The Colors of Madeleine 01: Corner of White

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  Missing Persons Report: Mischka Elizabeth Tegan

  He touched the sharp-edged papers and gazed steadily at the name for a moment:

  Mischka Elizabeth Tegan

  He flicked through the papers. There were lists of details about Mischka: her age, height, weight, build, hair, complexion, occupation, address.

  Her hair was dark brown, it said, and just touched her collar.

  Her address was Apartment 4 (Directly Above the Bakery), Town Square, Bonfire. Her housemate was Olivia Hattoway, Grade 2 teacher at Bonfire Grade School. That was Corrie-Lynn’s teacher this year.

  There were pages and pages of interviews too, mostly the same people who’d been interviewed about his dad, although here was an interview with Olivia Hattoway herself, and a number of teachers at the high school.

  All the same questions. Tell me your full name. Tell me when you last saw her. Tell me what she was wearing. What did she say to you when she left? Did you hear from her? Did she call? Where do you think she might have gone? Did she say anything about where she was going or why? Did she take anything special?

  Seemed like it could keep going on forever, the Sheriff blowing air on it, making it thin out in different directions. Questions trailing off, starting up again.

  His eyes fell on phrases: Nothing special missing.

  No evidence of bank accounts having been used since the disappearance.

  Mood in days leading up to disappearance was cheerful, maybe a little distracted.

  Last seen at the Toadstool Pub with Jon Baranski (dec’d) and Abel Baranski (missing).

  He stopped reading.

  Down the hall he could hear the sound of his mother taking a cold shower, trying to cool down in the heat.

  The classic text on Colors — The Origin of Cellian Colors by Enid Thurgood — was always on his bookshelf, bristling with his own Post-it notes.

  It practically fell open at the page he knew so well — the chapter on third-level Purples — and there, in tiny font, was footnote no. 7, the footnote that had springboarded him all over Cello.

  7. There is anecdotal evidence that a third-level Purple once took its victim all the way to its cavern, and, rather than slaughtering him immediately — which is the Purple custom — held him prisoner for as much as twelve months (the exact length of time varies between tellers).

  There it was again. The slight, fragile chance, as small as an eyelash of the Butterfly Child, that his father — and maybe Mischka too — might be alive somewhere.

  But what could Elliot do, trapped here in Bonfire?

  And with nobody who thought he should keep looking, and nowhere to turn for advice.

  Outside, the snow seemed almost violent in its melting, racing and shoving in drips and clumps and half-melted icicles past the open window to the ground.

  Ah, well, he thought, smiling suddenly. There’s ONE person who seems keen to give advice.

  He meant the Girl-in-the-World.

  Her suggestion had more or less worked with the Butterfly Child — or anyway, given him a starting point.

  Keep the subject constantly in mind.

  Well, he’d been doing that with his missing father for over a year now.

  May as well try her other suggestion — her therapist’s suggestion.

  Stop thinking about it. Go to bed. Tell your dreaming mind to find an answer.

  He kicked the books and papers halfheartedly across the room, dragged the blankets from his bed, lay down on the sheets, and fell asleep.

  Two things woke him the next morning — a hammering sound and a shout from somewhere deep in his own head.

  Go to the Watermelon Inn and put up those coat hooks! shouted his head.

  He scrambled out of bed, his heart shouting just as loud and fast as that voice in his head.

  Write a letter to the Girl-in-the-World! it cried next. Why have you not done your Chemistry homework yet? And then, First thing you’ve gotta call the glass-repair guys over in Appletown and get that crack in the greenhouse fixed!

  He was skidding around his room amidst these shouts, throwing on his clothes, dragging on his sneakers, running his fingers through his hair, and all the time there was an odd sense of familiarity. Another voice, somewhere quieter and farther back, was saying: You know what this is.

  Ah, yes. He did. There it was, outside. Air filled up with the shafts of a fourth-level Red, and they were coming in through his open window too. Flying around at waist level in long, straight bars, about the size of his arm. It looked like these ones were grade 6(d), but a fourth-level Red could shift grades at any moment.

  No warning bells — he must have missed them while he slept.

  He jogged down the hall and leapt down the stairs. In the kitchen he saw the cause of the hammering sound. It was his mother, dressed in trackpants, sprinting on the spot, weights in both hands.

  “Why have I not been exercising?” she bellowed.

  “It’s the fourth-level Red!” he yelled back, grabbing at a knife and wildly hacking at a loaf of bread.

  “I know! But why have I not?”

  “Well, why haven’t I gone to the Watermelon to hang the new coat hooks yet?” Elliot cried. “I promised Alanna I’d do that weeks ago!”

  They grinned madly at each other. Sweat poured down Petra’s temples, dripping to the floor. Elliot threw bread in the toaster, sliced oranges, and squeezed juice, did his Chemistry homework, phoned the glass-repair place, and wrote a letter to the Girl-in-the-World. All within five minutes.

  M.T.,

  You gotta spend some time rolling rosemary and sage into the lids of your pastry pies! You gotta stand on the tractor seat now and then! Scrape toffee from the apples in the trees! You’ve got your lava and your chestnuts and the tree falls in the forest, and the violin IS red, if it’s waiting to be red, if it’s ready to be red, then it’s RED, it’s just better at hiding than most — and you know what? YOU’RE THE ONE WITH YOUR EYES CLOSED!

  ’Cause your obsession with Colors and collars and ruffles, and with telling me what’s what —

  I kinda like it. I’ve gotta say you’re kinda

  Bye,

  Elliot

  “You sure you want to send that?” cried his mother, half reading over his shoulder. She’d stopped exercising and was wrenching open all the kitchen drawers, clattering their contents onto the floor. (“Gotta polish the cutlery! Gotta sort out the stationery! What have I been thinking?!”)

  “You bet I’ve got to send it! Right now! But first I have to cheer up the Butterfly Child!”

  He skidded into the living room shouting, “Cheer up! What’s to be down about?” He did some humorous spins and dances, then paused for a split second, watching her. He couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to him that the Butterfly Child might be squeezing her eyes tighter.

  “Ah well, I tried.” Elliot shrugged, then ran from the house, slamming the front door behind him. That old whistling sound was playing in his mind again, but he whisked it away.

  He ran right by the truck and by his bike.

  Who needed them? He could take on the world! He could fly there if he wanted to! Why not? He held his arms high and the Reds swooped under and over them, and he flapped his arms, waiting to fly, while a quiet voice in his head said: Uh, no.

  Okay, not fly, but he could run!

  His ankle throbbed a little and “That’ll teach you, ankle!” he shouted as he ran, “that’ll teach you to go breaking on me!” He ran faster.

  Downtown, everyone was out.

  Ladders leaned against buildings, and people shouted instructions at one another and themselves. Paint cans were opened, nails were hammered, wooden structures rose up out of lawns.

  “We’ve always wanted a garage! Why not just build one?!”

  “Look, children! You don’t need to live in our house anymore! Here’s a little house of your own!”

  Clover Mackie, town seamstress, was sitting on a park bench surrounded by papers.

  “Doing
my taxes!” she called to Elliot, punching furiously at a calculator. “Haven’t done them in twenty years or more!”

  The Reds swerved up and down the streets, swooping around corners.

  Isabella Tamborlaine jogged past Elliot, swinging her ice skates.

  “The lake won’t be frozen!” Elliot cried. “It’s summer, see?” pointing to the warm blue sky.

  “I’m a Science teacher! Surely I can freeze it myself!” Isabella picked up her pace.

  Elliot hurdled the school fence, passed a huddle of teachers — they were urgently grading exams at the same time as making plans for a complete overhaul of the school syllabus — and ran to deliver his letter to the sculpture. Everyone was caught up in activity and nobody paid him any heed.

  A Red brushed his arm, and he turned and sprinted from the school and on through the town.

  At the Watermelon Inn, the parking lot was crowded with people spray-painting their cars (“Who chose white anyway? I always wanted a black-and-orange-striped car! Just like a tiger!”) or taking out the engines (“Surely I can fine-tune this myself!”) or moving around the plant pots, adjusting the sprinklers.

  In the front room, Alanna was standing amidst piles and piles of bedsheets. “Going to refold them all!” She grinned at Elliot. Guests and visitors were in a frenzy of agitation, the bars of Red weaving amongst them. Some people were shifting the couches into new positions; others were busily unpicking the seams of their coats. He saw the Twicklehams leaning together by the fireplace, talking up a storm. “As to a puff adder in a hint of olive oil!” Mr. Twickleham prattled, and “Call yourself a screwdriver and be hooray!” responded his wife.

  Nearby, little Derrin Twickleham was playing a clapping game with Corrie-Lynn, their hands slapping together so fast the air seemed to vibrate around them.

  Then, suddenly, there was a shift. The color of the Red darkened ever so slightly, and the atmosphere changed at once. Waves of anger swept across the room. Couches were shoved aside, brows crumpled, and mouths snarled in rage.

  “It was the idea of a cockerel in a malt house!” shouted Mr. Twickleham.

  “And you’d have thought of something twittering better?” she hollered back.

  Corrie-Lynn and Derrin continued to clap hands together, but now it was more like pounding, and Corrie-Lynn was bellowing: “JUST TALK! JUST STOP NOT TALKING!”

  A sound like someone ripping aluminum seemed to tear right out of Derrin’s mouth.

  “IF YOU CAN MAKE THAT NOISE,” Corrie-Lynn screamed, “YOU CAN TALK!”

  Elliot found himself crossing the room. His face was alive with heat, the blood knocking wildly at his temples. Those Twicklehams. He would kill them. He would pick them up by the hair on their heads. He would hurl them through the air, they would smash through the picture window.

  Those Twicklehams.

  He stepped over the rolling bodies of two elderly men, locked in a wrestling match.

  Those Twicklehams.

  In his father’s shop.

  Stealing his father’s business. His customers. His place in Bonfire. His place in Elliot’s —

  And then suddenly Elliot stopped.

  The Reds had changed again. Their hue sharpened and darkened further. The rage fell from the room like a dropped towel.

  Instead, there was profound, piercing silence. Eyes widened and found one another. The wrestling men untangled themselves and drew back, unblinking. The fourth-level Red was now at grade 9(d), and everything, every thought, every object, had intensified.

  Elliot found himself turning, backing from the room. He moved with careful clarity toward the lobby.

  Everything he saw had redrawn outlines — fiercely redrawn outlines.

  Here was the lobby.

  Here, he knew now with vicious certainty, he would affix new coat hooks for Alanna.

  Objects asserted themselves. The guest book. A pen. An empty coffee mug.

  Behind the desk, the leaflets and notices on the corkboard. Breakfast Serving Times. Tours of the Farms. Maps of Bonfire. A small handwritten note in the bottom corner.

  He would nail the coat hooks beside the corkboard.

  His gaze seemed to lift itself up with its own certainty, and to shift, a careful shift, then another careful shift, until it stopped. It was on the corkboard, again. His vision aimed directly at that handwritten note in the corner.

  That was his uncle’s handwriting.

  That was Uncle Jon’s tiny script:

  Elliot stared. At the corner of his mind he was aware of a new change: the Red had switched back to grade 6(d), and people were once again restless with ambition, agitated with plans.

  But Elliot stood still, let his heart pound without him, and the words and numbers continued sharpening, the focus turning and turning until it seemed to be a light so bright that it burned right through his eyes.

  In the Sheriff’s station, Hector was climbing on the furniture.

  “Gotta change all the lightbulbs! Gotta make this station shine!”

  Jimmy was spinning in his chair, fanning out papers as he did so.

  “I’m solving them all,” he muttered feverishly. “All five of them. Right now!”

  “No!” The Sheriff jumped from his desk, stumbled on his bad knee, and snatched at the papers in Jimmy’s hand.

  Jimmy ducked away, reading eagerly.

  “Shred them,” ordered Hector, and he swung himself onto his own chair, dragging the typewriter across his desk. “I’m sending out an urgent notice! No more missing persons reports for my deputy! Enough! I’ve had enough!”

  “You’re the one who asked for them.” Jimmy frowned fiercely at the papers. “What’s the connection? I know there’s a connection, I can see the connection! I just can’t catch it!”

  “Never asked for these ones! They’re from Cellian Central Intelligence! It’s your fault, Jimmy — you’re too darn good! They heard about you and sent you five of their unsolved!” Hector was typing as he fumed. “I’m telling them now, Solve your own missing persons! We’ve got better things to do! I’m saying, You’re supposed to be the best, aren’t you? Or anyway, the most central!”

  “What’s the connection?” Jimmy’s eyes swerved from report to report.

  “There is no connection!” Hector swiped his letter out of the typewriter and rapidly turned it into a paper plane. “That’s five separate missing persons from all over the Kingdom that they’ve sent us! Nothing to do with one another! Nothing to do with us, more to the point. Nothing to do with you!”

  He looked down at the airplane in his hand and frowned in consternation. Then he threw it across the room.

  The door to the station swung open and Elliot Baranski skidded in. The paper airplane flew toward his nose.

  “It’s the same!” Elliot shouted, catching the plane and hurling it right back. “Hector, it’s the same! There’s a connection!”

  The Sheriff looked up. Jimmy looked up.

  There was a pause and in the pause, everything seemed to slide away.

  It was the bars of Red: They were fading.

  But Elliot’s voice still clamored: “It was in Dad’s workshop! A note on his board that said peripheral connectors are pin 1 plus 12, something, whatever, and just now I saw it at the Watermelon Inn! Uncle Jon used the exact same sequence, only for heaters. The guest room heaters! It’s gotta mean something! It’s gotta be connected to the night it all happened. It’ll maybe even tell us where he is!”

  Hector and Jimmy gazed at Elliot.

  He shouted the story of the two notes again and again, until they understood.

  “What do you think it means, Elliot?” Hector ventured.

  “I don’t know! But —” and Elliot himself was abruptly aware of the volume of his voice, the quiet around him.

  “Might be what you call a coincidence,” suggested Hector. “Or, no, more likely, your dad fixed the heaters one time for your Uncle Jon, and he wrote that sequence down for himself and for Jon, just for technical r
easons. Or maybe, like I said, it’s plain coincidence.”

  Jimmy was staring around the station. Paper chains hung from windowsills and paper lanterns were strung across the desks.

  “Seems like we decided to redecorate,” he said ruefully.

  “Ah,” sighed Hector, looking closely at one of the lanterns. “Used our paperwork to do it too.”

  Their bewildered, sheepish quiet seemed to spread out of the station, down the steps and right across the town.

  “It’s fourth-level Reds,” said Jimmy, his eyes on Elliot. “They make you do crazy things. They make you see things that aren’t there.”

  “But it was there,” whispered Elliot.

  “You know what I mean. A connection that’s not there.”

  The quiet kept drifting, and then it was filled with the sound of ringing bells.

  “It’s the all clear,” Jimmy said. “No, it’s more than that. That’s the code that means the whole wave of Reds is through.”

  “It’s over,” Hector murmured, and Elliot stood in the center of the station, his forehead crumpling so hard he had to close his eyes.

  10.

  One Friday morning in the first week of July, Belle came back.

  She arrived at Madeleine’s flat for the lesson with Holly, and she looked exactly like herself, but her voice was dry and hoarse.

  Outside, it was raining quietly and efficiently, and inside the electric lights and lamps cast a soft glow. They stood around at first, welcoming Belle, and there was a strange physical awareness. A sense of the shape and closeness of their bodies in the small golden space surrounding Belle.

  Belle took on the character of her low, dry voice, her eyes almost sultry, her words lethargic.

  “The only thing,” she said, “is it hurts to talk. Otherwise I’m better.” Then, with a shrug and a quick lift of her eyebrows, she said: “Of course, if you people could learn to read auras, we wouldn’t need to talk. We could just, like, glance at each other’s auras and know everything in all our heads.” As she spoke, her eyes shifted from Holly to Jack to Madeleine, studying the air above their heads.