The Emerald Atlas (6 page)

Across the room, Michael raised his camera. Just as he snapped the picture, he heard Kate behind him, saying something that sounded like “Oh no.”

His camera spat out the photo, and Michael waved it dry, blinking to erase the spots from his vision. He’d taken a picture of an old book he’d found on the desk. It was bound in green leather, and all the pages were blank.

Kate hurried up, dragging a protesting Emma.

“We have to get out of here.”

“Look.” He used one hand to flip through the book. “All the pages are empty. Like it’s been wiped clean.”

“Michael, we shouldn’t be here. I’m not kidding.”

His photo was dry, so Michael slipped it into his notebook. As he did so, he found the photo Abraham had given them the night before showing the lake with the village in the distance.

“Are you listening to me?” Kate asked. “We shouldn’t be here.”

“Let go!” Emma was struggling in Kate’s grasp.

“You said five minutes. Anyway, it’s just someone’s study. This is probably an old photo album. See?”

As Michael reached down with Abraham’s photo, Kate took hold of his arm. She was saying something. Something about a dream she’d had. But the instant Abraham’s photo touched the blank page, the floor disappeared beneath their feet.

CHAPTER FOUR
The Countess of Cambridge Falls

“This is—oh boy—I mean, we must’ve—”

“Michael, are you okay?”

“—there’s no other—I mean, it happened, right, we—”

“Michael—”

“—oh boy—”

“Michael!”

“What?”

“Are you okay?”

“Am I—I mean, yes, I’m fine.”

“Emma?”

“I’m okay. I think.”

They were on the shores of a large, smooth lake. In the distance, chimneys and the peaked roofs of houses rose above the pine trees. It was a cloudless summer day. Kate could smell the flowers blooming.

“What … happened?” Emma asked. “Where are we?”

“I can answer that.” Michael’s face was flushed with excitement, his words tumbling all over themselves. “We’re in Abraham’s picture! Well, not in the actual picture itself; that would be ridiculous”—he allowed himself a quick chuckle—“we’ve been transported to the time and place the photo was taken.”

Emma stared at him. “Huh?”

“Don’t you see? It’s magic! It has to be!”

“There’s no such thing!”

“Really? Then how’d we get here?”

Emma looked about and, seeing no clear way to argue, wisely changed the subject. “So where are we, then?”

“Cambridge Falls, of course!”

“Ha! There’s a big giant lake out there! And trees and stuff! Cambridge Falls looks like the moon!” She was pleased to prove him wrong about something.

“I mean before! The way it used to look! You didn’t see the picture! This is it exactly! I put it in the book, and now we’re here! Wait—the book! Where—”

The book, its cover now deep emerald in the sun, lay on the ground a foot or so away. Michael snatched it up and quickly flipped through the pages.

“The picture’s gone! But it really did bring us here!” Grinning hugely, Michael slid the book into his bag and gave it a pat. “It’s real. It’s all real.”

Kate had stepped away and was half staring at an enormous boat floating far out in the middle of the lake. Being responsible for her brother and sister had made her very literal-minded. She’d never indulged in the games of fantasy Michael played. But he was right: he had put the photo in the book and now they were here. Only what did that really mean? That the book was magic? That they had traveled through time? How was that possible?

“Bless me.…”

Kate spun around. A small man stood a few paces off, holding a camera. He wore a brown suit, was completely bald, and had a neat white beard. His mouth hung open in astonishment.

“It’s Abraham,” Michael said. “That makes sense. He’d have to be here to take the picture. It’s him, but younger.”

“Still bald,” Emma said.

Kate took a deep breath. She had to pull herself together. But just then a scream echoed out from the woods, a scream unlike any the children had ever heard before. It passed through them like an icy wind, rippling the water on the lake.

Abraham groaned, “Oh no …”

A figure emerged from the trees, running toward them through the high grass. It was dressed in dark rags, and some kind of mask covered its face. As it came closer, Kate saw that the creature ran with an odd, herky-jerky lope, as if with each stride it had to throw its legs forward.

“Run,” Abraham hissed. “You must run!”

“What is it?” Kate asked.

“Just run! Run!”

But Michael was fumbling with his camera and Emma had already snatched up a rock, and Kate knew it was too late. The creature pulled out a long, curved sword and screamed again. This time was much worse; Kate felt her legs tremble and her heart crumple in her chest as if all the blood, all the life, were being squeezed out of her.

The creature knocked Abraham to the ground.

Shaking, Kate stepped forward to put herself between this thing and her brother and sister.

“Stop!”

Amazingly, it did. Coming to a halt right in front of her. It was not breathing hard, despite having run all the way from the trees. In fact, Kate wasn’t sure it was breathing at all. Up close, the creature’s clothes were discernible as the tattered remains of an ancient uniform. There was a faded insignia on its chest. The metal of its sword was tarnished and chipped. But what truly drew her attention was the creature’s skin. It was a muddy, greenish color and covered here and there with bits of dirt, small sticks, and even patches of moss. As Kate watched, a thick pink worm slithered out from beneath the creature’s ribs.

She forced herself to look at its face. It wasn’t wearing a mask. Rather, strips of black cloth were wrapped around its head so that only its eyes were visible. The eyes were yellow, with thin vertical pupils like a cat’s. The creature smelled like something that had been buried in a swamp for centuries and then dug up.

It raised its sword and pointed back the way it had come.

“You’d better go,” Abraham said. “It’ll make you anyway.”

Stepping around Kate, the creature seized Michael and practically threw him toward the trees. It turned on Emma, but Kate moved again into its path.

“Stop, okay, stop! We’re going!”

“Get my camera!” Michael called.

Kate stooped, retrieved the camera, and draped it around her neck. Emma was still clutching the rock she hadn’t thrown, so Kate took her free hand and together they joined Michael, the three of them walking toward the line of evergreens, with the thing, whatever it was, trudging behind.

The forest the children were driven through held little relation to the Cambridge Falls they knew. The trees were tall and thick, ferns blanketed the ground, the air was filled with birdcalls. Everything around them was rich and alive.

“… And I bet you Dr. Pym’s a wizard,” Michael whispered excitedly. “That had to be his room, don’t you think? I wonder what else he’s got in there.”

Kate had now accepted that what had happened to them was magic. The truth was, it explained a great deal, not just the book Michael had found, but how, for instance, an entire mountain range could have been hidden from view. So fine, magic was real. Right now, she was more concerned with how they were going to get out of here.

“Where do you think he’s taking us?” Emma asked.

“He’s probably going to execute us,” Michael said, pushing up his glasses. The day was warm and humid, and they had all three begun to sweat.

“As long as he executes you first, Mr. It’s-Just-a-Photo-Album. ’Cause I’m definitely gonna watch that.” She turned to their captor. “Where’re you taking us, stinker?”

“Don’t talk to it,” Kate said.

“I’m not afraid.”

“I know you’re not,” Kate said, though in fact she knew the opposite to be true. “But don’t anyway.”

After ten minutes of being forced along with grunts and shoves, the children came overtop a short rise, the woods opened, and Michael stopped in his tracks.

“Look!”

He was pointing toward the river. At first, Kate didn’t understand what she was seeing. It was as if the water had gotten halfway down the gorge, gone under the narrow stone bridge, and suddenly stopped, a quarter mile shy of the falls. Only there were no falls! No river shooting down to tumble over the cliff! Kate looked back along the dry groove of the chasm to where the blue strip of water halted. She noticed what looked like a wide wooden wall built across the gorge, and it hit her: Abraham’s dam!

She glanced toward the town, to the shimmering lake in the distance, and saw the same large boat from before, floating on the glassy surface. In the other Cambridge Falls, the one they’d left, there was no dam, no lake, and hardly any trees. What had happened to change everything? Was their ragged captor to blame?

“In
The Dwarf Omnibus
,” Michael was saying, “G. G. Greenleaf writes about dwarves being master dam builders. Not like elves. All they ever want to build are beauty parlors.”

Emma groaned and said that she and Kate didn’t want to hear about dwarves. “We’re gonna die soon enough; don’t torture us.”

The creature emerged from the trees behind them and began waving its sword.

“Come on,” Kate said.

As the children picked their way down the hill, Kate’s hand went to her mother’s locket. It was up to her to get them out of here, up to her to protect them. After all, she had promised.

“Are those …,” Emma said.

“Yes,” Kate said.

“And—”

“Yes.”

“What’re they doing with them?”

“I don’t know.”

The creature had brought them down out of the woods to a clearing beside the dam. Up close, it was indeed like a huge wooden wall—perhaps twenty-five feet thick—and the whole thing was bowed, curving in a gentle C from one side of the chasm to the other. The front faced a long stretch of still water. The back—nothing, a void.

But none of them, not Kate, not Emma, not even Michael, were looking at the dam.

The reason was simple.

They had found the children of Cambridge Falls.

In the center of the clearing, forty or fifty boys and girls were massed into a tight knot. Kate guessed the youngest was about six, while the oldest looked to be near Michael’s age. There was no shouting, no pushing, no running about; none of the behavior Kate knew was normal when children were gathered together. Fifty children, give or take, stood in one place, perfectly still and quiet.

And around them paced nine of the black-garbed, moldering creatures.

There was a harsh bark, and the children’s captor drove them forward.

“Emma,” Kate whispered, “we need to ask these kids questions. So don’t do anything, okay?”

“What’re you talking about?”

“She means don’t start a fight,” Michael said.

“Fine,” Emma grumbled.

The creature forced them into the back of the pack. Kate was relieved that most of the children seemed to be looking at the woods across the gorge and didn’t notice their arrival. One boy, however, was staring directly at them. He had a round face, a mop of wildly curly red hair, and very large front teeth.

“What’re you looking at, you—” Emma began.

“Emma.”

Emma closed her mouth.

“You ain’t from around here,” the boy said.

He kept his voice low, and the look on his face was one Kate recognized. She’d seen it on children who after years in orphanages had decided no one was ever going to adopt them. The boy had no hope.

“My name’s Kate,” she said, speaking in the same near-whisper as the boy. “This is my brother and sister, Michael and Emma. What’s your name?”

“Stephen McClattery. Where’re you from?”

“The future,” Michael said. “Probably about fifteen years. Plus or minus.”

“Michael’s our leader,” Emma said brightly. “So if we all die, it’s his fault.”

The boy looked confused.

“That thing found us in the woods and made us come here,” Kate said. “What are they?”

“You mean the Screechers?” Stephen McClattery said. A small girl had come up to stand beside him. “We call ’em that ’cause of how they yell. You heard ’em yell?”

“I hear ’em when I’m sleeping,” the little girl said.

Kate looked at her. She was younger than Emma and had pigtails and glasses with lenses that made her eyes look huge. She was clutching a very worn doll that was missing half its hair.

“Is this your sister?”

Stephen McClattery shook his head. “This is Annie. She used to live a house over back in the village.”

The little girl nodded vigorously to show that this was in fact true.

“Where do you live now?” Kate asked, though she already knew the answer.

“The big house,” Stephen said.

Kate glanced at her brother and sister. It was clear they were all picturing the large room with bars on the windows and row upon row of beds.

“You’re orphans?” Emma asked. “All you kids?”

“No,” Stephen said. “We got parents.”

“Then why don’t you live with them?” Michael asked.

Stephen McClattery shrugged. “She won’t let us.”

Kate felt a shiver of dread; surely here was the answer behind the missing children. But before Kate could ask who “she” was, one of the children cried out, and the mob surged forward. The children were jumping, screaming, climbing over top of each other, their fear of the creatures seemingly forgotten. Stephen McClattery and the girl had disappeared into the crowd.

“What is it?” Emma asked. “What’s over there?”

Kate strained to peer over the heads of the children. Across the gorge, figures were streaming out of the woods. She realized why the children were yelling.

“It’s their mothers.”

The figures on the other side were all women. They were waving, calling the children by name.

Kate looked around. The Screechers—that was what the boy had called them—were at the front of the mob, pushing the children back. This was their chance to escape. But where would they go? They were still trapped in the past.

Then it came to her.

“Michael! Do you still have the picture?”

“No, it disappeared when I put it in—”

“Not the one Abraham gave us. The other! The one you took with your camera! When we were in the room! Tell me you have it!”

Michael’s eyes went wide as he realized what she meant. Putting Abraham’s photo in the book had brought them here. So maybe the picture he had taken in the underground study would get them back.