The Colors of Madeleine 01: Corner of White (9 page)

He hung up the phone.

9.

T
he Kingdom whispered.

Moonlight sighed across the ice fields of the Magical North, glinting in the eyes of bears and wolves. It wound through the battlements
and turrets of White Palace and glanced off the fishing poles that lined the Lake of Spells.

Farther south, it caught the buckles and harnesses of night-shift workers in Nature Strip. It pooled over a pair of sleeping leopards on the Cat Walk and flared against the white of a snowy owl’s wings.

To the east, the same moonlight hushed along the cobblestones and lampposts of the seafaring villages of Olde Quainte; farther south, and to the west, it crept across the creaking Swamp of Golden Coast. It skirted ships in harbors, mingling with lighthouse beams, then blinked in surprise at blaze after blaze of city lights.

On a lonely stretch of highway in the north of Jagged Edge, ten black cars trailed an emerald horse-drawn carriage. Streetlights caught the royal crest on the carriage roof, then lost it, caught it, lost it again.

The cars and carriages slowed, and slowed, and stopped.

The doors of the first car swung open, and a man and woman emerged. Both rested their right hands on holstered pistols. They stood at the side of the highway, looking up at an exit sign:

Just above the
Gregorytown
, a spray-painted
H
was encircled with sketched daggers: the Cellian symbol for Random Hostility.

The man shone a flashlight at the sign. He and the woman spoke briefly. They looked up, down, and around. The woman walked the curve of the exit ramp awhile, then came back. They spoke again. They returned to their cars.

The cars and carriage started up again. The procession resumed. As the horse-drawn emerald carriage passed the exit sign, one of the horses snorted, and a princess’s face, eyes large, pressed itself up against the glass.

In downtown Bonfire, chairs were stacked on tables in the empty square. The pyramid of pumpkins hulked in shadow.

In her spearmint green house, Clover Mackie lay beneath her patchwork quilt, fingers threading needles in her sleep.

Two blocks east on Broad Street, Jimmy Hawthorn had fallen asleep on his couch. His feet, his camera, and a plate of pastry crumbs were all lined up on the coffee table.

Next door, Isabella Tamborlaine, high-school physics teacher, stood at her front window. Her hands held the pendant that hung around her neck. She was breathing mist onto the window glass; outside, the faintest snow was falling.

A few doors down, a ladder leaned up against the electronics repair shop. Someone had scraped off the words
Abel Baranski
and replaced this with a larger, whiter
Twickleham
. Upstairs, the Twicklehams slept, suitcases open on the floor. Little Derrin, who was sucking her thumb, suddenly sat up in bed. She climbed to the floor, turned a complete circle, and climbed back into bed. Still sleeping, she curled up against the pillow and returned her thumb to her mouth.

Two miles down the Acres Road, an umbrella stood open, drying on the front porch of the Baranski farmhouse. Swimming trunks hung damply from the railings. Faint snow melted as it hit the ground.

Petra Baranski sat by the fire in her living room. She was eating dry-roasted almonds. A book lay open on her lap, but a flash of moonlight had caught her eye. It was sitting on the bookshelf by the window — this moonlight flash — alongside a framed photograph of Petra’s husband, Abel. In the photo, Abel was at his workbench. He was leaning over a radio, his snippers poised, the faintest smile of self-consciousness: He knew the camera was there. Petra kept her gaze on the moonlight a moment, then turned back to her book.

Upstairs in his bedroom, Elliot Baranski was sitting on the floor by his bed. Like his mother, he was eating dry-roasted almonds. Scattered across the floor were papers, receipts, manila folders, postcards, instruction manuals, user guides, notebooks. They were from his father’s shop — from the filing cabinets, drawers, and the corkboard.
Elliot was sorting through them, matching up customer receipts. Now and then he stopped and made a note in a table he had drawn up for himself. He was going to return the unrepaired appliances to their owners.

If they wanted to take them to the Twicklehams to finish the job — well, that was their decision.

The Twicklehams had asked if they could see his dad’s paperwork, wanting his client list and supplier addresses and so forth. Elliot had said he’d think about that, and he thought he’d probably keep on thinking for some time yet.

He paused now and looked at his clock. It was after two. He rubbed his eyes. There was something bothering him. Something wrong about his father’s things. Tools and appliances were stacked up in the shed now; the paperwork was here in Elliot’s room. But something was askew — like a painting on the wall that is hanging slightly crooked, or an accent that you can’t quite place.

He was too tired to figure it out.

His hand landed on a curling paper.

The handwritten note from the corkboard again.

It was so real, so mundane, so neat, so blue, so empty, so irrelevant now. He pressed it fast between the pages of a notebook, the moonlight stinging at his eyes.

10.

N
o sign of snow the next morning.

The sun was warm, the sky blue, the ground bright with freshly damp grays, greens, browns.

The parking lot of the Watermelon Inn was full. Sprays of water rose madly from the sprinkler system, swamping the already muddy flower beds.

Elliot grinned, left the truck on the street, and walked across to the inn.

In the front room, it was breakfast time, and crowded. He found Alanna standing on a chair, reaching up to change a bulb.

“Do me a favor,” she said when she saw Elliot, “and refill the orange juice? Be with you in a moment.”

Elliot held up a hand to take the used bulb from her.

The sideboard was colorful with cereals, fruits, pancakes, waffles, pastries, syrups, jams. A middle-aged couple, loading their plates, were exclaiming, “Would you look at this spread?”

Elliot headed to the kitchen with the empty juice jug. In an alcove in the corridor, he passed his little cousin, Corrie-Lynn.

“Hey, kid,” he said. “Whatcha making there? Another wooden puppet?”

“Nope,” said Corrie-Lynn. She blew the hair out of her eyes and looked up at Elliot, hammer in one hand, nail in the other. “My window ledge is already too full of puppets. This is going to be a doll’s house.”

“Best carpenter in the Kingdom,” said Elliot, “and only six years old.”

“You betcha,” agreed Corrie-Lynn, sizing up a plank of wood.

Elliot tossed the used lightbulb in the kitchen bin, refilled the juice, and returned to the front room.

Alanna was chatting with a table of guests now, telling them the best route to Forks from here, and how they should be sure and not miss the Antique Tractor Show in Dewey on the way.

“This is my nephew, Elliot,” she told them, putting her arm around his shoulders. “Isn’t he a handsome one?”

“Isn’t he just!” the table agreed, and Alanna led Elliot back to the sideboard.

“You want some breakfast?” She scraped spilled cereal from the cloth onto her hand.

Elliot shook his head. “Meeting the guys for breakfast in the square,” he said. “Just swung by to let you know I’ve been going through the things from Dad’s shop, broken appliances he hadn’t got to fix. Found a couple of program players that the records say are from here. Anyhow, I’ve figured them out so they work okay now, and I left them at the front desk for you.”

Alanna stopped fussing with the breakfast things.

“You can fix electronics like your dad?”

“Nope,” he said. “Most things, not a chance. But program players can be easy. When I saw they were yours, I gave it a shot.”

“Well, that just makes me want to hug you,” she said, and she paused and studied his face, and it kind of looked like she
would
hug him. But she was interrupted by a guest who wanted advice on how many pancakes he ought to have today.

Elliot smiled to himself about the pancakes and headed back out into the corridor.

“I’ll come back one day soon, Corrie-Lynn,” he said, “and see how the doll’s house is shaping up.”

“Come back later today,” she said. “It’ll be done by then.”

Elliot crouched beside her. “You skipping school?”

“Nope, just work fast. I’ll go to school today. Our teacher’s all right,” she said, then reconsidered. “Well, I
don’t
like the way she’s always crying. Not exactly crying, but her eyes fill up with tears
whenever
anything
happens, sad or happy or anything — like one time when Ben Montessori pulled Susi Wong’s hair and she saw all the hair in Ben’s hands. And another time when Ethan Crowhorn got all his spelling words right, which he never usually does. But she comes from Jagged Edge so her way of talking is funny, and I like her name. Miss Hattoway. It’s funny too, right? ’Cause it’s like: ‘Get your hat out of the way!’ That’s kind of funny. Or maybe, ‘Put your hat away.’ Not so funny, but still.”

Corrie-Lynn paused. Her voice was as calm and practical as her hands.

“And we got a new girl named Derrin Twickleham,” she continued, “which sure
is
a funny name. I don’t even need to
explain
that one. She comes from Olde Quainte and she can’t talk.”

Elliot was silent, watching his cousin work.

“This doll’s house,” he said, “it’s going to be for your puppets?”

“Nope,” said Corrie-Lynn. “For the Butterfly Child.”

Elliot laughed.

“If you find the Butterfly Child,” Corrie-Lynn said sternly, “you’ve got to take care of her. And they like to live in dolls’ houses, see?” She reached for a book that was lying on the floor beside her measuring tape, and flicked through the pages.

It was
The Kingdom of Cello: An Illustrated Travel Guide
.

“You should stop reading that,” Elliot told her, but she ignored him, found the page she wanted, and handed it over.

Elliot read.