Page 90 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
You can’t. You can’t make another Lukas. But what if it’s all he wants? What if he goes away and never bothers us again?
Magda looked at Frank, the branches around his neck, and at Henry with the ring almost free from her finger.
But what if the new Lukas is worse than him? What could two of them do?
Then she heard another voice in her mind, a voice that sounded a lot like Frank’s:This is why the Society exists, to put magical things away where they can’t do any harm!
Henry gasped suddenly, interrupting Magda’s warring thoughts, and her ring dropped to the carpet of branches at her feet. Then she too was restrained, just like Frank next to her, a thick branch with angry thorns and a large red rose at the end wrapping itself around her waist.
“Stop it, please,” Magda begged Lukas again, tears of frustration and fear welling in her eyes. “They haven’t done anything to you.”
“I haven’t done anything to them,” Lukas countered. “Make another me.”
Magda shook her head silently, denying him.
“I will take all of the items out of the magical box that you took from me,” Lukas said, eyes boring into Magda. “I will use them all. I will use them on people. I will use them on this world you love. You will do what I want.”
“No, you won’t!” Magda screamed at him. “The box is gone!”
Lukas stepped back from her and turned his head towards the end of the arbour, back in the direction where Magda had left James and Will. “No, it’s not,” he said. “It’s just not right here. Not yet.” And he smiled that sickly smile.
A moment later Magda heard rustling and creaking, and she saw movement off to her side, thick vines drawing backwards towards them, dragging heavy, bulbous forms along the ground as they slithered, shapes wrapped up and cocooned in thin stems and vibrant flowers. As the shapes bumped and juddered along the uneven ground, tugged slowly by the retracting vines, Magda thought of the prey of a spider, wrapped up and ready to be digested and eaten. The thick vines slowed to a halt and released the two mummy-like forms, leaving them still on the ground in front of Lukas. Magda saw the larger one twitching, something inside pushing against the bindings.
The branches unwound, ivy falling away to reveal Will and James. Will’s eyes were closed and his face colourless. James was blinking, the Impossible Box still held against his chest.
“I told you to run!” Magda wailed at James.
“We tried,” James croaked.
Lukas bent to take the box, but James resisted with a stern “No!”
Then he fell silent, and his hands dropped to his sides, his eyes staring straight up to the roof of the arbour as the chess piece restrained him. Lukas took the box in his free hand and walked a few steps away from Magda to sit cross-legged on the ground once again. His left hand remained in a fist, holding the chess piece, restraining all of Magda’s friends with no effort at all. He seemed to wield the magical items so easily. She remembered how much effort Frank had exerted to stop people in Regent’s Park. Lukas showed no signs of any such effort. He placed the box down in front of him, resting on the tangled mat, and opened the lid. He stared into it silently.
Magda looked around her. Frank and Henry stood where they were, bound by branches, kissed by thorns and roses, and James lay in the road, staring straight upwards, unblinking, all three of them controlled by Lukas. Will lay next to James, unconscious and motionless.
Is he dead? Is poor Will dead? God, I can’t bear it!
In front of her Lukas reached into the box with his free hand, his eyes fixed on Magda.
What do I do?
A Promise
Magda raised her eyes to the roof of boughs and flowers high above her, despairing. How had events conspired so that it fell to her to deal with all that had happened? Why was this responsibility on her shoulders?
Because you love the magic, don’t you, Magda? It’s so exciting, isn’t it?
She looked around at Frank and Henry, and then Will and James, her vision blurry with tears. Here was the sum total of everyone she knew, everyone who was in anyway close to her, damaged and destroyed and entirely under the control of this strange, impossible man.
And in front of her, on the carpet of stems and branches, Lukas sat with one arm in the box. His expression changed, eyes and mouth forming wide O’s, and he sat back, withdrawing his arm. The hand that emerged held a simple flute, carved out of a single piece of light-coloured wood, three finger holes along its length. Lukas studied the simple instrument for a moment, rolling it between his fingers like he was rolling up a cigarette. Magda had no idea what the flute would do.
James would know. Hememorisedthe book.
She glanced towards him, but he hadn’t moved. He remained trapped, controlled by the chess piece still gripped in Lukas’s left hand. Magda remembered the kiss, the gamble she had taken, so unlike her. Was she only ever brave enough to do something like that at the end ofthe world? Was that the sort of coward she was? She hated the thought it might be her last kiss. Because where did this end? What could possibly happen now that would stop this disaster unfolding? London was already consumed by Lukas’s monstrous roses; what more could he do with the things in the Impossible Box?
Magda couldn’t give Lukas what he wanted, but she couldn’t stop what he would do if she didn’t.
“I wonder what this does,” Lukas mused, as he placed the flute on the ground, between him and the box.
