Page 93 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
Lukas dropped his eyes to the box, his face expressionless.
“And I want the things you took from my mum. Her journal, the items in her bag. I want all of it.”
“But I like the magical items,” Lukas murmured to himself, and to Magda he seemed to be wrestling with the decision.
“I know you do,” she said, nodding, trying to show that she was on his side. “It’s a decision about what you would prefer. Do you prefer tobe alone with the magical items? Or do you want to give up the magical items and have a friend?”
Lukas sat up a little straighter, resting his hands on his knees, and the look he gave Magda was more calculating, his head turning slightly, eyes narrowed. “It’s a trick.”
Magda shrugged, and felt a fresh tear roll down her cheek. He had to trust her. “It’s not a trick, Lukas. I will help you if you let me. You just have to give up the magical things.”
Lukas didn’t react. He was balanced on a precipice that would decide whether or not the nightmare would end. The light shifted and changed as flowers bloomed and died, colours bouncing off the glass and metal of the cars behind Lukas. The only sound was the steady creaking on all sides, the distant patter of rain, and the wailing of distant sirens.
This is the moment. Youhave tomake it work. For Frank, for Henry and poor Will. And for you and James. For everyone. Make him believe!
She held out her hand to him, like they were meeting for the first time. “We should shake on it.”
“Shake?” he asked, not understanding.
She tried to smile at him, and she tried to make that smile friendly rather than fearful. “It’s what people do when they are making a deal, when they are making a promise. They shake hands. It’s what friends do when they meet. It means we trust each other.”
Lukas looked at her extended hand for a few moments, long enough that Magda’s arm started to tremble, that she started to hear the thudding of her heart in her ears. Then his eyes touched hers and something changed in his expression, the line of his mouth softening, the muscles in his cheeks relaxing. His eyes remained flat and lifeless, but his face told a story of a changing mind, a decision made.
He’s choosing to believe.
Lukas picked up the items in front of him—the flute, the cuff links, and the fountain pen—and he placed them inside Imelda’s bag. Then the chess piece dropped from his left hand into the bag. Then he reached forward as if to shake before stopping, his hand hanging in the air a footaway from Magda’s. “I just don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Magda smiled despite the tears rolling freely down her cheeks. “I know, Lukas, I know,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion, her throat hot and sore.
Lukas gripped Magda’s hand with his own. He felt warm, his skin rough, fingers lumpy with big knuckles, and Magda flinched inwardly at the contact. Then a smile stretched Lukas’s lips, and Magda thought he was trying to show that he was happy, that he believed her.
And then it all changed, in an instant, when Magda betrayed him.
Things That Are Put Away
“I’m sorry, Lukas,” she said, as she shook his hand. “But I need to put you away now.”
Before Lukas could absorb the meaning of her words, before he could do more than crease his brow, Magda took hold of him by the wrist with her free hand. Clambering to her knees and pushing forward with her body weight, she shoved his hand towards the open mouth of the Impossible Box.
Magda remembered what Frank had told her in the basement beneath Bell Street Books:You can put anything in here, of any size. Not just things that look like they would fit. Anything. You just push it in, and the box will grab it and hold it.
Lukas’s fingers were inside before he even started to resist, his arm stiffening and muscles engaging. “You lied!” he shouted at her, eyes flaring.
Magda looked away, unable to bear the fury and fear on his face, the products of her betrayal. She pushed with all of her strength, forcing Lukas’s hand into the Impossible Box, trying to put him away like any other artefact.
“No!” Lukas shouted, and Magda was aware of a sudden rustling and scraping as branches and stems and flowers writhed uneasily on all sides. Stems whipped through the air, thorns slicing Magda’s raw cheeksand battering off her raincoat, but she ignored them. All of her energy, the weight of her whole body, pushed against Lukas.
“No!” Lukas shouted again, a terrified, high-pitched squeal, and flowers above and around them glowed and pulsed, branches beating the ground. Magda felt something on her leg and ignored it too, then something bumping against the soles of her feet behind her, but she refused to be distracted. Then she saw movement out of the corner of her eye and could ignore it no more. She saw rats, thousands of rats, some on their backs, appearing as if from nowhere, and then springing up onto their feet, other rats already darting around and sniffing the air.
What the hell? He can summonrats?
A buzzing filled her ears, the growing drone of hundreds of flies and bees and wasps and other insects and finally Magda looked at Lukas, at his contorted, furious face, and saw the crucifix dangling from his neck, swinging free in the air as he fought against her.
He’s resurrecting every dead thing!
She felt her strength weaken, her resolve dilute, her aching body giving up on her.
What if I can’t stop him? What will he do to the world now that I’ve made him angry?
