The Colors of Madeleine 01: Corner of White

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  She stood while she was speaking and swirled her dress, raising a questioning eye at Clover, who nodded and came forward.

  “Meanwhile,” she continued, “I have to pretend that I’m a total moron, which is enormously tiresome, but there it is. It seems an effective way to hide the fact that I am running the show.”

  It occurred to Elliot that Princess Ko’s voice was not at the same high pitch as it had been the day before. It had dropped at least an octave.

  “The columns in the Cellian Herald,” she continued, sighing. “Well, obviously I write those in my idiotic voice, and make as many mentions of the other Royals as I can. Plus, there’s all sorts of codes in there to get word back to my allies — you’ll have to get to know the code, when you join us. It’s just things like, if I say I’d give away my last peach-nettle candy, I mean that a certain town has Wandering Hostiles at its edges. If I say the coffee’s bitter, I mean they’re tending toward Hostility. That sort of thing. Oh, the paper itself drives me insane! It is a ratbag of a paper. But I suppose the editing helps maintain the image.”

  The Princess brushed the crumbs from around her mouth.

  “To the point! I formed this Youth Alliance because I need people with certain skills to help get my family back. And you have been chosen.”

  She leaned back and studied him.

  Sergio-the-stable-boy in the blond wig also gazed, while Clover Mackie crouched down at Ko’s knees and threaded a needle.

  Elliot looked away. He looked at his coat on the back of the chair and his rucksack on the floor.

  He breathed in deeply.

  “Princess Ko,” he said, “it’s hard to put in words how impressed I am. This last year and a half, it’s been tough for me, living day to day while my dad’s missing, but it turns out you’ve had your entire family gone, and meantime you’ve been running a kingdom.”

  The Princess shrugged slightly and watched his face.

  “I’d really like to help you,” he continued, “but the thing is, I can’t. My dad’s still missing, see? Thanks to you, I know more about that now, and …”

  “Yes.” The Princess nodded sharply. “I’m sorry you were kept in the dark so long. I find Central Intelligence to be inscrutably ridiculous at times — why did that have to be a secret? I wanted you, and your whole town, in fact, to know the truth, so I pretended to be drunk. I apologize — both for the delay, and for you having to find out that way.”

  “Well, that’s okay. But I have to find him now. Get him back from those Hostiles, wherever he is. And no disrespect, but I don’t really see what I could offer your Youth Alliance anyhow. That thing with the Lemon Yellow, that doesn’t make me any kind of hero. That was just luck.”

  Princess Ko shifted, and from the floor, Clover called, “Whoa, hold your horses,” so Ko, obediently, held still.

  “I have four and three-quarter minutes,” she said. “I’ll speak fast. Strange as it may seem, helping me find my family will be your first step in finding your father. I see doubt in your eyes.” She swung her hand toward the documents again. “But the fact is, Elliot, your Jimmy solved these reports. Do you want to know where the royal family is?”

  “You know where they are?”

  “They’re in the World. We knew they’d been abducted by a splinter group of Wandering Hostiles — now, thanks to Jimmy, we know they’ve sent them to the World.”

  There was a long silence in the room.

  Princess Ko looked at the clock on the mantelpiece.

  “I make three points, then I go,” she said.

  Clover said, “Done,” and pushed herself up from the floor. She moved to Sergio and began to stitch his ball gown instead.

  “First. As you may have noticed, Cello is in a state of chaos. Color attacks are up. Hostiles are out of control. Crops are failing. Help us restore Cello’s royal family, and order will be restored. Chaos like this can only increase the danger that your father is facing.”

  Elliot looked into her eyes.

  “You are doubtful. You should not be. Perhaps you are skeptical about whether my family could restore order. Maybe you’re even anti-Royal yourself. To this I say that I am inclined to agree that a monarchy is not necessarily the best form of governance — don’t look at me like that, I have no time for even your restrained expression of surprise — but neither is destabilization of the Kingdom through abduction and violence the solution to this chaos.

  “Number two, your father was working on a project to assist my family. Nobody knows what it was, but the Twicklehams obviously wanted it — they moved into your father’s repair shop in the hopes that they would find it.”

  Across the room, Clover finished with the second dress, and Sergio-the-stable-boy began to change clothes.

  “Okay,” said Elliot, thinking fast, “that could explain why they wanted his paperwork…. It could even be them who broke the lock on the shed, the time I thought it was my mother.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about and do not care. The fact is, the Twicklehams have gone now. We think they failed to find anything, but who knows? Either way, you of all people are surely in a position to unlock the secrets in your father’s work. Whatever you find may help your father as much as it helps us.”

  Elliot sat straighter.

  “Three.” As she spoke she began to shrug off the gown that she was wearing, and Elliot turned his face away.

  “Three — you have a contact in the World.”

  He turned back.

  She was slipping a different dress over her head. She smoothed it over her hips, then tidied her hair.

  “Why do you think I’m really here, Elliot? Why do you think I came to your … sweet little town? It’s not for your tricks with light and Colors! It’s not for your friends and their rescue of the child! It’s because I discovered that you have been writing letters to a girl in the World.”

  “How?” began Elliot, but Princess Ko was pushing the documents back into the envelope.

  “Write to her for us,” Ko said. “Write and ask if she is willing to help us track down the Cello Royal Family in her World.”

  Elliot was standing.

  “But how?” he said again.

  “Will you do it? Will you join us?”

  Elliot stared at her, confused, uncertain.

  She spoke softly. “The penalty for contact with the World is death, Elliot,” she said.

  The room shifted. He stumbled sideways. Then he recovered and looked into her eyes. He half smiled.

  “As I suspected,” said the Princess. “You are a bright one, and you understand my meaning. You hold my secret, I hold yours. We could bring each other down, or we could help each other. Let’s choose the latter and both find our missing families. A deal?”

  He nodded, and she shook his hand, her fingers gripping hard.

  Across the room, Sergio nodded at Elliot.

  Then there was movement at the back door, and Ko and Sergio were gone.

  Elliot sat on the couch.

  The clock on the mantelpiece twitched.

  Clover sat beside him. They were quiet for a while.

  “Years ago,” Clover said into the silence, “I took a holiday in the Magical North, and ended up doing some sewing for the Princess Sisters. They were very young and sweet, and we got along. We’ve been friends ever since.”

  Elliot was only half listening.

  His head was still skidding in circles.

  “I still sew for them now and then,” Clover continued. “We send each other messages stitched into the seams of dresses. It started as a game, but in the last year or so, Ko has really needed a friend.”

  Elliot turned to Clover, a thought building in his head.

  “Ko shares her troubles, I let her know what’s happening in Bonfire,” Clover said. “There’s a lot you can see from my porch.”

  “It was you.”

  Clover kept her eyes on him.

  “The Twicklehams must have found a letter from you
r Girl-in-the-World,” she said. “An incriminating letter, I mean. They were taking it to the Sheriff and the Mayor the morning they left. No doubt they figured the Sheriff might cover for you, but having the Mayor there, that was their insurance. They sure didn’t like you, Elliot.”

  Elliot was still staring.

  “Anyhow, when they ran, the letter got blown away by the wind. And I caught it.”

  “And you told Princess Ko?”

  “I sent a message to her. Just the other day. Ah, I know what you’re thinking. I was risking your life. And it’s true, I guess I did take a risk, but a calculated one. I knew she could use a contact in the World more than she needed you dead. I figured I could trust her to do the right thing.”

  “You figured?” Elliot raised his eyebrows high.

  “You go ahead and write to your friend in the World now. Ask her for help.” Clover sighed herself to her feet, and started clearing away coffee mugs and pastries.

  “Actually, my friend in the World said she wasn’t opening any more letters from me,” Elliot said, remembering.

  Clover shrugged. “All you can do is try.”

  He looked up at her and shook his head slowly.

  Then he shrugged.

  What choice did he have.

  He took a piece of paper, wrote, Dear Madeleine, then stopped.

  Put the pen down. Thought awhile. How did you say this?

  Then he smiled, picked up the pen again.

  You remember you once asked me to write you into my story? To give you a role to play in Cello?

  2.

  There was a whisper’s edge of envelope in the parking meter.

  It flashed white in the sunlight and Madeleine pressed down on her bicycle pedal.

  Three days now she’d cycled by, and three days it had been there.

  The crack of white light.

  If you took a rainbow in your hand and snapped it together like a fan, it would make a crack of light.

  That was Isaac Newton, still in her head: I have often with Admiration beheld, that all the Colours of the Prisme being made to converge … reproduced light, entirely and perfectly white, and not at all sensibly differing from a direct Light of the Sun.

  She cycled to the end of the street and the colours of last night’s party wheeled before her eyes.

  The sweet yellow of the “get well” freesias that Jack had brought along for Holly. The bright red of the raspberries that Belle handed over without looking at Holly’s head — then Belle looked sideways and let loose a string of swear words, ending, “You got better!”

  The even brighter red of the rims of Denny’s eyes when he heard how they had almost lost Holly.

  The candy pink of the bracelet beads that Darshana’s little girls hid behind their backs, making people guess: “Which hand is it in?” The confusion on their faces when people chose right. “Choose again!” before holding out a bare palm, triumphant. Or giving up the game and flinging Belle’s swear words around the room like streamers, while Darshana advised, “Just ignore them. Just ignore them. We are ignoring you, little ones!”

  The dove grey of Federico’s shirt collar as he danced, his eyes closed, smiling slightly, swaying his hips side to side, a quick turn, remembering himself and sitting down.

  Madeleine stopped.

  She stood astride her bike at an intersection and something swooped past all the colour of these memories and into her mind.

  As a boy, Isaac Newton had placed a candle in a lantern, attached the lantern to a kite and set it free into the night. The villagers were much affrighted by the sight, said the account that she had read.

  She realised something.

  Exchanging her past life for this real life here in Cambridge didn’t mean the colours had to go.

  Nor that colours could only be dismal and grey.

  They could be bright and beautiful, a trail of light: imagination.

  She could, if she wanted, be a kite trailing a lantern. She could be the candlelit lantern itself. She could fly with the comets and stars.

  She swung her bike around and rode back to fetch the letter.

  I cannot imagine better publishers than Arthur Levine (along with Emily Clement and everyone else at Scholastic) and Claire Craig (with Julia Stiles, Samantha Sainsbury, Cate Paterson, and the others at Pan Macmillan). Working with people of such insight, acuity, flair, and enthusiasm is an honor and a pleasure. Arthur’s editorial comments on the first draft of this novel were even more incisive and brilliant than usual, and Claire deserves special mention for her shining intelligence and warmth, and for coming up with the title.

  I am equally grateful to my superb agents and friends, Tara Wynne and Jill Grinberg, and to Liane Moriarty, Nicola Moriarty, Rachel Cohn, Alistair Baillie, and Michael McCabe who read and offered comments on early drafts.

  Thank you so much to Elizabeth Pulie for her beautiful pictures of Cello, to Peter Hosking for his books about cellos, and to Marcin Wolski for teaching me the cello.

  Thank you to Merilyn Simonds for describing greenhouse gardening, to Kim Broughton for sharing her books about colors, to Samantha Avery for reading and (partially) healing my aura, and to Paul at Maisy’s Café in Neutral Bay, for having my peppermint tea ready while I am still pushing open the glass door.

  Adam Gatenby talked to me about farming life and Alistair Baillie talked about physics, and I am very thankful to them both. (Here I should note that Adam considers farming in shifting seasons to be impossible, and that Alistair has similar doubts about colors taking on corporeal form.)

  Uesugi Farms Pumpkin Park kindly explained to me how they build their pyramid of pumpkins each year: It’s not the way that Elliot built his pyramid, but it definitely helped.

  I am profoundly grateful to Libby and Henry Choo, Erin Shields, Jane Eccleston, Natalie Hazel, Jayne Klein, Andrew Broughton, Lukas Bower, Kim Broughton, Jonathan and Douglas Melrose-Rae, Stephen Powter, Melita Smilovic, Lesley Kelly, Michael McCabe, Rachel Cohn, Kate Manzo, Corrie Stepan, Elizabeth Pulie, Katrina Harrington, Fiona Ostric, and Bernard, Diane, Liane, and Nicola Moriarty, for all the many and various ways that they have helped with the writing of this novel, and for being so extraordinary.

  This book is dedicated to Charlie with love, and with thanks for the wild imagination and for being such a great kid.

  Jaclyn Moriarty is the author of The Year of Secret Assignments, which was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, a Horn Book Fanfare Book, and a Booklist Editor’s Choice selection. Her most recent novel is The Ghosts of Ashbury High. She lives in Sydney, Australia.

  Text copyright © 2013 by Jaclyn Moriarty

  All rights reserved. Published by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, THE LANTERN LOGO, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Moriarty, Jaclyn.

  A corner of white / Jaclyn Moriarty. — 1st ed.

  p. cm. — (The colors of Madeleine; bk. 1)

  Summary: Fourteen-year-old Madeleine of Cambridge, England, struggling to cope with poverty and her mother’s illness, and fifteen-year-old Elliot of the Kingdom of Cello in a parallel world where colors are villainous and his father is missing, begin exchanging notes through a crack between their worlds and find they can be of great help to each other.

  ISBN 978-0-545-39736-0 (hardcover: alk. paper) [1. Interpersonal relations — Fiction. 2. Magic — Fiction. 3. Missing persons — Fiction. 4. Color — Fiction. 5. Princesses — Fiction. 6. Cambridge (England) — Fiction. 7. England — Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.M826727Cor 2013

  [Fic] — dc23

  2012016582

  First edition, April 2013

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-51021-9

  Cover art © 2013 by Pierre Doucin

  Cover design by Elizabeth B. Parisi

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Convention
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