The Emerald Atlas

by John Stephens

  “But you gave me that memory!” Now that it was out, Kate wanted an answer. “You sent me to that moment! You had to have known!”

  “Well, I suspected, yes. Partly from your story. But also because one cannot look at you and fail to see your mother.”

  This silenced Kate. She looked like her mother? Against her will, she felt a thrill of joy.

  “Wait!” Emma cried, finding her voice. “What’re you talking about? How’s Dr. Pym know our parents?”

  “Your parents”—Dr. Pym replaced his glasses—“are very close friends of mine. Richard and Clare. Those are their names.”

  “But—no! That’s not—you would’ve told us! You—why didn’t you tell us?”

  “Again, my dear, when could I possibly—”

  “When we met you!” Emma was almost shouting now. “When we got to that stupid orphanage in the first place!”

  “My dear Emma, that is more than fifteen years in the future. I can’t very well explain why I did something that I haven’t done yet.”

  “But how …” Michael was looking at Kate.

  Here it comes, she thought.

  “… did you find out Dr. Pym knew our parents?”

  Kate swallowed. Her throat was like paper.

  “Our mom … was there. In the past. When I saw Dr. Pym. I … didn’t tell you.”

  For a long moment, Michael and Emma simply stared at her. On their faces were expressions of utter disbelief. Not that Kate had seen their mother. But that she hadn’t told them. Emma began crying, and the sight of it almost broke Kate’s heart.

  “Emma—”

  “Where are they?!” Emma wrenched her head toward Dr. Pym. “Take us to them! Take us there now!”

  “Emma—”

  “Now! I want to see them now!”

  “My dear,” Dr. Pym said, “don’t you know I would like nothing better than to do just that? But I’m afraid it’s not that simple.”

  “Why not?!” Tears were streaming down Emma’s face.

  “He can’t take us now,” Michael said quietly. “He has to stop the Countess first.”

  “Shut up!” Emma snatched off the badge Robbie had given him and threw it into the corner. “And that’s what I think of your stupid medal!”

  “Emma, stop it!”

  Emma jerked away from Kate’s hand.

  “Don’t touch me! You lied to us! You should’ve told us and you lied to us!”

  “I know, I’m sorry.” Again Kate reached for her sister and again Emma pushed her away.

  “I said don’t touch me!”

  Kate had to stand because Emma was also standing, and this time when she reached for her, Emma didn’t fight but let her sister hold her, and Kate felt how tight and angry she was, but she kept holding her and whispering, and slowly Emma’s sobs eased and her body relaxed.

  Finally, she asked, “Are you okay?”

  Emma nodded, sniffling, and wiped her sleeve across her face. She went to the corner of the room and retrieved Michael’s badge.

  “I’m sorry. I hope it’s not dented.”

  Michael forced a laugh. “You dent a piece of dwarf craftsmanship? Not likely.” But then he looked at her and offered a real smile. “It’s okay.”

  “Now,” Dr. Pym continued when they were settled and Michael was once again wearing his badge, “believe me, I do understand how confusing all this is and how badly you three want to see your parents. And I promise that once the Countess is defeated and the children are safe, I will answer any questions you have. But today, we have a great task before us and many whose lives depend on our success. That must be the focus of our efforts.”

  “But can’t you tell us anything?” Kate said. “Where they live? What their jobs are? Anything?”

  Dr. Pym sighed. “Very well. Your parents are academics. Professors.”

  “Our parents were teachers?” Emma’s tone was decidedly unexcited.

  “What was their field of study?” Michael asked.

  Emma let out a moan. “This is like the greatest day of your life, isn’t it?”

  “They are magical historians. It is not, I should say, a discipline treated very seriously in the academic world. But your parents believe in the importance of what they are doing. And they are both interested in the Books of Beginning. In fact, that was how they met. At a conference in Edinburgh. Your mother was delivering a paper dispelling a theory that a ninth-century Japanese shogun, called Rosho-Guzi, the Eater of Lives, had been in possession of one of the Books. Your father came up to her afterward, and, six months later, they were married. You see, children, the Books are in your blood.”

  “How did you meet them?” Kate asked.

  “In my own personal search for the missing two Books, I made a practice of following the current academic research. I read your parents’ articles and felt they were people I could trust. We began to work together. Of course, I hardly imagined who their children would turn out to be. In hindsight, yes, there were signs.…” He shrugged and let his hands fall. “But then, four years ago, just after Christmas, Katherine appeared in my study and that was that.”

  At the mention of Christmas, a memory shook loose in Kate’s mind, and she saw a tall, thin man standing in the doorway to her bedroom. The memory was from that last night with their parents. The pieces suddenly fell together, the feeling she’d had—in the library in Cambridge Falls, in the dwarfish dungeon—that she’d met Dr. Pym before.…

  “It was you! You took us from our parents!”

  “Perhaps. But again, what you’re talking about has yet to happen.”

  “Fine,” Kate said. “What did you mean, ‘who their children would turn out to be’? Who are we?”

  “You three are very special. And one day, when we have the time, I will explain it all.”

  Kate started to argue. They deserved to know—

  “And you will. When the moment is right. Katherine, you must learn to trust me.” He stood. “Now, I want to see how Robbie and Gabriel are coming along.”

  “Wait,” Michael said. “What’s our name?”

  “Your name. Yes, I suppose I can tell you that. Your real last name … is Wibberly.”

  The children looked at each other.

  “Wibberly?” Kate said. “You’re sure?”

  “Oh yes. It’s Wibberly, all right.”

  “At the orphanage, they said our name started with P!”

  “Did they? That’s odd.”

  “But you must’ve told them to call us that!” Kate protested. “You’re the one who took us there! Why would you tell them to call us P when our name was Wibberly?!”

  “I imagine I was trying to keep you hidden. The children W would’ve been too much of a tip-off.”

  “So why not just give us a different name?!” Michael said. “Smith! Or Jones! Anything! Do you know how much we got picked on having a letter for a last name?”

  “Hmm, I suppose I didn’t think that through. Apologies there. Now I must go. We will talk more later.”

  For a long time after the wizard left, none of the children spoke. Outside the door, they could hear the army beginning to move.

  “Wibberly,” Kate said. “It does … feel right.”

  “Yeah,” Michael agreed. “It does.”

  “I still like Penguin,” Emma said. “But I guess Wibberly’s okay.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kate said. “I should’ve told you right away about seeing Mom. I guess I just … I was afraid if I talked about it, I might lose it. Lose her. Again.”

  “I understand,” Michael said. “That’s why I write stuff down. It’s too easy to forget things. You write something down, you know it’s there.”

  He ran his hand over his notebook, and Kate suddenly saw him, a boy who’d had a whole life taken away, clinging to what he could.

  “Will you tell us now?” Emma asked. “Please?”

  Kate looked at the two of them, saw the trust they still had in her, that they would always have in her, and wo
ndered how she could’ve kept something like this to herself. It belonged to all of them or none of them. As she reached for the memory, she found that already some of the details had grown distant and fuzzy. She didn’t panic. She forced herself to focus on what she knew, the clothes their mother had been wearing, the color of her hair, the words she’d spoken, and the more she talked, the more she found she remembered; she described the warmth of her tone, a small mole on her cheek, the way her hand had rested on the doorknob; she talked about the room, describing the fire in the grate, the swirling reds and browns on the rug, Dr. Pym’s impossibly cluttered desk, the snow falling gently outside, and soon it was as if she was there again, standing before her mother, only this time Michael and Emma were with her and it was their memory as well. Kate knew that as time went on, Emma and Michael would change details to suit themselves, what their mother had been wearing, the things she’d said, the snow would become a rainstorm, but it made her feel better knowing that the memory now belonged to all of them, and together they would hold on to it, and hold on to their mother, more tightly than she ever could alone.

  Afterward, they were all silent. The air seemed to have gotten cooler, and through the walls came the reassuring sound of barked orders and of men and dwarves at work.

  Then Kate said, “I had a vision. That’s why I fainted. Not because I was hungry or anything.”

  She told them she had seen the battle in the Dead City. Only it had been different. There were fewer Screechers. And no dwarves or hordes of monsters rushing up from the deep. Just Gabriel’s small band of men. And they had won. They had beaten the Screechers. And then Gabriel’s men and the freed prisoners had joined forces and marched on the town.

  “But that’s not how it happened,” Emma said. “You must’ve seen it wrong.”

  Kate shrugged. “It’s what I saw.”

  “Was that the whole thing?” Michael asked.

  “No.”

  Kate said that in her vision, the Countess knew Gabriel and the others were coming and she moved herself and all the children to the boat in the center of the lake.

  “But why would you see something that didn’t happen?” Emma insisted. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Maybe it did happen,” Kate said. “Maybe it still does. Right before the vision, Robbie and Dr. Pym were talking about marching on the town. I think my vision was a warning.”

  “Warning about what?” Emma said. “Gabriel saved those kids, right? You must’ve seen that too?”

  Kate reached into her pocket and pulled out the two photographs she’d been carrying. They were still damp from her swim through the underground lake. There was the one of her in their bedroom in the house in Cambridge Falls, which Kate had thought of as their ticket home, and there was the other one, the last picture Abraham had ever taken. She studied Abraham’s photo, the dark figures emerging from the forest, the flare of their torches. She turned it over.

  “No. The dam broke, the boat went over the falls, and the children died. With her last breath, the Countess cursed the land.” She handed Michael the photo. “Abraham took this when it happened. Look at the back.”

  Written in a tiny scrawl were dozens of names. Kate pointed to one.

  Michael read, “Stephen McClattery.”

  “They’re all going to die.”

  “No!” Emma jumped to her feet. “It’s not gonna be like that! That was the other past! That’s what you saw! Before we ever got here! You said yourself Dr. Pym wasn’t there! And the dwarves! They gotta be good for something! They’ll stop her! It’ll be different this time! We weren’t there to help! It’s gotta be different! We’ll save the kids and then Dr. Pym will take us to see our parents! You heard him! He promised! You heard him, Kate!”

  The door banged open; Wallace stomped in.

  “Right, then. It’s chow time for you lot. Hup-hup-hup! Left foot. Right foot. Come on; army’ll be leaving soon!”

  “Go ahead,” Kate said. “I’ll be along in a second.”

  Michael slid Abraham’s photo into his notebook, then he and Emma headed out with the dwarf. At the last moment, Kate called her sister back. She held out the other photo, the one of her in their bedroom. “I think you should hold this.”

  “Really? Why?”

  Because I want you to have a picture of me, she almost said.

  “I just … think you should. Go on now.”

  And then she was alone.

  Kate knew with absolute certainty that if she did nothing, if she merely allowed Gabriel and Robbie and Dr. Pym to proceed with their plan, the children would die. Despite everything they’d done, nothing would be different. Time, Kate was learning, was like a river. You might put up obstacles, even divert it briefly, but the river had a will of its own. It wanted to flow a certain way. You had to force it to change. You had to be willing to sacrifice. Kate thought of her promise to Annie and the other children that she would come back for them.

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out the key she’d used to open the cage. She would’ve liked to have seen her parents.

  Ten minutes later, a man passing the Secretary’s cage noticed the door was open and the prisoner was missing. At the same moment, Emma, running to fetch her sister, found that she too was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Devil’s Bargain

  The air told Kate when they were getting close. It was no longer the damp, stale air she’d been breathing since the previous morning; this was clean, fresh. The Secretary must’ve sensed it as well.

  “Almost there,” he gasped, tightening his grip on Kate’s arm, which he seemed to be holding more for support than control, “almost there …”

  No guards had been posted outside his cage, and Kate had been able to sneak up unnoticed and whisper her proposal through the bars.

  If the Countess would free the children and leave without harming anyone else, Kate would deliver the Atlas. But the Secretary had to get her to Cambridge Falls before Robbie and Gabriel’s army. Could he do that?

  Yes, the man had sneered, there was a way.

  Now, as the pair stumbled along the tunnel, Kate holding aloft their pilfered lantern, she thought about Emma and Michael. Given the chance, she would’ve told them that her visions weren’t like movies. She didn’t watch them happen; she lived them. She had been on the boat as it went over the falls. She had felt what the children felt as it plunged toward the rocks. Their terror had been hers, and she would do anything to spare them that pain.

  She and the Secretary rounded a bend, and for the first time in two days, Kate was in the open air.

  They were high over the valley, on a path cutting down the side of the mountain. The moon was full, and it bathed the entire world in a calming, silvery glow. The sheer sense of space took her breath away. Kate thought it was the most beautiful sight she’d ever beheld.

  The Secretary fell to his knees at the edge of the cliff and started drawing in the dirt with his finger.

  “What’re you doing? The others will be after me! We have to—”

  “Quiet! I need to concentrate!”

  Kate looked back toward the tunnel. She expected at any moment to hear her name being called, to see the light of approaching torches.

  “There.” The Secretary straightened up, wiping his hands on his jacket. “Done.”

  “Done what? All you’ve done is draw a line in the dirt!”

  “Ah, but it’s a special line.”

  “Dr. Pym and Gabriel are going to be here any second! You said you knew a way to town!”

  “I do; this way. Step over the line.”

  Kate looked at the not entirely straight yard-long scratch in the dirt. Stepping over it would mean stepping off the cliff and into thin air.

  “You’re joking.”

  “It will take you to the Countess. It is magic she granted me.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, there has to be another way. If we run—”

  The Secretary lurched at her, shoving his sweating
face into hers.

  “There is no other way! Your friends will be here soon! Does the little birdie want to save the children? Then birdie has to fly! Fly, fly, fly …”

  He stepped back, gesturing to the line like a gruesome maitre d’. Kate noticed he was clutching something in his hand. It was the tiny yellow bird she’d seen earlier, but its body was motionless and limp.

  “What about you?”

  “Very kind of you to ask, very kind. But only room for one birdie. Griddley Cavendish will find another way.”

  “How do I know you’re not trying to kill me?”

  He smiled his filthy, cracked-toothed grin. “You don’t. Now—fly.”

  Her insides felt like they had turned to ice. She took a trembling step to the edge of the line. A breeze blew in off the valley, pushing back her hair. She looked down. Far below, she could make out the rocky base of the mountain. Then she heard it—the faint echo of a shout. And again. It’d come from the tunnel; someone was calling her name.

  Kate closed her eyes and stepped off the cliff.

  Her foot struck something solid. She heard a sound like water slapping against metal, the low rumble of an engine. She opened her eyes. She was on the deck of a boat; the moon reflected off the surface of the lake. The Secretary’s magic had worked.

  “Katrina …”

  Kate spun around. The Countess stood there, flanked by two morum cadi. She clapped gleefully.

  “You’re here! I’m so happy!”

  After failing to find her sister, Emma had run to tell Michael and discovered everyone in an uproar over the fact the Secretary had disappeared from his cage. She pulled her brother aside.

  “You gotta help me find Kate. She wasn’t in the room.”

  Dr. Pym overheard this and lunged toward them, grasping Emma by the arm.

  “What did you say?”

  Emma told him, and Dr. Pym let out a long sigh. “Oh, this is very bad.”

  Just then, a man was brought forward. He had seen two figures running toward the eastern end of the city.