6

In a way he was still falling, still flying over the fence, his hand around that warm glass jar, still falling.

A festive hospital room, crowded with overlapping talk. They had lost the deftball championship, they were all too excited. The Butterfly Child right here in Bonfire! Turned out that Elliot had concussion and a dislocated shoulder and fractured ankle! How had he driven the truck to the game in that condition? A red wooden house walked right through the door into the hospital room. Elliot kept falling. They’d all been drinking G.C. teakwater at the after-party, and doesn’t it go to your head?! The red wooden house moved across the room and settled on the bedside table. It was a spiral fracture of the fibula, but the doctor said she thought she wouldn’t operate; she’d just now put it in plaster. Cody spoke: ‘I wasn’t serious, Elliot, when I asked for you all to break some bones,’ and someone else: ‘He’s too obliging is the trouble, is that Elliot.’ Then there was his mother’s voice, somewhere across the room: ‘What sort of extra damage did you do anyhow, pushing your foot down on the clutch to change gears, is what I want to know?’

So they were back to him driving the truck, but Elliot was still falling. Cody was telling Shelby what he planned to paint on Elliot’s cast and how he’d redo Shelby’s to match it. Shelby said she was just about ready to take her own plaster off with a chainsaw. Never mind the truck, how did Elliot even get up from the ground and open the lid to let the Butterfly Child breathe, is what they wanted to know, what with all his injuries? Ah, he’s a tough one, isn’t he? It goes to show what adrenaline can do. And did you see when Jimmy popped his shoulder back in, how Elliot went so pale? In all her life, said his mother, she’d never seen him look so white. And did anybody notice how, once the shoulder was back in, Jimmy glanced down at the ankle, and the words slipped off the edge of the microphone, and what did Jimmy say?

A faint sound like a low-down whistle was running through Elliot’s head. Maybe the sound of a train leaving without him. Nobody paid it any attention, they were all still reciting the events of the day.

‘What the heck have you gone and done to yourself, Elliot?’ Jimmy had said—or something like that, but mostly those words had been lost. He’d beckoned the doctor over, the ambulance came and went, and everything had tumbled into jubilation.

Then the deftball finals had begun.

Nobody could concentrate, it was nearly hysterical out there—nobody except for the Horatio Muttonbirds, of course, who concentrated fine—and anyway, Bonfire’s best player was in the hospital! So. They didn’t win, but there’ll be other championships, and there’s just one Butterfly Child! Right here in Bonfire! The Mayor gave them the party with the G.C. teakwater, even though they lost, and now everybody’s planning. The whole town’s planning more parties, and what they’ll do with the surplus crops, and how they’ll have to put on extra markets and contractors, and how they might end up exporting to other Kingdoms!

Because look at her, look at that sweet Butterfly Child. Look at her sleeping in an empty tissue box on the shelf just above Elliot’s head. Alongside the chart that says his blood pressure and so on. She looks more like a teenage girl than a child, though, doesn’t she, let’s say a teenage girl could be shrunk to the size of a cork.

Corrie-Lynn was opening the front of the red wooden house. It was the doll’s house she’d built: she’d brought it into the hospital room and placed it on the bedside table. Now she gently scooped up the Butterfly Child from the tissue box, and there was quiet while she lifted her across to the doll’s house, and positioned her, still sleeping, on a tiny wooden bed lined with a handkerchief.

Then they were talking again, about how much pain he was in, poor Elliot, and what a hero he was, and he was falling through it all, but through the fall he found a way to speak.

‘But I’ve gotta get the train in the morning,’ he said. ‘Train to the Magical North,’ and the room laughed.

‘Not a chance,’ they said, and he kind of knew that anyway, so he gave back his half-smile. He said, ‘Well, as soon as it’s better, I’ll be taking the train. How long does a broken ankle take to heal?’ and there was quiet.

Someone ventured: ‘You won’t be able to put any weight on that ankle for a while.’ Someone else: ‘When my cousin broke his ankle it took eight weeks to heal.’ And: ‘We’ll ask the doctor when she’s back.’

He was falling faster: eight weeks was too long. A plummet towards the ground.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I’ll get crutches. I can take the train on crutches.’

Then Corrie-Lynn, standing alongside the doll’s house, right by Elliot’s bed, spoke in a big, clear voice.

‘You can’t go, Elliot,’ she said, and she swung her elbow sideways, indicating the doll’s house. ‘The person that finds the Butterfly Child? He’s got to stay and take care of her for as long as she’s around. And that could be a year, maybe two. Did you not know?’

His head cracked hard against the dirt.

7

Two weeks later, Petra Baranski watched from the porch as a pick-up truck pulled into her driveway.

Elliot negotiated his way out of the passenger door. He grabbed his crutches from the back of the truck and gave Kala a thumbs-up to say thanks. Then he waited, leaning on the crutches, while she reversed, gunned it down the driveway and was gone.

It was summer again in Bonfire, but a good sort of summer—long days, balmy nights, breezes that touched your shoulder blades just when you needed them. The celebrations had quietened and everyone was waiting. So far, no sign of any change in the crops, but it can be weeks, people said, before a Butterfly Child takes effect.

Petra had been doing paperwork at the porch table, and now she straightened the edges of papers while Elliot got himself up the porch steps. Five or six butterflies were lined along the porch railings, and a dragonfly was hovering above Petra’s pen. She waved it away gently.

Elliot stopped beside his mother and pressed his forehead against the window to look inside.

The doll’s house was on the sideboard in the living room.

‘She gone out?’ he said.

‘Sleeping. How was school?’

‘She sure does sleep a lot.’ He rested the crutches against the wall of the house and sat down, breathing in the quiet afternoon. There was a smile about him, a spark in his eye, and Petra waited, watching his face.

Then he took an envelope from his pocket and set it on the table.

“Elliot Baranski” said the envelope in bright red marker. There were fat quote marks around his name like little balloons.

Petra raised an eyebrow.

‘From Cody’s sculpture,’ he said, his smile open now. ‘I’d forgotten all about it, but I was walking by today, so I looked, and there it was.’

‘A letter from the Girl-in-the-World!’ exclaimed Petra. ‘Did she get your letter? Is she answering you?!’ Then she quietened. ‘Nobody saw you? You didn’t tell Kala or any of the others, did you? I looked it up the other day, and turns out the penalty for not reporting a crack is banishment to the Undisclosed Province, or even death. It’s kind of hard to believe in this day and age, but still.’

Elliot shrugged. ‘That must be an old law. Wouldn’t be enforced any more. Read the letter.’ He leaned back, closing his eyes.

His mother opened the envelope and read.

Dear Elliot Baranski,

You’re unstable or you’re high or you’re a kid who wants to write fantasy.

I’m thinking probably the last one. And finding a note somewhere weird like a parking meter inspired you, so you invented a place called Cello. (Or maybe you’ve got an imaginary cello in your head all the time, and you went with that right away?)

Anyway, since you’re the kind of person who puts your fantasy in parking meters, I’m thinking you’ll be back to check on my reply. I’m happy to play along if you want, but I feel compelled to say that I have issues with your world-building.

These are my issues:

(a) The use of the word ‘cracks’ to explain the way between our worlds. It’s not original. And the bit about a sculpture catching the letter but you’re ‘not sure of the science’? Are you for real? You’ve got to get your ‘science’ figured out upfront!

(b) You’re way too hokey and sweet. You need an edge.

(c) You say you’re about to go on a trip to the ‘Magical North’. Well, I guess you want to narrate an ‘epic journey’ of some kind, but maybe you could change the place name? ‘Magical North’ makes me think of reindeers and Santa Claus and that maybe you’re planning to rip off Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights.

But I like how you just got right into it, without trying to set things up. Even though it was confusing, it felt more real that way. The republican thing was kind of funny.

Also, thanks for your suggestions about beans.

And listen, what I said in my letter about cakes? Well, there’s homeless people and refugee camps and then there’s me crying about frangipane tart. So. Just forget I said that.

(PLUS, the computer guy downstairs is great at baking.)

Cheers,

M.T.

P.S. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be in Cambridge, but if you want to write more about your imaginary kingdom, why don’t you leave your next letter in the Trinity Porter’s Lodge? The parking meter doesn’t seem like such a safe place. You could address it to ‘M.T., c/ Federico Cagnetti’. He’s a porter there. I’ll tell him to watch out for it.

P.P.S I know Elliot Baranski is not your real name, but it’s a good one. I like that too.

Petra finished reading and widened her eyes, and they both laughed.

‘I don’t know where to start,’ said Petra through her laughter. ‘Honey, she’s critiquing your existence. She thinks Cello is—’

‘I know.’ Elliot picked up the empty envelope and balanced it on the palm of his hand. ‘She seems harmless enough, I guess, this M.T.’ They both laughed again.

‘Now, what do you think?’ Petra shook her head thoughtfully. ‘Has the World forgotten about Cello? Or is this girl just ignorant? Will you write back to her?’

‘Well . . .’ Elliot put his hands behind his head, looking out over the fields. There was still that grin at the edge of his mouth. ‘It seems to me that if I do start up a correspondence, it’ll just end up as a whole lot of me trying to persuade her that I’m real. Which could get—’

‘Tiresome,’ his mother agreed.

She reached over, across the table, to brush the hair out of his eyes, and there it was beneath her fingertips—the faintly damp forehead, the sun-warmed hair, the sweet, complex realness of her son.

But later that night, he did write a reply.

He’d finished his homework; the Butterfly Child was still asleep; and there was a pecan pie baking in the oven, which he planned to give to Kala the next day.

‘Don’t go baking her pecan pies,’ scolded his mother. ‘She’ll just fall for you harder than she has.’

Elliot wasn’t listening. His ankle was playing up. Taking all his attention.

‘Ah,’ he said, eventually. ‘She’s driving me to and from school every day. Least I can do is bake a pie.’

Then, because he couldn’t run across the fields to the greenhouse, or play deftball, or pack his rucksack for a journey north, he sat down and wrote.

Dear M.T.

I’m sitting here wondering why you don’t know about the Kingdom of Cello. Or are you pretending not to know?

I’ll tell you what I recall from World Studies, but keep in mind I’m rusty on that. Used to be, there was some movement back and forth between Cello and your World, especially around the 1600s, and especially from your cities of Cambridge and London.

Anyhow, but you guys had a sickness called the plague, which came across here, spread over Cello and spilled across the Kingdoms and Empires. That’s when they made the decision to close up the cracks. (There’s still occasional plague outbreaks, although not in Cello, on account of Cello’s Winds.)

Now and then little cracks reopen—never often, and never big enough for people to get through, just matchboxes or orange peels. But the World Severance Unit seals those fast, and anyone who finds one has to report it right away.

As for your issue with the word ‘crack’, well go ahead and take it up with the Department of Etymology, I guess. Let me know how that works out for you.

(My mother just said she seems to recall it was people in YOUR World who named the ‘cracks’. Bunch of scientists in London in the 1600s called the Royal Society? They were keen on Cello, apparently, and visited a lot.)

Not sure who you should talk to about changing the name of the Magical North. They’re kind of proud of their province and its name—still, try the M.N. Provincial Council. Maybe bring along a security guard when you do, and have an escape route in mind. They might have sweet-as-honey magic up there but they sure as hell don’t sugarcoat their tempers.

I haven’t got a clue what ‘hokey’ means or who Santa Claus or Philip Pullman are.

Thanks for being nice about my name. (My mother says she wants the credit for that, since she did the naming.)

Got to go check a pecan pie.

Yours,

Elliot Baranski

P.S. Forgot to say: had to postpone my trip to the Magical North on account of a broken ankle and a Butterfly Child. So if you want to write back, I guess I am around after all.

P.P.S. I guess I should check. Have you got the plague?

A few days later, the Girl-in-the-World replied.

Dear Elliot Baranski

Oh, it’s a KINGDOM. I should have guessed. Always with the kings and the queens, you fantasy guys. Why not a republic for once? I’m guessing, next there’ll be dragons. Also, some kind of a strong-willed princess with rebellion on her mind? Or a physically unattractive older woman who wants her pitiful son to be king so she’s plotting to poison the rightful heir with a brew made out of frogs’ warts?

So, how far have you got with your Kingdom? Can you outline the political system for me? Class structure? Oppressed minorities? What about foreign relations, primary industries and your GDP?

And what about your sky? Is it like ours? Do you have a single moon? (I bet you have three and one of them’s a triangular prism, right?) I like stars—I hope you’ve got stars. Talking about the heavens, what about religion? Seems like you don’t have Santa Claus, so you’re not a Christian nation. Do you celebrate any religious holidays? Ramadan, Chanukah, Valentine’s Day?

Where are you at with technology? Have you had an industrial revolution or are you still hanging out on the land? Or in caves? If on the land, what do you grow on your farms? Do you even have them? (Farms?) Or do you eat holograms? Do you use winnowing baskets, sickles and horse-drawn ploughs? Or do oxen draw your ploughs? Or technotrons? Or do you, Elliot, pull the ploughs in the Kingdom of Cello?

It’s funny you mention the Royal Society—and nice one, making them the people who ‘named’ the cracks (touché)—because I’ve been reading about Isaac Newton, and turns out he was in that group, or club, or whatever. They were sort of like the first group of scientists in England, right? He even ran it for a while. Turns out his special skills went beyond gravity: he was also great at telescopes, calculus, colours and problem-solving.

Anyhow, do you guys have any special skills or are you just basic humans? I mean, can you walk through walls? Fly? Go invisible? Read minds?

Do you dance? Do you have a sense of humour and, if so, is it witty, sarcastic, slapstick, ironic or crass? What’s your Kingdom’s position on sexual freedoms, gay rights, abortion? Do you have animals? What languages do you speak? Can your ANIMALS speak? Are you magic (or is that just for the sweet-as-honey ‘Magical North’—I still think you should change that name)? What’s your life expectancies there? Same as ours?

Finally: what’s the wind got to do with the plague, what’s a Butterfly Child, and how’d you break your ankle? (I broke my ankle snowboarding once, and I still have nightmares about this feeling I got, about a month after it was broken, like I could feel bones shifting and grinding around in there, and it was like I wasn’t real any more, or I wasn’t me, or my body was out of my control. Like something had got inside my ankle, and wanted to taunt me. It hurt like hell. In addition to creeping me out.)

I’ll send more questions later, gotta go.

M.T.

Elliot read the letter.

‘Ah, for crying out loud,’ he said mildly. He crumpled the paper and threw it in the trash.

Shelby was flexing her fingers, twisting her wrists in their studded leather armbands. The plaster from her broken arm had been removed that morning. She was reacquainting herself with the arm now, gazing at it as she walked.

‘It didn’t heal properly,’ she said. ‘I tried to take a swing at someone earlier and I couldn’t connect.’

The six were walking down Broad Street, heading to the Town Square for cold drinks, Elliot swinging high on his crutches.

‘It’ll take a while,’ Gabe suggested, ‘to get your normal strength back. Maybe longer for you, Shelby, your normal strength being what it is.’

‘Who’d you take a swing at?’ said a voice.

They were passing Jimmy Hawthorn’s place, and the Deputy Sheriff was home, working in his front garden.

‘Who’d you take a swing at?’ he repeated patiently.

‘Can’t say a thing around this town,’ sighed Shelby, ‘without somebody hearing.’

Jimmy shrugged and went back to his trowel, and the six of them kept walking.

‘What’s that whistling sound?’ said Elliot.

‘It’s me,’ said Nikki. ‘Whistling.’

‘No. It’s more than that—it’s like a lower sound, like the wind.’

‘Ah then, it’s probably the wind.’

They passed Isabella Tamborlaine’s place, and now they were on the commercial part of Broad Street. A door swung open just ahead of them, and out came Norma Lisle, town vet.

She was holding a program player to her chest, its cords and cables dangling.

‘Just taking this next door,’ she said. ‘Seized up in the middle of The Greenbergs last night—right at the bit where that plumber—the one that’s always so handy when the characters’ toilets block up—when he’s about to kiss the schoolteacher with the temperamental kitchen sink. Any of you kids see the show?’

‘He went ahead and kissed her,’ said Cody. ‘But don’t let it get you down that you missed it, Norma. It wasn’t such a great kiss. And I kept wondering if he’d washed his hands.’

‘Ah, Cody,’ laughed Norma Lisle. ‘It’s the best thing there is in the televisual waves, isn’t it, though I can see from your friends’ faces here that we might be alone in that opinion. I’ll just pop in and see if the Twicklehams can fix this, but listen, Elliot, before I do, how’s that Butterfly Child?’

Elliot swayed slightly on his crutches.

‘She doesn’t do much except sleep, Norma,’ he said. ‘There’s butterflies and other insects hanging around day and night, and sometimes she heads out for a ride on one of them. But when she gets back she falls straight asleep. Couple of times she has been awake and I’ve tried to say, “Hey,” and “How’s things?”, but she just stares at me.’

‘Huh,’ said Norma. ‘Well, I cannot wait for the crop effect to start working. Not that I have any crops, of course, but I’ve got my lemon trees and my little herb garden—just some pots on my patio. I’m that excited about the day they’re going to start thriving! For everyone else, of course, not just me,’ she amended quickly.

‘It’ll happen,’ said Kala. ‘Always takes a while.’

Then, as Norma reached a hand toward the door of Twickleham Repair, Shelby said, loud and clear: ‘Give your program player to me.’

Norma stopped, surprised, and turned back.

They could see through the glass into the repair shop. Fleta Twickleham was standing at the workbench, leaning forward, ready with a smile.

‘There’s a supermart in Sugarloaf does repairs cheap,’ Shelby explained. ‘I’m heading out there later today—got a broken player of my own.’

She held out her arms, one paler and thinner than the other, ready to take the program player.

‘Oh, well, now,’ said Norma, and she turned away again, pressing on the door so that its bell jangled. ‘That’d just be a nuisance for you!’

‘No, it wouldn’t.’ Shelby wrenched the player right out of Norma’s arms. ‘You always take such good care of my dogs when they’re sick,’ she added. ‘Least I can do is take care of your program player.’

Norma let the door thud closed.

She studied the faces of the six teenagers. Then she shrugged.

‘Well, that’s kind of you, Shelby! Guess it’ll save me time, and I have got an arthritic pig crying quietly in my waiting room!’

The others all agreed that the pig needed Norma more than her program player did, said their goodbyes, and waited while the door to her vet’s rooms closed behind her.

Then they turned to Shelby.

‘You really taking a player into Sugarloaf tonight?’ Nikki asked.

‘Nah. Don’t even have one. I’ll fix this for Norma myself. Taught myself how to fly the crop-duster, I can figure this out.’

‘Call me later if you can’t do it,’ Kala said. ‘I’ll see if I can track down a manual.’

‘The way you took that thing out of her arms,’ said Gabe. ‘Guess you got your strength back after all.’

They laughed, heading up the street again. Behind the glass of Twickleham Repair, Fleta’s face creased with confusion.

She slept on her side, the Butterfly Child, little hands clasped together, knees drawn up under the sapphire-blue dress. Elliot wasn’t sure any more that it was a dress; seemed like it might be part of her, a sort of skin.

It was late, past midnight, and he’d woken with the moonlight splashing on his coverlet and come downstairs. The moonlight was more composed here, shining in neat shafts and bars, lighting up the windows of the doll’s house.

She was maybe as long as his index finger, but the tininess was more in her features, and now, in his half-asleep state, Elliot felt a surge of something—of how confounding it was, that tininess. Those little hands, little fingers, little bare feet with their tiny, tiny toes. The lashes of her closed eyes, the sweetness of her nose, the soft breath of pale yellow hair across the pillow, the bend of her elbow, tilt of her chin.

What was it about littleness that made it catch at your heart like this? Elliot’s mind ran with little things—snowflakes, hailstones, raindrops; the pin you put through the hole when you clasped your watch. You could say she was as tall as his finger, sure, but how to describe the size of that dimple in her cheek, and the knuckles of her hands?

He thought of raspberries—the separate little globes, or pockets, on a raspberry. He thought of the tiny bubbles that form around the edges of a glass of fresh-squeezed juice. The hesitant ‘x’ that Kala added to her name when she wrote him notes. Smaller than that. The dot on an i.

It came to him, a memory of a day when his cousin, Corrie-Lynn, was just a few weeks old. So he, Elliot, must have been about nine. Uncle Jon and Auntie Alanna had been visiting, new baby in a sling around Jon’s shoulder, and they were talking about how they’d just cut the baby’s fingernails for the first time. How frightened they’d been of hurting those little fingertips.

Alanna had saved the clipping from the pinkie nail; she’d taped it to a piece of black notepaper, and they’d all laughed at her about that, but she hadn’t minded; and she’d taken it out of her purse to show. They’d all exclaimed. Just look how tiny that is. That little sliver of fingernail. Can it be real?

The Butterfly Child: she was that kind of tiny. She should be taped to a piece of black notepaper and folded, safe, into somebody’s purse.

His mind kept tumbling with thoughts of tiny things: those miniature nuts, bolts, screws, washers, springs—the ones that his father kept in empty margarine containers and used tweezers or magnets to pick up.

He rubbed his face hard with both his hands and looked at her sleeping face. Her eyelids! How small were those little eyelids? And could they be twitching a little? Was she dreaming behind those eyes?

It was wrong to keep watching; he was spying, but he wanted to look even closer. What he needed—

Then it came to him.

The thing that was missing from his father’s possessions, the thing that was wrong or askew.

In the Sheriff’s station, Hector and Jimmy were both typing at their desks.

‘Now did I tell you,’ said Hector, leaning forward to frown at the report in his typewriter, ‘that I heard from the folk in the Golden Coast? About that missing persons report you figured out for them the other day?’

Jimmy hit the space bar twice. ‘The sound technician,’ he recalled. ‘One with all the money from the prize win. No, you didn’t tell me.’

‘You were right,’ Hector said.

‘Ah, that’s a shame.’

‘It is. They found his body at the nephew’s place, just like you said they would. Now how, Jimmy, did you know that?’

Hector looked sideways once, then turned the handle, winding the completed report out of the machine.

‘I did background checks on them all, not just the ones who stood to inherit, and turned out the nephew had spent years bending Colours in Nature Strip. For one thing, they’ve got some loopy hereditary laws in Nature Strip—up there, the nephew would’ve got the fortune. I figured, he maybe got it into his head that the same would be the case in G.C. See, bending Colours for too long can bend your mind a little. You start to mix things up. You start to see Colours, always there, just at the edge of your vision.’

‘Don’t we all?’ Hector said, surprised.

‘Well, now—’ Jimmy began doubtfully, but the door to the station jangled, and they both looked up.

It was Elliot Baranski.

Jimmy ran to open the door wider, so Elliot could hop his way in on his crutches.

‘Well, if it isn’t Elliot Baranski!’ said Hector, studying the plaster on Elliot’s leg. Cody had painted a complicated pattern there, diamonds overlaid with scorpions.

‘Look at that decoration!’ Hector exclaimed. ‘It’s just like—’ But he found he could not think what it was like, so he asked after the ankle bone instead. Then he and Jimmy asked after Elliot’s mother, and the farm, and the Butterfly Child.

Eventually, Elliot said, ‘Anyhow, the reason I came here was—Hector, remember when we made the list of things that might be missing from Dad’s stuff? Well, last night—in the middle of the night—I remembered something else that was missing.’

Hector and Jimmy both blinked.

‘His magnifying glass.’

‘His magnifying glass?’

‘It was special to him. My mother ordered it from the best glassmakers in Jagged Edge, for his birthday a few years back. He used it all the time, and I’ve been thinking lately that something was wrong about his tools; something missing maybe, and finally, I realised—his magnifying glass is gone.’

There was quiet in the station for a moment. Hector’s face shadowed. The bandages were gone now, so you could see the healing welts crossing his cheeks. You could see the shapes the scars were going to be.

He scratched at the scabs on his hands.

‘Well, now,’ he said. ‘You think that’s the kind of thing he might have been carrying home from work? In the pocket of his overcoat maybe?’

Elliot shook his head. ‘No. He had tools at home, including a cheap magnifying glass—he’d have just used that if he needed one. And this magnifying glass, it was big.’ He held out his hands to demonstrate. ‘Had a special case, sort of a tartan green.’

‘And you’re sure it’s not with his things?’

Elliot shrugged. ‘I’m sure.’

‘Could he have loaned it out to someone?’

‘Doubt it. He wouldn’t even let me use it, not unless he was watching over my shoulder.’

‘Could it have been left behind in the repair shop when you packed it up? Maybe fallen off the shelf and got under something? You want to ask the Twicklehams about it?’

Elliot’s gaze was steady for a moment.

‘We did a pretty thorough job,’ he said, ‘cleaning the shop out. Don’t think we would have left anything.’

Hector nodded slowly. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let me add it to the report and have a think about it. About what it might mean.’ Then he paused and fixed Elliot with his own gaze. ‘What do you think it means?’

Elliot shrugged. ‘I guess it doesn’t mean anything. I guess he did have it with him that night, after all. In the pocket of his overcoat, probably. Anyhow,’ Elliot swung around on his crutches, and Jimmy stood again to hold the door. ‘Just wanted to let you know.’

He turned back, though, when the door was almost closed; used a crutch to hold it.

‘I guess,’ he said, ‘there’s been no news?’

‘Soon as there is,’ Hector said firmly, ‘I’ll let you know.’

Elliot nodded and the door closed behind him.

It was quiet in the station for a moment.

‘Don’t you say a word,’ said Hector, not looking at Jimmy.

So Jimmy didn’t. They both started typing their reports again, every click and clack a kind of punch.

When Elliot got home from the Sheriff’s station, the house was big with quiet.

His mother was still out at the greenhouse, he guessed. He checked the doll’s house and the Butterfly Child was asleep.

In the kitchen, he made himself a cup of coffee, cut a piece of chocolate-coconut cake, took a pile of homework from his backpack and sat at the table.

There was a faint rustle and clatter. A bird landing on the porch railing. The fridge buzzed. The bird flew away again. He opened his mathematics textbook, then closed it.

‘Ah,’ he said, looking down at his plastered ankle.

He pushed the chair back and limped upstairs, leaning and pulling on the banisters all the way. He found painkillers in the bathroom cupboard, took a couple and headed to his bedroom.

He opened the bottom drawer and dragged it all out: folders, books, notes, photocopied articles, newspaper clippings, official documents. He dumped them on his bed and leafed through the documents: Missing Persons Report: Abel Garek Baranski; Missing Persons Report: Mischka Elizabeth Tegan, and there it was.

Coroner’s Report: Jonathan Kasper Baranski.

The report on his Uncle Jon.

To look at it, he had to breathe himself sideways. He had taught himself this trick of shifting, inside his head, so that only part of him saw the words. Even doing that, he had to skim fast—past phrases like, lacerations to the face, neck, torso and severed carotid artery; severed spinal cord—and then he found what he was looking for.

In a box in the bottom-right corner, the coroner had written her Conclusions.

Injuries consistent with attack from a Colour in the Grey-Purple range; most likely a third-level Purple. Injuries are also somewhat consistent with the attack of a wild animal (tiger, cougar, bear, dragon, wolf pack), but I have ruled these out as unlikely since no evidence of teeth marks or ‘feeding’ on the victim; also, no evidence of scorching or singeing (highly common in dragon attack). Again, it is not impossible that a person, or group of persons (perhaps Wandering Hostiles), wielding daggers, machetes, trench knives, etc., could have inflicted the injuries, but in the absence of evidence of human involvement in the attack (blood at scene is that of victim alone, no traces under fingernails of victim, etc.), and noting that no Wandering Hostiles have claimed responsibility, which would be the norm, third-level Purple seems the likely cause of death.

In the adjoining box for Additional Notes, the coroner had written:

The victim was found in the vicinity of the abandoned truck of his brother, Abel Baranski; victim was last seen leaving the Toadstool Pub in the company of both Abel and a woman, Mischka Tegan. I have been asked to comment on whether these other parties may have been involved in the victim’s death, either as perpetrators or possibly (unconfirmed) fellow victims. In relation to the former, see my previous conclusions re human involvement; in relation to the latter, I note that Purples are occasionally known to slay one victim and abduct others, carrying them away from the scene. Accordingly, one could speculate as follows: the Purple attacked the truck carrying Jon, Abel and Mischka; they pulled over, hoping to flee into the woods; the Purple slaughtered Jon, and then carried Abel and Mischka away (in which case, I would ordinarily expect their remains to be found somewhere in the vicinity of the original attack); however, in the absence of any further evidence, this is pure speculation.

Elliot returned the report to its manila folder.

This is pure speculation, he thought.

There were people in this town—not many, but a handful—who were convinced that Elliot’s father and uncle had both fallen in love with Mischka, and fought over her. That his father had killed Jon, leaving him dead on the side of the road and fleeing with Mischka.

There were others—most of Bonfire, probably—who thought that, more likely, Abel and Mischka had decided to run away together. Taking the train, or maybe a boat upriver. They’d asked Jon to take the truck home to Abel’s farm and pass on the news, but the Purple attack had happened while Jon was en-route.

The rumours had started right away, and Elliot, hollow with shock, had felt their poison pouring into him.

Then the Sheriff had sat him down one day. It was in the Bakery, in the Town Square, he remembered; autumn chill in the air; the Sheriff in that black corduroy jacket he liked so much.

Hector had taken out this very coroner’s report and made Elliot read it.

‘This’ll hurt like the blazes to read,’ he had said. ‘But look here now,’ and he’d run his finger hard under the phrase: absence of evidence of human involvement.

‘I’ve seen my share of love triangles,’ Hector had said. ‘And yes, a man could kill his brother over love. It happens. But when it does, it’s a fist fight got out of hand, not machetes and hunting knives! You don’t slash your brother to pieces over a girl. I’ll tell you categorically, Elliot. Your father did not do this to your uncle.’

Elliot remembered the heat of his coffee mug at the time; the Sheriff said those words and Elliot realised his hands were ice cold and held them around his coffee mug.

‘As for running off with the teacher,’ Hector had shrugged, ‘I’m not saying they were lovers, but let’s say, hypothetically, they were. Well, I’ve seen my share of that, too, lovers running off. But they make plans. They come up with the idea, get cold feet, get more determined. Inch their way towards it. Never heard of someone deciding in a pub one night and asking his brother to let the family know. They write a note. They take money out of their bank account. And listen, they pack. Now, tell me again what you think might be missing from your dad’s things.’

‘Well,’ Elliot had said. ‘Like I said, there’s his overcoat and hat. He’d’ve been wearing those. And the other things he was wearing. His wallet. His watch. We thought maybe a framed antique map was missing, one he used to have on his workshop wall, but turned out he’d given that to Jon and Alanna for the front room of the Watermelon. So, that’s it.’

‘No medications? No photographs? Not those spell casings he got from the Magical North that he was so proud of?’

‘No. Like I said, they were still on his corkboard.’

‘No clean underwear? No favourite pair of boxer shorts?’

‘Not sure he had a favourite pair,’ Elliot said with half a grin.

‘You know what I mean. People don’t run off with nothing—they take a keepsake. A memento. A photo at least. You do know what I mean?’

Elliot had nodded, and that’s when Hector had leaned forward and run his thumb under the words on the coroner’s report.

One could speculate as follows: the Purple attacked the truck . . . they pulled over . . . the Purple slaughtered Jon and then carried Abel and Mischka away.

‘It’s ugly,’ Hector had said. ‘It’s ugly and distressing, and I wish I could say they’d run off together because much as that would hurt you—that betrayal of you and your mother—well, at least we’d know he was alive. But it seems to me that this is what happened. Like it says right here.’

‘And if a Purple took them,’ Elliot had said, looking Hector full in the eye, ‘if it did, they might still be alive. Alive and held prisoner in a Purple Cavern somewhere.’

Here Hector had paused for a long time.

‘Again, I want to talk straight with you, Elliot,’ he’d said eventually. ‘Purples don’t carry people away and let them live.’

‘But until we find them, until we find their bodies,’ Elliot had persisted, ‘we don’t know for sure.’

Hector had tilted his head, not a nod, but not a shake either.

‘Elliot, I’m not giving up. Like you say, until we find the bodies, we don’t know for certain. In a lot of ways, that’s the toughest kind of loss you can have, the one where you don’t know for sure. You can be 99.9% sure, Elliot, that your father isn’t coming back—but yeah, until there’s proof, there’s always going to be that glimmer. That tiny, tiny glimmer of hope. I can see it in your eyes all mixed up with the pain. And I’m not going to lie and tell you I don’t feel it too.’

Then Hector had leaned forward.

‘The tough thing,’ he had said, ‘is how to live with that.’

For that meeting, those words—for Hector’s straight-talking—Elliot had been grateful.

It was different from the gratitude he’d felt back on the day he was seven years old and he’d stolen his mother’s new quad bike—which she was crazy about—taken it for a spin and ended up in the river. He’d got himself out but the quad bike was lost under the water. He’d known the trouble he’d be in, but worse, he’d guessed, would be the disappointment on his mother’s face.

He’d run all the way to his dad’s repair shop and confessed.

Without a word, his dad had got up from behind the workbench.

He’d led Elliot out to the truck, waited while he buckled up his belt beside him, then driven to the river, speaking only once to check with him: ‘You mean right here? This is where it went in?’

And he’d pulled it out. He’d pulled out the quad bike, dried it down, hauled it into the truck, taken it back to his workshop and fixed it up. It took him hours. Hours of work, while Elliot watched silently—and he fixed it, good as new.

The gratitude he’d felt! The hug he’d given his dad! And his dad had leaned down into the hug and said, ‘Ah, we all make mistakes—that’s one you won’t make again.’

That had been pure, incredulous gratitude, whereas what he’d felt towards Hector was complicated, of course, and sharp-edged. Nevertheless, it was powerful: Hector had believed in Elliot’s father. He’d cleared away those rumours just as surely as if he’d taken his arm and swept the mugs and pie plates from the table.

Only, now there was this.

A missing magnifying glass.

The ruefulness in Hector’s voice at the station today.

Jimmy’s silence.

A favourite possession. A keepsake; a memento.

There was an urgent voice in Elliot’s head saying: So maybe he HAS run away with Mischka, after all. Well, that’s GOOD news. It means he IS alive, that he’s okay, and one of these days he’ll be back and begging our forgiveness.

But another thought hit back at once, like a child having a tantrum: It WAS a Purple, and it’s not touched a hair on his body, and he’s alive and okay, trussed up in a cavern somewhere now, and as soon as I can get out of here, I’m going out to bring him home!

‘Ah,’ Elliot said aloud, and it came out a growl. He swept it all off the bed—the coroner’s report, missing persons reports, papers, books and folders. They tumbled quietly to the floor.

Then he reached for a notebook and, sitting on his bed, wrote a letter.

Dear M.T.

You asked if we had farming here in Cello, and yeah, we do.

And you wanted to know something about technology here? Well, that depends on the province. In Jagged Edge, they’re all wired up. They’ve got whole cities made out of holograms, and computer programs that practically raise children. The Golden Coast is similar though they use it all for fun.

In Olde Quainte they don’t even have the telephone or electricity. And in Magical North and Nature Strip they’ve got most things only their magic messes it up all the time.

Here in the Farms we’re sort of coming around to computers. Some people use them to send messages but mostly it’s still faxes or just regular mail. Our TVs are still boxes that you set on a cabinet in your living room, not images that fly through the air like in the Golden Coast.

Farming’s getting more mechanised too. Like, we’ve got automatic openers now in our greenhouse, to lift the windows and let out the heat. And the furnace that blows the heat in when it’s cold, that’s state-of-the-art.

As for what we grow, well, some people in Bonfire raise livestock, especially pigs, but most of us here are agriculture based. It’s mainly greenhouses because of the weather.

That reminds me, I think you guys have rotating seasons in the World? Like seasons that come and go at the exact same time every year? Farming must be a dream. Seriously, you must grow stuff in your sleep.

(Cello has a roaming climate: seasons drift across the Kingdom, moving on whenever they get bored.)

On my farm, we grow bananas, raspberries, quince, beans and peas. We keep bees too, for pollinating.

Other people around here grow pecans, macadamias, mandarins, defts, potatoes, wheat and maize.

When I say that we grow these things, well, the word ‘grow’ is used loosely. Maybe PLANT is a better word—we PLANT them but lately, mostly what comes out of the ground is weeds. Or crumbling, twisted pieces of nothing that die before they see the sun.

Or nothing at all. Just soil that spills from the palm of your hand.

Now, people will tell you the Butterfly Child is going to fix this. That everything’ll grow like wildfire any day now. But I’ll tell you this, and keep it to yourself, we’ve had the Butterfly Child four weeks, and all she does is sleep. Goes on adventures now and then, sure, goes off for a ride, which I imagine is plenty of fun for her, and then she comes back home and sleeps.

She should have made a difference by now, I’m sure. She’s cute and all, but she’s either a dud, or she’s sick. All that sleeping, she might be sick, and you know what else, if she is sick, it’s probably my fault. Cause she was in that jar a long time. I watched her through my double vision, I saw her crumple up in there, I saw her little eyes start to close, and I still couldn’t make myself get up. It was like my snapped ankle was using up all the space. I tried, but I couldn’t. And when I did, when I finally crawled over there and got the lid off, really slow, like the useless piece of junk that I am, well, who knows how much time had passed and what effect it had had on her?

Who knows? It took a good minute, maybe more, before she unrumpled, looked me in the eye and bowed her tiny head.

I’ll be honest, the only reason I’m writing to you now is that the hurting in my ankle is just how you described in your letter—like a jostling, like somebody’s in there wanting to mess with me. That’s the only thing I remember from your letter, apart from your question about farms and technology.

But you’re right about the ankle and painkillers don’t do a thing.

One last thing, if you decide on writing back, you’ve got to at least pretend that I am real.

Cause I’m not in the mood for being treated like I don’t exist.

Yours sincerely,

Elliot Baranski