesco laid the book in front of Hypatia, who paused for a moment before flipping it open. She tilted her head, clearly disconcerted.

  “That’s not my book,” said Dorrie hoarsely.

  Hypatia slowly turned a few more pages. The pages were filled with faded, rust-colored writing, spelled out in the same unfamiliar letters. Sometimes the writing was loose and scrawling and sometimes crabbed, as if the writer couldn’t decide whether the book had more than enough room for his or her thoughts, or not nearly enough. In the book’s middle, someone had cut the shape of a five-pointed star into page after page.

  “Then how did you come to possess it?” said Francesco grimly.

  “I d–don’t know,” stuttered Dorrie, at a total loss for an explanation.

  Francesco crossed his arms. “And we’re supposed to just believe that as well?”

  “If we were lying,” said Marcus, “we’d come up with a much better story than ‘I don’t know!’ Is it your book?”

  Francesco said nothing.

  Dorrie began to paw madly through her bag. “Where’s my book?”

  “And that would be…?” asked Savi.

  Dorrie gave up on her search. “The Three Musketeers.”

  “Ah, your fencing manual, I presume,” said Savi, looking down his nose at her.

  She blinked at him, not sure why he looked amused again. She had, in fact, paid close attention to the sword-fighting scenes in the book.

  “So you have no idea how it came to be in your bag?” said Hypatia.

  “No!” Dorrie cried. “All I know is that The Three Musketeers was in my bag when I left our house yesterday.”

  Hypatia closed the battered book and pushed it to one side, her fingertips lingering over its cover. She glanced at the other lybrarians briefly, an eyebrow up. “We’ll set this matter to one side for the moment…”

  Mistress Wu swiftly pulled a piece of paper out of a notebook she carried and thrust it in front of Hypatia’s face. The director took it, gave it a quick scan, and then looked back up at Dorrie. “Chewbacca?”

  A short-lived but unmistakable guffaw escaped Marcus. Dorrie shot him a desperate look.

  Francesco curled his lip. “They think the situation is funny!”

  “No, we don’t think it’s funny!” Dorrie cried, as beside her Marcus shoulders began to shake uncontrollably with silent laughter. She whirled to look at Hypatia. “It’s just that my name isn’t Chewbacca.”

 
“Not Chewbacca,” wrote Mistress Wu dutifully.

  Here, Marcus had to cover his quickly reddening face with both hands as tears began to stream out of his eyes. Dorrie looked helplessly at Marcus and then back to Hypatia. “My name is Dorothea. Dorothea Barnes. And that,” said Dorrie giving Marcus a baleful look, “is my brother, Marcus.”

  Marcus drew in a deep, shuddering breath, as if trying to call himself back from his hysterics.

  “Ah,” said Hypatia. “So not…” Here she again consulted her paper. “Mr. Solo?”

  Another wheeze escaped Marcus, and he bent over double.

  Hypatia put the paper down.

  Even in her terror at the thought of being marooned at any moment, Dorrie felt idiotic. “We just weren’t sure at first. We just didn’t know whether—”

  “—you could trust us?” finished Hypatia. “Thoroughly understandable.”

  Gratitude and relief filled Dorrie. “Exactly.”

  Mistress Wu shifted a stack of papers on the table slightly to line up parallel to the table’s edge.

  Francesco grabbed the edge of the table hard and leaned toward Hypatia. “The connection with the Spoke Library is all wrong. It’s just a gaping hole. And where are its companion archways? They always form within days of the first. There should be six or seven others, and we shouldn’t need a bloody zeppelin to reach the first one. Then this book coincidentally appears! Something is very wrong. We must consider the possibility that a newly strengthened Foundation is behind this, and that these two are in their witting or unwitting service.”

  “If you’re going to keep accusing us of working for the Foundation,” said Marcus, “you could at least tell us what it is.”

  Hypatia nodded slowly. “One upon a time, long before Petrarch’s Library came into being, the Foundation had complete control of the written word wherever they ruled, and they held it jealously. By 1300 CE, a good portion of what you would call Europe, the Middle East, and Northern Africa was under the Foundation’s complete sway.”

  “Then how come I’ve never heard of the Foundation or the Founders?” asked Marcus.

  “Because the history you know,” said Hypatia, “is not the history that has always been. It only seems that way to those living it.”

  Dorrie felt that the floor had turned into a water bed.

  “The lybrarians spent many centuries chiseling away at the Foundation’s power,” said Mistress Wu. “Until it broke into pieces. History changed as a result.”

  Hypatia drummed her fingertips on the table. “Though the Foundation has receded from sight, and the world’s memory of it has dwindled into legend, it’s still possible that there are those who dream about its old power. Francesco’s greatest fear is that someone might desire to use Petrarch’s Library as a means of reasserting that power.”

  “That hole is proof that someone’s gone beyond dreaming,” said Francesco.

  “Perhaps,” said Hypatia. “Perhaps not.” Gazing first at Dorrie and then Marcus, Hypatia picked a quill out of a pewter mug and ran its feather along her finger. “Has anyone yet explained to you what a keyhand is?”

  Dorrie and Marcus shook their heads.

  “Keyhands occupy a special position here within Petrarch’s Library,” said Hypatia. “For one thing, travel into and out of the Spoke Libraries is only possible with the cooperation of a keyhand.” Hypatia put the quill down. “May I have some ink and a bit of paper, Francesco?”

  Dorrie felt a pointed stillness enter the room, as though everyone in it but she and Marcus was thinking the same thought.

  Francesco hurriedly handed Hypatia a bottle and a piece of rough paper from a drawer. Hypatia poured a drop of the ink on the paper and then looked up at Dorrie and Marcus. “Touch the ink and then try to make a fingerprint.”

  “Why?” Dorrie asked.

  “It’s not poisonous,” barked Francesco.

  Dorrie and Marcus each pressed an index finger down in the tiny spreading puddle of ink and then pressed their fingertips down onto a clean section of the paper. Dorrie leaned forward to look at the result. A chillness crept across her shoulders. The pressure of her finger had left a solid black oval on the paper. No pattern of whorls or lines. Nothing. She tried it again and again. Her fingerprint was gone.

  Hypatia leaned across the table toward Dorrie and Marcus. “The first three persons to pass through a new archway in the moments after it forms attain the power to navigate that particular archway, and bring others back and forth with them. Losing one’s fingerprints is a side effect of acquiring a keyhand’s unique time-slipping abilities.”

  Dorrie’s heart seemed to come to a jolting halt.

  “What a colossal waste,” muttered Francesco bitterly.

  “So are we keyhands?” Dorrie felt a spasm of fear mixed with wonder.

  “Falling through a hole, if that’s what you did,” growled Francesco, “does not make you keyhands!”

  Mistress Wu patted at the back of her neck with a fresh handkerchief. “You see, usually, long in advance of a new archway forming, the Lybrariad chooses two very skilled and experienced lybrarians to become keyhands.”

  “In other words,” said Hypatia, tapping the inky piece of paper, “you are keyhands in the sense that you now have a keyhand’s ability to navigate an archway. You are not keyhands in that you do not possess the customary experience, wisdom, and skills typically possessed by those we train for the job.”

  “But why train only two lybrarians for the job?” asked Dorrie.

  “Yeah,” said Marcus. “You said the first three people through the archway get keyhand powers.”

  “Well deduced, well deduced!” cried Mistress Wu, beaming as though Marcus and Dorrie had ferreted out the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx. “And here’s your answer: Because there’s always someone just on the other side of the archway who quite likes the idea of people saying or writing what they please. We rarely have to search far for them, and they’ve almost all made capital keyhands.” Her eyes shined. “It’s as if they came looking for us in one way or another. We think they’re why the archways open where and when they do.”

  “Did you come looking for us?” asked Hypatia, looking first at Marcus and then at Dorrie.

  Dorrie’s heart beat faster. She glanced at Marcus, who only gave her an almost unnoticeable shrug. Dorrie racked her brain. Had she come looking for Petrarch’s Library? She glanced at Francesco’s grim face, sweat trickling down her back. She had a feeling she and Marcus would be safer if she had but… “No,” she finally said, simply unable to concoct a believable story beneath Hypatia’s gaze.

  “As if Petrarch’s Library would open for a child,” muttered Francesco.

  “The fact that you have attained a keyhand’s power,” said Hypatia, “presents a bit of a problem for the Lybrariad.”

  “To say the least,” said Francesco. “The sooner we get rid of these two and let the hole close, the better.”

  Dorrie and Marcus exchanged panicked glances

  Savi looked stunned. “And abandon the twenty-first century?”

  “How else to protect Petrarch’s Library?” snapped Francesco. “We can probably take care of it by tomorrow.”

  Dorrie felt her knees begin to shake. She felt as though she were drowning in a nightmare ocean, her fate in the hands of others. She forced herself to think, to not go under. If she and Marcus were ever to get home again, they had to avoid being marooned. They had to at least convince the lybrarians to allow them to stay within the walls of Petrarch’s Library, even if it had to be as prisoners. “Wait!” she cried out.

  Everyone in the room looked in her direction. “Why maroon us when we could be useful to you? We could live in Petrarch’s Library. We could do work. We could, uh…shelve books or mop floors or…”

  “Yes!” Marcus threw a hand up in the air. “Genius idea from the lit
tle sister! I was just going to suggest that.”

  Mistress Wu looked horrified. “Oh, I don’t think you—”

  “Or we could…” Dorrie interrupted, desperate to convince them. An idea with stubby wings and a ridiculous ungainly body took clumsy flight within her. An idea fueled by her sudden realization that, beyond avoiding a marooning, there was a much, much bigger and more breathtaking goal to strike out toward. Why couldn’t…She felt her heart catch fire.

  “Why couldn’t we join the Lybrariad? Why couldn’t we become apprentices? Other kids do. You could train us so that we wouldn’t be a danger to the Lybrariad. Then you could still do your work in the twenty-first century!” Dorrie stopped speaking, out of breath. She looked pleadingly from face to face.

  Hypatia pushed the ink-stained paper to one side. Mistress Wu, her mouth open, didn’t even check to see if it lay exactly perpendicular to the edge of the table.

  “That is so ridiculous,” said Savi, “that it almost makes a kind of sense.”

  Francesco rounded on him. “Are you mad? We know nothing about their characters. We have no guarantee that they would have the mettle to succeed. They have no particular concern for our principles!”

  Marcus looked indignant. “I have never burned a book in my life! I mean, maybe I’ve written in a few. But only in pencil!”

  Hypatia leaned back, as if to better take in everyone in the room and all that had been said. “First off, I’m very sorry that you’ve been under the impression that a marooning was being considered.”

  “It’s not?” stammered Dorrie.

  Hypatia raised her eyebrows slightly, a shadow of a smile playing on her lips. “In Petrarch’s Library’s centuries-long history, only two maroonings have ever taken place, and those for extremely good reasons. The Lybrariad has no current intention of doubling that number in one fell swoop.”

  A wave of relief coursed through Dorrie. She glanced at Marcus, who flashed her a sickly grin.

  “No,” said Hypatia, with a little half-smile. “If you were looking forward to the rumored trip to Outer Mongolia, we must disappoint you. Assuming you mean us no harm, the choice as it stands is only between sending you home and letting the hole close up, or leaving it open and maintaining some sort of relationship with you two.” For a long moment she was silent and then, almost to herself, she murmured, “There would be much to lose by closing ourselves off from the twenty-first century.”