Maddie Ellis and the Malibu Movie Colony is an old-fashioned mystery serial set during the end of the silent movie era. Previous chapters are available online at topanganewtimes.com under the Storyland menu. In chapter 14, Maddie pitches her vision for the troubled film script she was hired to rewrite, and finds the plot thickening back at her home in the Malibu Colony, where there is evidence that someone has been in her house again during her absence. Join us as we travel back in time to 1928.
Hoffmann was distraught as they drove away from the Hollywood Hotel. “This is terrible,” he said. “I knew Miss Auclair was upset but not why.” The producer, so prim and proper in his elegant gray suit, looked like he wanted to cry.
“Instead of being the film’s leading attraction he is becoming a liability,” Milo agreed.
“The production is in enough trouble without this,” Hoffmann said. “Can you imagine the headlines if that beastly story about the boat were to get out? You weren’t exaggerating, were you, Devlin, when you said that Roberts was responsible for almost drowning Miss Auclair, were you?
“I wasn’t,” Milo replied. “It was fortunate that Miss Ellis and I were there.”
“And that Miss Auclair knew how to swim and didn’t lose her head,” Maddie added. “She could easily have died.”
“We need Roberts,” Hoffmann groaned. “We must have him for the film.”
As much as she disliked Roberts, Maddie agreed with Hoffmann. They needed him to complete the film, whether they liked it or not. She could, at least, do everything in her power as a writer, to limit his role.
“You have met all of the principals now, Miss Ellis,” Milo said, in an apparent attempt to change the subject. “What do you propose?”
“Yes, yes, now will you share what you have in mind to save this production, before the bills bury us?” Hoffmann exclaimed. “Can it be saved?”
“It can and will,” Maddie told him firmly. “Let me tell you a story, Mr Hoffmann.”
She was aware that the success or failure of the entire project was riding on her skills as a storyteller at that moment and felt a moment of panic. “You can do this,” she told herself. “It’s just like telling bedtime stories to Jimmy and Anna when we were children. ‘Once upon a time…’” she told herself, and began:
“Sultana Kahina, the Queen of Afar, it is said, was of the lineage of the Queen of Sheba, and she, like her illustrious ancestress, was famed for her beauty and goodness. The land of Afar prospered under her care.
Alas, when the riches of Afar reached the markets of the great city of Shoa, the Sultan of that realm took notice. He lusted to add the distant country to his empire. Afar, though prosperous, was small, and protected not by an army but by a vast desert wilderness. That was as nothing to the mighty Sultan. His troops were as numerous as the grains of sand, his camels able to endure without water for days on end, and his determination boundless.
The people of Afar were brave but outnumbered and the city soon fell. The queen, injured and alone save for Saba, her faithful handmaiden, prepared to surrender the palace to the invader, but there was one last thing that she could do. The crown of the queens of Afar was said to have been handed down, mother to daughter, from Queen Sheba herself.
At the center of the circlet was a stone, and in the center of the stone was the Seal of Solomon, the king who is said to have given this jewel as a token of his love from his own hand, and beneath the seal there was, imprisoned in the stone itself, a great and powerful Djinn.
That Djinn, so the story goes, would grant one wish to each who held the crown, but only one wish, and the wish must be a selfless wish. The power could be used only for the good of all and not the selfish desires of the one who held it.
The Queen took the crown and wished with all of her heart that her people would receive mercy from the invaders, even if she did not.
Queen Kahina then gave the crown to her handmaiden. “Go Saba, quickly! Hide this holy relic so our enemy will not find it, then go to safety.”
But there was no time. As the soldiers advanced on them, the handmaiden made her own wish, that the queen be delivered safely from her captors.
Perhaps that wish was why the Sultan did not execute the Queen. Instead, he bore her and her handmaiden away with him to Shoa, and left behind a general to govern the kingdom of Afar. The general was a hard man but not a cruel one. Although the land had fallen and there was much sorrow, the queen’s wish had spared her people the scourge and the executioner’s axe.
So it was that Queen Kahina and the faithful Saba were carried off to Shoa by the Sultan’s men, but the handmaiden’s wish was even then winging its way to heaven.
“Deliverance shall be yours,” said the Djinn. Now, Djinn live forever, and time to them as a plaything is to a child. And so the Djinn reached out its hand into the river of time, and plucked from it a champion from our world…”
The two men had listened without interrupting, much better-behaved than Maddie’s younger siblings had been. James and Anna had always had questions—hundreds of them. They would have wanted to know what the Djinn looked like, and how it fit into the jewel, and what color the jewel was, and what would happen if someone wished for something the Djinn couldn’t deliver, and why the queen hadn’t fought back, or why she hadn’t escaped through a handy secret passageway. Jimmy rested in France beneath the poppies in a field of “crosses row on row,” and Anna was half the country away with a daughter of her own to tell stories to, but those two young critics lived on in Maddie’s heart. She wrote with them in mind.
Hoffmann and Milo just sat there and looked at her, expectant and somewhat bemused. Maddie broke the spell herself. She pulled an outline of her revisions from her handbag and handed it to them.
“In the original script the Djinn granted wishes to whoever held the crown,” she said. “In this draft, he can only grant one wish to each person, and it must be a selfless wish, one that benefits others.”
“That leaves the Sultan out,” Milo said, shaking off the spell and looking over Hoffmann’s shoulder at the outline.
“I think you’ll find it leaves out Roberts’ character, too,” Maddie said.
“But why?” asked Hoffmann. He is the hero, should he not then be pure of heart?”
“He’s the antihero,” Maddie said. “If you think about it, everything he does is for selfish reasons.”
“Then who gets a wish?” Hoffmann asked, bewildered.
“The queen, who wishes that the Sultan will have mercy on her people; her handmaiden, who wishes for deliverance for her queen; and, in the end, Allen Smith, but only because Omar has helped him to see reason, and guided him to make the wish to put everything right.”
“But Omar is a villain,” Hoffmann exclaimed.
“He’s the real hero,” Maddie said. “He and the handmaiden.”
“Then why can’t he make the wish himself?” Milo asked.
“Because he isn’t in the tomb with the Queen and Smith at the end of the film. Only Smith can make that wish.”
“Tell us how it works, Maddie,” Milo said.
“The handmaiden—Saba—makes the wish that brings archeologist Allen Smith and his assistant and guide Raj Omar into the past to save the Queen.”
“But what about what’s-his-name, the actor playing the king?” Hoffmann asked. “He’s in the South of France right now recovering from a heart attack.”
“Do we need a king?” Maddie asked. “Isabel is willing to return to the production and she is already the ‘Queen of Afar.’ She can do her own negotiating. She doesn’t need a father. He doesn’t add anything to the story.
“Off with his head, eh?” Milo said, amused.
“Nothing so revolutionary,” Maddie replied. “A pen—or typewriter—not a sword. The Sultan takes the crown from the Queen, or rather, from the handmaiden. He doesn’t know about the Djinn and wouldn’t be able to use the power if he did, because he could only make selfish wishes, but the crown is still a valuable piece of jewelry, so he keeps it as a trophy. That sets up the sequence that was already filmed with Smith and Omar stealing it back.
“When he arrives in the past, Smith is able to save the queen with his modern medical knowledge, not the help of the Djinn. That explains why the Djinn chose him. When they are captured after retrieving the crown Smith is too self-involved to set things right. The story will be more compelling without the Djinn getting him out of trouble every few minutes.
“That will require some new scenes,” Milo said. “And also some judicious editing, but that can only be an improvement. No one is happy with how the Djinn appears and disappears.”
“We can keep the scene where the Sultan tries to convert Omar to his side,” Maddie continued. “We need only film a scene where he explains that he will use what he learned to help save the queen. Omar guides Smith to make the final, selfless wish to restore order and allow history to take its right course. The Djinn can then put everyone back where they belong.”
“How does it end?” Milo asked.
“Omar, who was outside of the sealed tomb, finds himself back in the present in front of the ruins,” Maddie said. “Smith is in the now-empty tomb chamber. Smith gives a cry of anguish and flees. The crown is there, lying on the floor. Omar uses it to make one final wish, and frees the Djinn. The Djinn shows him the Queen, serene and beautiful on the throne of her people, with the handmaiden beside her. The vision disappears, and Omar, still holding the crown, walks out of the tomb into the sunlight.
“There you have it gentlemen. I think the narrative now has the right resonance. I believe you can salvage most of the footage that has already been filmed with some clever editing and new titles.”
Milo was pouring over the pages that laid out the story treatment. “I think you’ve done it, Maddie!” he said. “It has real potential. It could be both the fairytale you envisioned, Hoffmann, but also a serious film.”
They discussed it all the way back to the studio, and were still discussing it when Maddie took her leave. She promised to return the next morning with a fuller outline of her proposed changes.
It was very late by the time she drove down the incline and onto the coast route and she was tired, but the waning full moon was still bright and the cold air smelled bracingly of the ocean. She felt once again that feeling of lightness, as if she was leaving the weight of responsibility behind.
There was no one on the road. The little red Nash carried her swiftly and smoothly along the winding sea road towards home.
When Maddie entered the house she once again had the unsettling feeling that someone else had been there. Everything looked exactly the way it had when she left, but once again there was just that hint of a foreign smell in the air—cigarette smoke was amazingly pervasive. Once again, there was nothing out of place that she could see.
She wandered into the kitchen and opened the cupboard. The smoked oysters reminded her of Roberts. He was sensationally good looking and he had turned the full force of his charm on her today, but she had felt nothing except revulsion. He had abused and endangered a girl who was barely more than a child and his excuse was that he was play-acting a pirate, but it wasn’t an act. Maddie thought that the pirate was his true face: selfish and lawless. She resolutely pushed him out of her thoughts and opened a can of soup.
Maddie took a shower, put on a soft and warm dressing gown of quilted amber-colored silk. She sat down on the living room sofa, and tried to read a book, but it was too quiet. Even the ticking of the clock on the stair landing seemed loud.
“This is ridiculous,” she told the suit of armor. “I’m going to bed.”
She couldn’t sleep. Remembering the cocoa in the cupboard, she rose and went downstairs again, found a saucepan, and put the milk on to heat. She measured sugar into a dish and reached for a tin of cocoa.
The yellow container positively radiated comfort and domesticity. The image on the tin featured a serene Dutch housewife handing a steaming cup full of wholesome cocoa to a curly-haired tot.
Cocoa was a special treat when Maddie was a child, reserved for holidays and especially cold nights. She hadn’t had any in years, not since before her sister Anna left home. They used to have it sometimes for old time’s sake.
She opened the tin and began measuring cocoa. Then stopped and stared at the tin again. Hadn’t all the tins been pink when she first saw them in the cupboard? Hadn’t the Dutch housewife depicted on the tin been standing alone? How had Maddie not noticed the child? She went to look. There were three yellow tins on the shelf. They matched the one on the counter.
All of the tins appeared brand new and untouched. She stared at them in consternation, then opened the other three. They were filled with cocoa right up to the top. She put all four tins back on the shelf. The saucepan boiled over and the kitchen was filled with the smell of scorched milk. Maddie swore, and snatched the pan off the range.
By the time she had ruefully scrubbed the stove and the burned pot she didn’t feel much like having cocoa anymore. She went to bed. It was a long time before she fell asleep.
