Amelia Earhart: Lady Lindy (3 page)

“I don't think Mom has worked at home since we moved here—” Felix began.

“Ever,” Maisie interrupted.

“Should we call the doctor?” Felix asked, worried.

Just then Great-Uncle Thorne walked in to the dining room.

“She'll be fine once the hubbub dies down,” he said. “Why, Penelope won't even take a stroll with me this morning.” He shook his head. “A real shame, too, because the Pickworth peonies have all bloomed.” Great-Uncle Thorne gave a small, satisfied smile. “Just in time for the wedding, too.”

“Won't Penelope want the Merriweather roses for the wedding?” Maisie asked.

“Don't be ridiculous,” Great-Uncle Thorne said. “Have you
seen
our peonies this year? They are truly magnificent.”

He took his seat at the head of the table, flicked a linen napkin open and tucked it into his collar.

“Mmmm,” he said, reaching for the silver serving tray. “Shirred eggs.”

“I don't understand why Mom is so mad about Dad getting married,” Felix wondered out loud. “She's got Bruce Fishbaum.”

“It's complicated,” Great-Uncle Thorne said. “Every one of Phinneas Pickworth's ex-wives got angry when he married a new woman.”

“How many times did he get married?” Maisie asked him.

Great-Uncle Thorne waved his bony hand dismissively. “It doesn't matter. He always loved our mother, Ariane, above all others.”

His eyes stayed on Aiofe, following her as she made sure everyone had what they needed before she left to get fresh coffee.

Once she was gone, Great-Uncle Thorne leaned forward and said in a stage whisper, “Get those Ziff twins over here. I'm sending you all on a mission.”

Felix groaned. How could he possibly do even one more thing?

But Maisie was intrigued. “What kind of mission?” she asked.

Great-Uncle Thorne cocked his head, listening to be sure Aiofe wasn't approaching before he spoke.

“Upstairs,” he said, “in The Treasure Chest, there's something that will bring you to the Congo—”

“And Amy Pickworth!” Maisie said, excited.

Great-Uncle Thorne nodded solemnly. “And Amy Pickworth. I want you to find it and go there immediately.”

“What's the object?” Felix asked.

Aiofe's footsteps neared.

“I don't know for certain,” Great-Uncle Thorne admitted. “I only know they went to find Dr. Livingstone.”

Maisie and Felix glanced at each other and shrugged.

“My sister was right,” Great-Uncle Thorne said. “You two know nothing about anything at all.”

Aiofe walked in with more coffee and cocoa.

“After school,” Great-Uncle Thorne said, leveling his gaze on Maisie and then Felix. “Meet me in the Library. And bring those Ziff twins.”

THE MISSION

M
aisie's teacher, Mrs. Witherspoon, clapped her hands for attention.

“People!” she said. Then louder: “People!”

Maisie caught Hadley's eye and the two of them smirked.

“Today we are starting a new unit,” Mrs. Witherspoon announced when the noise died down.

Still looking at Maisie, Hadley crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue.

“Miss Ziff?” Mrs. Witherspoon said. “Is there a problem?”

“Oh no,” Hadley said sweetly. “I can't wait to hear about it.”

Mrs. Witherspoon studied Hadley's face for a moment before she continued.

“The new unit is on aviation,” she said, pulling the large world map down over the blackboard.

Inwardly, Maisie groaned.
Aviation?
she thought.
Seriously?

“. . . Charles Lindbergh . . . ,” Mrs. Witherspoon was saying.

Surely there would be a report of some kind, Maisie thought. Mrs. Witherspoon loved reports and oral presentations.

“. . . the Space Age . . . ,” Mrs. Witherspoon was saying. “Your topic for your report can span the centuries!”

A smile crept over Maisie's face. The Aviatrix Room! Right in Elm Medona. Her mother's bedroom was the Aviatrix Room. It had real airplane wings suspended from the ceiling and an entire cabinet of early aviation mementos.
My room is sepia,
her mother had complained when they'd first moved into the mansion from the servant's quarters. Maisie hadn't known what “sepia” was until her mother threw open the door to the Aviatrix Room and said:
Look! Sepia walls and draperies and . . . everything!
Sepia was brown. The brown of old photographs and maps. And the Aviatrix Room was indeed sepia. Except the ceiling, which was the most beautiful blue Maisie had ever seen. The way those airplane wings were suspended from that ceiling, it actually looked as if a plane was disappearing into the sky.

“Where do you go, Miss Robbins?” Mrs. Witherspoon asked wearily.

Maisie glanced around the room. Everyone seemed to be staring at her, waiting.

“Uh,” she said.

“Miss Perkins is interested in doing a report on Neil Armstrong. Mr. Cooper wants to study Juan Tripp,” Mrs. Witherspoon said.

She leveled her gaze on Maisie. “I don't suppose
you
have any ideas, Miss Robbins?”

Maisie grinned. “Either Brave Bessie Colman, Pancho Barnes, or Amy Johnson,” she said, naming the women pilots whose mementos were in her mother's bedroom. Mrs. Witherspoon looked bewildered.

“They're aviatrixes,” Maisie said smugly. “Female—”

“I know what an aviatrix is, Miss Robbins,” Mrs. Witherspoon said. “I'm just surprised that you know of so many.”

“Oh,” Maisie said, “you'd be surprised at the things I know.”

As soon as Maisie's class entered the library, Felix grabbed his sister's arm and pulled her into the stacks. His class was also doing a unit on aviation, and Miss Landers had brought them to the library to start researching their subjects, too. But Felix had looked up Dr. Livingstone instead.

“Malaria,” he whispered to Maisie. “Cannibals.”

Maisie shook her head. “Our unit's on aviation,” she explained.

“Not the unit!” Felix said. “The Congo!”

When Maisie still looked confused, Felix said, “Dr. Livingstone. He went to Africa in 1871 to find the source of the Nile and he died there, just like every other explorer.”

“You mean Great-Uncle Thorne's Dr. Livingstone?”

Exasperated, he said, “Yes, yes. That Dr. Livingstone. And I am not going to the Congo. No way.”

Images of Africa filled Maisie's mind. She'd seen enough documentaries on the Nature Channel to have vivid images of herds of charging elephants and migrating wildebeests and prowling lions.

“I think it sounds kind of dreamy,” she said.

“This other guy? Stanley? He went to find Dr. Livingstone and got cerebral malaria, which is a million times worse than plain old malaria. Then he got smallpox!”

“I don't think you can get smallpox anymore,” Maisie said, thinking of giraffes with their long eyelashes and long necks.

“Are you even listening to me?”

“I think it would be extremely cool to go to Africa,” she said firmly.

“Maybe now. On a safari or something. But not in 1871 when warring tribes are massacring one another, and crocodiles are eating people and—”

“Felix,” Maisie said, putting her hand on her brother's shoulder, “you worry too much.”

With that, she turned and left the stacks.

Felix watched in disbelief as she walked away. He was certain of one thing: Great-Uncle Thorne would not be able to convince him to go to the Congo.

The shard had become a bit of a problem for Maisie, who had somehow become the person in charge of it. Sure, when it was cooler and she'd worn her polar fleece vest over almost anything, it had been easy to keep the shard in her pocket. But now that it was warmer, she almost never wore the vest, and she frequently found herself pocket-less.

That afternoon, before the Ziff twins arrived, she'd stared at the thing for some time, trying to figure out what to do with it so that it was safe and conveniently located should time traveling be in her future, which it was, thanks to Great-Uncle Thorne.

Maisie picked up the delicate white porcelain with the broken pattern of blue flowers on it and studied it closely.

What was that thing at the top?

She held the shard up to her eyes, closing one to focus better.

There, at the top, was the tiniest hole.

Maisie smiled, satisfied.

Tucking the shard into her fist, she went downstairs, all the way to the Kitchen in the basement. It smelled disgusting.

“What are you cooking?” Maisie asked, wrinkling her nose.

“Your great-uncle Thorne has requested a
pot-au-feu
for dinner tonight,” Cook said without bothering to look at Maisie.

“Pot-oh-what?”

Cook clucked her tongue and shook her head.

Maisie peered over her shoulder. Chunks of meat bounced around in a pot of boiling water, leaving a disgusting tan froth on their wake.

“Ugh!” Maisie said. “Are you boiling meat?”

“A
pot-au-feu
requires salting the short ribs a day in advance,” Cook said. “Then blanching them before braising.
This
,” she added, disgusted by Maisie's ignorance, “is blanching, not boiling.”

“Whatever,” Maisie said, eyeballing the chopping board lined with all sorts of disgusting root vegetables, like turnips and . . .

“What are these?” Maisie asked, poking at the hard purple-and-beige vegetable.

Cook sighed. “Rutabagas,” she answered wearily. “Did you need something? Or have you come downstairs to critique my delicious preparation of a
pot-au-feu
?”

“Thread,” Maisie said. “I need some thread.”

Cook pointed toward a distant drawer where Maisie found spools of fine thread in every color imaginable. Her hand hesitated over first red, then purple, before settling on black. She pocketed the spool of black thread and headed out.

“Thanks,” she called over her shoulder.

“You
will
be returning that,” Cook said unpleasantly.

Back in her room, Maisie licked the end of the thread and twisted it so that it was narrow enough to fit through the tiny hole in the shard.

“Perfect,” she said as she held up her new necklace.

Maisie tied the thread in a triple knot at the back of her neck. The shard hung cool between her collarbones. Satisfied, she ran downstairs to greet the Ziff twins.

“You make a plan,” Great-Uncle Thorne told Maisie and Felix and Hadley and Rayne. “And then you execute it.”

They were all standing at the wall, right by where you pressed to make it open and reveal the stairs that led to The Treasure Chest.

He snickered at Maisie and Felix.

“That's what you two never figured out,” he said, his voice full of disdain. “You went in there willy-nilly, picking objects up at random and stumbling through time.”

Insulted, Maisie put her hands on her hips and glared at Great-Uncle Thorne. “Well, nobody told us anything,” she said. “We had no idea—”

“I told you how to utilize
lame demon
, didn't I? But still you just grabbed at anything—”

“It was a crown,” Felix said. “Not just anything.”

“—and you went where?” Great-Uncle Thorne continued as if Felix hadn't spoken. “And for what purpose?”

“Why did you ask us to come here?” Hadley said.

Rayne, who had looked bored until now, came to life.

“Are you sending us on a mission?” she asked, her blue eyes shining.

“You see,” Great-Uncle said, looking dreamily at some distant point, “my sister and I would plan. We'd come back from a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where we'd fallen in love with a painting and we'd say, ‘Van Gogh. Let's find Van Gogh
.
' That was the fun of it, you see? To enter The Treasure Chest and, almost like a scavenger hunt or a puzzle, have to find just the right object to reach that person. That's the way Phinneas wanted it. He loved games and puzzles, you know,” Great-Uncle Thorne added.

“So we've heard,” Maisie muttered.

“It was exciting,” Great-Uncle Thorne said sadly. “It was a challenge.”

Rayne had gone back to chipping the purple nail polish off her fingernails. But Hadley seemed thoughtful.

“You want us to go—” she began.

“To the Congo!” Felix blurted. “Where there's malaria and cannibals and dangerous natives!”

Once more, Rayne grew excited. “Now that's an adventure. What do we need to do?”

“He thinks Amy Pickworth is there,” Maisie said.

“I
know
she's there,” Great-Uncle Thorne said, pointing a finger at Maisie.

“You want us to find her?” Rayne asked at the very same time that Hadley said, “And do what with her?”

Great-Uncle Thorne leveled his gaze on each of them, one at a time. A chill ran up Felix's spine when that gaze lingered on him.

“Bring her home,” Great-Uncle Thorne said matter-of-factly.

“But even if we find her, which seems pretty much impossible, she can't come back with us,” Felix said nervously. “You need your twin with you.”

Great-Uncle Thorne nodded slowly.

Felix held up his hands. “Well then,” he said.

“All I know for certain,” Great-Uncle Thorne said thoughtfully, “is that you need your twin to get
there
.”

Again, he stared off at some distant place.

Then he looked at them again and his voice grew firm.

“I came back without my twin, didn't I?” he asked.

Maisie knew that it was a rhetorical question, but she still said, “That's right, you did.”

“Came back from where?” Hadley asked, trying to keep up.