Page 19 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
It felt to Magda that her mother’s letter was a secret message to her. A reminder about that day in the Highlands, and a signpost to what had made that happen.
Not really believing it, not really thinking too much about what she was doing, Magda headed downstairs and out into the garden behind the house. She walked out onto the lawn and under the cover of one of the large old beech trees growing along the boundary wall. She stood there for a moment, recalling the day she had flown. She held the pendant in one hand and closed her eyes, thinking about her mother’s letter and her memory of flying.
The pendant seemed to grow warm in her hand as she focussed on it, and a sensation gradually dawned upon her. It was as if she could feel herself being pulled to the ground, as if gravity itself was a physical thing that had always been there but that she was only now noticing for the first time.
Magda reached out with her other hand, holding it in front of her, fingers waggling and experimenting with this sensation, tapping the bubbles of gravity that seemed to surround her. Then she cupped her hand and pulled it downwards and behind her, as if she were standing onthe beach and scooping out wet sand. As she scooped—as she gouged a space in gravity itself—Magda felt herself rise off the grass a few inches.
She panicked, releasing the necklace and waving her hands. She landed roughly back onto the ground and dropped to all fours, irrationally scared that she was about to drift off like an escaped balloon.
A moment passed, and then Magda giggled, a chuckle of disbelief and shock.
She stood up and tried again. And again. And more times, as she learned to fly in the garden behind her mother’s house. And Magda Sparks was free for the second time in her life, on that day she read the letter from her mother and learned the truth about the Society.
***
Magda had worn her mother’s pendant ever since, and from time to time, whenever she felt she could or that it was safe to do so, she would fly. It was her secret, something that she shared with her late mother, a connection between the two of them. When she was alone in the wilderness, or at night in her garden, Magda would use the necklace, just testing what she could do, reminding herself that it was real, that magic existed in this world.
As she took her place as a member of the Society and understood what the Society had been created for—the collection and protection of magical items—she said nothing about the necklace to Frank or to the other Society members. If her mother had wanted the necklace to be placed inside the Clockwork Cabinet, she would have done so. Magda had considered the rules of the Society, studying them carefully with the skills of a trained lawyer, and had concluded that she was doing nothing wrong. So she had kept the existence of the necklace to herself, just as her mother must have done before her.
***
Dropping headfirst through the Hong Kong air, a decade after first discovering that she could fly, Magda scrabbled with her fingers to catchthe pendant dangling below her from its chain. The necklace danced madly in the wind for a second—an eternity for Magda, as she fell—until it landed in her palm and she closed her fingers over it. She ignored the ground rocketing up towards her as best she could and concentrated on the pendant, rediscovering that sensation of the grip of gravity as it yanked her downwards. She pushed down with her right hand, the chess piece in its parcel of tissues still held within her palm, dispersing the gravity outwards in a cone below her body and turning herself upright. Immediately her momentum ceased, and she hung motionless in the dark Hong Kong night like a bird on a thermal.
Magda guessed she had dropped about half the distance from the meeting room on the eighty-second floor. She looked upwards and saw a head over the edge of the balcony gazing down at her. She was free and alive, but her body started to shake with the adrenaline that was fuelling her escape. She replayed what had just happened, already struggling to believe it. The image of James being shot distracted her, punching through her concentration and making her lurch in the air.
“No,” she muttered, pushing that image away. She wasn’t going to hang still long enough to give the man a chance to shoot at her. She pushed off with her right hand, pulling herself out into the West Harbour, over the dark black water where the wind was fiercer, the humid air thinning slightly. Below her the surface of the harbour rippled as she dispersed gravity. The warm breeze buffeted her, bumping her roughly like crowds on a busy street. Normally she loved flying, the freedom to be in the air and untethered to the ground, but she felt none of the usual joy right then.
She turned herself left and out over Victoria Harbour, between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island, a tiny object in the vast night sky. She faced the bright lights and towers and carried herself forward, cutting through narrow gaps between the mighty buildings. It felt like flying between the walls of a canyon. She saw people and traffic below her, an old tram rattling along a narrow street, and she heard the drilling sound of the pedestrian crossing signals somewhere in the distance.
The island reared up steeply as she flew between high-rise apartment blocks. Images flashed in her vision as she sped past windows: boxyliving rooms and televisions flickering; people in their kitchens making food or gathered around a table on stools and slurping noodles; skinny legs dangling over the edge of a top bunk in a narrow bedroom; washing hanging out on tiny balconies, empty sleeves waving at her in the breeze. Everyday life on all sides and ahead of her trees and the hillside climbing up to Victoria Peak.
Magda pushed herself up out of the light and the narrow canyons of humanity into the dark sky. And then she was hovering over the peak itself, all of Hong Kong and Kowloon spread out before her and blazing with light, the harbour a dark chasm in between, dotted with boats.
She hung there for a moment, sucking in big breaths, her heart racing, and then dropped down onto one of the quiet paths running around the hill. She took a moment to smooth down her hair and tidy her clothes, and then rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, trying to stem the tears that were bubbling there. Her emotions had turned to liquid and were sloshing around like wine in a glass held by an unsteady drunk.
“Pull yourself together,” she ordered herself sternly, but the many pieces of her didn’t want to come back together. She saw James hitting the window in the meeting room, his body dropping to the floor so heavily. She shook her head, trying to deny that memory, remembering the way he had looked at her in the park when he had revealed his love ofTintin,remembering how he had slurped his noodles.
No! No! No!
Her mind was stuck like a scratched record, showing her James falling to the floor again and again and again as she started to hyperventilate.
She crouched down, feeling the warmth from the day radiating off the path, trying to concentrate on the noise of the crickets in the undergrowth, the smell of the warm earth.
You can’t do anything for James here! Youhave toact! Come on!
She held her breath for a moment, consciously trying to slow her heart, and then she stood up straight. She placed the chess piece into the pocket of her jacket, then wiped the dampness from her cheeks with the heel of her hand, blinking the last tears away even as she started walking.She followed signs on the path towards the Victoria Peak Tram that would carry her back down towards the harbour and her hotel.
Youhave totell Frank!
She reached for her phone but the only thing in her pocket was the visitor pass on a lanyard she had been given. Stopping short in shock, she realised that she had left the phone on the table in the meeting room.
“No!” she shouted, the word punching the air.
She hurried to the tram and endured the tortuous journey to the bottom of the peak, sitting by herself at the back of the vehicle and nervously eyeing the tourists who chatted happily around her. What if one of them worked with the man with the gun? What if there was a gang of people in on it? She briefly thought about calling the police. Surely they would protect her from dangerous men? But a counterargument formed almost immediately in her mind: How would she explain how she had managed to escape from James’s office? How could she tell them about magical items? Her only choice was to flee, to get back to London.
From the base station it was a short walk through the streets back to her hotel. She kept moving, glancing around continuously, terrified that the gaunt-faced man would dart around a corner in front of her, gun in hand. She scanned the passing cars, anticipating him jumping out of a taxi. These were irrational fears—he was across the harbour, he couldn’t possibly have reached her—but her mind was in no mood for rational arguments. Her mind was stuck on the memory of James Wei being shot.
Inside her hotel room she locked the door and hurried to the phone to call Frank.
