“Impressive,” Franklin said in all seriousness. “Despite your short stature, may I compliment you on your thinking?”
“Thanks,” answered Fred. “Despite your immense girth, may I compliment you on your civility?”
“Uh, ah,” Franklin stammered. “Thank you.”
Edmund and Laura Glue arrived with a box full of vegetables for the next evening’s meal, and something else—Ernest McGee.
He stood hesitantly in the doorway, looking around at the interior of Franklin’s house as if he was about to be pinched for some petty crime.
“It’s all right, Father,” Edmund said soothingly. “I’m his apprentice, remember? I’m allowed to have guests.”
“I’ve never been here before,” said Ernest. “I wanted to speak to the Doctor, and …” He paused. “Thank him.”
Edmund beamed. “We can arrange that,” he said. “Laura Glue? Would you see if the Doctor is about?”
While the Valkyrie went to look for Franklin, Edmund took his father into the study, where a spirited discussion was taking place.
“I can’t help thinking that the key we’re missing is in Morgan’s message,” John was saying. “If only Captain Johnson hadn’t lost his book …”
Edmund perked up at this. “Which book?”
Jack waved his hand dismissively. “It’s not important now. He lost it decades before you were even born.”
“You mean The Maps of Elijah McGee?” Edmund asked. “That book?”
John’s jaw fell open. “How did you know?”
Edmund shrugged. “There were only ever three books that he worked on with my grandfather and Mr. Defoe,” he replied. “The History, the Pyratlas, and the last one.”
“Which does us no good if we don’t know where it is.”
“But we do,” said Edmund. “I have it.”
Every man in the room suddenly took on the same shocked expression. “You do?” exclaimed his father. “Since when?”
“Since I was a boy, and started making the maps,” said Edmund. “When you made your, um, opinion clear, I started hiding them—and that book, the one Captain Johnson started compiling, was the best of our family’s work. So I kept it, and have been adding to it ever since.”
“Ah, me,” his father said sadly. “I have done you a disservice, my boy. But we’ll say our piece later—for now, let’s see the book, hey?”
As Edmund went up to his attic workroom to fetch the book, Ernest took a seat among the Caretakers.
“He’s a talented boy, you know,” said John. “But then, it does run in the family.”
“The talent, or curse, depending on which of us you ask and when, skipped a generation or two, I think,” said Ernest. “Oh, I have the facility for it, as had my father. But neither of us has the innate skill that Elijah had. My son Edmund has it too. I’m more of a compiler, after the manner of my father,” he continued. “We were always more interested in collecting them than we were in making them.”
“It was good of you to let him apprentice to Franklin,” said Jack.
“I didn’t approve,” said Ernest. “I’m still not sure I do. But I’m not a fool, either,” he added as his son came downstairs to the study carrying a large book. “McGee maps are McGee maps, after all, and I’m loath to let the family legacy end just because I don’t like it.”
Edmund set The Maps of Elijah McGee in the center of the table and spread it open. It was not even a book yet, per se, but more a collection of notes written by Johnson, and maps, drawn on the same thick paper that Edmund had been carrying when they first met him.
“Do you know what these are?” Jack exclaimed excitedly. “These are maps to some of the places that Verne mentioned! To the places where imaginary lands never separated from the Summer Country!”
“You mean, like the Soft Places?” asked Fred. “Like the Inn of the Flying Dragon?”
“Not quite,” Jack replied as he riffled through the pages. “More like places that found their own niches in our world and never pulled away when the Frontier was created.”
“Pardon my asking, but did that badger just speak?” Ernest asked.
“Oh, that’s just Fred,” said Edmund. “Wait’ll you go upstairs to meet the new librarians.”
“Aha!” Jack exclaimed. “It’s here!”
As Johnson had said, there was indeed a note from Morgan, tucked away in the pages of his book.
To whoever finds this note:
It was no accident. It was no malfunction. But for whatever reason, my watch will not work. I was kept here, in this time, through no will of my own. Someone is playing a deeper game and has learned how to manipulate time—someone better than the Messengers. Better than Verne. Possibly even better than Poe. Somehow I must reach you in the future—but the key to the past is hidden here, in the pages of this book. Find it. Use it. As for me, my friend Elijah and I are going to try to create a chronal map, which I hope to use to return to Tamerlane House. If it works, then we’ll have a good laugh over this. If not, I hope you’ll fare better than I. If Houdini is the one who finds this note, then I can only pray it remains intact.
God be with you,
Captain Henry Morgan, Lt. Governor, Jamaica
“Oh, now that’s just a low blow,” said Houdini.
“Intriguing,” John said. “He believes that someone kept him here—someone better at time travel than he was.”
“It’s logical,” said Doyle. “He was the one most likely to take the Cartographer’s place, and according to the Watchmaker, that’s what we needed.”
“Whoever did this to him never expected that he might train someone else,” said John, “or that he would stumble across a family like the McGees.”
“I don’t think it was accidental,” said Houdini. “Not with what I’ve seen. Morgan chose Elijah McGee. Carefully, and with intent.”
“I actually wish he were still here,” said Jack. “I think it would be comforting, somehow, just to have him around.”
“It’s too bad he’s dead, then,” spat Burton. “The dead are useless, unless they’re Caretakers, or we’ve run out of supplies.”
“Do you remember reading anything about the McGees in the Histories?” John asked Jack. “Anything at all?”
“I can’t recall,” Jack said, thinking. “Those were more Charles’s passion, not mine. Why do you ask?”
“I can’t remember anything much about them either,” said John, “nor can I remember any mention of them in anything having to do with the Cartographer. But just look at these, Jack! Can you imagine a family of this talent not coming to the attention of the Caretakers? Or the Cartographer?”
Burton clucked his tongue. “Maybe they just did.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked John.
“I’ve had more experience in time than you have, young Caretaker. Just because something you think is important hasn’t happened in the past doesn’t mean it will not still happen in your own future. Even if that future takes you to the past.”
“Every time he talks about this sort of thing, my head aches,” said Jack.
“No, he’s right,” said John. “Time moves in both directions, isn’t that what you said?”
“At the Eagle and Child, yes,” Burton said with grudging admiration. “Maybe you aren’t a waste of time, after all. And yes,” he added, smirking at Jack, “the pun was intended.”
“Oh, I got it,” said Jack. “I just didn’t think it was funny.”
“What I’m thinking,” John said, “is that the McGee family may in fact be Fictions, like Hank and Melville. That would explain why we haven’t seen anything of them in the Histories before.”
“When they met past the waterfall at the Edge of the World,” he continued, “Captain Johnson told Rose that he and Defoe were training as possible apprentices to Cyrano de Bergerac, and that de Bergerac had his eye on Eliot as a possible apprentice to Merlin.”
“The Caretakers don’t document apprenticeships unless
they become full Caretakers,” said Jack, “no offense, Burton. And I don’t think anyone but Verne knew of actual apprentices to the Cartographer.”
“He never said that Eliot was a formal apprentice,” said John, “just that de Bergerac thought he had a good hand for map-making.”
“That’s a good eye for talent,” said Jack. “De Bergerac was one of the Cartographer’s apprentices himself, remember?”
“There’s another possibility,” Doyle said. He paced the floor pensively, rubbing his chin in thought. “We’ve gone about this backward,” he said slowly, “assuming that the McGees didn’t come to the attention of the Caretakers, or were somehow overlooked. But what if they weren’t?”
“What do you mean?” Jack asked.
“There are two possibilities,” said Doyle. “One, that they were never meant to be mapmakers until Morgan came here to teach them, and so the Caretakers never knew about them in our time.”
“Mmm, no,” said Jack. “De Bergerac knew of them, remember? And he was also a skilled cartographer. He might have started training them even without Morgan.”
“A possible paradox, then,” said Doyle. “But it’s the second possibility that’s more troubling—that the current Caretaker does know about them and is trying to suppress them. Maybe even destroy them.”
“Except there doesn’t seem to be a Caretaker here now,” said Jack. “There’s a gap, unless it’s Franklin—but surely he’d have mentioned it.”
“There’s no gap,” Burton said with an almost regretful sigh. “Perhaps Verne wasn’t brave enough to tell you the truth of it. Having three Caretakers at once was a safeguard, and kept the flames of prophecy fanned—but you three were the latecoming exception to the norm. There were not always three Caretakers available, not all at once. Sometimes there were two, and more rarely, one.
“There is a current Caretaker, but he’s a tulpa, one of the first John Dee created after himself, and that fact extended his tenure for a very long time—well before making tulpas fell out of favor with the Caretakers Emeritis. It was before Blake began creating portraits, and well before Poe began traveling to the past, so the records of his tenure could be manipulated. So,” he said again, “there’s no gap. You just haven’t figured it out yet, because the fact that he was a tulpa was kept a secret from all the rest later.”
“He’s correct,” John said as he examined the list in the Geographica. “Swift was the last Caretaker in this era until he was replaced by Blake, and Goethe is the current living Caretaker—but he isn’t one, not yet. That leaves only one name on our list.”
“Oh, fewmets,” Jack said under his breath. “Really?”
“I’m afraid so,” said John. “The Caretaker can only be Daniel Defoe.”
No one at the Doctor’s house noticed when the End of Time slipped silently out the door, just as no one had noticed the Shadow leaving earlier.
The Shadow moved quickly and was difficult to track. But the End of Time had tracked beasts in impossible terrains, and London was no challenge. The End of Time leaped over the chimney tops of the houses that ran perpendicular to Craven Street as he followed it, until finally it was cornered and could flee no more.
“You are not meant to be here, in this time, and in this place,” Theo said calmly.
“I’m impressed,” the Echthros said just as calmly. “There are very few among your kind who are able to sense my presence, let alone track me—especially when I don’t want to be tracked.”
“But track you I have,” Theo said quietly as he removed a small parchment from his pocket, “and now I will do what I must, and bind you, and cast you out.”
The Echthros laughed, a chilling sound that reverberated off the walls in the narrow alley. “Go ahead and try,” it said. “In fact, I insist that you do.”
A flickering of fear danced across Theo’s usually placid features, but he unfolded the paper and then began to read. His eyes grew milky and a faint shimmering appeared around him as he softly, carefully recited the ancient words of power. When he had finished, he looked up at his enemy.
“All done?” the Echthros responded, seemingly bored. “Is that all you’ve got? Or did you have something else you’d like to try?”
Theo’s eyes grew wide with alarm. The creature should have been bound. This was one of the oldest of the Old Magics, and it had never, never failed.
“That’s the thing about the Old Magic,” the Echthros said as it moved closer to the End of Time. “It is reliable. It operates according to rules and laws, and those may be bent, but never broken. Especially when it comes to things like Bindings.”
“I don’t understand,” Theo said, bewildered. “I spoke your name—your true name. You should be bound.”
“I am bound,” the Echthros replied, as it began to shimmer and change, growing larger and darker and less distinct. “I was already bound, and cannot be bound again by the same curse until the first is broken. So you see,” it concluded, now huge and towering over the man, “I am bound, but you are not my master!”
With a shrieking sound that shattered windows and a rending of flesh with massive claws, the Echthros fell upon the End of Time. There was no screaming, just dying, which irritated the creature somewhat. But for the moment, its secret was safe.
Changing back to its original shape, the Echthros walked away from the still steaming body and made its way back into the crowd, where no one saw it pass, nor would have stopped it if they had.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The False Caretaker
It took a while for Laura Glue to track down Doctor Franklin, but the second time she looked there, she finally found him on the upper floor, discoursing with Myrret about Arthurian history. He was reluctant to leave, until she told him who his visitor was.
“The fox has some very unusual takes on history,” Franklin said as they descended the stairs, “but I think he’s got his dates confused. He seems to be off by a millennium or two.”
“Foxes make great librarians,” said Laura Glue, “but they’re not so good at math.”
“Mr. McGee,” said Franklin, offering his hand.
“Doctor Franklin,” said Ernest, taking it. “I’m pleased to finally meet you.”
“What’s all this?” Franklin asked as he looked over the spread of papers on the table.
Briefly Edmund explained about the book and what he’d been doing with it.
“How fascinating!” Franklin exclaimed. “You know, Edmund, I’ve got some similar writings and drawings in an old book of mine I keep in my desk. You might call it my own apprenticeship. I’ll have to show it to you sometime. I think you’ll find it very enlightening.”
“I’d love to see it,” Edmund said, as a look of interest flashed among the Caretakers. A book like this one? One that Franklin had not yet shown to Edmund? And more importantly, that he referred to as his own apprenticeship?
At that moment John noticed that a shadow had followed Laura Glue and the Doctor down from the rooms upstairs. The boy Coal was holding a kite. He suddenly had an idea.
“Doctor Franklin,” John said amicably, “I’d promised Coal that we’d go out flying kites, but I forgot that we were meeting with Ernest. You wouldn’t have some free time, would you?”
“Actually, I do,” said Franklin. “I was thinking of going over to Trafalgar Square myself to try out a new kite design. I’m sure the young man wouldn’t mind helping me, would you?” He looked down at the boy, who nodded enthusiastically.
Jack started to protest that it wouldn’t be necessary, that they could look after the boy well enough, but John’s tap on his hand stopped him. John nodded almost imperceptibly, then to Franklin he said, “That will be fine. Thank you, Doctor Franklin.”
“What was that all about?” Jack asked as the Doctor left with the little prince, two kites in hand. “With all our suspicions, are you sure it’s safe to leave the boy alone with him?”
“What’s he going to do, really?” asked John. “Benjamin F
ranklin isn’t exactly going to harm a child in broad daylight. Besides, it’s to follow up on our suspicions that I agreed.”
“I hadn’t realized you expected me,” Ernest said, confused. “We had a meeting?”
“We’re having it now,” John said as he headed up the stairs. “Harry can pick any lock, and we’ve got a good hour before they’re back to look around unmolested. And I want to see that book.”
The others laughed and trotted to catch up to the Principal Caretaker. “When you wrote about the little burglar in your book,” Jack said, “I didn’t realize you were writing from experience.”
“Not experience,” said John as they entered Franklin’s private study. “Just unfulfilled ambitions.”
“Do you like the kite, Coal?” Doctor Franklin asked as he led the boy into ever more crowded streets. “I made it just for you.”
The boy nodded happily, clutching the brightly colored kite to his chest as the tail trailed along behind them. “It’s very nice, thank you.”
“What a polite young man,” Franklin said, mussing the boy’s hair. “I’m very glad we’ve gotten to be friends. We’ll have some good fun, you and I, won’t we? I was meaning to ask,” he added, “where is it you come from, Coal?”
“I—I’m not supposed to speak of it,” Coal stammered, looking suddenly very worried. Laura Glue and the Caretakers had given him very strict instructions not to talk about where he was from with strangers—but Doctor Franklin was not really a stranger, was he? After all, they had let him go to fly kites with the Doctor, and they had been staying at his house. If he could not be trusted, then who could?
“Perhaps you could tell me about it as a story,” Franklin suggested. “You like stories, don’t you, Coal? Like the ones in my library?”
“Oh, yes!” the boy responded. “I love to read.”
“Well, then,” Franklin said as they located a suitable place from which to launch the kite. “Why don’t I tell you a story about myself, and then you can tell me stories about yourself. Is it a bargain?”
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