The Glass Sentence (The Mapmakers Trilogy)

by S. E. Grove

  “I know—it’s strange to see ourselves without the world around us, isn’t it?” Shadrack gently moved the glass pane aside. “I’ll show you what makes it better—what makes them all worthwhile, really.” He picked up the cloth, gently blew against, it and placed it face up on the table. With the tip of his finger he drew water onto the clay tablet and placed it on top of the cloth, their corners perfectly aligned. Then he added the metal sheet, with its map still intact. And finally he set the glass pane, with its pebbles on the 10s, on the top of the pile. “Have a go,” he said.

  Sophia took the quill and hesitantly stared down through the glass. She could see the silver traces of the metal map lying beneath it. Then she took a deep breath and placed the quill at the corner of Beacon and Charles.

  All of it—a whole world from February of 1831—came back to her clearly. In Boston Common people were hurrying down the walkways, stamping their feet against the cold. The bare trees nodded gently in the chilly breeze, rattling a little against the gray sky. A small group of skaters whirled over the frozen pond. Along the streets people rushed with their baskets full of purchases or rode past on their Goodyears, the rubber wheels spinning soundlessly. And in all the windows of the houses people moved through their endless routines of eating and talking and working and sleeping.

  It was like plunging into another world, but the world was her own. She knew the memories did not belong to her, and yet they were there—so vivid, so lucid that they seemed to be entirely hers. Sophia lifted the quill with a sigh. “My memories are never that clear,” she said. “They are always so patchy. But these are so perfect.”

  “We are all like that,” Shadrack agreed. “That’s why it helps to make the maps in layers. We cannot all remember everything at once. In fact, it’s surprising how little detail people actually remember. But if you add together what everyone remembers about each piece, it comes together.”

  Sophia said what had been on her mind since she had first discovered the purpose of the glass map. “Do you think—is there any way . . . Could it be that Mother and Father might have left memories this way, stored in a map somewhere?”

  Shadrack ran his hand through his hair. “Perhaps,” he said slowly. “They did not know how to make memory maps when they left Boston. But they might have learned.”

  “Or someone else might have made a map that shows them in it.”

  “It’s a very good thought, Sophia. Even a glimpse could be invaluable. You’ll see what I mean if you take a look at East Ending, now that the maps are layered.”

  Sophia placed the tip of the quill on the map. She remembered a gray sky and a cold, damp breeze. The street was quiet. A few candles shone weakly in the windows, despite the fact that it was midday; the dark sky made them necessary. The bright red door she knew so well was closed. She could see someone through the upstairs window—a boy. He was reading intently at a desk, his chin in his hand. The memory suddenly grew sharper, as if a veil had been lifted from her eyes, and the boy looked up from his reading. He peered straight out at her—at Sophia—and smiled. Sophia gasped and pulled the quill away. “He looked at me.” She turned to Shadrack. “The boy in the window. Who was he?”

  “You saw him!” Shadrack said, taking the quill. He placed it on East Ending and smiled as the memory came to his mind. “You know who he is—think about it.”

  “Is it Grandfather?”

  “Yes—it’s my father; your grandfather.”

  “But why did he smile at me?”

  “Because that is your great-grandmother’s memory—Grandmother Lizzie. She was there to see your grandfather smile at her through the window.” Shadrack put the quill down a bit wistfully. “Nice one, isn’t it?”

  Sophia felt a wave of awe: she was seeing the world through the eyes of her great-grandmother, a woman she had never even met. But some part of her felt uneasy, as if she had trespassed on another person’s private thoughts. “It’s a lovely memory,” she said slowly. “But it’s not mine. Is it really all right to—to take it like that?”

  Shadrack’s face was thoughtful. “It’s a valuable question, Sophia. It has to do with what I was mentioning before—knowing where your memory stops and the memory of another begins. It may help to know that no one loses their memories in making the map. People share them. But that raises another problem: everyone’s memory is imperfect. I tried to learn everything possible about this month in Boston. I put together as many memories as I could find. And I combined them with what I knew—the kinds of clothes people wore, the buildings, the ships, all that. But you must know that memory maps—maps of all kinds, really—are inexact. They are only the best possible approximation. Think of them like books of history: the author will try to be as accurate as possible, but often he or she is relying on slim pieces of evidence, and there is as much art and interpretation as there is factual content. The best maps will show the cartologer’s hand at work rather than conceal it, making plain the interpretive work and suggesting, even, other possible interpretations.”

  “Does that mean that people could create maps that distort what really happened? Maps that are made up?”

  “They could indeed,” Shadrack said gravely. “It is a serious crime to do so. But all honest mapmakers swear an oath to tell only the truth, and you must look for the mark of that oath when you examine a memory map. Look here,” he said, pointing out the small symbol of the mountains atop a ruler that appeared beside the date on each map. “This is the Insignia Rule. It is required on those maps whose truth can only be vouched for by their maker. But even a truthful mapmaker may be inaccurate. For example,” he confessed, “there are some streets on this map that no one remembers at two or three in the morning on some day or another. Who is to say that something did not happen that I failed to record? In that way, my map, too, might be a distortion.”

  “But it is still incredible. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Shadrack shook his head. “My maps are still those of a novice. There are maps that make mine look like mere scribbles. You’ll see some of them, soon enough. I have read memory maps so real one forgets oneself in them. Some so large they fill an entire room. Truly, the maps created by the masters are astonishing.”

  Sophia bounced in her chair with excitement. “I want to read them all.”

  Shadrack laughed. “Someday you will. But there’s much yet to learn, and we must work quickly. Come, let me show you how to navigate seconds.”

  6

  A Trail of Feathers

  1891, June 15 to 21

  The lenient laws of New Occident have long allowed foreigners to enjoy the benefits of residency without requiring their formal application for citizenship. Only foreigners wishing to vote, run for office, or form a corporation have been required to apply. As of July 4, these laws will change. Full naturalization will be necessary for all foreigners. If you are a foreigner and you wish to work or reside in New Occident, you must apply through the attached form for documentation and a foreigner’s lifewatch. All those without documentation and watches will be deported on July 4.

  —From Application for Citizenship Pursuant to the Patriot Plan

  FOR THE REMAINDER of the day Sophia studied the maps of Boston in February 1831, and Shadrack taught her the intricacies of the four map forms. She learned how to use different quills in order to see more or less detail; she learned how to close in on a particular minute or second; and she began to grow more accustomed to the flood of memories that weren’t hers.

  The glass map still made her uneasy; remembering people she had never met left her feeling disoriented, as if she had woken up in someone else’s skin. But she began to find ways of distinguishing between her memories and those she experienced while map-reading: the memories from the maps were far clearer and more vivid than her own. At least one aspect came so naturally that she had nothing to learn: the fact that days, minutes, and hours unfolded at different paces; the sense that time could be short or long, dependi
ng on how one chose to read. More than anything, Sophia loved this quality of the memory maps. Though they revealed unknown places, their manner of compressing and expanding time made her feel entirely at home.

  In the days that followed, Shadrack began his ambitious plan to teach Sophia about the cartology of the other Ages. She learned that these maps needed particular care; they had to be cleaned and stored carefully to ensure their safety. Mapmaking, Shadrack explained, was a science and an art practiced in every Age, all over the world. The dynamic memory maps had probably been invented in either the Baldlands or the Middle Roads. No one knew for certain, but he believed their invention would only have been possible in one of those regions where the various Ages had been so jumbled that past, present, and future were interwoven.

  Shadrack had learned to make memory maps at the academy in Nochtland. The mapmaker’s guild was powerful there. The production and circulation of maps was carefully regulated; every Nochtland-created map had to bear the insignia that guaranteed its truthfulness—the tiny mountain range atop a ruler.

  His collection of memory maps opened Sophia’s eyes even further to the wonders of cartology beyond New Occident. She saw parts of the world she had never imagined she would see. The maps varied in scale: some recalled only a few rooms, others an entire city; some contained memories from only a minute or an hour; others held the memories of a whole year. One map captured twenty-four hours in the Alhambra, in Granada. Another showed the passage of a year in the capitol of the Russias. And another recalled the crucial four months of rebellion that led to the creation of New Akan. It occurred to Sophia, as she studied the maps, that space and skill were the only constraints. On the third day of her studies she turned to Shadrack. “Shadrack, do you think there could be a memory map of the entire world?”

  His face had an odd expression. “It would be unimaginably difficult to make such a map,” he finally said. “Though there are stories of something called the carta mayor, a hidden map that traces the memories of the whole world from the beginning of time to the present.”

  “That would be incredible.”

  For a moment, Shadrack’s face tensed. “Explorers have spent entire lifetimes pursuing the carta mayor. Some have lost themselves searching.”

  “So it exists?”

  “It almost certainly does not exist,” he said quickly. “I have always argued that it is a Nihilismian myth—one that serves their purposes well but has no basis in fact.”

  “How is it Nihilismian?” Though there was a large following of Nihilismians in Boston, Sophia knew little about them beyond what she had learned in school.

  Nihilismianism was one of the many religious sects that had sprouted in the wake of the Great Disruption. Many people still followed the old religions of the West, but a growing number believed in the Fates, whose temples depicted over the entryway the three goddesses, each holding the globe on a string. Others practiced Occidental Numism, or Onism, which held that all material and immaterial things were a form of currency to be bought and sold, exchanged and bartered with the higher powers. Sophia had seen an Onist’s account book once, when Dorothy—always more intrepid—had stolen a look at the private Book of Deeds and Debts that one of their teachers kept on his desk. It was filled with precise and, to Sophia, terrible calculations. One in particular often occurred to her when her mind wandered: “Twenty-one minutes of daydreaming about last year’s trip to the seaside with A, to be paid for with twenty-one minutes of housework.” It was said that the Onist lifestyle was wonderfully productive, but Sophia found the prospect dreadful.

  And there were Nihilismians who believed that the true world had been derailed by the Great Disruption and replaced by a false one. It was unsettling to think that a world no longer in existence was thought by some to be more real than their own.

  “The Nihilismians are sure that the carta mayor would show the true course of the world—not this one,” Shadrack said now. “But I fail to see how such a thing is even possible.”

  Sophia squinted pensively, considering.

  “It is a dangerous myth to believe in,” he concluded, with an air of finality.

  Every so often during her studies, Sophia would wander over to the wall map, where the blue and green pins marked the voyage her parents never took and the places where they’d appeared. Shadrack told her everything he could. An explorer from Vermont believed he had traded food with them somewhere deep in the Prehistoric Snows. An explorer from Philadelphia had spoken to a street vendor in the Papal States who had sold salt to a pair of young adventurers in Western clothing. A cartologer from the university had spoken to a sailor who might have boarded a ship with them in the United Indies. All of the encounters were brief and vague and inconclusive. Shadrack had noted every one.

  Sophia felt a terrible impatience when she contemplated the eventual purpose of her studies. Part of her wanted to leave at once, tracing the path of the green pins wherever they led. She had to remind herself that gaining the right store of knowledge for the journey posed a more significant and important challenge than any she might face later. Every moment of learning was essential. “Step by step,” Shadrack encouraged her, gesturing towards the wall map. “We have little enough time as it is, Soph. In truth, I wish we could work more slowly.”

  While Sophia learned to work with the maps, Shadrack shuttled back and forth between the map room and his ground-floor study. He had managed to secure forged papers and a lifewatch for Mrs. Clay, but this task had been only the first of many. Desperate friends from every corner of New Occident began arriving at 34 East Ending Street with requests for maps and route-guides to other Ages. Explorers were leaving the states in droves, panicked by parliament’s decision. Shadrack barely had time to answer Sophia’s questions.

  For her part, she became so engrossed in her studies that she hardly noticed how many days had passed, let alone hours and minutes. Her fascination with map-reading was genuine and all-absorbing; moreover, there were no competing distractions. Yes, it was summer, a time when ordinary schoolchildren spent all day swimming and wasting time and wandering with friends. But with Dorothy gone to New York, there was no one to knock on the door and drag her out into the sunshine.

  At the end of the week, Shadrack descended into the map room after a long meeting with an explorer who was leaving for the Russias, and he looked with some concern at his niece, hunched over the leather-topped table. With her dark blonde hair messier than usual, her face pale from lack of sleep, and her light summer clothes uncharacteristically rumpled, she looked more like an overworked office clerk than a child.

  Sophia was entirely unaware of Shadrack’s scrutiny; she was wrestling with a puzzle that she’d stumbled across while comparing two maps. From the shape and configuration of the islands rendered up them, she could tell that the maps depicted the exact same location. But one was labeled United Indies and the other Terra Incognita, and they seemed to show two different Ages.

  The former held the sound of bells at midday in a quiet stone courtyard; a pair of nuns walked past Sophia in the memory, talking quietly to one another, and the smell of the sea was in the air. The latter showed a cold, stony landscape with no signs of life. The only clue to their difference lay in the fact that the Terra Incognita map had been made more recently: ten years after the United Indies map.

  How is this possible? Sophia wondered. How could the place have changed so much so soon? She was studying Terra Incognita, scouring the map for signs of what had happened to so alter it, when Shadrack’s voice yanked her out of the memory.

  “Sophia!”

  “Yes?” She looked up, startled.

  “You’re getting pale from living in this basement. I know we have a lot to do, but you mustn’t entomb yourself here. Your limbs will turn to jelly.”

  “I don’t care,” Sophia said absently. “Shadrack, did anything happen recently at the eastern edge of the United Indies? I can’t figure this out. These two maps show the same place, but one of
them shows a convent and the one from ten years after shows . . . well, nothing.”

  “I determined that the map was mislabeled,” Shadrack said peremptorily. “We can look at it later; right now, you need to escape this room for a little while. It will clear your head.”

  “I don’t think it’s mislabeled. It’s the same spot, but different. And it occurred to me—do you still have the letter Casavetti sent? I think—”

  “Sophia!” Shadrack walked over and pulled back her chair. “Your enthusiasm does you credit. But it will not serve our purposes if you can’t carry a heavy pack or walk ten paces without collapsing. We’ll make a deal. Six days of being an indoor cartologer and one day of being an outdoor explorer.”

  Sophia grumbled. “It’s too hot outside anyway.”

  “How would you know? You haven’t even been outside! I’ll tell you what. I have hardly left the house myself, what with all the incoming traffic. When we do leave on our voyage, we’ll be utterly unprepared. Let me give you a list so you can begin gathering our supplies.”

  The prospect of buying supplies made the journey seem suddenly quite real; her pulse quickened. “That’s a good idea.”

  Shadrack chuckled. “I’m glad you approve. All right, I think your best bet will be Harding’s Supply out on the wharf. You were near there the other day.”

  “I know where it is.”

  “So I have an old pack that will do fine, but you need one. Don’t get one that’s too big—have them size it for you before you buy it. The other thing we need is a hard roll-tube for paper maps. Mine have all fallen apart, I haven’t used them in so long. Get two. And look for a weather-proof case for your lifewatch.” He thought for a moment. “That’s enough for now. Put it on my credit at the store; I have an account. Sound good?”

  “Pack, roll-tubes, watch-case,” Sophia repeated. “Sounds good.” She climbed the steps to the study, noticing as she walked through the house that the rooms had grown messier and messier during the days she had spent in the map room. Mrs. Clay did her best, but she was really no match for Shadrack’s explosive fits of energy. Sophia reached her room and sat down to change her shoes. As she did so, her eye lighted on her sketchbook, and a thought made her rise slowly and turn back the pages to June 14, the day before she’d first gone into the map room—the day she’d gone to parliament. She found herself looking at the drawing she’d made of the caged boy from the circus. Who knows what will happen to him, she thought. She stared at the bars she had drawn. Maybe he’s still there. I might see him again. The prospect gave her a brief flutter, but it was accompanied by a sobering thought. I wonder if he’s ever let out of that horrible cage. I can’t believe he might have to eat and sleep in it and everything. A sudden idea flickered through her mind. He doesn’t belong in that cage, she said to herself, her thoughts soaring. He shouldn’t spend another minute in that cage.