A Thief in the Archives

Hattie Plonk sat on the floor of a cramped utility closet with her knees scrunched to her chest and tried to ignore the smell coming from the damp mop under her left butt cheek. She had a persistent cramp in one calf and her car keys were digging painfully into her hip but she didn’t dare move. Outside, the searching beam of a flashlight swept lazily around the room as its owner verified all was as it should be in the basement floor archives of London’s largest and most prestigious Natural History Museum.

After he finished his nightly sweep of the archives, the museum’s longstanding security guard would do what he always did; Check the storage room, the two bathrooms, and then finish his rounds in the staff kitchen where he would make himself a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee. He would take them both to his desk and eat while listening to the news on that old gray pocket radio he kept in the top drawer. His name was Lou Weisman but everyone called him Grandpa Lou. Once he finished his dinner, he would promptly fall asleep for the rest of his shift. In forty-five minutes to an hour, Hattie would be free to exit the closet and the real work would begin.

Hattie was beginning to lose feeling in both of her legs when she decided it was safe. She had waited a long time. She couldn’t be sure how long because she didn’t have a watch, but it had certainly felt like a very long time. Far longer than most people would have waited, she was sure. Besides, she wasn’t going to make any noise. She was just going to conduct a little investigation. She turned the handle and pushed the closet door open slowly. She unwound her stiff legs and, with considerable assistance from the door frame, pulled herself to her feet which were somehow both numb and tingling in a sharp, unpleasant way. She took a few unstable steps and surveyed the various desks and filing cabinets as she considered where to begin her search.

She decided to start with Amanda’s desk. After all, it was Amanda’s fault that everyone they worked with thought Hattie was a thief when she absolutely wasn’t. Not really. Amanda had told everyone that Hattie had stolen her lipstick and was a kleptomaniac. Hattie hated that word. It was so ugly. Besides, does taking one lipstick really make someone a kleptomaniac? It wasn’t like Hattie had taken it for some nefarious purpose. She had just liked it, that’s all. She and Amanda had been eating lunch together when Amanda started whining about her favorite lipstick color being discontinued. She had taken it out of her bag and shown it to Hattie with the reverence of a family heirloom.

“Peach Blossom. Isn’t she pretty? I’ve been wearing this color since I was a teenager.” Amanda had said fondly as she uncapped it. “I don’t know what I’ll do when this one’s gone.”

The lipstick was already half gone, already a dwindling stub sculpted into something unique and wonderful through months of use. The once-uniform tube of peachy pink had been slowly, lovingly whittled away into a curving slope that rose to a pointed tip. Amanda puckered her lips and reapplied it once more before she capped it and put it away, already talking about something else. But all Hattie could think about was that lipstick. It carried so much history. It told a story, captured and reflected back an entire life through its mere existence. Amanda was just going to use it up and throw it away but Hattie would keep it, preserving it like a flower pressed between pages. After all, wasn’t that exactly what a museum did? It was insulting to call it stealing, really. And Hattie hadn’t had anything to do with all the other things that had gone missing in the past few months. After the whole lipstick fiasco, she had been on her best behavior. That had been a tiny slip up, a one-time thing. Hattie knew better than that, truly. One should never steal from family, coworkers, or anyone else you couldn’t get away from. That was just common sense.

She opened Amanda’s drawers and picked through each one carefully, her fingers lingering for a moment over the Almond Joy stashed behind a tiny box of multi-colored paper clips, before moving on. Hattie found nothing out of the ordinary. That was a shame. Hattie had already begun obsessively replaying an exquisite fantasy in her mind where she walked in on Monday morning, head held high, and proclaimed she knew who the thief in the archives was. The other archivists would exchange those snide looks she knew all too well but it would be Amanda who would speak up, Amanda who would say what they were all thinking.

“Of course you do.” She probably would have said with a condescending giggle. “So do we.”

And that’s when Hattie would have crucified her in front of everyone. She would have produced the irrefutable evidence found in Amanda’s desk, Amanda would have run out of the room sobbing in shame, and Hattie would have been the hero. Oh, and she would also get her job back. She closed the last drawer with a disappointed sigh. It would have been nice but Hattie knew from experience that life wasn’t always fair. She would persevere regardless because if Amanda wasn’t the thief, it was someone else and Hattie wasn’t going to stop searching until she cleared her good name.

Jeoffery’s desk was next. She’d never liked the pretentious man and had always suspected his horn-rimmed glasses were fake. If she couldn’t convict and exile Amanda from the archives, getting rid of him would be almost as good. That’s when she heard it. The faint scrabbling of nails on wood coming from… over there. Near her desk. She took a few clumsy steps closer and the scrabbling grew louder. She had been wrong. It wasn’t coming from near her desk, it was coming from her desk. She squinted through the darkness and saw the bottom right hand drawer of her desk rattle slightly. Hattie ran to the desk and pulled the drawer open. If there was a mouse or a rat in there, she had to get it out before it chewed through her-

Something flew from the drawer and attacked her. Whatever it was, it was small, scaly, and had very sharp claws. Hattie flailed her arms wildly, fighting to get the thing off as it writhed, hissed, and scratched at her face. She successfully flung it away to the other side of the room where it slid, hit the wall, and skittered away into the shadows of the nearest storage room. Hattie waited for a moment, heart pounding in her throat, as she listened for the shuffling footsteps of Grandpa Lou but nothing came. Good. She glanced down at the desk drawer, yanked all the way out of its compartment in blind panic, and her heart skipped a beat. She dropped to her knees and hastily searched the drawer, tossing aside files and scattering paper work around in a wild flurry. It wasn’t there. One of her most prized possessions, which she had always kept buried under files and tucked away in the back of that drawer for safe keeping, was gone. That thing had taken it. Hattie fumed, feeling a strange mix of satisfaction and anger in her chest. She had found the thief which was good. But now it had stolen something from her and as far as Hattie was concerned, that was unacceptable.

Hattie rose from the ground, smoothed her ruffled hair, and took off after the creature with a determined, no-nonsense limp. She entered the first storage room and stood frozen in the center, listening for the tell-tale sound of sharp nails scrabbling against a hard surface. After a moment of silence she heard it coming from the far back corner, behind one of the shelves. Hattie rolled the shelf away from the wall, the rarely used wheels squeaking in objection, to reveal a small, fist-sized hole in the bottom corner. It looked like a mouse hole. After a moment’s consideration, Hattie stood and plunged the heel of her boot into the wall with a swift, hard kick. She had already been fired, after all. What more could they do to her? Besides, this was in pursuit of catching a thief and that was a very noble cause. People can get away with all sorts of things when it's for a noble cause.

The drywall crumbled away easily with a puff of dust and out of the melon sized hole in the wall, a cascade of mundane objects tumbled like a waterfall. Along with them, a small, scaly thing also tumbled out and landed atop the small mountain of hair clips, ballpoint pens, fax confirmations, and pocket change with a little thump. It sat up, visibly disoriented, and blew an irritated puff of smoke at Hattie as it opened and closed the stubby, barely formed wings on its back in agitation.

“Just my luck.” Hattie said with an exasperated sigh. “A baby dragon.”

The city had been “cracking down” on dragon trafficking for as long as Hattie could remember but it never seemed to amount to much. Criminals imported dragon hatchlings and sold them to gullible dopes as ‘miniature fire lizards’ or ‘winged Burmese salamanders’. It was an old scam but people still fell for it all the time. Eventually, when their new pet started to grow bigger or broiled some throw pillows, the owners would figure out they had been duped and call it in for removal. Usually. Some people just dumped them wherever. Now they were considered an invasive species and you were supposed to report them or any other suspicious looking reptiles to your local animal control agency immediately. There was a special hotline number and everything.

The tiny dragon barred its teeth and spat another puff of warm smoke in her direction. Hattie was pretty sure it was trying to burn her alive. It was kind of cute. That’s when she saw what it had taken from her. The dragon was sitting on it. When Hattie reached for the leather pouch, the dragon pounced on her hand immediately, a tiny whirlwind of claws and little, sharp teeth.

“Ow! It’s mine!” She hissed angrily. “Give it back!”

The dragon hissed right back and continued to attack but Hattie managed to grab the pouch and shook the creature loose. It tumbled over the side and down the little mountain of stolen objects as she pulled a large, oval stone from the pouch and rubbed her thumb across its smooth surface reverently. There was nothing visibly special about it in the dark of the storage room but when light hit it, a marvelous, fiery rainbow of red, orange, green, and blue swirled inside the stone. Hattie had found it on one of the uncomfortable metal benches by the museum entrance two years ago, no doubt left behind by a forgetful child. She had treasured it ever since.

“Ha! I Win!” Hattie exclaimed as she gripped the stone in her fist and waved it at the little dragon. The creature climbed back up the mound of treasure and barred its teeth at Hattie once more. Clenched between the little fangs was Hattie’s bracelet, stolen right off her wrist. It shook the bracelet back and forth like a dog with a chew toy. The little silver charms jingled triumphantly.

“Fine, you can keep that one.” Hattie conceded with a huff. “I never liked it that much anyways.”

The dragon shook the bracelet at Hattie once more, a little softer this time, and she got the sense that it was pleased.

“You really can’t stay here, you know.” Hattie chided the little dragon. “For one thing, this space is far too small for you. I mean really, you’re going to outgrow it in a heartbeat. For goodness sake, you’re just about bursting out of the wall already! Soon you’ll have no room at all for new treasures. What will you do then?”

The dragon looked around at its collection of special objects and let out a small, despairing puff of smoke.

“It just so happens that I do have a spare room in my apartment...” Hattie said begrudgingly. “And getting you out of here would help me get my job back which would allow me to keep said apartment.”

The dragon let out a small, questioning squeak.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll just tell everyone you were a really precocious rat that I bravely chased off.”

The dragon gave a little hop and beat its wings, as if preparing to fly to Hattie’s apartment immediately.

“Alright, fine.” Hattie said, extending out her hand to the beast. It hopped up into her palm, curled itself up like a kitten preparing for a nap, and began to purr softly. A comforting sense of warmth radiated from its tiny body. “But no more stealing from here and absolutely no more stealing from me. Do we have a deal?”

The dragon raised its head to look up at her with big, earnest eyes and blew an agreeable puff of smoke into Hattie's face.

“Good. If you’re going to be staying in my guest room, I need to be able to trust you.” Hattie said as she lifted the sleepy dragon and placed it on her shoulder. “Because that’s where I keep my treasure.”