Dear Erik, wrote Maggie. We’ve been here almost seven months, and if you’ve read this far I’m just gonna assume you’re not traumatized anymore and I can just talk to you like a person again. So the gloves are coming off, fool.
I’m sure you think it’s hilarious that you’ve managed to hide from us for this fucking long, but I’m gonna remind you that I’m dragging most of the fam-damily along with me, and they won’t let me torture or murder anyone.
She paused, considering, and added a little star, with a footnote: I know torture doesn’t work, but murder sure does, and Hyacinth’s not up for it, so they’ve really got my tits in a vice, here.
Anyway, I miss you, and I’m doing all this writing to include you, like, retroactively, so don’t laugh too loud or I’m gonna slap the shit out of you. She drew a little heart next to that, just in case he was still too traumatized to notice she was kidding, then she shook her head and erased everything after “loud.” Erik might be somewhere getting the shit slapped out of him right now, and that wasn’t funny.
OK. I already told you I peeled off to start looking for immies in the countryside, and everyone else is still wandering around here trying to find you. Or, like, anything.
Another footnote: Your uncle stays in the hotel and we always knock him out before we hide him in the brain-melting void suitcase. He is fine. If you need me to go check him right now, I’m sure he’s still alive and he’s fine.
She sighed. It was way more fun to imagine reading these with Erik and winding him up, but she had actual information to get across.
Anyway, I found immies yesterday and they almost shot me — Don’t laugh, asshole, I’ve been distracted worrying about you and I forgot most people can’t turn into birds — so today I went back with your uncle and Hyacinth. Hyacinth can translate, but it turned out we didn’t need her too much. A lot of Prokovia is really jazzed to be friends with Marsellia now, so…
◆◇◆
“Maggie, put down the suitcase,” Hyacinth said evenly, leaning backwards at a forty-five-degree angle so the double barrel of the shotgun wasn’t quite against her forehead. “Please.”
Maggie slowly put down the suitcase, but she couldn’t pretend to be patient, “Will you tell them I’m not a gangster trying to get a Tommy-gun through customs? I just have this ‘cos it’s the only way we can get him into a taxi,” she jerked her head towards Mordecai, “and if I wanted to kill them they’d already be dead.”
“No, I will not tell them that,” said Hyacinth. She smiled politely at the man with the gun. “Mordecai, could you look a bit friendlier in my direction, or is that just beyond you these days?”
“I haven’t been outside in half a year and you just woke me up from a coma, I need a minute,” he said, blinking. “Oh, hey. Goats.” There were perhaps a dozen, eating grain from a trough in a snowy pen with a little lean-to sheltering it. “Wow.”
A small blue face appeared in the second storey window, framed in a bouncy bob haircut. An instant later, a blue hand smacked open the glass and a voice cried, “Hi, Marsellia! Coffee, croissant and cigarette!” There came a feminine shriek, and the child was dragged away from the window. Maggie could still hear her shouting, “Viva Emile Cloquette! Viva Emile Cloquette! Liberté, égalité, fraternité!”
The man with the gun staggered back a pace and glanced over his shoulder. It was only a split second, but long enough for Maggie to remove the shotgun and replace it with a lovely bunch of fake flowers she kept anchored to her body in slipspace. The gun went where the flowers had been, so the weak application of a summon spell she felt blow through her had zero effect. You want your gun back? What gun? Sorry, it’s in another dimension, I don’t have it either!
“Pleased to meet you,” Maggie said dryly. “Consider it a gift. If you’d like to make another trade, I got a stuffed animal, a squirt pistol, and a small bag of chocolates, but that’s all.”
Hyacinth spoke quickly, desperately smiling, with both hands raised in surrender. Maggie imagined her saying something like, This person isn’t trying to kill you, I swear. She’s just impatient and really good at magic! We cool?
The man said something in Prokovian, quietly, but with staring eyes suggesting it was certainly not cool, and then the little girl piped up again, from downstairs this time, “Papa, let Marsellia in! Maybe they know Radek!”
◆◇◆
…it turns out they sent one of their kids to school here, and all of them are trying to learn Anglais so they can talk to him and come visit. The littlest one is the best at it. Her name is Sofie, and she’s blue. Papa is Vitek, also blue, Mama is Svetlana, green, and older brother who seems a little annoyed he didn’t get to go to school in “land of rising sun and opportunity” (Sofie’s words!) and has to help out with the tiny subsistence farm instead, is yellow and also Vitek, but they’re calling him “Vie.” Together, they are, the Aristocrats!
Maggie snickered and added another footnote, Really, they’re the Kijeks, but I’m never gonna forgive you for making me sit through that dumb joke. And, obviously, they do not have a dog.
Once they stop trying to kill you, they seem very nice and domestic and happy, but, man, are they suspicious of questions! (Not without reason, but you gotta let me get to it.) It’s a good thing we had your uncle with us, fool, ‘cos I don’t think they would’ve said two words to us otherwise. He really got along with the kid and she’s stubborn (like you) so they had to put up with us.
Mama made us some tea, and by the time it was ready to drink they trusted us enough to let us come in and sit down and talk…
◆◇◆
“Hyacinth!” the red man called over. He broke off to stifle a cough in his coat sleeve. “Tell this short individual,” he pointed downwards, “that we really did have a goat living in our house and I am not winding her up!”
Sofie giggled and waved to everyone on the porch.
Hyacinth pointed downwards also, at the porch itself. “Get over here, sit down and drink tea! Prokovian winters murder the weak and you’ve had enough!”
“I’ve been living in a suitcase!” he hollered back, both hands cupped around his mouth. He doubled over coughing.
Hyacinth gave Maggie a shove. “Please drag him away from the cute animals and the sunlight before it kills him.”
Maggie met him halfway and offered an arm to steady him, which he refused in favour of Sofie’s hand.
“When you stay in hotel with suitcases, in Marsellia you say, ‘I live in suitcase’?” the girl asked him.
“No,” he replied, “but if you don’t believe me about the goat you’ll never believe me about the suitcase, and I’m not letting you try it for yourself, so just forget it.”
To change the subject, and distract her from her new best friend, Maggie gave her the bag of chocolates and the stuffed animal, a small brown bear.
“Mama, she do magic!” the girl announced. “She is coloured like us!” The woman nodded slowly, still petrified, and offering a cup of tea with a shaking hand.
“Maybe not quite like you,” Maggie said, with a smile.
Hyacinth said something. Maggie supposed it was, We all do magic, it’s not a big deal. We’re just as weird as you are, if not weirder, so please trust us.
Maggie wasn’t sure if it was trust, intimidation or convenience, but after that, the green lady held open the door and invited them into the house. It was a single room with one staircase leading up and one leading down, dim with candlelight and shuttered windows. There were a few places closed off with curtains that looked like makeshift bedrooms or storage.
Hyacinth, Mordecai, Maggie and “Mama” sat at a small plank table. There was one more chair available, but neither of the men in the house seemed to want it. “Papa” stood nervously near the door and Vie sulked in a rocking chair near a pot-bellied stove, holding a paperback novel, jaded and teenaged. Sofie decided to sit on the floor and play with the bear, near her mother and Mordecai.
The green woman said something and Hyacinth didn’t exactly translate it: “I know you don’t take milk or sugar, but could you shake your head so Svetlana here knows I’m being honest with her?”
“Does she have any lemon?” he said.
“Does a tiny farm family in Prokovia in winter have any lemon?” Hyacinth replied. “Oh, let me ask!”
Svetlana’s eyes went round. She politely cleared her throat and asked a question, indicating Hyacinth and Mordecai with a finger. Then she did a double take and stared at Maggie, creased and concerned.
Hyacinth burst out cackling. “No! Non! Nyet! Oh, my gods…”
“What?” said Mordecai.
“She wants to know if they let people like us get married in Marsellia, and I think she’s afraid to even ask if Maggie belongs to us somehow!”
“They certainly do let people like us get married in Marsellia!” Mordecai said hotly. “Obviously not us specifically, or I’d murder you in your sleep, but there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with a mixed marriage in and of itself. Do they not allow that around here?”
“Given that these are the first coloured people we’ve seen around here and none of them seem inclined to get married at the moment, I think that’s irrelevant and I’m not bothering,” said Hyacinth. “Now please smile at the nice woman who has invited you into her home and made you tea.”
He smiled at her, dipped a slight bow, and took a cookie from the plate on the table. After a hesitant bite, he smiled again and signed THANK YOU at her.
“Oh, my gods,” groaned Hyacinth.
“What?” he said. He glanced down at his hands and sighed. “I don’t know. It’s like a reflex. I just woke up from a coma!”
“What is coma?” Sofie said.
“Like a nap, but way more, and no fun,” he said.
“Aw.”
Hyacinth raised her hands, pleading for patience and quiet, and said something about “Radek,” so, Maggie guessed, she was trying to break the ice by asking how the kid was doing in school.
◆◇◆
So, Erik, Maggie wrote, go on and close your eye and cover the other one and I’ll give you three guesses which real good school in Marsellia Radek is supposed to be going to, and the first two don’t count.
…That’s right! It’s my old Alma Mater, the Academé St. Honorée! Now, I’m gonna hafta come back to this after we call Calliope, because she doesn’t always tell us things, but that made us all suspicious as hell and I think they noticed something was wrong. It seems like if the school Calliope’s family is running had a very lucrative deal with the Prokovian government to accept super smart coloured students with a full scholarship, we would know something about it, right? But this is Calliope and Calliope’s frigged up family we’re talking about, so I’m not sure.
Hyacinth had to cough up and tell them we know the school but we don’t know anything about that. She told them we hadn’t been home in a while and asked if this was a recent thing. Now guess when Radek went away to school!
That was a trick question, he went away to a Prokovian school two years ago, but he buggered off to Marsellia last year, right after you buggered off wherever you are, and just before everyone in the ghetto buggered off wherever they went. Guess you guys are all playing a cross-country game of musical chairs, huh?
But that’s not all…
◆◇◆
Mordecai laughed and put a hand over Hyacinth’s mouth. “No, don’t bother, I know exactly what she said!” He cleared his throat and straightened his coat and said it with the exact same inflection, making the exact same seesaw gesture with one hand, “‘He doesn’t write, he doesn’t call.’ Right?”
“Shit,” said Hyacinth. “Yeah. It’s a wireless, but apparently they can get phone calls on it. Can you read minds like Erik or is that suitcase doing something weird to your brain?”
He shook his head, still laughing. “It’s just how we are.” He picked up the report card that Svetlana had offered them almost immediately and handed it back to Radek’s proud, if nervous, mother. “At least his grades are good. Tell her straight As are very good, Hyacinth. He must be working very hard. Could you also tell her the boy probably just needs some space and I’m sure Calliope’s family is taking very good care of him, and he’ll call home soon, riddled with guilt. Be very specific about the guilt part, moms like that.”
“I’m not totally sure about that, Uncle Mordecai,” Maggie muttered aside.
“Oh, look,” he sighed, “I know I slammed the door and never came back, but I had a stupid family. They seem like nice people.”
“No,” Maggie said. “I mean, the timing is super weird. That’s just a few weeks after Erik got lost and a couple months before the whole ghetto took off, and they’re not writing or calling either.”
“Yes, but they didn’t write first and send us forms for permission to go to school,” Mordecai replied. “And we did not get a cute little certificate of Erik’s achievement that we could frame and hang on the wall.” He gestured to it, in a place of evident pride near the stove. “Maggie, don’t make the nice lady nervous, she can understand you a little. Calliope forgets to tell us things all the damn time and I’m sure that’s all it is. Hyacinth,” and he inclined his head towards Sofie and winked, “please tell her I’m certain the little one will have a nice certificate of her own when she’s old enough.”
The green woman shook her head right away, proving that she did understand, at least a little. She addressed Hyacinth in Prokovian, apparently too shy to attempt Anglais.
“She says they wanted Sofie too, but she’s too young for that,” Hyacinth said for her.
Maggie was shaking her head, wide-eyed. “She is too…”
Mordecai slapped a hand on the table and stood. “What? Goddammit, are they that backwards over here? Listen to me, my good woman, little girls need an education too! She’s obviously very bright and I’m sure you’re doing your best, but if she wants to grow up and have a place in a modern society, she is eventually going to have to go somewhere… And why not someplace a little more tolerant, eh?”
Maggie stood up too, “Uncle Mordecai, will you shut your mouth? They do not take six-year-olds at the Academé St. Honorée! It’s a prep school! This is weird!”
Mordecai sat and regarded Hyacinth. “Did they say they wanted to send the girl to Marsellia or a school here?”
Hyacinth asked a few more questions, nodding all the while, with her hand over Mordecai’s mouth. “They don’t know,” she replied at last. “The government have been bothering them a lot, that’s why they’re sick of questions. The ‘grey men’ want Sofie in school and they want the rest of ‘em in subsidized housing somewhere south of here, since the Kirov Ghetto is now officially ‘closed.’ Svetlana has lived on this land since she was a baby, and her mom is still upstairs, too sick to move, so they’re not going anywhere for the moment and they just want to be left the hell alone.”
“Babulya will get better or die and then we all go visit Radek!” Sofie added. She frowned at her mother’s disapproving expression. “Mama, what?”
◆◇◆
…I love that kid. She acts just like she grew up in Strawberryfield and I think she’s going places. Or she will if she grows up and makes it out of this place alive.
Fool, your uncle’s distracted and Hyacinth isn’t sure, but I know there is something wrong here and I think you’re involved. That whole ghetto is gone, but when the G-men pissed off Sofie’s family, they wanted to take the kids and move the parents somewhere else entirely. They didn’t want the older boy at all — he’s just seventeen and he doesn’t seem stupid. There wasn’t an entrance exam like for a real school! They just rolled up and said, “Give us your children.” That does not sound like a regular old forced relocation to me. (I know history, I went to school!)
Anyway, your uncle wouldn’t stop yelling about equal rights for women and the value of education and he sounds an awful lot like my mom but I think your whole culture has a real bee in its bonnet about smartness. I mean, Seth wants everyone to have free school and he’s out there doing it. So it seems weird Sofie’s parents don’t want her to go at all, right?
Well, it’s a real good thing we had your uncle with us, because he finally pissed off Vitek the Elder enough that he walked over to the table and started yelling at us. Hyacinth had to beg him to slow down and she finally got what he was saying.
I’m not gonna ask you to guess this because I think you must already know for sure, and when we find you, you’re gonna tell me what the hell’s going on. I don’t know if you’re working with them or against them yet, but some other folks from Marsellia have been by to check up on Sofie’s family, too. These guys said if Sofie goes to that government school she is never going to come back, and they offered to help the whole family go south, with passports and everything.
I’m sure I’ve said this, but I gotta keep saying it — we are goddamn lucky we had your uncle and he has people skills, because these other guys fucked up so bad if Vitek Sr. ever sees them again he’s gonna kill them, especially the coloured one. They scared the hell out of Svetlana and Vitek threw them out because they said Radek was not going to come home either, but they’d try to find him, and not to listen if he tried to contact them (??!?). Papa Vitek has had about enough of Marsellia altogether and wants us to stop blowing up their damn trains (Ha-ha, we have a reputation!) and make up our damn minds.
So of course Hyacinth had to get out her dictionary and do some linguistic gymnastics trying to get them to understand we are not with those assholes, and also to please give us some idea who the hell the assholes were. The coloured guy was purple, with a “northern accent” but Vitek means north around here. The other two were a blond guy and a girl with dyed red hair. They had Marselline accents and needed him to translate, like we need Cin.
They left a card with a phone number, which Vitek threw away, but they also gave Sofie a roll of stickers and she refused to throw them away. We all took a little field trip to Sofie’s bed — it’s against the wall with a curtain around it — and had a look at the stickers…
◆◇◆
“Oh, my gods,” said Hyacinth. She turned and spoke quickly to Vitek — Maggie had to presume she was scrambling to explain their terrible poker faces and obvious distress.
The stickers were all die-cut out of rainbow foil. There were arc shapes, stars, and human figures holding hands, all emblazoned with various slogans. “Safe Space” and “Ally” were the most common — that was what the stickers were for — but also “Equity,” “Equality,” “Ma Femme,” and “Mon Frere.” A large square one had the whole slogan in white print on a foil background: “Equity! Equality! RA! RA! RA!” The largest of all, proudly affixed to the headboard, informed Hyacinth, Mordecai and Maggie in no uncertain terms, “From Your Friends In The RAINBOW ALLIANCE!”
“What the fuck,” said Mordecai.
“What is ‘fuck’?” Sofie said.
“Something Radek wouldn’t like you hear you say,” said Mordecai. “So don’t.”
“Aw.”
Maggie leaned in and poked the sticker with a finger, like maybe it was some optical magic or a prank — hell, she didn’t know. “If the gays are getting into international espionage now, they are terrible at it.”
Hyacinth groaned. “Please, Maggie. I’m not with those people.”
“We have a sticker like that on our front door,” Maggie replied, indicating a largish one with a star. Safe Space! “And you guys are both wearing safety pins.” Maggie kept her pin threaded through her purse strap — which was attached to the rest of her purse, in the suitcase. She had enough things to carry.
Mordecai pulled out the lapel of his inadequate cloth coat, regarding the pin and the coloured paper beads on it with horror. “Mine says I’m straight! I’m coloured and marginalized and it’s an alliance. I’m allowed to be…” He frowned. “Unless John is winding me up, but I don’t think…”
“For the sake of these nice people,” Hyacinth snarled through clenched teeth, “all of whom can understand at least a little of what we’re saying, we are not with those people and we have no idea what’s going on… And that is, in fact, the truth, because if they trusted us with whatever the hell this is, they would’ve told us about it!”
“Hyacinth,” Mordecai said. “Is John here?”
John Green-Tara was in the RA, and he had been the one who showed up at their house asking what happened to Erik, that was all. A photo they had seen in the paper weeks ago, which Hyacinth had quickly snatched away in order to have a mild freakout about a man in a butterfly mask, had nothing to do with it.
Erik had been on his way to meet John and go to a movie, but he didn’t show. That wasn’t out of the ordinary — Hyacinth’s whole household was flaky as all hell and they didn’t have a phone, so John just went to the movies alone, then went home. (He was still kicking himself about it.) By that point, Erik — or his captors — had made the most of the twenty-four-hour head start, and nobody could find him.
“Please give me a little time to get Papa Vitek to put out the fireball and stop threatening to kill us and I’ll see if I can ask,” Hyacinth said.
Eventually, their jaded reaction and Hyacinth’s pleading got him to put it out, but they’d pretty much worn out their welcome by then. Maggie gave back the gun, Hyacinth said what must’ve been a rough equivalent of “We know you need this to live, but please don’t shoot us — it’s a waste of ammo,” and they got their shit together to get out.
◆◇◆
The story we have, fool, is that John and Jennifer are in Ansalem, studying “business management,” and they are being good little children who call home every week and send lots of postcards. (That seemed normal to me just yesterday, but now it makes me suspicious as hell.) They visited Calliope’s family and put some missing person flyers up, and Calliope’s family confirmed the visit and the flyers. They are still looking for you, but I don’t think you’re there, and I don’t think John and Jennifer are there either.
Frankly, I’m beginning to think “going to Ansalem” means something like “wish into the cornfield” like that gearshow with the creepy little reality-warping kid. People are going somewhere, but it ain’t fucking Ansalem, or even necessarily on this planet.
John and Jennifer don’t seem to be here, and I believe Sofie’s family about that. The two of them are darker than a paper bag, and I’ve told you about everyone calling me “tacky” — or whatever that dumb word that Cin swears isn’t a slur means. It’s not possible to stealth when people won’t stop staring at you. The RA may be a little silly but they’re not total idiots. I still think the Green-Taras are involved somehow and they must know about it, but we can’t interrogate them if we can’t find them. And I’ll bet you Tom and Mrs. Green-Tara don’t know, because they’re getting (fake?) postcards.
There are a lot of blond guys out there. Soup is a blond guy, and I’m pretty sure he’s still at home pretending to be a medic for the Apparent Cult — but you can bet when we call Calliope I’m gonna have her make sure! That girl with dyed red hair, though… I asked Sofie and she confirmed it was real red, like a red crayon.
I don’t know a girl with dyed red hair, but that lady who hangs out with John and the Rainbows had dyed blue hair last time I saw her, and I know she does it with drink mix ‘cos she stank to high heaven of raspberries. They make that shit in strawberry and cherry too. I asked Sofie if the Rainbow lady smelled like cherry or strawberry, and she looked at me like I was nuts, but drink-mix-girl could’ve done it a long time ago so it doesn’t smell anymore. I don’t know.
She sighed, sat back, and tapped the pencil eraser on the hotel stationary. She was getting close to the really scary stuff, and she didn’t know if she ought to write it down now or wait until they called Calliope and confirmed it was time to get scared. She didn’t want to traumatize Erik all over again by speculating, especially if something bad like that had happened to him.
Her mom was always telling her eyewitness testimony was unreliable bullcrap, and it was best to isolate yourself and write down the story in your own words if you didn’t want to get it wrong later. She didn’t think her mom was wrong about that.
She flipped to a new page. If she was being totally stupid and Erik didn’t need to see it, she could always shred it and throw it away later. When they found him.
If.
She shook her head, shaking it away. Barnaby knew where Erik was and he’d sent them to find him. It was going to be an utter shitshow, obviously, but they were going to find him.
Alive. Intact. They were going to find him alive and intact. Not like…
“Stop it,” she muttered. “You’re having a hysterical reaction to hearsay, just cut it out.”
The General lowered the volume on the radio. “Magnificent?”
“It’s nothing,” Maggie said. “I’m thinking out loud. I just need to get this down. Turn it back up, mom, it’s the news.”
…The Marselline news, from Marsellia, in Anglais. Milo had cobbled together a nice little signal booster for them, but Maggie thought he just missed his favourite station, with the bubble gum pop music.
Maggie picked up the pencil and wrote firmly, Anyway, Bethany…
“Ugh.” She erased it. Bethany’s psycho tendencies were not cute like that anymore, she was practically Erik’s age.
Anyway, Sofie wanted to know about the suitcase, and M really likes her, so she watched us put him away and she thinks it’s great. She wants one. I said she should come to Marsellia and learn to make one herself. Your uncle was in the suitcase, so I also said don’t let those government guys send her. I didn’t think they had a real school at all, even then, but now I’m sure of it.
It’s a dirt path up to the farmhouse and the taxi wasn’t gonna put up with it. We had about a half mile walk back to the main road — and that taxi driver charged the hell out of us, lemme tell ya, if we weren’t defrauding the phone company and living in a slum, we couldn’t afford this place! Maybe we were halfway there, hadn’t been walking long, but we couldn’t see the farmhouse anymore, and all of a sudden we hear this little bell, and Vitek Jr. rides up on a black bike with panniers and a sissy bar. This is already a bit weird, ‘cos the kid didn’t say a word to us the whole time. I wasn’t even sure he knew any Anglais.
Well, he’s not as good as Sofie, but he understood us all right, and I can understand him just fine…
◆◇◆
“Hey, Marsellia!” the yellow kid called out. He gently applied the brakes and coasted to a halt at Hyacinth’s side, giving the suitcase with the fragile human being in it a wide berth. “I tell Mama and Papa I give you our number to call, in case you hear about Radek. Here.” He handed Hyacinth a folded slip of paper with a ten-digit number, and a note above it which Hyacinth later translated as Dial 9 for Wireless Access. “But I am liar,” Vitek Jr. said.
“Oh?” said Hyacinth, stuffing the note in her purse.
“How you say, ‘Hell yeah’?”
Maggie snickered. “Yeah, you got it.”
“OK.” He took a deep breath and let it out with a huff. “I lie about Radek too. He call one time, only one. Late night. Time… Time not same there, da?”
Hyacinth and Maggie nodded.
“Da. Yeah.” He sighed again. “I… Don’t like. It him, but… Not right. In Marsellia… They do drugs, right? You say ‘do drugs’?”
Hyacinth answered in Prokovian, nodding the whole time, so Maggie knew she was telling this poor boy, Oh, hell yeah. All the time. I’ll do some right now, ya got any?
Maggie interrupted with her hand up. “How old is he? Your little brother.”
“Uh… Uh…” After a moment’s thought, he held up all ten fingers, and then four.
Maggie shook her head. “He’d have to get high on cold medicine or steal something. He can’t even buy beer in a store until he’s older than you.”
Hyacinth said it again in Prokovian, then Vie nodded. “Maybe sick,” he said. “Fever. I don’t know.”
“What did he sound like?” Maggie asked, with some help from Hyacinth.
“Happy. Too happy.” Vie shook his head. “And not happy at all. I don’t know. I say over and over, ‘Slow down’ but he have thing he want say and he say it. Not even stop for question or ‘you okay?’ He say Marsellia is beautiful, volshebnaya, and they love people like us.” He scowled. “No. ‘You.’ ‘People like you.’ He is not like us anymore. Poor. Farmer. Stupid. I don’t know. But he say government will help us move and live there and pay for everything and we must all move to Kirov and get ready. I say, ‘Radek, we have Babulya!’ but he not listen. We must come. They pay for everything. ‘See you soon!’ and he hang up.”
Vie spread his hands helplessly. “I turn around, still with phone, and Papa is there. He say, ‘What is?’ and I say, ‘Nothing, I think I hear ring.’ Three week later, Kirov Ghetto is no more.” He shook his head, looking down. “Tetya Dora live there. She not write nor call neither. Not even tell Babulya she go.”
“‘Aunt Dora,’” Hyacinth told Maggie.
“Mama sister,” Vie said, painfully. “Mama have five kids. Two die. She love Radek. He OK, Marsellia?”
Maggie and Hyacinth were both staring silently, mouths open, with expressions that suggested neither one of them thought Radek was OK. Maggie closed her mouth and spoke first, with a faint smile, “The Rainbows are good people. We have no idea what they’re doing, but if they said they’d find him, they’ll find him. Maybe he’s with Erik,” she added, and instantly regretted it.
If Erik was delirious and hooked up to an IV full of drugs somewhere, that would certainly explain why he hadn’t gotten back to them yet. But what could he possibly be doing? Just sitting around making incoherent calls? And not one to anyone at home? Calliope’s family had a phone, so did Seth’s school. He could’ve ordered them all Xinese delivery if he wanted!
Vie nodded gravely and put a hand on Maggie’s shoulder. “OK, but if you send purple man and friends back here, Papa kill them. They make Mama cry.”
“I will, uh, pass that along,” Maggie said. “If I can.”
“You call friend at school and call us vto… Uh, next week, Tieu-Day, yeah?” Vie said. “I, me…” He stuck out his thumb and smallest finger, making the universal gesture for answering a phone. “If good news, I tell Mama.”
“Da,” Hyacinth said, nodding.
“Hell yeah,” Maggie replied.
Vie smiled, a little bit. “Hell yeah.” He got back on his bike and took off, giving one final ring of the bell.
“Cin,” Maggie said. “What’s that word he said? Vol-something? ‘Marsellia is beautiful’ and what?”
“I think…” said Hyacinth, already pulling the dictionary out of her purse to make sure. “Yeah. Volshebnaya. ‘Magical.’” She put the little book away, shaking her head. “I have no idea where that kid is, but he is out of his goddamn mind.”
◆◇◆
…and she thinks he is out…
The pencil lead snapped off midway through the T, and Maggie swore.
The General put a warm hand on her shoulder. Maggie looked up and was surprised to see a small smile. “I broke an entire box of twenty-four writing the speech for Valvienne,” her mother said. “Some subjects are difficult.”
Maggie offered the sheaf of papers with a smirk. “Wanna proofread me? I think I said ‘anyway’ about fifteen times.”
The General adjusted her glasses and sniffed. “My eyes get tired. Regardless, it’s perfectly acceptable to be informal when…”
Mordecai set down the newspaper and swatted a hand at both of them. “Shh! Shut up! We just blew up another train!”
“Allegedly,” the General said.
“After today,” he said, “I do not believe for one second our stupid country is not involved in this somehow. So turn it up!”
