The Metropolitans Read online

  But that was just a daydream. He’d never be that strong. He’d always be the helpless boy who had to be lifted bodily up onto the train by his father because at the last minute he’d refused to go. He’d been so angry and ashamed that he’d hidden his head in his hands while the train pulled out, refusing to join the other children at the windows shouting their good-byes to their parents. Only when the train picked up speed did he realize he had lost his chance to see his parents for the last time. He’d squeezed in between the other children and pasted his hands to the window, but they entered a tunnel and so the glass only gave back his own reflection: the face of a scared and crying boy.

  He blinked at his own reflection in the museum case now and saw the duck lamp. Madge had been right. It was way too small to hold a whole chapter. Still, he used the key Kiku had given him to unlock the case and take it out. It fit in the palm of his hand. The duck’s head was turned back to form the handle, its wide flat tail pierced to hold the wick. It looked like something that had been made for a child. Walt would take it back to show the others even though it didn’t have the chapter inside. He put it in his pocket and was just closing the case when he heard voices.

  “Mr. Jenkins, what have I told you about napping on the job?”

  “Uh . . . that I shouldn’t do it, Miss Fitzbane?”

  “So get up instantly! Have you patrolled the Roman galleries?”

  “Not lately . . .”

  “Then don’t just stand there gawking at me—go to it! Where is your cohort?”

  “My co—?”

  “Mr. Carson?”

  “Uh . . . he’s usually na—patrolling the Egyptian—”

  “I will go check on him. You take the Roman gallery—and make sure you look behind all the statues. I’m afraid those chill-drun Dr. Bean let in might be sneaking around. If you find them, bring them to my office immediately.”

  “Yes, sir . . . uh . . . I mean ma’am.”

  Throughout the conversation, Walt had stood frozen in the shadow of a Roman gladiator, but now, as he heard the guard’s footsteps approaching, he realized he would be caught. He looked around for someplace to hide. He could try standing behind one of the statues, but most of them were missing body parts where his would stick out. If the guard caught him, he would get all of them kicked out before they could find out where the attack was going to take place. The only place he could see big enough to hide was the sarcophagus, but it was covered with a marble lid that must weigh a ton. He’d never be able to move it.

  Try, a voice said inside his head. You’re stronger than you think.

  That’s ridiculous, he thought, but he found himself clutching the edges of the marble lid nonetheless. Maybe if he could just slide it far enough for him to squeeze inside—

  The lid popped up easily in his hands, as if it were the top of a Cracker Jack box. He stared at it dumbfounded and noticed that his hands were covered with that gold paint from the book.

  Could it be—?

  He didn’t have time to wonder. He jumped inside the sarcophagus and pulled the lid over him as quietly as he could, hoping that whatever had given him superhuman strength would last long enough for him to get out.

  * * *

  Joe was in the Egyptian gallery, looking for the falcon sarcophagus. According to the catalogue, it was near the statue of Haremhab, but how was he supposed to know which of these statues was Haremhab? It was too dark to read the little plaques attached to each one, and some of the statues were in pieces. One was the bottom part of a woman’s face carved in yellow stone, her lips so beautifully curved, it seemed she might speak at any moment. It made him uneasy to be in a room with all these things having to do with the dead. It wasn’t just the mummies—those were creepy enough—but as he looked around, he realized that everything was supposed to honor the dead, from the little jars with animal heads to the cunningly crafted model of a boat. They were all supposed to represent the things the dead person had needed in life and would still need in death.

  Was it right, then, Joe wondered as he walked between the rows of tomb offerings, that these things were here and not in the tombs where they had been found? Hadn’t these things been taken from their people just as Joe’s language had been taken from him at the Mush Hole? When he’d gone home the second time he’d run away, he had realized he no longer understood everything his Tóta said to him. It had made Joe feel like a ghost in his own family. But it had also made him, just for a moment, proud that he had moved so far ahead of his family. And he hated the Mush Hole for making him feel that way.

  At the end of the room there was a short, squat statue of a man sitting cross-legged. Joe knelt in front of it and saw that the man held a scroll open on his knees, the surface carved with dozens of those little pictures he’d noticed earlier. More than the tall striding statues and cat-faced gods, this statue felt comfortable to Joe. The broad plain face seemed to smile at Joe as if he’d been waiting here for him. I wonder, Joe thought as he touched the pictures incised into the glossy black stone, what your name was.

  The figures on the scroll began to move beneath Joe’s fingertips. The snake crawled toward a bird that flapped its wings and soared over the head of a man fishing. They formed themselves into words that Joe heard in his head: I was Haremhab, royal scribe of Tutankhamen and Aya and finally king myself.

  Joe rocked himself back on his heels and sat staring at the smiling scribe. “How can I hear you?” Joe asked out loud.

  You have the gift of language, the voice inside his head said. Joe realized that the voice did not belong to the scribe—but it didn’t belong to him either.

  Yes, it does, the voice said. It belongs to who you truly are and who you were always meant to be. You’ve always known that you were special—even when they stole your language. Now all of it belongs to you!

  Joe looked around at the mummies and found he could read the words on their tombs: I was the great king . . . All bow to me . . . I will live forever . . . all boasts.

  None a greater warrior than you, the voice said. And suddenly Joe saw himself in a bright green field, mounted on a horse, a crowd of people in colorful costumes cheering him on as he charged at another knight on horseback. He drove his lance into the knight’s chest and watched as he fell to the ground, and he heard the shouts of the crowd, saw the bright fluttering ribbons that the women showered on him—

  This is what you deserve—fame, honor, love—

  And then he heard a keening cry, and a snow-white falcon landed on his hand. Joe opened his eyes and stood up. He still heard the cry of the falcon. It came from a bronze statue perched on a pedestal. As Joe laid his hand on the bird’s back he heard the voice inside his head say: The chapter is within the falcon. You are the one to find it because it is meant for you alone.

  Before he could object to what the voice was saying, he heard another voice, this one outside his head. “Honest, Miss Fitzbane, there’s no one here. If there were a bunch of kids in the museum, dontcha think me and Jenks woulda noticed?”

  “From the smell of whiskey on your breath, Mr. Carson, I don’t believe you’d notice a stampede of hippopotami. Now, find those children and bring them to me.”

  Joe could hear the guard and Miss Fitzbane heading toward him. He grabbed the falcon and dashed inside the big tomb. He held his breath until Miss Fitzbane and the guard had passed. When they were gone, he started to come out, but then the voice inside his head said: Stay and read the chapter first. After all, you’re the only one who can read it. Why do you need the others?

  Joe could think of half a dozen reasons why he needed Madge and Walt and Kiku, but his hands were already unlocking the mechanism on the falcon’s belly and slipping the pages out.

  * * *

  Kiku found the little okimono crow quickly, but she didn’t go straight back downstairs. It was exciting to have new friends, but she wasn’t used to spend
ing so much time with people. Besides, night was her favorite time at the museum. Often when her father worked late, she would wander through the empty half-lit galleries, able to stand as long as she liked in front of a favorite painting and get lost inside it without worrying about some nosy tourist or, lately, Miss Fitzbane looking at her as if she were planning to steal one of the paintings.

  How could she explain that she was playing her favorite game: vanishing inside a painting? That if she looked long and hard enough at a painting, she began to feel herself dissolving into that world—into the tawny gold wheat fields of a Brueghel, where she could feel the hot sun on her skin and the prickle of rough grass on her back, or onto the deck of a whaler painted by Turner, where she could smell the salt and feel the ocean spray on her face. She could be anyone in these moments—a pampered duchesse or a tired Parisian laundress or Joan of Arc hearing the call to arms. What a relief it was to feel her own self—the bookworm who always knew the answers but was too afraid to raise her hand, the awkward girl shunned by her haughty schoolmates, the girl left behind by her mother because she was too babyish to make the long trip back to Japan, the clumsy daughter who never seemed to do anything good enough for her father—fade away. Just now she would like to forget the girl whose face had become the face of the enemy to all around her.

  She walked slowly past the cases of porcelain vases and statues of Buddhas until she reached her favorite Chinese landscape, Mountain Market, Clearing Mist. There were tiny figures walking along a path at the bottom, but Kiku let her eyes rest on the towering craggy mountains wreathed by great swaths of fog so that the mountaintops seemed to be floating. When she looked at this painting, she didn’t feel like any of the figures in it; she felt like no one. She closed her eyes and pictured herself floating free of her body, her life, and her self.

  If only, she thought, I could feel like this forever.

  She was so lost in the floating feeling that she didn’t notice Miss Fitzbane and Mr. Carson walking up the stairs to the balcony until they were almost on top of her. She wheeled around to face Miss Fitzbane, prepared to tell a story. She would tell her she had come to find something she had lost. She knew that Miss Fitzbane would turn her over to the police, but maybe she could at least convince her that she was here on her own and Miss Fitzbane wouldn’t catch the others.

  Miss Fitzbane marched right up to her and stopped inches from Kiku’s nose, the glow from the emergency lights flashing off her glasses.

  “See, I told you,” Mr. Carson spluttered behind her, “there’s no one up here.”

  Miss Fitzbane took off her glasses and stared straight at Kiku. Her eyes burned yellow like a cat’s. Mr. Carson, standing right behind her, was staring at Kiku too.

  “Is there something wrong with that painting, Miss Fitzbane?” Mr. Carson asked.

  Miss Fitzbane leaned closer so that her nose almost touched Kiku’s. Kiku stayed perfectly still, breath held.

  “I’ve always liked this one. Those little guys climbing the mountain look like they’re having a good time.” Mr. Carson jabbed his finger toward Kiku’s nose. Was this some kind of a joke? Miss Fitzbane didn’t look like she was joking. And neither did Mr. Carson. He was so scared that he was trying to sneak a flask out of his pocket to take a swig.

  “Put that back in your pocket, Mr. Carson,” Miss Fitzbane said without turning around, “and come with me to the Medieval galleries. We’ll look for the chill-drun there.”

  Miss Fitzbane sniffed the air, her nostrils flaring like a hunting dog’s, and turned around, her skirt making a hissing noise. Kiku stayed perfectly still while they walked away. What was that about? Why would Miss Fitzbane pretend not to see her? Why would Mr. Carson? He had pointed at Kiku as if he could see the painting behind her. Kiku turned to look at the scene on the painting. There were the tiny figures at the bottom of the painting that Mr. Carson had been talking about. He had seen them right through her. As if she were invisible.

  Kiku held up her hand, half expecting not to see it, but there it was, sparkling with gold paint and trailing a bit of mist. Your own cloak of invisibility, said the voice inside her head. Fitting raiment for a sorceress.

  Then she remembered what Miss Fitzbane had said. She was on her way to the Medieval galleries. That was where Madge had gone. She had to go warn her to keep out of Miss Fitzbane’s way.

  * * *

  Madge was glad when she got past the mummies, but the Great Hall wasn’t any better to walk in alone. She could hear her footsteps echoing under the high ceiling, and she expected any minute for the guards or that creepy Miss Fitzbane to come running out or—worse—those mummies. What if the gold dust had gotten on them and they came to life like Boris Karloff in The Mummy?

  She walked past the Grand Staircase. It looked like the steps of an ancient temple—like the one Fay Wray was dragged up in King Kong on her way to being sacrificed.

  That’s what this kind of felt like, Madge thought as she walked through the hall of Medieval Art, like she and Joe and Kiku and Walt were supposed to give up a piece of themselves to find the Kelmsbury and stop Mr. January. She’d known that it would be dangerous, and Madge wasn’t afraid of facing danger. She knew how to run and how to fight. But she wasn’t sure she knew how to hold on to herself—not when she had lost so much already.

  Madge walked past a painting of an emaciated saint and a tapestry of a woman wearing something that looked like a pillow on her head. She walked past altars and crosses and panes of stained glass and statues of saints and Madonnas. Here, too, was something she had lost. She had gone to Mass every day in Catholic school and to church on Sunday with her mother. When people asked her what she was, she told them “Irish Catholic” like the two were inseparable and as bonded to herself as her red hair and blue eyes. But she hadn’t been able to make herself go to church since her mother’s funeral, and looking now at these suffering saints and sad-eyed Madonnas, she thought that this, too, all came down to sacrifice. Which made her kind of mad. Hadn’t she lost enough?

  She found the dove in a glass case. It was far more beautiful than the black-and-white photograph had suggested. Its neck and breast were bright copper etched with little feathers, its wings inlaid with blue, green, yellow, and red enamel. Bright blue-black glass eyes regarded Madge steadily as she used the key Kiku had given her to open the glass case. Holding her breath, she reached inside and cupped the bird in both hands. It felt cool and light, like her mother’s gloved hand had felt in hers that day in church when she’d told Madge, The people you love and who love you, Margaret, are always with you. But that wasn’t really true. Her mother had been with her one moment, stirring the oatmeal, chiding Madge for letting it burn (which Madge hadn’t) and then she was falling to the floor and out of Madge’s life forever.

  If only I could have done something, Madge thought as she took the bird out of the case, if only I could have held on to her—

  You still have her, a voice inside her head said. All that you’ve lost can be restored. Only you can’t do it alone. You bring out the best in others and they bring out the best in you.

  Pshaw! Madge thought, cradling the bird in the crook of her elbow as she walked back toward the Great Hall. Now she was imagining voices in her head. Sheesh! The next thing she’d think she was turning into Queen Guinevere—

  You’re not— the voice began, but Madge told it to put a lid on it. Walt was coming into the Great Hall from the Roman wing at the same time that Joe was entering from the Egyptian wing. What the heck were they doing? The guards were going to see them! She could hear Miss Fitzbane yammering away at one of the guards. And there was no place to hide in this big open space.

  Walt reached her first and grabbed Madge’s hand. “Hurry! We can hide behind the information desk!”

  But when Joe reached them, he grabbed Madge’s other hand and told Walt to stick out his other hand. “What for?” Walt asked, but then his e
yes grew wide and he stared at his hand as if something was attached to it. The air shimmered around them, gold specks falling down over their heads like snowflakes. Madge heard Kiku’s voice coming from the empty space between Walt and Joe. “Just hold still and imagine you’re floating.”

  Do it, the voice said. She closed her eyes and pictured herself on the beach at Coney Island where her parents sometimes took her. She remembered how it would feel to walk into the surf with her mother and father on either side of her, holding her hands, lifting her up as the waves rolled over her. She could hear Miss Fitzbane squawking at the guard and the swish-hiss of her skirt as she walked by. She cracked open one eye and peeked to see Miss Fitzbane and the guard disappearing into the Medieval galleries. They’d walked right past them as if they were—

  “Invisible!” Walt whispered. “Kiku can make us invisible. It’s the book! It’s given us all powers.”

  “Joe can understand languages,” invisible Kiku said.

  “Yeah,” Walt admitted. “I think I got superstrength.”

  “Jeez Louise,” Madge sighed. “I got zilch.” She shifted her arm to adjust the copper dove—and the bird tilted its head and looked up at her with its bright blue-black eye.

  “Hey!” Madge cried.

  The dove flapped its enamel wings and rose up into the air.

  15

  BORIS KARLOFF

  “HOLY SMOKES!” WALT whispered. “We’d better catch it before Miss Fitzbane and the guards come back!” He let go of Kiku’s invisible hand, and the gold flecks surrounding them came down like a summer rainstorm—along with the lovely image he’d had in his head a minute ago when Kiku had asked them to picture themselves floating. He’d imagined himself riding the carousel in the park where his parents had taken him when he was little. He’d been able to smell the sugary aroma of caramel corn in the air and hear the tinny music as he was lifted up, up, up on the back of a charging white horse—and then it had all vanished. Madge and Joe were back in focus now. Only Kiku remained invisible.