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Authors: Jacqueline West

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BOOK: Spellbound: The Books of Elsewhere
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They began their search in the guest bathroom, which had only one small painting. With Olive holding on to Harvey’s tail, and Morton holding on to Olive, they tugged each other through the frame. The woman in the painting, who was perpetually posing with one toe in the water of an old-fashioned bathtub, let out a little shriek when a splotchy cat and two pajama-clad children dropped through the frame onto her slippery tile floor. She plunked down into the water, towel and all.
“Pardon us, good lady,” said Harvey grandly, “but we must explore your bathroom, for the glory of England.”
“What!?” bubbled the woman.
Olive crouched down to look under the bathtub while Morton checked the corners. The room inside the painting was quite small and bare, and in just a few seconds, the three explorers were clambering back out of the frame, leaving the dripping lady huffing angrily behind them.
“No book there,” whispered Olive. “Let’s check the blue room.”
The blue bedroom was dark and grim, full of things like hat racks and shoe stands and dressers with rows of heavy, creaking drawers. On one wall there hung a painting of a ballroom where people in evening clothes danced to the music of an orchestra. But when Harvey, Olive, and Morton came stumbling through the frame, the people stopped dancing. A few last tweets and blats came from the orchestra as one by one the musicians lost their places and gaped at the intruders.
“Be at your ease,” said Harvey with a generous wave of his paw. “No doubt you are awestruck by the presence of the great Sir Walter Raleigh and the most splendid Queen Elizabeth.” He gestured to Olive, who tugged uncomfortably at her penguin pajamas. Harvey glanced over his shoulder at Olive and Morton, and said out of the corner of his mouth, “These ruffians know not how to bow to their queen. Shall we have them all beheaded, Your Majesty?”
Olive shook her head vehemently. “Um—actually,” she began, while all the painted eyes of the crowd swiveled toward her, “excuse us, but have any of you seen a book in this room?”
The crowd started to murmur.
“I saw one!” shouted one man from the corner, pointing, but the book he’d seen turned out to be only the big book of sheet music on top of the piano.
“I saw one too!” shouted another man, but he turned out to be talking about the same book as the first.
“Okay,” said Olive loudly as more and more people joined in, proclaiming that they too had seen the book of sheet music on top of the piano, “has anyone seen a
different
book?
Not
the one on top of the piano?”
There were some confused mumblings, but no one else spoke up.
“All right, then,” said Olive. “Thank you for your help.”
“Jiminy,” whispered Morton as they landed one by one on the blue bedroom’s carpet. “Those people weren’t very bright.”
“You speak the truth, Sir Pillowcase,” Harvey agreed.
“Well, they’re just paintings,” said Olive. “They’ve never been out of that one room. I’m sure they don’t have to do much heavy thinking.”
Morton looked down at his toes and didn’t answer.
“I mean,” Olive hurried on, “they’re not like
you,
or like the other people Aldous trapped in the paintings, who used to be real, but who aren’t—I mean, you haven’t always been just—I mean—”
But Morton was already stalking across the room toward the polished wooden door of the closet.
“Morton . . .” Olive pleaded.
Morton ignored her. He stepped into the closet and slammed the door behind him.
Olive sucked in a breath through her teeth. Had her parents heard? She and Harvey exchanged glances.
“I shall ensure that no adversarial vessels have entered the straits, Your Majesty,” the cat whispered, dashing out into the hall.
“Morton,” said Olive to the closed closet door. “Come out of there.”
There was no answer. Olive pulled on the knob, but the door wouldn’t budge. Morton was obviously holding it tight on the other side. “Come
on,
Morton,” she said. “We’re wasting time.”
The closet was silent for a moment. It seemed to be thinking. Then a muffled voice from inside said, “Why can’t I just stay out here? If the Old Man is gone, how come we all can’t just come out again?”
“Morton, you’re not
alive
.” Olive paused. “Anymore.” The closet didn’t argue, so Olive went on. “People would notice that you don’t get any older, and your skin looks funny, and you don’t eat anything. And bright light burns you. You wouldn’t be safe out here.”
“I could live in the closet,” said Morton stubbornly. “Or everybody from the painting could just live in this house with you.”
Olive tried to imagine this. “I don’t think that would work,” she said at last. “My parents would tell all the scientists from the college about you, and they’d all want to do tests on you and dissect you and genetically clone-splice you or something.”
The closet got very quiet.
Olive leaned her head against the wooden door. “Morton . . .” she began, as gently as she could. “I—”
But his voice interrupted her. “There’s a painting in here.”
Olive frowned. “Why would anyone hang a painting in a closet?”
“It isn’t hanging. It’s leaning. I can feel it. Look.”
The closet door swung open. Morton stepped out of the darkness, shoving aside a few musty wool coats and pointing to the closet’s back corner. There, lit by a beam of watery moonlight, a picture frame glinted around a painted canvas.
On their knees, Olive and Morton dragged the painting out into the blue room for a better look. Inside the heavy frame was a picture of a ruined castle, its stones crumbling beneath a night sky.
“Do you think it’s one of
his
paintings?” Morton whispered.
“Well, I know how we can find out for sure,” Olive whispered back as Harvey swaggered into the bedroom to announce that the coast was clear.
A moment later, the three of them were climbing through the picture frame, into a cool, damp, mossscented night. So it
was
one of Aldous’s paintings—one that Olive had never explored before. While they teetered across the mossy rocks that led down to the moat, she wondered how long it had been waiting in the closet, and who had put it there in the first place, in a spot where no one would ever get to look at it.
The trio paused at the drawbridge. Harvey gazed at the crumbling stone walls before them and shook his head sadly. “The years have not been kind to Windsor Castle.”
“I don’t think it’s supposed to be—” said Olive.
But Harvey was already marching over the drawbridge, with Morton at his heels. Olive wobbled across the slippery planks behind them.
Inside the castle was a wide, stone-paved courtyard. If the courtyard had ever had a roof, it wasn’t there anymore. Above the edges of the crumbling walls hung a dark sky spotted by a few changeless silver stars.
“Ah, what glorious memories Windsor Castle holds, even in its ruins!” said Harvey, bounding away across the paving stones. “What pageantry! What duels! What executions!”
As Harvey leaped up the steps to the parapet, reminiscing happily to himself, Olive and Morton searched the courtyard’s chilly corners. There was no sign of an important book anywhere. A big, empty, roofless room in a big, empty, crumbling castle seemed like an awfully unlikely place to leave an important book anyway.
“It’s not here. I’m sure of it,” said Olive with a sigh as a flagstone she’d shoved aside wiggled itself back into place. “Sir Walter Raleigh! We’re ready to go!”
As Olive and Morton passed through the arch leading to the drawbridge, Olive thought she heard something clatter in the distance behind them—something that sounded like a pebble kicked across the flagstones. A second later, she heard the soft rattle of the pebble rolling back to its original spot.
“Harvey? Is that you?” she called.
Harvey’s green eyes blinked up from the darkness near her shin. “No, Your Majesty. Do you not recognize Sir Walter Raleigh, your most loyal knight?”
“I meant, did you make that noise?”
“What noise, Majesty?”
They all listened. There was no sound—nothing but the soft swish of the water in the moat rippling against its banks.
“I hear nothing, Your Majesty,” said Harvey.
“Me neither,” said Morton.
“Your Majesty
.
”
Olive narrowed her eyes at Morton. “Thanks,
Sir Pillowcase
. Let’s go look in the next room.”
With Harvey leading the way and Morton and Olive hurrying behind, they crossed over the drawbridge to the mossy bank. Olive took a last look back at the castle, standing silent and dark under the night sky. Then, together, they climbed out of the painting, shoving it carefully back into the closet and closing the door.
The trio slipped along the silent hallway, where traces of moonlight turned the walls to silver, and headed into the lavender room. This room had once been Olive’s favorite. It had seemed sweet-smelling and delicate and pretty—just like Annabelle. Now Annabelle’s empty portrait hung like a menacing reminder above the chest of drawers. Although none of the guest bedrooms were used by the Dunwoodys, the lavender room felt especially cold and deserted, as though sunlight never reached it at all. Harvey leaped onto the chest of drawers, Olive held his tail, Morton held her foot, and they all crawled through the frame and landed, one by one, on the pillowy couch inside the painting.
“This is where Annabelle McMartin’s portrait was painted, back when she was young,” Olive explained, wondering why she felt compelled to whisper. “It’s the downstairs parlor of this house. A long, long time ago.”
Hesitantly, Olive climbed off of the couch and stepped toward the tea table. Everything stood at the ready: the cups and saucers, the dish of sugar cubes piled as high as ever. Annabelle’s full teacup sat just where she had left it. Olive touched the delicate porcelain. It was still hot. With a sudden shiver, Olive glanced around the room. It seemed that Annabelle would appear at any moment with her soft brown hair, her string of pearls, her gentle, too-sweet voice. Olive could almost feel the chilly touch of Annabelle’s fingers closing around her hand. She turned back toward Morton.
Morton was making one slow revolution, like a wind-up ballerina in a jewelry box. “I’ve been here,” he whispered. “Not the painting. The
real
here.” He wandered away to the right.
Olive skirted around the tea table, where Harvey was practicing fencing positions with a butter knife, and started looking under the furniture. Nothing. Next, she examined the shelves, but they held only delicate curios, little vases and seashells, and froufrou souvenirs. Just to see what would happen, she checked the doors. They had been painted shut, but not in the way that things are usually painted shut, when a little bit of paint dribbles into a gap and makes things stick together. These doors had been
painted shut
. They didn’t move or rattle their hinges when she pushed them. The doorknob didn’t even turn in her hand. With a discouraged sigh, Olive turned back toward the room.
Morton was standing beside the fireplace. At first Olive thought he might have fallen asleep on his feet, he was standing so still—but of course Morton didn’t have to sleep. His back was to her, and he was huddled over something that he held in both hands so that Olive couldn’t see what he was looking at until she was peeping right over his shoulder.
It was a photograph: a small black-and-white photograph in a silver frame. It had obviously been part of the row of photographs lined up on the mantelpiece. Olive looked at the other photos in the row. With a tiny shudder, she recognized the photograph of Aldous McMartin that she had found in a dresser drawer in the lavender room, just outside of this very painting. Next to Aldous’s portrait was a photo of a pretty but sour-faced little girl sitting between two rather dim-witted-looking grown-ups: Annabelle with her parents, Olive was sure. This was followed by several photographs of people Olive didn’t recognize.
She glanced back down at the picture in Morton’s hands. It was another family portrait, probably taken in the 1910s or 1920s. The men wore suspenders; the women had square, ribbon-trimmed collars. Unlike in the other pictures, everyone in this photo was smiling. Two beaming parents were gathered with a teenaged girl and a little boy. The mother’s eyes were big and gentle and turned down at the corners with her smile. The father’s face was round and friendly. The teenaged girl had a face that was angular and smooth, and her smile was a bit stiff, as though it had been stored in a refrigerator until it set. She reminded Olive of someone. But it was her brother who caught Olive’s eyes and held them. He was a little boy with a round, pale face. A little boy with tufty, whitish hair. A little boy who, for once, wasn’t wearing a long white nightshirt.
“Hey, that’s you!” she exclaimed.
Morton didn’t answer.
“Is that your family?”
Morton nodded.
“Wow,” Olive breathed. They were both quiet for a minute, studying the faces caught in fading shades of gray. “It must have been taken not too long before—I mean, you look almost exactly the same. Except in different clothes.”
BOOK: Spellbound: The Books of Elsewhere
11.44Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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