The Glass Sentence (The Mapmakers Trilogy) (6 page)

They stood in silence for a moment, gazing at the smattering of pinheads. “But you see, Sophia—I did not give up hope either. I wouldn’t have dreamed of heading off without you to find them, and taking you with me then was out of the question. While you were little, I learned everything I could about where they had been seen. And I waited. I waited for you to reach an age when I could tell what I knew. An age when it would be possible for us to go in search of them—together.”

Sophia took in the far-flung destinations marked by green pins, overwhelmed. “Go in search of them?” she repeated.

“I would have waited another few years, had I been able to,” Shadrack went on. “But that is no longer possible. You and I need to start making our plans
now
, so that we can leave in case the borders close for everyone—we have only weeks left. We can’t take the map room with us, so we have to take it all up here.” He tapped his temple with his forefinger.

Sophia’s eyes traveled over the room and settled on the hopeful, determined face of her uncle. She smiled at him elatedly. “How do I start?”

Shadrack smiled back, something like pride in his eyes. “I knew you were ready, Soph.” He reached out and placed his large hand gently on her head. “At first, you will have to rely on some of your extraordinary patience, because the first few steps to becoming a cartologer and explorer go slowly.”

“I can do it,” she said eagerly. “I can be patient.”

Shadrack laughed. “Then we’ll commence the first lesson. Before that, a brief tour of the map room.” He strode to the wooden tables. “Here’s where I do the mapmaking.” As she walked past them, Sophia noticed that one table had a worn, leather surface, covered with small nicks and scratches. “And these shelves are full of books that are either too valuable or too risky to have upstairs.” He indicated a few that were unusual shapes and sizes and then gestured at one of the large wooden bureaus. “I’ll show you these later. First—here, in the case, are some really beautiful things. Treasures from the other Ages. Your parents found some of them for me.”

Shadrack pointed to a tall metal cylinder studded with tiny gems. “A map reader from Patagonia,” he said proudly. Beside it was something that looked like an ordinary seashell, but somehow made her think of warm sunlight and the murmur of underwater voices. “A Finding Shell from the South Seas. And this,” he said, indicating a flat, waxy object covered with bright pictures, “is a forest map from the Papal States.” As Sophia looked at it, she envisioned it on a lectern in a room filled with incense smoke and faint candlelight. There were many other mysterious objects.

“So these are all actually
maps
?”

“That’s the thing, Soph,” he said, his eyes gleaming. “We think of maps as drawings on paper—some lines, some words, some symbols. Right?” Sophia nodded. “But in reality, maps come in all shapes and sizes—and in the other Ages, they are nothing like ours. My theory,” Shadrack continued, “is that your parents went astray because they could not read the maps
of the Age they were in
. They knew a little bit, but they counted on their paper maps to guide them through everything.” He winced. “
I
counted on their paper maps to guide them. If my theory is correct, there are places you simply cannot navigate without local maps, and that takes an entirely different kind of knowledge. More than skill—it takes a mental adjustment to read and make maps unlike those drawn on paper.”

Sophia looked at him in wonder. “Do you mean that
you
make them? You make those other maps?”

“That,” he replied, “is what the map room is for. In New Occident we mainly draw maps on paper. But maps can be cast in almost anything—stone, wood, earth, sand, metal, cloth, leather, glass—even made on a piece of soap or a broad leaf. Every mapmaker has specialties, depending on where they are and what Age they belong to. And some people, like me, have tried to learn the cartology of other Ages.”

“But not my parents.” Sophia’s voice was small.

“They knew the rudiments of other cartologic forms. But not enough, I suspect. They may have found themselves somewhere far from the Age of paper maps, with only a sand map before them. What then?” He shook his head. “That won’t happen again. You and I will be masters of every manner of map when we go in search of them.”

“What other forms do you know?” she asked breathlessly.

Shadrack led her to the large wooden bureaus. “Apart from paper, upon which every cartologer of our Age depends, I’ve learned mapmaking with four of the essential materials: metal, glass, cloth, and clay.” As he spoke, he opened one of the drawers in the nearest bureau and removed a thin rectangle of shining metal, which he held up by the edges. It was no larger than a sheet of paper. In the corner was stamped, “Boston, February 1831.” Beside that was a tiny symbol: a mountain range stacked upon a ruler. The rest of the metal sheet seemed completely blank.

“Let’s leave this out for a moment,” Shadrack said, placing it on the leather-topped table. He opened a drawer in the next bureau and took out a sheet of glass of about the same size. It, too, was entirely blank except for the place and date, “Boston, February 1831,” and the mountain symbol etched into the corner.

“But they are blank,” Sophia said.

“Just a little patience!” he said, opening drawers in the third and fourth bureaus. From these he withdrew a thin clay tablet and a rectangle of linen, engraved and embroidered, respectively, with the same information as the other two. He placed them side by side on the table and looked at the array in satisfaction. “There we are. Four maps of the same timeplace.”

Sophia frowned. “Timeplace?”

“The meeting of a particular place and time.”

“These are maps? They don’t even have anything on them. They’re just blank rectangles.”

Shadrack went to one of the bookcases and ran his hand along the spines of the books. When he found the volume he was looking for, he took it off the shelf and thumbed through its pages. “Here!” he said. He laid the open book on the table. “This is what you’re imagining, am I right?”

Sophia saw that the book was open to a map labeled “City of Boston.” The familiar shape of the city, with its neighborhoods and waterways and principal roads and rail lines lay before her. “Yes,” she said. “That’s a map.”

“Now, what would you say if I told you that each of these ‘blank rectangles,’ as you call them, has more information—a hundred times more information—than this paper map? They not only map the place, they map the
time
of Boston in February of 1831.”

Sophia furrowed her brow. “Do you mean like how I map things in my sketchbook?”

“Yes, very much like your clever way of recording time through drawings and words. Although in these maps, you won’t see pictures and words; you’ll see animate impressions of what was happening then and there. It will feel as though you are
actually
there.”

She let out a breath of astonishment. “How?”

He smiled. “I can promise you that, with practice, you will not only be able to read every map in those cabinets; you will even be able to make your own.” He pulled out a chair. “Have a seat,” he said. “And give it a try.”

Sophia sat down eagerly and looked expectantly at the four rectangles lying before her.

“What do you think the first step is?”

She looked up at him in astonishment. “You mean you’re not going to tell me?”

He smiled. “That would defeat the entire purpose. As I said, it’s not skill that’s required—it’s the ability to think about things differently. If I tell you, you will simply memorize the method. If you have to discover it for yourself, you will understand how to apply the principle you learn. When we are out in another Age, confronted by a map neither of us understands, we’ll need as much inventive thinking as both of us can muster. Memorizing won’t help.”

“But I have no idea how this works!”

“Perhaps not at first,” Shadrack said. “But you have imagination, and it will come to you. I’ll give you a starting point. And this is at the heart of lesson one—a lesson about paper.” He sat down in a chair beside her. “Paper maps are valued all across the Ages for good reason. They’re durable, they’re unchanging, and they’re accessible to anyone who picks them up. That has its uses. But other kinds of maps, while harder to read and in many cases more fragile, are also more dynamic and better at keeping secrets. Those qualities go hand in hand. A paper map is always there, but other maps—well, they sleep most of the time. Something you do has to wake them up so they can be read.”

Sophia shook her head, utterly perplexed.

“Trust me, this will be useful,” Shadrack said, getting up. He walked toward the stairs. “Now I have to go finish the letters I was writing on behalf of Mrs. Clay so that they go out with the morning post, and I want to enquire about Carlton. I’ll be back soon to check on your progress,” he said warmly.

After he had gone, Sophia took a deep breath and looked at the objects spread out before her on the table. She ignored the book and concentrated on the four blank rectangles, all with the mysterious words, “Boston, February 1831,” in the bottom righthand corner. What did Shadrack mean about “waking up” the maps? And that the maps showed the time as well as the place? How was such a thing possible? She tentatively picked up the metal sheet. It felt cool to the touch and surprisingly light, and she saw herself faintly reflected in the ochre metal. But no matter how much she stared, nothing on its surface changed.

She put it down and picked up the clay tablet. She turned it over; it was just as blank on the back. The glass sheet was more opaque than she had realized at first. She gazed down onto its milky surface and watched her blurry reflection grow larger. Finally, she picked up the piece of linen by the corners and held it up before her face. “What’s inside you, little handkerchief?” she murmured. “Why won’t you say anything? Wake up, wake up.” Nothing happened. She let out a sharp sigh of frustration. The piece of linen fluttered briefly, and as it settled once again something remarkable happened.

The surface started to change. Slowly, lines began to draw themselves across it. Sophia stared, wide-eyed, as the edges filled with scrollwork and a map appeared in the center of the cloth.

5

Learning to Read

S
OP
HIA
DROPPED
THE
linen on the table and ran to the base of the stairs. “Shadrack, come look!” she shouted. “Something happened!”

“All right,” he called down to her. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

She rushed back to the table to make sure the image was still there; it was. The fine, colored lines on the map looked as though they’d been drawn in ink. On the right-hand side, the legend consisted of two pale blue clocks: the first was numbered from one to twenty-eight, the second was an ordinary twenty-hour clock. A detailed web of brown and green filled the center of the linen, creating the familiar shape of the city of Boston. The borders, drawn in gold, repeated an inscrutable pattern of scrollwork and mysterious symbols.

“So how did you discover it?” Shadrack asked, sitting down next to her. He had brought a glass of water, which he set down at a good distance from the maps.

“I’m not sure. I think I breathed on it.”

He smiled, stroking his chin. “All right, good enough. We often discover things by accident. The cloth maps respond to air. A breeze, a gale, a breath—it’s all the same. The reason they respond to air is because they’re weather maps. You can draw anything on a cloth map, but what they show most clearly are weather patterns. This one shows the weather for Boston in February of 1831.”

“But it looks just like an ordinary map. Are those lines the weather?”

“You can’t read it because you haven’t specified a day and time yet.” He pointed to the clocks in the legend.

The clocks had no hands. “These are hours and days?” Sophia asked.

“That’s right. Choose one.”

“How?”

“Well, the traditional way is to use your fingers. But you can use all kinds of things—beads, pins, things like that. I like these.” He went to the closest bureau and removed a small, leather-bound box. Inside it were ordinary pebbles—all of them smooth and smaller than a fingernail.

“Oh, I see!” Sophia said excitedly. She placed a pebble on the day-clock’s 8 and another on the hour-clock’s 9. Nothing happened.

“Nine in the morning on February 8, 1831,” Shadrack murmured. He took a sip of his water.

Sophia squinted at the map. “I still don’t see anything.”

Shadrack looked at her keenly. “Before you look at the weather for February eighth, let me tell you about an important difference between these maps and the maps you’re used to. These are memory maps. They are not just one cartologer’s impression of this place and time. They hold the collected memories of real people. They’re histories. Some maps hold the memories of one person, others hold the memories of many. This map, for example, holds the memories of hundreds of people who were living in Boston in February of 1831.”

“How does it do that?” Sophia breathed.

“That is what you will learn when you start making maps yourself. I can tell you it requires a great deal of research. The important thing to know now is this: when you read the map, it will be like having memories—you’ll experience the memories of the people who were there.”

Sophia’s eyes opened wide. “I want to try it.”

Shadrack leaned over the map, carefully keeping his arms on the table. “Try pointing out Boston Common to me. Can you find it on the map?”

“That’s easy,” Sophia scoffed. She reached out and placed her finger on the five-sided common, drawn in green at the right of the map. And suddenly, as her finger touched the cloth, she had a vivid memory—a memory that seemed her own. She saw the common in the early morning light, with clouds passing overhead. The landscape around her was blurry and dim, but she could recall vividly the cold bite of the wind and the damp in the air. Sophia felt herself shivering, the memory was so clear. She gasped and pulled her finger away from the map. The sensation faded. “Incredible,” she said. “It is so real. As if
I
am
remembering it.”

Shadrack sat back with a look of gratification. “Yes. That is how it should be. That’s what these maps
do
.”

“But whose memories are they? Did you put them there?”

“Well, no—and yes. I learned about all the memories I could for this time and place. The map can only contain what the mapmaker finds. It’s not an all-seeing eye. The memories come from living people—people who were alive when I made the map—and from written memories.”

“I don’t understand how they are
there
.”

Shadrack paused. “Do you recall the drawing in your parents’ room? The one of Minna and Bronson on the day they were married?”

Sophia looked at him. “I didn’t know it was drawn the day they were married.”

“It was. You may have noticed that the drawing is unlike others. More alive, perhaps.”

“I had noticed,” she said slowly. “But I thought it was my imagination. When I was younger, I would remember them so clearly whenever I looked at it.”

“Whenever you
touched
it,” Shadrack corrected. “I used some of the techniques that I use for mapmaking in that drawing. It is not the same, of course—a static portrait is far less powerful than a map. But it is the same principle.”

Sophia shook her head in wonder. “But I still don’t understand how the memories are
in
the drawing. How did you
make
this?”

“Imagine that when I made this map I traveled around to all the people I knew who remembered this moment, and I asked them to put their memories of it in a box. Then I went home and dove into all the hundreds of memories and used my knowledge about winds and temperature and humidity and sunlight and sorted out all the memories into their correct place and time.”

“You actually used a box?”

“No, the ‘box’ is this cloth itself. Just as you read the map now by touch, it was written by touch. All of the memories were placed there by people who came into contact with this cloth, but then it was my task to give them order and meaning. The cartologer transforms the material into a legible, comprehensible document.” He smiled. “It will make more sense when we actually practice it someday. For now, concentrate on reading.”

“I’m going to read another time.” Sophia moved the pebbles to the 12 on the day-clock and the 20 on the hour-clock. Then she gingerly put her fingertip on Boston Common and immediately recalled something that she had never lived through: standing in Boston Common in the middle of the night while the snowflakes swirled down around her. The sky was silver with clouds, and the air around her tasted cold. The snow moved across the common in gentle currents, as if shaped by an invisible breath. “It’s just wonderful,” Sophia said drawing her finger away. “I can’t believe it.”

Shadrack spoke with just the slightest hint of pride. “It’s not a bad map, if I say so myself. Took quite a while to pin down the last few days of the month. Very few people remembered the weather.” He considered the other maps on the table. “So what about these? Any luck?”

“Not yet.”

“Let’s look at them then, shall we?” Shadrack collected the pebbles, lifted the linen cloth, and gently turned it over. When he turned it right side up, it was once again blank, save for the inscriptions in the corner. “What about the clay tablet?”

She picked it up dubiously. She tried blowing on it, but nothing happened. “I don’t know,” she said, frowning.

“Your breath caused the linen to change,” Shadrack said. “It was the key to the map—it created a movement, an impetus, a catalyst that unlocked it. What do you think would do that to clay—to a piece of earth?”

Sophia sat silently for a minute, thinking hard. Suddenly something occurred to her. “I know!”

Shadrack raised his eyebrows. “What are you thinking?”

“Hand me your water.”

He edged it along the table and she dipped her finger into the cool liquid. Then she held it over the clay tablet and let a single drop fall. Immediately the surface of the clay began to change, and an intricately painted map appeared on the surface.

“I guessed it!”

“Well done. Earth responds to water. So try a date and time.”

At the far left of the tablet was a legend like the one on the cloth map. Sophia placed pebbles on the day-clock’s 15 and the hour-clock’s 10: midday on February the fifteenth. Then she examined the map. The spidery lines on the clay wove their way tightly around the city center and then trailed off as they worked their way outward.

“Clay maps are topographical,” Shadrack said. “They show the earth: hills, fields, forests, rivers, and so on. I think for this one it might be a little disorienting to look at the city center. Try an outlying region, out here.” Shadrack indicated the western part of Boston, where there was a green expanse of land and almost no lines.

Sophia held her breath with anticipation and touched the map. She was flooded with a memory of rolling hills. In the distance she saw a small pond and farther on an orchard of bare trees. She lifted her finger, pulling herself away from the memories. “What happens if I move?”

“Go ahead—try it.”

She carefully edged her finger upward on the map; it was like moving through a cascade of memories. She remembered pine forests and the thick needled carpet that lay underfoot; she remembered a long avenue lined with bare maples; she remembered the edge of a stream that was entirely frozen, dry leaves clumped in bundles at its edges. “It’s beautiful,” Sophia said quietly. “So many places—and so detailed.”

“The clay maps are usually less work-intensive,” Shadrack said. “In this case, the terrain didn’t change much over the course of the month, so I was able to spend more time working through the details of the landscape.”

“I want to see the others!” Sophia removed the pebbles and then gently turned the clay map face down. She picked up the metal map. “I think I need some matches. Am I right?” She looked at Shadrack inquiringly.

Without speaking, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a box.

Sophia struck one and held it over the metal map. The small orange glow spread from the spot below the match outward, across the coppery surface. As she dropped the match into the glass of water, a clear, silver-lined map appeared in the center of the sheet. It seemed etched, rather than painted, and the lines shone like mercury against the copper surface. Sophia admired the map for only a few seconds before eagerly placing pebbles on the clocks.

“For this one I’d recommend something more precise,” Shadrack said, rising from the table. He went to the bureau where he’d retrieved the pebbles and returned holding a long quill. “Should be sharp enough. The maps that contain more detail can sometimes be difficult to see with your fingertip. Try catching a smaller surface with the tip of the quill.”

“Can I go back to the common?” she asked hesitantly.

“By all means—try it.”

She placed the quill on one corner of Boston Common and at once recalled standing at the intersection of Charles Street and Beacon Street, between the common and the Public Garden. The landscape around her looked blurry, but the brick houses along Beacon Street stood out sharply. There were fewer buildings in the city center. She had a clear memory of looking up the road and seeing the Park Street Church and then the State House at the top of the hill. She drew the quill along Beacon Street, heading west. The roads unfurled before her, and buildings sprang up as if emerging from a mist. She passed the mansions in the city center, the high churches, and smaller brick row houses, all the way to the small farms at Boston’s outskirts. She had a sudden, vivid memory of standing before a red tavern with a low, wooden door. Sophia drew back the quill. “It’s beautiful. Just beautiful. I can’t believe you made this!”

“Can you find East Ending Street?”

Sophia moved the quill tentatively, hovering over the South End. “There it is!” she suddenly exclaimed. “That’s East Ending Street!” She placed the quill on the map. In the memory that flooded her mind, some of the houses she knew were missing and some were unrecognizable, with newly laid bricks and oddly colored doors. But then something stirred in her mind, and she realized she was looking directly at a familiar house—her house. It was almost unchanged—sturdy and dignified, with its white-shuttered windows, its ponderous owl, and its bright red door. Only Shadrack’s oval sign and the creeping ivy along the brick walls were missing. “It’s our house!” she exclaimed.

Shadrack chuckled.

Sophia lingered over the memory a moment longer and then touched different areas of the map, locating her school and her favorite place by the river. After several minutes of eager exploring, she put the quill down. “So if the cloth map is the weather,” she said slowly, “and the clay map is the ground, and the metal map is the buildings—”

“Construction,” Shadrack clarified. “That includes roads, railways, bridges, and so on. Everything manmade.”

“Everything manmade,” Sophia repeated. “That’s all there is. What does the glass map show?”

Shadrack raised his eyebrows. “You tell me. What is missing from the memories?”

Sophia stared blankly at the sheet of glass. She picked it up and examined it closely, but all she could see was her cloudy reflection. Suddenly something occurred to her, but the thought was so marvelous that she couldn’t quite believe it. “Not . . .
people?
”

“Try it and see.”

“But I have no ideas about how to wake it up.”

“You’re right—this one is the toughest. And it’s a little difficult to come up with, in this particular room.” He stood. “Normally, you would have a window with daylight, and you would keep the glass covered. Bring it over to the table lamp.”