The Accidental Keyhand (6 page)

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.”

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 Marcus, 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?”

“Oh, you'd be surprised,” said Phillip, handing Marcus and Dorrie each a plate.

Dorrie took hers slowly and glanced out the window, the hairs on her neck rising. “Why can't we see Passaic from that window?

“Ah, now we've come to it,” said Mistress Wu, a new torrent of sweat breaking out on her forehead.

Ursula bustled to the window and pushed the curtains back fully. The blue of the sky had deepened into dusk since Dorrie had last looked through it.

Ursula took a deep breath. “Do you know what a hub is? The center of a wheel, say?”

Dorrie and Marcus nodded.

“Petrarch's Library is a sort of hub,” said Ursula. “Its spokes, however, aren't the wooden rods of a wagon wheel. No. Its spokes are the four hundred or so smaller libraries that connect to it.”

Phillip buttered a piece of bread for himself. “One Spoke Library sits in Passaic, and another sits in Peking, and another in Paris. You see?”

A wild beating had started up in Dorrie's chest. “But Paris and Passaic are miles and miles apart.”

“And yet, through Petrarch's Library you can get from Paris to Passaic in a matter of minutes.” Phillip sniffed. “Assuming you can find a bicycle when you want one, or a pair of roller-skates in a pinch.”

“Majestic,” said Marcus with deep fervor.

“Majestic?” repeated Dorrie.

“Oh, I meant to tell you,” said Marcus. “I've left ‘awesome' behind.”

“Always a sad thing to be left behind,” sighed Mistress Wu. “People even leave libraries behind, you know. Just abandon them to the cruelties of mice and wind and rain and torch-bearing philistines.” Her eyes began to well fabulously. “Petrarch's Library is more full of Ghost Libraries than Spoke Libraries. Oh, yes,” she added vehemently, as though Dorrie and Marcus had expressed some doubt upon the matter. “Ghost Libraries are constantly crashing into us here. Squeezing in. Making places for themselves where it suits.” She suddenly sounded querulous. “Always changes the layout of Petrarch's Library. Very confusing for us.” She sighed again. “But you can't blame them, poor things.” Now tears collected again in the corners of her eyes. “Fallen to wrack and ruin in their own times and places.” She dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief.

“It's true,” said Phillip cheerfully. “One day, it's two lefts and a right to get to the loo, and the next day, you're lucky if you can find the thing at all.” He began to fidget in his seat as if in discomfort. “Excuse me.” He dug two oranges out of a loose pants pocket. Dorrie started, forcibly reminded of the frightening figure who'd surprised them in the room with the
History
of
Histories
books.

Phillip held them up to Ursula. “Found these on my way over.”

Ursula raised her eyebrows. “The Archivist, no doubt.”

“Who's the Archivist?” said Dorrie, avoiding Marcus's eyes and trying not to sound too interested.

“One of our resident lybrarians,” said Phillip. “In charge of the
History
of
—”

“A very old man who once a year drinks far too much Madeira wine and gets maudlin,” Ursula cut in crisply.

Phillip pulled a third piece of fruit out of his vest pocket. “When the Archivist gets maudlin, the corridors tend to fill with bad singing and oranges. Lots of oranges. He reads them out by the dozens.”

Dorrie and Marcus looked at Phillip blankly.

Phillip tossed an orange to each of them. “I'm sorry. I mean, he reads the oranges out of a book. A French novel, in this case. Terrible plotting but a beautiful description of an orange near the end. That's how we get a good deal of our food around here.”

“
What!
” cried Dorrie and Marcus in unison.

Phillip waved at the laden table. “Took me an hour and a half to read all that out. It's amazing what the right reader can get out of a book. And if I do say so myself, I have something of a knack when it comes to meats and sauces.”

Dorrie looked at the bread beside her with new wonder.

“If we're quite done discussing oranges and sauces, there's one other fact of great importance we haven't yet shared,” said Ursula.

Something in Ursula's tone sent a wind kicking up in Dorrie's chest.

Ursula played with the pocket on the long, yellowed apron she wore. “The Spoke Libraries don't just connect Petrarch's Library to far-flung places.” She found Dorrie's eyes, and then Marcus's in turn. “They connect Petrarch's Library to every century that has passed since the invention of the written word.”

Dorrie held tight to the edge of her blanket. “You mean you can get from—”

“500 BCE to 1611 CE?” finished Phillip. “Ancient Egypt to twelfth-century Byzantium to eighteenth-century Japan? Yes.”

“Monumental!” shouted Marcus, sending a slosh of cloversweet flying from his goblet.

“You can tell the Spoke Libraries from the Ghost Libraries,” said Mistress Wu, “because the Spoke Libraries form on the other side of conveniently labeled stone arches. Tells you what lies on the other side.”

Phillip scratched his head. “Except for yours, apparently.”

“We saw an archway like that!” cried Dorrie, “There was a man on the other side. He looked like some kind of monk.”

“Ireland, 812 CE, most probably,” said Phillip. “Tell us, what century are you from?”

“The twenty-first,” said Dorrie, feeling bewitched. Ursula's long apron with its big pocket and Phillip's embroidered vest and Mistress Wu's long silk tunic made a new kind of sense. Suddenly, a vision of Tiffany's jeering face smashed through the magic stained glass of the moment. And then the faces of her parents, faces pinched with worry. Who knew what revenge Tiffany was going to take on Dorrie for disappearing. Her parents had probably called the police.

Setting her bread aside, Dorrie pushed the blanket off her legs. “We have to leave. Now.”

“Now?” said Marcus, outraged. “But it's just getting interesting!”

“Nobody knows where we are!” Dorrie turned to Phillip. “How do we get back into Passaic?”

“Oh, but you can't,” said Mistress Wu, sounding as pained as if she were being forced to strangle kittens. “You simply can't at the moment.”

Dorrie suddenly did feel mad with a great jag of Mistress Wu's anxiety. “Why not?”

“Well, for one thing,” said Phillip, “it sounds like we'd have to shoot you back through the hole with a cannon, and we don't have one of those on hand at the moment. Even if we did, right now you'd just sizzle against the hole rather magnificently and fall back into the pool in a deadish sort of way. The hole will be far too hot to travel back through until at least tomorrow—”

“Tomorrow!” cried Dorrie and Marcus together.

“Or a day or two after that.”

“But our parents will think we've been kidnapped or something,” said Dorrie.

“Well, there you're in luck,” said Ursula. “Time has all but stopped in your Passaic for the moment, at least for those of us here in Petrarch's Library.”

“Premium!” cried Marcus.

“For how long?” said Dorrie hoarsely.

“For the next four weeks or so,” said Phillip, “or whenever you return to Passaic. Whichever comes first.”

“Whichever comes first?” repeated Dorrie softly.

“I promise,” said Phillip. “No one in Passaic has even noticed that you're gone.”

Dorrie's heart beat slowly and hard as she closed her eyes and saw the pandemonium she and Marcus had left behind at the Pen and Sword Festival. Again, she saw herself falling through the floor of the Passaic Public Library and, at that very moment, all the shouting and running and sword-waving in the park coming to a grinding halt.

She caught her breath as a horrible, wonderful realization blossomed. Perhaps Tiffany still awaited her return and Dorrie hadn't forfeited anything to her yet. She hadn't yet lost the bet. And in the meantime—she looked out the marvelous, impossible window—there was all this.

“I'm so very sorry,” said Mistress Wu, mournfully. “It's just how the Library works!”

Dorrie met Marcus's enthusiastic eyes with her own eagerly blazing ones.

“There's another matter,” said Ursula. “The Lybrariad depends on Petrarch's Library as a secret headquarters from which to do our work.” Her eyes flicked to Dorrie's hands and back so quickly that Dorrie wasn't sure she hadn't imagined it. “Now that you've found us, we need time to come to some decisions.”

Dorrie reached for breath which with to speak. “What kind of decisions?”

“There are things you'll need to be told, things you'll need to understand about your situation,” said Ursula carefully.

Mistress Wu wrung her handkerchief. “I've sent word to Hypatia. Once she returns, we can figure out what to do. Also,” —she straightened up a line of sardines on their platter—“Francesco will want to speak with you.”

Something in her tone made Dorrie's fears surge back past her wonder. “Who's Francesco?”

Ursula looked at Dorrie steadily. “Francesco D'Avila is our director of security. He's out of library, as well, at the moment. Dealing with more of that nasty Inquisition business.”

“He can detect a threat just about anywhere,” observed Phillip archly.

“Francesco is one of us,” said Ursula. “A lybrarian. A good man.”

“Deep, deep on the inside,” said Phillip under his breath.