The Emerald Atlas

by John Stephens

  “Kate and … Dr. Pym. They’re on the boat. With the kids.”

  “I know! What’re we gonna do? Oh, Michael, Gabriel … he’s …” But she found she couldn’t say the words to pronounce her friend dead. Not yet.

  “That’s Abraham!” Michael was staring at the man beside her. “That’s good.”

  “I know that’s Abraham! So what? Kate’s on the boat! Why doesn’t Dr. Pym do something?! He should be—”

  A sickening crunch made them turn. The boat had slammed into the wall of the gorge just fifty yards away, close enough that they could see the panicked children swarming the deck. Another moment and the boat would pass beneath the bridge.

  “Make sure he takes the picture!” Michael was climbing onto the railing.

  “What? What’re you doing? Michael!”

  “Make sure you take the picture!” Michael yelled at Abraham.

  “Here now, lad …”

  “Michael, get down!”

  Standing on the railing of the bridge, Michael glanced once over the edge, then turned and looked at his sister. Something in his manner made Emma pause. She couldn’t have said why it was, but it occurred to her suddenly that Michael was her older brother and how she never thought of him that way.

  “I love you,” Michael said, and jumped.

  “MICHAEL!”

  Emma flung herself against the railing in time to see her brother falling through darkness as the boat appeared below them, huge, spinning, doomed; she saw him land on the deck and roll, and then he was gone, the boat wheeling away toward the mouth of the falls and there was nothing, anywhere, to stop it.

  “MICHAEL! MICHAEL!”

  She screamed so hard that her voice cracked, and she would’ve kept on screaming, but she heard other cries; dark-clad women from the town, their shawls trailing, their hair loose, were emerging from the trees along the ridge; they ran with torches and lanterns and called to the children on the boat, and there was something so familiar and haunting about the scene that Emma kept staring; then Abraham’s camera flashed—he’d been holding it down by his chest and seemed surprised it had gone off—and Emma understood what Michael had said.

  Make sure he takes the picture.…

  He’d meant the picture Abraham had given her and Kate that day in his room, the one Abraham had said was the last photo he’d ever taken, the one with the names of the children written on the back. But why had Michael wanted him to take it?

  A wailing rose along the ridge, and Emma turned to see the boat spinning about and teetering, backward, on the lip of the falls; for one excruciating moment it hung there, and Emma gripped the railing of the bridge and said her brother’s name once more, almost a whisper, “Michael”; then the bow rose, the stern went down, and the entire boat, and all its passengers, disappeared over the falls.

  Michael had landed on a pile of tarps. It took him a few seconds to get his bearings, for the boat was spinning faster and faster down the gorge, slamming first into one wall, then the other. All around him, children were clinging to railings, to ropes, to each other, screaming and crying. He glanced back and saw the silhouetted arc of the bridge. He prayed Abraham would take the picture, that Emma had understood. Then he put it out of his mind.

  He was running down the side of the boat in a drunken stagger, calling Kate’s name, when someone grabbed his arm. It was Stephen McClattery. He was holding a young child and had an astonished look on his face.

  “You came back! Again! How’d you even—”

  “Where’s my sister?”

  Stephen McClattery pointed to the front of the boat.

  Michael shouted, “We need all the kids together!”

  “You crazy?! They can’t move!”

  “They have to! It’s our only chance!”

  “But—”

  “Just do it! Bring them to my sister! Go! We don’t have much time!”

  For a brief instant, the boys stared at each other; Michael was younger than Stephen McClattery, scrawnier, but there was no question who was now in charge. Stephen McClattery nodded, turned to two boys standing nearby, and began yelling orders. Michael took off running.

  When he got to the forward deck, he found two dozen wailing, terrified children and Kate, up against a wall, her arms in a sort of hug around Dr. Pym and the book. Dr. Pym was unconscious.

  “Michael? What’re you …”

  He knelt beside her. “Kate, look—”

  “No! You shouldn’t have come back!” She began crying and hitting him. “Who’s going to take care of Emma? You shouldn’t have come back!” Then she wasn’t hitting him anymore, just leaning against him, sobbing, “You shouldn’t have come back.…”

  “No! Look! I brought this!”

  He dug into his jacket and pulled out his notebook. Opening it carefully, for the wind was whipping all about them, he showed her the photograph. Kate immediately recognized the dark figures running out of a wood, carrying torches and lanterns. It was the picture Abraham had given her and Emma.

  “We can use it! We can put it in the book!”

  But Kate was already shaking her head. “What about the others?”

  “I got ’em!” It was Stephen McClattery, and he was dragging half a dozen children with him. “Part of ’em anyway! They got the rest!”

  He waved to the far side of the deck where the two older boys had just appeared, herding a group of children. By Michael’s count, there were now more than thirty panicked children packed into the front of the boat.

  “Make them hold hands!” Michael shouted. “Hold hands!”

  Stephen McClattery and his lieutenants took up the cry and ran about, pushing kids together, yelling in their ears, but whether the children didn’t understand or were simply too terrified to obey, either way, it was hopeless.

  “We need Dr. Pym!” Kate was shaking the old wizard fiercely.

  Michael thought for a moment, then told Kate to stop, and he dug into Dr. Pym’s pockets till he found the tobacco. He shoved a wad of it under the wizard’s nose, and almost immediately, Dr. Pym snorted and his eyes blinked open.

  “Hmm,” he said groggily. “What’s that?”

  “Dr. Pym,” Kate cried, “we’re on the boat! We’re about to go over the falls! We have a photo, but we need the children to hold hands!”

  Dr. Pym nodded, appeared to think, then said, “What’s that?” again, as if he’d not understood a single word.

  As Kate repeated what she’d said, Michael looked up and saw that they had run out of water. There was nothing but air before them.

  “Kate—”

  That was as far as he got. Just then they struck a rock with such force that the entire boat spun around so the front was now the back.

  And still they were rushing forward.

  “It’s too late!” Stephen McClattery shouted. “We’re going over!”

  The deck of the boat started to rise, and for the first time, Michael heard the roar of the falls.

  “Kate,” Michael said, “I’m sorry, I thought …”

  “It’s okay,” she said, and squeezed his hand. “It’s okay. We’re together.”

  “Take the photo, Katherine. Be ready.”

  It was Dr. Pym. His voice was sharp; it snapped them back.

  Kate took the photo from Michael and opened the book; Dr. Pym was whispering something, and Michael suddenly found Stephen McClattery grasping his hand; he in turn grabbed his sister’s arm, and then, as the boat dipped forward and the deck continued to rise, a strange calmness came over the children, and each one reached out and in the darkness found the hand of another child, forming one long chain snaking around the deck, and Dr. Pym was still whispering as the chain grew longer and longer till the last child was joined in, and the deck was so steep now that Michael had to brace himself to keep from sliding, and he looked down and saw past the boat to the nothingness below, and they were falling, all of them, falling, and Dr. Pym shouted:

  “Now!”

  And the boa
t plunged forward.

  “It’ll be okay,” Emma repeated, for the fourth or fifth or ninth time. “It’ll be okay.”

  For a few seconds after the boat had gone over the falls, there had been a terrible, drawn-out silence. Then they heard the crash, far below, and the women on the ridge fell to their knees and wailed. Amid the shrieking, Emma heard other voices, men’s voices, coming along the gorge behind her. But she didn’t turn. Just as she didn’t run to the cliff to look over, or stare at the spot on the falls where the boat had disappeared. She kept her eyes fixed on the woods behind the women. And waited.

  Please, she thought, her hands clenched around the railing of the bridge, please …

  And then there was a different cry. One that stopped the women on the cliff and made them turn. It was a young girl’s voice. She was calling her mother.

  The girl was no more than seven or eight, and as she came running out of the trees, one of the women cried out and ran to meet her, folding the girl in her arms, and then there were more cries, and children streaming out of the woods in twos and threes, and tearful reunions began happening all along the ridge, and Emma felt the tight knot of fear that was binding her dissolve, and she was running down the bridge toward the trees, the pain in her ankle forgotten, knowing they would be there, knowing they would never desert her, running into the waiting arms of her brother and sister.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Rhakotis

  “Remember,” Dr. Pym said, “by going into the past, you children changed history. We must therefore imagine what would have transpired had you not traveled through time.”

  Kate, Michael, and Dr. Pym were sitting on the side of a fallen tree. Ten minutes had passed since the boat had gone over the falls and they had appeared in the woods, and still, all around them, families reunited for the first time in two years, mothers and fathers who minutes before had thought their children lost for good, were clasping each other in disbelief.

  Dr. Pym was in the process of answering one of Michael’s questions. Michael had wanted to know how the Atlas could’ve gotten from the vault in the Dead City to the study underneath the house. It was the sort of academic, essentially pointless question that he found fascinating. Kate was only half listening. She was watching Emma, who had wandered off to the edge of the gorge. For now, Kate thought it best to give her sister space.

  “So,” the wizard continued, “in what I will call the original past, prior to all your time-jumping, the Countess would have searched for, but not discovered, the Atlas under the Dead City. Led by Gabriel, the men of Cambridge Falls would have shaken off their captors and rebelled. The Countess, knowing her master would not accept failure, would have destroyed herself and the children, and, in the process, cursed the town.

  “Now, in any version of events, I would have found myself in Hamish’s dungeon. Let us assume I eventually freed myself, though not in time to thwart the Countess. Fearful that the witch’s master would send another emissary to pick up where the Countess left off, I would have removed the Atlas from the vault. From there, I can easily imagine how I might have taken over the Countess’s house and constructed an underground room to serve as a new repository. It would have appealed to my sense of irony, as if I were placing the book under her very nose. Then I would simply have woven a new enchantment so that if one of the three of you showed up, the door would reveal itself. Is that more or less what happened?”

  Michael said it was.

  “Well, there’s your answer.”

  They all fell silent. Michael seemed to have run out of questions. It was Kate who finally spoke:

  “It’s time, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Dr. Pym replied. “You have done what you came to do. It is time.”

  Kate rose and crossed to her sister. The wind was whipping up over the lip of the gorge, carrying spray from the falls.

  “Are you cold?” Kate asked.

  “No.”

  “Emma, we did a really good thing.”

  Emma said nothing.

  “I’m so sorry about Gabriel.”

  “He’s down there somewhere.”

  Kate didn’t reply, but she put her arm around her sister, and together they gazed at the dark water rushing over the falls.

  “Dr. Pym wants us to go, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  They walked over to Michael and Dr. Pym. From her jacket pocket, Emma pulled the photo she’d taken of Kate in their bedroom, the one she’d snapped just before they’d gone back in time to rescue Michael. She gave it to her sister. Around them, families were beginning to drift toward the town.

  “Will you be there?” Kate asked. “When we get back?”

  “Believe me, it is my firmest intention.”

  “Dr. Pym—” Emma began.

  “My dear, Robbie and his dwarves are already looking for Gabriel. He will be well taken care of.”

  “Dwarves are excellent trackers,” Michael said. “G. G. Greenleaf—”

  “Michael,” Kate said.

  “Yes?”

  “Be quiet.”

  “Okay.”

  Emma and Michael joined hands, and Michael took hold of Kate’s arm. Kate opened the book. She stopped.

  “Dr. Pym …”

  Kate picked up something from between two pages. It was Abraham’s photo showing the women running along the top of the gorge, the one Michael had given her as the boat was hurtling toward the falls. Kate didn’t understand. She’d used this picture to move them through time. It should’ve disappeared!

  “Ah,” Dr. Pym said quietly, “so it’s happened.”

  “What do you mean?” Kate demanded. “What’s happened? Why’s it still here?”

  “Katherine, do you recall what I told you in Hamish’s throne room?”

  “No, but—”

  “Try and remember. It will make things clear. Either way, I will explain in the future. For now, put the other photograph in the book. See if it disappears. My guess is that it will not.

  “Please,” he said when he saw her hesitate, “trust me.”

  “I do,” Kate said. And she meant it.

  Kate handed Abraham’s photo to Michael, who slid it in his notebook, and then she made one last check to ensure that she and her brother and sister were touching. She noticed something sliding along the shadows of the trees. She looked closer, but whatever it was had faded into the darkness. Just get on with it, Kate thought, and with that, she placed the photo of herself on the blank page. There was the familiar tug, the scene before them disappeared, and then they were in their bedroom in the mansion, and once again there was the feeling of being held in place as they watched the other Kate and the other Emma prepare to travel into the past to rescue their brother, then Kate watched her other self place the photo in the Atlas, vanish, and they were released.

  “Boy,” Emma muttered, “are they in for it.”

  “Did the photo disappear?” Michael asked.

  “No,” Kate said, showing it to them. “It’s still here.”

  Just then they heard the door open behind them.

  “So Your Majesties are here after all!”

  The children turned; the old housekeeper was standing in the doorway.

  “Miss Sallow,” Kate said, “we didn’t—”

  “Hear me knocking the last ten minutes? Thought you’d play a joke on old Sallow? What a laugh you must’ve had! I wasn’t aware I was employed at the Comédie-Française.”

  “Miss Sallow—”

  “Dr. Pym is below and wishing the pleasure of your company. Will you be making an appearance or should I say their royal highnesses wish to stay in their chamber making bon mots and fa-la-la-ing at an old woman’s expense?”

  Kate whispered to Michael and Emma, “Go on. I’ll catch up. I want to hide the book.”

  As soon as her brother and sister disappeared with the old lady, Kate turned and stuffed the book under the mattress. Her hands were shaking. She knew tha
t the photos not disappearing was important. But how? What was it Dr. Pym had told her in Hamish’s throne room? If only she could focus; if she could just clear her head for a moment. But there was so much else to think about: the prophecy and all that entailed; the other two Books of Beginning; the Dire Magnus, he was still out there; her mother.… Her mother had known who she was; her mother had recognized her. Kate was still thinking of that, or not thinking of it so much as reveling in the warmth of the memory, when she drew back the blanket and stood. That’s when it came to her. Dr. Pym had told her that she was the only one who could access the book’s full power. He means I can move through time, Kate thought, that I don’t need a photograph.

  But he’d said something else as well. What was it?

  She had to find the wizard.

  “Katrina …”

  Kate spun around. An ancient woman, a crone, bent-backed and wrapped in a ragged, filthy shawl, shuffled forth from a panel that had opened beside the fireplace. Her arms were little more than bones; the skin that clung to them was slack and spotted with sores. Lank strands of hair hung from her skull. Her blackened, swollen feet poked through the cracks in her shoes. She smiled, showing a mouthful of brown teeth. Kate’s eyes shot to the door; Emma, Michael, and Miss Sallow were long gone.

  “Fifteen years,” the Countess croaked. “Fifteen years I’ve waited. For you it’s been a matter of moments. You stepped across time as you would over a crack in the floor. But I’ve waited, mon ange, every day, every hour, for fifteen years; waiting for when we would meet again.”

  She moved between Kate and the door, blocking her escape. Not that it mattered; Kate couldn’t move. Fear held her in place. The Countess was alive. But how was that possible? Kate didn’t have to ask what the woman wanted. She had come for the Atlas.

  “You can’t believe your old friend the Countess is still creaking along, can you? You thought my old master killed me, yes? No, no! He merely took back his power! Left me empty and weak! A wretched sack of skin and bones. You didn’t know that I woke up on the floor of that cursed boat, that I dragged my broken body onto the deck and saw you and that wizard and the rest of the brats. I knew what you were doing. Oh yes, and I joined your little chain at the last moment. When you saved the children, my sweet Kat, you also saved my life.”