by S. E. Grove
Sophia realized what he was asking. “You can stay.”
“Thanks. I owe you.” He snapped his fingers with a practiced air, ending in a gesture like a pointed gun. “It would be good to get that map, too, if that’s okay. Tomorrow I’ll get out of your hair.”
The door shut, and after a moment Sophia heard the sound of running water.
Standing in Shadrack’s bedroom, which looked so normal, she was once again overcome. The leather armchair, the books on the end table beside it, and the piles of maps—it was as if her uncle had only left the room for a moment and was about to return. The blue rug was worn in a path from the door to the mahogany secretary, which, for once, stood unlocked and open. Sophia moved toward it, feeling a faint flutter in her stomach. Shadrack never left his desk open.
A splatter of ink on the blotter and the open journal left no doubt in her mind: Shadrack had been surprised while sitting here, writing. Seeing her name on the page, she read the last entry anxiously.
I struggle with how much to tell Sophia. She must understand the dangers, but there is a fine line between useful comprehension and needless alarm. While she left to buy supplies, I visited Carlton in the hospital, and I was shocked by his condition. The article did not mention the horrible mutilation of his limbs and face. I can only assume they mean to withhold this for purposes of the police inquiry. He does not recognize me; he recognizes no one. I doubt if he has preserved any cognitive faculties. He is like a helpless child. He makes inarticulate sounds, occasionally, and seems to feel pain when his injuries are dressed, but he has no other awareness of the world around him. It seems to me impossible that this could be the result of some ordinary assault. . . . Rather, I begin to suspect that someone
The entry ended there. Horrified by the image of Carlton Hopish ruined, Sophia drew back. What had Shadrack suspected? Could he have seen something at the hospital that had placed him in danger? There was no message for her in those pages, as she had hoped—only an ominous riddle that left her even more frightened. She felt the tears welling up in her eyes and took several deep breaths to stop them.
Shadrack’s armchair, where he always read for an hour or two before going to bed, still bore the impression of where he had sat the night before. Sophia stumbled over and dropped down into it. It smelled of cedar and pine and paper; Shadrack’s smell. What if she had seen him reading in his armchair for the last time? She could already imagine how the room would look in a year, or five, or ten. It would look just like her parents’ bedroom down the hall: the walls would discolor in strange patterns; the books would warp from one humid summer after another; the clothes and shoes would seem to shrivel and age. She had been trying to hold the thought at bay, but now that she pictured Shadrack’s room slipping into abandonment, she could not avoid it. Again, the moments expanded, and Sophia imagined a long future without him, without her parents—entirely alone. The thought made her curl up in the chair, and she wrapped her arms around her knees.
Sophia felt something sharp against her side. She ignored it. But the more she ignored it the more it jabbed into her ribs, until finally she sat up and shoved the pillow aside. To her surprise, it felt hard. She lifted the pillow. Propped behind it was one of her old drawing notebooks.
What is my old notebook doing in Shadrack’s armchair? she wondered dully, picking it up. The notebook felt heavy. She untied the two leather laces that held its covers closed, and the book fell open to what looked like a note. She recognized Shadrack’s handwriting at once, even though the message was brief. It read:
Sophia—go to Veressa. Take my atlas. Love, SE
Beneath it was a glass map.
Sophia stared at the map and the note in wonder. Shadrack had left her a message after all! And he had found the perfect place for it. Between the heavy pages of her drawing notebook, the thin pane of glass lay well protected. Sophia ran her fingers tenderly over her uncle’s writing. The message sounded urgent, but not despairing or afraid. Shadrack hadn’t told her to hide or run away. Sophia felt something—not relief, but determination—course through her. She remembered what Shadrack had said before under very different circumstances: “All you need, Sophia, is something to do.”
And now she did have something to do: she had to take Shadrack’s atlas and find Veressa, wherever that was. And perhaps when she found Veressa, she would find Shadrack!
Sophia jumped to her feet. First, she decided, she had to read the glass map. The fading sunlight from the window had no effect. She hurriedly lit the flame-lamps and held the map up to one. Once again, nothing happened. The glass had no inscription as to its time or place, and it was completely transparent. Could this simply be a plain piece of glass? she wondered. No, impossible. Why would Shadrack leave her a sheet of glass unless it was a map? She examined it carefully, holding it close to the light. Sure enough, in the bottom left corner was the etched mapmaker’s sign: a mountain range atop a ruler. But the map would not wake. She bit her lip and carefully placed the glass back between the pages of the notebook. It would have to wait. She had to find Shadrack’s atlas.
— 17-Hour 45: Searching for the Atlas—
NOTEBOOK IN HAND, Sophia rushed back down to the library. She took a deep breath, placed the book on the sofa, and dropped to her knees. Shadrack’s atlas could not be hard to find; it was tall and wide and would stand out from the other volumes. She rummaged through the piles impatiently, searching for the burgundy-colored binding. Then she realized it would be easier if she simply reshelved them.
She began placing the books back on the shelf closest to her. Slowly, the familiar white and slate-blue pattern of the carpet began to emerge. She filled four shelves without spotting the atlas. The books had fallen every which way, and some had torn pages. Sophia tried to be careful while moving quickly. She was filling a fifth shelf when she heard footsteps and looked up to see Theo standing in the doorway.
Sophia hardly recognized him. Without all the feathers, he looked like an ordinary person. He had brown hair that was a little long—just below his ears—and a small dimple in his chin. Wearing Shadrack’s clothes, he looked older. Sophia had thought he was about fourteen, but now she wondered whether he wasn’t fifteen or sixteen. He even held himself in an older way, with one hand—deeply scarred, as if from years of injuries—resting on the doorframe. But even without the feathers, he was still unlike anyone she had ever met in New Occident.
The boys her age at school were nice or harmless or erratically cruel, depending on their temperaments. None was very interesting. And the older boys, some of whom she had come to know through theater and field sports, seemed to have the same qualities in advanced form: more decidedly nice, harmless, or cruel. Theo seemed none of these. He had the air of calm authority she remembered from the circus. Sophia felt herself blushing when she realized she had no idea how long she had been staring at him.
His brown eyes met hers in amusement. “Are you cleaning?”
Sophia blushed a deeper shade of red. “No, I’m not cleaning. I’m looking for something and this is the easiest way.” She quickly rose. “You have to see what I found.”
Sophia had not yet learned, in her thirteen years, that it is not unusual for strangers in extreme circumstances to find themselves sharing a sudden familiarity. The shock of a shared threat makes the stranger an ally. Then the stranger does not seem strange at all: he, too, is a person in danger attempting to survive. And if the stranger who is no longer a stranger happens to be someone likable, someone who has seemed appealing and intriguing from the very beginning, then he will fit all the more readily into place, almost as if he was always meant to be there.
Having no internal clock exaggerated this effect for Sophia; a brief moment with someone could feel much longer. Theo was a stranger who was no longer a stranger: an intriguing and unexpected ally. If someone had asked her at that very moment whether she had reason to trust Theo, she would have had difficulty answering. The question did not occur to her. She liked him,
and so she wanted to trust him.
Sophia opened the notebook to show him the glass map and the message. “It is a—”
“Map,” Theo said, picking it up carefully with his scarred right hand. “I figured.” He held it up to the light, just as Sophia had, while she looked on in surprise.
“How did you know?”
He carefully replaced it, seemingly not hearing her question; then he frowned thoughtfully over the message. “Is this supposed to be the map to Veressa?”
“I thought it might be. Or Veressa might be in the atlas.”
“You’ve never heard of it before?”
“No. Have you?”
Theo shook his head. He glanced around the room. “What’s the atlas look like?”
“Large—about this tall—and fat, and dark red.”
“All right, let’s hunt it down.” He smiled. “And then, when we find it, maybe you can get me a map of New Occident.”
He crouched by the closest pile and began shelving books alongside her. They were almost halfway done when Sophia dove toward a pile a few feet away, exclaiming, “There it is!” She hadn’t recognized the book because it lay open, pages facing upward.
“This is it,” she said excitedly. “This is Shadrack’s atlas.” She flipped through it quickly. “It’s fine—all in one piece.” Then she showed Theo the cover, which read, in gold script, An Annotated and Descriptive Atlas of the New World, Including the Prehistoric Ages and the Unknown Lands, by Shadrack Elli.
“You mean it’s his,” Theo said, clearly impressed. “He wrote it.”
“Oh, yes—it is the best one. The others haven’t half the information.” Sophia opened the atlas quickly to the index. “Veressa,” she murmured. She ran her finger along the V column, but Veressa wasn’t there. “How strange. Every place in the atlas is listed here.”
“You’re looking at cities and towns,” Theo said, pointing to the page header. “Maybe it’s a lake or a desert or a forest or something else.”
“Maybe,” Sophia murmured. She was going through the index again when a sudden noise made her heart jump. Someone was rattling the side door of the house, the door that Sophia had closed behind her. She and Theo stared at each other, and for a few seconds neither of them spoke; they waited. Then they heard the sound of the door opening.
8
The Exile
1891, June 21, 18-Hour 07
New Occident’s northern border with the uninhabited Prehistoric Snows—also called the Northern Snows—remained an unprotected and undefined area. The western and southern borders, however, increasingly became contested zones between the people of the Baldlands and New Occident and its Indian Territories. Though determining an actual border would have been impossible, this did not prevent the inhabitants of the borderlands from going to extreme lengths to defend the boundaries where they imagined them to be.
—From Shadrack Elli’s History of New Occident
SOPHIA DOVE UNDER Shadrack’s heavy oak desk, dragging Theo with her. From the library there was no view of the side door, but as soon as whoever had entered the house came along the passageway they would be visible through the doorway. As it turned out, she didn’t have to wait that long.
“Fates protect us!” a woman’s voice cried out. “Mr. Elli! Sophia?”
“It’s our housekeeper,” Sophia told Theo as she scrambled out from under the desk. “I’m in the library, Mrs. Clay,” she called out. “In here.”
Mrs. Clay rushed into the library and stopped in the doorway, her eyes wide with fear. “What has happened here? Where is Mr. Elli?”
Sophia saw reflected in Mrs. Clay’s horrified expression the full scope of the destruction around her.
“We don’t know,” Theo replied when Sophia failed to answer. “He’s not here.”
Mrs. Clay turned to Theo, pausing as she took in his unexpected presence. “What do you mean? Who are you?”
“He was taken a few hours ago,” Theo said. He gestured at the destruction. “By force.” Mrs. Clay stared at him uncomprehendingly. “Theodore Constantine Thackary,” he added. “Theo for short.”
“Who? Who took him by force?”
“Some men. I couldn’t really see them very well. They had a coach. The coach . . .”
Sophia turned to him. “What is it?”
“I just remembered that the coach had something painted on the side—an hourglass.”
“That’s something to go on, I guess,” she said, disappointed.
Mrs. Clay, seeming strangely relieved by the mention of several men and a coach, reached out for Sophia and embraced her. Her frantic terror seemed to have subsided. “I am so sorry, Sophia. So, so sorry. What can I do to help?”
“Well, Shadrack left me a note.”
“A note!” exclaimed Mrs. Clay. “Surely that’s a good sign. What did it say?”
“He said to take his atlas and go to Veressa.” Sophia looked down at the book cradled in her arms. “We were just trying to find it when we heard you come in.”
Mrs. Clay had an odd expression. “What? You’re sure? He said Veressa?”
“Yes.”
“Show me,” she asked hoarsely.
Sophia put down the atlas and quickly retrieved the note from her drawing notebook. “It says ‘Go to Veressa.’” She looked at Mrs. Clay hopefully. “Do you know where that is? Do you think he might be there?”
Mrs. Clay took a deep breath and seemed to collect herself. “Sophia, this is so unexpected. I—I think there are some things I should tell you,” she said. She looked around. “Is the whole house this way?”
“No, they didn’t go upstairs.”
“Let’s go to my rooms, then, and get away from this terrible wreck. We will have something to eat, and I can tell you what I know. It might help.”
Sophia felt suddenly exhausted. She realized that the last thing she had eaten was the slice of bread on the way to Harding’s Supply. She was probably still trembling, in part, from hunger.
“Thank you, Mrs. Clay.” It gave her a pang to leave the library in such disorder, but she knew there was nothing else to be done now. She carefully tied her notebook closed and held it tightly along with Shadrack’s atlas.
The housekeeper’s third-floor apartment always made a striking contrast with the rest of the house; today, it did even more. The rooms were tidy and prettily arranged, with as much light as could be permitted through the open windows. A pale blue sofa dotted with white blossoms, a collection of empty birdcages, and a fragile white coffee table were the principal furnishings of her sitting room. Potted plants, many in bloom, dotted every surface: violets and palms and dozens of ferns. The air was thick with the smell of sun-warmed soil.
What always struck Sophia most was the sound—a light but constant tinkling, as if from hundreds of tiny bells. From every inch of the ceiling hung delicate sculptures: webs of thread strung with crystal, ceramic, and metal. The small globes, bells, mirrors, cylinders, and myriad other shapes turned slowly, colliding gently against one another and emitting a quiet chiming that filled the air. The sculptures almost gave the impression of living things, as if a flock of drowsy butterflies had come to rest in the rafters. Theo craned his neck to stare, fascinated. “I don’t like the silence,” the housekeeper explained to him. “I hope the noise doesn’t bother you.” She motioned toward the sitting room. “Why don’t you rest? I’ll just see about some coffee.”
Sophia perched herself on one of the chairs and tried not to think about what was waiting downstairs. The chimes soon began to have the soothing effect that was, no doubt, their intended purpose. She and Theo watched the sculptures turn slowly overhead as Mrs. Clay opened cupboards and set the kettle on the stove. “I’m sorry Shadrack won’t be able to help you,” Sophia finally said to Theo.
Theo shrugged. “That’s how it goes.”
“Is Ehrlach going to send someone after you?”
“No. He has no time,” Theo said with a half-smile. “He would have before
, but now all he wants is to get in one last show in New York. The only good thing about the borders closing is that Ehrlach is out of business. Can’t really run a circus when every act in your show is illegal, can you? Although I guess,” he added, his smile fading, “he’ll just take the show somewhere else. People like the circus everywhere.”
Mrs. Clay came in with a tray, which she set on the low wooden coffee table. She’d brought cups and plates, butter and jam, and a loaf of brown bread with raisins. “I’ll be right back,” she said. When she returned with the coffee pot, she poured them each a cup and then sat back. She traced her temples with her fingertips and patted the bun at the nape of her neck, composing herself. Theo and Sophia ate hungrily. Sophia covered her brown bread with butter and jam and took big bites. As she sipped the warm coffee from its blue porcelain cup, she began to feel better.
“I’m afraid what I have to tell you is unpleasant,” Mrs. Clay began, focused on something neither of them could see at the bottom of her cup. “These are very painful memories for me. But Shadrack has told you to find Veressa, and I should explain to you why I can’t ever return to the Baldlands.”
Theo leaned forward. “You’re from the Baldlands?”
Mrs. Clay met his eyes. “Yes.”
“So am I.”
“I thought you might be. So I’m sure, once you hear my story, you’ll understand the difficulty I’m in. But to Sophia it is all new, and it will take some explaining. People here sometimes have trouble believing what it’s like outside—in the other Ages.”
Sophia drew her legs up underneath her on the velvet chair. Mrs. Clay’s voice, high-pitched and fluttery, echoed the quiet tinkling of the chimes overhead. “I don’t know how much your uncle has told you,” Mrs. Clay began, “about when we knew each other in the Baldlands.”
