The Grimm Legacy (28 page)

“Hey, Elizabeth.” It was Aaron. He was sitting cross-legged on a flying carpet.

“Aaron! What are you doing there?”

“I just was wondering, what are you up to?”

“I’m doing my math homework, why?”

“Want to come for a ride?”

“You mean now?”

“No, yesterday. Of course I mean now.”

“Um . . . sure.” I put on an extra sweater and hauled the window open wide.

Aaron mushed the carpet up against the side of the building and held out his hand. “Careful,” he said.

His hand was cold but steady. I stepped out and sat down quickly. The carpet wobbled like a water bed.

“Okay?” asked Aaron. “It’s easier to keep your balance if you stay low.” He sent the carpet into an upward glide.

I lay down and looked up at the sky. A fullish moon made the clouds glow. Aaron lay down beside me on his side. I turned over on my side too. He put his arm over me awkwardly, then took it away. After a minute I moved back and leaned against him.

“Are you warm enough? I brought blankets.”

“I’m fine. Where are we going?” I asked.

“Anywhere you like. Green-Wood Cemetery? Battery Park? The Hudson?”

“How about The Cloisters?”

“You got it.”

The wind blew my hair back and ruffled the carpet fringe. I turned over on my stomach and peered over the edge, watching the buildings zip past underneath us. Aaron put his arm over my back again.

“So what did you leave as a deposit? For the carpet, I mean.”

“My sense of humor.”

“Come on. That’s the oldest joke in the repository.”

“Naturally it would be, since I’ve lost my sense of humor. I can’t tell a funny joke now, can I?”

“Your sense of humor doesn’t seem any different to me. What
did
you leave as a deposit?”

“My powers of persuasion.”

“No, you didn’t. You got me to come with you.”

“That didn’t take much persuasion.”

“Come on. What was it really? Your firstborn again?”

“No way. I’m never leaving my firstborn again as long as I live. That was too horrible.”

“Yeah, I saw,” I said. “It looked so . . . vulnerable.”

Aaron nodded uncomfortably. He moved his arm away. I changed the subject. “What’s that down there? The East River?”

“No, silly, the Hudson. I guess that means you didn’t get your sense of direction back?”

“Doc says they’re working on it. The ring helps, but it’s not the same thing,” I said.

“Too bad.”

“Yeah. It’s okay, though, my sense of direction was never all that hot . . .” We passed over a necklace of lights strung across the river. “What’s that down there?”

“The George Washington Bridge.”

“Oh, of course . . . So if you got your firstborn back, you must have returned the Snow White mirror?”

“Yeah—I couldn’t get that horrible thing out of my bedroom fast enough,” said Aaron. “Here we are. Hang on, I’m taking us down.”

Peeking out again, I saw The Cloisters—the museum of medieval art that sits on a hilltop in Fort Tryon Park, at the northern end of Manhattan. Aaron put his arm around me and held me tight against the carpet as we banked and glided down toward the castle-like cluster of buildings. We landed with a gentle bump in the high garden overlooking the river.

The still air was mild after the wind of our flight. The moon made the bare trees look as if they’d been cast in silver. Shadows played across Aaron’s face, emphasizing his cheekbones. His lips were a beautiful shape.

He brought out a thermos. “Want some cocoa?”

“Sure, thanks.”

I sniffed at my cocoa. There was something in it besides chocolate. Cinnamon? No, vanilla? Not quite . . . “What is this smell?” I asked. “You didn’t enchant the cocoa, did you?”

He gave an evil chuckle. “What, you’re worried it’s my secret aphrodisiac? And now that I’ve got you alone . . .”

My heart pounded. I hit him on the shoulder. “Come on, what is it really?”

“Ginger.”

“Oh.”

We sipped in silence for a while, watching the lights across the river.

“So what did you really leave as a deposit?”

“My ambition.”

“You? Never.”

“My sense of t-t-timing?”

I shook my head. “Uh-uh.”

“My most precious memory—of the moment I met you?”

“Fine, don’t tell me.”

He put down his cocoa mug, took the empty mug out of my hand, and put it down. He leaned forward—much too far forward—and fell, taking me down with him. “My sense of balance,” he whispered into my hair.

I pushed at him. “Ow, get off, you’re on my arm.”

He shifted his weight but didn’t move away. “My inhibitions,” he whispered into the other ear.

Then he kissed me.

He tasted of chocolate and ginger and apples. Spring air, books. New grass. Magic.

“Hey, you’re not bad at that,” I said.

“Neither are you.”

He kissed me again. Then I kissed him.

“You know,” I said, “you almost let a rat eat me.”

“I’m glad it didn’t.”

Shadows went across the moon. I pulled a blanket around me. We kissed again.

The trip home went by like a flash. I lay back in Aaron’s lap looking at the sky while he stroked my hair back from my forehead. His hands were cold, or maybe my face was hot.

“Aaron?”

“Mmm?”

“What was it really? The deposit.”

“My color vision.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I figured I don’t use it much at night anyway.”

“Oh. So why didn’t you just say so?”

“Because you’re so much fun to tease.”

“Oh,
I’m
fun to tease?”

“Yes, you’re fun to tease.”

“Mmm.” We kissed again, this time upside down.

The carpet slowed down and gave a little bob. Aaron looked up. “Too bad. We’re here already,” he said.

I sat up. There was my room, with my desk lamp still on. I knelt and pulled the window open. “Well, thanks for the ride,” I said. “This was . . . fun.”

“Yeah, it was.” He put out his hand and helped me through the window—which wasn’t strictly necessary, but I didn’t mind.

I put my head back out the window. “Bye, Aaron,” I said.

“Bye, Elizabeth. Maybe we can hang out in the daylight sometime,” said Aaron. “You know, I don’t think I know the color of your eyes.”

“Yours are brown. With gigantic red blood vessels at the corners. And you have cavernous nostrils, they look like a bear’s den, and a monster hangnail on your right index finger. Or is it your left?”

“Shut up,” he said, kissing me one last time.

I leaned out the window and watched him until the carpet vanished over the rooftops.

I would like to say the prince and princess lived happily ever after, along with the swineherd and the scullery maid. And, in fact, things did get easier for Anjali and Marc—thanks to Jaya, who spilled the beans by answering Anjali’s phone in front of their parents and telling Anjali her “boyfriend” was calling. After some recriminations—Mr. and Mrs. Rao thought Anjali should have mentioned Marc’s existence herself—they invited him over for dinner and pronounced him a “nice young man.”

“They’re just using reverse psychology,” Jaya told me. “They think Anji’s dating Merritt to rebel, so if they tell her they approve, she’ll get bored and break up with him.”

“How do you know they don’t just actually like Marc?” I said. “He’s pretty likable.”

“I know my parents. They’re crazy for reverse psychology. They’re always trying it on me.”

“Maybe that’s because you’re so perverse.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes you are, silly, you just proved it.”

“I think I know my parents better than you do, Elizabeth Rew!”

“Whatever you say,” I told her. I was glad the Raos allowed Anjali to date Marc, no matter why—and even gladder that she still went to the basketball games with me, even though she no longer needed me for cover.

As for the swineherd and the scullery maid, I was so used to the princess being somebody else, I had trouble getting used to being the heroine of my own story. In a few short weeks, I had gone from having nobody to eat lunch with to having a basketball-game buddy and even—wonder of wonders!—a boyfriend. It took me a while for my self-image to catch up with my new status. But “happily ever after” doesn’t begin to describe it. Not a week goes by when Aaron and I don’t have three or four little squabbles and at least one full-out fight.

Still, for a smug, pigheaded ogre, he’s pretty darn cute, and he hasn’t stuffed me in a paper bag and fed me to a rat again—at least, not yet.

And my sense of direction? I’m still waiting.

a cognizant original v5 release october 09 2010

Acknowledgments

If ever a book had a fairy godmother and a Prince Charming, they were Christina Büchmann and Andrew Nahem. I’m deeply indebted as well to the assorted witches, magicians, and librarians without whom my mice and pumpkins would never have had a chance of transporting anyone anywhere: my editor, Nancy Paulsen; my agent, Irene Skolnick; my mother, brother, father, and stepfather, Alix Kates Shulman, Ted Shulman, Martin Shulman, and Scott York; and David Bacon, Yudhijit Battacharjee, Mark Caldwell, Elizabeth Chavalas, Cyril Emery, Vida Engstrand, Rob Frankel, Erin Harris, John Hart, John Keenum, Katherine Keenum, Sara Kreger, Shanti Menon, Christina Milburn, Friedhilde Milburn, Laura Miller, Laurie Muchnick, Alayne Mundt, Lisa Randall, Maggie Robbins, Bruce Schneier, Jesse Sheidlower, Andrew Solomon, Greg Sorkin, Jaime Wolf, and Hannah Wood. Thanks also to my tenth-grade social studies teacher, the late Ira Marienhoff, who stopped me in the hallway one day with the words, “You! Polly! You look like a young lady who needs a job. Call this number.” And to Stanley Kruger at the New York Public Library, who hired me when I did.