The Cracks in the Kingdom Read online

  * * *

  “Yeah, I never want to get back into modelling,” Monty Rickard tells his friends. “I know I made a lot from it, but it’s better here in Idaho.”

  “No offence,” says Gianni. “But would you say your appearance has changed since your modelling days?”

  The others examine Monty’s face.

  “He’s got an interesting face.”

  “Maybe they used him as a sort of reference point — to highlight the gorgeousness of the other models.”

  Everyone laughs, including Monty.

  Monty’s roommate stands to go get popcorn. She stops in the front hall for a moment, then calls: “There’s a letter here for you, hot stuff. At least it must be for you.” She comes to the door of the room and reads it out: “ ‘To the boy who lives at this address, Who is eighteen years old and believes his identity — indeed, his entire life so far — to be something Entirely Other than What, in fact, it Is.’ ” Then she looks up: “Does anyone else here besides Monty have delusions of a former life in modelling?”

  * * *

  Ariel Peters sits in the empty bar, clipping her toenails. The eczema on her ankles has crept down to her feet, almost to her toes. She’s looking for patterns in it. Now and then she flicks a toenail to the floor, and turns back to the letter that is open on the bar.

  She thinks about her childhood. Foster homes. Detention Centres. Pole dancing. Nightclubs.

  And now here she is in Berlin.

  “Bist du immer noch da?” a voice calls, angry.

  She ignores it. Imagine, she thinks, if my entire life so far had been something Entirely Other than what it In Fact was. She sets down the toenail clippers. Makes herself a Long Island Iced Tea.

  * * *

  Finn Mackenzie sticks the letter on the fridge with the dolphin magnets.

  Then he goes upstairs, climbs onto the main bed so he can reach up into the wardrobe there, and takes down an old beach towel.

  He sits on the bed, rolls up the towel, presses it under his arm, takes a corner, and rubs it between his thumb and forefinger.

  It’s no good. He wipes his nose on the beach towel instead, then tosses it onto the floor.

  He has tried all the sheets, quilts, bath towels in the house. He even tried a piece of seaweed once.

  There was a blanket. Soft, edged in satin, knotted, unravelling, dirty-yellow. He remembers almost nothing at all, but of the blanket he is sure.

  1.

  Madeleine woke to find her mother lifting up the television.

  It was dark though, so what she actually woke to was a monster with a rectangular prism for a head. Little knobs along the monster’s chin as facial features. She screamed and gasped at the same time, which meant she sucked the scream back into her throat and choked on it. The noise was enough to trip her mother forward. The TV went donk against Madeleine’s head, then thud onto the floor, and her mother landed sprawled on top of Madeleine.

  “GO BACK TO SLEEP,” Holly shout-whispered, scrambling from the couch to the floor, where she groped around for the TV. “PRETEND THIS IS JUST A DREAM.”

  Madeleine sat up, blinking hard to adjust to the moonlight. The blinking hurt her forehead where the TV had just hit.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Go back to sleep.” This time Holly crooned the words, as if in gentle lullaby, although the sleep was strained as she wrenched the TV back into her arms. “That’s my darling little girl, sleep now, my darling, go to sle-e-e-e-ep, this is just a dreeeam.”

  “Mum,” said Madeleine. “You just thunked me in the head with a TV.”

  “Shhh,” agreed Holly.

  Madeleine sat up and watched as the shadow of her mother stumbled about the room. The linen closet was wrenched opened with a shadow hand, the TV shoved inside, sheets and towels spilled out, the cupboard was rammed closed.

  Holly turned and squinted across at Madeleine.

  “I just put the TV into the closet,” she whispered.

  “I noticed.” A pause. “Why?”

  “Radioactive waves.”

  “But it’s switched off. We don’t even leave it plugged in anymore.”

  Holly started to move towards the bed, feeling her way around the couch where Madeleine slept.

  “There’s the licence issue too,” she said. “Night after night I lie awake worrying about the licence police.”

  She climbed back into her bed and spoke into the darkness: “Do you want me to sing you a lullaby?”

  “No, Mum,” Madeleine said. “Thanks, though.”

  After a moment, Holly sat up again. “Sorry about your head,” she said.

  “Go back to sleep.”

  “TV should be free,” Holly added. “Then I wouldn’t have to worry.”

  “Well, it’s for the BBC,” Madeleine explained. “If they didn’t have the licence fee, there wouldn’t be such high-quality TV on the BBC.”

  There was another long quiet, then Holly said: “I don’t know why I just said TV should be free. Why should it? It’s not like there’s some fundamental right to free-to-air TV. Or is there?”

  “Go to sleep, Mum.”

  Eventually, her mother stopped twitching, turning, and making abrupt pronouncements about the European Convention on Human Rights, and the definition of sadness, and whether it embraced the sadness you feel when a TV series goes off the air — those characters weren’t actually your friends, but it felt like they were, so is that true sadness or an illusion thereof — and so on. Her breathing slowed and found its way to sleep.

  Madeleine looked at her watch.

  It was just before one A.M.

  She looked over at her mother’s bed again, watched the still form rise and fall awhile, then she got up, dressed, and slipped out of the flat.

  Hey, Elliot, you there?

  Yep.

  Madeleine wrote fast.

  Sorry I’m late. I fell asleep. Plus my mother’s in another crazy phase. She keeps coming up with some weird new twist on how the universe might plan to bring her tumour back. I don’t get it. The doctors are happy, the scans are clear, she seems fine. She’s even signed up for a fashion design course by correspondence and she’s been telling Belle, Jack, and me to wander around in clothes shops, talking loudly about Holly Tully Design so she can get brand recognition going before she even has a brand. But tonight she put the TV in the closet, and the other night I found her crying by the window. Turned out she’d thrown her wedding ring out onto the street. She said she’d had a dream that it was emitting negative cancer-causing vibrations, so she’d got up and thrown it away, but then right away she’d realised it had actually been protecting her from cancer. So she’s crying cause she doesn’t know how to get it back. I went downstairs with a torch, and found the ring in the gutter. “This is how,” I said, and she put it on her finger and we both went back to sleep.

  Madeleine posted her note into the parking meter, and stood in the Cambridge night, an odd swirl of hopefulness gathering inside her, a strange lightening of her mood. She hadn’t told anybody about that wedding ring incident, and writing about it now had formed tears in her eyes. Except that the last part — about herself finding the ring — had turned into a smile. Something about sharing this with Elliot seemed to lift her right up, so she was in the air, free and glad, way above the solid, crowded darkness of the memory.

  After a moment, his reply appeared:

  It’s tangled up in your mother’s head, maybe — the fear about getting sick again, and the hope that your dad will sort out his own issues and come and find you guys? So the wedding ring turns into something bigger? I don’t know. But I do know she’s lucky she’s got you for a daughter.

  Madeleine felt herself shining. She touched the note and it was as if she was touching darts of Elliot’s kindness and calm.

  She decided to change the subject fast so there’d be no chance of his saying more, and accidentally veering in the wrong direction. Jack and Belle sometimes suggested that Madeleine
’s dad would probably never come back — that if he hadn’t figured out his drug and alcohol issues by now, he never would.

  If Elliot started saying that too, she’d have to detonate the parking meter.

  Anyhow, I posted those letters to the members of the Cello royal family like you asked. I’ll let you know if there’s any reply. Do you want to try the “BELIEVING” thing again now, and see if we can get through/make contact, whatever?

  Yeah, only this time we have to step it up a notch so we do more than touch each other’s hands.

  Madeleine blinked hard.

  Since Elliot had returned from the Lake of Spells the other day, they’d only spoken about his trip, and arranged for her to forward the letters. Neither of them had mentioned their moment of connection. She’d felt reckless and brave bringing it up just now.

  And he wanted to “step it up a notch”?

  Holding Elliot’s hand was plenty.

  It was everything, she thought.

  But she wrote:

  How do we do that?

  I guess maybe we have to believe in more than just the other person’s hands. Specifically, we have to believe that our hands are attached to arms, and that our arms are attached to bodies, and that our bodies are hanging loose in other worlds.

  This was crazy. He was making jokes and her heartbeat was skittering. Talk about arms and bodies was too much. She needed to get scientific.

  I’ve been thinking we need to look at the issue from some different perspectives. We could try “believing” again, but the thing is, I sort of DO believe now. I think if I did that ferocious “I BELIEVE” thing, I’d be faking it, cause I just — I mean, of course I believe. Okay. Great. Whatever. If you see what I mean? So we need to think of a different angle: philosophy, geology, cosmology, chemistry, astrology, paleontology, holography. Take your pick.

  There was a long pause, during which Madeleine wondered if she’d sounded like a total twit.

  A young couple turned into the laneway, their hands swinging. The girl’s heels tapped quickly, keeping up with the guy’s steady stride. They stared at Madeleine as they passed, and she folded her arms and stared back.

  Elliot’s reply was short.

  Let’s just try the believing thing again. Countdown from five starting now.

  Cold hit her in the chest, and spread up and across her cheeks.

  I’m not ready, she panicked.

  That couple were still in the laneway. Their shapes were slowing in the distance. The boy was swivelling the girl around to kiss her. Madeleine looked away. She looked back. The boy was murmuring something into the girl’s ear. Her giggle tossed and turned its way down the laneway toward Madeleine, and got itself tangled in the fear in Madeleine’s chest. The couple started walking again, more slowly now, leaning into each other. Another pause while the girl wrenched her heel out of a crack between the cobblestones. Then they turned the corner and were gone.

  Madeleine looked back at the parking meter.

  5, 4, 3, 2, 1, she thought in a rush, closed her eyes, held out her hands and thought:

  Elliot Baranski.

  A slam of a moment. A boy’s wrist: narrow, brown. Dirt in a fingernail. The frayed edge of a jacket.

  She was back again, breathless.

  She shook back and forth a moment, trying to settle her thoughts.

  What just happened?

  Maybe nothing.

  Then a note appeared:

  Did you feel that?

  I think so. I saw a wrist, a fingernail, and a dark blue jacket. Do you have dirty fingernails?

  I’m a farm boy. What do you expect? You got more than me. All I saw was a sort of blur of dark hair, like you were running past me. Do you have dark hair? Were you running?

  Why would I be running? It felt more like falling. And it was over in, like, a crumb of a second.

  For me too. Like falling, I mean. And over fast.

  Maybe falling is what we need to do? Maybe the idea of believing is more in the double negative — like not disbelieving. Like letting go of doubt — and if you let go, you fall.

  And fall through the crack. Nice. Want to try that now?

  What? Try falling. That makes no sense. I think we need to think more. Like haven’t you found any more about the history or science of cracks? I can’t look anything up here since your Kingdom does not exist.

  I went to the library today, but there’s nothing in the catalogs and I can’t ask the librarians. I’d get arrested.

  Madeleine read this and frowned.

  Wait. You only looked this up in the library TODAY? Why not earlier?

  Well, no offense but the whole thing has seemed like a waste of time. I didn’t really believe the royals were in the World until the Locator Spell gave us those addresses. And I didn’t believe we’d ever crack this crack until we held hands before I went to the Lake. Anyhow, quit it with the attitude. I’m a busy guy. I still think we should try FALLING through the crack. It’s got a nice, relaxing sound to it.

  Ha-ha. Okay, listen, the idea of “falling” makes me think of gravity, which I’m into, cause I’m into Isaac Newton. Do you even have gravity in Cello? Or are all the people and animals there just, sort of like, flying around in the sky?

  We’ve got gravity. We’ve also got these little creatures called “birds,” and they do just, sort of like, fly around in the sky. I think they just, sort of like, work around gravity.

  We’ve got birds too. Or are you making fun of me?

  A little. I knew you had birds.

  While Madeleine was still blushing, another note from Elliot appeared.

  Actually, we also have flying machines — fixed wings and choppers. Do you have those? And we’ve got Occasional Pilots — people who get exemption from gravity now and again, but they’re rare. I can’t figure out how a discussion about gravity’s going to help anything, Madeleine. Let’s just fall into each other’s worlds.

  You go ahead and fall. I’ll wait.

  There was a brief pause then Elliot wrote again.

  Okay, that hurt. You win. Talk about gravity.

  Well, gravity is a mystery. Nobody knows how it works — some people think there are teeny things called “gravitons” — but they’ve never been found. All they know is that every single thing is drawn to every other thing. The reason gravity makes us fall is that we’re drawn to the planet Earth. But Earth is drawn to us too.

  My dad demonstrated that for me once. We were walking along and he stopped in the middle of the pavement and jumped on the spot. He said, “See this? The earth is pulling on me, and I’m pulling on the earth. Only,” he added, “the earth’s a little bigger, so it wins.” Then his phone rang and while he answered he held up his hand at me, meaning I should wait, cause he had more to say on the issue. I remember thinking: His work’s a little bigger, so it wins. Am I getting off topic?

  Kind of. But you’re allowed. I guess you miss your dad, just like your mother does. Sometimes I think I’ve got used to not having my dad around ’cause so much time has gone by, and then it’s like the opposite — it’s like all these hours and days of NOT having him have been quietly piling up, one on top of the other, and now I have to walk around with a huge tower of missing on my head. It does my shoulders in. I woke up last night and couldn’t stop thinking about the Locator Spell we caught at the Lake — how it had enough power to find five people, and there are five members of the royal family. Why’d there have to be five? Why not just four. Or why couldn’t the spell have had room for six missing people?

  Madeleine felt her heart hurting for him. She wanted him to see she understood. She wrote:

  I hear you.

  You hear me?

  No. I mean — I don’t HEAR you. I just get what you’re saying.

  Okay.

  There was a long quiet. Then Elliot wrote again:

  Gotta go. It’s late. Night.

  Sweet dreams.

  2.

  Elliot was sitting at a table outside
the Bakery Café.

  He had a coffee, a blueberry pastry, and a pile of Samuel’s index cards. Also, his Algebra textbook.

  It was an idle Sunday afternoon, and there was a wandering to everybody’s footfall. There’d be plenty of time to hide the cards under the textbook if somebody stopped by to say hello.

  Clover Mackie, the town seamstress, had already waved at him twice from the porch of her house. She was the only one in town who knew the truth about the missing royal family, and the real reason he was in the Royal Youth Alliance. There was some comfort in that, the invisible line from him here at this table, to her up on her porch, with her needle, thread, and patterns, and her jug of lemonade.

  Actually, now that he thought about it, she was the real reason he’d been selected to the RYA. She’d sewn dresses for the Princess Sisters since they were little, and become close to them, and they communicated by sewing messages, in secret code, into seams. When she’d discovered Elliot had a contact in the World, she’d risked his life by telling the Princess about it.

  He looked back at Clover. She seemed set to wave at him a third time, but she must have caught that recollection on his face. She dropped the wave, and began to whistle quietly, a range of expressions — sheepish, defensive, defiant, thoughtful, remorseful — crossing her face. Then she got over it and picked up the whistling, turning it into a friendly tune that carried all the way across the square.

  Ah, you couldn’t stay mad at Clover Mackie.

  These index cards, though. You could be plenty mad at them. He’d read over twenty already, and hadn’t learned a single useful thing. They were all from the seventeenth century when the Harmony Institute was active. Some were by people from the World, some by Cellians, but none said a word about the journey from one place to the other.

  Elliot picked up the next card in the stack. It was about a Worldian who called himself Sir James Gwynn. As usual, it started with a date (May 6, 1663). Then there was the place of departure (Chatham, England) and arrival (Beeks Vara, Nature Strip).