The Cabinet of Earths (7 page)

Valko was craning his neck to get a better look at the camera, too, but the purple-eyed Fourcroy kept getting in his way with that dish of candies.

“We
have
to go home now,” said Maya. “James! Let's go.”

“Thank you for coming to see your old cousin Four-croy,” said the man, in his friendly way, and he smiled as he said it, since he was so very much the opposite
of old.

“Thank you for the candy,” said James, and Maya and Valko echoed something similar.

“I didn't
quite
finish all of mine,” added James.

“Well, then, you'll have to come back,” said the cousin-uncle. “And have more sweets another day. If I give you the entrance code, it will be easier for you to come visit, won't it? 1901.”

“Come on, James,” said Maya. “You can't take more candy now!”

“It's quite an easy code to remember,” continued the cousin-uncle. “It's the year the house was built, you see.”

“That's very long ago,” said James.

Their cousin-uncle looked at James, and for a moment there was a flicker of feeling in his extraordinary eyes that Maya could not make sense of—amusement or pain or some odd mixture of the two.

“Perhaps it is,” he said. “What long lives they have, buildings!”

As they spiraled back down the stairs to the ground, Maya remembered what it was the little honey cakes reminded her of:
rosin
. That's what violinists put on their bows to get more sound out of their strings—was it made out of tree sap? Something like that.

Maya's mother used to play the violin, back before she got so sick. Then one day, she said the violin was too heavy, and her arm was too puffy, and her fingers too stiff, and she had closed up the rosin in its little satin bag and put the bow away and shut the violin case to wait until she was “really healthy again.”

And when was that going to be? Not just not sick, but her own wonderful self again, through and through. That was what Maya most urgently wanted to know. She emerged into the sunlight of the avenue Rapp, with James and Valko chattering at her about uncles, candies, and doors—and her heart caught her completely by surprise by being all tangled up in that other, deepest question:

When, oh when
, cried her heart,
was her mother finally going to be well?

Chapter 8
Worrying

E
very single person on the planet probably has some bad habit they'd rather the rest of us didn't know about. People leave their underwear on the floor or wash their hands too much or write love letters to television stars or always put off doing their math until the last minute. Maya, for instance, was a worrier. She knew she was, but it was still aggravating when her mother pointed it out (“You worry too much, honey-bun! It'll all be okay, really it will”—though the universe didn't have a very good track record on these things, as far as Maya could tell). As long as she could remember, Maya had always worried with her hands as well as her mind: She would pick at loose threads on her clothes until the edges unraveled, trouble her fingernails down to the quick, roll the wax that slipped down the candlesticks into smooth and milky pills. And scabs! They didn't stand a chance.

“You have very busy fingers,” her mother had said one day, half-alarmed and half-amused. What had Maya been worrying away at then? It was long ago. Maybe the hair of one of her dolls. But what Maya most remembered about that moment was the odd feeling of pride that had rippled through her.
Busy fingers
—and they were all hers, to put to work on whatever she wanted. They just needed something to do.

When she got a bit older, she had found that the right sort of project (if it was fussy enough and complicated) could satisfy her hands almost as much as picking and pulling and worrying at things. So that very evening, after James had finished chattering about towers and uncles and gone yawning to bed, Maya got out some scissors and glue, little screwdrivers and thread, whatever she could find, and let her busy fingers make what it was they were moved to make, just to keep them out of trouble, while her mind worked away at its own rough places.

(
Why was her mother still so tired?
) Rummaging through the big supply closet in the study, she found some tiny plastic bottle tops that could serve as glasses.

(
Her father saw it, too; that look on his face at breakfast!)
And glue that when shaped into sticky little white peas could be dipped in cardamom or cinnamon and made into blobs of miniature sand.

(
If her mother was sick again, would they tell her?)
Rectangles of plastic became the shelves; she built the cabinet's frame from tiny dowels, glue, and clay.

(
They would try to hide it from her, probably, as long as they could.)
It was the oddly familiar curve of that plastic casing that had done it, the shell from which she had extracted James's silly windup clown. That had probably given her the idea.

(
She would watch them like a hawk; she would not let them fool her into thinking all was fine.)
More glue to fit the shelves with their rows of tiny glasses into the frame with its rounded front. And then there was just the question of the salamander.

“Maya, hon?” Her mother stuck her head around the door. “Are you really still up? You'll be misery itself tomorrow, if you don't get some sleep. What's that you're working on?”

But Maya had already swept the little cabinet behind her and under the bed. It was a private thing. Nobody should see it. It needed her. It was hers to protect, hers to keep safe.

And she absolutely could not talk about it. Not at all. When Maya and Valko talked about Cousin Louise, or the various Fourcroys, Maya would get stuck, sometimes, if the topic got too close to the Cabinet, which was too private for words. Sometimes she would open her mouth and then find there was nothing she was able to say. Her jaw would just stick for a bit, while her brain tried to find a way around the topic. It was a little unsettling, to tell the truth. It was odd. But then, odd things seemed to be going on all around her these days.

A day after their unexpected visit to the Salamander House, for instance, Valko and Maya were chatting in the courtyard at school, and the Dolphin and his elegant gang were hanging out, looking lovely and bored, by the classroom steps. Pretty much like every other morning recess. And then the wind changed. (Literally: Maya had to brush the hair back out of her eyes.) And for some reason, when the breeze got as far as the Dolphin's crowd, a few of them turned their heads and looked over at Maya and Valko, almost as if they thought the wind had been conjured up by someone on purpose. This was strange, because never yet in the first month of classes had the Dolphin or any of his well-dressed friends ever so much as glanced in Maya's direction. And now they were looking her way with what might even be actual interest. In fact, a couple of them almost seemed to be sniffing the air as if they had just caught the scent of something they rather liked.

Maya and Valko looked at each other, and Valko, who had some nimble muscles in his face, raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Okay, that's weird,” he said to Maya. “Did one of us just make a really loud noise or something?”

“One of them's coming over,” said Maya. “Oh boy, the Dolphin himself. And what's her name, that really blond girl.”

“Cécile,” said Valko. “Wonder what they want.”

Well, they didn't want Valko, apparently. The Dolphin and Cécile sailed up to the two of them but did not so much as glance in Valko's direction. The Dolphin just passed a lazy hand over the top of his burnished hair and gave Maya an assessing sort of smile, the slightest bit vague around the edges.

“You're the new girl, I think,” he said. And then he sniffed the air again. “From the United States.”

“Hello,” said Maya.

“How do you like Paris?” said Cécile, coming up behind him.

“It's beautiful,” said Maya, a bit distracted by the sarcastic waves she could feel flowing in her direction from Valko.

The Dolphin and Cécile stood there for a moment, looking at her, and then Cécile pulled out a printed card from her bag and handed it over in one smooth, graceful motion, almost as if her hands had nothing to do with the rest of her, and then the two of them drifted back
to the rest of their people.

Maya gave herself a little shake, like a rabbit once the fox has faded back into the woods.

“Did you hear all that snuffling?” said Valko. “I have a cold, and I'm quieter than that. I mean, what was
that
all about?”

“No idea,” said Maya, and then she looked down at the card in her hands. “I'm invited to something. A party. In October. Weird.”

The bell was ringing already, so she stuffed the invitation into her notebook and shrugged. It wasn't as if her name were actually written on the card; it must have been a whim that had come over them, the Dolphin and Cécile. Those pretty faces, sniffing the air as if it carried some trace of her. She didn't like that at all. It was beyond weird, when you thought about it. It was out-and-out creepy.

Then a couple of days later Maya put her hand deep into her coat pocket, looking for change, and found the little round container of
anbar
still hiding there. As soon as she touched it, the memory came flooding back, of the moment when her hand had just shot right out and plucked the case off the young Fourcroy's table. Now the pretty box of
anbar
seemed to burn her fingers. She was so surprised to find it in her hand, in fact, that she dropped it right onto the floor and then had to stoop very fast to pick it up before her mother could come back into the hall and start asking questions.

She had never stolen anything before. It didn't seem like the sort of thing she would do. And yet somehow she had done it! The fragrant little box almost winked at her as she hid it behind the books on her bedroom shelf.
What else was she capable of?
she wondered.

The Dolphin's crowd no longer sniffed the air, the next day, when Maya stood in the school yard. Whatever aura she had held for them for those few days seemed to have evaporated into thin air. Odd, though, all the same.

Her mother was fighting off a touch of the flu. That's what her father said the morning her mother didn't even get out of bed to see James and Maya off to school. Maya's fingers itched with worry. She actually had to go back into her bedroom for a moment and run her hands lightly over the little cabinet she was making—the salamander was very good now; she had used some of James's modeling clay, and the tiny head turned at just the right quizzical angle—before she could face breakfast and school.

“Don't fret about it,” said her father, though there was a little crease of trouble on his forehead. “I'm taking the day off from the lab. She'll be drowning in chicken broth and attention.”

Maya could hardly look at him, because otherwise she knew the knot of worry in her might just fly out all over the place, and then what would they do? James had to be gotten cheerfully to school. That's the way they ran things on days like this, Maya and her father. Still, it was like finding the same old load of bricks on your shoulders again, the weight you thought you had finally shed.

But when she climbed the stairs at the end of the day (a few minutes later than usual, because there were math problems to copy out from Valko's notebook), Maya caught the scent of something encouraging: the faint aroma of baking. Half a flight later she knew the baking must be happening in her own apartment, because the smell had evolved into something more specific: chocolate chip cookies, and the Davidsons were the only family in the building that ever baked something as American as chocolate chip cookies. More specifically, only Maya's mother ever baked them. Maya's feet fairly danced up the last dozen steps to the door. Everything must be all right, if her mother was baking again.

But it was the inexpressive back of Cousin Louise she found bent over a tray of cookies when Maya came sailing through the apartment door. James was standing there, too, a toothpick in one solemn hand.

“We're seeing if they're done,” he said to Maya.

“But where's Mom?”

“Mom got the recipe out, but then she had to go to the hospital,” said James.

“What?” said Maya. “What?”

“Maya,
bonjour
,” said Cousin Louise, turning to look at Maya with her bland eyes. “You are not to worry, says your father. The hospital is just a precaution. And James wanted very much to continue with the cookies, though I am not really qualified.”

“We're making cookies for that uncle,” said James. “In the Salamander House.”

“What?” said Maya again. Her school backpack clonked heavily to the floor.

“Because we ate his candy up,” said James. “Remember how we went to see him and ate all his dessert up? I told Mom about that, and she said we should bake him something. And so we were going to do it today, and then she had to go for a checkup.”

“A checkup?” said Maya. The happiness had drained out of her so abruptly that she felt a little dazed.

“At the doctor's,” said James, and he poked another cookie with his toothpick.

“You don't have to test cookies like that,” said Maya, distracted. “If they look done, they're done.”

“Cousin Louise said perhaps we should be extra careful.”

“It's that I know nothing about cookies,” said Cousin Louise in French. “Now that you are here, Maya, we can go to this other Fourcroy you have found.”

“
But what is wrong with Mom?
” said Maya.

Cousin Louise and James both turned away from the cookies to look at Maya. Cousin Louise's expression was unreadable, but James looked startled.

“It's a checkup, right?” he said. “Like when you get the plastic dinosaur from the treasure chest afterward. Only I don't think they give dinosaurs to grown-ups.”

“Your father said not to worry,” said Cousin Louise.

Maya had to go out into the hall for a moment to bite back a lot of loud shouting words. Not worry! Maybe that worked on little kids like James. Maybe if you spent your life being almost invisible, like Cousin Louise, you eventually weren't able to tell the difference anymore between empty words and the truth. When she was finally able to come back in, Cousin Louise and James were already putting the cookies into a tin.

“Time for us to go,” said Cousin Louise. “We have worked it out, James and I. I am not going to do any talking.”

“She's our nanny,” said James, looking smug. “Our
nounou
.” A lot of the kids in his class were picked up by nannies at the end of the day.

“What I want is to look, quietly,” said Cousin Louise.

Maya felt tired already. They were really planning to take cookies to the purple-eyed Fourcroy in the Salamander House? All right, then; why not.

James carried the tin of cookies; Maya sagged along behind, worrying about their mother. And Cousin Louise walked in their shadow, and her thoughts, if she had any, were inscrutable.

At the entrance to the Salamander House, however, Maya felt a papery hand tighten itself around her arm.

“Familiar,” said Cousin Louise. She was looking up at the door, the building, the carvings crawling everywhere. “Look at her, for instance!”

It was the young woman whose head looked out over the street from the top of the door. The expression on her stone face was sad and wise, somehow; she hardly seemed to notice the fox draped around her neck.

“It's a Maya statue,” said James proudly. “See?”

“Strange,” said Cousin Louise in a thoughtful voice. “
Et là
, the little salamander on the door. I have seen it before, I think.”

Maya opened her mouth to point out that a similar salamander had looked out at them from the frame of the Cabinet of Earths, but the words refused to be spoken out loud. She had to close her mouth with the faintest little pop, like the noise a fish makes when it smacks its lips underwater. So instead she stepped up to the sill and typed in the code for the door: 1901.

“What if he's not home?” said James. “Will we leave the cookies here anyway, if the uncle-cousin's not home?”