Everyone turned to Elliot.
‘I’m sorry we didn’t find it—’ he began, and then stopped suddenly. ‘What did it say? What did your note say?’
‘I wrote something like, Help! I am being held against my will! But I had not time to write more.’
‘You put it in the TV that was on the workbench there?’ hazarded Elliot. ‘The one that ended up in Cody’s sculpture?’
‘Did it? All right. Yes, that’s where I put it—they watched me closely all the time, as to a . . .’
But here Libby’s voice faded, and she begged that somebody might contact her parents, as she would like to see her mother very much; then she put her thumb in her mouth and two tears slipped from her eyes.
In the consequent hubbub, Elliot slowly shook his head.
In Cambridge, England, the World, an extremely ill patient, her brain effectively strangled by a malignant tumour, lay in intensive care, waiting to die. Her teenage daughter walked into the room, dripping with rain, and was seen to draw a handful of white pills from her pocket. The supervising nurse rushed forward, thinking that the girl intended to give these to her mother for some reason, but the girl simply crushed them between her palms and let their dust sprinkle over her mother’s face and neck.
Then the girl sat weeping quietly, a hand on her mother’s hand.
Some minutes later, the woman sat up in her bed, pulling tubes from her mouth and her nose, so that the equipment set up frantic alarms and beeps, and requested chocolate.
Later that morning, various scans showed that the tumour had entirely resolved itself, that it had altogether disappeared, leaving behind apparently healthy brain cells—which, it would be fair to say, was an exceptional turn of events.
Meanwhile, in Bonfire, the Farms, Kingdom of Cello, the Butterfly Child flew through the streets, riding on her favourite moth.
Several people caught glimpses of her—or at least, glimpses of her russet-coloured dress—and, as she flew, there was a whispering and rustling, a bending and straining, an odd tearing sound through the fields. Word rippled out that the crop effect was happening at last!
Within moments, the Butterfly Child had vanished, and some people thought they heard a faint fluting sound, while others swore they heard the words, ‘goodbye’, and also, ‘sorry’.
‘The crop effect! The crop effect!’ The shouts ran up and down the street.
There was brief jubilation, but it quickly emerged that, in fact, it was not the crop effect.
Instead, the fields, the streets, the Town Square, the school grounds, even Norma Lisle’s little herb garden, were all now entirely clogged with mulberry trees.
Sheriff Hector Samuels
Bonfire Sheriff’s Station
Bonfire, The Farms
By Facsimile
Dear Sheriff Samuels,
We are pleased to inform you that the town of Bonfire, in the Farms, has been selected as a bonus town on the Princess Sisters’ current Tour of the Kingdom.
As you probably know, bonus town selection is highly unusual in Royal Tours, and is therefore truly an honour for Bonfire.
Your town has been selected as a consequence of reports of an extraordinary recent event in Bonfire. We understand that a young person (Elliot Baranski) successfully repelled an attack from a first-level Yellow using nothing but a garden hose. The Princess Sisters have expressed great interest in meeting with Mr Baranski and discussing his revolutionary approach to Colour attacks.
We have further been informed that—either immediately before or after the altercation with the Yellow (reports are not clear on the chronology)—certain other young people successfully negotiated the rescue of an abducted child. It appears you have a glut of heroes in your town.
It should be emphasised that the selection of Bonfire as a bonus town is unrelated to your recent correspondence in which you suggested, amongst other things, that the Princess Sisters ‘skip’ part of the Tour of Jagged Edge, since they would have ‘had it up to HERE’ with the ‘mockery’ in that province. On the contrary: the Princess Sisters were delighted by Jagged Edge, were treated with the utmost respect and humility by its people, and are very sorry to be leaving it so soon.
The Princess Sisters intend to spend twenty-four hours in Bonfire. As is customary, they will commence their visit by parading through the streets in the Emerald Carriage. During this parade, they will wave and smile at residents of Bonfire but will not address the crowd in any way, and any person who approaches the carriage or attempts to engage one of the Princesses in conversation or behaves in a foolish, comical, ‘wisecracking’ or otherwise odd manner in an effort to get the Princesses’ attention will be shot.
After the initial parade, one of the Princess Sisters (Princess Ko) will attend the following events, while the other (Princess Jupiter) rests:
• an awards ceremony at which the Princess will greet, chat briefly with, and present a bravery medal to each of the young heroes referred to above;
• three (3) visits to town monuments, museums, scenic outlooks, items of curiosity, etc., of your choice, at which the Princess will exclaim and/or nod (please note, however, that the Princess is not particularly interested in farming, per se, and accordingly would prefer not to exclaim or nod about crops, irrigation, etc.);
• two (2) visits to recently opened hospital wings, orphanages, etc., of your choice, at which the Princess will be glad to cut a ribbon, smash a bottle, etc.;
• a reception to be attended by the mayor, high-school principal, sheriff, hospital administrator, post-office clerk and Elliot Baranski (so as to give the Princess an opportunity to chat with him for three to five minutes), and at which the Princess has requested that baked goods and G.C. teakwater be served; and finally:
• a brief meeting with your town seamstress (which meeting shall be the only event attended by both sisters), as the Princesses have requested that certain adjustments be made to their ball gowns, following their exposure to the fashions of Jagged Edge.
Enclosed, you will find:
• a suggested menu for each of the meals to be served during the relevant twenty-four hours;
• a list of accommodation requirements. We understand that your town hospitality options include the Watermelon Inn and the Bonfire Hotel. As the enclosed form notes, the Princess Sisters require adjoining suites in the most luxurious of these establishments, such suites to be ‘the presidential suite’ or the ‘penthouse suite’ or the ‘deluxe suite with harbour view’ (should you have harbour views in your town), etc., etc.—that is to say, a suite with a grand title.
The Cello Secret Service will arrive shortly to carry out security checks; accordingly, please arrange for accommodation, food, entertainment, etc., for twenty-five members of the Service, ten members of the Royal Tour Committee and ten members of the Royal Support Staff.
Finally, anything you can do to ensure good weather for the visit would be most appreciated.
We trust that all of these arrangements will be in place in time for the Princess Sisters’ arrival in Bonfire, scheduled to take place tomorrow morning at 10 am.
Yours with Royal Splendour and Harmony,
The Cello Royal Tour Bonus Town Selectors
P.S. The Princess Sisters have particularly asked whether your Pyramid of Pumpkins might be rebuilt in time for their visit?
Dear Madeleine
It’s moonlight quiet on the porch out here, but the words are rattling around in my head like chains in the back of a pick-up truck.
They all want to get written down first, the words, so if this ends up as nothing but a tangle, you’ll know who to blame.
(The words.)
First though, I have to thank you.
You saved my life, and Corrie-Lynn’s too. Your Colour talk—about water splitting sunlight into rainbows, about complementary Colours, about the fact that yellow and purple are complementary—well, to put it bluntly, it saved us. We made rainbows with sprinklers and sunlight, and somehow t
he purple in the rainbow killed off the Yellows that were coming for us.
So, like I said, thank you.
The trouble is, now I’ve got the whole Kingdom wanting to know more. Colour Coders, Colour Benders, the Cellian Centre of Illumination, Department of Colour Counterfuge, Brellidge University, Tyler University, Central Intelligence, guy who works in the local grocery store—they’re all calling up and coming around with questions.
And what can I tell them?
That a Girl-in-the-World gave me the idea?
They’d take the medal away and lock me up instead.
Anyhow, my point is, everyone wants to know and I can’t tell them.
Even Princess Ko.
Which brings me to the Royal Tour.
The Princess Sisters are sleeping at the Watermelon Inn as we speak—they came here on their tour today, and it’s been the craziest day this town has ever seen.
The Sheriff was so happy he was bouncing around like he’d turned into one of Corrie-Lynn’s puppets. His head couldn’t stay still on his shoulders.
Royal flags were flying, the school band was playing (which made me miss Kala and her saxophone), and the streets were lined with people, a lot of whom had even camped out last night so they’d get front row views. (‘People,’ my mother said. ‘They’ll never stop mystifying me.’)
The Emerald Carriage came trundling through and you got a glimpse or two of Princess smiles and Princess hands in the air.
The Sheriff had talked Shelby into flying her crop-duster over the parade, showering the carriage with silver petals from the blue jacarandas of Golden Coast—which looked pretty, but next thing security guards were shooting at the plane. Someone hadn’t got the message through, I guess, and they thought Shelby was throwing down poison dust.
It turned out okay. Shelby was doing some fancy flying, so they couldn’t get in a good shot, and Gabe tackled one of the guards to the ground. It all got cleared up, although Gabe ended up handcuffed to a door handle for two hours until somebody remembered him.
That’s been the only glitch so far, if you don’t count all the joking around of Gabe, Nikki, Cody and Shelby at the awards ceremony. They’re on a high, see, because they’d been feeling guilty about driving the Twicklehams out of town, and then suddenly it turned a corner and seemed the Twicklehams deserved to be driven out. Although, the Sheriff keeps saying, ‘Hmm’ about this, and, ‘the thing is, kids, you couldn’t have known they deserved it,’ and ‘If they were good people, then . . .’. Gabe and the others just put on frowns like they’re trying hard to follow his logic but can’t keep up.
As for little Derrin Twickleham herself—well, her name is actually Libby Adams—her parents are in town now, both of them whistling and hugging practically everyone they see. They’re very keen on Gabe and the others, for rescuing their daughter, and for giving the Twicklehams a hard time while they were here. They keep telling the Sheriff that, ‘No doubt, these young people intuited the wickedness of our daughter’s kidnappers’.
Derrin’s the one who wrote the I am being held against my will letter, by the way—the one that got through to the World.
Anyhow, where was I? I was talking about the Princess Sisters’ visit.
Yes, I was. And how my friends were sort of disrespectful cause of being happy.
Not that Princess Ko seemed to notice. Her focus was more on getting herself another baked pastry or a third glass of G.C. teakwater.
Oh yeah, and the mulberry trees—I guess they were another glitch in the Royal visit. They’re everywhere now, thanks to the Butterfly Child. Can’t take a step without a mulberry landing in your hair, or falling down your collar. Princess Ko got a mulberry stain on her dress, which was a national emergency for a bit, but, like I said, her mind seemed mainly taken up with cake so we all got over that and moved on.
There was a reception, late this afternoon.
I was invited, so was the Sheriff, and the Mayor, and a few other local people. Princess Ko walked into the room, and she’s all sparkle. Exactly like her columns, only slightly more high-pitched, if that’s possible. How she can talk—and live and breathe—at that level, is beyond me. You’d think it’d get her exhausted. Or at the very least make her ears ache.
Anyhow, she whirled around the room, excited about everything from the Postmaster’s shirt collar to the Mayor’s signet ring. When she got to me, she turned out to be really pretty, in that glitter-sparkle way that she has—and she started talking about the Colour attack and how I used the sprinklers, and next thing, she’s begging me to demonstrate for her, right this moment, how I did it, since, she thought it would surely look like a whirlshine of prettiness, a landscape of rainbows! (Those were her words.)
I was confused for a moment, looking around the Mayor’s living room (which is where the reception was held), wondering how I was supposed to get sprinklers in here—not to mention sunshine—and the damage it’d all do to the carpet.
That’s when the Sheriff stepped in and saved me, telling the Princess how he’d read every word of her columns, and asking after her folks like they were old family friends. Princess Ko kept wanting to get back to the heroics of the Colour battler (she meant me), which I was not so much enjoying, so I pointed out that my buddies were the real heroics.
I meant to say ‘heroes’, but she knew what I meant.
She said, ‘Oh, my, yes—and imagine! You had that Olivia Hattoway living and breathing amongst you all this time! Not to mention Mischka Tegan!’
The whole room went quiet in an instant.
There’d been murmuring, and teaspoons and so on before that, but the moment she said that name, it stopped.
‘Hold on,’ said the Sheriff, and looked at her, quizzically.
‘Yes,’ she said, with a concentrating look. ‘The Security Forces brief me, you see, at each town, and it seems that you’ve had four Hostiles undercover here—Mischka Tegan and Olivia Hattoway and more, recently, the false Twicklehams of course. Now . . .’ She stopped a minute, thinking, and the room stopped breathing altogether, it was waiting so hard. ‘Now, as I recall it, Mischka and Olivia were here trying to infiltrate a branch of the Loyalists but that fell apart and Mischka left town. Olivia stayed, and then the Twicklehams came with the stolen child. And they worked with Olivia secretly under the guise of parent—teacher meetings. We think they were trying to figure out what the Loyalists—Abel and Jon Baranski, I mean—had been working on.’
The silence seemed set to blow the glass out of the windows.
Princess Ko looked around, then took a deep breath and kept talking.
‘Yes, you see, Abel and Jon Baranski were working on some secret project to try to assist us Royals against a Hostile plot. Mischka persuaded them she was on their side.’
There was a rising murmur in the room. Some people made distressed noises.
Then the Sheriff spoke, and set aside his manners.
‘What in the blazes,’ he said, ‘are you talking about?’
The Princess looked puzzled.
‘Oh, didn’t you know? No, I suppose you wouldn’t. These things are meant for top-ranked, highly rated, quizzically over-the-top agents, aren’t they? And here I am, chattering. Security will kill me! If only Jupiter were here today instead of me, she’s much more discreet! Or a little anyway. Waiter! Take this teakwater away from me!’
She giggled.
In a more restrained voice, the Sheriff said, ‘Jon Baranski was killed by a Purple. And it’s our belief that Abel Baranski left town with Mischka for . . . romantic reasons.’
‘No, no,’ the Princess said. ‘Well, we can’t be sure, but I can tell you what Central think happened. Right. Jon and Abel were working on something secret when Mischka joined them. Then, one terrible night—the report didn’t use the word ‘terrible’, that’s my innovation—one terrible night, Abel and Jon discovered that Mischka was a “bad guy”. Before they could expose her, she abducted Abel, no doubt using a weapon of some kind. Weapons are al
l the rage. Jon was probably chasing after them in his truck, or perhaps heading to Abel’s family’s home to let them know what had happened? Anyhow, that’s when the Colour attack took place. And so, tragically, he was lost.’
You can imagine the state of my head, and my heart, while she was talking.
‘If this is all true,’ I said, finally speaking, ‘where’s my father now?’
Then she looked at me, and you could see her linking it up. ‘Baranski!’ she said. ‘You’re his son! Oh, well, you would want to know that. It’s dreadful, actually, that all this time you couldn’t know the truth. But there it is. That’s how Central Intelligence seems to work. Secrecy. Look, the thing is, we’re not sure. We do know the particular Hostile organisation that has him. We know that.’
‘How do you know,’ the Sheriff said, faltering a little, ‘how do you know that he’s alive?’
‘If they’d killed him, they’d have let us know.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s how they work. Gloating. Intimidation. They’re probably keeping him prisoner, trying to get him to help them with their plans. Or to reveal the technology or whatever it is. Who knows? Maybe he’s even joined them!’
I was trying to shake this all into place, kind of believing her since she was a princess and all, but then I realised that it made no sense.
‘No disrespect, Princess Ko,’ I said, ‘but you must be mistaken somehow. My dad was not part of some Loyal club or whatever. He was in electronics repair.’
Princess Ko seemed to have forgotten her decision to stop drinking; she was looking around for somebody to refill her glass.
‘He most certainly was,’ she said, distracted. ‘Look around his things—there’s a secret code that Loyalists use to let others know who they are. It’s a number—they display it in plain sight, disguised as something ordinary.’
I was still shaking my head, almost laughing even, and then it came to me.
A Corner of White Page 32
