The Glass Sentence (The Mapmakers Trilogy)

by S. E. Grove

  Sophia shook her head, utterly perplexed.

  “Trust me, this will be useful,” Shadrack said, getting up. He walked toward the stairs. “Now I have to go finish the letters I was writing on behalf of Mrs. Clay so that they go out with the morning post, and I want to enquire about Carlton. I’ll be back soon to check on your progress,” he said warmly.

  After he had gone, Sophia took a deep breath and looked at the objects spread out before her on the table. She ignored the book and concentrated on the four blank rectangles, all with the mysterious words, “Boston, February 1831,” in the bottom righthand corner. What did Shadrack mean about “waking up” the maps? And that the maps showed the time as well as the place? How was such a thing possible? She tentatively picked up the metal sheet. It felt cool to the touch and surprisingly light, and she saw herself faintly reflected in the ochre metal. But no matter how much she stared, nothing on its surface changed.

  She put it down and picked up the clay tablet. She turned it over; it was just as blank on the back. The glass sheet was more opaque than she had realized at first. She gazed down onto its milky surface and watched her blurry reflection grow larger. Finally, she picked up the piece of linen by the corners and held it up before her face. “What’s inside you, little handkerchief?” she murmured. “Why won’t you say anything? Wake up, wake up.” Nothing happened. She let out a sharp sigh of frustration. The piece of linen fluttered briefly, and as it settled once again something remarkable happened.

  The surface started to change. Slowly, lines began to draw themselves across it. Sophia stared, wide-eyed, as the edges filled with scrollwork and a map appeared in the center of the cloth.

  5

  Learning to Read

  1891, June 15: 9-Hour 22

  It took decades, after the Disruption, for cartology to assert itself as the most important form of scholarship in New Occident. But as it absorbed the field of history and became essential to the country’s efforts at exploration, cartology became the single most important area of scholarly work. What always remained a specialized—even marginal—focus within the broader field, however, was the study of how the other Ages practiced cartology.

  —From Shadrack Elli’s History of Cartology

  SOPHIA DROPPED THE linen on the table and ran to the base of the stairs. “Shadrack, come look!” she shouted. “Something happened!”

  “All right,” he called down to her. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  She rushed back to the table to make sure the image was still there; it was. The fine, colored lines on the map looked as though they’d been drawn in ink. On the right-hand side, the legend consisted of two pale blue clocks: the first was numbered from one to twenty-eight, the second was an ordinary twenty-hour clock. A detailed web of brown and green filled the center of the linen, creating the familiar shape of the city of Boston. The borders, drawn in gold, repeated an inscrutable pattern of scrollwork and mysterious symbols.

  “So how did you discover it?” Shadrack asked, sitting down next to her. He had brought a glass of water, which he set down at a good distance from the maps.

  “I’m not sure. I think I breathed on it.”

  He smiled, stroking his chin. “All right, good enough. We often discover things by accident. The cloth maps respond to air. A breeze, a gale, a breath—it’s all the same. The reason they respond to air is because they’re weather maps. You can draw anything on a cloth map, but what they show most clearly are weather patterns. This one shows the weather for Boston in February of 1831.”

  “But it looks just like an ordinary map. Are those lines the weather?”

  “You can’t read it because you haven’t specified a day and time yet.” He pointed to the clocks in the legend.

  The clocks had no hands. “These are hours and days?” Sophia asked.

  “That’s right. Choose one.”

  “How?”

  “Well, the traditional way is to use your fingers. But you can use all kinds of things—beads, pins, things like that. I like these.” He went to the closest bureau and removed a small, leather-bound box. Inside it were ordinary pebbles—all of them smooth and smaller than a fingernail.

  “Oh, I see!” Sophia said excitedly. She placed a pebble on the day-clock’s 8 and another on the hour-clock’s 9. Nothing happened.

  “Nine in the morning on February 8, 1831,” Shadrack murmured. He took a sip of his water.

  Sophia squinted at the map. “I still don’t see anything.”

  Shadrack looked at her keenly. “Before you look at the weather for February eighth, let me tell you about an important difference between these maps and the maps you’re used to. These are memory maps. They are not just one cartologer’s impression of this place and time. They hold the collected memories of real people. They’re histories. Some maps hold the memories of one person, others hold the memories of many. This map, for example, holds the memories of hundreds of people who were living in Boston in February of 1831.”

  “How does it do that?” Sophia breathed.

  “That is what you will learn when you start making maps yourself. I can tell you it requires a great deal of research. The important thing to know now is this: when you read the map, it will be like having memories—you’ll experience the memories of the people who were there.”

  Sophia’s eyes opened wide. “I want to try it.”

  Shadrack leaned over the map, carefully keeping his arms on the table. “Try pointing out Boston Common to me. Can you find it on the map?”

  “That’s easy,” Sophia scoffed. She reached out and placed her finger on the five-sided common, drawn in green at the right of the map. And suddenly, as her finger touched the cloth, she had a vivid memory—a memory that seemed her own. She saw the common in the early morning light, with clouds passing overhead. The landscape around her was blurry and dim, but she could recall vividly the cold bite of the wind and the damp in the air. Sophia felt herself shivering, the memory was so clear. She gasped and pulled her finger away from the map. The sensation faded. “Incredible,” she said. “It is so real. As if I am remembering it.”

  Shadrack sat back with a look of gratification. “Yes. That is how it should be. That’s what these maps do.”

  “But whose memories are they? Did you put them there?”

  “Well, no—and yes. I learned about all the memories I could for this time and place. The map can only contain what the mapmaker finds. It’s not an all-seeing eye. The memories come from living people—people who were alive when I made the map—and from written memories.”

  “I don’t understand how they are there.”

  Shadrack paused. “Do you recall the drawing in your parents’ room? The one of Minna and Bronson on the day they were married?”

  Sophia looked at him. “I didn’t know it was drawn the day they were married.”

  “It was. You may have noticed that the drawing is unlike others. More alive, perhaps.”

  “I had noticed,” she said slowly. “But I thought it was my imagination. When I was younger, I would remember them so clearly whenever I looked at it.”

  “Whenever you touched it,” Shadrack corrected. “I used some of the techniques that I use for mapmaking in that drawing. It is not the same, of course—a static portrait is far less powerful than a map. But it is the same principle.”

  Sophia shook her head in wonder. “But I still don’t understand how the memories are in the drawing. How did you make this?”

  “Imagine that when I made this map I traveled around to all the people I knew who remembered this moment, and I asked them to put their memories of it in a box. Then I went home and dove into all the hundreds of memories and used my knowledge about winds and temperature and humidity and sunlight and sorted out all the memories into their correct place and time.”

  “You actually used a box?”

  “No, the ‘box’ is this cloth itself. Just as you read the map now by touch, it was written by touch. All of the memorie
s were placed there by people who came into contact with this cloth, but then it was my task to give them order and meaning. The cartologer transforms the material into a legible, comprehensible document.” He smiled. “It will make more sense when we actually practice it someday. For now, concentrate on reading.”

  “I’m going to read another time.” Sophia moved the pebbles to the 12 on the day-clock and the 20 on the hour-clock. Then she gingerly put her fingertip on Boston Common and immediately recalled something that she had never lived through: standing in Boston Common in the middle of the night while the snowflakes swirled down around her. The sky was silver with clouds, and the air around her tasted cold. The snow moved across the common in gentle currents, as if shaped by an invisible breath. “It’s just wonderful,” Sophia said drawing her finger away. “I can’t believe it.”

  Shadrack spoke with just the slightest hint of pride. “It’s not a bad map, if I say so myself. Took quite a while to pin down the last few days of the month. Very few people remembered the weather.” He considered the other maps on the table. “So what about these? Any luck?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Let’s look at them then, shall we?” Shadrack collected the pebbles, lifted the linen cloth, and gently turned it over. When he turned it right side up, it was once again blank, save for the inscriptions in the corner. “What about the clay tablet?”

  She picked it up dubiously. She tried blowing on it, but nothing happened. “I don’t know,” she said, frowning.

  “Your breath caused the linen to change,” Shadrack said. “It was the key to the map—it created a movement, an impetus, a catalyst that unlocked it. What do you think would do that to clay—to a piece of earth?”

  Sophia sat silently for a minute, thinking hard. Suddenly something occurred to her. “I know!”

  Shadrack raised his eyebrows. “What are you thinking?”

  “Hand me your water.”

  He edged it along the table and she dipped her finger into the cool liquid. Then she held it over the clay tablet and let a single drop fall. Immediately the surface of the clay began to change, and an intricately painted map appeared on the surface.

  “I guessed it!”

  “Well done. Earth responds to water. So try a date and time.”

  At the far left of the tablet was a legend like the one on the cloth map. Sophia placed pebbles on the day-clock’s 15 and the hour-clock’s 10: midday on February the fifteenth. Then she examined the map. The spidery lines on the clay wove their way tightly around the city center and then trailed off as they worked their way outward.

  “Clay maps are topographical,” Shadrack said. “They show the earth: hills, fields, forests, rivers, and so on. I think for this one it might be a little disorienting to look at the city center. Try an outlying region, out here.” Shadrack indicated the western part of Boston, where there was a green expanse of land and almost no lines.

  Sophia held her breath with anticipation and touched the map. She was flooded with a memory of rolling hills. In the distance she saw a small pond and farther on an orchard of bare trees. She lifted her finger, pulling herself away from the memories. “What happens if I move?”

  “Go ahead—try it.”

  She carefully edged her finger upward on the map; it was like moving through a cascade of memories. She remembered pine forests and the thick needled carpet that lay underfoot; she remembered a long avenue lined with bare maples; she remembered the edge of a stream that was entirely frozen, dry leaves clumped in bundles at its edges. “It’s beautiful,” Sophia said quietly. “So many places—and so detailed.”

  “The clay maps are usually less work-intensive,” Shadrack said. “In this case, the terrain didn’t change much over the course of the month, so I was able to spend more time working through the details of the landscape.”

  “I want to see the others!” Sophia removed the pebbles and then gently turned the clay map face down. She picked up the metal map. “I think I need some matches. Am I right?” She looked at Shadrack inquiringly.

  Without speaking, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a box.

  Sophia struck one and held it over the metal map. The small orange glow spread from the spot below the match outward, across the coppery surface. As she dropped the match into the glass of water, a clear, silver-lined map appeared in the center of the sheet. It seemed etched, rather than painted, and the lines shone like mercury against the copper surface. Sophia admired the map for only a few seconds before eagerly placing pebbles on the clocks.

  “For this one I’d recommend something more precise,” Shadrack said, rising from the table. He went to the bureau where he’d retrieved the pebbles and returned holding a long quill. “Should be sharp enough. The maps that contain more detail can sometimes be difficult to see with your fingertip. Try catching a smaller surface with the tip of the quill.”

  “Can I go back to the common?” she asked hesitantly.

  “By all means—try it.”

  She placed the quill on one corner of Boston Common and at once recalled standing at the intersection of Charles Street and Beacon Street, between the common and the Public Garden. The landscape around her looked blurry, but the brick houses along Beacon Street stood out sharply. There were fewer buildings in the city center. She had a clear memory of looking up the road and seeing the Park Street Church and then the State House at the top of the hill. She drew the quill along Beacon Street, heading west. The roads unfurled before her, and buildings sprang up as if emerging from a mist. She passed the mansions in the city center, the high churches, and smaller brick row houses, all the way to the small farms at Boston’s outskirts. She had a sudden, vivid memory of standing before a red tavern with a low, wooden door. Sophia drew back the quill. “It’s beautiful. Just beautiful. I can’t believe you made this!”

  “Can you find East Ending Street?”

  Sophia moved the quill tentatively, hovering over the South End. “There it is!” she suddenly exclaimed. “That’s East Ending Street!” She placed the quill on the map. In the memory that flooded her mind, some of the houses she knew were missing and some were unrecognizable, with newly laid bricks and oddly colored doors. But then something stirred in her mind, and she realized she was looking directly at a familiar house—her house. It was almost unchanged—sturdy and dignified, with its white-shuttered windows, its ponderous owl, and its bright red door. Only Shadrack’s oval sign and the creeping ivy along the brick walls were missing. “It’s our house!” she exclaimed.

  Shadrack chuckled.

  Sophia lingered over the memory a moment longer and then touched different areas of the map, locating her school and her favorite place by the river. After several minutes of eager exploring, she put the quill down. “So if the cloth map is the weather,” she said slowly, “and the clay map is the ground, and the metal map is the buildings—”

  “Construction,” Shadrack clarified. “That includes roads, railways, bridges, and so on. Everything manmade.”

  “Everything manmade,” Sophia repeated. “That’s all there is. What does the glass map show?”

  Shadrack raised his eyebrows. “You tell me. What is missing from the memories?”

  Sophia stared blankly at the sheet of glass. She picked it up and examined it closely, but all she could see was her cloudy reflection. Suddenly something occurred to her, but the thought was so marvelous that she couldn’t quite believe it. “Not . . . people?”

  “Try it and see.”

  “But I have no ideas about how to wake it up.”

  “You’re right—this one is the toughest. And it’s a little difficult to come up with, in this particular room.” He stood. “Normally, you would have a window with daylight, and you would keep the glass covered. Bring it over to the table lamp.”

  “Oh—light!” Sophia exclaimed. She carried the glass sheet carefully to where her uncle was standing beside the two armchairs. She held the pane under the bright lamp, and immediately the spi
dery white lines of a finely etched map spread across the surface of the glass like fragile threads of frost on a winter windowpane.

  Shadrack took it from her and held it up. “The glass map recalls human action—human history. It can be disturbing the first time you see one. It is strange to remember people you don’t know, saying things you’ve never heard. You must keep a clear distinction in your mind between the memories that are yours and the memories that come from the map. But you’ll learn to do that with time. This map I know for sure has nothing too alarming in it. You can savor all of its memories without concern.” He carried the glass back to the main table and gently placed it face up. Then he slid pebbles onto both of the 10s on the two clocks at the left-hand side of the map. “Try the quill,” he said encouragingly.

  Sophia wrinkled her brow. She felt strangely reluctant to plunge into the memories that she knew were stored before her.

  “Go ahead,” Shadrack said. “How about here, near the market?”

  She held the quill over Quincy Market and set it down. She felt a sudden rush and a powerful wave of recollection. People were talking all around her, laughing and shouting and gossiping in low voices. A woman standing next to her carefully counted her money. A boy walked past with a crate full of flowers, and she had a sudden memory of their powerful, hothouse smell. She could remember seeing the clouds of warm breath in the cold air and the sleepy face of a potato farmer who had driven his cart into the city from far away. It all seemed incredibly vivid—as if she had lived through it herself. The space around them remained blurry. It was as though she had erased all the buildings and streets and the very ground beneath her feet. Beyond the people, her memory was dim.

  Sophia lifted the quill and blinked a few times. “It’s odd. As though I can remember people, but nothing else. It feels like I could be anywhere.”