Page 34 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
The group of men stopped and reorganised themselves into a ring, like children playing some schoolyard game, walking in a circle, following each other round and round. Beyond them the women separated and walked off away from each other in opposite directions. The jogger still lay in the grass, the old couple were motionless on the bench, and the woman pushing the wheelchair was frozen on the spot.
“I can keep them moving until they collapse from exhaustion,” Frank said, through clenched teeth.
“Stop it!” Magda pleaded.
“I can keep them walking until they die.”
“Frank!” She grabbed his arm.
Frank gasped a breath of release, and in the distance the circling men stopped moving and the two women slowed to a stop and turned back to face each other. One of the men dropped into a crouch, a hand on his head; the other four men stumbled around, exchanging words and shaking their heads. On the lawn, the jogger was on all fours and the woman with the wheelchair was looking around, hands on her cheeks in horror.
“What did you do, Frank?” Magda asked, appalled at what he had done,terrifiedby this display of raw power.
Frank withdrew his hand from his pocket and opened his fingers. In his palm was the chess piece that Magda had just given him.
“I used this. I did magic. This can control people,” he said. “When I hold this, I can control anyone I can see. I can make them move however I want.” He leaned closer, pinning Magda with dark eyes, his voice low. “This is the first time I’ve ever held this, and Istopped the world,Magda. Imagine what I could do with practice. Imagine what someone could do with this if they had ill intent.”
Magda pulled her eyes away, looking ahead. In the distance the menwere still recovering, two of them helping their crouching friend to his feet.
“Imagine what someone could do to an army if they had this.” Frank continued, so close that Magda could feel his breath on her cheek. She looked at him again, fearfully, and he shook his head, a hand resting on Magda’s shoulder. It felt paternal, like he was trying to get her to understand complex things that only adults knew about. “Imagine what they could do to the world. In the hand of the wrong sort of person, this chess piece is all it takes to destroy everything!”
This was a Frank Magda had never seen before, a man who knew dark secrets and who was burdened by them.
“We hold many items in the Society collection,” he said. “The dice is just one. This chess piece will be another. But there are many other items, Magda. Many dangerous, awful items. And only I know where they are.”
“But not in the cabinet.”
He said nothing.
“Why?” Magda asked. “Why only you?”
“Because not even the members of the Society can be trusted,” Frank said, his voice rising, eyes flashing with anger. “Isn’t that right?”
Magda wanted to argue, but she realised that Henrietta’s actions had already proven Frank right. Henrietta had tried to take things from the Clockwork Cabinet, to use them without Frank knowing, only to find the cabinet empty.
“Nobody can be trusted, not really, Magda,” Frank said, his mouth turning down at the corners, pulled by the weight of bitterness. “I know this in ways you will never understand.”
Magda blinked in the face of Frank’s certainty. “Do you trustme?”
He took a long while to answer. “I trust you more than anyone else,” he admitted. “But I’ve trusted people before, and it hasn’t ended well.”
“What people?” Magda asked.
Frank shook his head. “Doesn’t matter,” he said, avoiding her gaze. “I trust you and that’s why you’ll get my letter when I go. Everything you need to know will be in that. Until then, you’ll know what I want you to know and that’s the way it is.” He took a few steps away from thefountain. “I’m going,” he said, over his shoulder. “I don’t like being out with an artefact in my possession.”
“Will you call a meeting?” she asked, as he walked away.
He looked back at her over his shoulder. “I said I would.”
He sounded annoyed—maybe hurt, even—that she hadn’t taken him at his word.
“Will you invite Henrietta?”
“I always invite Henrietta,” he said, surprising Magda. “It’s up to her if she comes.”
Magda let him go. Across the park the men that Frank had controlled were also now moving away and the two women were already out of sight. Magda trembled again at the memory of the world stopping, at the awful, incredible moment of sudden stillness as Frank had controlled the movements of so many people with such ease.
The Frank she had just spoken to was so different from the Frank she held dear in her heart, the man always folded into his chair reading a book, the man she would always picture as if seen through the window of The House of Doors.
