by S. E. Grove
Sophia could tell that she had grown older because she did not bristle at how Errol treated her. She knew he had related his Faierie tale for the purpose of distracting her, and she appreciated both the tale and the intention. And when he said, “Well, miting, you are taking us into the dark heart of the Age. You must be sure to stay near Rosemary and myself at all times,” she did not feel annoyed at being treated like a child. It gave her a strange sense of wistfulness. She wished she were truly as sturdy and little as Errol imagined her.
“I will,” she agreed.
“The caravan will have to stay at the border,” Rosemary said with regret. “The spines are too dense.” She peered ahead. “I do not see any guards at this portion of the border. It is too bad, for I would have left the caravan in their care.”
“The riders are advancing,” Goldenrod said, looking over her shoulder.
Sophia, who could not turn around, instead regarded the dark forest. It was unlike any Age, any landscape, that she had ever seen. Though the sheriff’s memories had prepared her for a dark Age, they could not fully render the sense of strangeness emanating from the black moss, tinged faintly purple, and the tall black trees, sharp and bright as polished iron.
Rosemary stopped her horse. She dismounted and unhitched the caravan, tying it to a stake which she drove into the ground. As she did so, Goldenrod turned to the west and Sophia saw the cluster of golden birds that the map had foretold riding toward them, glinting here and there as their masks reflected the sun.
“So we enter the Dark Age,” Errol said. “Are you certain about this, miting?”
“Almost,” Sophia replied nervously.
He gave her a wry smile. “Reassuring.” He led his horse forward. “I will go first. Goldenrod and Sophia travel next, then Rosemary with the crossbow.”
“Remember that every thorn carries poison in its tip,” Rosemary cautioned them. “A single thorn is capable of killing a grown man. I have seen it myself. Do not touch the spines for any reason.”
Errol’s horse paced the dry ground. The black moss ahead was lush and wet, as if from some hidden moisture. Two tall spines made a black archway that seemed to invite them onward. The sharp thorns on the trunks were as long as Sophia’s forearm, and the branches lined with smaller thorns flexed slightly in the breeze.
Errol urged his horse through the archway. Seneca shuddered. For a moment Errol paused, waiting for some rush of wind to sound, but nothing happened. He looked over his shoulder. “It seems you were right, Sophia. So far.”
Goldenrod and Rosemary followed, the horses’ hoofbeats dulled to silence on the moss. Sophia looked around her, fascinated despite herself. The trees, she could see now, had thin, almost transparent leaves that rustled softly, filling the air with a papery murmur. The branches were unexpectedly beautiful, curving in smooth arcs outward and upward. Vines twined around the spiny trunks, with flowers like purple sponges; they expanded and contracted gently, as if breathing. On one long spine overhead, a long, luminescent worm held itself upright, describing a slow figure-eight in the air.
From the moss below, Sophia heard a faint buzzing, and as she peered downward she saw a trickle of beetles, shiny and black, scurrying in a straight line toward a hole. The patch of soil where they burrowed was dark and rich, far moister than the dry soil of the Papal States that they had left behind.
Sophia frowned, wondering how such a thing could be. The Dark Age lay just beside the Papal States. It received no more rain than did its neighbor, and yet it looked like a landscape that received rain daily. Suddenly Sophia’s mind recalled a similar mystery: soil that held heat while the air around it was cold. She caught her breath.
“What is it?” Errol asked sharply, turning in his saddle.
“Nothing. I—I realized something.”
He looked at her, waiting.
“I realized something about the Dark Age. Last summer, when we were in the Baldlands, we came across a future Age where the soil was man-made. It could stay warm, even in a cold place. It warmed the water. And it made seeds grow differently, into other kinds of plants. I was thinking . . . Could it be that parts of the Dark Age are man-made? That might be why Goldenrod cannot speak to it.”
Goldenrod’s body, behind her, stiffened. “Yes,” she said. “Of course. If it were man-made, it would not hear me. Or speak.”
Errol looked around him, baffled. “That is impossible. How could humans make this?”
“They can,” Goldenrod replied. “I have heard that in future Ages, the manipulation and even invention of animate beings is not unheard of. But I had never imagined an entire Age.” Sophia felt her shake her head. “It would be remarkable. But conceivable.”
“But the Dark Age is of the remote past, not the future,” objected Rosemary.
“How do you know?” Sophia thought of Martin Metl, the botanist, and his soil experiments. She would have to find a way to gather a sample for him. “Perhaps people of the Papal States assumed it was from the remote past because it looks like it should be.”
“I suppose that is possible.” Rosemary shook her head. “Whether made by man or God, it seems to me an abomination.”
“I agree,” said Errol, and he led his horse onward.
“I think it is rather beautiful,” Sophia murmured. Her mind was lit by possibilities. She began to consider what it would mean for a Clime to be both living and artificial: alive and yet not, conscious and yet not. Perhaps the people of this Age had invented ways to adapt, just as the people of the Glacine Age had invented warming soil to counter the extreme cold.
They had progressed some two hundred yards into the forest when Rosemary halted them. “Look behind us,” she said. “You will see they stand at the border.”
Goldenrod turned her horse carefully in the narrow path, avoiding the leaning branches of the spines. Sophia could see the glint of gold in the distance. One of the men shouted into the forest, his voice hard. “What did he say?” Sophia asked.
“He seems to believe we are witches who live in the Dark Age, and he wishes us a speedy return to our maker.” Errol smiled wryly. “Would that we were. But since we are not witches, let me ask a question: We can ride east for some time easily enough, but the path to Ausentinia is gone. Just how are we planning to find it?”
“I had an idea,” Sophia said. “The map told me to enter the Labyrinth of Borrowed Remembering.”
“Yes,” Errol replied. “Very useful advice.”
She smiled. “The truth is, I have seen the road east to Murtea and the way to Ausentinia many times. Dozens of times. In Cabeza de Cabra’s map.”
“And you think you could navigate the route, despite the fact that we are in a different Age?”
“I think so. I have a sense of where we are.” Sophia imagined that the Ages were not unlike memory maps, layered one atop the other. She pictured herself in a map of the Dark Age made of metal, seeing through its man-made landscape to the map of clay below it.
“Very well, miting. I will head east, and you will tell me if we should change course.”
The afternoon lengthened as they continued at a slow pace, choosing the ways less crowded by spines. The air in the forest was cool, despite the sun overhead, and the quiet rustling of leaves alongside the occasional buzz from the black beetles made the ride deceptively tranquil.
Sophia waited for the fourwings to appear, scanning the patches of sky overhead, but they did not. While she reached for the familiar route in the borrowed memories of Cabeza de Cabra, another part of her mind turned over and over the words from the Ausentinian map. When you emerge from the labyrinth, you will have a choice. You will defend the illusion or you will not. She had felt confident that the Labyrinth of Borrowed Remembering meant the sheriff’s memories, even if she could not feel confident that she would navigate them perfectly. But she could not fathom what the illusion would be, or how sh
e would defend it. Would it be an illusion of safety? A patch of Ausentinia that would seem safe? Or perhaps the illusion already existed around her: the illusion of a living Clime, which she knew to be false. How would she defend such an illusion?
“Stop,” Errol whispered. He halted his horse. He had already drawn his sword.
Sophia raised her head and strained to look past him. A fourwing lay directly in their path. It was curled up at the base of a spine. The nearest thorns dripped a white liquid, and the fourwing’s beak was lined with the same milky substance. It raised its head and made a hoarse, halfhearted cry. Then it buried its head in its wing as if to sleep.
Errol waited, but the bird did not move. Slowly, he led them to the right, making a wide circle around the fourwing.
When it lay safely behind them, Sophia turned to look up at Goldenrod. “Was it poisoned?”
“I think it was drunk,” Errol replied with a surprised laugh.
“The fourwings nest in the spines,” Rosemary put in. “The thorns cannot poison them.”
“Then it was drinking from the tree,” said the Eerie.
At this, Sophia understood why they had not heard the cries of the fourwings inside the Dark Age; in their homeland, the creatures were always sated and half intoxicated by the milk of the spines. She marveled again at the possibility that people had created this world. However much its creation was mysterious to her, she could appreciate the symmetry: a forest that protected itself from outsiders, trees that fed the creatures who lived in them, soil that gave water to the moss and trees.
As the sun began to dip toward the horizon, Sophia reckoned that they were reaching the place that had been Murtea. They climbed a hill where the spines were short and sparse. Looking out over the dark landscape ahead of them, Rosemary cried: “There! Do you see it? A yellow patch among the black.”
“And another one,” Goldenrod pointed.
“Ausentinia still defends itself,” Rosemary said proudly. “I feel certain it is there, waiting for us to find it.”
“It will be dusk soon,” said Errol. “I fear it will be almost impossible to travel safely through the spines in the dark.”
“I have brought one of the golden eyes.” Rosemary withdrew it from her pack and held it aloft. Slung in a loose net, the orb emitted a penetrating yellow light. “Besides, the forest provides its own illumination, as you will see. I have camped by the perimeter at night and have seen the floor grow bright.”
“Nonetheless,” Errol replied skeptically, urging his horse onward, “we should move onward while we still have some daylight.”
The sky turned a brilliant orange and then faded to violet. The moss around them began to glow softly, as if illuminated from within. “Just as you said, Rosemary,” Goldenrod observed. “Perhaps it will not be so difficult to travel at night.”
They reached a clearing where the moss underfoot made gentle mounds. A ring of spines around them leaned inward, creating a space like a black chapel of thorns and moss. Errol stopped abruptly. Goldenrod and Rosemary halted behind him. He swung down from his horse and took his bow, which had hung on his shoulder, and a green arrow from his quiver. “You dare follow me here,” he said in a hard voice, aiming the arrow.
A figure emerged from the trees. Pale and luminous, it reached its hands out in a gesture of entreaty. “At the City of Foretelling, you will have a choice.”
“A spanto,” Rosemary gasped. She crossed herself. “This bodes ill.”
Errol’s horse, now riderless, backed up, whinnying nervously. Goldenrod reached out and took its reins; she murmured, calming it.
“Do not speak to me of choice,” Errol said, his voice strained.
“At the City of Foretelling, you will have a choice.”
Errol loosed his arrow, plunging a green stem into the phantom. It crumpled and vanished like a scrap of mist.
“Your arrow felled it.” Rosemary’s voice was hushed. “I have never seen this done.”
“Any green branch will do,” Errol said tersely. As he returned to his mount, another figure emerged from the spines: a woman, slight and straight—Minna Tims. The horse suddenly reared; letting out a cry of terror, it turned and fled toward the trees. “No!” Goldenrod cried. “Come back!” Without warning, she seized Sophia and lowered her to the ground. Then she urged her horse toward the trees, diving between the spines.
“Goldenrod! Are you mad?” Errol ran to the edge of the clearing and looked into the trees. With a curse, he pivoted toward Minna’s phantom and drew another green arrow from his quiver.
“It advances, Errol,” Rosemary warned. She crossed herself again as the pale figure approached.
Suddenly several voices echoed all at once in Sophia’s mind. She heard again the phrases Minna’s phantom had spoken in Boston: Missing but not lost, absent but not gone . . . She heard Errol recounting the tale of Edolie and the woodsman: The beloved figure before her, so many years absent, had been in her heart since childhood. She heard Rosemary speaking with pride as she looked out over the hills: Ausentinia still defends itself—
“Stop!” she shouted. She raced to put herself between Errol and Minna’s phantom. She understood now that it was this illusion—this specter of Minna Tims—that she had to defend.
“What are you doing?” Errol demanded, lowering his bow.
“She’s not a phantom.” Sophia’s heart was pounding. “She’s a guide.”
“Trust this companion, though the trust would seem misplaced.” The voice of Minna’s phantom was clear and bright.
“What do you mean, she is a guide?” Errol demanded.
“She is a spanto, Sophia,” Rosemary said. “A cursed phantom.”
“Listen to her words,” Sophia urged. “They’re like the ones on the Ausentinian maps. She comes to us from Ausentinia. She is leading us there.”
“Trust this companion, though the trust would seem misplaced,” Minna repeated.
Errol looked at her. “How would such a thing be possible?”
“I don’t know. I don’t understand it either, Errol, but I don’t think the phantom means us any harm.” Sophia took him by the arm, pushing the bow aside. “People say they lead you to oblivion. If the phantoms led here, through the Dark Age to Ausentinia, wouldn’t that seem like oblivion? And yet all they are doing is leading us to where the maps we want—the very maps that will guide us to Oswin and my mother—can be found.”
Errol regarded her in silence.
“It is too dangerous, Sophia,” Rosemary said adamantly.
“She is the illusion that will lead us to Ausentinia.” Sophia’s voice took on a pleading note. “The map has been right until now.”
Errol shook his head. “Very well.” He stepped away, returning the green arrow to his quiver, but he drew his sword. “I do not trust this phantom for a moment, but I hope I am right to trust you.”
Goldenrod appeared at the edge of the clearing, leading her horse. “Your horse was stung by the thorns,” she said sadly to Errol. “I could do nothing for her.”
“And yet Sophia would have us believe the phantoms are harmless,” Rosemary said.
“I didn’t say that,” Sophia protested. “I said they could be guides from Ausentinia. Their words sound so much like the maps.”
“Trust this companion, though the trust would seem misplaced,” Minna repeated. She turned and slipped away among the spines.
“We must follow her.”
“Sophia, wait!” Errol called.
“I will not wait,” Sophia insisted. “She will be gone in a moment.” She plunged into the spines, following the retreating back of the pale specter.
40
Minna’s Phantom
—1892, July 2: 17-Hour 00—
Seneca the Younger, a Stoic philosopher from the ancient world, was born in Córdoba in what would become the P
apal States. Today he is not popular in the land of his birth, but in the Closed Empire to the north, Seneca is widely taught and admired among scholars.
—From Shadrack Elli’s History of the New World
SOPHIA COULD HEAR Errol and Goldenrod call her name. She could hear them fall behind as they tried to follow her twisting route through the spines. But she was fixed on the pale figure before her, and soon their sounds faded.
Minna’s phantom moved quickly. Sophia felt a longing in her chest that seemed to steal her breath; at first she thought it was the anxious, fervent wish that she had understood the Ausentinian map correctly. But then she realized it was simply longing to see that pale figure: to never lose sight of it; to follow it wherever it might go, as long as she could continue seeing that beloved face that turned, every few steps, to make sure Sophia was there.
A part of her realized that she was falling under the phantom’s spell. This was what had happened to Errol’s brother, Oswin, when he pursued the phantom of his horse, heedless of where he was and who else pursued him. But the other part of her, the principal part of her, did not care. This was what she wanted. She wanted to follow Minna. It felt so unquestionably right, but she could not tell if it felt right because she was correct in reasoning that Minna would lead her to Ausentinia or simply because she wanted it to feel right.
Her awareness of the Dark Age around her dimmed, until all she saw was Minna’s phantom. The long dress trailed over the moss, sweeping it lightly. When she paused and turned, looking over her shoulder, she smiled in a way that Sophia found achingly familiar. How could I have forgotten that smile? Sophia asked herself. She felt in it all the comfort and reassurance that she had missed over the long years of Minna’s absence. She began to wait expectantly for Minna to turn her head, to smile once more. Each time it came, Sophia felt a rush of happiness. She quickened her pace over the moss.
The spines had become almost invisible in the darkness. Her path was illuminated only by the moss underfoot and the phantom before her. She lost track of whether they continued to move east—and, as the stepping and pausing, stepping and pausing continued, she lost track of time. Minna had not spoken again after leaving the clearing, but Sophia seemed to hear her nonetheless. It was not words that she spoke, but thoughts and feelings. Minna said that she had not wanted to leave Boston, that she had missed Sophia on every step of the journey, and that it had broken her heart when she realized Sophia would have to wait for her—and wait for her, and wait. But Minna also said something more heartening: I am here now, she said to Sophia with every pause, every turn of the head. Wherever I have been, I am here with you now.