The Cracks in the Kingdom Page 11

  “And this carried on until the World gave us the plague?” Elliot prompted.

  “No. It was stopped long before that. The World closed the cracks. Some kind of religious fervor took hold. Cello became associated with heresy and witchcraft. Contact with our Kingdom met with severe punishment. I understand the World then entered a period called the Dark Ages. Much later, in the sixteen hundreds, certain cracks were rediscovered in parts of the World, especially Italy and England, and those were used in secret by certain Worldians, especially a group of English scientists known as the Royal Society. Here in Cello, the Illustrious Institute for Harmonious and Mutually Beneficial Relations between Cello and the World (or the Harmony Institute) was established, and Worldian visitors were welcomed. Friendships were forged, ideas and experiments shared, and accounts of journeys between our worlds were recorded.

  “This ended, abruptly, with the plague: It slipped through the cracks from the World into Cello. Our Winds blew it away before much life was lost, but it spread across many Kingdoms and Empires — including, famously, Aldhibah, precipitating the 200 Year War and being indirectly responsible for the hostilities that have flared between our kingdoms ever since, the loss of millions of Cellian and Aldhian lives, and recent border skirmishes and tensions. Cello had no choice but to seal off the cracks. The Harmony Institute was shut down, the WSU established, and two more contrasting organizations could not be imagined.”

  Samuel bowed slightly, to signal that his recitation had concluded.

  “But here,” he remembered, “are my index cards, detailing the recorded accounts of journeys from the archives of the Harmony Institute.”

  “Give them to Elliot,” Princess Ko instructed. “They might help him figure out how to open up the crack. Okay, thank you, Samuel. That was informative. But I assume you know nothing about how to see the cracks, or about what the ‘secret technique’ is for getting through them?”

  “Call yourself the truth of your assumption,” Samuel agreed. “I know naught. But do you know of the Stumblers?”

  “The Stumblers?”

  “Very rarely, people in both Cello and the World have been known to stumble through a crack into the other place. Obviously they do this without using any kind of secret techniques. But there have been no reports of stumbling for several centuries.”

  “Interesting. But not particularly helpful.”

  “No,” Samuel agreed.

  The Princess turned to Keira, who was sitting beside Samuel. “Keira?”

  Keira blinked.

  “I went through six boxes of code,” she said. “Cellian weather statistics. I took notes. Should I read them?”

  Princess Ko shook her head. “Sergio?” She turned to Sergio, while the others looked from Ko to Keira and back again, and Keira herself narrowed her eyes, then smiled in a tight, complicated way.

  Sergio launched into a flamboyant account of his new job as junior administrative clerk at the World Severance Unit.

  It turned out he was in human resources, mostly filing documents, which were beautiful in their fascination. Not always. Sometimes they killed him with their desperate absence of reason for him to be the living. Figures, percentages, rules. These were things Sergio had never found beautiful. “But! The application by Raymond Kiriaki for funding for a two-day conference in Nature Strip on workplace presentations! Interesting! Because Raymond spent five percent of his worktime doing presentations. So where was his justification?! Although, there had been disagreement. Helena was of the thinking that it was more likely seven percent, and Jakobski put it closer to four point five —”

  “Who are Helena and Jakobski?” asked Princess Ko, frowning.

  “Helena is my immediate supervisor,” Sergio explained. “She has the photos of her dogs on the corkboard of the cubicle. Did you know of these boards of cork? Beautiful! You have the photos, you have the reminders, you have the small jokes, and the beautiful pictures of the rivers with the trees reflecting to give the inspiring. Beautiful. And Jakobski, he is regional manager, HR — so he is the boss of Helena’s boss — and he came to work with the white cotton wool in one of his nostrils the one day! Beautiful! In the hilarious sense. There was the speculating about —”

  “Sergio.” Princess Ko’s frown was deepening. “Is this relevant?”

  Sergio looked surprised.

  “Strange, no?” He scratched his forehead, his voice turning philosophical. “I am working at the WSU but I am hearing nothing of the World.”

  “Maybe you should listen harder,” Keira pointed out.

  “But …” Sergio’s tone remained thoughtful. “I have seen the files of the Enforcement team, and they are, how do you say? Trained. Former military mostly, and former police, former intelligence. They have the training in the hand-to-hand combat, in the sharp shooting, in the assassination. Everything. So much training that their files are as fat as Samuel’s cheeks.”

  He said this with such a fond smile at Samuel that Samuel blushed proudly.

  “Well, we knew that.” Princess Ko fluttered her fingers, the way she did when Sergio grew too theatrical. “When you go back, focus less on Raymond Kiriaki’s conferences, and more on getting a crack detector. Or on anything vaguely related to the World. Speaking of the World … Elliot?”

  Elliot was caught in Sergio’s gaze. He had to shift to get out from it.

  “Okay.” He turned to the Princess. “It might not sound like much, but Madeleine and I had a breakthrough. The night before I left for this trip.”

  They all waited, interested.

  “It was — well.”

  He stopped. He didn’t know how to say this. Words couldn’t match up with the event. It might not sound like much, he’d said, but he needed to convey that it was, in fact, much.

  “Okay, what you have to understand —”

  He stopped again. Now he had this unexpected feeling that it was private. He didn’t want to tell them. It was between him and Madeleine, wasn’t it?

  That made no sense.

  “I touched her hand,” he admitted. “We believed in each other for a moment, and then suddenly our hands were intertwined.”

  “And then?” said Princess Ko.

  “Then she was gone. It was only for a moment. My eyes were closed.”

  “You closed your eyes?”

  “Well, it just …”

  “You did this by believing?” Keira spoke in a voice that could wither the Ancient and Enduring Forests of Nature Strip.

  “You touched hands with a girl in the World!” exclaimed Samuel. “You reached through a letter-size crack and touched her hand?! But it’s impossible!”

  Elliot looked at Samuel and felt, for the first time, mild affection. The kid was the only one reacting appropriately.

  “Imagine what Enforcement at the WSU would do if they knew this,” Sergio reflected. “It would not be beautiful.”

  “Ah, you already made that point.” Elliot was getting impatient.

  “And what am I supposed to do when we find my family?” Princess Ko’s tone echoed Keira’s. “Touch my sister’s hand? Tremendously helpful, I’m sure. I’ll tell the King of Aldhibah that my father cannot actually attend the namesaking ceremony of his first and only son, but ‘Here!’ I’ll say, “Why not hold his fingertips a moment?!’ Truly a sparklespin of whirlshine, Elliot.”

  “But, I think —” began Samuel, then stopped in tremendous confusion. Supporting Elliot would mean disagreeing with the Princess. What to do?

  “Oh, never mind.” Princess Ko sighed. “Continue working, Elliot. You will, I trust, take greater strides over the coming days.”

  Elliot smiled. “Sure,” he shrugged. “Oh, yeah, and Madeleine sent me those maps of the world you wanted.”

  He offered a pile of papers, but the Princess nodded toward Samuel.

  “Give them to him,” she commanded. “Samuel was to determine where my family emerged in the world, according to the location of their disappearance. He can update his
findings using these modern maps. Samuel?”

  There was a stillness from Samuel: the sort that draws attention. They turned to him and his face had assumed its familiar anguished dismay.

  “Honestly,” said the Princess, “between you and Sergio we could open a dramatic society. What is the matter, Samuel?”

  “Did I not mention?” Samuel murmured. “A rather important omission, I suppose. As to a fig leaf wrapped in wire. I’m afraid I was not able to determine where your family would have emerged.”

  “Why not?” snapped the Princess. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “It’s a wrongness of geography, although my own flaws are certainly manifold, as to —” Samuel stopped himself. “There is no pattern, you see, to the links between Cello and the World. Consider this. Elliot has found a crack in Bonfire, the Farms, which leads to a city called Cambridge, England. Am I correct, Elliot?”

  Elliot nodded.

  “Call yourselves my apologies, dear friends,” he continued, “but another crack, one town away from Bonfire, say, could lead to a city on the entire other side of the World. There is a randomness, you see, to how cracks connect here to there. The only way to tell where your family arrived in the World would be if any of the accounts I collected happened to match the exact royal crossover points.”

  They all looked at Samuel’s index cards.

  “As to which,” he added, “they do not.”

  “A rather important omission,” Keira murmured.

  4.

  “Nonsense!”

  Princess Ko clapped her hands three times. “This is of no consequence! It might have been useful to know where they had emerged in the World, but what of it? Did they go through to the World and then sit patiently by the crack? Are they still there a year and a half later? Hardly! All that matters is where they are now!”

  “It might become an issue,” Keira pointed out, “if we find an address for them in the World. We’d want a crack here in Cello that matches the point in the World where they are, so we could bring them back through directly, but —”

  Princess Ko spoke over her.

  “We are here to find a Locator Spell,” she said. “By my calculations we have twenty minutes before our Seclusion Spell expires. Accordingly, we need to refresh ourselves with a mallow treat and hot chocolate while Elliot explains this Spell Fishing book of his.”

  She handed around cups, poured chocolate from a thermos flask, and placed the basket of roasted mallow treats in the center of their circle.

  “Right!” said Princess Ko. “Elliot?”

  Elliot had brought the book into the tent with him. He picked it up now, felt the cool softness of the cover, and studied the title page.

  Here it was. The book he’d found months before in the Bonfire Library. That exquisite surge of hope he’d felt when he first leafed through its pages. Everyone he knew had shaken their heads, dismissive, contemptuous, sympathetic: It can’t be done; the book’s a crock; the book’s a cheat; that book’s a load of —

  He’d ignored them all, studied this book late into the night. He’d believed in it — until he hadn’t.

  It had been part of his own desperation. It had turned itself into itself right before his eyes — a self-delusion, a load of trash.

  Yet here they were at the Lake of Spells, and this book had brought them here. He had no choice. He’d have to see this through.

  They waited, watching him, slurping their chocolate.

  He explained the book.

  Its central premise, he said, had to do with the symbols that appeared on the casings of spells. Symbols, as they knew, were unique, although they fell into certain categories.

  The book recommended a procedure. First, you found the symbol of the spell you wanted. Next, you took certain measurements and ratios from the symbols, and applied those to the layout of the Lake itself.

  “I don’t understand,” said Samuel.

  “It’s coordinate geometry,” Elliot explained. “I can show you the charts in the book — it’s simple. Well, once you’ve read it thirty, forty times, it’s simple enough. Anyhow, I’ve done that part. I’ve found what the book calls the Precise Spot.”

  “The Precise Spot?” Princess Ko repeated.

  The Precise Spot was the place where the spell was most likely to be caught. You fished from that spot. You didn’t move from it. You could tag-team if you wanted — the book suggested teams fish in shifts, day and night.

  Each member of the team should study the symbol of the desired spell until it was imprinted on his or her mind. Each should transfix him or herself with the symbol. Believe in it with his or her whole being. The symbol should be marked on the forehead of each team member. Each should allow the symbol to affect his or her mood, carriage, posture, hair —

  “Hair?”

  That was Keira. As Elliot had been speaking, he’d found himself avoiding her eyes. He’d looked at the others, seen them nod occasionally, maybe slight frowns of confusion, but mostly attentive and concentrating, carried along by his words.

  Except for Keira. Even without looking at her, he’d sensed something growing, something gathering in her.

  Now she unleashed it.

  “Are you insane?” she said. “You don’t honestly think this is real, do you? This is a self-help book! The worst kind of self-help book! Believe in the symbol? Transfix yourself with the symbol? Allow the symbol to affect your hair?”

  Everyone began to speak at once. They shifted to be heard, their voices rising higher, and somebody knocked over the basket of mallows. These began to slip into the folds of the sleeping bags.

  “I see your point,” Elliot began, “but …”

  “Take no notice of Keira,” Princess Ko commanded. “Continue!”

  “The others hereabouts will certain jeer at us,” Samuel fretted. “If we mark ourselves — our foreheads — with a symbol.”

  “It’s not just abstract ideas,” Elliot said. “It’s got the mathematical part….”

  “Of course it does,” Keira blazed. “That’s what self-help books do. They build illusions on foundations of pseudoscience. Mathematics. Give me a break! I guarantee I could take that mathematics to pieces before Samuel takes another one of those quivering breaths of his. My dog could take it to pieces. I bet it cites authorities in footnotes, right?”

  Elliot scratched his head. On the one hand, he actually agreed with Keira. On the other hand, as he’d been explaining the book, he’d been taken right back to the time when it had held his heart: when it had seemed like the chain link that would lead him to his father. Now he had this crazy sense that he should defend the book out of loyalty to his former self.

  Out of loyalty, even more weirdly, to his father.

  “Well, footnotes, yeah —” he began.

  “I thought so. Have you actually followed up on any of these references? Of course not. If you did, you’d find they were a crock. I’ve gotta say, I thought self-help books was one failing the Farms didn’t have, but nope, they’ve got that too.”

  “It was sounding perfectly sensible to me,” the Princess cried. “Keira, you will desist from this outrage.”

  “Well, it would!” Keira spat. “It would sound sensible to you.”

  At this point, Sergio’s voice seemed to pour out, low and thoughtful, from somewhere just beneath the frenzy.

  “How can we be knowing,” he mused, “until we try? We will start. I will draw the symbols on the foreheads. Elliot, you will show me the symbol. You will show me the — how did you call it? — Precise Spot on the shore. I will have the symbol imprinted on my heart and on my mind, and then I will take the shift at this spot. We will all take the shifts.”

  Princess Ko straightened; at the same time, Keira slumped.

  “Oh, suit yourselves,” Keira said. “Whatever.”

  “Well.” Elliot tried to figure out how to say this. “The book says we should start at four A.M.”

  “No matter,” declared Sergio. “I will
take the shift.”

  Keira’s voice was flat.

  “I’ll take it,” she said. “I’m a Night-Dweller, remember?” She gazed at the others, her contempt so palpable that it almost seemed that it was this that snapped open the silence a moment later, when the chaos of the Lake rushed back into the tent.

  The Seclusion Spell had expired. The meeting was done.

  5.

  Tricky to stay fierce or moody at the Lake of Spells.

  Everyone else was there to catch spells and have fun, and these shiny goals overlapped and interwove. There were no adults. Kids from across the Kingdom had saved for months or years to get here. Now they were sharing secrets, playing music, eating junk food, watching stars, and hooking up. They were tying ropes to trees so they could swing out over the Lake and land themselves a splash spell. They were panning, drumming, chanting, meditating, and fly-fishing for spells. A group of kids from Golden Coast had heard that an effective technique was to disguise themselves as giant spiders and crawl around the edges of the Lake. Another group, from Jagged Edge, had rigged up a hologrammatic net. (The spells were slipping right through it.) A youth band from Olde Quainte waded fully-clothed into the Lake up to their necks, held their instruments high, and played a rousing jig for the spells.

  Local kids who came here every other weekend laughed until they wept, after which they stopped and scooped up armloads of spells.

  The members of the Royal Youth Alliance lightened up.

  They drew the symbol of the Locator Spell on their foreheads and they fit right in with the madness. They took turns fishing from the Precise Spot — a quiet corner of the Lake, not far from the beaver dam — and they also took shifts monitoring the trading tables. You never knew. A Locator Spell might turn up there. A couple of locals told them this was unlikely — those Locator Spells were rare, they said, and anyone who caught one would likely take it with them. If not, they’d need a truckload of spells to trade for it. So they fished, climbed, dove, and dug for spells — for any spells — for truckloads of spells — ready to trade if they had to. And because it was fun.