The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman

technology—they call it ‘modern magic.’”
    “What’s wrong with that? Modern magic sounds good to me.”
    “Me too. But they prefer the old kind.” Dr. Rust held a pair of leather leggings up to one ear with a hand, as if listening for a secret, then scribbled something on a white tag and tied it to a buckle. I looked carefully to see if I could catch the freckles moving, but it was too dark to make them out.
    Dr. Rust seemed to listen to another pair of chaps, gave it a shake, and listened again.
    “So, Dr. Rust, can I ask you a qu—,” I began, but stopped. I knew what the answer would be.
    “Of course. Always ask qu’s.”
    “What’s the Grimm Collection?”
    Dr. Rust put down the last garment and looked at me seriously for a long time, then said at last, “Stan Mauskopf has never sent us a bad page.”
    Was that supposed to be an answer? “I really appreciate his good opinion. I’ll do everything I can to live up to it,” I said.
    “I’m sure you will. Yes, I really do think you will.” Dr. Rust took a deep breath. “The Grimm Collection is one of the Special Collections on Stack 1—probably the most special of the Special Collections. The original holdings came to the library in 1892 as a legacy from Friedhilde Hassenpflug, a grandniece of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.”
    “I know who they are. I just wrote a paper about the Brothers Grimm for Mr. Mauskopf.”
    “Of course. So you know about their collections of märchen —folk tales or fairy tales. But stories weren’t the only thing they collected. They also assembled a remarkable group of objects.”
    “Oh, that’s cool! I knew the Brothers Grimm were historians, but I hadn’t heard they were interested in the history of—of objects, of stuff too.”
    Dr. Rust nodded. “Yes, it’s called material culture. The study of how physical objects relate to society and history. It’s relatively new as an academic discipline, but in a sense it’s always been central to our mission at the repository. It didn’t exist per se at the time of the Grimms—they were visionaries in so many ways. We’re very fortunate to have the privilege of caring for their collection.”
    “What kind of objects did they collect?”
    “Things mentioned in the märchen. ”
    “What do you mean, like Cinderella’s slippers?”
    “Something like that.” Did I detect a trace of longing in Dr. Rust’s voice? “We don’t have Cinderella’s actual slippers, but that’s the idea.”
    I was relieved to hear Dr. Rust wasn’t crazy enough to claim they had Cinderella’s actual slippers. That would be going a little too far. “What do you have, then?” I asked.
    “Oh, spindles and straw and beans and tears. A glass coffin. A golden egg. A number of things. The Grimms were serious and thorough collectors, and of course we’ve added to the collection a great deal over the years, objects associated with other fairy-tale and folklore traditions. I’m especially proud of our French holdings—we have the best collection outside the Archives Extraordinaires in Paris. And there’s some important material related to the Arabian Nights in the Grimm Collection too.”
    “I would love to see that.”
    “One of these days, perhaps. We like to get to know our pages for a while before we let them work with the Special Collections. Some of those objects are quite . . . powerful.”
    If these were really the objects that inspired the famous fairy tales, then powerful was a good word, I thought. I tried to imagine what it would feel like to touch the spindle that inspired the story of Sleeping Beauty. When I was six, my mother took me to see Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty at Lincoln Center—that’s when I fell in love with ballet and fairy tales. How I wished my mother were still alive! I would love to see the look on her face when I told her about the collection.
    If only I’d known about the collection when I was writing my paper for Mr. Mauskopf’s class! I