The Cracks in the Kingdom Page 25

  Only, now the apple tree had a voice.

  He put his truck in gear and remembered Turquoise Rain.

  He smiled. Of course. It was that exquisite sensation — the blending in, the folding-out — that’s exactly how her voice felt to him.

  Actually, the Turquoise Rain had been familiar the moment he felt it, and now he knew why.

  It was just like the touch of Madeleine’s hand.

  That first time they’d made a connection, they’d held hands, and he’d gotten that sweet sensation, that merging, folding sensation.

  He’d touched the apple tree’s hand.

  Ah, he had to stop thinking of her as an apple tree.

  She was a girl.

  A girl with a killer voice.

  He drove home and listened to that voice play in his mind like a new favorite song.

  * * *

  The next morning he woke early to the sound of the telephone ringing.

  He heard his mother answering it down there in the dawn dark. He heard her silence, waiting for the voice on the other end to say its piece. He sat in bed with his fear and his heart, waiting on that silence.

  Then her voice broke into a surge of laughing talk, and he was out of bed, and running down the stairs.

  She looked over at him, her tired eyes, sleep-tousled hair, her smile forming as she listened more, and then, “Really? No! Really? And the tartan cover?” Then she was laughing and chatting more.

  “He’s here beside me. He’s just come downstairs. You want to tell him yourself?” She handed Elliot the phone. “It’s Agent Tovey.”

  Agent Tovey’s voice was brimful of something. “Elliot? That you? You okay? You’ve got another Royal Youth Alliance thing today, haven’t you? But you’ll be back tomorrow?”

  “That’s right.”

  “By then,” Agent Tovey said, “your dad should be back too.”

  Elliot’s mother was watching him, waiting for his smile, and when it came, she matched it with her own. Eyes reflected smiles reflected smiles, their grins dancing back and forth between them. Then she skidded toward the kitchen, sliding on her bed socks, calling as she did that she was going to make pancakes.

  They’d actually spoken to Elliot’s dad, Agent Tovey said. They’d gotten through to him. For just a few moments, but he sounded fine. A little scared, a little weary, but mostly relieved. He’d asked whether Elliot won the deftball championships, and how Petra’s raspberries were doing.

  “He’s got your voice,” Agent Tovey said, and Elliot smiled again. “Older, deeper, a bit rougher, but basically he’s a bigger you.”

  “The negotiations are just about wrapped up,” Tovey continued. “They’ve given us his magnifying glass — that special one that your mother gave him? The one with the tartan case? As a token of good faith. Next we’ll get your dad. By tomorrow at the latest, we think — well, of course, there can be glitches. You know that. But it’s all lining up at the moment, and I wanted you both to know.”

  Elliot ran upstairs to get dressed.

  His mother was calling that maybe they ought not to have pancakes until they were absolutely sure, for superstitious reasons, but he could hear the pan clanging onto the cooktop right through her voice.

  Now she was calling that actually it was lucky Tovey had woken them so early because didn’t Elliot have to start packing soon?

  This was true. Maybe if he packed fast he’d have time to run by the schoolyard and drop off a note to Madeleine before he left. He wanted to tell her the news right away.

  This RYA trip was only overnight, so he’d just take his regular backpack, not the big one. He grabbed it from the floor, and unzipped it. It didn’t smell so great. Maybe he should set it at the open window while they had breakfast. He tipped out its contents: sweaty old socks, a half-empty drink bottle, crumpled papers, damp from where they’d rubbed against the drink bottle. One of the papers was a sketch Cody had done of a cat with ringworm. Should keep that: It’d be worth a fortune one day. He laughed, and tossed it in the trash.

  He unfolded the other paper, and laughed again at the heading:

  THE OCCASIONAL PILOT

  It was the paper Corrie-Lynn had given him on the deftball field.

  He was about to crumple it too, but that seemed disrespectful after Corrie-Lynn’s work. All that careful handwriting. So he read it over fast.

  The Occasional Pilot can, on occasion, fly. When the buzz hits, he or she can jump without landing. (Or, at least, without landing until ready to do so.) Once Occasional Pilots have taken to the air, they need only brush their hand against the hand of another to bring that person also to the air. The “passenger” in turn may touch a third person, to bring that person to flight, and so on. I have witnessed the flight of the Occasional Pilot (my friend, Jeremy), his companions trailing behind him like a string of plastic monkeys.

  Elliot recalled how much he disliked this guidebook writer. Always with the namedropping. Of course he had an Occasional Pilot buddy.

  Occasional Pilots are very rare. Generally, they do not know their true identity until they find themselves flying. Their hidden talent will often emerge at times of great danger, possibly triggered by a rush of adrenaline. They are invariably people of great courage and strength: explorers, soldiers, officers of the law. Sometimes they have already trained as aircraft pilots, before they know their calling — perhaps sensing the air in their wings, the blue in their hearts, the gold on their shoulders….

  Ah, this guy.

  “You want blueberries with yours?” Elliot’s mother called.

  There were only a couple more lines.

  The Occasional Pilot is not as useful as you might think. I must repeat, for the sake of emphasis, that he can only fly when the buzz hits him. I have heard that there are certain indications that the buzz is going to hit: He feels tired, disconsolate, agitated. He craves peanuts. His fingernails grow unnaturally fast. Of course, all of that might be plain nonsense.

  Elliot grinned. She really thinks that I’m an Occasional Pilot?

  But it was sweet of Corrie-Lynn to believe in him.

  He tossed the paper.

  His dad was coming home. There was a girl in the World with a voice like Turquoise Rain.

  He jumped the last few stairs and it did feel a little like flight.

  Jimmy Hawthorn was the Deputy Sheriff of Bonfire, but he was also its deftball coach, and some days he brought his pistol along to training. He’d split the team in half, gather one group around a basket filled with deftballs, position the others adjacent to them, and fire his gun into the air.

  Instantly, the half with the basket would begin throwing balls in random directions; the other half had to chase and catch. Five minutes later, he’d shoot the pistol again and they’d swap roles. They’d alternate in this way until the entire team had collapsed or Jimmy had run out of ammunition.

  Jimmy referred to these training sessions as “Chase Nights,” and the team had a theory that he instigated them after a bad day at work, or an argument with Isabella. And it was true that he always seemed more cheerful when he was looking down at them at the end of the night, flat on their backs, panting, and dripping with sweat.

  * * *

  The RYA convention in Olde Quainte felt to Elliot like one long Chase Night. From the moment the train pulled in to Chester-on-Brell, he seemed to be running.

  The Royal Staff who welcomed him were half sprinting to the horse-drawn carriage while they were still curtsying, proclaiming their greetings, and pulling him from the train. The driver cracked the whip until the horses cantered, and the carriage swayed and clattered over cobblestones, slipping and tilting on corners.

  At the Magenta Palace, the Royal Butler beckoned Elliot so urgently that he found himself running to the entry. He was hustled to a wood-paneled room where a frantic woman named Gretel dressed him (in breeches, stockings, slippers, a ruffled cotton shirt, a surcoat with gaping armholes, all green except for the surcoat, which was golden), snipp
ed the ends from his hair (before he’d realized that the glint in her hand was scissors), pressed a peaked velvet cap on his head, and gave him a snappy tutorial in Olde Quainte etiquette.

  It turned out that it was a “scurrilous insult,” the “height of coarseness,” worse, “far worse than rummaging about in one’s nostrils with one’s fingers” — to speak more than two sentences without a simile.

  “It matters not what the simile is,” explained Gretel, “neither must it make any sense. Indeed, the better simile bears no relation to that before or after. As to a hammer in a carpetsnake. All that matters is that it must needs be there.”

  No wonder Samuel had so much trouble speaking plainly.

  Now it seemed that Gretel planned to teach him how to dance.

  “Call yourselves my apologies,” she said, “but to dance with a boy from the Farms would be beyond and beneath me. As to a shudder in a rocking horse.” Then she flung open a door and called, “Send in the lass.”

  Elliot was still trying to figure out if he should be offended by Gretel’s refusal to dance with him, when Keira walked into the room.

  “Don’t laugh at me,” she commanded. She was wearing a floor-length gown and a pointed hat with a streamer attached to it.

  “Nothing to laugh at,” Elliot said. “You look beautiful.”

  “Come on.”

  Elliot shrugged. “Trouble is, you do.”

  “Oh, well then, good, I’ll laugh at you ’cause you look like deep-fried zucchini.”

  Gretel declared that there was neither the time nor the cause for laughter, and indeed, had there been time, she herself would have laughed fit to a rain shower of fingernails when she saw how they were dressed upon their arrival, and it seemed to her that both the Farms and Jagged Edge could set sail under the wind of the laughter they triggered, for the ludicrousness of all and sundry about them, not just their clothes but everything (waving her hands vaguely around Elliot and Keira), but she was saving her laughter for the end of this Convention, which, needs, she looked forward to, with the alacrity of a hatpin in a tree house.

  She then gave them a rapid lesson in Olde Quainte dancing.

  “You both show unexpected skill,” she admitted irritably. “I was hoping to gather more laughter at your ineptitude, but here and you have deprived me of this, as to a tortoise on a tea tray.”

  Then she surprised them by reaching her arms around their necks, hugging them roughly, and shoving them toward the door.

  “Call yourselves my good wishes,” she said. “And fly to the banquet hall! The others await you. Let the festivities begin! Fifth doorway on the left.”

  “What’s up with all the hysteria?” Elliot murmured as they ran along a wide hallway.

  “I heard the Royal PR department have co-opted this Convention,” Keira said. “Apparently, we spend too much time having meetings behind closed doors. They say the people of Cello need to see us out and about, especially here in Olde Quainte where Hostility’s gone a bit wild.”

  “But we need to have meetings behind closed doors. The Princess should tell PR to stick it.”

  “I know, but all we’ve got scheduled for this weekend is a mad list of provincial pastimes, so I’m guessing she didn’t tell them anything.”

  Elliot turned to stare at Keira, but they’d reached the fifth doorway now, and at once were swooped into a frenzy of activity.

  The activity only stopped at two A.M., when they were allowed to rest for four hours. It resumed at an even faster pace.

  Frequently, platters of meat and fruit were thrust at them, but it seemed they were expected to continue with their schedule as they ate: Melon juice ran down Samuel’s chin; Sergio clutched a chewed chicken bone for over an hour, trying to figure out where to put it. Eventually he tossed it in a flowerpot.

  Everywhere they went they were surrounded by reporters, minstrels, troubadours, musicians, and a continually revolving group of “honored and privileged” villagers. The reporters carried tablets and fountain pens, and were accompanied by assistants with pots of ink. The minstrels sang in high, sweet voices, telling tales about the history of the Kingdoms and Empires, which might have been interesting except that they all sang at once so that their stories overlapped: Ancient battles with Aldhibah got tangled up with the curse of Olde-Quaintian magic, which itself ran smack into the legend of the giant sweet potato.

  One of the troubadours took a liking to Keira and spent most of his time dancing circles around her, his fiddle pressed beneath his chin, his eyes fixed on her eyes. She didn’t take this very well.

  Musicians pranced, playing trumpets, whistles, horns, drums, and bells, at the volume of jackhammers.

  The villagers hovered, turning to one another to exchange wry comments, and occasionally reaching to touch Elliot’s cheek or rub the sleeve of Sergio’s cloak.

  The RYA toured villages, admiring bathhouses, tulip gardens, and pigs in pens. They pitched quoits. They jousted with lances, fought with cudgels, and strapped the shinbones of calves to their feet so they could skate on a frozen pond. They played backgammon. They bobbed for apples. Frequently, they were called upon to display the dances that Gretel had taught them, and they found themselves spinning, clapping, springing, gliding, and kicking, occasionally in the correct order.

  Samuel, of course, was an expert at all these activities, and he seemed to alternate between being both more cheerful and more anxious than Elliot had seen him yet. He was cheerful when he himself was engaging in an Olde-Quaintian pursuit — especially the dances, which turned his plump cheeks pink and his blue eyes bright — but he turned pale gray with terror when the others took a turn. Either way, he also seemed more tired and edgy than usual, which was no wonder, considering all that swinging back and forth between moods.

  Princess Ko undertook every task with practiced ease, interspersed with fits of her signature verbal excess. “Does a starspin make the moon shine?” she exclaimed, when somebody asked if she liked clam chowder.

  Keira widened or narrowed her eyes in turn, but otherwise participated adroitly. Sergio leapt between the games with his usual effervescence, dancing so well that the villagers threw petals at him. Elliot shrugged and had a good time. He tried not to mind about the villagers stroking his face, but he drew the line when somebody tried to pry his mouth open to examine his teeth.

  Eventually, with only an hour before the Convention’s official conclusion, they found themselves in a barge on the River Brell, anchored just off the bank. The schedule called for them to partake of a banquet in the dining hall, which, it turned out, was a small room built in the center of the deck. There was just enough space for the five of them to encircle the table, while the security agents — who had trailed them grimly throughout their pursuits — pressed into a corner. The four walls of this room were lined with windows, so the entourage was invited to watch, play music, dance, and sing on the deck.

  The door closed, and for the first time they were alone in quiet. To the extent that you can be alone and quiet while faces press against glass all around you, and shouts, songs, cheers, bells, and fiddles shrill just beyond that glass.

  “Smile and talk when I tell you to,” Princess Ko instructed. She laughed suddenly. “Laugh each time I touch my nose. And help yourselves to the food.”

  The table was set with huge silver platters, each crammed with cold meats, seafood, fruits, and cakes. There were also goblets of wine.

  Elliot was seated beside the Princess. He touched the front pocket of his breeches, and there was the crackle of paper. There had not been a moment in the last two days to give her the letters from her sister and brother, and that had been making him crazy: She deserved to see these. He kept thinking how he had felt, hearing word from his own dad, and it seemed unfair that the Princess was being deprived.

  “Princess?” he murmured.

  Outside on the deck, a man in a tricornered cap knocked on the glass with the knuckles of both hands and grinned.

  The Pri
ncess beamed back at the man.

  “Wait,” she told Elliot. Then she addressed the group. “We can’t be seen interacting with the security agents, so I won’t have Agent Nettles tell you the latest.” She touched her nose. After a brief pause, Elliot and Sergio remembered to laugh. Samuel looked confused, and Keira raised her eyebrows.

  “Don’t look at Agent Nettles, Samuel. Look at me.” The Princess smiled around her words, and sipped from the wine. “Here’s the latest. They now know which Hostile groups are behind the abduction of my family. It was an alliance between five separate factions. They know that the original plan was, as we suspected, to assume control of Cello amidst the consequent disruption.

  “Disagreements between the factions meant this never happened. The alliance fell apart. As we speak, however, it is reforming. It is only a matter of time, and time is moving with haste.”

  She paused, beamed around, and held out her goblet, as if to make a toast.

  “My father’s failure to attend the Namesaking Ceremony next week would not only destroy our relations with Aldhibah. It would also give the Hostiles the impetus they need to iron out the last of their differences.” She grinned again, raised the glass, and drank from it.

  There was a general “Awwwww!” from outside, and calls of “What has occurred?” and “The Princess raised her glass!” and another, louder “Awwww!”

  “Now,” said Princess Ko. “What has everybody learned since we last met?”

  Nobody spoke.

  Keira reached for a plum.

  “I learned the distances between every city, town, and village in the Kingdom,” she said, “by reading code the size of an ant’s toenails.”

  She bit into the plum, watching Princess Ko. “It strained my eyes so much I had to close them for two days.”

  Princess Ko responded with a beautiful smile.

  “Brilliant!” she said, and clapped her hands.

  There was a rise in the voices outside, and the sound of somebody shouting: “The Princess just clapped!”