The Glass Sentence (The Mapmakers Trilogy) (4 page)

“Every man or beast in a continuous exhibition of all the fascinating variety of the Ages!” the little man continued, showering his audience with energetic bursts of spit. “Each enacting constantly the bizarre and indeed mesmerizing habits of its Age, so that the visitor will hardly believe that he stands still in time!” With the tip of his cane, he tapped a large cage that stood to his right. “The wild boy from the Baldlands, in his fierce warrior dress. And inside there are even fiercer creatures from the Baldlands. Centaurs and mermen and children with tails. See them while you still have the chance!”

Sophia stared in fascination at the cage, all other thoughts forgotten. There stood a boy who seemed only a little older than herself, dressed from head to toe in feathers. She could tell at once that he belonged to a different Age. His hair was twisted up around colored plumes that appeared to spring from his skull, and his limbs were covered with multicolored down. A skirt of trailing feathers hung at his waist, while an empty quiver dangled from his shoulder. His costume might once have been impressive, but most of the feathers were broken or crushed. To Sophia he looked like a beautiful bird, trapped in midair and dragged down to earth.

But it was not his beauty that captured her attention. It was his expression. He was imprisoned in a cage, and he was made a spectacle to everyone around him. And yet, for all that, he surveyed the crowd as if
they
and not he were the spectacle. A faint smile tugged at the edges of his mouth. Gazing calmly at them, he made the cage seem like a pedestal; he was serene, unshakable, magnificent. Sophia could not take her eyes off him. She had lost track of time once again, but in a way that seemed entirely new.

“I assure you, ladies and gentlemen,” the little man went on, “that you will even see battles enacted among these fierce creatures in Ehrlach’s Circus of the Ages. And after today’s decision in parliament, your days to view the wonders of the other Ages are numbered! Seize the opportunity now before it’s too late!” At this he reached with his cane through the bars of the cage and gave the boy dressed in feathers a careless jab.

The boy looked at the cane and grabbed it easily, as if picking up a stray feather. Then he pushed it back toward the circus master, disinterested, and resumed watching the crowd. As the man continued to advertise Ehrlach’s marvels, Sophia realized that the boy was looking directly at her. He raised his hands and placed them on the bars. It seemed to Sophia that he could see her thoughts and that he was about to speak to her. She knew she was blushing, but she could not look away. She could not move; she did not want to move.

“Hey, hey,” she heard someone say. The young woman ahead of her in line was shaking her shoulder. “Didn’t you want the city trolley, sweetheart? There it is—better run for it.”

Sophia tore her eyes away from the boy. Sure enough, a trolley was approaching. If she hurried she would catch it. She looked back once more at the boy, who was still watching her thoughtfully. Then she ran.

3

Shadrack Elli, Cartologer

S
OPHIA
LIVED
WITH
Shadrack at 34 East Ending Street in the South End of Boston, in the solid brick house her great-grandparents had built. White shutters, an abundance of ivy, and an iron owl perched discreetly over the entryway made it similar to the other brick houses adjoining it on the quiet street. But no other house had the small oval sign, pine-green in color, that hung on the red door, announcing:

In reality, the sign had little use, because anyone who sought out Shadrack knew exactly where to find him; furthermore, they knew that the mere title “cartologer” did not begin to describe his occupation. He was as much historian, geographer, and explorer as he was cartologer. Apart from being a professor at the university, he was a private consultant to explorers and government officials. Anyone who needed expert knowledge of the history and geography of the New World found their way to Shadrack’s door.

They came to see Shadrack simply because he was the best. In a time when most of the world was uncharted and no single person knew more than a few Ages, he was the most knowledgeable. Though he was young for a master cartologer, no one could match Shadrack for breadth of knowledge and skill. He had mastered the history of every known continent, he could read the maps of every civilization known to New Occident, and, most importantly, he could draw brilliant maps himself. The great cartologer who had trained him was said to have wept with wonder when Shadrack Elli presented his first complete map of the New World. He had precision and artistic ability on his side, but any draughtsman had that; it was his bottomless knowledge that made Shadrack so extraordinary.

Having grown up surrounded by her uncle’s work, Sophia sometimes had difficulty seeing it as exceptional. She thought of mapmaking as a noble, learned, and rather messy profession. The house on East Ending Street was papered from top to bottom with maps. Maps of contemporary, ancient, or imaginary worlds covered every inch of wall space. Books and pens and compasses and rulers and more maps, lying flat or rolled up like scrolls, littered every flat surface. The parlor and the study fairly overflowed with equipment, and even the kitchen had begun to shrink from the edges inward as the countertops and cabinets became receptacles for maps. Sophia moved like a tiny island of tidiness through the house, straightening books, rolling maps, gathering pens, all in the effort to stem the cartologic tide around her. The only two relatively orderly places were her room, which had a few select maps and books, and the third-floor apartment of their housekeeper, Mrs. Clay.

Mrs. Sissal Clay had arrived years earlier, when Sophia was only eight, and after a long consultation with Shadrack had simply moved in to the uninhabited third floor. Shadrack had always frowned upon the custom of keeping servants, believing such arrangements perpetuated a system in which the children of the servant class withdrew early from their schooling. Even when he was entrusted with the care of his three-year-old niece, he refused to hire a nanny, relying instead upon the paid assistance of his graduate students—who, he reasoned, were not abandoning their education to perform domestic duties.

Immense love is almost always enough to sustain a child. But it does not always provide the logistical and practical necessities, including a steady supply of clean clothes and an understanding that toddlers can become bored with certain aspects of adult life, such as two-hour university lectures on the glaciation of the Eerie Sea.

Shadrack’s well-meaning but mostly unsuitable assistants had no more command of these necessities than he did, and they were fleeting presences in Sophia’s life: brilliant, inventive, memorable, and usually rather incompetent as caretakers. One had built her a magnificent boat out of lacquered paper that she sailed on the Charles River to the everlasting envy of all the neighborhood children. Another had attempted to teach her Latin and had mostly succeeded, so that she could converse quite fluently in that tongue about farmers, sheep, and aqueducts by the time she was seven. All in all they were very lovable, but few understood the usefulness of mealtimes and bedtimes. Sophia had learned early on to see them as friendly companions rather than reliable guardians, and she did what any reasonable person would do: she learned to take care of herself.

Then Mrs. Clay arrived. For reasons he did not explain, Shadrack broke his own rule. Mrs. Clay became the housekeeper at 34 East Ending Street. Had Mrs. Clay been a different sort of woman, Sophia’s life might have changed dramatically at this point. Mrs. Clay was a widow, and she had been the housekeeper at the academy of cartology where Shadrack had studied for two years in Nochtland, the Baldlands’ capital. The house might have flourished under her guiding hand, so that Shadrack’s high-spirited chaos and unbounded affection would have found some complementary order and good sense. But Sophia soon realized, young as she was, that their housekeeper needed more taking care of than she herself did.

A moody, silent woman with sad eyes and a wide face, Mrs. Clay moved through the rooms of 34 East Ending as she did through the streets of Boston: quietly, almost fearfully, as if the only thing she was looking for was a proper place to hide. She was one part melancholy kindness, two parts mysterious unease; Sophia both liked her and felt that she did not really know her. Over time, Sophia simply accepted Mrs. Clay’s presence and went on relying more and more on herself, becoming the independent and peculiarly practical person that she was.

— 15-Hour 19—

W
HEN
S
OPHIA
FINALLY
returned home, she found a red-eyed Mrs. Clay and a harried-looking Shadrack at the kitchen table. They both rose to their feet the moment Sophia walked in. Shadrack rushed to embrace her. “Sophia! Finally!”

It was such a comfort to find herself back home, crushed up against the familiar scrape of Shadrack’s chin and the familiar smell of Shadrack’s pine soap, that she held on tightly for a while before speaking. “I’m sorry,” she finally whispered, pulling away. “I lost track of time.”

Mrs. Clay placed her hand on Sophia’s shoulder, murmuring a fervent thanks to the Fates, and Shadrack shook his head with an affectionate smile that still bore traces of his concern. He tucked her hair behind her ears and held her face in his hands. “I was just about to go back to the State House—for the third time—to look for you,” he said. “I thought you were going to wait for me on the balcony.”

“I did, but I didn’t know how long to wait, and then they started shouting about a fire . . .”

“I know,” Shadrack said grimly.

“When I finally got away I took the wrong trolley. And then I lost track of time. I ended up at the wharf,” she concluded with embarrassment.

“It’s all right,” Shadrack said, taking her hand and pulling her over to the kitchen table. “I was worried, but it’s all right. I know the fault is not yours.” He let out a deep sigh as he sat down.

“What happened to you?” Sophia asked.

“I made my way over to the balcony stairs with Miles, and then he started a fistfight with some hothead in a bow tie. By the time I separated them, the balconies were empty.” Shadrack shook his head. “What a day. Mrs. Clay has of course heard the news—the whole of Boston has by now, I’m sure.”

“But at least you are home safely, Sophia.” Mrs. Clay said. She spoke with the clipped accent of the southern Baldlands, and her manner of dress had never lost its foreign eccentricities. She always tucked a stray flower or clover stem or even an autumn leaf into her buttonhole; today, she wore a wilted violet in her hair. Her face was still blotchy and red, and Sophia understood that the tears had nothing to do with her absence: Mrs. Clay had no lifewatch and no papers.

“Thank you. I’m sorry to have caused you so much worry,” Sophia said, sitting down beside them at the table. “Did Miles leave as planned?”

“Yes,” Shadrack said, rumpling his hair tiredly. “His ship left at twelve-hour. He hardly expected the day to be so momentous, and now he was more eager to leave than ever.”

“He
is
coming back, isn’t he?”

“Let us hope so, Soph. For now, the plan is to close the borders and deport people from other Ages unless they have papers. The so-called ‘Patriot Plan,’” he said dryly, “is generous enough to permit free travel for citizens of New Occident.”

“So we could still travel in and out?” She glanced apologetically at Mrs. Clay. “I mean, anyone with papers can travel in and out?”

Shadrack nodded. “Yes. For now. What you may not have heard over the commotion,” he went on, “is that they plan to reconsider Wharton’s Protection Amendment at the end of August. They may very well implement it.”

“And close the border for all of us?
No one
could go in or out?”

“It would be sheer stupidity, of course, but that has hardly stopped parliament before.”

“I just don’t understand why this is happening now,” Mrs. Clay protested, her voice dangerously wobbly.

“Fear, pure and simple,” Shadrack said.

“But my impression has always been—and I know I am still a relative newcomer here—but I had always thought that people in New Occident—in Boston, at least—were rather . . . intrigued,” she said carefully, “by the other Ages. They treat foreigners with curiosity, not hostility.”

“I know,” Sophia agreed. “It makes no sense; people love to see the other Ages. At the wharf, there was this circus with creatures from the other parts of the world. And there was a man selling tickets who had a boy covered with feathers in a cage, and the boy was his prisoner, but he was so calm he hardly seemed to care, even though everyone was staring at him.” She found, despite her rush of words, that there was no way she could explain just how remarkable the boy was, or why he had left such an impression upon her.

“Yes,” Shadrack said, eyeing her thoughtfully. He ran his hand through his hair and frowned. “I think the majority of the people here
are
intrigued—fascinated, even—by the other Ages. For some that means exploration, for others that means befriending foreigners, for still others it means observing them in cages.” His smile had no mirth. “But many others are afraid—not just afraid of people from other Ages who are different, but afraid, however illogically, for their own safety.”

“You mean piracy and raiding,” Mrs. Clay said.

“I do. No one is denying,” Shadrack said, “that the conflicts with the other Ages are real. The pirates in the United Indies are a costly distraction, and it is true that raiding parties from the Baldlands are continually tormenting populations at the edges of New Occident—even more so in the Indian Territories. But,” he continued sadly, “it goes the other way, too. Ships sail from Seminole every day under our flag and then, once they’re out on the sea, they lower ours and raise a pirate flag. And raiding parties from New Occident go into the Baldlands as often as they come out of them.” He paused. “That is why the boy you saw on the wharf, Soph, was a captive.”

“You mean he was kidnapped in the Baldlands?”

“Most likely. They would probably claim that they found him in New Occident and that he somehow broke the law, but most certainly he was taken in a raid, and the circus bought him from the raiders as the newest addition to their show.” His voice was bitter.

“That’s despicable.” Sophia was thinking of how calm the boy had seemed and of how he had stepped up to the bars, as if about to speak to her.

“It is.” The Elli side of the family, Shadrack and Minna, were all from Boston. But the Timses came from many different places, and Sophia’s great-grandparents had been slaves; after the rebellion, they helped to found the new state of New Akan in 1810. Their son, Sophia’s grandfather, had moved to Boston to attend the university. “Sophia’s great-grandfather was only seventeen when slavery ended,” Shadrack explained to Mrs. Clay. Then he turned to Sophia. “It must have shaken you to see a boy behind bars like that.”

“This is what I don’t understand,” the housekeeper said. “Surely people in New Occident see that almost everyone here was once from somewhere else—everyone has a foreigner in their past.”

“Yes, but what we have seen today,” Shadrack replied, “is what happens when fear overwhelms reason. The decision is illogical. It makes no sense to deport some of our finest laborers, merchants, and tradespeople, not to mention mothers, fathers, and friends. They will live to regret it.”

The three sat silently for a while, gazing, each with their own preoccupations, at the empty kitchen table. Sophia sat with her head resting on Shadrack’s shoulder. He stirred a moment later, as if something had just occurred to him. “Mrs. Clay, I apologize. You came in an hour ago quite distressed, and I was full of my own concern for Sophia. We should discuss how we will get papers for you, since there is no time to acquire them through the proper channels.” Shadrack shook his head. “Naturalization can take months—sometimes years. We will have to find other means.”