The Cracks in the Kingdom

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  Elliot shook his head, and told her to keep reading.

  “The Lake of Spells has its own microclimate, separate from the constant winter of the Magical North: Here, the seasons rotate, and with every season, additional methods for spell collection arise. In springtime, spells grow on brambles around the edges of the Lake, like berries. In the summer, you can sail or windsurf for spells. In the fall, gather those that fall from surrounding trees. In winter, ice fish or skate for spells — risk skating on thin ice to get the most valuable spells. Spells can be frozen for later use, but like most things, they are best if used fresh. Oh, the nights I have spent with my friend (Vincent) around the campfire — feasting on spells for song, for love, for ghost stories, for games … these are the some of the fondest memories I have. If only I had not grown up and found myself excluded from the Lake!”

  “See,” said Elliot. “He’s a tosser.”

  “You’re a tosser,” Corrie-Lynn said amiably. “There’s a whole other section here on types of spells. You want me to read that?”

  Elliot gave her a look, so she shrugged, closed the book, and collected his empty glass from the bedside table. “Missed the third loop,” she added, thumb pointing over her shoulder as she headed out of the room.

  “Ah, for crying out loud.” Elliot saw he’d have to start afresh.

  * * *

  He cycled home from the Watermelon Inn, the day dripping off him in slides of sweat. Not even a breeze.

  He passed the high school, and there was the sculpture, black with shadows. Nobody was around, so he slipped in and checked it. A new letter from Madeleine. It looked like a fat one. He put it into his pocket to read later, and carried on.

  With all that had been happening, he’d hardly even thought about Madeleine since that night she and her buddies had kept him up trying their dumb experiments. He’d written to her a couple of times, once because he’d remembered Princess Ko’s request — or command, more like — that he get ahold of some current maps of the World. And the second time to thank her for the maps.

  But that was it. He’d done nothing about figuring out how to open the crack.

  Well, seriously. How were they ever going to find the royals in the World? Setting aside the somewhat blinding fact that they probably weren’t even in the World. Security agents generally knew what they were talking about, as hyperorganized as Princess Ko might be.

  * * *

  But the next day Elliot was walking by a notice board at school, and there was one of the newspaper articles about the RYA. Princess Ko’s face dimpled out at him, and he turned away, thinking about the steel bone structure that seemed to lie behind those dimples.

  As he turned, he realized he was almost side by side with Mr. Garenstein, the World Studies teacher. Right ahead of them, a crack ran along the brickwork, left there by yesterday’s Charcoal Gray.

  You couldn’t get a better opportunity.

  Mr. Garenstein was raising a paper bag toward his mouth, and had just taken a bite from a pastry in there, when Elliot said his name. It must have been a hot pastry — you could see it was burning his mouth, the way his eyes opened in mild panic even as they turned toward Elliot.

  Elliot swung his thumb toward the crack in the brickwork.

  “Do Charcoal Grays ever open up cracks through to the World?” he said.

  Mr. Garenstein swallowed the bite of pie, and wiped his mouth.

  “Not that I’ve heard.”

  “How do cracks open anyway?” Elliot said, like he’d just thought of it.

  “They just do.”

  Not especially forthcoming, this guy. And he was opening his mouth again, ready for more pie.

  “Those little cracks you hear about,” Elliot continued, trying to make his voice sound like it was off on an unexpected path, one that was surprising Elliot himself. “Do they ever grow any bigger?”

  “How could they?” Mr. Garenstein took a bite, and spoke through it. “The WSU close them up soon as they hear about them.”

  “But in the olden days, before they did that — well, did cracks grow?”

  Mr. Garenstein shook his head. “As you’d know if you’d ever paid the slightest attention in my classes, Elliot Baranski, cracks don’t change. They come in a particular size and stay that way. They’re not potted plants.”

  He was taking a flight of stairs now, and Elliot shrugged and turned to go. But halfway up the stairs, Mr. Garenstein paused: “You know,” he said, “there did used to be talk of people constructing artificial cracks. You won’t find that in the syllabus, of course — the WSU banned any mention of it. I shouldn’t even be talking about it, I suppose.” He swiveled. “Not that I could talk about it — it’s quantum physics.” He pointed at the window behind Elliot’s head. “Her field of expertise, not mine.”

  Elliot looked through the glass, and there was the Physics teacher, Ms. Tamborlaine, heading through the school gates.

  Mr. Garenstein carried on up the stairs, and Elliot stayed at the window.

  Isabella Tamborlaine. He didn’t take Physics but he knew she’d come across from Jagged Edge about a year ago, replacing Mischka Tegan, the teacher who’d disappeared the same night as his father.

  Isabella had taken up with Jimmy, the Deputy Sheriff, and the two of them were nuts about each other. They didn’t hide it, like you might expect: They walked around town, swinging hands together like a couple in a barn dance.

  She was standing at the gate now, as if she was waiting for something. Maybe Jimmy was coming to meet her — the Sheriff’s station was right across the road.

  Elliot thought about running over, and asking about quantum physics.

  Ah, he should go right home and start packing for tomorrow’s trip.

  He’d ask when he got back.

  5.

  Later that night, Elliot had packed and was thinking about a shower to cool down, when he remembered Madeleine’s letter.

  He sat out on the porch under the starlight to read it.

  Dear Elliot,

  Do you ever feel like you’re running alongside a spinning carousel while the horse you want is moving just ahead of you?

  I sort of feel like the Kingdom of Cello is a horse on a carousel. Taking the curve ahead of me, always just out of my reach.

  No offence.

  I’m sure you guys are more than just a fibreglass horse.

  It’s just, in all the fantasy books I’ve read, the character gets into an alternate dimension, and that’s it. There they are.

  So they never question it. Maybe they wonder if it’s a dream, but everyone knows what’s a dream, so they don’t waste time on that. They never seem to think too much about the fact that the universe has just turned upside down.

  Anyhow, I’ve been trying to think about what the universe is made of, so I can tell if there’s room in it for Cello.

  Seems to me the world is made of buildings, trees, people, bikes, telegraph poles, taxi cabs, and ice-cream cones. But I guess all that is made out of something.

  The ancient Greeks seem quite nice. They were the first smart people in history, I think, and they decided the universe was made of fire, earth, air, water, and one other thing called the ether. It was outside, holding everything in place.

  Then the next smart people, the scientists, figured out that actually the world is made of tiny atoms, and atoms have tinier protons and neutrons, and inside these are teenier quarks and gluons, and drifting around, like dust around the furniture in Denny’s apartment, are teeny electrons —

  My point is, the pieces get smaller and weirder, and we still don’t know what things are made from. Scientists keep finding new elementary particles, and they can’t even see half of them. So they just sort of imagine them.

  So, Elliot, is your Kingdom smaller than a particle of light?

  If so, how did I see it that time that I came through?

  That was when my mum was in the hospital. I remember running through the rain, hoping you’d sent me healing b
eads, and terrified my mum would be dead before I got back. You could’ve just been a hallucination brought on by the adrenaline and shock.

  But if it did happen, well, I think it was cause I wanted so badly to believe that you were real. Cause that would make your healing beads real, and they’d cure my mother. (Which they did. Thanks again.)

  I am about to be as wise as an old Greek guy. You ready?

  The world is made of more than particles. It’s made of things you can’t hold in your hand, like fear, love, loss, hope, truth. Or plural, truths, and you can take these by the shoulders and turn them around to face you. Or tilt them so you can see them in the light.

  And maybe truths are like horses on a carousel. You could keep running around, trying to catch one, or you could just stand still and believe, and wait for it to come around to you.

  When I believed in your Kingdom, it came to me.

  How about we meet at midnight tomorrow night and try this: I close my eyes, believe in you, and there you’ll be.

  See ya then.

  Madeleine

  She was wildly strange, she talked too much, but something about Madeleine’s letter felt like quiet.

  He sat on the porch and it seemed like these last crowded, noisy days were folding themselves up, breaking into their constituent parts, dissolving into tinier pieces, floating away. The last two weeks were a hill he’d just climbed — that hill out past Sugarloaf, say, where he and his buddies went camping sometimes. There’d be bramble-bush stamping, dog barking, joke calling, bark crunching, rock clambering, backpack clinking, strap adjusting — there’d be pulling twigs out of boots, holding branches back so they wouldn’t fling into faces — tramping, tramping, tramping, and then there you’d be. Top of the hill. Everything different, suddenly quiet — the pieces of their climb fading into stillness, fields and farms laid out before them, sky and clouds around them.

  Elliot looked at the pieces of days behind and days ahead; at the particles of light in the night sky.

  It was past eleven. He had to be up at five tomorrow to make his flight.

  Ah, he could talk to her one more time.

  Couldn’t get any more tired than he already was.

  6.

  “Thank you very much. Cheers.”

  That’s what the world was made from. Words. Sentence fragments. Madeleine walked through the world and watched its pieces. The wheel of a pram running over a torn phone bill. Machinery throbbing somewhere. A group of Spanish students standing at a shop window. Chairs scraping. Throats clearing. Phrases handed back and forth. Thank you! and I’m in Hampstead now. A little three-bedder.

  Herself. Her bare legs and sandals moving over rain-dampened roads. Herself turning back as she passed a man holding up a camera, trying to figure out what picture he was framing.

  This morning she had said to Denny: “Do you think there could be a universe next door?”

  He’d had his asthma inhaler in one hand, Sulky-Anne entangled in his ankles. He’d been trying out cables on a computer he was repairing, plugging and unplugging. Belle and Jack had been sitting at the other bench arguing about something.

  “Another universe?” Denny had said.

  “Like magic.”

  “Well, now.” Denny had looked up. “When people talk about magic, what I think about is this. I think that these computers here would’ve seemed like magic, back when Charles Babbage was working on his arithmetic machines. Magnets and electricity were once magic too. And your guy — your Isaac Newton — when he first started talking about gravity stretching as far as the moon, well, people made fun of him. ‘If the moon is sending messages across all that space,’ they said, ‘then it ought to have a mouth and eyes and nose.’ It didn’t help that Newton didn’t know exactly what gravity was. He just knew it was.”

  Denny had stopped and thought a moment.

  “So, sure,” he’d said, “if there’s a universe next door, then there is.”

  * * *

  Now Madeleine’s day was moving towards twilight. She saw a tiny boat glinting in the river, looked again, and realised it was just a crushed tin can.

  She saw a genie’s bottle in the grass, but it was only a half-full plastic bottle of juice. She heard someone singing, Hello there! and thought it was a talking cat. It wasn’t. It was a woman.

  That’s what my days are made from, she thought. Seeing magic in nothing cause I’m yearning for something. Before she and her mother had run away, her days had cycled and spun, taking everything with them: shadows, windows, trains, dance steps, all of it careening along.

  But they’d stepped out of that life and here they were, motionless.

  “Did I see a sign about the Duchess of Malfi?” said a passing voice. “Or did I just dream it?”

  The response drifted back: “Strange thing to dream.”

  * * *

  When Madeleine had asked Denny about magic that morning, Belle and Jack had turned to her with matching, meaningful eyebrows.

  They still asked questions about Cello, but in a respectful way, as if the Kingdom belonged to her. Just the other day Jack had asked if there were monsters there, and she’d explained that, in Cello, colours had material form.

  “Give us an example,” Jack said.

  “Well, Elliot told me about this rare one called Clay Brown,” she said. “It rises out of the ground beneath your feet, like a patch of mud, and keeps rising until you’re encased in it. Then it hardens around you and crushes your bones.”

  “Can’t you just climb out of it?”

  “No. I asked that too. It keeps pulling you back in.”

  “So colours come to life there?” Belle had said. “That is awesome.”

  Madeleine had felt that strange pride again. Ever since she’d come to Cambridge, she’d wanted Belle to like her. Or anyway to see her properly. She daydreamed that someone from her past life would show up and put her in context. Or maybe send Belle a reference letter: This is to confirm that Madeleine Tully is actually supercool. She dances down corridors, and everyone dances after her. She skips school to play pool in the pub down the road. She does really well in exams without ever studying. (She never used to be obsessed by Isaac Newton and science — that’s an aberration. Don’t let it fool you.) She changes her hair colour constantly: She’s a free spirit. People are drawn to her. You’ve probably missed all this since she’s sort of lost her step since she got there, but trust me, she’s brilliant.

  She could hardly say all this to Belle herself. It wouldn’t sound objective.

  * * *

  Her day carried its pieces on into the night. Her mother stayed up late watching TV, and Madeleine watched the clock, put on her own pajamas, yawning repeatedly to try to make her mother catch some sleepiness.

  Finally, her mother was in bed, and then there was the suspense of waiting while Holly finished tossing and turning, adding more to the pieces of the day, telling long stories about a debate in an online forum in one of her design courses; and then finally, finally, nearly midnight, there was the quiet of sleep in the flat.

  Madeleine dressed again in the darkness, slipped on one of her shoes, felt around on the floor for the other — her mother sighed in her sleep, and Madeleine caught the oven clock in the moonlight. It was two minutes to twelve.

  She gave up on the other shoe.

  She slipped out into the street, ran through Cambridge with one bare foot, and reached the parking meter.

  She scrabbled for her pen and paper.

  Hey, Elliot. You there?

  His reply came almost immediately.

  Yep.

  She wrote:

  Okay, so here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to totally believe in you and your Kingdom. I’m going to close my eyes and take a step forward into your Kingdom, and you do the exact same thing, and come into my World. You get it?

  There were a few beats of quiet.

  Won’t we bump into each other?

  Ha-ha. But shut up. I’m going to d
o it now. Get ready. Counting down from five — starting now —

  Five, four — and she thought about the pieces of her day, the pieces of the World, about the ether, the quintessence — the impossible thing outside it all, the inexplicable other that holds everything.

  Three, two — there’s no such thing; it’s a magic show; it’s an optical illusion; a glimpsed hallucination; it’s a camera trick —

  No, it’s not, it’s Elliot Baranski.

  One.

  She closed her eyes and took a step forward.

  7.

  Their fingertips were touching.

  Their fingers were tangling, his thumb was pressing hard against her palm.

  There was the extraordinary rush of it, the warmth and buzz of each other’s hands. It was like standing in the path of closing elevator doors and stepping aside just in time: the breeze of the doors still cold against your cheeks; the quiet power of an ordinary thing like a door or the touch of a hand.

  Their hands curled together, sensations on sensations.

  They opened their eyes.

  Elliot was standing alone by the sculpture in the schoolyard.

  Madeleine was standing alone in the street beside the parking meter.

  It was cold — her one bare foot was chilled through — but she didn’t zip up her jacket, or turn and run towards home. She stood, staring at her empty palms. Then she put her hands into her pockets, for the warmth.

  1.

  After three days of travel by husky-drawn sleigh, they arrived at a notice.

  LAKE OF SPELLS

  None who has celebrated more than sixteen birthdays may pass beyond this point.

  “What if you celebrate your birthdays more than once?” Samuel demanded.

  The travelers stood about quietly. Some studied the notice, which was nailed to a tree. Some peered beyond the tree to where the path curved and disappeared into denser, darker forest.

  There was no sign of any lake.

  Some looked back toward the scattered sleighs, where drivers were seeing to the dogs, servants were unloading packs, and guards were training guns at the shadows.