Uncharted Hope

by Keely Brooke Keith

  She popped up out of her seat and paced the office floor as she continued. “And when Justin Mercer came here, he said the Land was hidden from the outside world partially because it is beneath the point on earth where a radiation belt comes closest to the earth’s surface. I read your notes on Connor and Justin’s theories about this South Atlantic Anomaly and our atmosphere and how they agreed there has to be more to it than the Land’s location.”

  Lydia raised a finger as understanding struck. “Our atmosphere would be filled with this airborne substance released by the gray leaf. Connor believes nothing else on earth under the radiation belt is hidden from the outside world’s technology and says the gray leaf tree is only found here in the Land.”

  Sophia flipped to the diagram at the end of Marian’s notes and held it out to Lydia. “My ancestor proposed a way to capture a high concentration of the gray leaf’s airborne substance. I’d like to replicate her contraption and study the molecules we collect.”

  Lydia ran a finger over the page as she read. Then she reached into the cabinet above the worktable. She pulled down a beaker, a hose, and a basket full of glass tubes. “A concentration of the airborne substance might also have added medicinal value.”

  Sophia rubbed her fingertips together. “There is only one way to find out.”

  Lydia paused with both hands on the basket of vials. She aimed her gaze at Sophia. “Just promise me if this works and we collect the substance, you will not experiment with it on people. We would have to complete many controlled tests before giving any new form of medicine to a patient, no matter the circumstance.”

  “Of course, I promise.”

  “Great,” Lydia smiled, filling Sophia with pride. “Then let’s get started.”

  * * *

  At sunset, Nicholas rounded the south corner of the Fosters’ massive barn and nearly ran into James. Both men startled each other, paused, and then broke into laughter. Nicholas stuck out his hand to shake James’s. “When did you get back, old chum?”

  James shifted a coil of rope that was slung over his shoulder. “Not an hour ago. Everett rode out to relieve me.”

  “Excellent. Are you well?”

  “I am.”

  Nicholas enjoyed raising sheep and looked forward to owning a flock and land, but had no desire to grow a farming operation so large he’d have to spend weeks moving a flock across the countryside. “Must take a toll on a man to be isolated so long.”

  James shrugged, still grinning. “Not on me.”

  “Will you go back out to the western pastures?”

  “In a few days. Unless Everett decides to bring the flock back early.”

  Nicholas scanned the paddocks and the rolling meadow that faded over the horizon. “Plenty of grass here now.” He spotted James’s brother pushing a wheelbarrow toward the north side of the barn. “Revel has been a good hand. Hard worker.”

  “I’m surprised he stuck around Good Springs while I was gone.”

  “I think John Colburn has been an influence on him.” Nicholas almost mentioned the security team and how Connor was hoping Revel would join then but stopped himself. He looked back at James. “Listen, I never thanked you.”

  “Thank me?”

  “Yeah, you kept me from making a mistake… kept me from leaving that night and hurting the Fosters.”

  “I’m glad you stayed. Somebody has to keep this place running when I’m out with the flock.” James smiled at his own joke then swatted a fly. His smile promptly faded. “How is Sophia?”

  Hearing the man he once considered competition for Sophia’s affection ask about her brought a quickening to his pulse. He waited a beat for the sensation of jealousy to pass. “She is well.”

  “Still working with the doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  James pushed his greasy hair off his forehead. “Are you and Sophia courting?”

  “Not yet. I went to Woodland to ask her father’s permission and plan to ask her soon.”

  “You’d be good for each other.”

  “Yes.”

  James pointed to the shepherds’ cabin. “I’d better get cleaned up. Mrs. Foster is planning a big dinner.”

  “Right.” Nicholas patted James’s shoulder as he walked away. “It’s good to have you back.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Bailey chewed her nails while she waited for Professor Tim to consider what she’d just told him about the Land. He rubbed his bald spot and stared at the linoleum floor, his pensive forehead wrinkled in a grid pattern. It was a lot of strange information to dump on a person: a hidden land existed in the South Atlantic Ocean and it was filled with unpolluted resources, peaceful people, and forests of medicinal trees.

  Utopia.

  A boring utopia, according to Justin Mercer, but it sounded good to Bailey—like a chance to live a peaceful life surrounded by people she was distantly related to and was already considering family.

  She had spent yesterday watching Justin out of the corner of her eye, memorizing the movement of his fingers on the screens. Then she’d spent last night dreaming of finding the Land, keeping it and its people hidden from a ravenous world, and living a simple life like the one Justin said his friend Connor Bradshaw now lived.

  But that was just a dream.

  There was no way for her to get to the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean before the equinox and wait at the exact coordinates for the Land to appear like some mystical portal to Atlantis. She could, however, destroy the gray leaf saplings and Justin’s data to make sure no one else ever found the Land. But she needed Professor Tim’s help.

  “Wow,” Tim finally said. “Yeah… um, wow.”

  “I know. It sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”

  He laced his hands together, pointing his index fingers up like a church steeple. Her stomach quaked as she waited for him to divulge whatever thoughts were churning in his head. At last, he leaned forward and peered at her over his fingertips. “Bailey, you’re a scientist.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re also a good judge of character.”

  “I hope.”

  “You’ve suspected Justin Mercer was lying to you since the moment he walked into the bar. He finally tells you what’s going on and it sounds like a whopper of a tale. Why do you believe him?”

  She sat in the plastic chair beside his desk. “I saw the satellite image of the Land.”

  He spread his palms. “It could have been fake.”

  “He has electronic devices I’ve never seen and is linked to an intelligence communication system. He said an acquaintance gave him access before he died. I don’t know who it was or who the guy worked for but—”

  “I do.” Tim removed his glasses and cleaned them with the bottom edge of his shirt. “Last year, Justin Mercer was hailed a hero by the Unified States Navy for apprehending a hacker known as Volt. The report I found said Justin was rescued at sea after keeping Volt and his men detained on a mid-sized nuclear powered icebreaker in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. Somehow, Justin got the communications satellites back online then sent out a call for help. When the navy located him, everyone on the icebreaker was dead from the plague, and Justin Mercer was found in a dinghy a mile away. Did he tell you that story?”

  “No, but he said he’d been to the Land. He was there long enough to get to know the people, and they gave him medicine made from the gray leaf tree. It cured him of the plague. That’s why they sent him home with seeds. They wanted to help heal the world, and now he will let the world take over the Land.”

  She stood and paced the floor. A cockroach crackled underfoot. Her skin prickled along her spine. “Life won’t get better here. The university won’t reopen. I won’t get to earn my degree and get a good job. I have no hope for a future here, but if there is a place left on Earth with hope, I can’t let Justin ruin it.”

  Tim put his glasses back on. “This is about more than a hidden land and medicinal trees, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.�
�

  “It’s about you finally having family.”

  She had tried to push aside those desires. “That’s sentimental. Holding sentiment weakens people.”

  “Sometimes. But having family strengthens people.”

  “Not always.”

  “If it’s a loving family.” He lifted a finger. “How would you help the people of this hidden land if you could?”

  She already had it all planned out. Returning to the chair by his desk, she sat and folded her hands. “Justin has a meeting in the city tomorrow morning and gave me the day off. I could watch for him to leave the house and then tell his mother he told me to wait there for him. She would let me in. She’s blitzed out most of the time. I could pack up everything—the saplings, data, devices—and take the evidence of the gray leaf and the Land to the university’s incinerator before Justin knows what happened.”

  Tim shook his head. “We.”

  “We what?”

  His eyes widened, bringing more light to his face than she’d seen in years. “We could take his evidence of the gray leaf tree to the incinerator.”

  Her pulse raced, filling her legs with heat. She jumped up from the chair. “So you are in?”

  He clapped once. “Absolutely! If you believe this Land exists, I’ll help you in any way I can.” He walked to the white board at the front of the lab. After drawing a massive circle and outlining the shape of North and South America and Africa, his marker hovered about where the Land would be. “But you know, Bailey, we don’t have to destroy the gray leaf saplings.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  He drew the shape of an island with the western boundary blurred like she had described from the satellite image. “Maybe we should take the saplings back to where they belong… personally.”

  She inched toward the white board. “How?”

  “We could use the university’s sampling bags to transport the saplings. I have a contact who could get us on one of the few commercial flights.”

  “To the Land?”

  He chuckled. “No, to South Africa. My nephew is in Cape Town. Before the war, he worked as tour operator to Tristan da Cunha.” He drew a dot representing that island. “My nephew, Micah, and his partner have spent the past year using one of their company’s yachts for humanitarian work. They take medicine and supplies to the remote islands. Maybe if we explained the situation, Micah would sail us to the coordinates of the Land.”

  It sounded like a long shot, but she hadn’t seen Professor Tim this excited about anything since before the water poisoning and the war and plague that followed. His plan might be a great adventure, but it had too many variables. It might end in them being denied boarding to the flight or not finding his nephew in Cape Town or his nephew refusing to sail to the middle of the South Atlantic to find uncharted land. And the entry point to the Land had to appear on the equinox like Justin had suggested. Not to mention the dangers of traveling in a disease ravaged post-war society.

  Tim gazed at her over the rim of his glasses like he used to during lectures. “The autumn equinox for the Southern Hemisphere is in two weeks. It would be a challenge, but I think I can get everything lined up in time.”

  “It’s worth a shot, right?”

  “To live in a clean, safe land? To get you to your family? Yes.”

  She picked up the eraser. “But if you hit one snag in the plan…” She wiped the Land off his drawing. “We have to destroy all the evidence and forget about the Land. It’s not worth exposing innocent people.”

  Tim capped his dry erase marker and tossed it onto the white board’s tray. “If you want to go, I’ll make a few calls without mentioning the Land and see if I can get us on a flight. If you decide you want to destroy the evidence and stick around for whatever that might provoke Justin Mercer to do, I’ll help you there too.” He held up a hand. “It’s up to you, Bailey. This is your job and your family and your chance to change your life.”

  “And your chance for a future.”

  He nodded. “I’m not concerned about my future. I’ll support you no matter what you decide. If you want to get there by the equinox, you should make your decision quickly.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  After two weeks of grinding and brewing dried gray leaves, Sophia’s unsuccessful experiments had transformed Lydia’s quaint office into a crowded laboratory. Capturing the gray leaf’s airborne particles had looked simple enough in her ancestor’s sketches and notes but thus far hadn’t yielded enough of the compound to reveal anything conclusive.

  Sophia checked each hose connection and beaker temperature then stepped away from the worktable to stretch her tired neck. The hour hand on Lydia’s clock pointed at two. She should boil more water while there was no one in the kitchen. She began to stand then halted, disturbed by the faulty habits in her own reasoning.

  Considering how welcoming the Colburn family was, it made no sense she avoid going into the house during their meal times. John and Lydia and Connor were nothing like her family. If she truly wanted to start a new life of her own, she should force herself to do things she avoided in her old life—things like being in a room full of people who were related to each other.

  The Colburns weren’t going to yell and ridicule one another. In fact, they were an excellent example of how a family should treat each other—a skill she wanted to master before she even considered having a family of her own. Maybe if she spent more time in the house when they were home, she would discover what enabled them to love each other so well.

  She looked through the window at the back of the big brick house. She would make an effort to stop missing meals with them, but for now it didn’t matter. No one would be in the kitchen at two o’clock. John would be working at the church, and Lydia would be upstairs while Andrew napped. Revel was working at the Foster farm and only came to the Colburn house late at night to sleep in the guestroom. Connor was probably in the barn, working with whatever he’d brought back in those boxes from Woodland.

  Woodland. Nicholas had gone there with Connor, and Sophia knew why.

  Or at least she thought she did, but he hadn’t mentioned it to her. Maybe he didn’t talk to her father after all. Maybe he decided she wasn’t worth the trouble. The thought disappointed her. While she struggled with the notion of her family being brought into her relationship with Nicholas, a growing part of her was hoping he was still pursuing her.

  She stepped to the window and stared out, imagining Nicholas at her parents’ home, defending her qualities and fighting for her worth. Maybe he’d tried but her father had refused to be reasonable.

  She shook her head trying to regain her focus. There was work to do. She had three weeks left before the trial period of her position was up, and she had yet to prove her worth to Lydia. She wasn’t retaining the medical knowledge as well as Lydia had hoped, and she squirmed at the sight of blood. She wanted to prove herself indispensible as a babysitter for Andrew when Lydia was called to treat patients at their homes, but those occasions were rare and usually when Connor or John was in the house with the baby anyway.

  The only possible way she could be of value to Lydia was by advancing the doctor’s long-stalled research on the gray leaf medicine. It was the only aspect of the position that delighted Sophia. If she were going to keep her job and her home, it would be by making this experiment work.

  With determination, she turned back to the monstrosity of tubes and beakers and hoses on the worktable. A basket of the recently harvested gray leaves sat on the floor. She picked up one of the fresh, silvery leaves. Lydia had said to dry the leaves before grinding them, but something was amiss.

  Pinching the stem of the fresh gray leaf between her finger and thumb, she sat at Lydia’s desk and flipped through the pages of her ancestor’s notes. After scanning the pages, her gaze fell on the words she was looking for: the gray leaf’s mesophyll discharges an aromatic substance as it begins to decay.

  Sophia took the leaf to the window and twi
rled the stem so the sunlight picked up the silver specks underneath the leaf. “As it begins to decay. That is what we’re doing wrong.”

  She grabbed the empty kettle on the worktable and carried it to the kitchen. Lydia was standing by the table, folding laundry, while Andrew sat in his high chair eating a plum. Juice dripped from his round chin.

  Sophia smiled at the baby. “Up early from your nap, little man?”

  Lydia sighed. “He was too hungry to sleep. Probably about to hit a growth spurt.”

  Sophia walked to the table, resolute to stay focused. “I might have found the reason the experiment isn’t working.” She held up the kettle. “But first I need to boil more water.”

  Lydia folded a crib-sized bedsheet. “Oh?”

  Water susurrated inside the copper kettle as Sophia filled it. “I think we should be using fresh leaves not dried.”

  “I’ve never made gray leaf medicine from fresh leaves.” Lydia smoothed the sheet onto a stack and began to fold another. “Dr. Ashton taught me dried leaves are best.”

  Andrew gurgled a response as if he were included in the conversation.

  Sophia made a silly face at him while she placed the kettle on the stove. “I’m sure that’s true for making medicinal tea, but my ancestor’s experiment is different from brewing tea. We don’t need the gray leaf particles in the liquid; it’s a substance in the steam we’re after. Would it be all right with you if I try using fresh leaves?”

  “Sure.” Lydia wiped the baby’s hands and face and lifted him from his highchair. “Sophia, I want this experiment to work for you as much as you want it for yourself.”

  “Thank you,” Sophia said as she helped fold sheets. “I’m truly grateful for all you’ve done for me.”