“And you think you’ll be gone for a few weeks?”
“Maybe longer. As long as it takes.”
Petra grows still. She leans forward slightly. Her eyes are full of the things she wants to say, pages and pages of things she’d like to say.
Instead, she says, “Make this the last time.”
Elliot also grows still, then, suddenly agitated, he looks behind his shoulder and pulls on his shoelace. He turns back, changing the subject.
“I checked the sculpture one more time this morning,” he says. “Still nothing.”
He means Cody’s sculpture in the schoolyard. Since he replied to the letter from the Girl-in-the-World, he’s looked once or twice for a reply, more for his mother than himself.
“I suppose we’re not going to hear from her, then,” sighs Petra. “Well, it’s for the best. If the Sheriff found out there was a crack and we hadn’t report —” but then her eyes startle at something just over Elliot’s shoulder.
Elliot sees her startle, and his left arm swings into the air.
He catches it. He opens his hand and there’s the tomato that was flying straight toward his mother’s face.
“Those are some reflexes,” says a voice. It’s the Sheriff himself, approaching from behind and stopping beside Petra.
“That’s my boy,” agrees Petra, grinning up over her shoulder at Hector. “And that’s why I’d bet the farm on the Antelopes winning today,” and as she speaks, she rests her arm across the table. Her fingertips play with the tomato.
They all look across the square to the kid who threw it, slinking now into a store.
“I’ll have a word with him,” the Sheriff says.
Petra shrugs. “It was an accident. No harm done.”
The Sheriff breathes in the atmosphere and also shrugs. “You still heading out tomorrow, Elliot? Heading to the Lake of Spells?”
“First train of the day.”
“Swing by the station later. If you catch that Locator Spell you want, and it leads you back to the caverns, well, you’ll need a couple of extra protective jackets. I’ve got some in the station.”
Elliot nods. “Thanks, Hector.”
“Just saw the team from Horatio,” Hector says now. “Their coach is parked up on Main Street and they’re all sort of hovering there. Tough-looking bunch.”
Elliot smiles. “We can take them.”
The Sheriff tips his hat. “See you at the game.”
“See you there, Hector.”
They both wait until he’s shuffled across the square, then their eyes meet.
“That was close,” says Petra. “I should be more careful what I say.”
“Ah,” says Elliot. “He didn’t hear.” He drinks the last of his coffee and puts the mug down, looking behind him at the clock tower. “I’ve got time to head home and check on that window catch that keeps stalling. Meet you at the field?”
Petra shakes her head at him.
“You’ve got less than an hour until the game; you know I can handle the window catch myself, and you still plan to go home now to check it? Elliot, you can’t do everything, you know.”
Elliot stands, half smiles.
Petra gives up. “See you at the game.”
It’s twenty minutes later and Elliot has found the glitch in the automatic window opener, and fixed the stalling window catch, and is crossing the fields toward his house.
There’s a great big quietness out here in the fields, and there’s something in his chest, an elbowing excitement. The championship is today, and he loves the game of deftball fiercely, the sprint of it, and the catching, always the catching, the feel of those smooth balls falling and falling in the palm of his hand. He holds a hand out now, and it happens, he catches the ball, closes his fingers tight, and then tosses it high again. He can’t walk these fields without tossing that ball.
At the edge of his vision there’s some patterns of light. He must have been fixing his gaze too tightly on the bolts and nuts of the window catch.
The elbowing in his chest gets harder; he’s excited about the game, sure, but more about the journey tomorrow. The edges of him need that train, the clatter and vibration of that train, and how it pauses at stations, and the doors open and shut, then it moves on, and moves on again. There’ll be swiftly changing weather, and shifting altitudes, and bridges crossing high over rivers and ravines. He’ll be studying his maps and codebooks and his Spell Fishing. He’ll look up now and then through the windows, and soon there’ll be nothing but the blinding snow-white of the Magical North.
He blinks hard now, to clear that smudge of light from his vision; it’s like a splinter of the northern snow-white is already catching at his eye.
He can see the farmhouse, and on the front porch, his rucksack, standing up against the wall. It got damp in the Swamp of the Golden Coast — he only realized last night that mold was growing in its pockets. He washed it out and now it’s drying in the sun. Later, after the game, he’ll pack it.
That tightening of straps and buckles: He breathes it in deeply, the idea of that.
It’s not his vision, he realizes now; it’s something up there in the sky. A flash of sunlight on something, maybe an airplane or the eye of a bird. He looks up, sheltering his own eyes with his hands, but a ladybird bug lands on his wrist, and he lowers his arm, shakes it slightly to let the ladybird go, thinking how that’s good luck. They’ll win the game; he’ll find what he needs on his journey.
His right foot almost lands on a caterpillar turning itself over in the grass.
He keeps walking, still tossing the ball into the blue. There’s a flurry of moths over the gatepost there. There’s that light in the sky that keeps catching his eye like sun on water.
At the sports field, there’s nervous energy sparking through the crowds, throwing smiles and banter helter-skelter. The local farmers have set up stalls down the southern end, selling not just cold drinks and baked goods, but every kind of produce they can grow, and everything they can stitch or knock together. Olaf Minski has lined up jars of honey; Petra Baranski’s selling quince, beans, peas, and recycled buttons and zips; the Epsteins have baskets of peaches and buckets of old clothes-pegs. There’s cash boxes and coconut ice.
They’ve come from all over the Farms to see the game: They’ve sailed down the Chokeberry, and up the River of Dray; they’ve ridden on trains, coaches, and ferries. They’re wearing straw hats and applying sunscreen, and someone picks up a jug of ice water and tips it right over his own head.
At one end of the field, Jimmy’s taking photos of his Bonfire team while they warm up, lowering his camera now and then to call out advice. At the other, the team from Horatio is gathered close, talking fast. The crowd is mostly Bonfire supporters, and when they’re not catching up with one another, they’re staring at those Horatio players. Horatio’s a lean factory town up in the north of the Farms, where they manufacture clothes, glass, toys, and polyurethane glue. The team members look tough: torn nails, bruised eyes, big shoulders.
The sky is even higher and clearer now, and people look up at it often. There’s been five attacks of fifth-level Gray in this last year alone. Townsfolk who’ve been living elsewhere share stories of increasing Color attacks all over. A man pats the patch over his eye and says, “Gentian Violet, second level,” and a woman says she nearly lost her leg to a malicious Green.
“Color attacks up, and crops down,” somebody says mournfully, and “Isn’t that the truth?” goes drifting through the crowd. There are stories of farms shutting down and banks moving in, and a woman says her sister, been growing carrots all her life, just got herself a certificate in Hygiene Management at the hospital. Not a whiff of interest in hygiene management before, excuse the pun, but what with the carrots turning up green and puny yet again, she couldn’t make ends meet any longer.
A child draws an outline in the dust of a Butterfly Child, and someone spots it and says, “Now isn’t that exactly what we need?”
Ther
e’s a wistful sigh through the crowd, and “Imagine that,” and “Wouldn’t that be the answer?”
“I heard they already found her,” someone says. “Up at Forks — late last night.”
“Ah, it’d have been on the radio if they’d found her.”
Then there’s a clattering sound and everyone turns. It’s the band tuning up — Kala’s on the saxophone — and the soundtrack of the day shifts back to excitement once again.
It’s like sun on water or on tinsel or coins.
Elliot’s squinting up now to see what it is, that flash of light in the sky.
It’s something falling. He thinks maybe a leaf, but he can’t get the perspective. A bird maybe turning somersaults.
He keeps walking, keeps tossing the ball, his mind still making lists of the things he needs to pack.
Maybe it’s a little touch of Silver, he thinks, but Silver’s so rare these days. They only seem to get the bad Colors, not the good.
Sunlight on glass, he thinks, that’s what it’s like. On a glass jug, or a vase, or — and then he’s running.
He knows what it is, and he’s running. Time changes right away; it’s been falling all this time, in that strange slow tumble, but now it’s a lightning plummet.
It’s beyond the fence, way over to the left, but the gate’s to the right. The fence is too high to jump; he has to sidetrack to the gate and then around.
But he knows how long it takes a thing to fall. He knows exactly where and when that thing will land.
He’s running and he’s thinking, what a damn fool place for a Butterfly Child to manifest, in the sky, in the sky above a field! He’s running and he senses, out of the corner of his eye, his own deftball landing in the grass. He’s going to have to clamber over the fence, there’s no time to sidetrack to the gate, and then run again, and even then he’s going to miss it —
He can see it clearly now, falling — the glass jar, and a little tumble of color inside. That’s her, that’s the Butterfly Child, tumbling around in the tumbling jar.
He knows what he can catch and what he’ll miss — and he’s running like he never ran before, but this one, he knows he’s going to miss.
At the edge of the sports field, there are a couple of kids on bikes riding in circles. They’ve pegged little squares of cardboard to the spokes of their wheels to make a high-speed rat-tat-tat noise.
The band’s playing tunes now, and someone’s slicing oranges and mangoes for the teams to eat at halftime. The school principal arrives and shows some of her students how she’s painted her fingernails blue and gold.
Isabella Tamborlaine passes just behind Jimmy, and he stops, turns around, and she twirls her dress for him. It’s blue and gold clouds, fading one into the other.
“Is that supposed to be ironic?” he says.
“Of course not,” she says. “I got Clover to make it for me. I’m a deftball fanatic now that I know it’s all calculus. Just be sure and win today, okay?”
There are picnic blankets on the grass, and the Twicklehams are weaving amongst them, handing out leaflets for Twickleham Electronics Repair.
They climb up to the bleachers, sit down, and hand another leaflet to the person beside them, saying, “Like to a dovecote in a gum boot, so are we with your picture-box repair,” while little Derrin waves at her grade-school teacher — Miss Hattoway — who waves back and smiles an upside-down smile.
Then somebody shouts that they need tickets to be up in the bleachers, and the Twicklehams laugh, embarrassed, and stand. Derrin’s face remains solemn as she makes her way back down the stairs. She pauses when she reaches the grass, and this time she’s waving more vigorously, a wave and a grin that fly across the field to her friend, Corrie-Lynn.
Corrie-Lynn is with her mother, both of them leaning up against Petra Baranski’s stall for a chat.
Petra shakes her head about her son. “He’ll be here in time — he always is — but he sure knows how to cut it fine.”
Alanna laughs. “Tell him I said thanks for getting the team into the finals,” she says. “The Watermelon’s jam-packed. Every room booked. I should be there right now making beds actually, but who needs that when there’s this?”
“Well now, it was the whole team who made it to the finals, not just Elliot,” says his mother automatically, but they both know that it was mostly Elliot.
He jumps the fence.
He can’t jump the fence; it’s too high.
But he does.
He’s leaping, flying, sailing over that fence, and his foot catches the top ledge as he does, but his arm’s out, his hand’s out, his fingers are out, he can actually shift his body in the air, and he catches it.
The cold smooth surface of glass in the palm of his hand. He closes his fingers around it.
Time’s strange.
There’s enough time to think about how beautiful it is, to catch. How catching is the opposite of missing. How the opposite of missing feels so damn good. How this glass jar feels better in his hand even than the winning catch in deftball.
Then he hits the ground.
His head hits the dirt.
He sees it as he hits, the jar rolling slowly from his hand across the grass.
He’s flat on his back, and there’s the jar, stopped still now, and inside it he can see her, the tiny, tiny Butterfly Child. She’s sitting up straight at the bottom, and she seems to be looking at him. She’s holding a dress around her, such tiny hands, holding that dress, and the colors of it! Sapphire blue with deep russet spots, and she’s holding this dress close around her, like wings.
Elliot lies with his head on the dirt, watching her through the glass. He’s thinking about school. You do one test, but then you’ve got to do another, is what he’s thinking.
There’s always another test, and he can hear the voice of his little cousin, Corrie-Lynn. She’s explaining something to him: You’ve got to open the lid of the jar.
She’s saying, You’ve got to do it right away or she’ll suffocate. Her voice is growing angry. You’ve got to do it immediately!
But there’s some kind of a test he has to pass, and he realizes it’s this: He has to replay in his mind the way he hit the ground just now. The way his head, in particular, hit the ground and flew back up and hit again. The thump of his head, the percussion of that thump. So this might be a music exam.
There’s the Butterfly Child in her jar, and she’s not sitting straight-backed anymore. She’s sliding downward, kind of slumping, her tiny little chin, and maybe those are her tiny eyelashes.
His own shoulder is slumping too, and his ankle, now and then, has a wildness about it. That’s one thing, before he goes tomorrow, he’s going to have to give that ankle a good stern talking-to.
There’s a whole lot of Butterfly Children now, a whole lot of jars, with a whole lot of lids, rolling along the grass together, the lids of the jar are the lids of his eyes, and all of them closing tight.
The Mayor is at the field. Someone from the local paper is photographing her; she’s standing on her seat, ignoring the photographer and shouting to the crowd. She’s got a bottle of GC teakwater in her hand, and she’s holding it up, promising she’ll serve it at the after-party if they win.
“So I want to hear some cheering!” she cries. “I want you all to do some damage to your voice boxes!”
There’s cheering and shouting at this, and a lot of chatter, as word gets passed around about what the Mayor has promised. This gets tangled with the rumor that those strangers in red T-shirts are actually deftball selectors from Tyler University in Jagged Edge!
But that turns out to be just a rumor.
However, then it emerges that they are selectors, but from the University of Dentwood, which is not such a bad school, really! Even if it is just in the Farms.
Officials in white are doing final measurements of the furrows on the field. Patterns of orange light are rippling across the scoreboards. The teams are moving into formation.
There’s an expectant quieting, then almost at once, a new murmur moves through the crowd. Where is Elliot Baranski? says the murmur. And focus shifts from face to face; Elliot’s mother, who is sitting in the front row of the stands now, shrugs slightly, then fixes her gaze back on the field. Jimmy is talking to his team, but his head keeps swinging away from them, to scan the crowd and the distance. The players themselves are not listening. Gabe and Nikki step away from him slightly, glancing at each other, then lifting their hands simultaneously to shade their eyes and squint around. The band is playing, but Kala, on saxophone, pauses, lowers her instrument, and twists around in her seat, eyes searching.
The Mayor is standing at the microphone, watching the scoreboard. She’s supposed to officially begin the game. She looks across at Jimmy with a question on her face, and he makes a decision, strides out across the field himself.
He joins her at the microphone.
“Anybody here seen Elliot Baranski?” he says, and there’s laughter at his informality, and because he’s turned all their thoughts into words.
The team from Horatio is protesting, though, and so are the Horatio supporters, and an official blows a whistle hard.
“Welcome, everybody,” says Jimmy into the microphone, stalling, “to the Bonfire Sports Field on this fine and beautiful day!”
There’s an obliging cheer from the crowd, and the Horatio team fold their arms, hostile — and then there’s the roar of a truck engine.
Everybody sees it, just over the crest of the hill: It’s the Baranski truck.
The cheer fades into the engine roar itself, and there’s a pause, and the truck door opens, and here’s Elliot. They watch him get out.
Now he’s crossing the empty field, heading for Jimmy and the microphone. He’s walking kind of slowly and oddly, limping a little, his shoulder askew, and his chin’s low, eyes down, like he’s studying the ground. Two or three times he nearly trips on the furrows, and each time a shadow flashes across his face. Over at the stands, his mother climbs out of her seat and starts heading fast in his direction.
The Colors of Madeleine 01: Corner of White Page 11