Page 72 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
Lukas reached into the bag he was carrying—Magda’s mother’s bag—and removed a thin book. “I’ve read this so many times!” he said, his eyes wide and white, that awful smile on his face. “I know all about you! Imelda talks about you so much!”
It took Magda a moment to realise that the man was holding her mother’s final journal, the notebook Imelda would have been carrying when she’d died.
He’s had it all this time! He knows what Mum was thinking. He knows and I don’t.
Magda shook her head quickly as she stared at this man’s thick, grubby fingers on her mother’s journal. “You killed her,” Magda exclaimed. She felt Henry’s hand tightening on her own, perhaps a squeeze of reassurance, or warning. “You killed my mum.”
The man blinked back at her, his smile falling. “It was an accident.”
Magda took a step forward, her fury overriding her fear. “Whatwas an accident?”
“It was an accident,” the man repeated, returning the journal to the bag. He pushed the bag around to his back, as if trying to keep it away from Magda. “She was my friend.”
“Friend?” Henry asked, and Magda heard the scepticism dripping from that one word.
“I met her on a hill, but I was there first!” The man’s eyes darted away, and he took a step backwards. “I was watching the sunset. She fell. I didn’t do anything!”
Magda stared at the man, feeling all the muscles in her face tighten with anger.
“I can take the bag,” Henrietta said to her.
“You can’t take it!” the man shouted, but to Magda it sounded panicked more than angry.
“That bag belongs to Imelda,” Henry snapped back. “And everything in it. Everything that Imelda had belongs to Magda.”
Lukas shook his head at them, then he reached back into the bag and removed the Impossible Box. “This wasn’t Imelda’s.”
The bird in the woods called again—hoo-woo—as if surprised by this development.
Magda looked at Henry and then James, shocked by the appearance of the box. What had happened to Owen?
“The other man brought me this,” Lukas said, as if he could hear Magda’s thoughts. “The man with the stained wings.” Lukas narrowed his eyes as he regarded the three of them, the expression of a man just beginning to suspect he was being conned. “You all have wings too. I can see it. I drank from the flask already today so I can see your wings.”
Magda shook her head, not understanding. This man appearing out of the woods, a complete surprise, and everything he was saying, it was impossible for her to decipher.
I don’t understand what is going on here.
“Everyone has wings,” Lukas continued. “Even the dead, but their wings are black and see-through like shadows.” He looked at the box for a moment. “I don’t have any wings. I’m different.”
Henry released Magda’s hand and took a few paces forward.
“Henry!” Magda gasped.
“Hand it over,” Henry said, flapping her hand like she was encouraging Lukas towards her.
Lukas took a step backwards, eyes fixed on Henry as she approached. At the same time he returned the Impossible Box to the bag. “It’s mine,” he complained, sounding to Magda like a spoiled child.
“It’s not. It was stolen from us, and we need it back.”
Henry continued her advance and Magda was aware of James sidestepping to stand next to her, his large shape somehow reassuring and soothing in the midst of all of this madness.
“I can take it off you,” Henry warned the man. “I don’t need your permission.”
“No!” Lukas barked in reply, and Magda thought of the dog on the chain she had seen as they had driven into Masters.
And then Henry stopped suddenly, surprisingly motionless. Lukas slid his eyes over to Magda, now ignoring Henry entirely as if she weren’t there.
“She was my friend!” he complained, and for a moment Magda thought he was talking about Henry. “I brought her back to talk to her.”
