The Sixty-Eight Rooms (5 page)

“I know, Jack. But I just have a feeling that nothing bad will happen. And who knows—whatever is making this happen right now might never happen again. I don’t want to pass up this chance to find out if I can walk right into one of those rooms!”

“But what about the people looking in on the other side?”

“I’ll be really careful. If someone sees me I’ll freeze like a statue. Besides, I bet most people wouldn’t believe their eyes if they saw a miniature human.”

“Okay … but only like five minutes. Remember, the guards might come and catch me, and then you’d be stuck back here by yourself. They could lock you in,” he cautioned.

“They’ll never come this far down the corridor and around that corner,” she reasoned, picking up the key.
The process started, and as before, she was seeing the world from five inches off the floor! Ruthie could barely see the backs of the rooms, they were so high! The first thing she wondered was whether she could put the key in her pocket and still stay small. She tried it and discovered that her clothes, which of course were touching her, were included in the magic.

“Okay, I’m gonna pick you up,” Jack said. He put his hand flat on the floor. She had to actually climb up onto it, the key safely in her pocket. His fingerprints were like corduroy and the creases in his hand were as big as the creases in a sofa cushion. He cupped his palm slightly so she wouldn’t fall out, and she had to rebalance herself as though she were on a trampoline.

“Sorry. I’m trying to move steady,” Jack said. “I can’t believe this; you’re like the size of a gerbil!”

“Just put me on the ledge behind the closest room. I’ll peek in to see if the coast is clear,” Ruthie directed. Jack walked over to a spot behind room E17, which was a sixteenth-century French bedroom.

“Easy now,” Jack said, lowering his hand to the ledge. She climbed out of his giant palm. From this position the distance to the floor looked like the Grand Canyon and the ceiling still looked as far away as the sky. The screws holding the rooms in place were as large as the seats of kitchen stools. The hardest thing about being so small was adjusting to the scale. If she thought about it or looked around too much, she got dizzy.

Room E17 was entered through a small back hallway. “Okay … I’m just gonna walk around the corner and look in,” she said, projecting her tiny voice so he could hear her.

Once she was in this hallway, Jack couldn’t see her and neither could people looking in from the front. (They couldn’t see the lightbulb that loomed over Ruthie’s head, illuminating the space either.) Viewers on the museum side could see only a small portion of this hallway through a doorway at the back of the room. The carved wooden door was left ajar. She leaned forward to have a look into the bedroom and immediately pulled back. She returned to Jack in the corridor. “Whoops. Someone was in the gallery!”

“Did they see you?”

“No, I’m sure they didn’t. I’ll count to ten and look again.” She did and this time it was clear.

As soon as she was all the way into the room Ruthie knew she had made the right decision. She would remember this moment for her whole life, she was certain. The illusion felt complete and perfect; it seemed as though she had left Chicago, the Art Institute and possibly even the twenty-first century.

When Ruthie was little, she had always loved fairy tales. Now that she no longer believed in those stories, she wondered what living in the time of knights and kings and queens might have been like. And here she was standing in a room that looked exactly as she had imagined that
world to look. For the first time in her life, Ruthie felt extraordinary.

It was a relief to be inside a space that was her scale again, and her dizziness lifted. There was a big stained-glass window to her right and a carved stone fireplace to her left. The floor was made of different kinds of wood in squares that formed an elaborate geometric pattern. A beautifully carved stand held a half-finished needlepoint project in front of the window. A three-tiered candelabra with real candles hung from the nineteen-foot (or nineteen-inch) ceiling. The walls were covered with brown and gold wallpaper that had vines and birds all over it.

But the most impressive thing to Ruthie was the giant (to a five-inch-tall girl) canopy bed covered in silvery green silk. This was the same bed she had been enchanted by yesterday. She wanted more than anything to run and jump right into it but she stopped herself. Someone was coming—she could see them just before they saw her. She dashed back into the little hall and waited. Fortunately, she could hear the muffled voices of the people through the glass. “Ooh! Look at this one!” “This is my favorite!” the voices exclaimed.

Finally there was a break in the crowd. Ruthie entered the room again. She walked over to the bed and ran her hand over the silk bedspread, pushing her fingers into it a bit. It was as soft as a real feather bed. She had to remind herself that it
was
real, only miniature.

She couldn’t resist. First she sat on the edge of the bed. It was blissfully soft. Then she picked her feet up, not letting the dirty soles of her shoes touch the beautiful silk. Then she put her head down on the pillow. Her gaze caught the tall canopy over her head and the beamed and painted ceiling beyond.
Why don’t people still live like this?
she wondered.

She turned her head toward the window. The town beyond was painted so beautifully, it looked as though she could wander through its streets. She closed her eyes to imagine what that would be like. Just yesterday she had been wishing something special, something exciting, would happen in her life. Now here she was, a miniature girl in a miniature room from another century. She opened her eyes to see if she was dreaming.
No, it’s real
, she thought, and closed her eyes again.

Suddenly she heard a voice on the other side of the glass. “Mommy, Mommy, c’mere! Look! This one has a little person!”

It was the voice of a little girl, around six years old. Ruthie lay still. She opened one eye. The girl, who was jumping up and down, turned her head away from the room, calling, “Mommy! C’mon!” While the child’s head was turned, Ruthie jumped out of the bed and flew to the door. She ducked into the back hall.

From where she stood, Ruthie could hear the little girl, whose mother had joined her in front of this room.
“But I saw a little doll in this one and now it’s gone!” the girl insisted.

“Sweetheart, there are no dolls in these rooms,” Ruthie heard the mother answer. Finally, after much discussion, they moved on.

Ruthie poked her head back around to Jack’s side of the display. “What happened? Did someone see you?” he asked.

“Just a little girl. But she was really young and I’m sure her mother didn’t believe her,” she answered casually. “Jack, I wish you could have been in there with me. It’s fantastic! I actually got to lie down on the bed! It’s exactly like being in a real room—only much, much better!”

“We should stop and get out of here,” he insisted.

“No, not yet, Jack. I want to see just one more room!”

“Ruthie, it’s way too risky!”

Ruthie was amazed by how the tables had turned. She wondered why he couldn’t see how important this was to her. She tried to understand how he felt, but mostly she thought he was jealous.

“Just one more and then I’ll drop the key. I promise,” she said as convincingly as she could.

“Where is it—the key, I mean?” He sounded panicked.

Ruthie patted her pocket. “Right here—don’t worry. Okay, now let’s go down the hall.” Ruthie started to walk on the little windowsill-like ledge. In her small state there was plenty of room to walk along without feeling as if she were about to fall off a cliff. However, she came to a gap in
the wooden structure that actually measured only half an inch but that presented quite a wide crevasse for her to fall into at her current size. She stopped and looked at Jack, who gazed back at her as if to say,
You need my help for this!
He gingerly picked her up between his thumb and first finger and set her down again. “Thanks, Jack.” She kept going.

Finally she arrived at room E12, an English drawing room from the year 1800. (She remembered this from the wall label.) Ruthie was interested in this one because it had some musical instruments in it. She wanted to see if they would really play.

The room was entered through a side door. Like many of the rooms, this one had a little entry hall that could be only partially seen from the viewing side. She stood in this smaller room while she waited to make sure no one was looking. Under a large black-and-white picture on the wall sat a carved wooden bench, which was right next to the door to the main room. When there was a lull in the voices from the gallery, she walked in.

The room appeared very different in style from room E17; it was smaller, with a lower ceiling, and the walls were painted white. Straight ahead of her was a bay window with a gold-silk-covered window seat that looked out onto a sunny spring garden. On her left was a marble fireplace with tiny blue and white china pieces on the mantel. Just past the fireplace was a harpsichord, and on the window seat a delicate violin sat in its case. Ruthie was about to
take another step when she heard voices. She quickly ducked out of the room and waited again.
This would be so much better if the museum were empty
, she thought.

At last the viewers had passed by. This time she made a beeline for the harpsichord. She placed a finger on one of the keys, softly. The key was stiff but she managed to push it all the way down. It played! It sounded tinny and out of tune, but it was a real harpsichord, all right! She tried a chord.
Wow! Who could possibly have built this so small?

She had to work fast—more people would be coming by. She took two steps over to the window seat and picked up the violin. Her class had taken violin lessons for one semester back in third grade, so she knew how to hold it and use the bow. She made a pass. It squeaked! She made two more. Not bad! But then she heard voices coming again.
Not enough time to put this back in its case! Run!
She sped across the room and out the door just as two elderly women came into view.

“Mary, did you hear something?” one of the women asked.

“Sounded like a mouse!” the other answered.

Ruthie decided she’d better pay more attention to the people in the museum. She walked around to the corridor, where Jack was pacing nervously.

“Jack, listen to this!” She made a couple of squeaks on the violin.

“That’s pretty cool but you’re making me nervous. You should put it back and we should get out of here!”

Ruthie knew he was right. She didn’t want to push her luck. She walked back to the doorway and waited for a good break in the crowd, which was now a serious problem; the museum had filled up fast. When the coast was clear, she placed the violin back in the case, took one last look around and exited.

“Okay, Jack. You can put me on the floor now,” she said, standing on the ledge and facing Jack in the corridor.

Again he held out his hand and she climbed into his palm. She noticed, however, that this time his hand was a little bit clammy. He bent down to the floor and she put her feet over the edge of his palm, like she was getting out of bed. Standing on the floor, she took the key out of her pocket and let it drop. The process worked just as it had before, with the same sensations, the same odd tinkling of the key hitting the floor and expanding to full size.

“Let’s go,” Jack said.

“Jack!” Ruthie looked at him in disbelief. “Don’t forget the key! You know I can’t carry it!”

He paused for a moment. Ruthie could tell he was uneasy; but as she stood there, perfectly fine and unhurt, she watched his caution give way to curiosity. He picked the key up and put it in his pocket.

They made their way back down the corridor and around the corner to where the brooms and boxes were kept. Jack held on to the end of his library card, which he’d left sticking out of the doorjamb, and gently pushed on the door, opening it a sliver at first to make sure they
wouldn’t be noticed. They both squinted in the light of the museum after the darkness of the corridor. Neither of them spoke. They slipped back out into the public space, somewhat dazed at what had just happened. It was the feeling you sometimes get when leaving the darkness of a theater after a really exciting movie—you notice how the world around you is exactly the same as when you went in, only you feel different.

“Let’s look a little longer, Jack,” Ruthie suggested. “I don’t want to leave yet.”

They walked around, and after viewing only a couple of rooms they came face to face with the little girl who had seen Ruthie in the canopy bed. With huge eyes staring, she pointed at Ruthie and shouted to her mom, “That’s the little doll I saw, Mommy! Look! How come she’s big now?”

Ruthie tried to look innocent. Fortunately, the girl’s mother smiled at Ruthie and, taking her daughter by the hand, patiently explained to her that it was only her imagination; the little things in those rooms couldn’t become life-size. Ruthie and Jack knew better than that—but they had no idea how it was possible!