Aster Wood and the Child of Elyso (Book 4)

by J B Cantwell

  I closed the book and decided I didn’t. I had never seen anything of the sort. Perhaps my blood was too diluted, its power cut in half generation after generation, even though it felt, to me, enormously strong.

  I sat back and looked around the cramped space. Something felt different up here, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I clicked on my flashlight again and ran it over the boxes stacked along every side of the room. A tiny glint of gold caught my eye, peeking out from between two boxes.

  The map.

  The thought hit me like a truck, and my breath caught in my chest.

  The first thing I had ever found up here had been a map. Not Almara’s paper map, but a much bigger one, painted in fine detail along the far wall. I had cleared everything away from it that first afternoon, had gazed upon it each time I paused in my digging to take a breath.

  But now, someone had covered it up. That was what was different.

  I sprang to my feet, grabbing at the boxes and hauling them away from the wall. Behind them, as I slowly revealed the paint, I found the map was unchanged, the same odd shape it had been when I had first looked upon it. I stood back, wiping the sweat from my face, and stared, confused.

  Why would someone want to hide the map? And who?

  There was only one answer to this question, and my heart thudded as it came to me.

  Dad.

  But why?

  I heard a creak and looked over, finding Mom watching me from the opening to the hall.

  “Hi,” she said when I noticed her. “Can I come in?”

  “Yeah,” I said, trying not to look too terrified about the discovery I had just made.

  She picked her way across the space.

  “I’d never been up here before yesterday,” she said, looking around. She paused, staring at the wall. “What is that?” she asked.

  “Some sort of map,” I said.

  “Of what?” she asked. “What do those rings mean?”

  I stared at the rings, glinting mysteriously in the dim light.

  What did the rings mean?

  In the Triaden, the golden ring on Almara’s map always indicated the target, the desired destination. Where was this map of? And what was beneath those rings? I walked up to the wall, stretching out one hand and running a finger along the curve of gold paint.

  “Have you ever seen a shape like this?” I asked, ignoring her question. “Like the whole map, I mean.”

  She stood back and regarded the wall, studying the outline.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It looks sort of like America.”

  “That’s what I thought,” I said, remembering that first afternoon when I had found the map. “But it’s not quite the same. I could never figure it out before. Why does it look all squished?”

  Mom stared at it, her head cocking slightly to one side as she examined it. She, like I, was searching for familiar landmarks. Suddenly, she took in her breath sharply.

  “Ah!” she said. “You know what this is. It is America. Only it’s America before it was part of the United States. Or, at least, before it had all the states. Look.”

  She walked up to the wall and pushed back a row of papers on a shelf on the far left side. Behind them, another, thinner line of gray paint appeared.

  “This map was made before most states was part of the country.”

  “Whoa,” I said, my brain jamming with the realization that the map continued farther along the wall. This whole time I had only been viewing part of it.

  We both dove in, clearing away every book, every sheet of paper, and then every shelf, until the entire wall was completely exposed. It was undeniably a map of the United States. But when Brendan had painted it, not every state was yet in the union. That was why a darker outline cut down the middle of the bigger map. It was the edge of the country at the time. I had thought it was the outer edge when I had first found it, but the map had continued on. Light gray paint, badly faded, outlined the rest of the territories that weren’t yet states. I had never seen it, thinking that the black line running down the center had been the border.

  But I wasn’t concerned about the details of United States history, because Brendan had painted something much more important than a record of the union. In a line much thicker than the other rings, a band of shining gold was now revealed, all the way towards the corner of the room. Along that edge, in the detailed hand of a cartographer, was California. And right over the corner where it met Nevada, the gold ring shimmered.

  “What does it mean?” Mom asked again.

  I ran my fingers along this new gold line.

  “These are all destinations,” I murmured, transfixed. I turned to her, smacking my hand against the ring hovering over California. “We need to go here. This is where Dad is.”

  I expected her to argue. After it taking so long to convince her of where I had been, it seemed only logical that she would.

  But she didn’t. She stepped up beside me and together we looked back at the wall.

  “When I found him,” she said, running her hand along a different gold ring, “he was here.” She was pointing to the center of the country. “Right near Denver.”

  “He must have seen this,” I said. “Dad must have figured out the same thing we just did. Mom, I think he’s trying to hide from us.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “This wall used to be exposed, but now it’s been covered up. I think that when Dad came up here for the gold, he must have seen this map.”

  “But why would he hide?” she asked.

  I didn’t know. I didn’t have any idea why he would hide or why he would steal the gold. I had never understood the workings of my father’s mind.

  “I don’t know why,” I said. “But he covered this up before he left. He didn’t want this map found.”

  I stared at the spot where her hand still lingered, the spot she had said was near Denver.

  “Do you think he’s still there?” I asked, a plan forming in my mind.

  She shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But I’d be willing to bet, if he really has seen this, if he’s not in Colorado anymore, he’s where one of these other rings are.”

  I couldn’t have agreed more.

  An hour later we had both made our own version of the map on paper. It made sense for us to have more than one copy, just in case. Once they were complete, we compared them to an atlas from the 1950’s to get our bearings. Next to each penciled ring on our papers, we wrote the names of the closest cities.

  Chicago

  Denver

  Salt Lake City

  Sacramento

  That was where the biggest ring had been, the spot on the wall where Brendan had made his biggest marks. That was where we needed to go.

  As the clock passed midnight, we sat across from each other at the kitchen table. Cait lay snuggled beneath a pile of blankets in the living room.

  “I think we should call it a night,” Mom said, yawning.

  I looked over at the pile of backpacks Grandma had dug out and filled with who-knows-what. This was our last chance before leaving. My last chance to make sure I had all the information I could find.

  The map was a huge breakthrough. Even though I felt compelled to stay, to dig around upstairs for another week or three, I knew we had to leave. We were as ready as we were going to be.

  I nodded, pushing back from the table. I folded the new, copied map and stuffed it in my back pocket. Then I tucked the photo album under the crook of my arm. If I ever saw Jade again, maybe she would like to see the photographs of the brother she had parted from so many years ago.

  It had been decided that we would take the car as far as it would go. Grandma had a store of gasoline in the barn, along with several barrels of purified water, and we rigged an old trailer to the sedan to carry it all in.

  “Do you think we’ll have enough water?” I asked her. I had already loaded five large containers of it, but it was competi
ng for space in the trailer with the fuel.

  “Depends,” Grandma said, hauling another jug and fitting it neatly into the remaining space. “How long you think we’ll be going for?”

  I shrugged. I had no idea what to expect. Days? Weeks?

  “Well,” she said, looking around the barn, “I have enough to keep things up and running here.” A water tank taller than my head sat in one corner of the barn, filled halfway with already purified water. “I’ve hooked up the dripping system for the vegetables, so they should be good to leave for now. But we can only take so much.”

  I made sure to take a long drink for the tap before we left.

  We would have reached our destination more quickly if we were to jump, and I fumbled with the link, now tied securely back around my neck. I hadn’t noticed any difference in its power when I had used it yesterday; it had transplanted me safely back and forth again in my attempt to get Mom to believe my story.

  But Brendan’s diary entry weighed heavy on my mind. He had specifically written about how the magic in his frame had dissipated over time, and I worried that using the link too much too soon would leave us stranded in the deserts of America before long.

  I stuffed it back beneath my shirt, determined to save it for when we had no other choice.

  As the last of our bags were loaded into the trunk of the car, I opened the back door, grateful that we would be traveling during the winter months. The burning heat of mid-summer in a car with no air-conditioning would have been difficult to manage with just two travelers. But four, one of them a little kid, would have been miserable.

  There was one clear advantage to taking the car, though the link would have been much quicker, and I thought of it as I scratched at my damaged skin. The car would provide us with cover from the rain, better than any tarp of blanket could. If we were to become stuck out in the elements with no shelter, it would only be a matter of time before we each succumbed to an extremely painful death. The beat up sedan with its rusted edges would actually protect us quite well, and would allow us to travel through the acid rain, not just hide from it.

  Mom estimated it would take us a day to reach Denver, which was on the way to California and the last place she had seen Dad. A stir of excitement spun around in my stomach at the thought. Not far from Denver was the camp I had so wanted to visit, the camp for sick kids. Though it seemed silly now, the idea that a place existed somewhere up above the reach of the poisoned atmosphere, where people could pretend things were just as healthy as they had been before the drought, was thrilling. The steady beat of my heart beneath my shirt meant that I might not fit in in a place like that anymore, but after just a few days back on this barren planet I was eager to see some green.

  Denver was widely known to be all but abandoned, and I hoped we wouldn’t be there for long. It sat at the sweet spot in elevation where most of the pollution that plagued Earth’s survivors collected. Above it, the air was clear, the rain was clean. But within it… I clutched absently at my throat as I imagined breathing in the chemicals that were so strong they fused with the clouds, corrupting the rain.

  We would not be able to stay there for long.

  Cait came around the side of the car, then stood back, staring at it distrustfully.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  I cranked down my window behind the driver’s seat to talk to her.

  “It’s called a car,” I said. “It can take you from place to place.”

  “You don’t have horses?” she asked, not convinced.

  “No, not anymore,” I said. “Don’t worry, though. This is even safer than horses. And more comfortable, too.” I reached over to her side of the car and opened the door, indicating that she should come around.

  She climbed up into the seat, and a flicker of excitement flashed across her face. Her hands moved over everything she saw, materials she had probably never imagined before.

  “So, it’s like a horse?” she asked, fumbling with the window crank on her side.

  “Here,” I said, reaching over and showing her how to lower the window. “And no, it’s nothing like a horse. But it will get us to where we’re going.”

  I watched her for a moment, her eyes bright the discovery of this new, unexpected technology. I wondered what else those little eyes saw.

  “Hey Cait,” I said. “Yesterday you said something about me glowing. What did you mean?”

  She paused, her fingers still on the crank, and turned.

  “Well,” she began, her face scrunching as she searched for the words. “I can see the glow in people. Mama says it’s my gift.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Does everybody glow?”

  “No,” she said, her attention drawn back to the operation of the window. “But you do.” Her eyes grew distant, as if she were tracking something far away. Her little hand raised up and made a swirly sort of motion in the air, as if she were drawing a picture.

  Mom opened the driver’s side door and climbed in, ending our conversation. She leaned over and started the car with a flick of her keys.

  “You kids ready?” she asked. We could have been headed out on the first leg of a family vacation from the sound in her voice.

  “Yup,” I said. “Where’s Grandma?”

  Mom looked around, spotting Grandma on the covered porch of the house. She was turned towards the front door, fumbling with a key. Mom stepped out of the car.

  “Come on, Cathy,” she called. “Nobody’s going to come through here.”

  Grandma turned and shuffled towards the car.

  “I ain’t taking any chances,” she huffed as she approached. “There’s a lot more in that old place than any of us ever realized. Just wanna make sure it’s still there when we get back.”

  Locking the front door wouldn’t be enough to keep people out, and I might have worried about leaving the house abandoned and unprotected if I had seen anyone within a hundred miles of this place in the last five years. But this part of the country was so desolate, so exposed. It seemed possible that no one would ever come this far out again.

  She climbed in on her side with a groan, dropping her gigantic purse on the floor beside her feet. It looked like she had packed the entire contents of her bedroom into the old, leather bag, and I couldn’t help but question her.

  “Grandma, why did you bring your purse?” I asked. I couldn’t fathom what she might have stashed inside that would be beneficial to our trip. It wasn’t like we were headed to the market.

  She turned, not just her head but her whole body, and stared at me.

  “You think you’re so smart,” she teased, “with your little trinkets and your stories. I got a few tricks up my sleeve, too, kiddo.”

  She shut her door with a snap and Mom reversed away from the house. Then, putting the car into gear, we set off.

  Cait stared excitedly out her window as the fenceposts whipped by. I longed to question her more, but somehow I felt that more conversation about such unusual things as glowing humans might be too much for Mom to handle. The old, gravel road was rocky and full of potholes, bouncing the car this way and that as Mom careened down it. She had always preferred to drive fast, and I could relate to her desire for speed, especially considering the situation. But I glanced nervously behind us at the trailer, the fuel in the barrels sloshing back and forth with every bump.

  “Careful, Mom,” I warned. “The gas is gonna all leak out if you don’t slow down.”

  “Don’t tell me how to drive, Aster,” she shot back. But in the rearview mirror I saw her glance at the barrels behind us, and the car gradually slowed.

  Cait bounced around the back seat, investigating every crevice of her new traveling space. She opened all the little compartments, fingered the couple of coins she found loose in the cup holders, checked in the pocket in front of her seat for hidden treasures in the folds.

  But as we turned off the gravel road and onto the slightly smoother highway, her excitement came to a halting end. Her face paled, and
with each rocking movement of the car her head swayed back and forth, her eyes rolling back slightly.

  “Mom, we need to stop,” I said.

  “What?” she asked. “Why? We just got started.”

  “Cait’s going to be sick, Mom, stop the car!” I shouted.

  Cait’s eyes were suddenly bulging, and I turned her head to face the door on her side, pulling desperately on the handle and getting the door open just in time. She vomited all over the pavement. I held her long brown hair away from her face and tried to hold my breath at the same time.

  A new knot of worry tightened in my stomach. It had never occurred to me that riding in the car might be a problem.

  Mom put the car in park and stepped out.

  “Oh, honey,” she cooed, coming around the side of the car. “Oh, no, that’s not very fun. Cathy, can you pass me a bottle of water?”

  She brushed the remaining hair out of Cait’s eyes. Cait spit onto the ground repeatedly, her body clearing itself out. When it appeared she was finished, Mom straddled over the sick and put her hands beneath her armpits, hauling her out of the car and into a tight embrace. She walked with her away from the vehicle and, finding a spot on the side of the road, sat down, cradling her in her arms.

  My heart suddenly swelled with pride and admiration for my mother. Though her words were inaudible from inside the car, I did make out the comforting murmur she had always used with me in times of trouble. They sat for a few minutes, Mom gently rocking Cait, and soon a giggle escaped the little girl. It was a welcome sound.