Authors: Marianne Malone
“So all the stuff in the rooms that started off full-sized will stay small only in or near the rooms,” Ruthie went on.
“Must be,” Jack agreed. He handed Ruthie the bento box, and she put it in her backpack. “And remember when
we were in A1 from the time of the Salem witch trials—Thomas Wilcox’s room?”
“The
Mayflower
model!” Ruthie exclaimed.
“The archive papers we read said it came from an antiques dealer, right? Not a miniatures dealer; that’s how we knew Thomas’
Mayflower
was made full-sized.” Then Jack added, “I wonder how many objects are magically shrunk in the rooms.”
With Ruthie’s mom and Mrs. McVittie on their way home in a cab, Ruthie and Jack hopped on the bus to Jack’s house. They walked down the aisle and found two empty seats at the back. “Oh, I almost forgot,” Ruthie said as the bus started forward. “While I was waiting for that tour group to move I looked in another room.”
“Which one?”
“E27—it’s a room from Paris in 1937. It was alive, Jack. Just like Sophie’s room and Thomas’.”
“Cool. Are you sure?”
“Positive. It has a balcony, and I could see people in the streets. It looked like some kind of fair was happening. I want to go back.”
“We should probably learn some French, huh?” Jack suggested.
“My mom would be thrilled,” Ruthie said. Her mom taught French at Oakton and was always trying to get Ruthie to study it.
“Let’s see the letter,” Jack said.
Ruthie took the letter out of her back pocket and unfolded it. She and Jack looked at it and then at each other in disbelief.
Jack’s handwritten note, which they had both signed, read:
To whom it may concern,
Ruthie Stewart and Jack Tucker, sixth-grade students in Chicago, visited these rooms by way of a magic key. We think the magic came from Christina of Milan (see room E1). If you are reading this, it means you are experiencing the magic too. Others have done this before us. Good luck!
At the bottom of their note someone had written:
If this is not a joke, leave another note.
The handwriting had an odd appearance.
“It looks like someone tried to write really small, doesn’t it?” Ruthie observed.
“Yeah—like someone used a full-sized pencil. See—the thickness of the lines is all wrong,” Jack said. “We could write an answer, saying it was a joke.”
“That won’t totally solve the problem. Whoever it is will still know we snuck into the rooms.” They both kept
looking at the note as though answers would appear on the page. People walking in the aisle jostled them as the bus made its stops. “But they don’t know about the shrinking. They could think we just wrote really tiny and somehow put the note in from the front.”
“I think we need to find out who wrote it,” Jack said.
“That’s going to be hard. And whoever wrote this already knows who we are! Our names are in it.”
Ruthie felt a sudden sensation of paranoia. She looked at the people around her on the bus and the hundreds of people they were passing on the street. Any one of them could be the person who wrote the anonymous note. She folded the letter and clutched it close.
“I wonder how long it’s been there?” Jack asked.
“It could be a trap,” Ruthie said. “You know, someone at the museum who wants to know how we got the note in there. Or it could be someone just like us, someone who wants answers.”
Concentrating on their homework proved extremely difficult; as soon as they’d answered the last question in the history book, Jack slapped it closed.
“Okay. List time. We need to make a list of all the facts we know about the magic.”
Ruthie took a small spiral-bound notebook from her backpack. She turned to a fresh page, ready to write.
In about ten minutes they had a pretty thorough list:
1. The magic comes from the key that Christina, Duchess of Milan, had made for her in the sixteenth century.
2. The shrinking can happen only when a female is holding the key in her hand.
3. The shrinking happens only within a certain distance from the rooms. The bigger the object (like a human), the smaller the distance away from the rooms before you regrow. Small objects, like a bento box, can go pretty far before regrowing (near the doors of the museum, for instance).
4. The unshrinking also happens when a shrunk female lets go of the key somewhere in the corridor or in the area nearby.
5. Once small, the female must keep the key with her, like in a pocket, to stay small, except if she is in the rooms (or outside in the past worlds).
6. A male can shrink if he is holding hands with the shrinking female.
7. Some of the rooms are “alive”—we think these rooms are portals to the past.
8. The time of day in the past worlds is determined by the painted worlds outside the rooms, and the “clock” starts ticking when a person from now enters the past (we think). Once we are in the outside worlds, the time seems to pass just like normal. We have no idea how this part of the magic works.
9. We don’t know if Mrs. Thorne or her craftsmen knew about this, but we think maybe they did.
10. Stuff from the past (like the arrows that were shot into the window of the French castle room) disappears if it ends up in the rooms. But the antiques that Mrs. Thorne put in the rooms on purpose stay there.
“Anything else?” Ruthie asked.
“I’m sure we’ll think of more.” Jack stretched.
“We should probably make a list of who could have written the message,” Ruthie suggested.
“Mr. Bell,” Jack stated matter-of-factly.
“You really think so?” Ruthie was skeptical.
“Maybe. He has access to the rooms.”
“
Had
access,” Ruthie corrected him. Since Ruthie and Jack had discovered his lost work, Mr. Bell had retired from his guard job. For the past month he had been working solely as an artist.
“Yeah, but he could’ve put the note in there right before he left,” Jack said.
“He knows us. Don’t you think he would have said something directly to us?”
“Maybe, maybe not. It’s pretty unbelievable, after all.”
“How about the archive curator, the one who helped us on the report?”
Jack nodded, then added, “Any of the other guards or maintenance people.”
Then something occurred to Ruthie. “Jack, remember what Mr. Bell’s daughter said at the opening last night?”
“Caroline Bell? About what?”
“About how her backpack was lost. She said the three of us have more to talk about. Remember, you elbowed me. I think we should try to meet with her.”
“And just ask her if she knows anything about the note?”
“No, not about the note exactly. But to see if maybe we can trust her. To see if she wants to know anything more about her memories and the rooms. Maybe she can help us.”
“Okay. Put her down.”
As she wrote the name, Ruthie realized something else. “Maybe whoever put the note in the box will notice that it’s gone now and come looking for us.”
“You’re right,” Jack agreed soberly. “We’d better put it back. Tuesday—it’s a half day of school.”
They sat on the floor of his room, looking from the letter to the list and back again, quietly mulling the
situation. The silence was broken by the sound of a key opening the loft door.
“Hello,” Lydia called into the big space.
“Hi, Mom.” Jack got up. “We’re here.”
Jack and Ruthie went into the kitchen area.
“Hello, Ruthie.” Lydia had just put down a bag of groceries and was looking through the mail. She smiled at Jack. “Yesterday’s mail. We forgot to bring it up,” she said. “And today’s paper. I hear we’re in the Arts section.” She opened the paper on the kitchen table and thumbed through to find their pictures. “Ah, here we are. Hey, you two look pretty good! … Oh boy.” Her tone changed as she skimmed another article. “I was wondering if this would make the papers. I’ve been hearing about this from some of my friends. An art thief!”
“My family saw that too,” Ruthie said.
“What else do you know, Mom?”
“Not much more than what it says here in the article. Word is it’s been going on for several weeks; there aren’t any clues.” Lydia turned her attention to opening the mail. “What have you two been up to today?”
“We took my mom to see the Thorne Rooms,” Ruthie said.
“Yeah, and I met someone who’s maybe going to give Ruthie drawing lessons,” Jack added.
“Really? Who?”
“Dora Pommeroy. She’s an interior designer,” Ruthie answered.
“She said she’d heard of you, Mom.”
“I’ve met her a few times. She’s decorated homes of some people who’ve bought my paintings; she has a great reputation. I don’t know her well, though.” Lydia showed Jack a card that had come in the mail. “Look at this. It’s an invitation to a gala at the Art Institute—and I can bring a guest.”
“Do you have to dress up?” Jack asked with an obvious lack of enthusiasm.
“Yes. Gala means you dress up,” she answered. “I bet I could bring you both.”
“I’d love to!” Ruthie looked at Jack, wondering why he didn’t appear to understand the opportunity this might present—being in the museum after it was closed! Now Ruthie had two things to look forward to: drawing lessons and an evening at the museum!
“So my first drawing lesson is going to be on Saturday. My mom got an email from Dora last night,” Ruthie told Jack. It was Tuesday afternoon, chilly but clear and sunny. She and Jack sped two steps at a time up to the front doors of the museum. “We’re going to meet here and she’s going to bring the supplies I need.”
Jack didn’t seem to be paying attention. “Do you have money to check your backpack?” he asked.
“Yep.” She retrieved a dollar out of her pocket. They set their backpacks down on a bench just inside the entrance. “And I brought this.” She pulled a canvas messenger-type
bag out of her backpack. “I can bring this into the museum. We can carry the bento box in it.”
“Good thinking.” He slipped the bento box out of his backpack and lifted the lid to show Ruthie the letter safe inside. “Here, take this too.” He handed her the tiny rolled-up string ladder.
“Where’s the key?” Ruthie asked.
Jack patted the pocket of his sweatshirt jacket. The line for the coat check was long but moved fast.
“It’s so crowded today,” Ruthie commented as they bounded down the marble staircase. Unfortunately, not every school had a half day, and the museum seemed to be bursting with school groups on field trips.
They hovered around the alcove, not looking at any of the rooms. The more Ruthie tried to act normal, the more she felt certain she seemed guilty of something. A guard came by and gave them a long glance.
“This is torture,” Ruthie whispered.
“Just look at the rooms,” Jack said. They walked across the space, back to the wall of European rooms, and stood in front of room E6, an English library from the early 1700s. The library was directly next to the alcove.
“That’s odd,” Ruthie said. “Something’s missing.”
“What do you mean?” Jack asked.
“See the smallish globe on the desk there?”
“Yeah. What about it?”
“There should be two of them. One on each side of the desk,” Ruthie said.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. I know one’s missing because I thought it was weird to have two globes in the first place,” she explained.
“Is it somewhere else in the room?”
Ruthie and Jack spent a minute looking.
“No. It’s definitely gone,” said Ruthie. “I’ll show you later in the cata—”
“Quick!” Jack grabbed Ruthie and pulled her to the alcove. They had three or four seconds with no one nearby. He slammed the key into Ruthie’s hand and she closed her fist around it. In the blink of an eye, Ruthie’s ponytail was swinging in the breeze that surrounded them, the alcove enlarging into a cavernous space.
They fell to their hands and knees on the giant carpet loops and rolled under the door. In the corridor, Jack jumped up and down like a tiny prizefighter.
“It worked! I almost forgot how cool this is!”
“Yeah, but we’ve got to get big again to set up the ladder,” Ruthie reminded him.
“You can do it without me. Let me stay small and you can lift me up.”
“Oh, all right,” Ruthie said, feeling like his chauffeur.
She dropped the key and returned to full size. Jack lifted the key, which was now almost as large as him, staggering under its weight.
“If I carry you while you’ve got the key, you’re gonna have to make sure it doesn’t touch me!” Ruthie cautioned. “I don’t want to shrink while I’m holding you!”
Jack held the key in front of him with his hands outstretched. He looked like an old-fashioned doll whose arms didn’t bend. Ruthie carefully picked him up between her thumb and index finger, holding him at the waist, his legs dangling.
“Go fast,” Jack’s tiny voice ordered. “I don’t think I can hold the key very long.”
Ruthie jogged down the dark corridor, Jack bouncing along. At E31 Ruthie placed him on the ledge.
“Man, that was heavy!” Jack let the key fall from his hands.
Ruthie secured the ladder to the ledge, then picked up the key and shrank along with the canvas bag, the bento box, and the letter. Wishing she could be in Jack’s place on the ledge, she started the long climb.
“There are so many people out there right now,” Jack said as Ruthie arrived on the ledge. “I just checked.”
“Here.” She handed him the bento box. “You can put it back.” Ruthie was glad to rest after the long climb. She sat down and watched as Jack took the box and made his way through the opening in the framework, which led to the side room where he would wait for a break in the crowd.
“That was close,” Jack said when he reappeared. “Someone almost saw me, and I had to dive into the garden. It’s weird,” he added. “It feels different in there since the last time. The garden was real, alive, before. Now it’s fake.”
“I’m pretty sure it wasn’t alive when I went in there on Sunday. I noticed that right away.”
“I wonder why it’s not.”