Spellbound: The Books of Elsewhere (10 page)

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Authors: Jacqueline West

BOOK: Spellbound: The Books of Elsewhere
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“I was looking for you, naturally,” Rutherford answered. “My school schedule just came in the mail, and I thought we could compare and see if we’ll be having any classes together.”
“It came already?” Olive cast a dismayed glance at the paper in Rutherford’s long, paint-speckled fingers. “But school is weeks away!”
“I’ll have American history, Spanish, general math, art, and physical science during the first semester,” Rutherford recited. “I’m a bit disappointed that it has to be physical science instead of geology or biology; even botany would be more useful to my possible future career, but I suppose that they don’t allow those kinds of choices until high school . . .” he rattled on, jiggling from foot to foot.
As horrible as the thought of school was, it couldn’t quite push the other thoughts out of Olive’s mind. Her eyes drifted back to the windows of the big stone house, flicking from room to room: the steamy kitchen window, the stained glass of the dining room, the gauzy curtains of her own bedroom, the little round porthole of the attic. Somewhere, behind one of those watching windows, was the book that she was looking for.
“Have you found it yet?” Rutherford asked suddenly.
Olive jumped. For a second, she was sure Rutherford had been reading her mind—but maybe he’d only been reading her face. “Found what?” she asked warily.
“The grimoire,” said Rutherford, jiggling with increasing excitement. “Have you finished searching the library?”
Olive hesitated. Something that didn’t make sense—something she’d been too distracted by the promise of the spellbook to notice—rushed to the forefront of her mind, like a roadside construction worker waving a PROCEED WITH CAUTION! sign.
“Why are you so interested?” she asked slowly. “And how did you know about
grimoires
in the first place?”
Rutherford blinked back at her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, how did you know that I should look for a book of spells? You said, ‘Every witch has one.’ How did you know that?”
For the first time since Olive had met him, Rutherford seemed to be searching for the right words. He stopped jiggling. His eyes drifted away from Olive’s, toward the rustling lilac leaves behind her. “Well,” he said, speaking much more slowly, so that his words came out only slightly faster than most people’s “. . . The practice of witchcraft was apparently quite common in the Middle Ages. Stories of magic and sorcery, like Merlin and Morgan le Fay, and . . .” He trailed off, his skinny fingers turning the class schedule around and around. “Later, when writing became more widespread, witches were known to keep books of spells, but most of them would never let you—I mean, let anyone else—” Rutherford broke off again. When he began the next sentence, his voice had resumed its usual pace. “
Grimoire
is a French word; it comes from
grammaire
, which is French for
grammar,
so the word
grimoire
really implies a set of rules for language.” His eyes flicked back to Olive’s. Behind their smudged lenses, they looked wide and slightly alarmed, but more than anything else, they looked
hopeful
. “Have you found it?” he asked.
Olive looked back at him for a long moment. “No,” she said at last. “I’ve been looking. But I haven’t found it.”
Rutherford nodded. “If you do find it, I would really like to see it. Even just as a historical artifact, it would be fascinating . . .”
Olive shuffled her feet in the long grass. “
If
I find it,” she said noncommittally, looking away from him again.
“Well, I’d better be going,” said Rutherford after a brief pause. “The silver paint on my model of Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, should be dry by now. I’ve got to add the details.”
And with that, Rutherford whirled around and hurried along the side of the house toward the street. His whole body seemed to be leaning forward, as though his head was trying to move even faster than his legs could go. Olive wondered if he might topple headfirst over his own feet, but he made it safely to the sidewalk before striding out of sight.
She turned back to the dark windows of the old stone house. The book was inside the house somewhere. And only the house knew where it was. If the spellbook was bait, then Olive was the fish, and the house was slowly reeling her in.
9
 
“S
TOP PULLING,” WHINED Morton as Olive tugged him toward the painting that led to the attic’s entrance.
“I have to pull you or you won’t get through,” Olive argued. “Now hurry up.”
“I can hurry without you pulling,” Morton muttered.
They were in the pink bedroom, very late at night, where the scent of mothballs and ancient potpourri floated through the damp midnight air. Through the lace curtains, the dim light from the streetlamps filtered like white mist, and if she squinted, Olive could just make out the stern faces of two towering stone soldiers on either side of the massive arch in the painting that led up to the attic.
This painting was different from Aldous’s other works. It didn’t take you Elsewhere—it was not a little world that you could climb into. Stepping through the frame, you found yourself not in an ancient city at all, but in the dark entryway to the house’s attic—the attic where Aldous had created all of his paintings a very, very long time ago.
And now, from the other side of the frame, Olive could feel something tugging at her, like an invisible thread woven through her rib cage—something that she couldn’t help but follow.
In turn, Olive tugged at Morton, who wriggled in her grip like a greased piglet.
Harvey, still in Sir Walter Raleigh mode, waited in front of the painting, his eyes two bright glints in the darkness. “Ready, Your Majesty?”
“Ready.” Olive took hold of Harvey’s tail and kept her tight grip on Morton’s wrist, even though Morton squirmed grumpily. Then, together, the three stepped through the frame and into the even deeper darkness. As her eyes adjusted, Olive picked out a thin strip of moonlight that ran along the bottom edge of an old wooden door. Above it, a round brass doorknob gleamed dully. Olive felt a cool draft rush over her skin as she groped through the alcove for the doorknob and pulled open the heavy attic door.
As soon as a gap appeared, Harvey bolted up the steps, shouting, “The Ark Raleigh enters the mouth of the Orinoco! Come, men, El Dorado surely lies ahead!”
Olive followed, climbing slowly. She hadn’t planned to come back so soon. Without the spectacles, she couldn’t get into the attic on her own, and the memory of her long night trapped up there with the snaking, shifting shadows of Aldous McMartin was enough to crush her curiosity down to a nub. In fact, Olive thought she might have lost the nub entirely. But now as she climbed the creaky wooden stairs, she realized that her heart was pounding not with fear, but with excitement. Fear was just the edge that kept the excitement sharp. As she climbed, Olive felt that once again she was being pulled forward, very, very gently, like something at the end of a long, fragile string.
“You can let go now,” huffed Morton, managing to yank his hand away from hers at last.
They reached the top of the stairs. The attic was dim, with the round window high above the backyard letting in a beam of moonlight. Olive struck a match and lit the candle she had brought along, tucked in the waistband of her pajamas. In its flickering light, she glanced around at the jumble of furniture and canvases, the circle of mirrors still standing where she had arranged them—and, just as she remembered it, Aldous’s tall, paint-spattered easel, draped with a piece of trailing cloth.
Harvey darted forward and bounced from an old sofa into the rafters. “Clear sailing, men! Land ho! Chips ahoy!” he bellowed. “Hoist the mainsail and raise the roof!”
“Not so loud, Harvey!” Olive hissed, but the cat was already leaping out of sight through the shadowy beams.
Olive set the candle down on an old flat-topped steamer trunk. Its gold beams threw wavering shadows against the walls; dark, twisted versions of the sewing mannequins and cabinets and coat trees danced in the corners, looming and fading. Winding her way between the furnishings, Olive headed toward the attic’s far corner, where a stack of painted canvases leaned against the wall.
“Morton, come look!” she called softly over her shoulder.
Morton, who had been rolling a small, battered cannon back and forth, got up rather reluctantly and shuffled across the floor to crouch beside her.
They looked through the stack of paintings one at a time, squinting and tilting the canvases, sometimes leaning forward until they accidentally bumped their heads together and gave each other irritated scowls before setting back to work. There were snowy villages and grand manor gardens, peaceful farmyards, and the old wooden barn where Olive first found Baltus, Aldous McMartin’s big, mostly friendly dog. But there were no books—at least, not any that they could see from the outside.
“Harvey?” Olive called. “I mean, Sir Walter Raleigh? Can you come and help us, please?”
There was a soft swishing sound from the ceiling, and the cat dropped from the rafters onto the floor before them. “Have you found it, Your Majesty? El Dorado, the golden city?”
“What is he talking about?” said Morton, not quite under his breath.
“Just pretend you understand,” Olive whispered back. Then, looking into Harvey’s fanatical green eyes, she said, “We might have found it. We just need to look in all of these.”
Harvey glanced at the stack of paintings, raised his chin, and sweepingly offered Olive his tail. Olive took it. With her other hand, she held on to Morton, and until the candle in the attic had almost burned out, they climbed in and out of Elsewhere.
They rambled through snowy villages and manor gardens, peaceful farmyards and lonely valleys. They pelted each other with snowballs that dissolved backward into the sparkling drifts, and picked flowers that flew back onto their stems. They were chased by a flock of honking geese who turned out not to be
nearly
as peaceful as they looked. And, in a painting of a willow-lined river, Olive tripped over her own feet and knocked Morton off of his, so that they both splashed face-first into the chilly green water. But nowhere did they find a book of spells.
They crawled back through the frame around the painted river, Harvey flouncing, Olive dripping, and Morton—though he was already completely dry again—scowling violently.
“I’m tired,” he announced as Olive wrung the water out of the cuffs of her pajamas and Harvey bounded back toward the rafters, shouting, “Man the manropes! Moor the moorings!”
“You don’t
get
tired,” Olive reminded him.
“I’m tired of
looking
.” Morton sat down on the floor and flopped backward against a rolled-up rug. “We’ve been looking and looking. We’ve checked every single painting in this stupid old attic, and we haven’t found anything.”
“But we’re so close, Morton,” said Olive. “I can tell.” Even by the light of the dwindling candle, she could see the skepticism on Morton’s face.
“How do you know?”
“I’m not sure, but I can just—I can
feel
it. It’s like . . . like the house is guiding me.”
Morton looked at her as dubiously as if Olive had said she’d been taking advice from a ham sandwich.
Olive sighed. “Maybe we missed it somehow. Maybe we need to check these paintings again.”
“Well, you can check them again without me.”
“But two eyes are better than one,” Olive pointed out. “I mean, four eyes are better than two. I mean—”
“It’s two
heads,
” said Morton. “And besides, if
you
want to find this book so much, you should do it yourself. Paddle your own canoe. That’s what Lucy used to say.”
“What does that even
mean
?” asked Olive. “And who is Lucy?”
“She’s my—” said Morton, and stopped suddenly as a funny look dropped over his face. “She was . . . my sister.”
“Morton—you remembered her name!” Olive jumped to her feet. A few droplets of water pattered onto the floor. “Don’t you want to find this book, and see if it’ll help us find out more? Maybe it has a spell to bring back lost memories, or to make a compass that finds missing people or something!”
Morton paused for a moment. His expression, when he turned to Olive, was hard to read. “Maybe you shouldn’t find it,” he said.
“What?”
“It belongs to
them,
” said Morton. “So . . . maybe you shouldn’t find it.”
“But the McMartins are gone now,” Olive argued. “You
know
that. You were
there
.”
Morton stared at her doubtfully, his pursed lips twisting to one side.
“Morton . . .” Olive began, but Morton had hopped up and was stalking away toward the steps.
“I’m not going to look with you anymore,” he said over one shoulder. “And I don’t think you should look anymore either. Sir Walter?” he called toward the rafters. “Come and take me home.”
“Aye-aye, Sir Pillowcase!” Harvey swung from the rafters to the back of an old chair, catapulting off the cushions and landing at Morton’s feet. The two of them started down the stairs. Olive had no choice but to grab the candle and hurry after them.

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