The Colors of Madeleine 01: Corner of White

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  The cars and carriages slowed, and slowed, and stopped.

  The doors of the first car swung open, and a man and woman emerged. Both rested their right hands on holstered pistols. They stood at the side of the highway, looking up at an exit sign:

  Just above the Gregorytown, a spray-painted H was encircled with sketched daggers: the Cellian symbol for Random Hostility.

  The man shone a flashlight at the sign. He and the woman spoke briefly. They looked up, down, and around. The woman walked the curve of the exit ramp awhile, then came back. They spoke again. They returned to their cars.

  The cars and carriage started up again. The procession resumed. As the horse-drawn emerald carriage passed the exit sign, one of the horses snorted, and a princess’s face, eyes large, pressed itself up against the glass.

  In downtown Bonfire, chairs were stacked on tables in the empty square. The pyramid of pumpkins hulked in shadow.

  In her spearmint green house, Clover Mackie lay beneath her patchwork quilt, fingers threading needles in her sleep.

  Two blocks east on Broad Street, Jimmy Hawthorn had fallen asleep on his couch. His feet, his camera, and a plate of pastry crumbs were all lined up on the coffee table.

  Next door, Isabella Tamborlaine, high-school physics teacher, stood at her front window. Her hands held the pendant that hung around her neck. She was breathing mist onto the window glass; outside, the faintest snow was falling.

  A few doors down, a ladder leaned up against the electronics repair shop. Someone had scraped off the words Abel Baranski and replaced this with a larger, whiter Twickleham. Upstairs, the Twicklehams slept, suitcases open on the floor. Little Derrin, who was sucking her thumb, suddenly sat up in bed. She climbed to the floor, turned a complete circle, and climbed back into bed. Still sleeping, she curled up against the pillow and returned her thumb to her mouth.

  Two miles down the Acres Road, an umbrella stood open, drying on the front porch of the Baranski farmhouse. Swimming trunks hung damply from the railings. Faint snow melted as it hit the ground.

  Petra Baranski sat by the fire in her living room. She was eating dry-roasted almonds. A book lay open on her lap, but a flash of moonlight had caught her eye. It was sitting on the bookshelf by the window — this moonlight flash — alongside a framed photograph of Petra’s husband, Abel. In the photo, Abel was at his workbench. He was leaning over a radio, his snippers poised, the faintest smile of self-consciousness: He knew the camera was there. Petra kept her gaze on the moonlight a moment, then turned back to her book.

  Upstairs in his bedroom, Elliot Baranski was sitting on the floor by his bed. Like his mother, he was eating dry-roasted almonds. Scattered across the floor were papers, receipts, manila folders, postcards, instruction manuals, user guides, notebooks. They were from his father’s shop — from the filing cabinets, drawers, and the corkboard. Elliot was sorting through them, matching up customer receipts. Now and then he stopped and made a note in a table he had drawn up for himself. He was going to return the unrepaired appliances to their owners.

  If they wanted to take them to the Twicklehams to finish the job — well, that was their decision.

  The Twicklehams had asked if they could see his dad’s paperwork, wanting his client list and supplier addresses and so forth. Elliot had said he’d think about that, and he thought he’d probably keep on thinking for some time yet.

  He paused now and looked at his clock. It was after two. He rubbed his eyes. There was something bothering him. Something wrong about his father’s things. Tools and appliances were stacked up in the shed now; the paperwork was here in Elliot’s room. But something was askew — like a painting on the wall that is hanging slightly crooked, or an accent that you can’t quite place.

  He was too tired to figure it out.

  His hand landed on a curling paper.

  The handwritten note from the corkboard again.

  It was so real, so mundane, so neat, so blue, so empty, so irrelevant now. He pressed it fast between the pages of a notebook, the moonlight stinging at his eyes.

  10.

  No sign of snow the next morning.

  The sun was warm, the sky blue, the ground bright with freshly damp grays, greens, browns.

  The parking lot of the Watermelon Inn was full. Sprays of water rose madly from the sprinkler system, swamping the already muddy flower beds.

  Elliot grinned, left the truck on the street, and walked across to the inn.

  In the front room, it was breakfast time, and crowded. He found Alanna standing on a chair, reaching up to change a bulb.

  “Do me a favor,” she said when she saw Elliot, “and refill the orange juice? Be with you in a moment.”

  Elliot held up a hand to take the used bulb from her.

  The sideboard was colorful with cereals, fruits, pancakes, waffles, pastries, syrups, jams. A middle-aged couple, loading their plates, were exclaiming, “Would you look at this spread?”

  Elliot headed to the kitchen with the empty juice jug. In an alcove in the corridor, he passed his little cousin, Corrie-Lynn.

  “Hey, kid,” he said. “Whatcha making there? Another wooden puppet?”

  “Nope,” said Corrie-Lynn. She blew the hair out of her eyes and looked up at Elliot, hammer in one hand, nail in the other. “My window ledge is already too full of puppets. This is going to be a doll’s house.”

  “Best carpenter in the Kingdom,” said Elliot, “and only six years old.”

  “You betcha,” agreed Corrie-Lynn, sizing up a plank of wood.

  Elliot tossed the used lightbulb in the kitchen bin, refilled the juice, and returned to the front room.

  Alanna was chatting with a table of guests now, telling them the best route to Forks from here, and how they should be sure and not miss the Antique Tractor Show in Dewey on the way.

  “This is my nephew, Elliot,” she told them, putting her arm around his shoulders. “Isn’t he a handsome one?”

  “Isn’t he just!” the table agreed, and Alanna led Elliot back to the sideboard.

  “You want some breakfast?” She scraped spilled cereal from the cloth onto her hand.

  Elliot shook his head. “Meeting the guys for breakfast in the square,” he said. “Just swung by to let you know I’ve been going through the things from Dad’s shop, broken appliances he hadn’t got to fix. Found a couple of program players that the records say are from here. Anyhow, I’ve figured them out so they work okay now, and I left them at the front desk for you.”

  Alanna stopped fussing with the breakfast things.

  “You can fix electronics like your dad?”

  “Nope,” he said. “Most things, not a chance. But program players can be easy. When I saw they were yours, I gave it a shot.”

  “Well, that just makes me want to hug you,” she said, and she paused and studied his face, and it kind of looked like she would hug him. But she was interrupted by a guest who wanted advice on how many pancakes he ought to have today.

  Elliot smiled to himself about the pancakes and headed back out into the corridor.

  “I’ll come back one day soon, Corrie-Lynn,” he said, “and see how the doll’s house is shaping up.”

  “Come back later today,” she said. “It’ll be done by then.”

  Elliot crouched beside her. “You skipping school?”

  “Nope, just work fast. I’ll go to school today. Our teacher’s all right,” she said, then reconsidered. “Well, I don’t like the way she’s always crying. Not exactly crying, but her eyes fill up with tears whenever anything happens, sad or happy or anything — like one time when Ben Montessori pulled Susi Wong’s hair and she saw all the hair in Ben’s hands. And another time when Ethan Crowhorn got all his spelling words right, which he never usually does. But she comes from Jagged Edge so her way of talking is funny, and I like her name. Miss Hattoway. It’s funny too, right? ’Cause it’s like: ‘Get your hat out of the way!’ That’s kind of funny. Or maybe, ‘Put your hat away.’ Not so funn
y, but still.”

  Corrie-Lynn paused. Her voice was as calm and practical as her hands.

  “And we got a new girl named Derrin Twickleham,” she continued, “which sure is a funny name. I don’t even need to explain that one. She comes from Olde Quainte and she can’t talk.”

  Elliot was silent, watching his cousin work.

  “This doll’s house,” he said, “it’s going to be for your puppets?”

  “Nope,” said Corrie-Lynn. “For the Butterfly Child.”

  Elliot laughed.

  “If you find the Butterfly Child,” Corrie-Lynn said sternly, “you’ve got to take care of her. And they like to live in dolls’ houses, see?” She reached for a book that was lying on the floor beside her measuring tape, and flicked through the pages.

  It was The Kingdom of Cello: An Illustrated Travel Guide.

  “You should stop reading that,” Elliot told her, but she ignored him, found the page she wanted, and handed it over.

  Elliot read.

  The Butterfly Child is so small she can fit into a locket. She likes to ride on butterflies and prefers to reside in a doll’s house. I have never been fortunate enough to meet a Butterfly Child, but this is not surprising: A single Child appears, trapped in a small glass jar, once every twenty years or so, and only ever in the Farms. Once the jar “manifests,” the lid must be removed immediately, otherwise the Butterfly Child will suffocate. The jar, moreover, is fragile and can manifest anywhere in the province: Tragically, the most recent Butterfly Child appeared on the edge of a mantelpiece. The jar toppled, crashing into the fireplace and killing the Butterfly Child instantly. The family could only watch in helpless horror.

  (This happened about twenty years ago. Thus, as this edition of the Guide goes to press, there is much talk buzzing around the province of the Farms as to when and where the next Butterfly Child will arrive.)

  Butterfly Children are timid, and even the person who releases the Child can have difficulty winning her trust. I have a friend (Barney) who recalls moving to a small town in the Farms when he was young, and discovering, to his immense excitement, that a Butterfly Child was in residence! However, he never got to meet her. She apparently hid behind the tiny chaise longue in her doll’s house whenever a stranger approached.

  Any number of magical abilities have been attributed to the Butterfly Child — she has been said to be able to conjure invisibility spells, compose nocturnes, and much more. None of these claims has been verified, but it is generally accepted that: a Butterfly Child can speak both the language of humans and that of the insects; when a Butterfly Child is happy, the crops in the surrounding area will flourish; and, at any moment, she will vanish, never to be seen again — sometimes after only a matter of hours.

  Elliot closed the book again and looked up.

  “You plan on finding her?” he said.

  “People say it’s time for one. And it’d fix the farming problems, right? I heard that everyone’s selling their grandma’s pearls that they’d hoped to give to their daughter someday ’cause otherwise they’ll starve ’cause nothing’s growing.”

  “Corrie-Lynn, people are having a tough time but nobody’s starving, and whoever you overheard complaining about their grandma’s pearls, well, their daughter probably prefers showing pigs at the provincial fair to old necklaces anyway.” Elliot reached across Corrie-Lynn’s head to the wall, and pressed down a stray flap of wallpaper. “As for the Butterfly Child,” he continued, “she could show up anyplace in the entire province of the Farms.”

  “Exactly,” said Corrie-Lynn. “So why not right here?”

  Elliot laughed again, standing up.

  “I plan on finding the Butterfly Child.” Corrie-Lynn leaned forward so her hair fell into her eyes. “And I plan on making friends with that Twickleham girl and teaching her how to talk.”

  “Well,” said Elliot, “I like your attitude.”

  11.

  According to the paperwork, the broken TV from Abel Baranski’s workbench belonged to Jimmy Hawthorn.

  “Hey, Jimmy,” Elliot called.

  He’d caught up with his friends in the square for breakfast and now they were heading into school. Across the street, Jimmy was opening the door to the Sheriff’s station.

  Jimmy paused, ran back down the stairs to the edge of the street, and shielded his eyes against the sun.

  “Got your broken TV in my truck,” Elliot said. The street was empty, so his regular voice carried across easily. “It was in my dad’s shop. He was halfway through fixing it.”

  Elliot’s friends shifted closer to him. Jimmy watched them, his hand still at his eyes.

  “Thanks, Elliot,” he said. “I’ve got myself a new TV in the meantime, but I’ll take the old one off your hands if you like. Maybe I’ll get it from you at training later on? Unless you can use it yourself?”

  “If you don’t need it, I can take it to the dump for you,” said Elliot. “Bunch of other stuff I’ve got to take.”

  There was another quiet. Elliot’s friends were looking at the pavement.

  “You don’t want to offer it to the Twicklehams?” said Jimmy, even-voiced. “See if they can’t use it for the parts?”

  Now the chins of Elliot’s friends lifted abruptly, and Jimmy could have sworn that a camera flash was going off in each one’s eyes.

  They spoke one at a time, voices almost overlapping, calm as water:

  “Broken televisual machine you don’t want, Jimmy?” said Kala, long dark hair shifting with her words. “School might need it for teaching electronics.”

  “Could come in handy for storage of your files and such,” said Gabe, gesturing toward the Sheriff’s station just beyond Jimmy’s shoulder. “Police files, I mean. You just take out the internal workings and you’ve got yourself an empty box.”

  “You can make a broken TV into a picture frame, Jimmy,” Nikki suggested, tilting that pretty face of hers. “Cut out the glass and put one of your best photos in there.”

  “Might make a good fishbowl,” grinned Shelby, playing with her leather armband. “Take out the wires and stuff, like Gabe said, and then pour in a bunch of water and a fish.”

  Then Cody Richter shook the curls from his eyes. “Ah, let me have it, Jimmy,” he said. “Just what I need for the sculpture I’m doing for art class. Exactly what I need, actually. I plan on putting it in the schoolyard right over there.” He pointed, and they all turned and looked.

  Five different uses for a broken TV in just over five seconds. Jimmy regarded Elliot and his friends, their backpacks slung over their shoulders. They turned back and stared at him, challenge in their eyes.

  He would have liked to photograph them.

  “You bet, Cody,” he said. “Help yourself.”

  Those Twicklehams didn’t stand a chance.

  12.

  Two days later, the sculpture was done.

  Elliot’s friend Cody believed in speed. It was part of his personal theory of art — once you got an idea, you executed it. Right away. Without even stopping to sharpen your pencil, let’s say the art in question was a pencil drawing.

  The art teacher sometimes talked to him about planting ideas in the soil at the back of his mind, nurturing them, seeing how they grew, but Cody said he spent enough of his life farming without having to harvest his art as well.

  Faint rain was falling — not falling so much as trembling — and Elliot was crossing the schoolyard, heading back to his truck after deftball training.

  In the corner of the yard was Cody’s sculpture. It was a pile of cement rising up out of the asphalt, the broken TV jammed on top. It was a mess, that was Elliot’s first thought. But he’d been friends with Cody long enough to set that thought aside. Cody always had a point.

  TV as trash, Elliot thought, but that was too obvious.

  The cement was pale in the moonlight and he thought maybe it resembled a snowman, the TV as its head. In Cello, snowmen lasted as long as the winter, and winters could be anywh
ere from an hour to a couple of weeks. (Once, there’d been winter for just over a year, but they’d torn down all the snowmen eventually, in protest.) So the sculpture was a comment on the fickleness of seasons — the TV representing what? The weather news?

  Elliot moved closer. He circled the sculpture. The back panel of the TV was still missing, he saw now, but in the darkness it looked like a patch of blacker black.

  It felt good, the TV being here. The last appliance his dad had worked on — the final, unfinished repair job — and now it was an artwork. Not one of Cody’s prettiest, but still. It was not in the dump yard, not under the magnifying glass of those Twicklehams, not even in a shed at the back of Jimmy’s house.

  It was here. Set in concrete. In the schoolyard.

  Ready for his dad to come back for it.

  That was the moment when he saw the corner of white. As the thought ran across his mind — ready for his dad to come back — he caught sight of it. The corner of a folded paper. Somewhere deep inside the back of the televisual machine.

  At first he thought it must be part of Cody’s sculpture and tried to adjust his theories to include semi-concealed paper, but then he wondered if it might have fallen in. Maybe it was supposed to be fixed to the outside of the TV? Cody sometimes wrote notes of explanation.

  Or maybe — and this thought had been there from the moment he first glimpsed it, playing deep in the darkest darkness of his mind — maybe it was something of his father’s.

  He reached his hand into the darkness and drew it out.

  His head was chanting: Peripheral connectors are: Pin 1: +12, Pin 72 and 13: Gnd. To remind himself that even if the paper really was his dad’s, most likely it was more of that same thing. Dry electronics. Not something personal or sweet. Not something that would somehow speak to Elliot, or explain where his dad was right now.