The Cracks in the Kingdom Read online

Imagine you were lying on your scratchy couch, and you honestly believed you were living on a giant fried egg, while the universe was a decoration, slowly rotating around you. And then imagine someone came up, stood at your shoulder and said, “Actually, you know this world? It’s not so much a fried egg, it’s more a boiled egg, and this boiled egg is actually flying around out there, part of the universe, spinning as it flies.”

  It’d set your head to turning circles, wouldn’t it!

  No, actually, it would not.

  You’d just go: Rubbish.

  If you could be bothered, you might point out that the floor wasn’t moving, which it would be, if it was. Then this person at your shoulder might go on about scale and perspective, and how it’s calibrated so we can’t see it happening, and you’d stop listening. You’d go: Whatever. Or maybe: Look, would you mind popping somewhere else for a bit?

  No wonder it had taken ages for people to come to terms with the idea of the revolving, rotating earth! Even Aristotle — and he was a smart one — he’d laughed his head off. He’d gone, “Watch this,” and he’d thrown a chicken or something straight up in the air. “See?” he’d said. “It landed right where I threw it. If Earth was moving, the chicken would have landed over there!” What’s more, Aristotle had said, warming up, there’d be winds like you wouldn’t believe. We’d never get anything done, what with holding our hats down.

  Everyone had laughed, pleased, and that had been that with the idea.

  Madeleine had always had a sense that people used to be a bit daft. Whereas now, they were smart. Now we walk around going: Well, of course, the world’s not sitting there being an egg. It’s spinning and flying! It’s getting the shopping done and doing its homework and meeting up with its friends, it’s a kite of activity with its tail going mad, is what the world is, and aren’t I clever? For knowing that?

  We’re not clever, though. We’re just stating the new obvious.

  She sat up suddenly.

  She was starving.

  That’s why all the thoughts about eggs.

  * * *

  An hour later, she’d had her cornflakes and she’d bathed, dressed, and brushed her hair and she was out there in the Saturday.

  She still felt odd, but not remotely like a fried egg. Now she felt like a girl.

  A busy girl. But she went by the laneway anyway to check the parking meter — and there it was.

  A letter from Elliot of Cello.

  A long one, but she sat down on the edge of the gutter and read it anyway.

  Dear Madeleine,

  I once saw the mating dance of the carbuncle-bats of Nature Strip. If I hadn’t seen that, I’d be saying right now: The weekend I just had was the weirdest experience of my life.

  (But seriously, those carbuncle-bats. Must be one of the twelve wonders of the Kingdom they ever reproduce at all. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.)

  Anyway, I got back a few days ago. Haven’t had time to write, and still don’t, actually, but I will anyway. ’Cause I’ve got to give you a message from Princess Ko. And ’cause I might go mad if I don’t tell somebody

  I’ll start with the people.

  There’s Princess Ko. She’s okay, I guess. Super pretty and super organized, anyway, what with her flowcharts and diagrams.

  There’s Keira from Jagged Edge. She’s a beautiful techhead with a personality like sandpaper, and an attitude could start a fire. She’s got some fierce secret reason for hating the Princess. Or maybe she just hates her randomly. Either way, I feel like ducking for cover whenever those two exchange glances.

  There’s a kid named Samuel from Olde Quainte who’s a walking panic attack.

  There’s a nice enough stable boy named Sergio.

  And there’s me.

  We sat around all weekend talking about how the royal family has gone to the World, and coming up with absolutely no solution to that situation.

  Then there’s the security agents. Completely irrelevant except when they stepped up near the end of the weekend and said, actually, the royals have NOT gone to the World.

  Then Princess Ko’s back again, painting her fingernails (well, that’s how it felt), as if the agents hadn’t spoken, and planning a trip to the Lake of Spells, to track down a spell to find her family in the World.

  (This part was my fault, ’cause I tried to diffuse a situation by suggesting we go to the Lake, never expecting they’d take me up on it. I’m an idiot.)

  It’s a total waste of time. You can’t choose what spell you get at the Lake — for a while I thought you could ’cause I wanted it to be true and I had a book said you could, but then I came to my senses. Tried to explain this, but it was too late, the Princess had got stuck on the idea.

  And more to the point, I DON’T WANT TO DO ANYTHING ELSE ABOUT THE MISSING ROYAL FAMILY. THOSE SECURITY AGENTS CAN TAKE CARE OF IT. I WANT TO BE LOOKING FOR MY DAD. I WANT TO BE WORKING WITH TOVEY AND KIM (THE CI AGENTS). SURE, IT’S GOOD WE SORT OF KNOW WHERE HE IS, BUT HE’S IN TROUBLE. YOU DON’T WANT TO BE A PRISONER OF THE HOSTILES. WHAT IF THEY TURN ON HIM BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE? WHAT IF HE TRIES SOMETHING HIMSELF BEFORE THE CI GUYS FIND A WAY TO GET HIM BACK???

  Anyhow, so that’s one part of the situation.

  The other part is, the Princess gave us assignments. It’s a lot like school, this whole Royal Youth Alliance thing.

  Keira’s job is to read six boxes of documents. The documents are covered in tiny, tiny print. It’s XML code, apparently — some kind of computing language? — which most techheads in JE can read. There was a lot going on in the facial expressions between Keira and the Princess, and I think what they were saying was that Keira was getting shafted.

  Samuel has to look through the archives of World-Cello interaction. He also has to research how the World and Cello link up so we’ll at least know which part of the World the royals went to first, since we know exactly where they were taken.

  Sergio has to go work at the WSU headquarters, which are in Olde Quainte, and see if he can get ahold of a crack detector.

  The security agents went a bit ballistic when Princess Ko gave Sergio this job. He’s a stable boy. He has no training in undercover work. He’d be in serious danger. Etc., etc.

  But the Princess just said that Sergio’s a great actor, and then she turned it back on the agents by saying she was sure they had the proficiency to get Sergio false papers, and the contacts to get him a position in the WSU as a junior clerk.

  And my job is to work with my “contact in the World” (you) to figure out how to break open this crack and get people through.

  So, I guess, do you want to talk about that sometime? If you get this today (Saturday), maybe midnight tonight?

  I leave for the Lake of Spells in two weeks.

  Catch ya,

  Elliot

  Madeleine looked at the parking meter.

  It wasn’t just the earth not being centre of the universe. It was every time someone picked up the truth and gave it a good shake so that things we thought we knew crashed into splinters. There’d always be a clamour of disbelief. What, the moon causes the tides?! Don’t be such a tosser. What, there’s gravity somehow holding things in place via invisible strings? Oh, yes, certainly there’s a thing called space-time that gets bent out of shape when a planet passes by. No question.

  The thing was, just because it went against everything you’d believed before — didn’t mean it wasn’t correct.

  There’s a whole other world called Cello just beyond a crack in that parking meter? And now you’re going to help a boy there figure out how to open that crack?

  Madeleine stood on the street, holding Elliot’s letter in one hand, let the summer breeze rustle it a little, let the traffic and voices and footsteps slide back into her head.

  2.

  Elliot arrived at the high-school grounds a few minutes before midnight.

  The sky was high black and star-studded, and the air seemed frozen into silence. His boots scuffed through snow from t
hat afternoon’s fall, still powder white, and he lifted up his collar and pulled his coat tighter around him.

  Seemed unfair that it was winter here in Bonfire soon as he got back from all that snow of the Magical North. People said he must have brought it with him, which, now that he thought about it, was actually quite possible. He’d flown from MN to the airfield in Sugarloaf, then taken the train home from there. Seasons sometimes hitched a ride on fixed wings and express trains.

  It was the sort of cold that tensed your neck and shoulders, made your face hold panic-still. Which was all wrong. He tried to loosen up: shook his arms, stamped his boots. Then he examined the sculpture.

  The base was a great hunk of concrete formed into a little hillock, and the old TV was wedged on top of it, its back open, internal workings exposed. All he knew was that there must have been a crack hovering here in the schoolyard, and the sculpture had somehow caught ahold of it.

  He thought through what he knew about cracks. They were invisible and intangible. That was something. And they came in two types. First there were the minor cracks that opened now and then. Small things, like pencils, matchboxes, receipts, operating instructions for toys, shopping lists, would blow through, mostly drifting away unnoticed. It was only if someone happened on an object that jarred as being Worldian that these cracks got discovered. Anyone who found a Worldian object — or even suspected something had links to the World — had to notify the WSU immediately. They’d swoop in with their detectors, locate the crack, and seal it up.

  The second kind were the major cracks, and these were big enough for people. You couldn’t just walk through a major crack, even if you knew where it was (which was tricky in itself, their being invisible) — there was some secret technique. The WSU had sealed up the old ones, and major cracks never opened anymore.

  Obviously, this one in the schoolyard was a minor crack. Could he stretch it into a major crack?

  Ah, who understood the science. He’d never paid much attention back in World Studies. Maybe they’d had an entire class on constructing cracks?

  Although, that seemed unlikely. That’d be like a class on how to rob a bank or manufacture heroin. Worse, actually. Closer to selling state secrets to a foreign power. There was probably some rule against teaching kids to commit high treason.

  He’d have to look into it, read up, ask around, whatever. He seemed to remember that Mr. Garenstein, the World Studies teacher, had actively discouraged discussions outside the classroom. Wasn’t it Mr. G who’d once clapped a hand over Elliot’s mouth when he’d started to ask a question on the way out of the classroom? And pointed to his own right foot, just past the door frame, bellowing, “Look! I’m outside! I have immunity!” before thundering away down the corridor.

  Elliot smiled, remembering. He’d only been going to ask Mr. G if he knew what time his wife — Clara Garenstein, she ran the grocery store — if he knew what time she was closing up that night. He’d had a delivery of quinces for her.

  Of course, even if he got Mr. G to talk, he’d have to be careful how he phrased his questions. He’d need some plausible reason why the sudden interest in the World.

  Tricky.

  He checked the back of the TV. Still nothing from Madeleine, but it was not quite midnight.

  He stood back and examined the sculpture as a whole again.

  The obvious thing would be a chain saw.

  Or anyway, a shovel or a pick.

  Break open the crack. Dig through, cut through, tunnel through, tear his way into the World.

  He could get Madeleine to start up with a jackhammer on her side, and he could bring in a bulldozer, and they could meet in the middle.

  Maybe not the most subtle approach, if you were trying to avoid the attention of the WSU.

  And, actually, even without having listened much in World Studies classes, he had a feeling the cracks might be a little more complicated.

  A flash of white caught the light, and there it was, a note from Madeleine.

  Hey, Elliot, you there?

  She always started off like this.

  And he always replied:

  Yep.

  A few moments passed and another paper appeared.

  It’s me. Plus Belle and Jack are here. They wanted to meet you. They say hi, and pleased to meet you and that, and they’d shake your hand only there’s the whole issue of you being in another dimension or whatever. They’re keen to help solve this issue so the royals can get back through once we find them, and they extend their honour and greetings from our world to yours, cause they’re polite like that, they say (not something I’ve particularly noticed, but anyway).

  A brief laugh of surprise shook the cold out of Elliot a minute. Strange: Even though she’d talked about her friends, a part of him had half thought that Madeleine was all that there was to the World.

  He replied:

  Tell Jack and Belle I said hey, and my Kingdom extends greetings and honor right back at ’em.

  Madeleine’s reply was fast:

  Belle and Jack are totally psyched to see their names in your handwriting. They’re star-struck by you. I told them they’d get over that and you’re just regular and nothing special.

  Much appreciated.

  There was a lengthy pause, then Madeleine wrote again.

  Did you hear that?

  Elliot startled. Maybe there had been a rustle from the trees over there just now? But it was just the wind, right? And wait, how could she have heard it over in the World?

  Hear what?

  Don’t worry. I knew it wouldn’t work. Belle’s just been bellowing your name into the parking meter. Luckily this laneway’s empty, so nobody can see her and get her sectioned or whatever. But she’s totally going to wake somebody up any moment.

  Elliot was still reading this, and reflecting on it, when another note appeared.

  See, Belle and Jack say if there’s a “crack” you should be able to hear sounds through it. Or feel our breeze or our rain or whatever. And smell our low-grade fuel. And Jack says if letters can get through, what about tiny little organisms and germs and stuff? I told them they make no sense, but actually it DOES make sense.

  This was followed up by another shorter note.

  Jack says we need to figure out the nature of the crack if we’re going to crack the crack. Also, as an aside, he asks if crack is the freebase form of cocaine in Cello?

  Elliot wrote a reply.

  I think your friends are right that we need to figure out the nature of the crack.

  I just want to say that it wasn’t just Belle and Jack saying that about the crack issue; I’ve been thinking the exact same thing.

  What’s your point?

  When you praise them, praise me too.

  Elliot decided not to get into that. He wrote a new note:

  I’ve been thinking: So far we’ve only sent letters to each other — apart from those healing beads I sent for your mother. So maybe we see what other objects can get through? Start small and then work our way up to bigger things?

  And see if we can sort of stretch the crack?

  Elliot nodded in the cold night air.

  Right. Go from marbles to oranges to apples.

  Are apples bigger than oranges over there? They’re about the same size here. Sometimes oranges are bigger.

  That might be sort of off topic.

  The oranges and apples might disagree with you on that. But then we’ll move on to watermelons, right? Watermelons are bigger than apples?

  And after watermelons, a head.

  There was another delay. It felt to Elliot like the pen might have glued itself to his hand, it was that stiff with the cold. Then Madeleine’s note appeared:

  You mean, like a severed head? Where would you get that from?

  I mean my own head.

  Attached to your body, though, right?

  Yeah, no, I was thinking I’d cut off my head and send it through.

  Belle and Jack are laughing their heads
off right now. They think you’re a riot. But that’s still them being star-struck. You’re not that funny.

  If I could get my head through, maybe I could kind of pull the rest of my body through? Don’t know. I need to ask the World Studies teacher about how these cracks work. So, you want to talk again this time next week?

  Wait. Belle and Jack want to try some stuff. (Me too. I mean, if these things work, I want the credit for them. If not, they’re Belle and Jack’s ideas.) Just wait.

  A gust of wind slapped Elliot’s face. He stamped his feet in the snow.

  3.

  For the next two hours, Madeleine, Belle, and Jack experimented with the parking meter. They slapped it around, and kicked it. They hit it with closed fists (which hurt). They leaned in close and blew air at it, threw their shadows and jackets over it, grabbed it with both hands and shook it from side to side.

  Belle had some of her mother’s cheap perfume in her handbag and she sprayed this all over the meter. She chewed some peppermint gum and breathed hard on it. Then she lit a cigarette, took a drag, and blew smoke.

  “You’re doing that in the wrong order,” Madeleine reflected.

  Jack offered to take off his running shoes, as that would be as strong a smell as anything that could be produced in all of England, and there was a minor scuffle when they tried to stop him doing that. He won the scuffle, as he had the interests of science and World-Cellian relations on his side. So then there was some screaming and rearing away from him while he waved his shoes around the parking meter.

  Every now and then they sent a message to Elliot:

  Don’t tell me you didn’t hear that?

  or

  You felt a sort of shaking sensation just now, right?

  or

  Are there any wisps of smoke tendrilling towards you from the crack there?

  or else:

  Come on, you MUST have smelled that. (You’ve got noses there, right?)

  But Elliot’s replies were always “nope,” and they started to see him as a bit of a nuisance. A wet blanket, even. Eventually, they forgot about him altogether, as they joined hands and danced around the parking meter, and chanted nursery rhymes, prayers, multiplication tables, the periodic table, and French irregular verbs. Madeleine found a stick and beat the side of the meter with it, because maybe he would be able to sense the rhythm even if he couldn’t hear it, and Jack recited a lot of Byron’s poetry because maybe only beautiful words could get through.