The Emerald Atlas (5 page)

Kate leaned forward, which was difficult given the pitch and how the cart was bouncing on the rutted dirt road. “Sir—”

“Name’s Abraham, miss. Not necessary to call me ‘sir.’ ”

“Well—”

“You’re wondering why you didn’t see the mountains from Westport.”

“Yes, si—Abraham.”

“Light off the lake can be funny in the afternoon. Plays tricks on the eyes. Sit back now. We’ve an hour to go, and we’ll be hard-pressed to make it before nightfall.”

“What happens at nightfall?” Michael asked.

“Wolves.”

“Wolves?”

“Night falls. Wolves come out. Sit back now.”

Emma muttered, “I hate Miss Crumley.”

The higher they climbed, the more desolate and bleak the landscape became. Unlike the countryside around Westport, there were few trees here. The land was rocky, barren, wasted-looking.

Finally, when the sun had slipped behind the mountains and the sky above was streaked with red and Kate was sure she saw wolves lurking in every shadow, the road looped over a saddle between two peaks, the old man called out, “Cambridge Falls, dead ahead,” and there, stretching away from them, was a crooked, sloping valley with a river running down its center like a vein from the mountains above. The town was nestled on the river’s near bank, and the road took them down a lane of shops and houses. More homes, separated by snaking and crumbling stone walls, dotted the hillside. But for all that, most of the windows were dark, smoke came from only a dozen chimneys, and the few people they passed hurried by with their heads down.

“What’s wrong with this place?” Emma murmured.

Abraham snapped the reins sharply, forcing the horse into a trot. Both road and town ended at the wide gray-green river, and the old man turned the cart along the riverbank, following a set of fresh wheel tracks in the snow.

“Where’re the orphanage?” Michael asked.

“Across the river.”

“And what’s Dr. Pym like?”

Abraham didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “Different.”

“Different how?”

“Just different. Anyway, he’s not around much. Miss Sallow and meself do most everything.”

“How many children live here?” Emma asked.

“Including you three?”

“Yeah.”

“Three.”

“Three? What kind of orphanage only has three kids?”

This was a valid question and deserved an answer, but they were at that moment traveling along the edge of a gorge some hundred feet above the river—the banks had been growing steadily steeper since they’d left the town—and just as Emma asked her question, the cart slid on the icy track, skidding right up to the lip of the chasm.

“Do we have to go so fast?” Kate asked as the children tightened their grips on the sides of the cart.

“Look up,” Abraham said.

The red had faded from the sky, leaving behind a bruised blue-black. Night was only moments away.

The old man turned onto a narrow bridge. As the horse’s hooves clattered across the icy stones, the children peered down to the river rushing through the gorge below. Then they were across and Abraham was urging the horse up a winding path.

“Almost there!”

Kate had an awful feeling in her stomach. There was something wrong with this place. Something beyond the lack of people or trees or life.

“Is that it?” Emma exclaimed.

They’d rounded a hill, and there before them was the largest house the children had ever seen. It was made of black stone, the whole thing bent and crooked, its uneven rooftop spiked with chimneys. There were turrets at the corners and high, dark windows. Only a few lights burned on the ground floor. It seemed to Kate that the house squatted on the hillside like a great dark beast.

Abraham cracked the reins again and whooped.

Just then they heard the howl of a wolf. Others took up the cry. But the howls were far off, and the cart was even then pulling up to the house—the same house, Kate was sure, that she had seen in her dream.

CHAPTER THREE
The King and Queens of France

“Still asleep, are we? The King and Queens of France need their beauty rest, is that it? Lounge all day while others work. That’s the way it’s done in Gay Paree?”

Kate opened her eyes. Miss Sallow, the old crab-backed housekeeper and cook, was whipping open the curtains, letting in the morning. Emma groaned softly. Michael pulled the covers over his head.

They’d been put in a bedroom on the fourth floor. Through the windows, Kate could see the village of Cambridge Falls across the river. The old woman yanked the blankets off Michael on her way out.

“Breakfast in five minutes, Yer Majesties.”

Since they’d arrived the night before, Miss Sallow had accused the children of acting as if they were “the King and Queens of France” a good twenty times. Where she’d gotten the idea they thought so highly of themselves was a mystery. They were barely inside the front door when she’d scuttled up, scolding them for being late.

“Took our time getting here, didn’t we? Perhaps the young ladies and gentleman were expecting a carriage with four prancing horses, is that it? Chocolates and cake to eat on the ride?” She wore an old red sweater with holes in the elbows and men’s work shoes with no socks. Her gray hair was covered by a knitted cap. Without waiting for them to speak, she’d grabbed Kate’s and Emma’s bags.

“I’ve made dinner. I doubt it will be up to the gourmet standards of the King and Queens of France, but it will have to do. Chop off my head if you don’t like it; I’m past caring. This way, Your Highnesses.”

They ate at a wooden table in the kitchen. Miss Sallow shuffled around, banging pots and pans and muttering about various character flaws the children shared with the French royal family. But even so, Miss Sallow served them the best meal they’d had in years. Roast chicken, potatoes, a very small amount of green beans, warm rice pudding. If the price for eating like this was being called the King and Queens of France, then Kate, Michael, and Emma were happy to pay it.

When they had eaten all they possibly could, Miss Sallow yelled, “Abraham!” and a few moments later, the old man limped into the kitchen.

“So they’ve had their dinner, then,” he said, looking at the clean plates and the glazed, sated expressions on the children’s faces.

“Oh, you’re a sharp one, Abraham,” the old woman said. “Nothing gets by you now, does it?”

“I was just making an observation, Miss Sallow.”

“And thank the heavens for that, for where would the rest of us be without the benefit of your keen insights? Now, do you think you could show Their Royal Highnesses to their chamber or do you have more enlightening observations you need to impart?”

“This way, young ’uns,” Abraham said.

He led them up four different staircases and along dark, crooked corridors. The light in his gas lamp wobbled as he limped. Emma leaned heavily on Kate, and Michael, already half asleep, walked into two different tables, one lamp, and a stuffed bear. Once in their bedroom, Abraham built up a fire large enough to burn through the night.

“Now you listen to me,” he warned, “and don’t be wandering about these halls at night. They’ll twist you about so you can’t find your own nose and you have to cry for Miss Sallow to come get you, and then, young ’uns, you’ll have wished you’d stayed lost.”

He started out, then paused and came back.

“I almost forgot. I brought you this.”

He took an old black-and-white photograph out of his pocket and handed it to Kate. It showed a wide lake and, in the distance, the chimney-peaked roofs of houses rising above the trees. She passed it to Michael, who, without opening his eyes, slid it between the pages of his notebook.

“I took that near fifteen years ago. Remember the gorge we drove along? Used to be there was a dam on it; plugged up the river and made a lake stretching from the big house here to the village.”

“A dam?” Michael yawned. “Why’d the town need a dam?”

“Boring,” Emma mumbled, and rolled toward the window.

Abraham went on, undeterred: “Why, so’s to build a canal to the lower valley. Cambridge Falls made its bones in mining, pulling ore out a’ them mountains. That’s all done with now, but time was, this was a different place—a decent place. Men had work. Folks were neighborly. There was trees covering the hillsides. Children—” He stopped himself.

“What about the children?” Kate asked.

And suddenly, despite her fatigue, it occurred to her that while passing through the village, they had not seen a single child.

Abraham waved his hand as if brushing the question aside. “Nothing. It’s late and me old brain’s muddled. That photo’s just to know your new home wasn’t always the benighted and bedeviled place it is today. Now good night, and no wandering about.”

Then he was gone, shuffling out the door before she could press him further. Left alone, Michael and Emma were asleep immediately, but Kate lay awake long into the night, watching the firelight on the ceiling and wondering what secret Abraham was keeping. The dread she’d felt when she first saw the house had wrapped itself like cold metal around her heart.

Eventually, the journey, the large meal, the warmth of the fire all overcame her, and she fell into an uneasy sleep.

The children got lost trying to find the kitchen. They ended up in a room on the second floor that had at one time been either a picture gallery or an indoor tennis court. They were hungry and frustrated.

“Dwarves have an excellent sense of direction,” Michael said. “They never get lost.”

“I wish you were a dwarf,” Emma said.

Michael agreed that would be nice.

“Do either of you smell bacon?” Kate asked.

Following the smell, ten minutes later the children stumbled into the kitchen, where Miss Sallow pronounced herself honored that the Emperor and Empresses (the children had somehow been promoted) saw fit to grace her with their presence and said that next time they were late, she would give their food to the dogs.

“We need to learn our way around,” Michael said as he tucked into a thick stack of pancakes. Kate and Emma agreed, and, after breakfast, they went back to their room and Michael dug in his bag till he found two flashlights, his camera, paper and pencils for making maps, a small knife, a compass, and gum.

“All right, I guess it’s obvious I should be the expedition leader.”

“Hardly. Kate should be leader. She’s oldest.”

“But I have the most experience in exploring.”

Emma snorted. “You mean poking around in the dirt, saying, ‘Oh, lookit this rock! Let’s pretend it belonged to a dwarf! I want to marry it!’ ”

Kate said it was fine if Michael was leader, and Michael said Emma could carry the compass, which was all she wanted anyway.

Over the next several hours, they discovered a music room with an ancient, out-of-tune piano. A ballroom with cobwebbed chandeliers slumped on the floor. An empty indoor pool. A two-story library with a sliding ladder that came crashing down when Emma tried to ride it. A game room with a billiards table that had families of mice living in the pockets, and bedroom after bedroom after bedroom.

Michael dutifully recorded each new discovery in his notebook.

They made it to the kitchen in time for lunch, and Miss Sallow served them turkey sandwiches with mango chutney and—apparently in honor of their visit—French-fried potatoes. After lunch, the children decided to go see the waterfall, it being, after all, what the town was named for. And so, their bellies full, they left the house and walked across the narrow bridge and through the snow along the edge of the gorge. Soon, they heard rumbling, and as they came over a small rise, the ground ended suddenly in a sharp cliff. The children found themselves looking out across a wide basin. In the distance, they could see the blue-gray expanse of Lake Champlain with the dark knot of Westport hugging its shores. And there, directly below them, the river shot out of the gorge and plunged hundreds of feet down the face of the cliff. It was dizzying, standing there amid the thundering of the water, the spray blowing back cold and wet on their faces.

Emma held on to the back of Michael’s coat as he leaned forward and took a picture looking down the flume of water.

For a long time, the children lay on their stomachs in the snow, watching the river tumble down the cliff. Kate could feel the snow melting into her coat, but she was content not to move. The sense of lurking danger she’d felt that first moment of arrival had not gone away. She had so many questions. What had happened to this place? What had killed the trees? Made the people so unfriendly? Why hadn’t they seen the mountains from Westport? Where was the mysterious Dr. Pym? And why—this troubled her most of all—were there no children anywhere?

“Well, team”—Michael stood and brushed the snow off his coat—“we’d better be getting back.” Since becoming leader, he had taken to referring to Kate and Emma as his team. “There’re still a few rooms I want to get to before dinner. And I heard Miss Sallow mention something about beef potpie.”

Returning to the house, they discovered a room filled only with clocks, another that had no ceiling, and another that had no floor. And then they discovered the room with the beds.

It was on the ground floor at the southwestern end. There were at least sixty old metal bed frames, all ordered in rows. “It’s a dormitory,” Michael said. “Like in a real orphanage.” But when they opened the curtains, the children found iron bars on the windows. They didn’t stay in the room long.

It was close to dinnertime when they descended a flight of stairs and pushed through a half-rotted door into the wine cellar. The air was cold and musty. The beams of their flashlights played across row after row of empty racks.

Michael found a narrow corridor at the back of the cellar and followed it to where it ended in a brick wall. He’d just turned away when Emma and Kate came around the corner.

“What’d you find?” Emma asked.

“Nothing.”

“Where’s that go?”

“Where’s what go?”

“Are you blind? That.”

Michael turned. Where moments before had been a solid brick wall, there was now a door. He felt the breath go out of him and his heart begin to pound against his chest.

“What’s wrong?” Kate asked.

“Nothing, just”—he struggled to keep his voice steady—“that door wasn’t there a second ago.”

“What?”

“He’s kidding,” Emma said. “It’s part of his exploring, pretending-dwarves-are-real, boring-everyone-to-death game, remember?”

“Is that true?” Kate said. “You’re just playing?”

Michael opened his mouth to tell her no, he was telling the truth; then he saw the look in her eyes and knew if he said that, she would make them leave. And what was he saying? That the door had appeared out of nowhere? That was impossible. Obviously, he had missed it somehow.

Only he hadn’t. He knew that.…

“Michael?”

“Yes. I was kidding around.” And he smiled to show that everything was okay.

“Told you he was being weird,” Emma said. “Look how he’s smiling.”

The door opened easily and revealed a narrow flight of stairs going down. Michael went first, counting each step aloud. Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two … forty-three, forty-four, forty-five … fifty … sixty … seventy. At the eighty-second step, they came to another door.

Michael stopped and faced his sisters.

“I have a confession. I lied. The door wasn’t there.”

“What—”

“I’m sorry. Leaders should never lie to their team. I just really wanted to find out what was down here.”

Kate shook her head angrily. “We have to go—now.”

Emma groaned. “He’s just playing that game again. Tell her.”

“Come on, both of you!”

“Kate—” Michael went up a step so he was close to her. “Please.”

Afterward, Kate would sometimes think about this moment—out of all the moments—and wonder what might have happened if she hadn’t given in, if she hadn’t looked at Michael and seen his eagerness, his excitement, the desperate plea in his eyes.…

“Fine,” she sighed, telling herself that in the dimly lit cellar he simply hadn’t seen the door, that there was no need to over-react. “Five minutes.”

Instantly, Michael had his hand on the knob. The door opened to darkness.

They moved forward in two groups, Kate and Emma to one side, Michael to the other, their flashlights revealing a lab or study of some kind. The ceiling was curved, giving the space a cave-like feel, and it was either very large, very small, or sort of normal-sized. Each time they turned around, the walls seemed to have shifted. There were books and papers everywhere, piled on the floor, on tables, stacked on shelves. There were cabinets crammed with various-sized bottles and long brass instruments with dials and screws. Kate found a globe, but as she turned it, the countries seemed to change, assuming shapes she didn’t recognize.

Had the lamps been lit or the fire burning, Kate might have recognized the room sooner. As it was, she simply stumbled about in the darkness, counting the seconds till they could leave.

“Look at this,” Emma said. She was standing in front of a row of jars, pointing to one in particular. Kate leaned in close. A tiny lizard with long claws hung suspended in amber liquid. Folded onto the lizard’s back was a pair of papery wings.