A Quill Ladder

by Jennifer Ellis

  Kasey watched with great interest. “You know something I don’t know. Are you saying there’s another circle, this one farther out?”

  Mark seemed stymied for an answer.

  Abbey stared at the dots.

  Five dots. Five lines. Equilateral. The pentagons on the door locks. The one on Ian’s lighter.

  “What if…” she said, “what if they aren’t circles? What if they’re pentagons?”

  Kasey cocked his head. “I guess they could be. I don’t see how that makes much difference though.”

  “Does ‘BP’ stand for bottom of the pentagon then?” Caleb said.

  “Maybe, except this pentagon is upside down.” Abbey pointed at the middle ring of dots. Something about this hypothesis didn’t seem quite right though. Abbey stared at the giant M watermark and the cross. Why was the M so big and funny-shaped?

  “You said the mapmaker had a last name of Morrison, right? Did he put this funny watermark on any of his other maps?” Abbey said.

  Kasey shook his head. “I thought maybe it wasn’t to represent his name, but rather that these maps are considered to be part of the Messiah series.”

  Messiah: deliverer or savior. That was a strange theme for maps. Abbey stared at the map again. “Mark, can you draw the tunnels? The ones that connect the outer dots to the inner dots?”

  “Tunnels?” Kasey said. “You mean the old city tunnels. I thought those were an urban myth.”

  “Perhaps,” Abbey said quickly. “But we heard some rumors about where they might be, if they’re real.” She looked at Caleb and Mark, wondering how much they wanted to share with Kasey. Mark had already withdrawn a ruler and protractor from his satchel and was busy drawing the tunnel lines between the dots. Then he pointed at the dot in the southeast quadrant of the map; he had connected it to the Heximer Building.

  “This is Abbott’s Apothecary,” he said.

  Abbott’s Apothecary, where they had arrived this afternoon. So it was connected to two tunnels—one that lead to Ian’s and one that lead to the Heximer building. There was something about the shape of the tunnels…

  “What if… what if…” she said again, her words falling over each other. “What if it isn’t a pentagon? What if it’s a pentagram inside a pentagram, inside a pentagram, and the tunnels follow the arms of the inner pentagrams? The golden mean…” She shook her hands in the air as she tried to explain. “Pentagrams are one of the ultimate illustrations of the golden mean. The lengths of the pentagram sides and the sides of the corresponding outer pentagon are in the golden ratio. And all of the line segments within the pentagram are in the golden ratio to each other. The M isn’t a watermark. It’s the bottom of the biggest pentagram.”

  Abbey snatched the ruler and pencil from Mark and began drawing the lines of the outer pentagram. Its point was at the very northernmost part of the map, right on top of Sylvain’s house.

  “At the top of Top Point Drive,” Caleb breathed, before the words could come out of her mouth.

  Then Abbey drew the two inner pentagrams, the medium-sized one upside down within the pentagon of the larger pentagram. “This tunnel here”—she pointed to the one they had taken from the swamp to the apothecary—“is this arm of the pentagram. And the cross—”

  “—is the Greek Cross on the man on the pentagram by Agrippa, to show that the human body also reflects the golden mean,” Kasey finished, sinking into a chair at the end of the map table as if it was all too much.

  They all stared at the map for a few seconds. But Mark had taken back the pencil and was placing dots on the southern and eastern points of the cross. He labeled them with a D and a question mark. “The docks?” Abbey asked.

  Mark shook his head. He pointed to the bottom one. “It’s not quite right. This one fits. And this one, I think.” He pointed to the docks they had seen most recently in the forested future. “But there are also the docks near the stones on the causeway. It’s not quite right.” He shook his head again with a furrowed brow.

  “And there are also the stones in the bubble city that don’t quite fit,” Abbey mused.

  Mark added a dot in the center of the pentagram and labeled it with “statue” and “center.” He underlined “center” and then added “QFM.”

  “What’s that?” Abbey asked.

  “Does he mean the statue of Quinta Francis Merry?” Kasey said. “It used to be where the train station is, but now it’s on the library roof, in the garden.”

  “Did you say Quinta?” Abbey said.

  Kasey nodded.

  Quinta. For five. Was that the meaning of the five lines that Mrs. Forrester had drawn? Or was it the five lines that made the pentagram? Or something else?

  “Can I ask a question?” Caleb asked. Abbey swiveled her eyes to her brother. Caleb pointed at the easternmost point of the pentagram, where presumably another set of stones lay in the Circle Mountains. “Why does it look like there’s a blank space here?”

  Abbey stared at the spot that Caleb was pointing to. Sure enough, even though Abbey knew the area to be part of the Circle Mountains, and therefore obviously mountainous, there was a break in the hachures, almost as if part of the map had been erased.

  A part of the map that was the exact size of one of the cards that Ian had given them.

  Abbey pulled the third card from her pocket and fit it in the blank space. The edges met up perfectly.

  “Now we just have to see what’s on the card,” Abbey said.

  “What do you mean? It’s blank,” Kasey said.

  “We could rip it open,” Caleb said.

  “But what if we wreck it and there’s nothing printed underneath?” Abbey replied.

  “We have two.” Caleb held up the card he had taken from the file room in their house.

  Just then one of Kasey’s cats pushed its way into the room and wove around the bottom of their chairs, purring. Abbey bent to pat the cat and looked at the map again, but the strange sense of depth that she had noticed with the original map was gone. Maybe that had somehow not transferred to the copy.

  “I thought I left you outside, Tabitha,” Kasey said, scooping up the cat. “No cats in the map room. Hair is bad for maps.”

  “You did leave her outside,” Caleb said.

  It seemed like everything happened quickly after that. The room was suddenly filled with Selena, Nate, Damian, and Dr. Ford (and Selena’s horrid perfume). It felt to Abbey as if they had simply apparated there, although in reality she knew they had walked. But Kasey’s look of surprise and horror put a whole new level of gravity on the situation. There was no way out of the room, other than the door through which they had all come in.

  “Ah, just the map we were hoping to see,” Selena said, leaning over the map, her hair falling in a dark curtain across Caleb’s arm.

  Mark whipped the map off the table and started crumpling it into a little ball. Selena and Dr. Ford reached out and grasped at the map, but Mark dropped to the floor on his knees and curled himself around the crumpled paper.

  “Give us that map,” Selena ordered. Nate and Damian rounded the table, but were blocked by Kasey and Abbey on either side of Mark, due to the rather tiny size of the map room.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Kasey said. “I’m not sure what’s going on here, but perhaps we could all step out into the living room and discuss this like rational adults.”

  Dr. Ford stepped forward and extended his hand to Kasey. “My apologies. We’ve met before. I’m Dr. Ford. I hope you don’t mind that I brought some colleagues. Your door was open, so we just came in. Selena was just excited to see the maps.” He gave both Damian and Nate a stern look as he said this, as if he hoped to snap them into the act.

  Selena pushed past Dr. Ford. “Get that map,” she ordered.

  Damian and Nate, clearly listening to Selena, not Dr. Ford, strong-armed their way past Abbey and Kasey. Caleb moved in to stop Damian, but the older man threw Caleb into the armoire that
held one of the Tiffany lamps, which crashed to the floor and shattered into a million blue slivers—to Kasey’s screams—and then both Damian and Nate were on top of Mark, trying to pry him up so they could retrieve the map.

  “Wait! Aren’t you going to create paradox somehow?” Abbey yelled. “Isn’t this risky?”

  “You let the adults worry about adult things,” Selena snapped, trying to push the map table out of the way so she could have a go at Mark from another direction.

  “Where’s our dad? What have you done to him?” Abbey said.

  A small, secretive smile crossed Selena’s face even as she struggled with the table. She was, Abbey observed with a choking feeling, extraordinarily beautiful with her dark hair and high cheekbones. And extraordinarily young, compared to their mother. “Only what should have been done to him ages ago. I brought him to his senses,” she said. “Get over here and help me, Ford. The rest of you, get out of the way!”

  Abbey wanted to slap her.

  “I don’t know who you are, or what you’re doing here, but you need to get out of my house immediately,” Kasey ordered.

  Everyone ignored him, and Caleb jumped on Damian’s back. Between them, Damian and Nate had managed to hoist Mark a few centimeters into the air, and were now pulling at the white sheet of paper Mark clutched between his knees and his hands. Mark started to frantically shred it; Nate clawed at the torn pieces, while Mark shoved others into his mouth and swallowed them.

  Everyone else watched as the Damian-Mark-Nate-Caleb blob crashed around the room, knocking the map table into the wall by the door. Abbey wondered if she should be swinging punches at someone, but she didn’t know whom, or how it would help. Should she wrestle with Selena, while directing Kasey to clobber Dr. Ford? Kasey looked equally uncertain. Dr. Ford stood with his back pressed against the far wall as if he didn’t wish to be hurt.

  Finally Nate managed to pull the remainder of the crumpled bit of map away from Mark and shoved it in his pocket. They lowered Mark to the ground, and he remained there in a ball.

  “This is trespassing and theft. Please leave my house,” Kasey said.

  “There’s got to be more maps,” Dr. Ford said. “That one was just a copy. He has the original, and he may have the others too.”

  “We want the rest of the maps,” Selena demanded. Damian and Nate both withdrew guns to emphasize their point. “Just give us the five maps, and nobody will get hurt.”

  “I don’t have any more maps,” Kasey said, throwing his hands in the air. “The other ones burned in the museum fire. You know that,” he said to Dr. Ford.

  “I’m not convinced of that. I would search the map cabinet,” Dr. Ford said.

  “Get out of the way,” Nate ordered Mark, trying to shove at Mark with his booted foot.

  Abbey tried to reassure herself that they wouldn’t shoot anyone. That shooting someone would create paradox, and she was sure none of them wanted to go back to Nowhere. The guns were just a threat. Otherwise they would have shot Mark while he ripped up the other map. She hoped.

  Mark recoiled from Nate’s boot, rose to his feet, stumbled, and fell heavily against the map cabinet.

  “Out of the way, dopey,” Nate said.

  Mark righted himself. “It is completely inappropriate to talk to me that way because I am different. It is quite likely that my IQ is higher than yours. I know where the maps you want are. They’re in drawer 309 in the map room at the library.”

  Abbey stared at him, but tried not to show too much surprise. Were the maps there? Or was Mark actually lying? She wouldn’t have thought him capable of it.

  Mark’s words silenced everyone for a few seconds. Nate made swaggering moves, as if he expected everyone to laugh at Mark’s statement regarding his IQ, but nobody did.

  “309,” Selena said. “That’s it. The meaning of the card. All this time. We need to get to the library.” Evidently, Selena didn’t think Mark capable of lying either.

  Dr. Ford gave Mark a long, assessing look. “I’d take our young friend here along as a helper. Mark likes maps. Don’t you, Mark?”

  “I’ll go, too,” Caleb said.

  “I don’t think you have any expertise we require,” Dr. Ford said.

  “I’m in charge here,” Selena interrupted. “We may not have a lot of time before the energy from the stones is gone.” She narrowed her eyes further at Abbey and Caleb, as if assessing how exactly they had gotten here. “Nate and I will take Mark to the library. You and Damian search the rest of this room.”

  “We were just about to head off, anyway,” Caleb said. “We don’t find maps quite as riveting as you all. As far as I can tell, they’re just a bunch of lines on paper. Not sure what everyone’s so worked up about.”

  Selena smiled and then moved until she was standing only a few centimeters away from Caleb, close enough for him to feel her breath. She had curved her body so that it would fit perfectly against his. “So like your father. We should be working together on this. It’s for the benefit of us all. Your father understands. Any information you want to give me about the location of the map would be most appreciated.”

  Caleb kept his face straight and blasé. “’Fraid the map Mark just ate is the only one I knew about. Is it okay if Abbey and I head out?”

  Selena’s face tightened for just a second, and then she smiled again. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to stay. At least until we verify that the maps are at the library, or you decide you’re going to cooperate. The pair of you can just sit right over there.” Selena gestured at a set of chairs that occupied the far wall.

  Just then Abbey heard a familiar howl.

  Farley.

  Then the one remaining Tiffany lamp went out, and they were in the dark.

  It was Mark who screamed first, and then the room transformed into a dramatic push of bodies around the map table, with the crunch of glass from the first Tiffany lamp under their feet.

  “For God’s sake, don’t move.” Selena’s voice. “And don’t the pair of you shoot anyone either… Yet.” There was an ominousness to the “yet” that Abbey didn’t like at all.

  Farley’s barks came closer. Then the door to the map room swung open with a crash, and light from the streetlight shimmered down the hall. It had grown dark outside while they’d studied the map. The bleakness of midwinter night. Abbey’s mother would be waiting outside the hospital for them soon.

  “Who’s there?” Selena said, sharply. But there was no answer.

  “Go outside and help Jake,” Selena ordered. “He’s so useless sometimes. It’s got to be Ian. Or Sylvain. They play these kinds of games.”

  “No,” Abbey yelled. What if Farley got shot? But Damian had already taken off down the hall and out the front door.

  “Everyone out,” Selena said, and everyone filed out of the map room and into the dimly illuminated hall.

  “Someone must have cut the power to the house,” Dr. Ford said.

  “We have to get to the library,” Selena said. “I don’t have time for this. The three of you sit there.” She pointed at Abbey, Caleb, and Kasey, then at the overstuffed couches in the living room. “Mark and I are going to make a run for the library. Nate, you guard these children. Ford, you find a candle and continue searching the house. When Damian gets back, send him after me.”

  This was punctuated by wild yips and the sound of gunfire outside.

  Farley. Abbey bit back tears of terror. A rock shattered the living room window. Abbey screamed, and Mark dropped to his knees behind the couch, whimpering. The dining room window exploded next, in a tinkle of glass, followed by more gunshots.

  Selena thrust a long fingernail at Dr. Ford. “You go outside and help Damian. I want this to stop.” A frown creased Dr. Ford’s face, and he opened his mouth, but then pulled out a gun of his own and turned and exited by the front door.

  “The police are going to be coming any second,” Kasey said.

  “Let’s go
, Mark,” Selena directed.

  Mark didn’t respond.

  “Get up. Nate, make him get up.” Nate walked over and thrust his gun at Mark’s prone form.

  Caleb launched himself out of the armchair that he occupied, swung his leg into the air, and kicked the gun. The weapon fired into the living room wall and flew across the room. Nate and Caleb both dove for it, their arms a blur of punches and clawing. Selena tripped around their writhing forms, trying to snatch up the gun herself. Kasey and Abbey both dashed across the room and, between the two of them, managed to grab her. Selena struggled against them, slashing with her long fingernails, her face a twist of fury marked by red lipstick.

  “Get out!” Caleb yelled. “Get out and run!” His face was already bruised and bleeding. The gun skittered out from underneath him and Nate, slid across the hardwood floor, and came to rest next to Mark, who had risen to a sitting position with his back against the couch, clutching his satchel to his side. Mark stared at the gun.

  “Pick up the gun, Mark!” Abbey screamed. “Pick it up!” Selena wrenched at her, nearly dislocating Abbey’s shoulder.

  “Guns are very unsafe…” Mark said softly.

  He reached out a tentative hand for the gun as Nate plowed a heavy punch into Caleb’s eye. Caleb stopped moving, and his head hit the floor with a sickening thud. Nate careened to his feet and staggered toward the gun.

  Mark picked up the gun and raised it until it was pointed at Nate. “Guns are very unsafe,” he repeated. His hand was shaking.

  “Ungh.” Caleb let out a groan.

  “Right, buddy. They are. Just hand the gun over to Uncle Nate, and we’ll all be fine.” Nate closed in on Mark’s trembling form, and Selena redoubled her struggles. Mark fired the gun. The bullet sailed over Nate’s shoulder and hit the wall in the stairwell behind them.