He would raise his chin and say, ‘It is worth the risk to see my wife and daughters,’ as if he was doing something grandly courageous. But his wife and daughters kept sending him away. Keira became brazen in her irritation.
‘It’s not brave, it’s stupid,’ she told him. ‘If you die out there, your family will get even more morose and insufferable than they already are!’
The King would smile gently, as if she was kidding. But she wasn’t.
*
One day, during a rare afternoon free from Colour, the King turned up in a car, with Abel driving, and announced that they were taking the Queen to Sugarloaf Hospital to see a specialist. The King had brought disguises along for both himself and the Queen, which Keira found sort of amusing.
But they were terribly solemn, straightening their wigs and wiping away smudges of lipstick.
When they came back later, they were full of celebration, because, they announced, the Queen did not have a brain tumour.
‘Well, great, I guess,’ Keira said. ‘Neither do I.’
Nobody seemed to find her funny, but seriously, who knew there’d ever been a chance that the Queen had a brain tumour? Not Keira. So it was hard to get excited that she didn’t.
Madeleine cried about the news for more than an hour, curled up next to her mother on the couch. Keira began to feel guilty and unpleasant about her own lack of reaction. She also wondered if maybe Madeleine’s tears would melt that brick of rage.
But the next day Madeleine was concrete again, and soon the moodiness settled back over the household.
3
It was a few days after the news about the non-existent brain tumour that Keira and Madeleine were sitting side by side at the kitchen table. Gabe had brought in several buckets filled with bruised plums and the girls were making these into jam.
That was the idea anyway. Neither of them had a clue how to make jam. They were following instructions in an old book they’d found in the kitchen drawer, but these seemed to assume a lot of knowledge. What was pectin, for example? And what was a slotted spoon?
‘I like the name anyway,’ Madeleine said. ‘Slotted spoon.’
‘Me too,’ Keira agreed. Actually, she was pretty neutral about the name, but for Madeleine to say that she liked something seemed like a shot of melody in a song that was otherwise relentless thrash.
They’d pulled all sorts of bowls, pots, empty jars, crockery and cutlery out of the cupboards, and these were scattered over the table. Then Keira opened the third drawer down and pulled out a big spoon with slits in it.
She held it up. ‘Slotted spoon,’ she whispered.
Madeleine raised an eyebrow. A dimple flickered in her cheek.
‘Now what do we do with it?’ Keira asked the recipe. The recipe was silent.
Madeleine said she remembered reading somewhere that you could peel fruit more easily if you dunked it in a pot of boiling water for half a minute, then ladled it into a pot of ice.
‘You could use a slotted spoon,’ she said, ‘to ladle.’
So they did this, and now they were peeling plums.
‘This is working,’ Keira said.
Madeleine nodded.
‘It feels good, doesn’t it? When they just slip out of their skins like this?’
This time Madeleine tilted her head, non-committal.
But it did feel good. There was no question, Keira thought. Commit, Madeleine! She was a bit annoyed for a moment. Then she calmed down.
‘I guess it feels good to be back in Cello? Back with your family?’ she tried.
Small talk was not something Keira had ever done in her life. She didn’t believe in it. Probably, she thought, she was doing such a bad job now because of lack of practise. But she had a faintly urgent sense that this might be her only chance to break through to Madeleine.
Madeleine had stopped peeling the plums and was looking at the recipe again. She didn’t answer.
‘I think we’re supposed to squeeze some lemon juice on the ones we’ve done,’ she said. ‘To stop them going brown.’
‘Oh, well,’ Keira said. ‘Haven’t got any lemons. Who cares if they’re brown?’
‘Does Gabe have lemon trees?’
Keira shrugged.
After a moment, Madeleine returned to peeling plums. They were silent.
Then Madeleine spoke in a low voice. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘when I was in the World, I didn’t even remember I had brothers and a sister? My mind translated them into friends. I thought they were a bunch of kids we hung out with on vacations. Which makes sense because I never used to see them except on vacations.’
‘Huh,’ Keira said. She tried to think of something to counter that. ‘Well, your sister really wanted to find you,’ she said. ‘You know she formed this group called the Royal Youth Alliance, right? And we all had to basically give up our lives to track you down and bring you home? She was a total tyrant.’
Madeleine nodded. ‘Elliot told me about R.Y.A. I was helping, remember? Only, I didn’t know it had anything to do with me. In my head, my sister Ko was a friend named Tinsels. I emailed her and she pretended not to know me.’
‘She probably didn’t know you, whoever she was. And your actual sister wasn’t some friend who ignored you—she was always Ko and she was trying to get you back,’ Keira said. ‘Same with your dad. He didn’t get far, but he’s been working like mad to get you home from the World.’
A figure appeared in the kitchen doorway. It was the King himself, looking small. He’d just been upstairs talking to Holly again.
‘You realise the warning bells just rang?’ Keira scolded. ‘So if you’re thinking of leaving right now, you will literally get shredded.’
The King shrugged. He was looking at Madeleine.
‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘I was determined to bring you home.’
Madeleine had opened a sack of sugar. She dug a spoon into it, drew it out, then tipped the sugar onto the table top.
‘Huh,’ said Keira, watching this.
‘When you were in the World,’ Madeleine said, now making patterns in the sugar with her fingertips, ‘you thought you were a former rockstar, right?’
The King nodded.
‘And you knew you’d had a fight with your wife and kids?’
‘Right.’
Madeleine concentrated on the sugar. ‘In all the time you were in the World, did you ever try to get in touch with them? Like, try to make it up with your family? Did you ever try to track them down?’
The King was silent.
‘I missed you all so much,’ he said after a moment. ‘And when I heard your mother’s voice singing on the recording that Ko sent me, I remembered, and then—’
‘But did you ever try to track us down?’
‘I missed you so much,’ he whispered.
‘Because I tried to contact you, you know. Twice. I wrote you two letters. You never answered.’
The King came over and put his arm around Madeleine’s shoulder. She shrugged him away.
‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘I know you didn’t get them. But you never tried to contact us, did you? You hated me. You were always mad at me. I don’t blame you. I was selfish and spoilt. I was always making trouble. It’s my fault that Mum came after me that night and it’s my fault, all of it, that the entire Kingdom hates me.’
She pushed her chair back, so the King half-stumbled to get out of her way. ‘And there are Knotted Charcoals everywhere around here!’ she shouted, and ran from the room.
Keira and the King looked at each other. ‘Knotted what?’
The King sighed and walked towards the back door.
‘I swear,’ Keira said, ‘if you go out there, you will be torn to pieces.’
He chuckled sadly and opened the back door.
‘I’m not making a joke!’ Keira shouted after him.
*
A few minutes later, the Queen ducked her head through the kitchen door, looked around furtively, confirmed that t
he King had gone, and came into the room. She was wearing jeans and an old sweater with torn sleeves. She must have found these in the attic. Her hair was loosely braided. She looked like anybody’s mother.
‘Please call me Holly,’ she murmured as usual.
Keira was never sure what to say to that. ‘Okay then. Hi there, Holly.’ It seemed weird.
The Queen—Holly—sat at the table and began to read the recipe.
As usual, she was quiet with a faded sort of smile, but then, unexpectedly, she started speaking.
‘You know I never knew my son very well,’ she said. ‘The other day, when we were all sharing stories about Chyba? Did you notice that his family didn’t contribute?’
‘Oh?’ But of course she’d noticed.
‘I never knew any of my children well,’ Holly continued. ‘I got to know Madeleine this last year, but before that, life was always just . . . I don’t know, a party.’
Keira nodded.
‘A party, and the Kingdom’s finances. I got so interested in those.’ She laughed oddly. ‘Nobody believes this, but I was actually quite good at them.’
She began pushing around the sugar that Madeleine had left on the table top, making it into a tiny mountain range.
‘You can peel plums if you like,’ Keira suggested, but Holly didn’t seem to hear.
‘I have this memory of Chyba, though,’ she said. ‘I wish I’d shared it the other day. It was when he was about nine. We were at some Opening or something, and they had six tiny planes doing an acrobatic display. They were all bright red, these little planes, flying in formation. Curling upwards, zipping past, looping around, leaving their trails of smoke.’ She used her hands to demonstrate the flight paths. ‘I was standing beside Chyba and I remember I looked down at him and I said, I wish they’d just LAND! Right away I thought, Wow, that was a dumb thing to say to a nine-year-old boy. He won’t get it at all. He’ll want them to keep flying. But do you know what he said?’
Keira waited.
‘He looked up at me, and he said, I know. It reminds me of a clown I saw in a show one time, when I was about five—And I remember thinking how cute it was, how he talked about being five in that grown-up way, when he was still only nine at the time—anyway, he said the clown had climbed up on some kind of board on rollers, so the board was sliding around, and the clown balanced up there, juggling, and it kept looking as if the clown would fall, and when he finally jumped down from the board, everybody had cheered, and Chyba said he’d felt like they were cheering because the clown had stopped. Not for what the clown had done, but because the clown was safe. Like the applause of relief.’
Holly closed her eyes.
‘I remember thinking: This kid is amazing! So much empathy! So wise!’ She opened her eyes and looked at Keira. ‘Anyhow, last night, I was thinking about how I grew up wanting to be a fashion designer—not a queen, not a finance minister, but a fashion designer—and I started a course in that when I was in the World. So I was thinking about that, and I suddenly remembered the conversation about the planes and the clowns, and I found myself wanting to call Chyba, right away, and tell him that I want to be a fashion designer. I stayed awake the entire night playing our conversation in my head. I would say to Chyba, Guess what I started when I was in the World? and he’d say, What? and I’d say, A fashion design course! and it went from there. He was really nice about it, in my imaginary conversations. He was supportive and enthusiastic. He had suggestions for what I should do next. He told me I should keep it up here in Cello. His voice was so gentle and thoughtful. I had that conversation with Chyba, inside my head, maybe ten thousand times last night. I never fell asleep. Now and then I’d change what I said, and each time, he’d reply with exactly the right words.’
Keira looked at Holly.
If you get caught in a shower of Bright Orange, small discs hit your skin, burn like candle wax, and harden. You have to scrape them loose. Keira felt as if Holly’s words were Bright Orange.
Holly stood.
‘I saw a lemon tree from the attic window,’ she said. ‘I’ll go pick some and we can squeeze it on this fruit.’
‘You can’t go out there now,’ Keira said. ‘The bells have been ringing.’
Holly took a jacket from the hook. ‘I’ll be quick.’
‘Seriously, you can’t go out. There are Purples and Greys on their way.’
The back door slammed. Keira gave up. These people were impossible.
And holy, as the Farmers said, talk about your dysfunctional family.
4
Later that night, Keira and Gabe were drinking hot chocolate in the kitchen, enjoying the silence of the sleeping house, when a sharp rapping sounded at the back door.
It was Jimmy. He came in showering pieces of snow and breathing steam.
‘Cold like you wouldn’t believe out there,’ he said, dragging off his coat and gloves. ‘Won’t keep you. Just doing the rounds after that Purple-Grey storm this afternoon. Checking everybody’s okay. Holy.’ He shuddered. ‘That wind is blowing direct from the Magical North.’
He pulled up a chair at the table, warming his hands on the mug of chocolate that Gabe set down before him.
‘You and Hector must be busy with these Colour storms?’ Keira suggested.
‘Never been so busy in all my life,’ Jimmy confirmed, and he gave them a rundown on the damage to the town and farms, the families that had packed up and fled to cities, the animals lost or left to starve, the folks who’d got themselves killed or injured, some directly from Colour attacks, and some doing darn fool things like climbing up on the roof during an ice-storm to clear traces of Bronze from a chimney.
‘Madness,’ Gabe said. ‘Bronze won’t do anything but alter the smell of the woodsmoke. Leave it until after the storm.’
‘Exactly. Tell that to Shayna Tilnouth, laid up with a collarbone broke in five different places.’
‘Five!’
‘Well, now, I may be exaggerating. Still.’
‘Talking about darn fool things that people do,’ Keira said. ‘If you’re going out to the Baranskis at some point, will you tell King Cetus to stop coming over here in the middle of Colour storms?’
‘He’s not!’ Jimmy said.
‘He is,’ Keira and Gabe told him at once.
Jimmy leaned back in the chair and breathed deeply. The warmth of the kitchen and hot chocolate seemed to be soothing out his rumples. ‘They’re right through the Kingdom, you know, these storms? Not just here in Bonfire. At least it’s stopped the nonsense with the Hostiles and the Elite and so forth.’ Jimmy set down his mug. ‘Well, if you’re sure you’re all good here,’ he said. ‘I should get on my way.’ He looked around the kitchen, not moving.
‘You need anything else?’ Gabe asked.
Jimmy looked over at him. ‘No, no, I’m all good.’ But still he didn’t move. ‘Can I tell you kids something?’ he said eventually.
They nodded, and waited.
Jimmy pulled on his lower lip. There was a long pause.
‘You bet,’ Gabe prompted him.
The pause continued.
‘Fire away,’ Keira suggested.
‘Well, it’s just . . .’ Jimmy shook himself. ‘Haven’t told anybody this, not even Hector. It’s this call I got, right before the Colour storms started bringing phone lines down and up like yoyos.’
He massaged his forehead with his fingertips, as if he was trying to move the call around inside his mind. Then he looked up at them both.
‘The call was from Isabella,’ he said, adding formally to Keira: ‘She was my girlfriend. The one they say betrayed Elliot to the W.S.U.’
Keira nodded. ‘I know about her.’
‘She was nice,’ Gabe told Keira. ‘She was a great Physics teacher, too. I had her last year.’
‘Thank you,’ Jimmy said.
‘You take Physics?’ Keira said, surprised.
‘If you’d paid any attention to my schedule,’ Gabe said, ‘you’d know
that.’
‘Why should I pay attention to your schedule? I’ve got my own. I’m just sort of surprised that you take Physics.’
‘You think there couldn’t be a Farms kids smart enough?’
‘Well, it’s not that so much—’
‘You don’t think I’m smart enough. You think—’
‘You want to hear about Isabella’s call or not?’ Jimmy half-yelped.
Keira and Gabe turned back to him, contrite.
Jimmy waited a moment, to be sure of their attention, and then began. ‘She said she was real sorry about disappearing,’ he said. ‘She said she’s not a Hostile, and she never called the W.S.U. on Elliot. And well now, I know I’m biased and all, but the way she spoke, about how she really liked Elliot and she’d never have done a thing like that, and she was almost crying and so forth—I guess I just believed her.’ Jimmy gave them a hopeful look.
Keira and Gabe returned his gaze. Eventually, they both nodded.
‘Like I said,’ Gabe offered. ‘She was always nice.’
Jimmy seemed pleased enough to carry on. ‘Anyhow, the next thing she said took me by surprise like a bear in the pantry. She told me she was from . . . well, she said she was from the World.’
There was a long pause.
‘And that the W.S.U. are after her,’ Jimmy tumbled onward. ‘So that’s why she had to run. And she said that’s why she’d had a false name—and she studied Physics so she could try to find out about cracks—and she came to Bonfire in the first place because she’d heard that there were people here secretly working to create cracks.’
The silence hummed on.
‘Holy,’ Gabe said eventually.
Keira considered her fingernails. ‘Did you believe her?’ she asked.
‘Well, it’s just about the craziest thing I ever heard,’ Jimmy explained. ‘So I didn’t see a reason not to believe her, if you get what I’m saying. I mean, why would she suggest such a thing. That she was from the World!’
Gabe and Keira glanced at each other, then down at the table.
‘I guess, so you’d stop thinking she’s a Hostile who sold out Elliot,’ Keira hazarded.
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