The Accidental Keyhand (24 page)

“I'll kill him if you don't open that door immediately!” shouted Mr. Biggs, his voice sounding more high-pitched with every word.

“Will he?” whispered Dorrie, alarmed.

“No,” scoffed Savi, sounding regretful. “It's his only bargaining chip. Why ever is he talking like that?”

“Helium changes your voice,” said Marcus.

“You don't know who you're dealing with!” shouted Mr. Biggs, now sounding like Miranda.

“Help!” squeaked Mr. Kornberger. After a moment of silence, Dorrie heard two thuds.

HELLO, GOOD-BYE

Great-Aunt Alice, Ebba, and Amanda had done their best to make Elder comfortable, making a pillow out of an old Windbreaker they found in the bookmobile.

He was beginning to stir when Savi and Marcus returned from dragging Mr. Lamb into the garage and retrieving Mr. Kornberger from inside it. They lowered Mr. Kornberger to the grass, where he flopped backward.

Great-Aunt Alice looked at Savi, from where she knelt beside Elder, her face pink. “You serve Petrarch's Library, I take it.”

Savi gave her an appraising look. “I do. And you?”

“It's been my hope,” said Great-Aunt Alice.

Dorrie stared disbelieving at her great-aunt's lined face, around which locks of white hair swung, loosened from their customary bun. As Savi knelt beside Elder, Dorrie sought out Great-Aunt Alice's eyes. They looked at each other for a long moment. For the first time since she'd come to live with her great-aunt, Dorrie felt invited all the way in. Savi picked up Elder's hand to feel for a pulse and then went completely still. Staring at Elder's fingertips, Savi brushed them with his own and looked carefully into Elder's face.

“What is it?” Dorrie demanded, certain he was going to pronounce Elder dead.

Savi cleared his throat, his face pale. “It's Kash,” he said, a terrible wonder in his voice. “But old. So old.”

Dorrie and Marcus traded amazed glances. Ebba gave a little cry, her hand to her mouth.

“Elder's the missing keyhand?” Marcus said, staring at the face he and Dorrie knew so well.

Savi leaned down closer to Elder's ear. “Kash?” he murmured. “It's Cyrano. It's Savi. Can you hear me?” Savi brushed Kash's cheek tenderly.

“How do you know it's him?” Dorrie asked, taking Elder's other hand protectively.

“I'd know him anywhere,” answered Savi, a catch in his throat.

At that moment, Elder's eyes fluttered open. He looked vaguely around, and then his eyes caught on Savi. “I had an apprentice once with a nose even bigger than yours.”

“Is that right?” Savi said, a helpless grin breaking out all over his face.

“Elder!” Dorrie cried.

He turned his head to her. “Dorrie B. How did—”

Dorrie felt tears pricking at her eyes. “We found Petrarch's Library. Accidentally.”

Elder winced. “We've been checking for weeks. Hoping.” He closed his eyes again. Dorrie longed to ask him more questions, but he seemed so tired.

Savi's face darkened. “Kash, the Lybrariad's been looking everywhere for you. Why didn't you get to Thebes? Where are you in Egypt?”

Elder swallowed with what seemed like great effort. “Egypt?” he said, licking his swollen and cracked lips. “That was so long ago. Such a lifetime ago.” He seemed to be thinking very hard. “A boy came to me there. He wanted to tell me about a threat to the past from the future that could unravel all the Lybrariad's efforts. He wanted to give me something he called Petrarch's Star. For safekeeping. We made plans to meet again. When I went to the appointed place, others were waiting.”

His eyes bored into Savi's. “They kept me in a temple at Kom Ombu for a while. Tried to make me tell them who had come to me. Then they took me into their headquarters.” Elder struggled to take a breath. “I thought the boy must be dead or imprisoned himself, but he soon came to my cell, the thing he called Petrarch's Star hidden in a book.”

Dorrie glanced meaningfully at Savi, who tore off the pouch that he'd slung over his neck and threw it to her. He leaned forward and used a small dagger to tear away the bloody cloth around Elder's wound.

Dorrie fumbled with the pouch's knots as Elder rubbed his lips together. “The boy had a key to my cell.”

Pain came into Elder's face and he gripped Savi's arm hard. “The people who took me call their headquarters the Stronghold. It's like Petrarch's Library in that it opens into other times, but wholly different. I don't know what holds it together but I saw prisons and barracks. Opulent offices and throne rooms. The people operating it have dreams of controlling the world that rival the Foundation's.” Elder clawed harder at Savi's arm. “The Stronghold connects to a hundred wherens in the future, and now they're fighting to move into the past.”

Dorrie felt her heart slow and heard Great-Aunt Alice inhale sharply. Dorrie looked to Savi. His dark eyes held Elder's eyes steady in a terrible, bright gaze.

“What happened after the boy freed you?”

Elder's hand slipped from Savi's arm. “He had me drink something he said would allow me to escape the Stronghold. Before we could pass back into Egypt, Stronghold guards came after us. In the fighting, the boy and I were separated. He with the book, and I with the star. I escaped into one wheren—the United States, 1956—and the boy into another. I had no idea what Petrarch's Star actually did until I met Alice.”

Dorrie's trembling fingers worked at the pouch string's last tangle.

“My father served as an ambulance driver during World War I,” said Alice hurriedly. “He met an injured boy in a field hospital in Germany. At first he thought the boy was delirious, talking about magical libraries and passages to times and great danger for the world. The boy made my father take a book. Its pages had been hollowed out in the shape of a star.”

Dorrie upended the pouch and shook it violently. A round, gray stone landed on the grass. Dorrie stared at it in horror.

“That's not the star,” said Marcus.

“But we saw Mr. Gormly put it in here,” cried Dorrie. She looked at Marcus desperately, as a horrible vision of Mr. Gormly handing the star to an operative from the Stronghold flashed in her mind.

“We saw Mr. Gormly put
something
in the pouch,” said Marcus.

Dorrie couldn't bear to look at Savi or Elder. “Mr. Gormly must still have it! He made us think—Oh, Elder, I'm so sorry!”

Elder's eyes closed, and Dorrie's heart went into her mouth.

“He needs a hospital,” said Great-Aunt Alice.

Elder pulled at the front of Savi's shirt. He licked his cracked lips. “No hospital.”

“But you're very hurt,” said Great-Aunt Alice. “You could die.”

Elder shook his head weakly. “Too many questions. Get me back to Petrarch's Library. Get me to…Ursula.” His head lolled.

“But we can't,” whispered Dorrie turning desperate eyes on Savi. “Mr. Gormly said we've locked ourselves out.”

Savi paled, as if when he'd chased after them into Passaic, he hadn't given the problem of their return a second thought. He glanced at the bookmobile where Moe sat chittering angrily at them through the windshield. “Unless, of course, that hole happened to finish its cool-down before Moe took Ebba and me through.”

They all stared at the mongoose as the sound of sirens reached their ears.

“Bound to be the police,” said Great-Aunt Alice. “After a crash like that.”

Marcus swallowed hard. “Help us, Obi Won Ke-Moe-bi. You're our only hope.”

***

At the Passaic Public Library, Amanda backed the bookmobile up against the rear door of the library. She hurried off to find Mr. Scuggans and keep him out of the way, while Mr. Kornberger took care of Elder, and Savi stood guard over the tightly bound Mr. Biggs and Mr. Lamb. They'd left Great-Aunt Alice behind to make up a story for the police.

Dorrie, Marcus, and Ebba scrambled down out of the bookmobile, Ebba holding tightly to Moe, and ran for the staff room, where they let themselves in with Amanda's key. Locking it behind them, they tore through the mop closet and threw themselves down onto the floor at the edge of the hole. The Roman bath lay far beneath them, glinting and winking. With trembling fingers, Ebba held Moe out over the hole and brought him down slowly toward the hard, invisible barrier.

Dorrie's breath came in hard little pants as Moe wiggled and twisted. Ebba spoke to him softly, and he relaxed, one forefoot scrabbling in midair just at the floor's level, and then as Dorrie stopped breathing altogether, his foot seemed to dig below the level of the invisible barrier. Ebba gave a cry of delight as his head sank out of sight below the jagged edge of the visible floor. She hauled him back up and held him tight against her chest.

“I'll get the others,” shouted Marcus, jumping to his feet and disappearing through the mop closet.

Dorrie wanted to sing and shout and leap into the air, but as she stared with joyful relief down into Petrarch's Library, a thoroughly overwhelming thought suddenly took her in its teeth and shook her to the bone.

She startled when Marcus and Savi staggered back through the door carrying the unconscious Elder. They laid him down gently on the floor and ran back to the door to fetch the others.

“Wait!” cried Dorrie, speaking all in a rush. “Now that we know where the Stronghold people were keeping young Kash out in Egypt, the Lybrariad could find that place, couldn't it?” Dorrie's felt like her heart was tearing and swelling all at once. “The Lybrariad could still go to that time and that Kom Ombu place and free him, right?”

Savi looked at her steadily, his eyebrows drawn together. “Yes,” he finally agreed, his voice brusque.

“Then Elder, I mean Kash, would have a chance to live his real life,” said Dorrie breathlessly. “Not the one the Stronghold people made him live.”

Savi breathed deeply, his face a mix of hunger and uneasiness. “There would be consequences.”

“Elder won't ever get to Passaic in the twenty-first century,” whispered Ebba.

“So we'd never meet him,” said Dorrie, trying to sound more brave than miserable.

“And we'd never get to Petrarch's Library,” said Marcus.

Dorrie's voice cracked. “You have to get him back.”

***

As soon as they returned to Petrarch's Library, Savi turned Mr. Biggs and Mr. Lamb over to the Lybrariad and disappeared to pull a team together to rescue young Kash from Egypt. Ursula took over care of old Kash, making him as comfortable as she could in the repair and preservation department, while Dorrie, Marcus, and Ebba waited anxiously in the corridor, peeling and feeding Moe the dozen hard-boiled eggs that Sven had read out for the mongoose when he'd heard what Moe had done.

Dorrie and Marcus had ditched the trench coat and parka and pulled on their old Passaic clothes.

Dorrie reached into the pocket of her pirate coat for the caramels that Sven had also given them. She handed one to Ebba. “That was brilliant thinking about Moe being a keyhand.”

Ebba smiled faintly. “Lucky that Savi needed to cut through the baths to ring the emergency bell.”

Dorrie fussed with one of the buttons on her coat. “Mom's probably wondering what happened to the driveway gates, about now,” she said glumly.

Marcus leaned his head back against the wall. “And Dad is definitely going to be curious about his wrecked workshop.”

“Well, you won't get in any trouble at least,” said Ebba, scratching Moe between the ears. “That whole time stream's about to be obliterated.”

Dorrie felt a wave of misery. “Do you think we'll feel it when our history goes different?”

“I don't know,” Ebba answered, burying her face in Moe's fur.

They stopped talking and scrambled to their feet as three figures turned into the corridor.

“Savi?” said Dorrie, staring at the one with the biggest nose.

He bowed deeply to her. He and the other man wore pleated white skirts, and the woman a long straight white dress. They all wore sandals, wigs, and heavy eyeliner.

“You sure about the eyeliner?” asked Marcus.

“Great for sun glare,” said the other man, whom Dorrie had never met. He bowed to them as well. “Kemnebi. Second keyhand of Middle Kingdom Egypt.”

“Excuse us for a moment,” said Savi to the others, steering Dorrie a short way down the corridor. “I want to thank you for all your assistance to the Lybrariad and to me, personally. I'm very happy to be getting one friend back but—”

Dorrie felt the tears that had been threatening ever since Elder's rescue finally spill from her eyes. She threw her arms around Savi's waist and hugged him fiercely.

He held his arms out to either side as if unsure what to do with them. “But I'm truly sad to be losing another,” he finally said in a hoarse voice, patting her head gently.

“Were you able to speak to Madeleine?” murmured Dorrie.

“Oh that. I made a horrible hash of it,” said Savi. “I'll do better next time.” He tilted Dorrie's face back away from his middle. “You'll make a fine swords-woman some day.”

“For all the good it'll do me in the twenty-first century,” sobbed Dorrie, imagining herself in Passaic setting the table, and taking books out of the library, and acting in one of the Academy's staged sword fights and knowing nothing about Petrarch's Library. Reluctantly, she finally released Savi.