Page 91 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
“Why are you doing all this, Lukas?” Magda asked, trying to keep her tone light despite her tears, trying to sound like a concerned friend rather than a stranger challenging him.
“What do you mean?” he asked, looking at her as he reached into the box once again.
Magda gestured backwards through the arbour, towards where Bell Street lay beyond the flowers and the branches, the rows of elegant townhouses that were now barely visible. “All of this. You’ve changed the street. All the flowers. You’ve blocked all these people’s homes and businesses. You’re changing the city. Why did you do that?”
“I don’t like cities,” Lukas said. “I ran away from a city when I was a child because nobody wanted me around. I like the wilderness. The city... it is all straight lines and boxes and people staring at me. But the wilderness, the plants and flowers and the trees, they don’t hate me. Not like people hate me. So I changed it.” He withdrew his hand from the box again. “I realised I can change things if I want to. Do you like the flowers here? They are different from the flowers I am used to.”
Lukas uncurled his fingers to reveal that he was holding two small items in his palm. He bounced his hand and the simple gold cuff links jostled and bumped together, edges catching the light from the glowing roses overheard and winking at Magda in multiple colours. “I wonder what these are?”
One of the strange, gangly sunflowers, its large red head full of seeds, bobbed slightly as if to peer over Lukas’s shoulder. Magda thought there was something carnivorous about that flower, even though it had no obvious mouth. It looked hungry. Suddenly she was convinced thatthe seeds were in fact teeth, and the flower would open up to reveal a vast, circular mouth.
“Cuff links,” Magda said. “They’re cuff links.”
Lukas looked at her blankly, not understanding.
“They’re used to fasten the cuffs of a shirt,” she said, tapping her wrist.
Lukas regarded the cuff links again, but Magda sensed her explanation did not translate to understanding. He laid the cuff links down next to the flute.
“I was happy by myself,” Lukas continued, reaching once more into the box. Magda watched his arm as it sunk up to his elbow. “But then Imelda found me. And she had these things that felt different to me. Things that did things. They were the first things I had ever known that interested me.” His brow creased slightly into a frown. “I don’t remember much before I met Imelda. There was nothing worth remembering. But then I had Imelda’s bag and it had things inside. I didn’t know what they were, but I liked having them. I liked using them. But I didn’t go looking for them, Magda. I didn’t ask Imelda to find me. I didn’t kill her and steal the items. It was an accident.”
Magda swallowed, something large and hot in her throat. She wanted to ask Lukas about her mother, about things Imelda might have said to him that day she had died, how she had looked. Was she happy or sad? But she also didn’t want to ask these things, because maybe it would be worse to know than not know.
“I took the items and I learned about them, and I used them,” Lukas continued, telling his tale in his pinched, thin voice. “I was happy by myself with my flowers and my plants. But then I worked out what the map did. And the map took me to the man with the gun.” Lukas frowned, his expression darkening. “And he had the flask.” Lukas tapped the item on the chain around his neck with the knuckles of his clenched left hand. “When I drink from the flask I can see things. I can see the magic. I can see the wings. You have beautiful wings, Magda.”
“Thank you.”
Why are you saying thank you to the man like he just complimented you at a party?
Because it was polite to thank someone who had just complimented you. Magda couldn’t simply discard a lifetime of good manners, as much as it seemed crazy in the circumstances to thank him.
Never mind that. Think! Do something!
“I don’t have any wings,” Lukas reflected, his tone sounding so sad. “It’s like the old man said. I am different. I am not human. But then the man with the gun came and tried to kill me. And then you and your friends came. I didn’t ask you to come. You came looking for me.”
“No, that’s not right, Lukas,” Magda said, shaking her head emphatically. “I didn’t even know you existed.”
Lukas started withdrawing his hand for the third time.
“I knew about you,” he said. “I read Imelda’s words. She said you were kind and you had lots of friends.” He smiled at her, but it was a bitter expression. “I thought you might want to be my friend. We both have magical items. We like magical things. That’s what friends do, isn’t it? Friends like the same things.”
His hand emerged from the box and this time it was holding a black fountain pen with a golden nib. It was a beautiful thing, Magda thought, more so than the flute or the cuff links. Lukas studied it, rolling the pen between his fingers, and then he placed it next to the other items.
“But you said you hated me.”
Magda flinched at the accusation, remembering shouting those words at Lukas before flying off into the night. “You tortured my mother, Lukas. You broke her mind!”
Lukas tilted his head, frowning again as if he didn’t understand. “I brought her back to life. Why wouldn’t someone want to be brought back to life?” Magda shook her head at his failure to see what he had done. “Being dead is bad. Being alive is good. I brought her back for you, because I thought you would like that. It’s not my fault she was broken.”
“She was in agony!” Magda shouted, and the branches hissed and writhed on all sides in response. “You said yourself she’d gone mad. But she’s just one part of this. What about all the other people you’ve hurt? Why did you come all the way here just to destroy things?”
“I came here because your friends stole the box,” he said. “I used the knife and the wind and followed them. I can see the colours of the box,Magda, the magic. I followed it all the way here to this big city. And then I saw the colours of the book the old man has. So I came to see. But I brought the flowers because they keep me company. Not like people. Not like you, Magda.”
Magda swallowed, trembling. She hated the way he spoke—it wasn’t like a normal person. He spoke in short sentences, repeating words and ideas often. It felt unnatural, just like everything about him.
“I haven’t hurt anyone,” Lukas continued. “Only that man with the gun, but he tried to kill me first. He came looking for me, I didn’t search him out. I just defended myself.”
Magda gestured along the street once more. “What about this, what about all the harm you’ve caused?”
