Door Number One

Mr. Today left the office to accompany Ms. Morning and Eva Fathom to the new Necessary hallway where Eva would be staying, giving Alex a few moments alone to recover, at least physically. By the time Mr. Today and Ms. Morning returned, Alex’s frozen face had thawed and he’d coaxed himself into letting the sting go away. After all, it was true, wasn’t it? Alex just didn’t have the drive to become leader of Artimé. Was there something to be ashamed of because of that? Alex didn’t think so. He sighed deeply and tried to relax in his chair, prepared to find out what he was supposed to do to help Mr. Today and Ms. Morning.

But when they returned, Mr. Today didn’t sit. “Come with me,” he said instead, and he turned abruptly, walking back out the door. He hastened up the mostly secret hallway to one of the two doors on the opposite wall. He paused dramatically as Alex and Ms. Morning caught up to him. “This isn’t quite as exciting for Ms. Morning as she’s been in here a time or two. But it’s a fascinating place, and I think you’ll enjoy it, Alex. I call it . . . the Museum of Large.”

It was a door Alex had often wondered about’one of four doors in this part of the secret hallway that he’d never seen opened, nor anyone entering or exiting. He assumed the two doors on the same side of the hallway as Mr. Today’s office were his private living quarters, which made sense when Alex remembered that Mr. Today had once come in through the back wall of the office. But the two on the kitchenette side of the hallway had remained a mystery until now.

All negative feelings forgotten, Alex watched eagerly as Mr. Today touched the handle and uttered a spell. “Door number one.” The door swung open with a low creak and Mr. Today stepped aside.

Alex walked into the dimly lit room, squinting to see. His footsteps sounded louder than life, as if the room went on for quite a long way, and he could hear things whirring and clicking, and what was possibly a distant waterfall or a fountain.

Ms. Morning and Mr. Today entered behind him and closed the door, and just as Alex’s eyes began to adjust, Mr. Today commanded light to appear. In an instant, torchlike lamps that were attached to the walls lit up one by one, chasing around the perimeter of what seemed like an endless room . . . or cave . . . or . . . Alex didn’t know a name for it. He sucked in a breath as his eyes leaped from one large item to the next.

“Go on then, have a look around for a few minutes,” Mr. Today said, chuckling. “You might not want to touch anything unless you’re absolutely sure of what it is.” Ms. Morning smiled, nearly as eager as Alex. It looked like a place where you could visit a hundred times and still never see everything.

Alex looked to his left along the wall. The length of it as far as he could see was covered in tall shelves. Books overflowed from them, some carelessly so, and none looked like they were in any particular order. There were giant maps and an enormous marble ball with etchings on it and a ring around it, floating on a bubbling fountain. In a way this part of the Museum of Large resembled the Artimé library, but this seemed more massive yet more intimate at the same time.

“What are all these books about?” Alex was secretly delighted to see them in such disarray. It felt very homey despite the vastness of this room. “And how is it possible that this room just goes on forever? It seems like it would bump into one of the other mansion hallways.”

“The books’many of them penned by me’are about a lot of things. There are also duplicates of most of them in the library. As for the room size, it’s magic like the lounge or the theater. It takes up no real physical space, which is why it doesn’t encompass the entire upper level of the mansion.”

Something looming to Alex’s right caught his eye and made the boy turn toward it, away from the books. He gasped. Just dozens of steps away was an enormous statue of an elephant-like creature so large that it nearly touched the ceiling. Alex had seen a picture of elephants in the library, but this one was ridiculously huge and had two long, sharp tusks along with a smaller pair that gleamed. Alex looked at Mr. Today. “Is it alive?” he whispered.

Mr. Today put his hand on Alex’s shoulder. “No. Sadly I had to pull the magic from old Tater many years ago. He’s a mastodon statue’a prehistoric sort of elephant that I’d seen a picture of once. I thought he’d be useful in moving things around, but I never did get his mind quite right in the creating process. He grew to this size in a matter of days and soon became violent with the domestic creatures. So I sent him to live in the jungle for a while, but it didn’t suit him, and he began to destroy it’uprooting trees and wandering back to the lawn, scaring everyone. He grew quite beyond what I’d ever intended, and he was becoming vastly uncomfortable in his own skin, so to speak. And try as I might, there was nothing I could do to change his disposition. I had made a mistake, and the rest of Artimé was suffering for it.”

Mr. Today reached out to pet the beast. He was only tall enough to reach the creature’s knee, so he patted that. “It was a hard day, but in the end Tater requested it’he was incredibly unhappy, I could tell. Once the magic was gone from him I couldn’t bear to destroy him completely, so he lives on in here as a little reminder. He was the last statue I made’I just couldn’t stand to go through that again, so I stopped creating them.”

Ms. Morning gave her father’s hand a squeeze. He looked at her, his eyes the tiniest bit shiny with regret.