A Tangle of Gold

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But as it was, all was well.’ Samuel shook his head slowly. ‘What and ho, such a thing.’

  ‘What and ho,’ Madeleine agreed. She looked at Samuel. His reactions were great. It was good to talk to an enthusiastic listener. She’d been so silent these last few days.

  ‘I remember it made me think that terrible things are always on the verge of happening,’ she said. ‘They’re always being just avoided. And it’s the same with wonderful things. It’s only when—I don’t know, the stars are aligned—that something great happens. And you have to catch the moment or you miss it.’ She frowned at the window. ‘What is that? A Slate Grey or something?’

  ‘Someone has spilled a sack of flour!’ boomed the driver’s voice. ‘Do you see?’

  ‘Yes!’ Madeleine and Samuel chorused.

  ‘And the rain has fallen so now it is glug and glue!’ The driver chortled. ‘As to a scissor-snake in radishes!’

  ‘As to a netted branch of clover!’ Samuel retorted, and there was even heartier laughter from the driver.

  So that was another good thing about Samuel. He was Olde-Quaintian, and a lot of this journey would be through that province. She wouldn’t even have known the driver was making a joke, let alone how to respond.

  They sat forward, listening in case the driver wanted to chat on, but he was silent, so they settled back.

  ‘Go on,’ Samuel said. ‘You were describing your pursuit of moments.’

  Madeleine laughed. ‘I don’t think it was anything so intense as that. It’s just, I’m always looking around corners. Like, I never stop watching for something special. Which can get sort of tedious, cause mostly it’s not there.’

  Samuel’s right eyelid was swollen. He touched it lightly, then nodded. ‘Yet somehow you found your way home to Cello. Splendid as to a knitting needle in a deckchair!’

  Madeleine studied him. She pictured a knitting needle sitting on a deckchair. It didn’t seem all that splendid.

  ‘It’s like this,’ she said. ‘Imagine you run away from home, and you don’t really like where you end up. It feels wrong. Then you find out about this other place, this magical place, and you think that everything would be okay—everything would be wonderful—if you could just get to that place. And you want to be with people from that place, and talk to people from that place, and you kind of long for that place, and then, suddenly, you’re there . . .’

  Samuel spoke under his breath. ‘You’ve come full circle.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. Go on, Madeleine. Continue.’

  ‘No, you’re right. I’ve come full circle. That’s it exactly. I’m back where I started and it’s like a freakin lesson from a fable or something. We had a governess once who used to make everything into a fable. It made Ko insane. Just give us the facts! she used to say. But the governess would love this one. Cause it’s like the truth was right there all along. Or you can’t run away from yourself, or whatever. I can’t stand it. I wanted magic so badly, and now it’s like there’s no such thing. I mean, I know we’ve got magic here in Cello, but it’s just, like, whatever. There are Occasional Pilots who can fly, and a Lake of Spells, and the Wind blows away disease, and magic mists around the Magical North, but so what? Do you see what I mean? I mean, what’s magic? It’s not even relevant. It’s just another thing.’

  Samuel was looking at her oddly.

  Dark lines of magic were running in his veins, scabbing his hands, swelling his fingers, blackening his nails.

  ‘That was really stupid, what I just said,’ Madeleine stated. ‘I apologise.’

  4

  Over the next few days, they had to change plans constantly.

  The Maroon had destroyed several other train lines, and a thundering Taupe had blown up a swag of trains. At the same time, Wandering Hostiles had been taking out bridges. Scuffles were erupting between Loyalists and Hostiles. The Elite had sent out special forces to quell the violence, but mostly they only increased it. Several towns were in total lockdown, gates chained shut.

  They found their way to bus terminals where they waited for hours before somebody shouted that no bus was coming. They took paddleboats, or hitched rides in the back of trailers, and found themselves backtracking or lost.

  For the first two nights, they slept in fields, in the tent Samuel had taken from Gabe’s basement. But on the third night, as they were setting up camp, a fierce wind sprang up, so the tent turned inside out, the canvas punching their faces.

  In the end, they ran across the field towards distant lights.

  It was an amusement park, closed for the night but with one or two lanterns still shining. A giant wooden face, complete with open mouth and teeth, served as its entry gate.

  They stopped and looked around. For a moment Madeleine thought that some kind of animal was scraping across gravel towards them, then she realised it was the sound of Samuel’s breathing. She looked at him. He was hunched and shivering in the wind.

  She looked at the wooden teeth. Each was hollow. ‘Get in there,’ she said pointing to one. ‘Don’t start talking again, just get in.’

  They each climbed into a tooth, side by side, and crouched deep inside.

  ‘Ingenious!’ Samuel’s voice rose up from his tooth. ‘We are safe inside cavities!’

  They were silent for a while, listening to the wind. It quietened briefly and Samuel’s voice sounded again. ‘Your Highness?’

  ‘You seriously have to call me Madeleine.’

  ‘Very well. Your Highness, I have been thinking of what you said the other day. In the stagecoach? Recollect?’

  ‘It was stupid,’ Madeleine called to him. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  ‘As to a woollen scarf in sunshine! No. I do not mean your reference to magic being nothing. That amused me merely. I mean your words about how you are always searching around corners for something marvellous. It has come to me that this is a sign of a magic-weaver! Are you, perchance, a magic-weaver?’

  Madeleine laughed. Her laughter echoed strangely.

  ‘I’m not a magic-weaver,’ she called.

  ‘How can you know this?’

  ‘Well, for a start, I’ve spent a lot of time in the Magical North, and there’s magic everywhere there. I never saw any of it. Isn’t that what magic-weavers do? See magic?’

  There was silence from the tooth. The wind set up a louder hum, and Madeleine pressed herself in deeper.

  ‘Well,’ Samuel’s voice piped again. ‘Do you ever have visions? Or waking dreams? That would be another sign.’

  Inside the wooden tooth, Madeleine laughed again and then instantly wanted to cry. She wasn’t inside a tooth, she was inside a memory. She was fierce with the memory of Auntie’s Tea Shop, and telling Jack and Belle about her hallucinations.

  They hadn’t happened since she’d been back in Cello, she realised, and her nose bleeds had stopped. She closed her eyes and ran through the three hallucinations. The boy running through the marketplace, the office with the . . .

  ‘Samuel,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can you stand up again?’

  He stood, shivering, the wind pasting his hair to his head, moonlight shadowing his cheek. She studied him.

  ‘Okay, get back down.’

  They both crouched again.

  ‘You’re the boy from my hallucination,’ she said quietly.

  The wind sighed, long and languorous.

  ‘I am what?’ Samuel called.

  ‘I saw you, before I ever met you. You were running through a marketplace, and then standing in an office building.’

  Samuel was silent.

  ‘Are you there?’

  ‘How splendid.’ Samuel’s voice rose up uncertainly. ‘You dreamed me! As to an . . . as to a what? Well, it will come to me.’

  ‘Weird, right? The last few days I’ve been feeling like I’ve known you a long time, and now I see why. I guess I didn’t connect you with that vision or what
ever at first, because . . .’

  ‘Because I am so tainted by black magic.’

  Madeleine pushed her backpack around behind her so it was like a cushion. She put her feet up against the opposite wall of the tooth and leaned back. Above, she could see stars. ‘You know, the marketplace I saw could easily have been in Olde Quainte. You were being chased by a bunch of boys—has that ever happened to you?’

  There was a low chuckle from Samuel. ‘Call yourself the truth of that statement. Indeed, and I have been so pursued often betimes!’

  Madeleine remembered the man at the desk in the vision. ‘But I guess you’ve never met Leonardo da Vinci,’ she joked.

  ‘Call yourself my pardon, never met whom?’

  ‘Leonardo da Vinci. That’s what happens next. You’re in an office building and Leonardo da Vinci—he was a famous painter—he’s sitting at the desk.’

  ‘Leonardo!’ Samuel’s voice was warm. ‘I greatly admire his work!’

  ‘You what? No, he’s from the World. You must be thinking of somebody else.’

  ‘Indeed, and I am not.’ She could hear him moving about in the tooth. ‘Leonardo visited our Kingdom often, Madeleine. I am a student of World history—hence, your sister chose me for her Youth Alliance—and I have read much about Leo. That’s how we knew him, as Leo.’

  Madeleine was on her feet again, gasping in the wind. ‘Are you serious!’ she shouted. ‘But that’s what I said! I said to Belle, I bet Leonardo came to Cello! Through a cave!’

  ‘Sit down,’ Samuel called to her. ‘You will blow away. Yes, I recall a tale of his finding his way through as a boy. His favourite provinces were Jagged Edge, where he studied the technologies, and the Undisclosed Province. Also, I think he was much taken with the Cat Walk in Nature Strip.’

  Madeleine sank down again, her cheeks aching from her grin. ‘Maybe that’s why I saw you! I was a Cellian girl in the World, and you’re a Cellian boy who knows about the World!’

  ‘There are 426 of Leo’s paintings in the World–Cello archives,’ Samuel said. ‘He was prolific. I enjoy them immensely. Especially his Mona Lisa series.’

  ‘You’re not serious.’

  ‘There was a woman of the Undisclosed Province named Lisa. You know that they speak there with their eyes? Leo was intrigued by this phenomenon. He painted at least twenty portraits of this Lisa, trying to capture her eyes.’

  Madeleine was giggling.

  ‘What is it amuses you?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, and her words caught in a yawn. It was a happy yawn. ‘Do you think you can sleep in that tooth?’

  There was shuffling. ‘As to a swordfight in a moonbeam,’ Samuel mumbled. ‘Well, I will do what I can. Call yourself a good night, Madeleine.’

  Madeleine tilted her head so she could fill her eyes with stars. She thought of the haze over Leonardo’s life, and then of his sfumato effect: the smokiness, the dusk and shadows, he liked to use in paintings. She laughed again. ‘You may paint your picture at the end of the day when there are clouds or mist,’ Leonardo had advised, ‘and this atmosphere is perfect.’ No wonder he liked the Undisclosed Province: twilight was relentless there, the light always dim.

  She imagined herself at Cambridge, Federico warming his hands by the gas fire, his hat on the desk, Belle and Jack insisting that Madeleine shut it, while she ignored them and exclaimed: ‘He loved the Cat Walk! No wonder he covered pages with sketches of cats!’

  She was happier than she’d been in months. She was on her way to see Elliot. She would tell him this story about Leonardo. She would hand it to him in long, decorated paragraphs: the vision, Belle’s presentation, Samuel’s accent and locutions, the fairground, the wooden teeth, the cold wind, the Mona Lisa, the coincidence, how much she missed Jack and Belle—all of it. She would give all this to Elliot and he would take it in exactly the right way.

  5

  The next day, they caught a train that was so crowded they had to stand in the vestibule. Several other travellers stood or sat on luggage.

  Outside, warning bells rang constantly, and the train security shutters clattered open and closed.

  ‘Why don’t they just leave them closed all the time?’ Madeleine wondered.

  The train line was skirting the Inland Sea, so the view, when the shutters were open, was of waves clutching at sunlight, ships in mist, and fishing villages.

  ‘The prettiest scenery in all the Kingdom,’ Samuel smiled, leaning up against a pole.

  They were sharing the chocolate bar from Gabe’s kitchen.

  ‘I only have two days before I’m supposed to meet Elliot,’ Madeleinesaid. ‘You think we’ll make it?’

  ‘As to an earplug in a catapult.’

  ‘That’s never helpful,’ Madeleine said.

  Samuel smiled to himself, and held out his hand for more chocolate.

  They passed a village coated in Ice Blue. The streets were empty but, on the outskirts, a child had frozen mid-leap in a meadow and a man had been caught climbing a stile.

  ‘They’ll thaw,’ Samuel said.

  ‘Will they crash to the ground when they do?’ Madeleine asked.

  ‘As to a double chin in lacework.’

  ‘Again, not helpful, and actually pretty annoying.’

  A moment later, the train began to slow and then stopped. There were mutterings and then someone said, ‘Indeed, and there’s a Pale Grey. Call yourselves a look now.’

  Everyone crowded the windows. The fields here ran down to a village nestled in a valley. It was shrouded in a mist of Grey.

  ‘Is it not merely a mist?’ someone asked.

  ‘No. You see the ragged edges? That’s certain of a Pale.’

  The others agreed.

  ‘The poor good people as live in there,’ an elderly woman observed, addressing her husband. ‘They’ll be sensing that something is ever so wrong and not knowing why. They’ll be cranky and sharp-tongued as I am with you when you return from market without eggs.’

  ‘Indeed,’ the husband agreed complacently.

  A conductor was leaning through an open window with a megaphone.

  ‘Your village is coated in Pale Grey! Pale Grey alert! Pale Grey!’

  ‘They’re too far away,’ someone murmured.

  A moment later, the train crackled with an announcement. Unexpectedly, the driver had a Farms accent. ‘Apologies for the delay, folks. As you may have have noticed, that little village just to the east of us—Sederidge, I’m told—looks to be under a Pale Grey. There’ll be kids being expelled from school, marriages breaking up, friendships torn to shreds, and who knows what the heck else. And if it doesn’t shift soon, the moodiness might settle there for good. Now, our train is equipped with handheld fans, and anybody wants to, might join us in helping out these folks. We’ll stop here half an hour or so and see what we can do.’

  ‘Unorthodox,’ somebody said.

  ‘These are troubled times,’ the elderly woman countered.

  The doors trundled open and groups of people spilled from each carriage. Others settled onto empty seats to wait. Train conductors handed out little fans and everyone set off across the field.

  The sky was blue, the sun warm, and the atmosphere robust and upbeat.

  ‘I keep thinking about how Leonardo da Vinci was here in Cello,’ Madeleine told Samuel as they walked.

  ‘Indeed,’ Samuel agreed.

  ‘And it makes me wonder if the other famous people from my visions might have come here too. Would you know? Because you know so much World History?’

  ‘I cannot know,’ Samuel said promptly. He kicked some brambles aside.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I cannot know,’ he repeated, ‘unless and until you tell me who was in your dreams.’

  Madeleine gave him a look, but he was walking at a sturdy, steady pace and didn’t notice. ‘A scientist called Isaac Newton,’ she said, ‘and a musician named Vivaldi.’

  ‘Vivaldi!’ Samuel exclaimed. ‘I have read of him! Y
es. He came much and often too. I believe he was drawn to the Farms. Especially its fiddle-playing.’

  ‘Ha!’ Madeleine said. ‘Wait. You’re joking right?’

  ‘Do you not know me yet? Rare and betwixt do I joke.’

  ‘But Vivaldi was a genius! People said his music was like nothing ever written before. He composed twenty-seven cello concertas, amongst the first ever written, and when he played violin solos himself, the audience was gobsmacked! Are you saying he was influenced by fiddlers in the Farms?’

  Samuel shrugged. ‘Why not? Farmers are fine musicians if you care to listen. I believe Vivaldi studied with some. Perhaps he heard the Cello Wind? If so, twenty-seven cello concertas are no surprise. As for the other name—Isaac Newton—I have seen that name before. He was, at one time, a President of the Worldian group that called themselves the Royal Society?’

  Madeleine nodded. ‘They were scientists.’

  ‘Some of its members used to visit Cello frequently. And I recall . . . an article, or perhaps a letter. Allow me pause to breathe.’ Samuel stopped. Other passengers passed them, some glancing at Samuel’s mottled face with interest. ‘I have it. It was, An Account of A Journey into an Adjoining World. It was submitted to the Royal Society when Newton was its chair. It was amusing, I recall, for it speculated that Cello was affixed to your World by magnetism, and proposed an expedition, with botanist and surgeon, to explore our Kingdom thoroughly.’

  By now, Samuel had sat down on the grass. Madeleine sat beside him.

  ‘And what did Newton say?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, he rejected the whole idea as fancy.’

  ‘Strange,’ Madeleine said. ‘They were obsessed with the idea of other worlds back then. Worlds on the moon; inside the centre of the Earth. And the Royal Society gave everything a chance. Like, they sat around a table, once, and watched to see if a spider could escape from a circle of powdered unicorn horns. They didn’t actually have a unicorn horn, of course, they probably had the tusk of a narwhal. I guess Cello just didn’t fit into any of Newton’s theories of the universe. Poets didn’t like him, you know: they said he’d killed off magic. Keats said he’d unweaved the rainbow.’