A dark, rich scent swirled from the warm interior. The smooth black leather was soft and warm beneath him, the car fancier than a church. A basket of toys waited on the seat, a splash of color in an otherwise obsidian tomb. The door shut like a sealing vault before he could ask who the toys were for.
Jackie rose on his knees, pressing his hands to the cool, black glass. “Mummy!” She turned away, deaf to his cries and he pounded his palms harder. “Mum!” She didn’t look back. “Mum, wait!”
The car began to move.
Jackie sat back, wiping away tears as pressure built in his chest. He cried so hard he could hardly breathe. But the car kept moving.
Buildings whooshed by, replaced by streets he didn’t recognize, then hedgerows and fields so vivid and green they hurt his eyes. The sky opened up, wider than any sky he’d ever seen, and the world no longer appeared drenched in grey.
It was his first car ride, and a rather long one. He didn’t want to touch the toys, but after a while, when his sobs had slowed to short breathy hiccups, he gave in to temptation and pulled a brightly colored book from the basket.
He traced the letters on the cover and slowly sounded them out. “Jack…and…the…” He didn’t know how to say that big word. He looked at the back of the driver’s head. “What does this say?”
Dark lenses looked back at him from the mirror, but the driver didn’t respond.
“Bees,” Jackie decided. “Jack and the Bees.”
With a sniffle, he opened the book, choosing not to read the words, but getting just as much pleasure from the colorful picture. There was a cow and a boy. He planted seeds that grew into a long vine that reached the clouds. Then there was a giant.
When the car slowed, black iron gates appeared, twisted into leaves and topped with spikes that reminded him of sharp teeth.
“I’m here with the boy,” the driver said to a post with a tiny box.
The gates opened inward, revealing a driveway that stretched like the tongue of a sleeping giant. The building at the end was too big to be a house. A castle, maybe.
It rose from the hill as if seated among clouds. Thick, white columns framed the entrance as a hundred windows stared out like eyes. They parked beside a fountain with three stone horses rearing upward and spraying water into the sunlight.
The door opened and Jackie sank deeper into the shadows of the car.
“Come on. This way. The chancellor is waiting.”
His legs shook as he climbed out, white gravel crunching beneath his tattered, dirty shoes. He didn’t belong in this pristine place.
A woman stood in the entrance, tall and thin, dressed in black, grey hair pulled so tight it stretched her face. She looked at Jackie like a stain on the carpet.
“He’ll need to be washed.” She touched his hair, as if searching for something hidden in the strands. “And those clothes should go right in the rubbish.”
“Is this a church?” he asked, stepping under the high ceiling with a dome glass that let the sun in. Gold framed paintings hung on every wall, depicting clouds, twisting vines, and cherubs stroking harps. Even the white tile floor gleamed.
“Don’t dawdle.” The woman’s voice cracked like a whip as she urged him up the sprawling staircase. “What’s your name?”
“Jack Fitzgerald Thorne.”
“That’s a long name for such a little boy.”
“My mum calls me Jackie.”
They stopped before a door twice the usual size, and she knocked three times.
“Enter.”
She led him inside a room where bookshelves lined every wall. Flames danced in a fireplace, making the air warm and dry. Behind an enormous desk sat a man like a king on a throne.
“The boy is here.”
The man looked up from his work and drummed fat fingers along the surface of the desk. A gold ring glinted just below his knuckle with the letters RA. “Well, bring him forward. Let me see what I’ve paid for.”
Jackie dug in his heels as she pulled him closer to the desk. The man rose, eclipsing whatever daylight filtered from the window behind him. His body spilled over the seams of his clothes like dough rising from a pan. As he looked down at Jackie, taking his measure, his chin rested on sagging folds of skin.
