The Cracks in the Kingdom

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  Alanna sighed. “I’m sure you liked meat loaf last week,” she said. “But okay, go on into the kitchen and see what you can find. Today’s lunch menu has chicken and leek pie. Maybe try one of those?”

  “Maybe.” Corrie-Lynn echoed her mother’s sigh. She turned to Elliot. “Hey,” she said.

  Elliot laughed. “Hey, Corrie-Lynn. Any new puppets you want to show me?”

  “Nope. You know what, though? That spell you got me from the Lake of Spells? It’s a metaphoric spell. Did you know that?”

  “Don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do. Those spells that work in a more airy sort of way. My room was a disaster the other day after I built a puppet theater on my bed, so there was wood shavings, nails, sawdust, everything, everywhere, and I thought: This is just the time to use that spell that Elliot gave me. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Elliot agreed.

  “So I got it out. And I was about to use it when I noticed a tiny, tiny metaphor mark — it’s like a little dash with a squiggle through the middle? It’s so tiny I hadn’t even seen it before. So don’t blame yourself that you didn’t.”

  “Well,” said Elliot. “I can’t say I was. But how did you even know what that mark meant?”

  “I read all the extra stuff about the Lake of Spells in the Guidebook. So then I had to clean up the mess myself. ’Cause that spell won’t work on regular mess. It’ll be for clearing away things that are blocking the truth or whatever. Which I don’t see when that will ever come up. And if it does, I’ll forget to use the spell for sure. I’ve got to go and eat now. I’m starving. See ya, Elliot.”

  “Okay, well, sorry about that, Corrie-Lynn.”

  “That’s okay. Like I said, don’t blame yourself.”

  Elliot looked at Alanna and they both smiled. They watched Corrie-Lynn walk in her straight-backed, listless way toward the kitchen.

  “If you really want to help, I’ve always got things to do,” Alanna said. “You must be going crazy, waiting for your dad. You want distracting, right?”

  Elliot looked at her. “You bet I do.”

  “Well, if you feel like grabbing a paintbrush, there’s the cornices need touching up in twenty-three, twenty-four, and — what was the other room?”

  “Wait,” Elliot said, staring. “What did Corrie-Lynn just say about the spell?”

  “She thinks it would clear away something else? Not a regular mess? Things blocking the truth, wasn’t it? Anyhow, it was up on the third floor, so it’s room thirty-seven. That’s the other one, and —”

  But Elliot had gone.

  5.

  The Watermelon kitchen was busy in a low-murmuring way. It smelled of warm bread, crushed tomato, chopped onion. Elliot nearly tripped over a trash can full of eggshells, and the assistant chef, dusting flour from her hands, rebuked him sharply: “Slow down!”

  Corrie-Lynn was climbing onto a stool in the corner, while the head chef slid a plate of chicken-and-leek pie in her direction.

  Elliot pulled up a stool and sat beside her. She nodded at him.

  “That spell I gave you,” Elliot said. “What would you think about me asking for it back. And not explaining why?”

  Corrie-Lynn picked up her knife and fork.

  “It’d be wrong, I know,” Elliot continued.

  “It sure would,” Corrie-Lynn agreed, concentrating on the pie. She seemed to be deciding where to slice into it. She chose, and the pie toppled gently sideways.

  After a moment of chewing, she looked up at Elliot.

  “I don’t know what else to say,” he admitted. “I just really need it back.”

  Corrie-Lynn gazed at him critically. The people she had to put up with, her gaze said. All of them so much taller and older than she was, and yet so much less reliable.

  “I promise I’ll go back to the Lake of Spells one day, and get you another spell,” Elliot added. “A better one if I can.”

  Then he remembered himself.

  “Actually,” he said. “I can’t promise that. I’m banned from the Lake of Spells.”

  Corrie-Lynn broke off a piece of the pie crust with her hand, and shrugged.

  “You’ll be too old to get into the Lake soon anyway,” she said. “I plan on catching plenty on my own.”

  “You’re going to the Lake of Spells, Corrie-Lynn?”

  She turned back to him. “I’m going everywhere,” she said. “I’m seeing all of the Kingdoms and the Empires. Why do you think I never stop reading that Guidebook? One of these days I plan to meet the guidebook writer. I’ll ask him if he’s a tosser.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Elliot suggested mildly.

  “Everyone knows your dad and mine were adventurers. The Baranski brothers were famous for it,” Corrie-Lynn continued, her voice almost grim. “Well, guess what, I’m a Baranski too.”

  “So you are.” He smiled, but he was thinking how it must be for her and for his Auntie Alanna: one Baranski coming home tomorrow; the other never would.

  “Just wait a few years before you go,” he suggested.

  “Well, of course.” She took a bite of pie.

  He was watching her, trying to keep the panic from his face and eyes, but he couldn’t help a glance toward the kitchen clock.

  Might clear the black away, Cody had said. Might also clear the words behind the black.

  If the words were gone for good, this spell of Corrie-Lynn’s couldn’t get them back either.

  It was twenty minutes into the school lunch hour.

  Corrie-Lynn followed his eyes to the clock. She set her knife and fork down.

  “Nobody take away my pie!” she called to the kitchen generally. “I’ll be back in just a minute,” and to Elliot: “Come on up to my room and I’ll fetch it for you.”

  * * *

  He flew to the school, pumping the pedals, slung his bike inside the gate, and ran across the lunch-time schoolyard.

  He had to dart and skid between kids who turned and looked, or ignored him completely, or blocked his way, or called things like, “Hey, you want to go up to the deftball field and practice pitches?” in ordinary voices, and they seemed surprised when he ran by without stopping to answer, just as if it wasn’t blindingly obvious that he was in a hurry.

  He was pounding toward the small Art Room — but which one was the small one? They both seemed about the same size. There should be a better way of distinguishing, he thought. This one had green drainpipes, for example, and the other red. They could be the green art room and the red art room. No confusion there.

  Would Cody have already done it? Cody had the dreamy way about him, but when it came to his art, he was slapdash fast and efficient.

  The one on the left must be the small Art Room. From this angle, it seemed a tiny bit narrower.

  He tried the door, but it was locked. He knocked and waited. There was silence from inside. Had Cody finished already? Was he gone?

  He moved along from the door and knocked on the window.

  The blind lifted a little, and there was Cody’s face at an angle, squinting at him, suspicious, then frowning. “Hey,” Cody said, raising the window and leaning his elbows on the sill. “I said I’d see you at the end of lunch.”

  “Have you done it yet?”

  “Still deciding on the solvent.”

  “Can I have them back? I’ve got another idea.”

  Cody’s face fell for a moment, then brightened.

  “You bet,” he said. “I’m almost positive I was going to destroy them.”

  * * *

  Elliot thought he’d skip the class after lunch, find somewhere quiet to try the spell. But seemed that the teachers at this school — who’d had no apparent pedagogical enthusiasm that morning — were suddenly full of vim.

  “Elliot Baranski! You’re walking in the wrong direction if you want to make it to Biology in time!”

  How did Ms. Piper even know Elliot had Biology right now? She was a Music teacher.

  He
was trapped in classes by similarly dedicated teachers the rest of the day, then swooped on by friends, then his mother needed help packing boxes of quince — and so the day continued. Just hours back he’d been frantic for distraction, now all he wanted was a moment of peace.

  At last, late that night, he was alone in his bedroom. Through the window, a slip of moon, and a big curve of black, starry sky. He tipped out the papers. The edges almost wilted into dust.

  It suddenly seemed like the dumbest idea he’d ever had, telling Cody to pour chemical solutions on these.

  Ah, well, he’d stopped him in time.

  He took out the spell. Corrie-Lynn had had it stored in an icebox in her bedroom, and she’d packed it in an insulated bag for him to transport, but it already seemed warmer than it should.

  This one had a shinier casing than most he’d seen — it was a deep mud color, and almost a perfect circle. He thought of this spell lying in Corrie-Lynn’s hand. How she’d passed it straight across without hesitating. How thin her arms were, and her ankles, poking out of her cutoff jeans. Her fraying sandals, her black toenail growing out from when she’d dropped a hammer on her foot.

  Elliot found himself standing up. He was going to take this shiny spell straight back to his cousin. It was all wrong taking it away from her. It was the opposite of what he should be.

  Ah, but this might be the only way to get the royals back. There was Ko without her family. There was the Kingdom of Cello on the brink of collapse. The Hostiles secretly gathering. That ominous King of Aldhibah: Who knew what trouble he’d get up to with his army if King Cetus didn’t turn up to the Namesaking Ceremony?

  There was no choice.

  He fanned the papers out on his desk, trying to decide which blacked-out block to try. Corrie-Lynn had explained how the spell worked, and it seemed he’d only get one chance.

  The second-to-last page contained an account by a Cellian. She was Jane Whitehall of Marlow in Golden Coast, and the date was February 28, 1662. Elliot glanced at this, then leafed through the papers a few more times before returning to it. Something about the name Jane Whitehall struck him as hopeful. It seemed a sensible name. Or anyway the name of someone attentive to detail.

  “I bethought me that ample time had passed since my last sojourn to the World, and finding myself willing, and most desirous, to visit once more, I bethought myself that I should do so, and so, after I had supped, I took me to the” — here the words ran up against a solid blackness, which carried on for the next four or five lines.

  Okay, Jane Whitehall, Elliot took the spell into his hand again. Let’s see where you be-took yourself after you be-supped.

  He felt around the smooth surface of the casing until his fingertips touched a faint seam. Then he dug in his nails, carefully pried it open, and held the opening over the blacked-out paragraph. Nothing happened. He recalled Corrie-Lynn’s suggestion that he might have to tap the bottom and shake it a little. The moment he did that, there was a faint buzz against the palm of his hand and a tiny fluttering shadow slipped from the casing and fell softly onto the paper.

  Again, nothing happened. Elliot leaned forward. The shadow seemed about the size and shape of a small moth: It also seemed to be disintegrating into dust as he peered at it. Had it been out of the icebox for too long?

  But then the black ink slowly curled itself upward. It rolled along, collecting the next line of black, and the next after that, like someone rolling up strips of turf. Handwriting, clear and bold, emerged beneath the rolling ink. It was exactly like the hand which came before and after, except brighter and cleaner, as if the blacking-out had kept it crisp. Like carpet, protected under furniture for years.

  “and so, after I had supped, I took me to the place, and employ’d our system of pulleys and weights to locate the precise position of the Crack. I performed the usual ritual with mirror and candlelight, and within a mere quarter of an hour I had success, and a great joy it was to me to feel myself so transported to the World, mindful though I was that, in upwards of a day and a night, I should”

  There, the account carried on as it had, detailing her careful preparations for avoiding the loss of her memory, and her time in the World, and her return, all in the faded script.

  I performed the usual ritual with mirror and candlelight.

  Elliot dropped the casings onto the table and smiled.

  6.

  Madeleine and Jack were waiting at the door of Darshana’s place, listening to the clamour inside — little running footsteps, a sudden howl, a sharp crash, children’s television, Darshana’s voice singing — when Jack, who’d been standing silent and thoughtful for a moment, turned to Madeleine and said:

  “So, we’ll go no more a-roving

  So late into the night,

  Though the heart be still as loving,

  And the moon be still as bright.

  For the sword outwears its sheath,

  And the soul wears out the breast,

  And the heart must pause to breathe,

  And love itself have rest.

  Though the night was made for loving,

  And the day returns too soon.

  Yet we’ll go no more a-roving

  By the light of the moon.”

  “Yeah,” said Belle, who had arrived halfway through this recital, and waited, staring at Jack with an expression of mild distaste. “Another thing: The time has come for you to quit with the Byron obsession.”

  She leaned between them and knocked hard on the door, which opened at once with a gust. A small girl fell out onto the mat.

  “What are you waiting for?” Darshana cried. “Come in!” while the small girl — it turned out to be Chakiki — shouted at her mother: “You knew I was leaning on the door! Why did you open it?”

  Madeleine walked in with pieces of strangeness slotting themselves into her like playing cards:

  So, we’ll go no more a-roving

  So late into the night,

  Though the heart be still as loving,

  And the moon be still as bright.

  She had run into Jack on her way to Darshana’s place just now, and she’d told him about her argument with Elliot the night before.

  “So, it’s over,” she’d told Jack, and then raised her eyebrows, trying to convert the melodrama of those words into a sort of ironic self-parody. “Me and the Kingdom of Cello are officially finished.” He had been quiet and thoughtful until he’d turned on the doorstep and offered her the Byron.

  “Though the night was made for loving,

  And the day returns too soon.

  Yet we’ll go no more a-roving

  By the light of the moon.”

  Darshana was ushering everyone into the living room, at the same time as instructing her little girls that they were magnets, one north, the other south.

  As usual, Madeleine sat on the couch with Belle beside her. Jack was on the floor, leaning up against their knees. The little girls were set to crashing together, flying apart, and picking up various metal objects. Then their mother informed them that they were no longer magnets, but electrical charges. They cried about this for a moment, but they were adaptable girls and adjusted to their new roles quickly.

  Madeleine looked around the room. A cluster of stickers adorned the opposite wall, just above the skirting board: She could make out a Cinderella, a smiling Aladdin, a small blue figure with enormous eyes giving her a manic thumbs-up. LEGOs scattered the carpet. A wilting slice of tomato stained the arm of this couch.

  These are the pieces of their lives, Madeleine thought, and her mind faded back onto the pieces of her own life: the life she had lived before Cambridge.

  She and her mother had been electrical charges themselves then, hurtling around a superconductor world made of music, shimmer, glint, froth, jasmine; made of saxophone, berries, buckles, petals, espresso, and flames; of silver snow, chocolate meringue, glacial blue, fragrant tea; of walls of glass, skies of sparks, the pleasure of shoes, the sighing of pillows, t
he soft fall of dresses, the feathers of peacocks, the spinning of wheels and tops and doors and coins and girls.

  “You are a positive charge,” Darshana was instructing Chakiki, “and you, Rhani, are negative. So, what do you do? You do not know? You are no children of mine! Great big four-year-old and you do not know the behaviour of unlike electrical charges?! You rush towards each other! Good! That’s it! Excellent. Ah, your knee is all right, Rhani, do not be a crybaby. Just, maybe, shift the knee the next time a positive charge rushes you.”

  There was a brief delay then when the girls were distracted by a ball of Silly Putty that Jack had found underneath the couch. Darshana threw the Silly Putty against the wall (where it stuck) and resumed the lesson.

  “Now, you are both negative! So, run away from each other! You, Rhani, into the kitchen! You, Chakiki, as far as you can down the hall! Oh, do not be a crybaby, it is not that we wish you away from us. No! Do not come back! We do wish you away from us! For the sake of science! Science needs you in the linen closet!”

  Then Darshana summoned the girls back and explained that charges were surrounded by invisible fields of power —

  “Magical powers?” Chakiki interrupted.

  “With powers that extend to the boundaries of those fields,” Darshana said, ignoring her, reaching out to the little girls’ arms, and twisting this way and that, entangling and disentangling, to demonstrate the lines of force.

  It was the right thing to do, Madeleine told herself. Calling things off with Elliot. Even if it did mean that she would go no more a-roving by the light of the moon. Dangerous, anyway. Teenage girl. Roving by moonlight.

  She’d been entitled to say that the games were too much for her, and if he couldn’t respect her wishes, he wasn’t a true friend. Well, he wasn’t. She knew that now. He was clearly only interested in what she could do for him, how she could help with the crack and the missing royal family. She’d been stupid to think there’d been more to it, that he’d been enjoying their conversations the way she had. It was disappointing. That was all.

  Also, annoying that it had ended the way it had — with him thinking she was a quitter, and accusing her of not caring about his dad. Which made her feel guilty now, which was unfair. She hadn’t meant it that way, but now he had the moral high ground. When, actually, she should be up there, proud.