Read Online The Accidental Keyhand by Jen Swann Downey - Free Book Online Page B

dozens.”
    Dorrie and Marcus looked at Phillip blankly.
    Phillip tossed an orange to each of them. “I’m sorry. I mean, he reads the oranges out of a book. A French novel, in this case. Terrible plotting but a beautiful description of an orange near the end. That’s how we get a good deal of our food around here.”
    â€œ What! ” cried Dorrie and Marcus in unison.
    Phillip waved at the laden table. “Took me an hour and a half to read all that out. It’s amazing what the right reader can get out of a book. And if I do say so myself, I have something of a knack when it comes to meats and sauces.”
    Dorrie looked at the bread beside her with new wonder.
    â€œIf we’re quite done discussing oranges and sauces, there’s one other fact of great importance we haven’t yet shared,” said Ursula.
    Something in Ursula’s tone sent a wind kicking up in Dorrie’s chest.
    Ursula played with the pocket on the long, yellowed apron she wore. “The Spoke Libraries don’t just connect Petrarch’s Library to far-flung places.” She found Dorrie’s eyes, and then Marcus’s in turn. “They connect Petrarch’s Library to every century that has passed since the invention of the written word.”
    Dorrie held tight to the edge of her blanket. “You mean you can get from—”
    â€œ500 BCE to 1611 CE?” finished Phillip. “Ancient Egypt to twelfth-century Byzantium to eighteenth-century Japan? Yes.”
    â€œMonumental!” shouted Marcus, sending a slosh of cloversweet flying from his goblet.
    â€œYou can tell the Spoke Libraries from the Ghost Libraries,” said Mistress Wu, “because the Spoke Libraries form on the other side of conveniently labeled stone arches. Tells you what lies on the other side.”
    Phillip scratched his head. “Except for yours, apparently.”
    â€œWe saw an archway like that!” cried Dorrie, “There was a man on the other side. He looked like some kind of monk.”
    â€œIreland, 812 CE, most probably,” said Phillip. “Tell us, what century are you from?”
    â€œThe twenty-first,” said Dorrie, feeling bewitched. Ursula’s long apron with its big pocket and Phillip’s embroidered vest and Mistress Wu’s long silk tunic made a new kind of sense. Suddenly, a vision of Tiffany’s jeering face smashed through the magic stained glass of the moment. And then the faces of her parents, faces pinched with worry. Who knew what revenge Tiffany was going to take on Dorrie for disappearing. Her parents had probably called the police.
    Setting her bread aside, Dorrie pushed the blanket off her legs. “We have to leave. Now.”
    â€œNow?” said Marcus, outraged. “But it’s just getting interesting!”
    â€œNobody knows where we are!” Dorrie turned to Phillip. “How do we get back into Passaic?”
    â€œOh, but you can’t,” said Mistress Wu, sounding as pained as if she were being forced to strangle kittens. “You simply can’t at the moment.”
    Dorrie suddenly did feel mad with a great jag of Mistress Wu’s anxiety. “Why not?”
    â€œWell, for one thing,” said Phillip, “it sounds like we’d have to shoot you back through the hole with a cannon, and we don’t have one of those on hand at the moment. Even if we did, right now you’d just sizzle against the hole rather magnificently and fall back into the pool in a deadish sort of way. The hole will be far too hot to travel back through until at least tomorrow—”
    â€œTomorrow!” cried Dorrie and Marcus together.
    â€œOr a day or two after that.”
    â€œBut our parents will think we’ve been kidnapped or something,” said Dorrie.
    â€œWell, there you’re in luck,” said Ursula. “Time has all but stopped in your Passaic for the moment, at least for those of us here