by Perrin Briar
“I’m no artist like you, but I can give you a vague idea of what it looks like,” Zoe said. “My knowledge of Asia is a little sketchy.”
“Asia is real too?” Cartographer said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Sure,” Zoe said. “It’s a large continent.”
“So there are such things as continents!” Cartographer said, dumbfounded.
He balled his hands into fists and held them above his head, a look of surprised approval on his face.
“Sorry,” he said. “I had a wager with one of the other cartographers. It seemed strange to me to have a word like ‘continent’ when there was only one real landmass here. I figured it was from a time when the world had a different shape, when there were many continents.”
“There are six continents,” Zoe said.
“Six!” Cartographer said. “And I was right—about how they keep moving around?”
“You were,” Zoe said. “It’s due to plate tectonics and processes called-”
“Enough with the lecture,” Bryan said. “We need to focus. We’ve got an important mission to complete. Here’s the deal: if we get the information we need, we’ll give you as much information about the surface as you’d like.”
“Sounds fair enough,” Cartographer said.
“We need to get our hands on the map,” Bryan said. “How do we go about doing that?”
“You don’t,” Cartographer said. “Only King and Admiral have access to the complete map. I’m in charge of just a small part of the map. No one but the king and Admiral has access to the whole map. If anyone else did, there might be a chance that they would sell it to the pirates and live on one of their islands, living like a king.”
“How many cartographers are there?” Zoe said.
“Seven,” Cartographer said.
“Too many,” Bryan said. “We’ll never be able to locate them all.”
“The only piece I have is the one I’m responsible for,” Cartographer said.
He moved to a drawer, hesitated, and then opened it. He lifted up a secret section in the bottom and extracted a rolled up piece of parchment.
“And you haven’t even seen the other pieces?” Bryan said.
The cartographer’s mouth opened, like he was about to reply without thinking, a cookie-cutter response.
“You can be honest with us,” Bryan said.
“And you’re sure you’re not from the government?” Cartographer said.
“We aren’t affiliated with any government,” Bryan said. “Well, Zoe is, up on the surface she works for a non-profit, but that hardly affects us down here.”
“What’s a non-profit-” Cartographer said.
“Sir, please try and focus,” Bryan said.
“Right, right,” Cartographer said. “I have seen the rest of the map. But only a series of glances. It’s treason for me to admit this to you. We’re supposed to keep our eyes on the floor at all times.”
“Do you think you could draw what you saw of the rest of the map?” Bryan said.
The cartographer shook his head.
“No,” he said. “It’s too complicated.”
“If you shut your eyes now, do you think you can see it?” Zoe said. “It’s an old memory trick. Try it.”
The cartographer shut his eyes and pictured the map.
“It was just a bunch of glances, like I said,” he said.
“Cassie, get some paper and a pencil,” Zoe said.
Cassie opened two drawers before she came to what she was looking for. She took out three sheets and a blunt pencil, placing them before the cartographer. Zoe put the pencil in the old man’s hand and placed it on the table.
“Try to sketch what you saw,” she said. “Anything you remember could be really useful.”
The old man began to draw, tracing a rough shape, and the longer he did it, the more he grew in confidence, his movements becoming smooth and controlled. He opened his eyes to find he had gone off the page and onto a second piece, where Zoe had lined them up so Cartographer could continue drawing uninterrupted.
“That’s the rough shape,” Cartographer said. “As well as I can recall, anyway. Now, as for the details, I think there was a town here.”
“Draw it,” Zoe said.
The old man did, and as he kept drawing, he added three forests and a long windy line that looked like a road that linked three of the small towns he’d drawn.
“If King knew I could recall the map in this much detail my head would be on the chopping block,” Cartographer said. “So would all the cartographers’.”
“Good thing no one else knows then, isn’t it?” Bryan said.
He looked at the picture. It showed a large landmass with rolling plains fenced in by tall mountains on one side and the sea on the other.
“It’s not very detailed I’m afraid,” Cartographer said.
“You did a great job,” Zoe said, laying a comforting hand on his back.
“But it doesn’t help us out much, does it?” Bryan said. “There’s no sign of where the treasure might be.”
“You can’t give it to the pirates,” Cartographer said. “They’ll use it to kill innocent people. But the truth is, you’re wasting your time even looking for the treasure.”
“If the treasure isn’t on the British side, why don’t you give us the whole map?” Bryan said.
“For our own safety,” Cartographer said. “You see, if the pirates had the map of our area they would rape and pillage their way up and down the coast, and there will be no way to escape them. What they lose by not finding the treasure, they’ll make up by taking from the poor. I’m sorry about your son. Really, I am. But there’s nothing you can do once the powers that be have him in their clutches.”
“But there is something we can do,” Bryan said. “We just need to find the location of the treasure.”
The cartographer let out a bark of laughter.
“Then you were better off where you were before,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Bryan said.
“The treasure is on the pirates’ side of the world,” Cartographer said.
“What?” Bryan said. “No. It can’t be.”
“It is,” Cartographer said. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but we’ve combed every inch of our side of the world and there is no sign of the treasure. It can only be on their side.
“Legends are dangerous things. They can grip a mind and make it obsessed, and the legend might not even be real. This war has lasted this long because of such a legend. There might be other reasons for fighting now, like destroying one another’s ship, but when you peek under the surface, when you lift up its edges, you can see what this war is really about. The treasure. It always has been, and always will be.”
“And if the treasure is discovered one day?” Bryan said.
The cartographer glanced up, his look pinning Bryan in place.
“Then it would be the end of the war,” Cartographer said. “Sure, there will still be a few scuffles for power, but once that original instigator was revealed to all, there would be nothing more they could reasonably fight over. The people would wake up, relieved of their cause for grievance.
“Don’t you think the rich on this side of the world haven’t wasted entire fortunes in trying to locate it? If it was here someone would have discovered it by now.”
“Then what would you suggest we do?” Zoe said. “Murdering psychopaths have my son and they’re not going to let him go unless we tell them the location of the treasure.”
She ran her hands through her hair in desperation. They were in a total losing position. They were never going to get Aaron back again.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Cartographer said.
“What is?” Zoe said.
“You make a map and tell them where the treasure is,” Cartographer said.
“But we don’t know where it is,” Cassie said.
“So you lie,” Cartographer said.
“This is Aaro
n’s life we’re talking about,” Zoe said. “We can’t leave something like that up to the chance they might believe us.”
“We won’t,” Bryan said. “We’ll spend the time coming up with ways to spring Aaron loose. Look here.”
He gestured to the segment of map the cartographer had spread on the table.
“The meeting point at Hollow Cove isn’t all that far from the Demon Isles,” Bryan said.
“I’m not sure I’m liking the direction this plan is going,” Cassie said.
“We’ll go where they refuse to go,” Bryan said. “We’ll distract the pirates with the map and treasure location, grab Aaron and make a break for it.”
“You want to lay a trap for the Mary Celeste,” Zoe said. “And use it to spring Aaron free and get to the Demon Isles before they can stop us. That’s the crux of it, isn’t it? It’s hardly foolproof, is it?”
“We’d better know what we’re doing,” Cassie said. “One mistake and we’ll be dead for sure.”
“Is this your son?” Zoe said, gesturing to a family portrait on the wall.
“It is,” Cartographer said.
“He’s a good looking boy,” Zoe said. “He’s got your chin.”
“Only my chin, fortunately,” Cartographer said. “Everything else, he got from his mother.”
“He looks smart,” Zoe said.
“He is,” Cartographer said. “He was top of his class in math.”
“So is Aaron,” Zoe said.
Cartographer sighed. His body deflated.
“Look, I want to help you, really I do,” he said. “But there’s nothing I can do that won’t endanger my son. They took him, said they would take care of him. Now I live letter to letter, hearing about him, not from him, never knowing how he really is. He works directly for Admiral. It’s meant to be honorable, but it doesn’t feel that way to me. The letters could be fake for all I know.”
“Fake,” Cassie said. “We could give Stoneheart a fake map of the British empire.”
The idea came from nowhere, and it took a moment for the full implications of such an action to sink in, including Cassie too. It was a subconscious burbling, popping like a bubble on the surface of a tarpit.
“Great idea,” Zoe said. “That way we wouldn’t have to worry about the pirates coming onto the land to pillage innocents. They would arrive to find nothing there. The map we give them would be all but useless to them.”
“How are we supposed to explain how we got this map?” Bryan said.
“We’ll tell them the truth,” Zoe said. “Or half-truth. That we kidnapped a cartographer and got him to draw the map for us.”
“And where shall we say the treasure actually is?” Bryan said.
“The Mountains of Mist,” Cartographer said.
“Where’s that?” Zoe said.
“Nowhere,” Cartographer said. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Because you’ll make it all up,” Bryan said. “Yes.”
“So we’re doing this?” Zoe said.
“With the time we have, the resources, it’s about all we’re capable of,” Bryan said.
“A forced plan by necessity,” Zoe said. “That really fills me with confidence.”
29
THE CAPTAIN had once again stuffed himself to bursting with food. He was already half asleep by the time Aaron entered the room. Still, Aaron’s lip curled into a sneer. At the beginning, he’d enjoyed telling stories. It was a way to express himself, and he liked having a captive audience. But now the stories felt forced and didn’t come easily to him.
The captain had noticed, and was quick to point out any holes and lack of consistency. Aaron had other things on his mind, not least of all what the captain might do to him should his parents not return with the location of the treasure as agreed. But with the dark cloud on the captain’s brow, Aaron realized he had a much more real and present danger to concern himself with.
Jim sat on the writing desk with a knife, whittling a piece of wood.
“I’ve got another story to tell you, if you’re interested,” Aaron said. “It involves pirates, though they’re not the main characters in the story.”
“But they will feature?” Stoneheart said.
“Yes,” Aaron said. “They’re an important part of the story. There was once a boy called Peter Pan.”
“Stupid name,” Stoneheart said, getting comfortable.
“He lived in a world called Neverland,” Aaron said. “And in this place, he never aged. He lived young, forever. And he wasn’t the only one. There were other boys like him, his gang of friends, who he called the Lost Boys. And what was most amazing about these boys wasn’t the fact they didn’t age, but the fact they could fly. By thinking of something that made them happy, they could soar high above the treetops, like birds.
“But not everyone in this world was like the Lost Boys. There were pirates aboard a ship in the reef, captained by a man called Hook. He had a missing hand that had been replaced by a metal hook, and that’s how he got his name.”
“Very impractical,” Stoneheart said.
“He tried to capture the Lost Boys, Peter Pan more than any other,” Aaron said. “And he always failed. But that was because Peter Pan knew something he didn’t, and that was how to be happy. By thinking of all the happy times he’d had in his life, and even if he couldn’t really fly, it made him feel like he could. And that was something the pirates could never understand.”
“I don’t like this story,” Stoneheart said.
“Neither do I,” Aaron said. “But I thought you might have liked it all the same.”
“Well, I don’t,” Stoneheart said. “Tell me something else.”
“Like what?” Aaron said.
“You’re the storyteller,” Stoneheart said. “You tell me.”
“How about mermaids?” Aaron said.
“You told me about those already,” Stoneheart said.
“The kraken?” Aaron said.
“Yes, all right,” Stoneheart said. “Though I could probably tell you more about them than you could tell me.”
“So maybe you can tell me the story tonight,” Aaron said, hoping for a night off.
“No,” Stoneheart said. “It’s your job to tell me stories, so tell me.”
Aaron collated everything he could think about krakens from movies he’d seen and books he’d read. He added in everything he’d seen about octopi and squids too for good measure, and though he couldn’t make a good story out of it, he could reel off a bunch of facts. They were enough to get the captain asking questions, and that was half the battle.
At some point Jim had stopped whittling. He sat with his unfinished piece of woodwork on his lap.
30
THE MAP was a piece of art. It showed the contours of a beautiful nation, with New London, New Birmingham and all the other cities on this side of the world clearly drawn.
“That’s great,” Bryan said.
He began to roll it up.
“Wait,” Cartographer said. “It’s not finished yet.”
Bryan laid it out flat again.
“I don’t know what else you can do to make it look better,” he said.
“Making it look better isn’t the purpose,” Cartographer said.
He upended his cup of tea over the parment. Bryan snatched the map up.
“What are you doing?” he said, staring at the Cartographer like he’s lost his marbles.
The cartographer pulled Bryan’s hands away and dabbed at the spilled tea, spreading it across the paper’s surface.
“A map like this would have been around for centuries,” he said. “It would have exchanged many men’s hands, would have been swept by the wind and rain and dirtied by blood and sweat.”
He put the parchment to his teeth and tore along one side. He stabbed at it with his pencil and folded it as if it had been put in someone’s pocket at some point.
“It’s valuable, and men would have killed one another for it,” Cartographer
said. “If it comes back looking too clean, too new, Stoneheart will never believe it is genuine.”
The cartographer was right, of course. He clearly knew his business. But still, Bryan didn’t like to see a piece of art get abused.
Cassie and Zoe lay asleep on the twin sofas, legs and arms hanging over the sides, sofas too short to support their whole bodies. Zoe had been up most of the night telling the cartographer everything she knew about mountains, geology, time and the other planets that populated the solar system.
All the while, the cartographer worked on his map, raising his eyes only to confirm what Zoe was telling him about the Earth and its orbit, shaking his head in disbelief at everything the people on the surface had discovered.
“Do you think Stoneheart will believe the map’s real?” Bryan said.
“Would you?” Cartographer said.
Bryan looked down at the map again, this time with its stamp of time. If Bryan had seen it, he wouldn’t have questioned its authenticity. He would never have guessed it was bogus. So long as Stoneheart believed how the family had come across the map in the first place, and that was something they’d given a great deal of thought, there was no reason he wouldn’t believe them.
“I have some bread and cheese,” Cartographer said. “Perhaps you would like some breakfast before you go? It’s likely to be a long day ahead.”
“Yes please,” Bryan said.
The cartographer headed downstairs. Zoe grunted and stretched, extending her arms. She opened her eyes and found Bryan standing over her.
“Is it done?” she said. “Did he finish the map?”
“Yes,” Bryan said. “He did.”
“How does it look?” Zoe said.
“Come and take a look for yourself,” Bryan said.
Zoe threw her legs over the side of the sofa, stood up, and stretched her back and legs. She yawned and approached the table.
“Wow,” she said.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Bryan said. “It must be great to have a talent like this.”
“You do have a talent like this,” Zoe said.
“What?” Bryan said.
“For business,” Zoe said. “That’s every bit as impressive as being able to create a piece of art like this.”