The Glass Sentence (The Mapmakers Trilogy)

by S. E. Grove

  “Thank you. I’m sorry to have caused you so much worry,” Sophia said, sitting down beside them at the table. “Did Miles leave as planned?”

  “Yes,” Shadrack said, rumpling his hair tiredly. “His ship left at twelve-hour. He hardly expected the day to be so momentous, and now he was more eager to leave than ever.”

  “He is coming back, isn’t he?”

  “Let us hope so, Soph. For now, the plan is to close the borders and deport people from other Ages unless they have papers. The so-called ‘Patriot Plan,’” he said dryly, “is generous enough to permit free travel for citizens of New Occident.”

  “So we could still travel in and out?” She glanced apologetically at Mrs. Clay. “I mean, anyone with papers can travel in and out?”

  Shadrack nodded. “Yes. For now. What you may not have heard over the commotion,” he went on, “is that they plan to reconsider Wharton’s Protection Amendment at the end of August. They may very well implement it.”

  “And close the border for all of us? No one could go in or out?”

  “It would be sheer stupidity, of course, but that has hardly stopped parliament before.”

  “I just don’t understand why this is happening now,” Mrs. Clay protested, her voice dangerously wobbly.

  “Fear, pure and simple,” Shadrack said.

  “But my impression has always been—and I know I am still a relative newcomer here—but I had always thought that people in New Occident—in Boston, at least—were rather . . . intrigued,” she said carefully, “by the other Ages. They treat foreigners with curiosity, not hostility.”

  “I know,” Sophia agreed. “It makes no sense; people love to see the other Ages. At the wharf, there was this circus with creatures from the other parts of the world. And there was a man selling tickets who had a boy covered with feathers in a cage, and the boy was his prisoner, but he was so calm he hardly seemed to care, even though everyone was staring at him.” She found, despite her rush of words, that there was no way she could explain just how remarkable the boy was, or why he had left such an impression upon her.

  “Yes,” Shadrack said, eyeing her thoughtfully. He ran his hand through his hair and frowned. “I think the majority of the people here are intrigued—fascinated, even—by the other Ages. For some that means exploration, for others that means befriending foreigners, for still others it means observing them in cages.” His smile had no mirth. “But many others are afraid—not just afraid of people from other Ages who are different, but afraid, however illogically, for their own safety.”

  “You mean piracy and raiding,” Mrs. Clay said.

  “I do. No one is denying,” Shadrack said, “that the conflicts with the other Ages are real. The pirates in the United Indies are a costly distraction, and it is true that raiding parties from the Baldlands are continually tormenting populations at the edges of New Occident—even more so in the Indian Territories. But,” he continued sadly, “it goes the other way, too. Ships sail from Seminole every day under our flag and then, once they’re out on the sea, they lower ours and raise a pirate flag. And raiding parties from New Occident go into the Baldlands as often as they come out of them.” He paused. “That is why the boy you saw on the wharf, Soph, was a captive.”

  “You mean he was kidnapped in the Baldlands?”

  “Most likely. They would probably claim that they found him in New Occident and that he somehow broke the law, but most certainly he was taken in a raid, and the circus bought him from the raiders as the newest addition to their show.” His voice was bitter.

  “That’s despicable.” Sophia was thinking of how calm the boy had seemed and of how he had stepped up to the bars, as if about to speak to her.

  “It is.” The Elli side of the family, Shadrack and Minna, were all from Boston. But the Timses came from many different places, and Sophia’s great-grandparents had been slaves; after the rebellion, they helped to found the new state of New Akan in 1810. Their son, Sophia’s grandfather, had moved to Boston to attend the university. “Sophia’s great-grandfather was only seventeen when slavery ended,” Shadrack explained to Mrs. Clay. Then he turned to Sophia. “It must have shaken you to see a boy behind bars like that.”

  “This is what I don’t understand,” the housekeeper said. “Surely people in New Occident see that almost everyone here was once from somewhere else—everyone has a foreigner in their past.”

  “Yes, but what we have seen today,” Shadrack replied, “is what happens when fear overwhelms reason. The decision is illogical. It makes no sense to deport some of our finest laborers, merchants, and tradespeople, not to mention mothers, fathers, and friends. They will live to regret it.”

  The three sat silently for a while, gazing, each with their own preoccupations, at the empty kitchen table. Sophia sat with her head resting on Shadrack’s shoulder. He stirred a moment later, as if something had just occurred to him. “Mrs. Clay, I apologize. You came in an hour ago quite distressed, and I was full of my own concern for Sophia. We should discuss how we will get papers for you, since there is no time to acquire them through the proper channels.” Shadrack shook his head. “Naturalization can take months—sometimes years. We will have to find other means.”

  She looked at him gratefully. “Thank you, Mr. Elli. You are very kind. But it is late, and neither you nor Sophia have eaten. We can speak another time—I do not wish to impose.” She rose tentatively to her feet and patted the bun at the nape of her neck, tucking stray hairs into place.

  “Nonsense,” Shadrack said, gently putting Sophia aside. “You’re right, we haven’t eaten. And neither have you.” He looked at his watch. “I will get in touch with Carlton. Tonight, if possible.” Carlton Hopish, fellow cartologer and Shadrack’s friend from the university, worked for the Ministry of Relations with Foreign Ages and owed Shadrack more favors than either of them could count. Thanks to his friendship with the most knowledgeable cartologer in New Occident, Carlton always seemed to be the most informed member of government; and Shadrack, in turn, always managed to be conveniently apprised of classified government information. “As a beginning step, I’ll write him a note tonight about getting expedited papers for you—may as well try the legal route first. Will you stay to have dinner with us? No one should have to bear such ill news as we heard today alone. Please,” he added, when he saw Mrs. Clay hesitate.

  “Very well. Thank you for your kindness.”

  “Soph, can you wait to eat a little while longer while I write to Carlton and discuss things with Mrs. Clay?” Shadrack asked with an apologetic look.

  “Yes, of course. I should write to Dorothy, anyhow.”

  “A good idea.” As Shadrack and Mrs. Clay retreated to his study, Sophia made her way upstairs.

  — 16-Hour 27: Upstairs at East Ending—

  SOPHIA SIGHED AS she climbed the stairs. She passed the room that had belonged to her parents, which had remained almost untouched for so many years, and she tapped the door lightly as she did every time she walked by it. When she was very small she would often take refuge there, curling up with the comfort of her parents’ belongings all around her. A portrait of her parents drawn by Shadrack sat on the nightstand, and when she was small Sophia had believed it had magical properties. It seemed an ordinary drawing, made with passable skill, since Shadrack was more draughtsman than portrait artist. In the first years after their disappearance, Sophia often picked it up and traced her finger along the inked lines, and somehow she could hear her parents’ laughter and sense their presence—as if they were truly in the room beside her. But over time, she visited the room less and less; it came to remind her more of their absence then of their presence. It recalled to her all the times she had gone in and, as always, found the room empty.

  There were enough reminders of them elsewhere: the silver star earrings that she always wore, which they had given her on her first birthday; the colorful ribbons her mother often used as bookmarks; her father’s pipe, still sitting next to Shadrack’s
in the study downstairs. These small objects made tiny anchors all around her, reminding her quietly that Minna and Bronson had, indeed, once existed.

  Sophia’s bedroom had fewer of these anchors. It was filled instead with the objects that made up her life: a potted magnolia that grew in miniature; a watercolor of Salem given to her by an artist friend of Shadrack’s; a wardrobe with carefully ordered clothes; a desk with carefully ordered papers; and a bookshelf with carefully ordered books—school books on the bottom shelf and her own on the top shelf. The popular novels of Briony Maverill, the poetry of Prudence Lovelace, and works by Emily Dickinson and Ralph Waldo Emerson all accompanied the picture books that she still cherished and sometimes read.

  Sophia unpacked her satchel, taking out her drawing notebook and her pencils. As she did, she found a stray piece of paper, folded in half, and she smiled, knowing already that it would be a drawing Shadrack had somehow sneaked into her satchel that morning. She opened it and laughed at the little sketch of Clockwork Cora, sleeping soundly through a boring speech at parliament, her tiny feet propped up on someone’s lap. Unfortunately, Sophia thought, putting the folded paper in a tin box, today it had been anything but boring.

  Before sitting down at her desk, she opened the window above her bed to let the air in. She leaned on the sill to look out over the city. From her second-story window, she could see mostly rooftops. She had a narrow view of East Ending Street, where at that moment a boy was slowly pedaling along the cobblestones on a Goodyear. The sun was finally beginning to set, and though the air was no cooler, a breeze had started up.

  After unlacing her boots and placing them neatly under her bed, she sat at her desk. She began by writing a letter to her friend Dorothy, who had moved away at the end of the school year. Dorothy’s father had an important position in the trade industry, and he had taken a job in New York that inconveniently deprived Sophia of her best—and in many ways her only—friend. Dorothy’s easy good humor had a way of tempering Sophia’s seriousness, and with her gone, the days of summer vacation had so far been very long and rather lonely. Dorothy had written of her loneliness, too, in the noisy bustle of New York City, so much less civilized than Boston.

  But now they both had more pressing concerns. Dorothy’s father had been born in the United Indies, and it seemed doubtful they would be able to stay in New Occident. Sophia wrote to express her worry and to say how hard Shadrack had fought to prevent the measure that might now send all of Dorothy’s family into exile.

  With a sigh, Sophia folded the letter, placed it in an envelope, and took out her drawing book. She always drew at the end of the day; it allowed her to record the hours that would otherwise, all too easily, slip away unnoticed. As images and words those hours became real, tangible, visible.

  Years earlier, she had taken a trip with Shadrack to Vermont, and, as they were happening, the days seem to evaporate before her eyes until they lasted no more than minutes.

  Upon their return home, Shadrack had given her a notebook with calendar pages as a way of helping her keep track of time. “Memory is a tricky thing, Sophia,” he had said to her. “It doesn’t just recall the past, it makes the past. If you remember our trip as a few minutes, it will be a few minutes. If you make it something else, it will be something else.” Sophia had found this idea strange, but the more she used the notebook, the more she realized that Shadrack was right. Since Sophia thought most clearly through pictures, she had placed images in the calendar squares to make careful records of her explorations through the year, whether they required leaving Boston or sitting quietly in her room. And incredibly, time became ordered, reliable, constant.

  Now she had no need for calendar pages; she had her own method for reining in those slippery hours, minutes, and seconds. She had even devised her own manner of binding the paper, so that her notebook unfolded like an accordion and she was able to see the continuous passage of time in a clear, notched line like a ruler along one side of the page. At the margin she dutifully marked the time and recorded the happenings of the day. She filled the center of the page with the day’s images, thoughts, and quotes from people and books. Often she dipped backward or forward to amend how things had happened or speculate how they might happen.

  Perhaps due to Shadrack’s influence or perhaps due to her own natural inclinations, she had realized that her sketches and recordings were actually maps: maps to guide her through the shapeless time that would otherwise stretch boundlessly into her past and future. Straight lines formed the borders of her observations, and dashed lines linked the borders to memories and wishes. Her thoughts connected to them with hatched lines, marking her mental travels, so that Sophia always knew not only what had happened when, but what she had been thinking at the time.

  Using a soft pencil and the tips of her fingers, she began drawing June fourteenth. She found herself sketching the absurd, detestable mustache of Rupert Middles and quickly drew a firm line around him, boxing him off in disgust. Not that, she said to herself, trying to put the whole dreadful morning out of her mind. She began again. Soon she realized she was drawing the boy from the circus. It was difficult to capture the expression on his face that had so impressed her: his dark, intent gaze; his careless smile. “He was almost laughing,” she murmured. She glanced down at her notebook. That’s not what he looked like, she thought.

  She turned the page to start over and then slowly began turning pages in the opposite direction, back to a drawing she had made on the last day of school.

  A woman of middle age with laugh lines and short, wavy hair gazed fondly out at Sophia; a tall man with an impish smile and a bit of a stoop stood protectively behind her. Sophia had drawn her parents many times. She tried to imagine them as they would be now, older and a little heavier; over time the drawings had grown more detailed and vivid. But I will never really draw them if I never see them again, she thought. She closed her notebook and put it in the drawer with a sigh of frustration.

  Sophia realized as she did so that the room had grown dark. She picked up her watch: it was almost eighteen-hour. Shadrack has been talking to her for so long, she thought. As she descended the steps, she could hear his voice—steady, reassuring—coming from the study. But when she reached the open doorway she stopped abruptly, seeing that Mrs. Clay was weeping openly.

  “I can’t go back, Mr. Elli,” she said, with a note of terror in her voice.

  “I know, Mrs. Clay. I know. I only say this because I want you to be aware of how difficult it may be. Carlton will hopefully get us the papers, but the government-issued lifewatch is difficult to procure. That’s all—”

  “I can still hear the Lachrima. I can still hear its cries ringing in my ears. I would rather remain here illegally than go back. I can’t.”

  Sophia took an awkward step forward. “I am sorry to interrupt—”

  “And I am sorry we’ve kept you waiting, Soph. We’ll be in the kitchen momentarily,” said Shadrack, with a look that was apologetic but firm. Mrs. Clay wiped her nose with her handkerchief and did not look up.

  Sophia walked down the hallway, the question in her mind—What is a Lachrima?—unasked.

  4

  Through the Library Door

  1891, June 15: 7-Hour 38

  This is New Occident’s Great Age of Exploration. Travelers head as far as their vessels, mounts, and feet will carry them. But exploration is dangerous work. Many explorers never return, and most of the world remains unknown. Even those places that can be explored prove terribly distant for all but the most elite traveler. Postal routes are fragmentary or nonexistent. Trade routes are painstakingly cultivated, only to crumble. To be connected to the world is a constant, difficult labor.

  —From Shadrack Elli’s History of New Occident

  SOPHIA ALWAYS TOLD Shadrack everything; usually he knew what she was thinking without having to ask. And Shadrack told Sophia everything. At some point, he had realized that this oddly grown-up child had the maturity and capabilities of someo
ne far older. He had known graduate students less able to keep their lives in order. And so he even shared the complexities of his work with his niece, making her far more knowledgeable about cartology than any other thirteen-year-old in Boston. They did not keep secrets from each other. Or so Sophia thought.

  The next morning, Sophia found Shadrack in his study, writing furiously. The mahogany desk and the ink blotter shook from the pressure of his urgent scribbling. When she came in, he pushed himself back from the table and gave her a tired smile.

  “Is Mrs. Clay still here?” Sophia asked.

  “She went upstairs around one-hour.”

  “You haven’t slept much.”

  “No,” Shadrack replied shortly. “Apparently everything that could go wrong has. You may as well read it yourself—you’ll see the news eventually.” He handed Sophia a newspaper that was lying, partially disassembled, on his desk.

  The principal story was, of course, the closure of the borders and the adoption of Rupert Middles’s Patriot Plan. But the rest of the headlines took Sophia’s breath away:

  FIRE AT STATE HOUSE TAKES THREE LIVES

  PARLIAMENT MEMBER MURDERED

  LEAVING STATE HOUSE

  MINISTER OF FOREIGN RELATIONS

  SUFFERS “ACCIDENT”

  Sophia gasped. “Carlton!” she cried.

  MINISTER of Relations with Foreign Ages Doctor Carlton Hopish was discovered this morning in his house on Beacon Hill, suffering from what appears to have been a grievous stroke to his nervous system. He was found by his charlady, Samantha Peddlefor, who described her employer’s condition when she came upon him as “horrifying.”

  Dr. Hopish has seemingly lost critical brain function. Doctors at Boston City Hospital say that it is too early to determine whether Dr. Hopish will be able to speak, let alone return to his duties as minister, any time soon.