The Colors of Madeleine 01: Corner of White

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  First time in almost a year.

  At street level, there was the one big room. There was a counter and, a few feet behind that, a high workbench. A televisual machine (or “TV” as they called it) lay facedown on the bench. The other side of the room held rows of wide shelves crowded with appliances.

  Shafts of sunlight were blinking their way into the room now, and the dust was in a panic. A vacuum cleaner and a couple of buckets stood just inside the door. His mother must have brought them in.

  “That you, Elliot?” she called now, from upstairs.

  At the top of the stairs, there was a little flat. Kitchenette attached to living room, with a good-size window overlooking Broad Street. Down the hallway, a tiny bathroom and two bedrooms, each piled high with junk — old toolboxes, a broken circular saw, pieces of TVs, crowbars, and hammers — and, at the back of the smaller bedroom, Elliot’s mother.

  She was washing the window.

  Elliot watched her a moment.

  “Funny place to start,” he said.

  “I know.” She turned, wringing a cloth into a bucket as she did. “But I’ve never seen a window so coated with grime — and when I brought them through here yesterday, the little girl came right up to this window. She can’t speak, you know, so she ought to be able to see through her window.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” said Elliot, turning to go. “I’ll start downstairs.”

  “They seem like good people, Elliot,” his mother said. “The Twickleham family, I mean.”

  Elliot hesitated. He scratched at his eyebrow.

  “Of course,” she murmured, almost to herself, “they’re from Olde Quainte, as you know, and they did inform me that this place is ‘exactly like to a jittering horsetrap,’ which,” she paused, looked around, “well, I don’t see it.”

  “Indeed, and do you not?” Elliot’s eyes sparked now. “For here in my quickening early-morning mind I see much that is like to a cascade of turtles and a veritable basket of toadstools.”

  “Isn’t it not?” agreed his mother, getting into character as she reached for the water spray and dazzled the window. “And isn’t my stomach now rumbling like to what one of my son Elliot’s blueberry muffins might cure if he would only fetch one from the truck for — Hey, there’s your buddies, Elliot.”

  She interrupted herself, leaning closer to the window.

  Down below, across the street, a group of five teenagers walked toward the high school. Two boys — one tall and lanky, one shorter — and three girls. One of the girls was holding the end of her own long red braid and pointing it at the taller of the boys, talking fast as she did so. The others were laughing. Just as they reached the corner, another of the girls — thin and dark, a saxophone case over her shoulder — turned, and looked straight toward the window. She paused a moment, her eyes wandering over the Baranski shop and the truck parked on the curb outside. Then she carried on.

  “She’s keen on you, Elliot,” his mother told him. “I saw it clear as you like the other day when they were over.”

  Elliot was quiet now, watching his friends disappear around the corner.

  “Don’t go starting something, will you? You’ll just go and break her heart. You’re perfect, see,” his mother explained, “and that can be a flaw of its own.”

  Elliot laughed. “Ah, perfect is like to a runaway palm tree with a head cold, or a dandelion uprooted in some other bizarre, unrelated thing. I’ll get you the muffins from the truck.”

  He took the steps two at a time, still grinning to himself.

  But crossing the shop, he paused and glanced at the TV on the workbench. A panel had been removed from its back so you could glimpse a tangle of wires.

  “Who do you belong to anyhow?” he said aloud.

  His voice was interested, neutral. He imagined somebody in this town, somebody sitting on a couch, gazing at the empty spot where their TV should be.

  He moved to the side of the workbench and looked more closely at the clutter. A circuit board sat patiently alongside the open-backed TV, and beside that, a soldering iron, a multimeter, and a pair of snippers.

  The snippers were so familiar Elliot had to turn away.

  Hanging on the wall behind the workbench was a corkboard. It was covered with printed papers, photos, and postcards — and one tiny note in his father’s handwriting. Something jumped in Elliot’s chest and he moved toward the paper fast — but it only said:

  He’d done the exact same thing a year ago. He and his mother had come into the shop then, a few days after it had happened, and he’d seen that very note, and his heart had startled — but it had been nothing. Technical details.

  His eyes wandered over the postcards instead; he knew these as well as he knew that pair of snippers. They were from every province in the Kingdom. Elliot’s father had traveled years before; he and his brother Jon had run away from home when they were kids, heading out exploring for a year.

  Pinned to the far right of the corkboard were a couple of old casings from spells that Abel had collected at the Lake of Spells on the same trip, their symbols worn and fading.

  In the center of the board was a photograph of Elliot himself. He was about ten in the photo, and playing deftball. He was leaping into the air, his shirt lifting up with the leap so you could see his bare stomach, the ball just beyond his fingertips.

  Someone outside the family must have taken the photo — probably Jimmy, actually; the shot had the vibrant look of Jimmy’s photographs — because both his parents were in the crowd on the sideline, blurred a little, but clear enough so you could see the laughter on his mother’s face, the concentration on his father’s.

  Elliot turned back to the workbench — and again to the TV — “Where is my TV?” he murmured, in the imagined voice of that imagined person sitting alone in an imagined living room.

  He laughed at himself, and headed out the door to the truck.

  7.

  There were five of them — two boys, three girls — sitting at a table outside the Toadstool Pub in the square. They were Elliot’s friends.

  The summer light was fading, but the air was hot, still, languid.

  “Gotta hit the road,” said the taller of the boys, Gabe Epstein. He was at the table’s head, leaning back so his knees rose up like a grasshopper’s knees. His cap was inscribed with the fading words Bonfire Antelopes ’07.

  “Give me a ride?”

  They all turned to the girl who had spoken. Shelby Ryerston wore her red hair in a braid, a studded black band around her left wrist, and a frayed and graying cast on her right. She had two tattoos on her neck: one, a skull and crossbones; the other, a small reindeer.

  “You still haven’t got your driver’s license? You can fly a crop duster but you still haven’t got your driver’s license?”

  The studs on Shelby’s armband clanged against the table, defensively.

  “Why’s there got to be a written test?” she complained. “Been driving since I was two years old. I don’t need to write a book about it.”

  “Two?” said the darker, thinner girl beside her, a saxophone case under her chair, beaded bracelets sliding up and down her arms. That was Kala Mansey. “You have not.”

  “Ah, well, five, anyway. I drove the ATV when I was two.”

  “Test is easy,” said the other boy. Cody Richter had a head wild with curls, and dried flecks of paint on his knuckles. Cody’s head was tilted at a thinking angle now, but a slow smile was forming as he spoke. “It’s multiple choice.”

  “Ah, I never learned to read. Grew up in a grain silo.”

  They laughed, and she added, “The Farms should be exempt from written tests,” and they laughed again, their chairs scraping in the evening quiet.

  The fifth person at the table was Nikki Smitt, hair the white-gold of a zephyr nectarine.

  “He might still come,” she said. “We should wait.” The muscles in her arms tightened as she reached into her bag for a pencil case. The zipper on the pencil
case was broken; she used her nail to slide it open, took out a pen, and handed it to Shelby, who stuck it underneath her cast, to scratch.

  Then a figure entered the square from behind the clock tower.

  It was Elliot. Faded gray T-shirt smudged, streak of mud on his jeans, old sneakers with no socks.

  They watched him approach, and he stopped and said, “Hey,” and they all said, “Hey” back. Then they asked him questions, long pauses between each while they waited to see if he had any more to say.

  “You get it done?”

  “Just took the last load.”

  “Hot day for it. Where’d you put it all?”

  “Shed. Back of the shed.”

  “It fit okay?”

  “Yeah. Broken TVs and program players and stuff. Twicklehams were keen to try fixing them — get their business started that way — but they didn’t buy the business, just took over the lease. I figure I’ll look up the paperwork and take everything back to the owners. Should’ve done that sometime back, I guess.”

  Now the quiet carried on for a while; someone slapped at a mosquito and the table shook.

  “You missed the thing in History — the test, the test thing,” said Shelby, pulling on her braid.

  Elliot looked across at her. Everyone’s face was in shadow now.

  “He’s not in your History class,” somebody said, and she said, “Oh, yeah,” and they all laughed.

  Then Gabe reached out and dragged a chair across from another table.

  “Have a drink,” he said.

  “I need a shower,” said Elliot, but he sat down anyway.

  “Someone get this guy a beer.”

  Nobody moved. There were a couple of pitchers of fresh-squeezed lemonade on the table.

  “They let us drive at fifteen,” said Nikki. “They should let us drink now too.”

  “Yeah,” laughed someone. “’Cause drinking and driving, they’re kinda hand in hand.”

  “Ah,” shrugged Nikki. “You know what I mean.”

  “We could cross the river into Jagged Edge,” someone else suggested, and a few of them said, “Yeah,” and somebody said, “Why do the Edges get to drink younger than us anyhow?” and somebody else, “’Cause they need alcohol to cover their own stench,” and somebody else, “’Cause they’re not actually people, they’re holograms,” and another, “Yeah, we should go.”

  But nobody meant it.

  They all had to be up at dawn. Normally they’d be home by now, but today they’d been waiting for Elliot.

  Elliot was clicking his fingernails on the table.

  He looked at his watch.

  “Train comes through in ten,” he said. “You want to hitch a ride down to Sugarloaf? Pick up some hooch at their local — guy there never checks ID.”

  Elliot pushed his chair back. There was a single beat of hesitation, then they were all standing too, picking up their things, dropping cash onto the table.

  The train was heading out of Bonfire Station, but they were fast runners — Elliot and Nikki, the fastest — and they chased it down the track into the deep blue dusk.

  Then they leapt, one at a time, and fell into the back carriage.

  It was empty and unlit. The six of them formed vague shadows moving inside, breathless, tipping into one another, holding on to the backs of seats in the rattling speed.

  There was a squeal of brakes then, and the train shuddered, slowed, and stopped altogether.

  Kala leaned out of the window. Her saxophone was lying on a train seat.

  “Cow on the track,” she said.

  Shelby scratched at the edge of her cast and said, “We ran for shit,” and they all laughed at their own breathlessness, then the cow wandered off the track and the train started up again.

  Later, slick and wet from swimming, Elliot was standing apart. He’d just pulled on his jeans, but he was shirtless. He was drinking from a bottle, looking around at the shades of gray, thinking about the colorlessness of night, watching the blackness of the water with its ripples of moonlight, and then Kala, thin and dark, moved from somewhere nearby and stood behind him. Her arms reached around his shoulders; her long fingers clasped together against his chest.

  He was still for a moment, then he turned, loosening her hold, touched her cheekbones with the tips of his fingers, held the bottle to the side, bent his head, and kissed her, underneath the high, dark stars.

  8.

  That same night, Jimmy called the Sheriff.

  Hector was home, making grilled cheese sandwiches for a snack to eat with his favorite true-crime TV show.

  “That missing persons report from Jagged Edge?” said Jimmy. “The fax you got the other day?”

  “Guy with the gambling habit,” recalled Hector. “Blew his wife a kiss, then the loan sharks got him. You solve it already?”

  “Loan sharks never got him. He’s run off with a coworker. They’re someplace in Olde Quainte as we speak, running that very gambling page.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Ninety percent,” said Jimmy.

  The Sheriff limped across the kitchen, his phone cord untangling behind him. He grabbed a cloth and pulled out the grill. Cheese was getting nice and brown and crisp, the way he liked it.

  “What’s the story, then?” he said.

  “He and the coworker had been having an affair the last few years,” said Jimmy. “They started up the gambling business together on the sly. Things heated up and they ran away to a seafaring village in Olde Quainte called, if you can credit it, Why.”

  “Why?”

  “Just plain Why. A village called Why.”

  “No, I mean, why? Why’d they go there?”

  “Ah, its registered Hostility’s as high as you can get. Sky-high. It’s officially Ferociously Hostile.”

  “I’m with you,” said Hector. “So it’s exempt from Cello laws.”

  “They can run their gambling pages from there without getting into any trouble, and it’s a tax haven. They’re rich and in love —”

  “And living in Olde Quainte,” laughed Hector. “I’ll take poor and lonely over that any day.”

  They both chuckled awhile.

  “How’d you figure it out?” said the Sheriff.

  “Got them to fax me work records and bank statements — in Jagged Edge, they just about never pay cash, see, so it’s all right there on their bank statements.”

  “Sweet,” breathed Hector.

  “The guy bought flowers same day every year — date matched up with this colleague’s birthday, so I looked at her records, and seems she quit her job a week after he disappeared. The rest I got from the network — passwords on the gambling page matched our missing guy’s dog’s name. That kind of thing.”

  “You can work it?” said the Sheriff. “The network?”

  “Ah,” said Jimmy, “I’m just tinkering.”

  There was an admiring silence from Hector. He had the phone under his chin now and was cutting his grilled cheese sandwich into triangles.

  “Thing that got me thinking,” said Jimmy, “was that bit about the kiss — the guy blew his wife a kiss when he set off to work. Now why’d she mention that to the police?”

  Hector nodded. “Hadn’t happened in a while,” he guessed.

  “He was saying good-bye,” Jimmy said.

  “Sad story.”

  “Sad,” said Jimmy, “but it happens.”

  The way he said it — it happens — that emphasis made Hector straighten up.

  “It happens,” he agreed, “but it’s not what happened here. Not here in Bonfire.”

  “Hector,” began Jimmy, “Abel Baranski was always a player. His boy, Elliot, takes after him. I don’t think there can be a girl in that school Elliot hasn’t gone and broken her heart. Nobody expected Abel to stay with his wife. I don’t like it any more than —”

  Hector interrupted. “Abel Baranski did not run away with that teacher,” he said. “He was a good man. He loved his wife and his b
oy. Setting that aside, how’d you explain the dead body of his brother, Jon, and Abel’s own truck on the side of the road. How’d you explain that?”

  “He and Mischka took the train where they were headed?” suggested Jimmy. “Gave Jon the truck to take home to the family?”

  “Now why would they do that?” said Hector.

  Jimmy sighed. “All right,” he said. “So let’s say you’re right and all three of them were in the truck, and the Purple’s chasing them. Why get out? Why not just put up the protective shutters on the truck windows?”

  “Shutters must’ve malfunctioned. They pulled over and tried to run. Purple killed Jon, then took Abel and Mischka away with it.”

  Another silence.

  “We’ve been through this before,” Hector added.

  There was a clamorous silence, then Jimmy spoke again. “Hector,” he said gently, “you think anyone in this town really believes that Abel and Mischka were taken by a Purple?”

  Hector took a bite from his cold grilled cheese sandwich and spoke rough and firm through the chewing.

  “That’s the story,” he said, “and I’m sticking to it. I’ll fax Jagged Edge about their missing guy tomorrow. Night, Jimmy.”

  He hung up the phone.

  9.

  The Kingdom whispered.

  Moonlight sighed across the ice fields of the Magical North, glinting in the eyes of bears and wolves. It wound through the battlements and turrets of White Palace and glanced off the fishing poles that lined the Lake of Spells.

  Farther south, it caught the buckles and harnesses of night-shift workers in Nature Strip. It pooled over a pair of sleeping leopards on the Cat Walk and flared against the white of a snowy owl’s wings.

  To the east, the same moonlight hushed along the cobblestones and lampposts of the seafaring villages of Olde Quainte; farther south, and to the west, it crept across the creaking Swamp of Golden Coast. It skirted ships in harbors, mingling with lighthouse beams, then blinked in surprise at blaze after blaze of city lights.

  On a lonely stretch of highway in the north of Jagged Edge, ten black cars trailed an emerald horse-drawn carriage. Streetlights caught the royal crest on the carriage roof, then lost it, caught it, lost it again.