The Emerald Atlas

by John Stephens

  She gripped Michael’s hand fiercely. “Don’t listen to him.”

  They climbed on in silence and, half an hour later, entered the Dead City.

  The Screechers led Michael and Kate and the dwarves down rutted, debris-littered streets between the shells of ancient buildings. Overhead, dozens of lamps hissed gassily, casting everything in a yellow-green hue. Everywhere they passed Screechers. There seemed to be no end to the black-clad ghouls. Finally, the party stopped at the edge of what Kate guessed had once been the main square. Four enormous open-air cages had been erected, and the children watched as a line of thin, hollow-eyed men were driven into one by a crew of Screechers. More men—perhaps fifty total—huddled in the other cages. They sat or stood about listlessly, like ghosts, but as awareness of the dwarves and even more—or so it seemed to Kate—of her and Michael spread among them, the men began to gather at the bars of their cages, staring at the children with wide, sunken eyes.

  The Secretary hissed an order, and she and Michael were wrenched apart—Michael and the dwarves herded toward the cages, while the Secretary, with a clammy hand locked about her wrist, dragged her toward one of the shattered buildings that ringed the square.

  He brought her to a room on the second floor and shut the door.

  “Have a seat, my dear.”

  The room was empty save for two chairs, a desk, and a gas lamp that hung on a chain from the ceiling. The setup of the furniture, along with the air of displeased authority, reminded Kate of Miss Crumley’s office at the orphanage. How long ago had that been? A month? A year? Had it even happened yet? Of course, Miss Crumley’s office wasn’t missing a wall the way this one was. Kate stepped toward the edge, hoping to see Michael in the square below.

  The Secretary slammed his hand on the desk, startling Kate.

  “Little birdies should do what they’re told. Now pleeeeaaasssse, have a seat!”

  Reluctantly, Kate came and sat across from him. The man folded his hands and attempted something like a smile. It was then Kate saw the tiny yellow bird peeking out of his jacket. The head and beak were visible for only a moment, then disappeared. The man seemed not to have noticed. He was staring at Kate with a hungry expression.

  “So, my dear, you opened the vault?”

  Kate shrugged.

  “Don’t know what that means, do you? But I do. Didn’t I see it, hmm? Yes, moment you arrived. Before even the Countess, I saw.” As he spoke, his fingers twisted themselves into knots. “The first dwarfie we caught told me how you opened the vault when no one else could. How you touched the book and, poof, disappeared. Then came back, but no book. Just you. Dim-dumb Hamish couldn’t have been happy about that, could he?” He clucked his tongue. “Not happy at all. But”—he gave Kate another of his hideous smiles—“to business—once you touched the book, exactly what happened? And please, be as precise as possible.”

  Kate said nothing.

  “Not talking? Of course, so brave. Such a heart. But …” He turned his head and whistled. A few moments later, the door opened and a Screecher entered, carrying a brutal-looking crossbow. He took up a position behind Kate, where the open wall looked out over the square. Kate watched in horror as he fitted a bolt into the instrument and cranked it back.

  “What’s he doing?!”

  “Why, he’s going to kill someone. Now, I’ll not pretend I’m going to harm your brother. You both are far too valuable. However, for every one of my questions you don’t answer, he will kill a man from Cambridge Falls, no doubt the beloved father to one of those dear children you met back with the Countess. Understand?”

  Kate nodded numbly.

  “Excellent. So you touched the book and …”

  “I … went into the past.”

  “See, that wasn’t difficult. When in the past?”

  “I’m not sure. A few years, I think.”

  “And?”

  “And then I came back.”

  The Secretary barked at the Screecher, shocking Kate with the abrupt harshness of his voice. “Kill one!”

  “Wait! Wait! Okay … Dr. Pym was there.”

  “Ah! So the old wizard has his hand in this. I suspected as much. A powerful adversary. Very powerful indeed. And perhaps this wasn’t the birdie’s first time meeting the good doctor, hmm? You had a previous acquaintance?”

  “Yes,” Kate said quietly.

  “The picture becomes clear. And did anyone else attend this pleasant reunion?”

  Kate hesitated. The Secretary raised his hand.

  “Yes! There was … a woman.”

  “A woman. Any guesses who?”

  Kate shook her head.

  “So just a random woman. Of no importance. Hmm.” He scratched the side of his head with a jagged nail, then looked at the Screecher. “I changed my mind. Kill the brother.”

  Instantly, the Screecher brought the crossbow to his shoulder.

  “No! I’ll tell you! Please!”

  The Secretary held up a finger. The black-garbed creature paused, waiting.

  “It was … my mother.”

  “Your mother? That’s very odd. Very odd indeed …” As Kate watched, he took the yellow bird from inside his jacket and began to caress its head, cooing, “What’s he doing, my love? Why the child’s mother? How could …” The Secretary began to giggle. “Yes, yes, of course, ingenious. And elegant. Clever old man.” He stowed the bird in his jacket and gave Kate his widest, most revolting grin yet. “Well, if the book is in the past, you’ll just have to go back and get it, won’t you, my dear?”

  “What’re you talking about? That’s impossible! I can’t!”

  “Ah yes, for how can you go into the past to retrieve the book if you need the book to go into the past? Doesn’t make a great deal of sense, does it? A conundrum. A puzzle. Indeed. Shall I tell you?” He jumped up, scuttling around the desk till he was in front of Kate, pinning her shoulders back and staring into her eyes. “You’ve been having visions, haven’t you? Things you can’t explain. That is because part of the book has passed into you. You and your little brother and sister are the chosen three. And the Atlas has already marked you as its own!”

  Kate’s mind was spinning. The Atlas. It was the first time she had heard the name.

  “What do you … what do you mean, marked me?” Kate couldn’t stop her voice from trembling.

  “The Atlas is an ocean of power. A few drops of it now run through your veins. Can’t the little birdie feel it?”

  As much as Kate wanted to tell the stringy-haired man she didn’t believe him, the fact was, she did. Ever since that night in the orphanage in Cambridge Falls when the blackness had crept off the page and into her fingers, she had known something in her had been changed.

  “You mean, I can travel through time?”

  The Secretary let out a rough laugh and released her. Kate felt the blood returning to her shoulders. The man began pacing back and forth, yanking on his fingers as he spoke.

  “No no no no no! By yourself, not possible, not possible! But with the help of a powerful witch or wizard? Oh yes. You see what the old man did? He wanted to hide the Atlas from the Countess and her master. Where safer than in the past? So he puts a spell on the little birdie, makes her travel back in time. Then he has the birdie leave the book with him, thinking the two of them can retrieve it anytime they like.”

  “But it’ll disappear!” Kate cried. “It’s already disappeared!”

  “True,” the Secretary said, mock-thoughtfully. “The book’s no more! E-vap-o-rated years ago!” He smiled at Kate and then did something truly repellent—he winked. “But what if old man Pym sends the birdie back to the second just after she brought him the book? Hmm? What about that?”

  Finally, Kate understood. Yes, the book was gone. It had disappeared a half hour after she left it in the past. But for that half hour, however many years ago, the book had existed. Dr. Pym would simply have her return to that window in time.

  “But how can he send me into th
e past?! I still don’t—”

  The Secretary’s patience was ebbing.

  “Is the birdie deaf? The power is in her now! The wizard can call upon it!” Leaning close, he ran a filthy finger along Kate’s cheek. “Must’ve anchored her here with the same spell that gave the memory, hmm? Made it easy to reel her back. Kept his birdie on a short string, didn’t he?”

  Kate was trying her best to put it all together. In the throne room, Dr. Pym had done something to her, cast some spell that had made the book (or Atlas, as the Secretary was calling it) take her to a moment in the past. And somehow that same spell had kept her tied to this time, so once she’d given Dr. Pym the book, she was yanked back to the moment she’d left.

  The Secretary was pacing again, rubbing his hands together. “Ingenious, ingenious! To hide it in the past! Thinks he’s foiled the Countess. She can look all she wants, but no book, no Atlas, hmm? Doesn’t exist! Gone gone gone! Only too bad for him, the Countess also has the power to send the birdie back in time. And she will, my dear. Oh, she will.”

  “But”—Kate hated asking the wretched man anything, especially this, but couldn’t stop herself—“why was my mother there?”

  “Why? Why? That is everything!” he shrieked gleefully. “Yes, a brilliant detail. You see, the sly old fox knew that one day he would have you retrieve the prize, and even with the power in you, it is no simple thing to send someone across time. Before, his spell could borrow on the power of the Atlas. Now, there’s just the little birdie. Much more difficult. Requires a strong connection to the moment you wish to reach. A bond, yes? So what did the wise doctor do? He gave you a memory that would outshine all others. One that would burn like fire in your heart. He gave you your mother.”

  Kate didn’t dare move. She had been holding herself together through force of will, but in that moment, she felt as if she were suddenly about to break apart.

  Just then there was a squawking and something large and black tumbled through the open wall and crashed onto the floor. The Screecher swung around his crossbow, but the Secretary screamed, “No!”

  It was an enormous black bird. The creature was wounded and flopped about in a circle, making desperate cawing noises.

  “Something is wrong,” the Secretary said. “Gather the host. Fortify the entrances—”

  His command was cut off by a hard thuck, and the dark end of an arrow suddenly protruded from the Screecher’s chest. The creature fell to its knees; a foul-smelling smoke rose, hissing, from the wound.

  “ATTACK!” the Secretary shrieked. “We are under attack!”

  Gabriel’s band had entered through the dark northern end of the city. Two Screechers standing sentry had been felled by arrows, another by Gabriel’s falchion. Emma was amazed at how silently the large, heavily weaponed men moved. They were like deadly shadows, sliding among the ruined buildings, and it thrilled her to be with them.

  Gabriel stopped everyone along a half-destroyed wall a block from the center of the city. They were close enough to the gas lamps to see clearly, and Emma could hear, out in the square, shouting and the sounds of blows. Glancing down the wall, Emma saw the men spreading out, disappearing down alleys and into buildings to take up closer positions around the square.

  Dena was beside her. Gabriel had placed them in the charge of a young warrior only a few years their senior, giving the boy strict orders to keep the girls back once the action started.

  Dena poked Emma in the side and the two of them, the boy, Gabriel, and half a dozen others passed through a gap in the wall and into the ground floor of a building that bordered the square.

  A memory came back to Emma. It was from one night a few months earlier. She, Kate, Michael, and the other orphans at the Edgar Allan Poe Home had been taken to a baseball game in Baltimore. Emma couldn’t remember anything about the game itself, but she remembered the long tunnel they’d walked down, the muffled sounds of the crowd, the darkness, and then the sudden explosion of light as they’d entered the stadium. It was like that now, crouching with Dena at the hollowed-out window, staring at the harsh, bright scene before them.

  There were at least three dozen morum cadi in the square, most of them gathered near four large cages. Inside the cages, Emma could see fifty or so sickly-looking men huddled about. Immediately, her heart filled with pity. She thought of the Countess, dressed up in her finery, having pretend balls in the Cambridge Falls mansion. Someone should lock her in a cage and see how she liked it! In her mind, Emma went ahead and put Miss Crumley in the cage as well. She knew the orphanage head wasn’t the same kind of evil as the Countess, but as long as Emma was locking people up, she figured why not.

  Emma’s gaze stopped on a group of figures in the farthest cage. They were half the size of the men and, for a brief moment, she thought they were children. Then she noticed their beards and the stockiness of their arms and legs and realized she was looking at a group of dwarves. Emma reflected that if Michael were here, he would be having like nineteen heart attacks. Personally, she couldn’t see what the big deal was. They were short, okay, and their beards were kind of funny, but she wasn’t going to go out and start a fan club. As she was thinking this, the largest of the dwarves, the one with the filthy blond beard who’d been hurling abuse at the Screechers, moved, and Emma let out a gasp.

  Ignoring the hiss from the young warrior, Emma scampered past Dena to the break in the wall where Gabriel knelt. He was fitting a thick black arrow on the string of his bow. Emma seized him by the arm and pointed. It was all she could do not to cry out. In the farthest cage, standing among the dwarves, wearing clothes she had seen him wear a thousand times before and an expression that even from this distance told of bewilderment and fear, was her brother, Michael. A black-bearded dwarf stood beside him, his hand on Michael’s shoulder.

  Gabriel nodded, indicating that he’d seen Michael already, and gestured to a building across the square.

  The whole front of the building was missing, allowing Emma to see directly into the rooms. There, on the second floor, sitting between a Screecher and a short figure in a suit whom she immediately recognized as the Countess’s secretary, was Kate.

  Questions swirled through Emma’s mind. How had her brother and sister come to be here? Were they all right? How had the Secretary found them?

  A pained cawing cut the air, and a black shape fell out of the darkness and into the room where Kate was being held. There was a soft twang beside her as Gabriel released his arrow. The Screecher with Kate staggered and fell. Then—it was all happening so quickly now—the Secretary gave a strangled shout, there was a volley of rifle fire, the thick swoof of a dozen arrows taking flight, the broken thudding as they found their targets, and all was chaos and shouting. Dropping his bow, Gabriel pulled the falchion off his back, gave a great, bellowing cry, and leapt through the gap in the wall. The battle had begun.

  Kate lay on her stomach beside the motionless body of the Screecher. A dark, foul-smelling ooze was leaking from its wound.

  “Birdie!”

  The Secretary was behind the desk. He’d scurried for cover in the first moments after the attack.

  “Come here!”

  She ignored him. Propping herself on her elbows, she inched forward till she had a clear view into the square. It was a mass of dark, struggling figures; there were shouts and cries, sickening crunches, the clang of metal on metal, and, above everything, the inhuman shrieks of the Screechers. Kate felt the familiar sweeping weakness, the inability to draw breath, and, to her surprise, she found she was furious. No, she told herself, it’s not real! Her anger must’ve given her thoughts force, for while the screams were still awful, the invisible hands crushing her lungs vanished almost at once.

  Breathing deeply, Kate sent Gabriel a silent thank-you.

  She stared down into the square, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. Who was fighting who? How did they not all hit each other accidentally? Then, just as she was noticing the bare heads of the attackers and f
eeling relief that they were men and not some strange underground race of mole people—she didn’t actually know if there were such a thing; she would have to ask Michael—she saw Gabriel himself.

  He was in the thickest knot of the fighting, carving his way through the Screechers with long, vicious swings of his falchion. He looked unstoppable, and the sight of him gave her hope. But only for a moment. For as Kate watched Gabriel hack his way through the Screechers, she noticed that more and more of the Countess’s black-clad horde were pouring into the square. At the start of the battle, Gabriel’s men and the morum cadi had been fairly evenly matched, but with each passing second, the balance was shifting to the Screechers. Gabriel’s men would soon be completely surrounded, and that would be that, the end.

  “Kate!”

  Michael’s voice penetrated the din, and she looked left, toward the cages. Michael and Wallace stood apart from the pack of dwarves and men massing at the bars. Michael jumped, pointed toward the fighting, and shouted something. It was lost in the clamor, but Kate understood. He’d seen Gabriel and thought they were going to be rescued. He couldn’t see that Gabriel and his men were doomed. They needed help. They needed two, three times the men.

  An idea seemed almost to explode in Kate’s mind. She turned to the dead Screecher, reaching beneath its tunic. The corpse had an unnatural, cold hardness; just touching it made Kate nauseous, but she forced her hand between its body and the floor, feeling along the creature’s belt. Earlier, when it had entered the room, she’d heard a soft jangling. Come on, she thought, come on.… Her hand closed on a bundle of keys.

  A weight slammed down on her.

  “No, no! Bad birdie! Bad-bad-bad!”

  The Secretary had thrown himself on top of her. Clammy hands scrambled for her wrists. He was panting, his breath warm and sour against her cheek. Kate struggled, but the man was much stronger.