Most nights, he’d find something bigger than his memories surging inside him, and he’d begin to twitch and turn, even to writhe in his bed, thinking of closed doors, locked doors, whispers, codes and passwords, the cracks between Cello and the World tightly sealed. He’d think of the tape that was embedded in his forehead and that lit up as a yellow stripe. Stop it, he’d think. Stop embedding me. Making me into what you want. I am Elliot. I’m my own. He thought of darkened rooms, blackened paper, blank faces, hunched shoulders, cold stares and, most of all, he thought of exit doors.
I’m from the Farms, he said, over and over, in his mind. I’m a Farms boy. Don’t you get it?
6
In the kitchen, Chime outlined the daily menus to Elliot, pointing out the various residents’ food preferences and allergies. Mostly, it turned out, she wanted him to chop vegetables and wash dishes.
Each day Chime disappeared for a couple of hours. When she returned, she’d be carrying buckets of onions, turnips and carrots, roots clumped in dirt. Her fingernails would be black, and there’d be smudges on her cheek and neck. It was a blacker dirt than Elliot was used to at the Farms, but either way, he’d always been partial to a girl with dirty fingernails and smudges.
The more he worked with her, the more he saw that she wasn’t slight and skinny at all, her body was rough and hard and muscle-bound, and she could rip things apart—packaging, raw vegetables—with her teeth or her bare hands. Like most Nature Strip girls, she’d make music by clicking her tongue and tapping her hands on the table, sometimes singing a strange verse or two, her accent riding roughshod over the soft thrum of her voice.
‘Yes, I can tell you, I can tell you sure,’ she’d say in response to a simple question he might ask, and he could almost see the twists of her accent, the way it swerved around corners.
He learned who she was in ragged bursts, as if she was ripping out handfuls of grass and handing these to him. Her mother had gone home to the Kingdom of Sjakertaat when Chime was still young, she told him, and Chime hadn’t seen her since. ‘That must have been tough on you,’ Elliot said, but she was silent. Two days later, she explained that it was a Sjakertaatian tradition—mothers always returned to their tribes once their firstborns were four or five—and had not affected her in the slightest.
Her father had been a Colour Bender, she told him another day, and she had travelled Nature Strip with him, learning the art. Again, Elliot adjusted his opinion of Chime. To Colour-bend, even as an adult, you had to have the kind of reckless courage that stepped right up to insanity. College graduates would sometimes go to Nature Strip and sign up for three-month Colour-bending contracts. The pay was fantastic; you could make a killing in a short time. But they never lasted the contract.
Chime’s father had joined this Hostile branch when Chime was ten, she explained, and he was now on a mission for them.
‘You see much of him?’ Elliot asked.
Chime added flour to the pan and stirred.
*
One day, Elliot picked up a newspaper that a transient had left in the rec room.
The back page reported a shock defeat in a champion deftball game and he read that article carefully. It felt good, thinking about regular things like deftball controversies. Then he flicked the paper open at a random page.
A giant photograph of Keira stared up at him.
So that was disconcerting. He’d almost forgotten Keira—or, at least, she’d turned into a sort of minor celebrity in his mind, like someone he used to watch on a TV program. Her eyes, in the picture, seemed contemptuous, as if she was annoyed with him for being here in the rec room of a Hostile compound.
You’re the one who put me here, he reminded the picture.
He’d forgotten how beautiful she was. The cheekbones, and the hair spiked as if in honour of her province, Jagged Edge, and the big mouth curling in that intense half-smile.
He looked at the accompanying article. It was some kind of opinion column by a guy called T.I. Candle. Familiar name.
Perhaps I should begin by introducing myself.
Please, Elliot thought.
It is I, T.I. Candle! The Cellian Herald has kindly invited me to write a series of columns on the state of the Kingdom. And you, dear reader, now peruse my first!
But who am I? If you suspect that I am the author of the best-selling book, Kingdom of Cello: An Illustrated Travel Guide, you are correct. I claim that honour.
Of course. That was the book his little cousin, Corrie-Lynn, liked to lug around. Elliot had always thought the guy was a total ass. He read on.
Perhaps you also believe that I currently hold the prestigious position of Chair of the Cellian Travellers Club, have post-doctoral degrees from the Universities of Brellidge and Yoghurt, consider myself a foremost wildlife explorer, dabbler in politics, biochemistry and viticulture, am a proud member of the Council of Elders in the picturesque hamlet of Lanternville, Magical North (where I reside, when not travelling)—and the (equally) proud owner of a cat named Patricia?
You do?
Well, in all that, I am sorry to say, you are wrong.
Ho ho.
No. That was mere humour. Once again, you are spot-on, and I congratulate you on your encyclopaedic knowledge of yours truly.
‘Yep,’ Elliot murmured. ‘Still a total ass.’
He skimmed the next paragraph. It was a summary of the recent events in Cello. The paragraph after that took up the issue of the missing Royals.
What of Cello’s Royal Family? We know that the King is in talks with the Elite, and little Prince Tippett is safely installed in the White Palace with his nanny.
But what of the Queen? Prince Chyba? Princess Jupiter?
They remain trapped in the World.
Which begs the question: Should we retrieve them? Should the W.S.U. send in a team and bring our Royals home? Surely the cracks would only need to be opened a few seconds, then safely re-sealed, no harm done?
Here is Anders Jerome, Deputy Director of the W.S.U., in yesterday’s press release:
‘We cannot and must not unseal any cracks through to the World. To open a crack, even for a fraction of a second, would be an invitation to the plague—that infamous disease of the World—to enter our Kingdom. Moreover, it would violate numerous treaty obligations owed to our neighbouring Kingdoms and Republics.’
It breaks my heart to say it, but Mr Jerome is right. For the safety of our Kingdom, the Royals should stay RIGHT WHERE THEY ARE.
Look. The Royal Family are a hoot. I’m crazy about them! The King and Queen are personal friends, or at the least really jolly acquaintances. I have watched with delight, and occasional winces, as the Royal Children have clambered their way through childhood.
And yet we CANNOT tamper with those cracks.
As a traveller to distant climes, I have personally witnessed the plague in action. Women and children shriek from behind windows and doors. Streets that once thronged with people are left desolate. There is the stench of filthy linen, pus, blood, dust, vomit, vinegar. In the agony of swellings, people shoot themselves, or throw themselves under steam trains.
It’s just no cup of tea.
Certainly, the Cello Wind would blow the plague away from OUR Kingdom (or would it? I haven’t heard a peep about the Wind for some time, to be honest . . .), but the plague would find its way to other Kingdoms and Empires, and for them, there would be no relief.
Indeed, if we so much as glanced towards a Crack Detector, our neighbour, the Kingdom of Aldhibah would open fire. They’d launch missiles and storm our borders, in strict accordance with their treaty rights.
We CANNOT rescue the remaining Royals. We must sacrifice them for the greater good.
Anyway, I’m sure they are cheerful in the World! They have no doubt forgotten their true identities, and don’t even know what they’re missing. And I hear that the World is a pleasant-enough place. (Assuming our Royals have found a plague-free corner.)
Before I conclude, I wil
l mention one other missing person. She is Keira Platter, of Tek, Jagged Edge [pictured, right].
She was a member of the R.Y.A. She assisted the Princess in her deception of the Kingdom. She should be found, arrested, and face the charges against her.
It is only fair. The other members (excepting Elliot Baranski, who has already met his destiny, having perished in his hometown) are under lock and key. I invite all citizens to keep a careful eye out for the face in this picture.
Elliot looked back at Keira’s photograph. He stroked it once with his thumb. He closed the paper.
*
Another day, Chime asked Elliot if he’d like a piece of Vermillion candy.
He didn’t know what she was talking about.
‘Vermillion candy,’ she repeated, unlocking a drawer and sliding it open. It was crammed with deep-red toffees that were wrapped in cellophane and attached to wooden sticks.
‘Someone brought these in with a shipment not long back,’ she explained. ‘They’re always along with things we’ve not requested. Melons, umbrellas, olives. What are they thinking, and who in rightness of mind would eat an olive? Vile, disgusting pieces of all that is salty and dark.’
‘Olives are great. Especially those huge ones from the East Wapshire Hills in Golden Coast. You tried those?’
She ignored him, selecting two pieces of candy from the drawer, unwrapping these, dropping the paper back into the drawer and locking it again.
‘Whereas, these now,’ she said, and sighed into a smile. Elliot looked from the candy in Chime’s hand to her face. ‘Vermillion?’ she said. ‘It’s a Colour?’
‘Never knew it came as candy.’
‘It doesn’t, but if you catch yourself a twist of Vermillion, it’s wonderful, it is, infused in toffee. Suck it slowly and the effect will last for hours.’
She handed him one.
‘Don’t chew it, though. You’ll just turn stupid.’
For a while they worked side by side in silence, sucking on their Vermillion candy. Elliot was peeling potatoes—Chime was slicing these—and after a while, a pleasant sensation slid from his right shoulder and down his arm. It reached his fingertips. It was remote, the sensation, then he realised what it was. It was calm. It’s been a while, he thought, surprised. He found he could actually see the calm: He watched his hand passing Chime a potato, and there it was, in the veins, scars and knuckles of his hand, a visible, physical calm.
He pulled the toffee from his mouth, looked at it a moment, then returned it and sucked harder. Immediately, the sensation careened along his left arm. It flowed down his spine.
‘Set it down, now and then,’ Chime advised. ‘Take it slow. Make it last.’ She had placed her own candy on a saucer beside her.
‘You have been to the World,’ she continued, musingly. ‘What happens to you, d’you think, when you cross to another reality? Is it still you? If you go from Cello to the World, and back, who are you as you cross? Are you light? I mean, are you transformed into light and then back into yourself? And if you’ve once been light, is it still you?’
Elliot glanced at her and smiled. He saw no need to reply. Her questions, and their internal repetition, were like a soft brushing back and forth.
After a while, though, he found himself speaking.
‘I reckon I’d have noticed,’ he said, ‘if I’d turned into a light.’
He picked up the candy again, and there was another slide of serenity, this time in his shoulderblades and skimming his calf muscles.
Chime sliced potatoes, slow and steady.
‘I figure it’s like this.’ Elliot decided he ought to take her seriously. What the heck. Why not. ‘There was the me I was when I was growing up. Hanging with my buddies, making trouble, going to school. That me seems embarrassing now, like I was an ant scooting up and down a leaf, never noticing the whole tree.’
He paused. He watched the peeler in his hand. Before the Vermillion candy, the peeler had moved in jabs and bursts, but now it swooped like it loved this potato; it curved, following contours.
‘Then there was the me when my uncle was dead and my dad had disappeared. That’s just a bunch of pictures and feelings now. Blood on grass; my Uncle Jon like an animal someone had got halfway through gutting; and most of all the terror that my dad was somewhere looking the same way. The only thing that kept the pieces together then was the fight. Searching for him, I mean, and fighting the rumours that he’d just run off on us. Fights with things that stopped me searching: a broken ankle, a Butterfly Child, Princess Ko. But next thing you know I’m in the World and there he is. My dad.’
Again, Elliot paused so he could marvel at the beauty of the peeler’s motion. Peeling a potato used to be a kind of violence, a vicious flaying. Now it was ballet. He’d never been all that into ballet: he remembered an old girlfriend, Kala, and how he’d had to sit through her little sisters rehearsing in the living room. That had been cute, but mainly a chore, only now, well, if a potato and a peeler could dance the ballet, there must be something in it.
Actually, he saw, ballet was a crock. What he was doing was, he was setting this potato free. Releasing it from its binds. He felt the relief of the smooth white object as it slipped from its own skin. He weighed it in his hand, its damp coolness.
There was a heck of a lot of honesty here, he thought, in this potato.
‘So, you see,’ he said. ‘The fighting’s done. My dad is safe. It’s like I’ve been set loose from a long, long fever. Now the clarity’s back and I can see myself at last, but I don’t know who the heck it is I see.’
He reached for the stick of candy again. It was dwindling. He smiled at it with gratitude. This beautiful calm. He felt as if he’d been thudding up a flight of stairs, heavy grocery bags in each hand, and now he’d set them down. Or working in the greenhouse back home, hauling a potted quince for his mother while she hesitated, changing her mind about where she wanted it set, and she’d finally decided.
Was that the candy, or was that the relief of speaking those words about himself aloud? The words, he realised, had been tearing back and forth inside his skull these last weeks.
‘And isn’t it the strangest,’ said Chime, ‘that, in those days of fighting, you were also fighting things you could not see?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When you were on the Royal Youth Alliance, under the command of Princess Ko?’
Elliot smiled. He hadn’t thought of himself as under Princess Ko’s command, but of course that’s exactly where he’d been.
‘Uh huh.’
‘There was a traitor.’
Elliot studied the empty stick of the Vermillion candy. Pieces of toffee were still caked around it. He scraped at these with his teeth. Then he turned to Chime.
‘A traitor?’ He smiled again. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Somebody on the Royal Youth Alliance was working against your team. You surely knew?’
‘Not a chance,’ he said.
‘This, and I should never have told you.’ Chime was suddenly troubled, muttering to herself, and then she breathed in deeply, turning the knife in her hand. ‘Ah, but all is quiet in its way, and why not? Yes, Elliot, there was a traitor. Think of it. Who knew that you were communicating with the World? Only those on the R.Y.A. Hence, one such must have reported you to the W.S.U. To stop you from getting the Royals home.’
Elliot’s calm seemed to rattle like a window in an unexpected bluster.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It was someone in my town reported me to the W.S.U. I was always in the schoolyard sending messages to Madeleine. Someone must have seen.’
‘Well, perhaps,’ Chime allowed. ‘But, as you know, even though the W.S.U. took you down, the others managed to rescue two Royals anyway. But somebody reported this fact too, because whoosh! the W.S.U. swept in again, blockading the other crackpoints.’
Elliot placed the peeler on the counter and the candy stick on its saucer.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Who
? Who was the traitor?’
Chime shrugged. ‘I do not know. I cannot know. My clearance level is not so high. But I believe there was somebody there all along: that is the rumour amongst low-clearance Hostiles.’
Elliot turned his thoughts over. He listened to Chime chopping potatoes. The rhythm was soothing. She was dropping the freshly-sliced pieces into a pot of cold water, and each fall seemed like a perfect little plash, a playful dive.
So there was a traitor in the R.Y.A.? Well, the team had been disbanded now. It was the past.
It was the previous Elliot who’d been betrayed, so who cared?
He would put the information aside, he decided.
‘I can’t stay here much longer,’ he remarked, swivelling the candy stick again. ‘See, there’s one thing that’s in me, no matter who I am. Or two things. I need to run and I need to be outside. I’m a Farms boy, see, and what I do is, I run. Not just run. Ride my bike, drive the truck, toss around a deftball, and it’s gotta be outside. Heck, even when I’m baking in the kitchen at home, the windows are open, the room is filled with light, and I head outdoors the second that I’m done.’
It was strange how tranquil his voice sounded. Again these words had been elbowing around his head. He’d imagined speaking them in shouts with vicious edges, he’d been made of shouts and edges when he thought them. Now the edges were softened, rounded like bannisters.
‘You’ve got the shoulders and the muscles,’ Chime observed, stepping back to study him. ‘I see it in your calves that you can run.’
She swirled the point of the knife in the water. The potato pieces swayed and bumped.
‘You’ve got the confidence too,’ she went on. ‘Even with all your different Elliots, you’re a deep truth and your outline’s clearly marked. This is why the girls will always like you, Elliot. I myself am drawn to boys with edges,’ she added, ‘so I cut myself on sharpness. Or I get too close to the edge and fall. But you, you’re the boy with edges that are kind, and if a girl fell from your edges you would catch her.’
A Tangle of Gold Page 8
