Read The Colors of Madeleine 01: Corner of White Online
Authors: Jaclyn Moriarty
The Colors of Madeleine 01: Corner of White (27 page)
The following day, the fifth-level Red was gone.
Bonfire’s residents moved through town, stilted and awkward, bowing their heads to hide their red-rimmed eyes.
It was a Sunday, and Elliot started the day by repairing the lock on the shed door. He guessed his mother must have broken it while trying to get inside — maybe wanting to see the old junk of his dad’s that was stored there, so she could hold it and weep.
Then he headed to the square to meet his friends, but detoured via the schoolyard first, to check for a letter in the sculpture.
There was a new one. He glanced around — sometimes he almost forgot that this was illegal — but the schoolyard was still, and empty, so he opened it and read.
Dear Elliot,
Okay, so, you win, Colours are the bad guys there.
(But they DO all travel in waves. You’re wrong about that.)
It’s funny, the way you’ve got red, blue, and green as the “original” colours, cause they’re the primary colours, right?
I’ve been thinking about it, though, and you know what?
THEY’RE NOT REAL.
Now, listen, science was never really my thing, so you can ignore all this if you want, but I THINK what the books are trying to say to me is, like I said, that they’re not real. They don’t really exist. For two reasons.
The first one is this. They’re just made of light. So, you know, in the dark, they’re gone. Switch off the light or put up a black curtain and they’re gone. Objects have no colour in the dark, did you realise that? It’s only the light hitting them that sets off this chemical reaction with their pigments or whatever, that makes them turn a particular colour. Otherwise, it’s kind of like, “If a tree falls in a forest and nobody sees it, does it really fall?”
Yeah, sure it does. The tree falls. But with colours? Well, if a red violin is sitting in the dark, is it really red?
Nope. Not in the dark it’s not.
So, that’s the first reason.
The second reason is this. Our brain invents colour. It’s this tricky thing our eyes do, which I won’t get into, except to say that our eyes have teeny-tiny things called “cones” and “rods.” The cones see red, blue, and green, and the rods figure out shapes. So, these cones and rods send little electrochemical messages to our brain, and the brain puts them together and invents colour.
Who knows if all our brains are inventing the same thing? I mean, how do we know that the thing YOUR eyes see and call “red” is the same thing that I call “red”?
Instead of saying, “Look how green the grass is,” we should actually say to each other, “Huh, that grass is absorbing light rays with wavelengths blah to blah nanometres, and reflecting light rays with wavelengths blah to blah nanometres, which the cones and receptors in MY eyes are seeing as a certain shade which we have chosen to label GREEN and I realise that your brain accepts the label GREEN, but I wonder what you actually think GREEN is?”
Anyhow, all this is leading to my suggestion for how to deal with dangerous Colours in your kingdom.
It is this:
CLOSE YOUR EYES.
And the Colours won’t be there.
My mother seems okay at the moment. I’d kind of like her to see a doctor, but she just looks confused or irritated when I suggest it, and remembers some sewing job she’s forgotten or something she wanted to ask the computer guy downstairs. I’m not too worried cause my dad should be here soon, to get us, and he’s the kind of guy who knows how to fix things. Like, he’ll look at her and he’ll KNOW right away what she needs, and how to get it.
Whereas I’m kind of like, one day, OMG, SHE’S REALLY SICK, and the next day, um, is that my imagination or is she sort of off-colour? And if she IS sick, will she get better on her own or does she need antibiotics? Or just to eat better and that?
And so on.
When my dad does get here and takes us back to our usual life, I’ll be able to see my real friends again — Tinsels, Corrigan, and little Warlock.
Anyhow, I liked your letter but I’m not sure that the “Kala” girl is working for me.
She’s kind of too much? If you know what I mean. The whole “artist and musician” thing — can’t she just be one or the other? And she can plough a field! And she’s so smart! I just sort of find I don’t like her that much. And does she have to have long glossy hair, or whatever you said? Next thing you’ll be telling me her eyes sparkle like dewdrops.
Get a new girlfriend.
And get back to me soon — like I said, I don’t know how long I’ll be here.
Take care,
M.T.
As Elliot finished reading the letter, he looked up and there was Kala herself, walking toward him across the schoolyard.
He hadn’t seen her since he left the note for her yesterday, and now, as he watched her approach, he saw that her face — especially her eyes — was sending him a complicated message. She was smiling but the smile had a tilt that told him that she knew his note had been brought on by the fifth-level Red. Her eyes laughed about this, but there was kindness too, and something deeper that said: Even if it
was
the Red, it was special, Elliot, and it kind of transcended Color.
She meant she wouldn’t hold him to it, but she liked it all the same.
Ah
, thought Elliot, seeing all this,
she’s amazing — and I’m sorry, but her eyes
do
sparkle like dewdrops
.
Over the next few days, winter snowstorms blew through.
Then, late one night, an abrupt summer.
Elliot was sitting on his bedroom floor, his research sprayed around him. The window was open to let in the hot breeze, and he was shirtless. Outside, the snow was in a frenzy of melting.
Eventually, the Butterfly Child would fly away for good — maybe sooner rather than later, seeing she was so sad — and the moment she did, Elliot would fly away himself. But lately he’d been wondering exactly where he’d go. His idea about the Lake of Spells and catching a Locator Spell was starting to wear thin, to fray around the edges — it even seemed childish and unlikely.
So he’d ordered some new books on Colors, and these were stacked beside him now, alongside all his usual research.
The Hunting Tactics of Third-Level Purples
was the title of the first book. The next asked,
Feeling Blue? Reimagining Cello’s Cooler Colors.
Then:
The Palette of Cello, or How to Paint the Sky
— and so on.
He sorted through the books and wondered why he’d ordered them at all — none of them seemed remotely helpful. A thin book called
Thrupp’s Comprehensive Guide to Locating and Opening the Seams of Purple Caverns
was followed by an even thinner volume, asserting that every word Thrupp uttered was demonstrably false.
There was a long, chatty article written by a Color Spotter (a person whose hobby is tracking down Colors, taking photographs, and ticking them off lists — a little like an extreme bird-watcher) — who claimed he’d seen a concentration of third-level Purple caverns on the coast of the Inland Sea. Behind that was a manual put together by a Color Bender, which said there was not a single trace of Color in the entire Inland Sea.
And now that Elliot looked closer,
The Palette of Cello
was actually an art manual. Nothing to do with Colors at all.
So he let the stack fall, and turned back to the official documents. There was the coroner’s report on his Uncle Jon, the missing persons file on his dad, and the other one, on Mischka Tegan.
He pushed these aside, and then he stopped, and pulled the latter back.
Missing Persons Report: Mischka Elizabeth Tegan
He touched the sharp-edged papers and gazed steadily at the name for a moment:
Mischka Elizabeth Tegan
He flicked through the papers. There were lists of details about Mischka: her age, height, weight, build, hair, complexion, occupation, address.
Her hair was dark brown, it said, and just touched her collar.
Her address was Apartment 4 (Directly Above the Bakery), Town Square, Bonfire. Her housemate was Olivia Hattoway, Grade 2 teacher at Bonfire Grade School. That was Corrie-Lynn’s teacher this year.
There were pages and pages of interviews too, mostly the same people who’d been interviewed about his dad, although here was an interview with Olivia Hattoway herself, and a number of teachers at the high school.
All the same questions. Tell me your full name. Tell me when you last saw her. Tell me what she was wearing. What did she say to you when she left? Did you hear from her? Did she call? Where do you think she might have gone? Did she say anything about where she was going or why? Did she take anything special?
Seemed like it could keep going on forever, the Sheriff blowing air on it, making it thin out in different directions. Questions trailing off, starting up again.
His eyes fell on phrases:
Nothing special missing.
No evidence of bank accounts having been used since the disappearance.
Mood in days leading up to disappearance was cheerful, maybe a little distracted.
Last seen at the Toadstool Pub with Jon Baranski (dec’d) and Abel Baranski (missing).
He stopped reading.
Down the hall he could hear the sound of his mother taking a cold shower, trying to cool down in the heat.
The classic text on Colors —
The Origin of Cellian Colors
by Enid Thurgood — was always on his bookshelf, bristling with his own Post-it notes.
It practically fell open at the page he knew so well — the chapter on third-level Purples — and there, in tiny font, was footnote no. 7, the footnote that had springboarded him all over Cello.
7. There is anecdotal evidence that a third-level Purple once took its victim all the way to its cavern, and, rather than slaughtering him immediately — which is the Purple custom — held him prisoner for as much as twelve months (the exact length of time varies between tellers).
There it was again. The slight, fragile chance, as small as an eyelash of the Butterfly Child, that his father — and maybe Mischka too — might be alive somewhere.
But what could Elliot do, trapped here in Bonfire?
And with
nobody
who thought he should keep looking, and nowhere to turn for advice.
Outside, the snow seemed almost violent in its melting, racing and shoving in drips and clumps and half-melted icicles past the open window to the ground.
Ah, well
, he thought, smiling suddenly.
There’s ONE person who seems keen to give advice.
He meant the Girl-in-the-World.
Her suggestion had more or less worked with the Butterfly Child — or anyway, given him a starting point.
Keep the subject constantly in mind.
Well, he’d been doing
that
with his missing father for over a year now.
May as well try her other suggestion — her therapist’s suggestion.
Stop thinking about it. Go to bed. Tell your dreaming mind to find an answer.
He kicked the books and papers halfheartedly across the room, dragged the blankets from his bed, lay down on the sheets, and fell asleep.