Wood Sprites

“You’re about to leave Earth.” Louise slowly turned in circle, scanning the room. “You’re never coming back. You’re only here because you want to keep up appearances; you don’t want your evil stepfather to guess you have some grand scheme. It’s natural to say good-bye to your mother, so you’re here, saying good-bye. But then you have a glimpse of the future — your daughter is going to be dragged to this mansion and locked up by the man you fear the most.”

“We’re not locked up.”

Yet, Louise thought but didn’t say. “Your ace in the hole is a secret room that you’ve stocked with food and God knows what. Where do you hide the key?”

Jillian snorted as she attempted to keep Joy from stuffing all the food into her mouth. “Chew first! Nobody is going to take the rest.” Once Joy actually paused to chew, Jillian glanced around the room. “Considering Esme’s ‘clues’ so far, it’s not going to be anywhere sane. I say we just forget about finding it and pick the lock.”

There was the possibility that Esme would have made the hiding place too obscure, going on some weird trust that they’d be able to figure out the clues in time.

Jillian continued, “If I was going to leave a key for a kid I’d never met but was fairly sure they were going to be smart, I’d put it someplace famous. Someplace literary. I’d put it in a bottle labeled ‘drink me’ like Alice in Wonderland. Or inside a seaman’s chest, like Treasure Island.” Jillian pointed at the steamer trunk that served as a dresser.

They searched the trunk while trying to think of other famous hiding spots.

“This is Esme. It’s not going to be obvious,” Louise said once they had pulled out drawers and checked the lining. “Still, she was under a time restraint. She couldn’t get too elaborate and still expect us to find it.”

“April, Tim Bell, and Lain all were on Elfhome, so she couldn’t give anything to them,” Jillian said.

“She didn’t trust her mother or Ming or anyone that we know of.”

The only clue she seemed to have left regarding the secret door was the video, which showed the mural. Louise went back to examine it closely again. Obviously the mural had been painted ages prior to Esme filming her warning, so whatever clue she would have left would have been added. The mural was a busy landscape of a Paris that never existed. Odd steam machines labored through a Victorian-period city landscape while great airships drifted overhead.

Was there anything added? Louise peered at all the tiny little details. The little windows of the houses. The storefronts. The people in Victorian dress.

“The Dahe Hao.” She read the name written on the gondola of one of the airships. “That was Esme’s spaceship, wasn’t it?”

Louise frowned at the mural for a minute, thinking. “Let’s go with the assumption that this is one of Esme’s stupid clues. She realized that we were going to be here and would need to get through this door. She shifted the vanity so the door would be in the video she left and then she wrote this name here. She couldn’t have written it when she was a teenager because she wouldn’t have known it was the name of her ship.” Scratch that if Esme was a precog; magic skewed the normal odds. “Probably didn’t know.”

“The models!” Jillian cried. “I bet it’s one of the airship models.”

They looked up at the models hung from the twenty-foot ceiling.

“Oh, she has to be nuts,” Louise murmured.

“How would she even get up to them without everyone in the mansion knowing?”

“She’s an astronaut. She has to be smart.”

“And how are we going to get it down?”

Louise studied the models. “Same way.” She pointed to the one that most closely matched the Dahe Hao in the mural. It nearly touched the bookcases. “She used the library ladder.”

* * *

The twins rolled the ladder to under the model airship, and Louise climbed up to the top. The maids hadn’t started on the top shelves yet; they were thick with dust. There was one faint smudge in the dust, as if someone had put out their hand to balance themselves after a first layer of dust had settled. Had it been Esme? Or someone searching for the key?

Louise turned to study the nearest airship model that was still two feet from the bookcase. Like most of the room, the airship was steampunk in design, a cobbling of improbable and might-have-been. A brightly striped balloon held up a wooden pirate ship complete with five small bronze cannons. It had been crafted with amazing detail. The balloon was stiffened so it looked plump with hydrogen. Hemp ropes like sailing ships’ rigging wove a net around it and fastened it to the wooden hull with dozens of miniature knots. Tiny sandbags and an anchor dangled over the sides. Instead of a wooden rudder there was a massive airplane prop. The original name had been scratched off the bow and “Dahe Hao” had been printed in its place with a Sharpie.