The Glass Sentence (The Mapmakers Trilogy) (5 page)

She looked at him gratefully. “Thank you, Mr. Elli. You are very kind. But it is late, and neither you nor Sophia have eaten. We can speak another time—I do not wish to impose.” She rose tentatively to her feet and patted the bun at the nape of her neck, tucking stray hairs into place.

“Nonsense,” Shadrack said, gently putting Sophia aside. “You’re right, we haven’t eaten. And neither have you.” He looked at his watch. “I will get in touch with Carlton. Tonight, if possible.” Carlton Hopish, fellow cartologer and Shadrack’s friend from the university, worked for the Ministry of Relations with Foreign Ages and owed Shadrack more favors than either of them could count. Thanks to his friendship with the most knowledgeable cartologer in New Occident, Carlton always seemed to be the most informed member of government; and Shadrack, in turn, always managed to be conveniently apprised of classified government information. “As a beginning step, I’ll write him a note tonight about getting expedited papers for you—may as well try the legal route first. Will you stay to have dinner with us? No one should have to bear such ill news as we heard today alone. Please,” he added, when he saw Mrs. Clay hesitate.

“Very well. Thank you for your kindness.”

“Soph, can you wait to eat a little while longer while I write to Carlton and discuss things with Mrs. Clay?” Shadrack asked with an apologetic look.

“Yes, of course. I should write to Dorothy, anyhow.”

“A good idea.” As Shadrack and Mrs. Clay retreated to his study, Sophia made her way upstairs.

— 16-Hour 27: Upstairs at East Ending—

S
OPHIA
SIGHED
AS
she climbed the stairs. She passed the room that had belonged to her parents, which had remained almost untouched for so many years, and she tapped the door lightly as she did every time she walked by it. When she was very small she would often take refuge there, curling up with the comfort of her parents’ belongings all around her. A portrait of her parents drawn by Shadrack sat on the nightstand, and when she was small Sophia had believed it had magical properties. It seemed an ordinary drawing, made with passable skill, since Shadrack was more draughtsman than portrait artist. In the first years after their disappearance, Sophia often picked it up and traced her finger along the inked lines, and somehow she could hear her parents’ laughter and sense their presence—as if they were truly in the room beside her. But over time, she visited the room less and less; it came to remind her more of their absence then of their presence. It recalled to her all the times she had gone in and, as always, found the room empty.

There were enough reminders of them elsewhere: the silver star earrings that she always wore, which they had given her on her first birthday; the colorful ribbons her mother often used as bookmarks; her father’s pipe, still sitting next to Shadrack’s in the study downstairs. These small objects made tiny anchors all around her, reminding her quietly that Minna and Bronson had, indeed, once existed.

Sophia’s bedroom had fewer of these anchors. It was filled instead with the objects that made up
her
life: a potted magnolia that grew in miniature; a watercolor of Salem given to her by an artist friend of Shadrack’s; a wardrobe with carefully ordered clothes; a desk with carefully ordered papers; and a bookshelf with carefully ordered books—school books on the bottom shelf and her own on the top shelf. The popular novels of Briony Maverill, the poetry of Prudence Lovelace, and works by Emily Dickinson and Ralph Waldo Emerson all accompanied the picture books that she still cherished and sometimes read.

Sophia unpacked her satchel, taking out her drawing notebook and her pencils. As she did, she found a stray piece of paper, folded in half, and she smiled, knowing already that it would be a drawing Shadrack had somehow sneaked into her satchel that morning. She opened it and laughed at the little sketch of Clockwork Cora, sleeping soundly through a boring speech at parliament, her tiny feet propped up on someone’s lap. Unfortunately, Sophia thought, putting the folded paper in a tin box, today it had been anything but boring.

Before sitting down at her desk, she opened the window above her bed to let the air in. She leaned on the sill to look out over the city. From her second-story window, she could see mostly rooftops. She had a narrow view of East Ending Street, where at that moment a boy was slowly pedaling along the cobblestones on a Goodyear. The sun was finally beginning to set, and though the air was no cooler, a breeze had started up.

After unlacing her boots and placing them neatly under her bed, she sat at her desk. She began by writing a letter to her friend Dorothy, who had moved away at the end of the school year. Dorothy’s father had an important position in the trade industry, and he had taken a job in New York that inconveniently deprived Sophia of her best—and in many ways her only—friend. Dorothy’s easy good humor had a way of tempering Sophia’s seriousness, and with her gone, the days of summer vacation had so far been very long and rather lonely. Dorothy had written of her loneliness, too, in the noisy bustle of New York City, so much less civilized than Boston.

But now they both had more pressing concerns. Dorothy’s father had been born in the United Indies, and it seemed doubtful they would be able to stay in New Occident. Sophia wrote to express her worry and to say how hard Shadrack had fought to prevent the measure that might now send all of Dorothy’s family into exile.

With a sigh, Sophia folded the letter, placed it in an envelope, and took out her drawing book. She always drew at the end of the day; it allowed her to record the hours that would otherwise, all too easily, slip away unnoticed. As images and words those hours became real, tangible, visible.

Years earlier, she had taken a trip with Shadrack to Vermont, and, as they were happening, the days seem to evaporate before her eyes until they lasted no more than minutes.

Upon their return home, Shadrack had given her a notebook with calendar pages as a way of helping her keep track of time. “Memory is a tricky thing, Sophia,” he had said to her. “It doesn’t just recall the past, it
makes
the past. If you remember our trip as a few minutes, it will
be
a few minutes. If you make it something else, it will be something else.” Sophia had found this idea strange, but the more she used the notebook, the more she realized that Shadrack was right. Since Sophia thought most clearly through pictures, she had placed images in the calendar squares to make careful records of her explorations through the year, whether they required leaving Boston or sitting quietly in her room. And incredibly, time became ordered, reliable, constant.

Now she had no need for calendar pages; she had her own method for reining in those slippery hours, minutes, and seconds. She had even devised her own manner of binding the paper, so that her notebook unfolded like an accordion and she was able to see the continuous passage of time in a clear, notched line like a ruler along one side of the page. At the margin she dutifully marked the time and recorded the happenings of the day. She filled the center of the page with the day’s images, thoughts, and quotes from people and books. Often she dipped backward or forward to amend how things had happened or speculate how they might happen.

Perhaps due to Shadrack’s influence or perhaps due to her own natural inclinations, she had realized that her sketches and recordings were actually maps: maps to guide her through the shapeless time that would otherwise stretch boundlessly into her past and future. Straight lines formed the borders of her observations, and dashed lines linked the borders to memories and wishes. Her thoughts connected to them with hatched lines, marking her mental travels, so that Sophia always knew not only what had happened when, but what she had been thinking at the time.

Using a soft pencil and the tips of her fingers, she began drawing June fourteenth. She found herself sketching the absurd, detestable mustache of Rupert Middles and quickly drew a firm line around him, boxing him off in disgust.
Not that,
she said to herself, trying to put the whole dreadful morning out of her mind. She began again. Soon she realized she was drawing the boy from the circus. It was difficult to capture the expression on his face that had so impressed her: his dark, intent gaze; his careless smile. “He was almost laughing,” she murmured. She glanced down at her notebook.
That’s not what he looked like,
she thought.

She turned the page to start over and then slowly began turning pages in the opposite direction, back to a drawing she had made on the last day of school.

A woman of middle age with laugh lines and short, wavy hair gazed fondly out at Sophia; a tall man with an impish smile and a bit of a stoop stood protectively behind her. Sophia had drawn her parents many times. She tried to imagine them as they would be now, older and a little heavier; over time the drawings had grown more detailed and vivid.
But I will never really draw them if I never see them again,
she thought. She closed her notebook and put it in the drawer with a sigh of frustration.

Sophia realized as she did so that the room had grown dark. She picked up her watch: it was almost eighteen-hour.
Shadrack has been talking to her for so long,
she thought. As she descended the steps, she could hear his voice—steady, reassuring—coming from the study. But when she reached the open doorway she stopped abruptly, seeing that Mrs. Clay was weeping openly.

“I can’t go back, Mr. Elli,” she said, with a note of terror in her voice.

“I know, Mrs. Clay. I know. I only say this because I want you to be aware of how difficult it may be. Carlton will hopefully get us the papers, but the government-issued lifewatch is difficult to procure. That’s all—”

“I can still hear the Lachrima. I can still hear its cries ringing in my ears. I would rather remain here illegally than go back.
I can’t.
”

Sophia took an awkward step forward. “I am sorry to interrupt—”

“And I am sorry we’ve kept you waiting, Soph. We’ll be in the kitchen momentarily,” said Shadrack, with a look that was apologetic but firm. Mrs. Clay wiped her nose with her handkerchief and did not look up.

Sophia walked down the hallway, the question in her mind—
What is a Lachrima?—
unasked.

4

Through the Library Door

S
OPHIA
ALWAYS
TOLD
Shadrack everything; usually he knew what she was thinking without having to ask. And Shadrack told Sophia everything. At some point, he had realized that this oddly grown-up child had the maturity and capabilities of someone far older. He had known graduate students less able to keep their lives in order. And so he even shared the complexities of his work with his niece, making her far more knowledgeable about cartology than any other thirteen-year-old in Boston. They did not keep secrets from each other. Or so Sophia thought.

The next morning, Sophia found Shadrack in his study, writing furiously. The mahogany desk and the ink blotter shook from the pressure of his urgent scribbling. When she came in, he pushed himself back from the table and gave her a tired smile.

“Is Mrs. Clay still here?” Sophia asked.

“She went upstairs around one-hour.”

“You haven’t slept much.”

“No,” Shadrack replied shortly. “Apparently everything that could go wrong has. You may as well read it yourself—you’ll see the news eventually.” He handed Sophia a newspaper that was lying, partially disassembled, on his desk.

The principal story was, of course, the closure of the borders and the adoption of Rupert Middles’s Patriot Plan. But the rest of the headlines took Sophia’s breath away:

FIRE
AT
STATE
HOUSE
TAKES
THREE
LIVES

PARLIAMENT
MEMBER
MURDERED

LEAVING
STATE
HOUSE

MINISTER
OF
FOREIGN
RELATIONS

SUFFERS “ACCIDENT”

Sophia gasped. “Carlton!” she cried.

M
INISTER
of Relations with Foreign Ages Doctor Carlton Hopish was discovered this morning in his house on Beacon Hill, suffering from what appears to have been a grievous stroke to his nervous system. He was found by his charlady, Samantha Peddlefor, who described her employer’s condition when she came upon him as “horrifying.”

Dr. Hopish has seemingly lost critical brain function. Doctors at Boston City Hospital say that it is too early to determine whether Dr. Hopish will be able to speak, let alone return to his duties as minister, any time soon.

Considering Dr. Hopish’s crucial role in implementing the newly passed Patriot Plan, the connection with parliament’s decision at the State House cannot be overlooked. Indeed, certain of Dr. Hopish’s colleagues in the ministry, as well as several respected members of parliament, readily assume that the injury was no accident. “I have no doubt,” said Mr. Gordon Broadgirdle, MP, “that Hopish has fallen victim to the unrestrained violence of foreigners bent on the vengeful extinction of our nation’s leaders.”

“How terrible!” she exclaimed.

“It is,” Shadrack replied, running a hand through his hair. “As if Carlton’s tragedy were not bad enough, all of this will only lead to greater support for the Patriot Plan. They are of course blaming foreigners for all three incidents.” He shook his head. “What a disastrous twenty hours.”

They were both silent for a moment. “We will be all right, won’t we?” Sophia asked quietly.

Shadrack sighed and held out his hand. Sophia took it. Despite her uncle’s look of exhaustion, his expression was reassuring. “We will be all right,” he said. “But there will be changes.”

“What kind of changes?”

“I won’t lie to you, Soph. This is a difficult time, and it will remain that way even after the immediate furor subsides. I am most worried about the end of August. As I said yesterday, I would not be surprised if the borders were closed entirely by the ridiculous Protection Amendment—even to us.”

“If”—she swallowed hard—“if they did that, then we couldn’t leave.”

“No,” Shadrack agreed.

“And . . . the people from New Occident who are in another age now?”

“I see your point,” he said after a moment.

“Their papers are here. If they want to come home now, they won’t be able to get in. And, after August, we wouldn’t even be able to go out to—to meet them?” She looked down, avoiding Shadrack’s gaze.

He stood and put his arm around her shoulders. “You’ve always held out hope, Soph.”

“It is foolish, I know,” she muttered.

Shadrack tightened his grasp. “It is not in the least foolish,” he said forcefully. “To hold out hope, to be willing to expect the impossible—these are courageous things. You have wonderful resilience.”

“I guess.”

“All you need, Sophia,” he went on, “is something to
do.
You lack the way to apply your exceptional patience, your persistence.”

“I don’t know what I can possibly
do
about it.”

“Yes, Soph, but I know,” he said, stepping back and releasing her. “I meant to wait a few more years, but we can’t. The time has arrived.” He looked her in the eye. “Sophia, you have to make me a promise.”

“Okay,” she said, surprised.

“Only a handful of people in this Age know what I am about to tell you.” Sophia looked at him expectantly. “I won’t ask you never to speak of it, because I know you will use your judgment and speak of it only when you must. But,” he said, looking down at the floor, “you must promise me something else. You must promise me that you won’t . . . You won’t decide—you won’t even consider,” he corrected himself, “going in search of them without me.” He met her eyes, his expression earnest. “Can you promise me that?”

Sophia pondered in silence for several seconds, feeling confused, alarmed, and hopeful all at once. “I promise,” she whispered.

“Good.” He smiled a little sadly. “I hope the long wait will have served its purpose in teaching you caution.” He walked to one of the bookshelves and removed a thick leather-bound volume. Reaching behind it, he seemed to turn something. Then the entire bookshelf, which reached from floor to ceiling, swung slowly outward. A wide doorway with a set of steps leading downward stood revealed.

Sophia gaped for a moment, too astonished to speak. Shadrack reached into the open passageway and turned on a series of flame-lamps. He smiled at her expression. “Well? Don’t you want to see the map room?”

“This has been here all the time?”

“It has. It’s where I do my most important work.”

“I thought when you closed the door you were working in your study.”

“Sometimes. I am usually downstairs. Follow me.” He led her down the steps, which turned twice before opening onto a basement Sophia had never known existed.

The room was fully as large as the entire first floor of the house. Electric flame-lamps dotted the walls and tables. In many ways, it seemed a grander, more orderly version of the library upstairs. Here, too, bookshelves covered the walls and a pair of sturdy wooden tables showed signs of frequent use. The room smelled of old paper, flame-lamp, and polished wood. A thick carpet that muffled Sophia’s footsteps covered the floor, and on one side of the room a sofa and two armchairs formed a small sitting area. But in other respects there was a sharp contrast. A long glass display case such as one would see in a museum glinted under the lights by the rear wall, filled with all kinds of strange objects. Nearby was a set of four enormous oak bureaus, each with dozens of shallow drawers. And then there was the most striking difference of all: the room was tidy and well kept. Nothing was out of place.

Sophia stood rooted to the spot, staring around her. She was still having trouble believing that such a room existed. “How long has this been here?” she finally asked, in an awed voice. “And why is it so
clean?
”

Shadrack laughed. “Let me tell you a little family history—some history that you don’t know. My father—your grandfather—was, as you know, the curator of the museum at the university. And as a curator, he was also an explorer.”

Sophia nodded; this much she knew.

“So Father spent a great deal of time not only curating the museum but also exploring the different Ages and purchasing pieces for it.” Again, this was not news. “Well, during his explorations, it was only natural that Father should also acquire things for himself. He was an avid collector, after all. And on his travels to the various Ages, he met people who gave him gifts. The pieces he had purchased for the museum went to the museum, and the pieces that were given to him or purchased for himself were kept here. Father made this space into his own private museum.”

“But why was it secret?” she asked.

“It wasn’t—not always. At first, he simply wanted a place that was cool and out of the light in order to keep his treasures safe. But then, as word of his private collection got around, Father began getting visitors from all over New Occident—people who wanted to buy his pieces. Needless to say, he wasn’t interested. As the attention of other collectors and dealers grew more and more insistent, Father decided he would just cause all of it to disappear. He made it known that he had donated his entire private collection to the museum, and then he built the bookcases to conceal the entrance. It took some time, but after a while the collectors stopped pestering him.”

“And everyone forgot the collection existed?”

“Almost everyone. When I started studying cartology,” Shadrack went on, “Father suggested I keep my more valuable maps and cartologic instruments here. He had a list of rules that I agreed to observe”—he grimaced—“such as keeping everything tidy. I agreed, and over time I had more maps and tools that needed to be kept hidden. Eventually, after Father passed away, I remade it into a map room, and I’ve kept it that way ever since. And of course it’s still secret, because of the work I do here. Most of it is so sensitive that it must be completely concealed—even from those who live under my own roof,” he added apologetically.

“Who else knows about it?”

Something like pain flashed across his face unexpectedly as his dark eyes drew inward, but he recovered himself almost immediately. “Very few living souls know about the map room. My students and colleagues at the university have no idea. Nor does Mrs. Clay. Miles knows. And your parents knew, of course. We spent many hours here together, planning their expeditions.”

Her parents had once sat in those very chairs with Shadrack! She could imagine them huddled over the table, poring over maps from all the different Ages and talking animatedly about routes, and supplies, and strange foreign customs.

“We did make a mess of this room before every trip,” Shadrack said, smiling. “Here”—he led her to a large, worn map pinned to the wall above the armchairs—“is where we would always begin.” It was a map of the world, dotted with pins of different colors. “After they left when you were small,” Shadrack said quietly, “I kept track of where they’d gone. This was their planned route.” He pointed to a series of blue pins that stretched out across the Atlantic and through the Papal States into the Middle Roads. Sophia had heard why her parents had left many times, but the journey took on a different aspect when accompanied by a map. “The message from our friend Casavetti seemed to suggest he had fallen prisoner while discovering an unknown Age here, in the Papal States.” He pointed to a blue pin. “Somehow, though Casavetti knew the region like the back of his hand, he had stumbled upon something new—and clearly dangerous. They planned to arrive, rescue Casavetti, and return.

“But I do not believe they ever arrived at their destination. The green pins show the places where I heard they had been.” They were scattered all over the world—the Northern Snows, the Baldlands, the Russias, even Australia. “For years, explorers I knew would bring me news. Very few claimed to have seen them firsthand, but they’d heard a rumor here, a suspicion there. I collected every scrap of information and tried to track their route—make some sense of it. As you can see, there’s no sense at all.” He gestured at the map. “Then I stopped hearing about them.”