The Colors of Madeleine 01: Corner of White (42 page)

3.

T
he bells were ringing for the all clear, and they were surging out of the Watermelon Inn. Someone was turning off the sprinklers; someone was taking these gently from the outstretched arms of Elliot and Corrie-Lynn; others were draping towels around their shoulders and leading them inside.

They brought them into the front room, and Elliot and Corrie-Lynn were whiter than the Magical North, pale and trembling, but every other face was alive with smiles and wonder, and everyone was asking, “How did you
know
to do that, Elliot?”

Eventually, Elliot shook the trembling out of his body, and half smiled.

“It was something that a friend told me once,” he said, and then something seemed to turn over in his face, and his hand reached into his pocket.

“What’s the time right now?” he said, and when someone said it was just on ten, he seemed to fly from the room.

They watched through the window as he ran through the parking lot and away.

The rain hammered on Madeleine’s head and she stopped laughing, stopped gasping and turned from the parking meter, where there was no slither of white, there was nothing —

And then something happened. It was a fragment of time, a breath of time. It was like being in a car in pouring rain and driving under an overpass, and for just that second there is a profound, powerful sense of reprieve — the utter silence of non-rain.

That was how it was — she was, for a fragment, without rain; she was somewhere silent and warm, and there was the flash of an image — a schoolyard, distant buildings, blue sky, intense quiet, strong sunlight, an odd pile of cement topped with a crooked TV, and beside her, right beside her, a boy in jeans, his head turned away from her; she saw dark blond hair, a sun-brown neck —

Then the rain again.

She was back in the street with the parking meter, the chaos of the downpour, and parked cars again.

But now, in her hand, was an envelope. It was instantly sodden with rainwater, and she sat on the edge of the kerb, let the rushing gutter water swarm over her shoes, soak her socks, let the rain drench and drench her hair, the curling water rush past her eyes and tendril down her cheeks, and opened the envelope.

A handful of little white balls.

Were they children’s sweets? Were they aspirins? Were they mothballs?

Whatever they were, she sat on the kerb, folded them tight in her fist, and the sobs gashed their way through her chest, surging against the flesh of her face, bursting out through her mouth and into the rain.

4.

A
fter he had delivered the envelope to the sculpture, Elliot returned to the Watermelon Inn, and was just in time to hear little Derrin Twickleham, the girl who could not speak, announce in a strident voice: “My name is
not
Derrin Twickleham.”

There was a sudden quiet in the front room.

Derrin explained that her name was, in fact, Libby Adams.

For a child who could not speak, she was very vocal. In an Olde Quainte accent, she told the room that she had been taken from her hometown of Gwent Cwlyd by a pair of Wandering Hostiles who’d brought her to Bonfire, disguised as a family called the Twicklehams.

The real family Twickleham had a small daughter, so they had stolen Libby to play that role. It was her understanding that the real family had been sent a false note, telling them that the repair shop was no longer available.

They had some Hostile mission here in Bonfire, the child continued, but she had not been able to figure out what it was, although she had tried and tried to drop in on their eaves.

“She means eavesdrop,” somebody murmured, and the others nodded or agreed.

“There is also this,” she said. “That I never got their real names. As to an apple in a seashell, so were they careful to call each other Fleta and Bartholomew, even when I was a-bed.”

There was an impressed silence after this lengthy speech.

Then Corrie-Lynn, who was still wrapped in a blanket in her mother’s arms, announced: “You can
speak
. I taught you how to speak!”

Libby replied diplomatically: “You did a very good job trying to teach me how to speak, Corrie-Lynn. But actually I think I can probably speak now because the Mute Spell they put on me would now be far away — away from this town it is going, in the back of Miss Hattoway’s car.”

Everybody nodded. A spell like that would lose its effect with some distance.

“Well, why didn’t you write me a note?” Corrie-Lynn persisted. “You’re good at writing.”

“I wrote a note to Miss Hattoway,” Libby said, “on my first day at the grade school. She whispered that she’d help me, and that I had to lie low and not tell a soul. Of course,” she added ruefully, “it soon became clear, as to a window in a washhouse when the door is open wide, that Miss Hattoway was actually a Hostile her
self
. And quite good friends with my kidnappers.”

“You should’ve told me,” Corrie-Lynn insisted.

Libby shrugged. “But I didn’t want you to be in danger. And I
did
draw a picture to try to tell the Sheriff.” Here, the Sheriff assumed a deeply sorrowful expression. “But my picture was probably confusing. Also …” She scratched the inside of her ear thoughtfully. “Also, on my very first
morning
in this town, I scribbled a note and tucked it into an old TV machine in the repair shop — when we were being shown around, before it was cleared out. I was hoping that Elliot or his mother might find that note and save me.”

Everyone turned to Elliot.

“I’m sorry we didn’t find it —” he began, and then stopped suddenly. “What did it say? What did your note say?”

“I wrote something like,
Help! I am being held against my will!
But I had not time to write more.”

“You put it in the TV that was on the workbench there?” hazarded Elliot. “The one that ended up in Cody’s sculpture?”

“Did it? All right. Yes, that’s where I put it — they watched me closely all the time, as to a …”

But here Libby’s voice faded, and she begged that somebody might contact her parents, as she would like to see her mother very much; then she put her thumb in her mouth and two tears slipped from her eyes.

In the consequent hubbub, Elliot slowly shook his head.

In Cambridge, England, the World, an extremely ill patient, her brain effectively strangled by a malignant tumour, lay in intensive care, waiting to die. Her teenage daughter walked into the room, dripping with rain, and was seen to draw a handful of white pills from her pocket. The supervising nurse rushed forward, thinking that the girl intended to give these to her mother for some reason, but the girl simply crushed them between her palms and let their dust sprinkle over her mother’s face and neck.

Then the girl sat weeping quietly, a hand on her mother’s hand.

Some minutes later, the woman sat up in her bed, pulling tubes from her mouth and her nose, so that the equipment set up frantic alarms and beeps, and requested chocolate.

Later that morning, various scans showed that the tumour had entirely resolved itself, that it had altogether disappeared, leaving behind apparently healthy brain cells — which, it would be fair to say, was an exceptional turn of events.

Meanwhile, in Bonfire, the Farms, Kingdom of Cello, the Butterfly Child flew through the streets, riding on her favorite moth.

Several people caught glimpses of her — or at least, glimpses of her russet-colored dress — and, as she flew, there was a whispering and rustling, a bending and straining, an odd tearing sound through the fields. Word rippled out that the crop effect was happening at last!

Within moments, the Butterfly Child had vanished, and some people thought they heard a faint fluting sound, while others swore they heard the words, “good-bye,” and also, “sorry.”

“The crop effect! The crop effect!” The shouts ran up and down the street.

There was brief jubilation, but it quickly emerged that, in fact, it was not the crop effect.

Instead, the fields, the streets, the Town Square, the school grounds, even Norma Lisle’s little herb garden, were all now entirely clogged with mulberry trees.