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  Isabelle remained a mystery to the papers and magazines, the silent screaming girl who had vanished. Many assumed she had died in the fire at the theatre along with Mr. Cecil, who had also disappeared. Beatrice decided that Isabelle would have liked that story. It was dramatic, at least.

  In time the people who’d watched Isabelle on the screen, who had loved her and wished to be her parents, her brother, her sister, her protectors, forgot that she’d existed. Many of the silent film stars retired as the “talkies” took over. Frankenstein was never released. The only copy had burned up in the Theatre Eternal.

  When she was sixteen Beatrice packed up her suitcase and returned to the farm outside Lethbridge. She had a small log house built there. She finished her schooling, took more schooling, and received an anthropology degree. She travelled the country by train, then the world by ship and airship and airplane, and spent many years just seeing what there was to be seen. Her favourite place was the pyramids at Giza. She visited them twice.

  She kept journals, and those journals eventually became books that people in many countries read. She often received letters from young women who said she’d inspired them to travel. On their own. To see the world. To own it with their eyes and minds.

  But no matter how much she wrote or how far she travelled she only felt half of herself.

  Then she returned to the farm, to the log house she had built, and became a teacher. She was known as Miss Scarves to her students, because she continued to wear scarves over her head. They were from every land she’d set foot in.

  When she had been back at the farm for several years, she received a letter from Raul. It had several small drawings in it. One was of her scarves: I seem to be able to make a living from these chicken scratches. I often think of you, friendbird. It was addressed from Mexico City. She had never seen the ancient ruins there.

  I will go one day, she decided.

  When The Wizard of Oz came to Lethbridge, she decided to take the long drive into the city. She had never had the courage to enter another movie theatre again, but this time, this time she would go in. After all, it was the book she’d read to Isabelle at least ten thousand times. Beatrice steeled herself as she sat in the theatre and waited for the projector to show her that other world.

  It was in the black-and-white scenes at the beginning and the end of the movie that she first spotted something. Just a movement out of the corner of her eye. A figure. It set her heart racing. She stayed for the second showing and watched that exact place on the screen and was certain she had seen something amazing. At the late-evening showing it became perfectly clear.

  Isabelle was there. She was far in the background of the movie and was waving. Beatrice looked around the crowd. No one else seemed to notice her sister. But she was there, smiling and waving. And Beatrice felt that the place inside her heart, the place that belonged only to her and her sister, was full. Isabelle wasn’t dead, perhaps would never be dead. Beatrice came back for the showing the following day and later watched Babes in Arms and there was Isabelle again, a character walking in the background. She winked at Beatrice. Actually winked!

  Beatrice rented a hotel room across the street and watched ten more movies. She saw Isabelle again and again. Always the same age. In the background. Enjoying that other life.

  A few days later Beatrice went back to the home quarter and into her house. She sat by her mother’s stove, which had survived the fire. She’d had it cleaned and fixed, and she used it every day. Her mother had heated her father’s coffee on this stove. Her father had heated their milk on it. In some ways her father and mother were still in the room.

  It came to her, that night. Films were a view into another world. And somehow, Isabelle had survived in that world. Her spirit had become indomitable. The screen held so many stories. Her sister had fallen into one, then another, was perhaps going from story to story now. Just like people did in real life.

  Beatrice smiled as she pushed another log of wood into the stove. Isabelle had won. They had won.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  No book leaps fully formed from the void. I’d like to thank Hadley Dyer, Scott Treimel, Alice Kuipers, Kenneth Oppel, Chandra Wohleber, and Maria Golikova for helping to bring this book out of the darkness and into the light.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ARTHUR SLADE was raised on a ranch in the Cypress Hills of Saskatchewan. He is the author of eighteen novels for young readers, including The Hunchback Assignments, which won the prestigious TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award, its three sequels, and Dust, winner of the Governor General’s Award for Children’s Literature. He is also the author of the acclaimed graphic novel Modo: Ember’s End. He lives in the mythical city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Visit him at www.arthurslade.com.

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  CREDITS

  COVER IMAGE: ELISABETH ANSLEY/TREVILLION IMAGES

  COVER DESIGN: DAVID A. GEE

  COPYRIGHT

  FLICKERS

  Copyright © 2016 by Arthur Slade.

  All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

  FIRST CANADIAN EDITION.

  EPub Edition: March 2016 ISBN: 9781443416672

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  ISBN 978-1-44341-665-8

  RRD 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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