The Cracks in the Kingdom Read online

  By now it was almost two o’clock in the morning and they were drunk on sleepiness and on their own laughter, and Belle was getting into the noise thing again, announcing that he must be able to hear this, he’s just not listening hard enough. She got them all singing Florence and the Machine at the top of their voices, then she gave one of her own high-pitched whistles, the kind that could cross a city. It was so close and so alarming that Madeleine and Jack screamed in shock and then fell into wailing hysterics.

  At that point, a window was thrown open in a house along the street and a stream of words came flying out at them.

  The window slammed shut.

  “Nice,” Belle murmured, impressed.

  They quietened, untangling their breath from the laughter and from the echoes of the shouting just now, and then gazed at one another in subdued silence.

  “People live in those houses,” Jack reflected. “All this time I’d been thinking they were sort of decoration.”

  Belle was looking at the parking meter.

  “There’s another note,” she said. “How long has that been sitting there?”

  Madeleine drew out the paper and held it out to them.

  Are we nearly done? I’m freezing my balls off here.

  Belle grabbed the pen and notepad from the path where Madeleine had left it, and wrote:

  You have balls in Cello?

  There was a long pause. Then Elliot’s reply.

  We might be talking about different things.

  Belle smiled, and wrote again, pushing Madeleine aside with her elbow as she did so.

  I think we mean the same thing. This is Belle here, and I have questions. Is there censorship of the cracks between Cello and the World? And how filthy is your language there generally? And you speak English, right? Is that all over Cello or just where you are?

  As Belle wrote this, Madeleine was watching over her shoulder, agitated. She wanted the pen back, but she also wanted to see what Belle would say.

  Jack was spring-jumping from the street to the kerb and back again, his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

  Elliot’s reply came a few moments later.

  We don’t speak English, we speak Cellian. What’s English? Anyhow, this is what we speak all over the Kingdom but different provinces have their own accents and slang, and sometimes — like in Nature Strip — the accent’s so strong it’s like another language. Also, I just remembered that there are parts of MN and OQ where they have their own dialects. And the Wanderers speak a version of Southern Climean. (In the Undisclosed Province they speak with their eyes.) But maybe we could have a discussion about linguistics another time, ’cause I’m not sure if I’m just exhausted or hypothermic, but either way, I’m about to pass out.

  Belle glanced over her shoulder at Madeleine. “Your boy needs to toughen up,” she said, and wrote again, speaking her words aloud as she did so.

  I don’t get why you guys speak the same language as us.

  She folded it, posted it, and pulled her jacket tighter around her. “Cold here too,” she said. “You hear us complaining?”

  “But this is summer,” Madeleine pointed out. “He’s got winter there. We don’t even know what the temperature is in Cello.”

  “Still cold here.”

  Jack stopped jumping and looked at them both.

  “How do we know we’re speaking the same language as Elliot?” he said. “There could be some kind of inbuilt translation device inside the crack, and it’s instantly converting the messages.”

  Another note appeared.

  I don’t get it either. Are we done here?

  Madeleine was watching Belle.

  “Why are you asking him these questions?” she asked. “Are you thinking it’s not real — do you think it’s all, like, a trick?”

  “No.” Belle tapped the notepad with the pen, distracted. “Just thinking —” then her head swung up and her eyes widened. “But you do.”

  They held each other’s eyes a moment.

  “I know what it is,” Belle said slowly. “You’re believing and not believing at the same time. You can’t do that. It’s like you’re on a train track and one foot’s on one — wait, what are those things called? Those tracks that trains run on?”

  “Tracks,” Jack said.

  “Right, and you’re trying to run along with a foot on each track, Madeleine. It won’t work. They’ll go off in different directions.”

  “No, they won’t,” Jack said. “They run parallel. That’s how train tracks work.”

  “Well, still. They’re too far apart. You’ve got to choose one of the tracks, otherwise you’re just, like, doing the splits all the time.”

  “Could get uncomfortable,” Jack agreed.

  Belle sat down on the edge of the kerb and rubbed her arms. Jack and Madeleine sat on either side of her. They stretched their legs out and contemplated three pairs of shoes.

  “You guys really think the Kingdom of Cello is real,” Madeleine said eventually. “I mean real like real real — not like your auras and your horoscopes.”

  Jack and Belle snorted simultaneously.

  “I don’t mean auras and horoscopes aren’t real,” Madeleine said quickly. “I mean in your minds, they’re totally — I mean …”

  “Ah, it’s all right.” Belle squinted at the space around Madeleine’s head. “Your aura’s gone all complicated trying to get out of that one. It’s like it’s crowded with tiny china figurines. Calm down, Madeleine’s aura, it’s not her fault she’s a bit simple.”

  “A bit unevolved,” Jack suggested.

  “Well, all right.” Madeleine shifted back so she was leaning up against the parking meter now. “It’s like this. You guys remember when I first came to Cambridge last year, and I kind of thought I was too special for this life? Cause I was used to being rich and travelling the world and everything, right?”

  Belle and Jack nodded.

  “And I was a bit of a loser, and I had to, kind of like, learn I’m not superior?”

  They nodded again.

  “You’re allowed to jump in at any point and say I wasn’t that bad.”

  Jack reached back and squeezed Madeleine’s knee, which could have been interpreted either way.

  “Get to your point,” Belle said.

  “If I believe in Cello, I also have to believe there’s a place nobody knows about except me. Out of all the people in the world, I discovered it. So wouldn’t that make me special? Which is the opposite of what I learned, and therefore can’t be true, and so Cello can’t be true either?”

  Jack stuck his little finger in his ear and gazed at Madeleine with interest.

  “Ah, you’ve got everything upside down,” Belle said. “You were just the only one tosser enough to stop and look at something jammed in a parking meter. Everyone else would’ve gone, bit of old junk in that parking meter, or wouldn’t have bothered to think anything. Whereas you walk around all sad and missing your dad and thinking about the sky and it’s cause you want to believe in magic, Madeleine. So, you know, go ahead. Believe.”

  There was another thoughtful quiet.

  Jack took his finger out of his ear and studied it.

  “Believe that there is wax in my ear,” he said.

  “The way I see it,” Belle continued, ignoring Jack, “if you want to make a connection with your Elliot, you’ve got to let go of the doubts and overthinking. And just go with it.”

  Jack clicked his tongue loudly. “Now you’re doing the Star Wars thing.”

  “What are you on about?”

  “It’s the force is with you thing. The whole, if you just believe the spaceship will do its own precision shooting, it’ll do it. It’s the whole let go and feel it in your heart and trust your instincts and don’t think and just BE and stop thinking with this” — he thunked the top of Belle’s head — “and think with this instead” — he touched his own chest. “It’s just lazy is what it is. It’s bollocks.” He paused. “I tried it myself playing
football once.”

  The girls laughed, and Jack did too, but a bit grimly.

  There was a faint rustle behind them, and they looked up at the parking meter.

  “I forgot all about him!” Belle said. “Ah, well, that’s what you get for living inside a parking meter.”

  Madeleine reached for the paper and read it.

  Going home. Night.

  They all stood up, yawning.

  “Hang on a minute,” Jack said. “You told us you went into the Kingdom once before. Well, how did you do it that time? That’s what you’ve gotta figure out.”

  Belle thwacked his head.

  “He’s got some brains in there,” she said, “along with the wax.”

  “He has,” Jack agreed. “Can we go home now?”

  They trailed slowly towards their homes, Madeleine looking back just once at the parking meter. A dark hulking shape, a shadowy figure, and it seemed to her that it was bending forward, lost in thought itself.

  4.

  Over the next couple of weeks, Elliot got himself so tangled in busy he couldn’t see his way around the knots.

  The snowfall melted overnight and summer veered its way down Main Street. Seemed Elliot was always sweating now, as he ran from breakfast to the greenhouse to school to deftball practice, and from there to his friend Nikki’s farm. They were harvesting the macadamias, and he and his buddies always pitched in with that. Sure, he needed the extra cash, but now was not an ideal time.

  He’d rush home late to catch Agents Tovey and Kim — they dropped by the farmhouse most nights to keep him and his mother up-to-date, and to ask any questions — and there they’d be, sitting in the porch light. Drinking whiskey, sometimes shelling peas, and he’d grab a cold drink and join them.

  “I don’t know what it is,” Elliot’s mother said one night, then she paused. She and Elliot were leaning on the porch railing, watching Tovey’s car slide down the driveway. Way down at the gates, the indicator flashed orange for a moment. She and Elliot both smiled at that. City boys. Then the car turned left and disappeared.

  “I don’t know what it is,” Petra repeated, “but whenever those two talk it’s like they’re taking a coat off my shoulders. A heavy coat I didn’t want to wear ’cause it’s so hot, is what I mean. You see what I’m saying?”

  Elliot knew exactly what she meant.

  Tovey had eyes that seemed never to stop thinking; he’d stop and rub his chin, turn a question upside down, shell peas at super speed. Agent Kim was different — you couldn’t see his eyes so much, they were always lowered to his notebook. He sketched everything: Elliot’s mother’s profile, fences cutting through fields, a half-full whiskey tumbler.

  But whatever the agents said — even when they slipped off topic and started swapping Central Intelligence jokes for farming anecdotes — there was always a powerful sense that they could make things happen: that they were steadily, methodically, patiently working toward the rescue of Elliot’s dad.

  Once the agents had gone for the night, Elliot would open up his schoolbag and try to stay awake through homework. Teachers were piling it up on him now, to make up for the school he’d missed over the last year. They used to be quiet and cautious with him, back when nobody knew just what had happened to his dad.

  But now the truth was out, and it was a solid, heroic story with a couple of solid extra characters — Tovey and Kim — who’d ridden into town to sort things out. Surely, the teachers seemed to reason, this must free him up for schoolwork?

  On top of that, Elliot was a minor celebrity in town, since he’d been selected for the Royal Youth Alliance. That lightened the mood even further. Teachers had switched from quiet to riotously noisy.

  It was all kinds of noisy, to be honest, thanks to that Royal Youth Alliance. Everyone wanted to shout questions at Elliot, about Princess Ko, and the White Palace, and werewolf colonies up north. Kids kept showing him his own photo in the Cellian Herald — waving articles in his face in a weirdly triumphant way, as if they were giving him a treat. He was never sure how to react to that. It didn’t feel like a treat. He’d already seen most of the articles, for a start.

  Teachers had questions too, but they tried to disguise plain curiosity as something more dignified — educational, even — and they’d take slow, thoughtful pauses between questions, which sent him insane — he could have written a whole essay in some of those pauses (his essays were pretty short) — and then they’d smile generously, as if it was a privilege for him to be chatting with them.

  They were too accustomed to being able to command words from students, that was their problem.

  Outside school was not so bad — his friends had already asked what they wanted to know, which wasn’t too much — but the Sheriff was the worst. Great guy, but obsessed with the royals. He kept using his police skills to track Elliot down and then asking things like, how did the Princesses take their coffee? And how did they feel about the breeding of thornless roses? And did they prefer fizzy or still water — ah, the Sheriff didn’t know what he wanted to know, he just wanted.

  Elliot had to dig through his weekend at the Palace for answers that were true — or at least plausible — to keep his interrogators happy. They weren’t satisfied, he’d noticed, unless he said something tangible, preferably funny — words like beautiful or sparkly or super nice didn’t cut it.

  On top of all this he had to find time to brush his teeth and scratch mosquito bites.

  * * *

  Two days before the trip to the Lake of Spells, he woke up at ten past his usual waking time. From that point on, the day kept sliding from his reach.

  He pulled on his running shoes, tied the laces fast and hard, and they snapped in his hands. They were already broken in three places — he kept knotting them back together. Who had time to buy new laces and rethread them?

  The school assembly ran overtime, which meant he couldn’t get moss growing in the petri dish in Biology like he was supposed to. So now he’d have to do that at home. He was running to the Mathematics lab to do another makeup exam when the alarm rang for an emergency drill — they’d been doing a lot of those on account of increased Color attacks, but seriously, how many different ways were there for everyone to get into the gymnasium?

  Then the yearbook editor sidelined him for an interview about the royals.

  Then his buddy Cody reminded him about the performance artwork he was about to reveal in the stairwell of the admin building.

  That meant he was late for his History group meeting — they were doing a presentation on the origins of the 1422 Cello-Aldhibah War of Attrition, drawing comparisons with the recent Cello-Aldhibah Missile Crisis. Half the group were pissed at him for being late. The other half hadn’t done their share of the work, so they stayed quiet.

  Then, just as the school day was finally winding down, the warning bells rang for real — a Charcoal Gray, Level 11 — and who had time to be trapped behind security shutters while a Gray shook, rattled, and juddered through town?

  It was not as bad as Charcoal Grays can be, and only lasted a few minutes, but word got around that the Watermelon Inn had taken a beating — half the pipes dislodged, and the rooms in the northern wing a shambles.

  So he headed over there to see how he could help his Auntie Alanna.

  He was standing on a bed in an empty guest room, refitting the curtain rod, when his little cousin, Corrie-Lynn, came in with a fresh-squeezed juice for him.

  She had a book under her arm: The Kingdom of Cello: The Illustrated Travel Guide.

  “Listen, Elliot,” she said, holding up the book. “I was just reading about Occasional Pilots, and what I’m thinking is, I think you might turn out to be an Occasional Pilot. ’Cause of how you’re a hero all over the place and you can jump so high in deftball. So I’m going to read it out to you while you work.”

  “Why are you always reading that book?” Elliot set down the empty juice glass, and turned back to the curtain rod. “Why not read books abo
ut woodwork? Seeing as you’re so talented at it.”

  “Why does it bother you?” Corrie-Lynn countered, ignoring his question.

  “Don’t like the guy who wrote it.”

  She turned to the cover.

  “T. I. Candle. You know him?”

  “Nope. Just don’t like the way he writes. He’s a tosser.”

  “What’s a tosser?”

  That was a word he’d gotten from Madeleine-in-the-World. He should be more careful.

  Ah, who cared. Nobody would get the connection.

  “Well, he doesn’t like the Farms. He thinks our province is boring.”

  “So? It kinda is.”

  Elliot laughed. “If you want to read something to me, maybe find the bit about the Lake of Spells.”

  Corrie-Lynn nodded, approving. “For your trip on Saturday.”

  Elliot kept threading the curtains back into place while Corrie-Lynn read in her clear, strong voice, tripping over strange words now and then:

  “The Lake of Spells is shaped like a battered handbag. It is, as the name suggests, replete with spells. You can dive, fish, swim, or prospect for spells. You can spin or skip pebbles to gather surface spells, snorkel for spells, net them, trap them, or simply wash your hands through the water — the spells will wind themselves around your fingers like slithers of seaweed.”

  Corrie-Lynn sighed.

  “You are so lucky. Will you bring me back a spell, Elliot?”

  Elliot promised he’d do his best.

  “But a lot of people don’t catch any spells at all,” he warned her.

  “You will,” she said, confident.