The Colors of Madeleine 01: Corner of White (15 page)

“I suppose we’re not going to hear from her, then,” sighs Petra. “Well, it’s for the best. If the Sheriff found out there was a crack and we hadn’t report —” but then her eyes startle at something just over Elliot’s shoulder.

Elliot sees her startle, and his left arm swings into the air.

He catches it. He opens his hand and there’s the tomato that was flying straight toward his mother’s face.

“Those are some reflexes,” says a voice. It’s the Sheriff himself, approaching from behind and stopping beside Petra.

“That’s my boy,” agrees Petra, grinning up over her shoulder at Hector. “And that’s why I’d bet the farm on the Antelopes winning today,” and as she speaks, she rests her arm across the table. Her fingertips play with the tomato.

They all look across the square to the kid who threw it, slinking now into a store.

“I’ll have a word with him,” the Sheriff says.

Petra shrugs. “It was an accident. No harm done.”

The Sheriff breathes in the atmosphere and also shrugs. “You still heading out tomorrow, Elliot? Heading to the Lake of Spells?”

“First train of the day.”

“Swing by the station later. If you catch that Locator Spell you want, and it leads you back to the caverns, well, you’ll need a couple of extra protective jackets. I’ve got some in the station.”

Elliot nods. “Thanks, Hector.”

“Just saw the team from Horatio,” Hector says now. “Their coach is parked up on Main Street and they’re all sort of hovering there. Tough-looking bunch.”

Elliot smiles. “We can take them.”

The Sheriff tips his hat. “See you at the game.”

“See you there, Hector.”

They both wait until he’s shuffled across the square, then their eyes meet.

“That was close,” says Petra. “I should be more careful what I say.”

“Ah,” says Elliot. “He didn’t hear.” He drinks the last of his coffee and puts the mug down, looking behind him at the clock tower. “I’ve got time to head home and check on that window catch that keeps stalling. Meet you at the field?”

Petra shakes her head at him.

“You’ve got less than an hour until the game; you know I can handle the window catch myself, and you
still
plan to go home now to check it? Elliot, you can’t do
everything
, you know.”

Elliot stands, half smiles.

Petra gives up. “See you at the game.”

It’s twenty minutes later and Elliot has found the glitch in the automatic window opener, and fixed the stalling window catch, and is crossing the fields toward his house.

There’s a great big quietness out here in the fields, and there’s something in his chest, an elbowing excitement. The championship is today, and he loves the game of deftball fiercely, the sprint of it, and the catching, always the catching, the feel of those smooth balls falling and falling in the palm of his hand. He holds a hand out now, and it happens, he catches the ball, closes his fingers tight, and then tosses it high again. He can’t walk these fields without tossing that ball.

At the edge of his vision there’s some patterns of light. He must have been fixing his gaze too tightly on the bolts and nuts of the window catch.

The elbowing in his chest gets harder; he’s excited about the game, sure, but more about the journey tomorrow. The edges of him need that train, the clatter and vibration of that train, and how it pauses at stations, and the doors open and shut, then it moves on, and moves on again. There’ll be swiftly changing weather, and shifting altitudes, and bridges crossing high over rivers and ravines. He’ll be studying his maps and codebooks and his
Spell Fishing
. He’ll look up now and then through the windows, and soon there’ll be nothing but the blinding snow-white of the Magical North.

He blinks hard now, to clear that smudge of light from his vision; it’s like a splinter of the northern snow-white is already catching at his eye.

He can see the farmhouse, and on the front porch, his rucksack, standing up against the wall. It got damp in the Swamp of the Golden
Coast — he only realized last night that mold was growing in its pockets. He washed it out and now it’s drying in the sun. Later, after the game, he’ll pack it.

That tightening of straps and buckles: He breathes it in deeply, the idea of that.

It’s not his vision, he realizes now; it’s something up there in the sky. A flash of sunlight on something, maybe an airplane or the eye of a bird. He looks up, sheltering his own eyes with his hands, but a ladybird bug lands on his wrist, and he lowers his arm, shakes it slightly to let the ladybird go, thinking how that’s good luck. They’ll win the game; he’ll find what he needs on his journey.

His right foot almost lands on a caterpillar turning itself over in the grass.

He keeps walking, still tossing the ball into the blue. There’s a flurry of moths over the gatepost there. There’s that light in the sky that keeps catching his eye like sun on water.

At the sports field, there’s nervous energy sparking through the crowds, throwing smiles and banter helter-skelter. The local farmers have set up stalls down the southern end, selling not just cold drinks and baked goods, but every kind of produce they can grow, and everything they can stitch or knock together. Olaf Minski has lined up jars of honey; Petra Baranski’s selling quince, beans, peas, and recycled buttons and zips; the Epsteins have baskets of peaches and buckets of old clothes-pegs. There’s cash boxes and coconut ice.

They’ve come from all over the Farms to see the game: They’ve sailed down the Chokeberry, and up the River of Dray; they’ve ridden on trains, coaches, and ferries. They’re wearing straw hats and applying sunscreen, and someone picks up a jug of ice water and tips it right over his own head.

At one end of the field, Jimmy’s taking photos of his Bonfire team while they warm up, lowering his camera now and then to call out advice. At the other, the team from Horatio is gathered close, talking
fast. The crowd is mostly Bonfire supporters, and when they’re not catching up with one another, they’re staring at those Horatio players. Horatio’s a lean factory town up in the north of the Farms, where they manufacture clothes, glass, toys, and polyurethane glue. The team members look tough: torn nails, bruised eyes, big shoulders.

The sky is even higher and clearer now, and people look up at it often. There’s been five attacks of fifth-level Gray in this last year alone. Townsfolk who’ve been living elsewhere share stories of increasing Color attacks all over. A man pats the patch over his eye and says, “Gentian Violet, second level,” and a woman says she nearly lost her leg to a malicious Green.

“Color attacks up, and crops down,” somebody says mournfully, and “Isn’t that the truth?” goes drifting through the crowd. There are stories of farms shutting down and banks moving in, and a woman says her sister, been growing carrots all her life, just got herself a certificate in Hygiene Management at the hospital. Not a whiff of interest in hygiene management before, excuse the pun, but what with the carrots turning up green and puny yet again, she couldn’t make ends meet any longer.

A child draws an outline in the dust of a Butterfly Child, and someone spots it and says, “Now isn’t that exactly what we need?”

There’s a wistful sigh through the crowd, and “Imagine that,” and “Wouldn’t
that
be the answer?”

“I heard they already found her,” someone says. “Up at Forks — late last night.”

“Ah, it’d have been on the radio if they’d found her.”

Then there’s a clattering sound and everyone turns. It’s the band tuning up — Kala’s on the saxophone — and the soundtrack of the day shifts back to excitement once again.

It’s like sun on water or on tinsel or coins.

Elliot’s squinting up now to see what it is, that flash of light in the sky.

It’s something falling. He thinks maybe a leaf, but he can’t get the perspective. A bird maybe turning somersaults.

He keeps walking, keeps tossing the ball, his mind still making lists of the things he needs to pack.

Maybe it’s a little touch of Silver, he thinks, but Silver’s so rare these days. They only seem to get the bad Colors, not the good.

Sunlight on glass, he thinks, that’s what it’s like. On a glass jug, or a vase, or — and then he’s running.

He knows what it is, and he’s running. Time changes right away; it’s been falling all this time, in that strange slow tumble, but now it’s a lightning plummet.

It’s beyond the fence, way over to the left, but the gate’s to the right. The fence is too high to jump; he has to sidetrack to the gate and then around.

But he knows how long it takes a thing to fall. He knows exactly where and when that thing will land.

He’s running and he’s thinking, what a damn fool place for a Butterfly Child to manifest, in the sky, in the sky above a field! He’s running and he senses, out of the corner of his eye, his own deftball landing in the grass. He’s going to have to clamber over the fence, there’s no time to sidetrack to the gate, and then run again, and even then he’s going to miss it —

He can see it clearly now, falling — the glass jar, and a little tumble of color inside. That’s her, that’s the Butterfly Child, tumbling around in the tumbling jar.

He knows what he can catch and what he’ll miss — and he’s running like he never ran before, but this one, he knows he’s going to miss.

At the edge of the sports field, there are a couple of kids on bikes riding in circles. They’ve pegged little squares of cardboard to the spokes of their wheels to make a high-speed rat-tat-tat noise.

The band’s playing tunes now, and someone’s slicing oranges and mangoes for the teams to eat at halftime. The school principal arrives
and shows some of her students how she’s painted her fingernails blue and gold.

Isabella Tamborlaine passes just behind Jimmy, and he stops, turns around, and she twirls her dress for him. It’s blue and gold clouds, fading one into the other.

“Is that supposed to be ironic?” he says.

“Of course not,” she says. “I got Clover to make it for me. I’m a deftball fanatic now that I know it’s all calculus. Just be sure and win today, okay?”

There are picnic blankets on the grass, and the Twicklehams are weaving amongst them, handing out leaflets for Twickleham Electronics Repair.