by S. E. Grove
On her second night aboard, Sophia had occasion to study the ship’s nautical charts, and it gave her the opportunity she’d been waiting for. She had already decided to ask Burr and Calixta for help in reaching Nochtland. She had no choice, but even if she had been able to get there without them, she would have asked. The way that Burr had helped her on the dock in New Orleans and the fact that Calixta had saved her pack when she easily could have either left it or taken it for herself had paved the way. Grandmother Pearl’s kindness convinced her further. The pirates clearly had nothing to do with the Sandmen and Montaigne, and it could only help, she decided, to tell them what had happened to Shadrack.
She sat on the deck surrounded by lanterns, poring over the charts and weather maps that Burr had brought from his cabin. He and Calixta were a few paces away, attempting to teach Theo the rudiments of sword-fighting. Grandmother Pearl sat listening to them with a smile.
“Molasses, don’t stand there facing me like you’re asking to be skewered,” Burr counseled. “Turn your body sideways.”
“It’s heavy,” Theo protested, pacing backward with the sword in both his hands. “I’d rather just use a revolver.”
“And lazy to top it off,” Burr said, advancing toward him and rolling his eyes at Calixta. “Calixta’s half your size and she wields that sword you’re holding like one of her hat pins.”
“Half his size?” she exclaimed, whirling on her brother and disarming him with the wooden pole she held. “What do I look like to you, a fat fish?”
“Fish aren’t nearly as vain as you are, dearest,” Burr replied, dodging the pole and rolling across the deck to retrieve his sword. “And they don’t look as charming in ruffled petticoats,” he conceded, turning back to Theo. “Use your other hand,” he said, “the one you apparently like to use as a dartboard.”
Theo grimaced and passed the sword to his scarred hand. “I’m just saying, a revolver’s a lot easier.”
Burr quickly loosened a length of rope near him and Theo looked up, too late, and was trapped beneath a sprawling fishing net. “Agh!” he shouted, dropping the sword with a clatter and struggling against the knotted ropes.
“Pistol wouldn’t do much for you now, would it, Molly?”
“We just bought that net last month,” Calixta complained.
“He’s not going to cut through it. Look at him.” Burr chuckled as Theo fought to disentangle himself. “What were you saying about fat fish?”
Sophia, who had been entirely absorbed with the charts she was studying, suddenly let out a gasp. “Oh!” she exclaimed, holding up a paper map. “This is Shadrack’s!”
“Who, dear?” Grandmother Pearl asked.
Sophia collected herself. “My uncle, Shadrack Elli. He made this map.”
“Did he, now?” Burr said with interest. He and Calixta peered over her shoulder. “Ah, yes! Quite a map, that one. This island,” he said, pointing, “is so remote that most people have never even heard of it. Only pirates ever go there. And yet this map is incredibly exact. Every stream, every rock—it’s remarkable.”
“Yes. It’s a lovely map,” Sophia agreed, gazing down at the fine lines drawn in her uncle’s familiar hand.
“How does he do it? He’s never been there, I’m sure.”
“I don’t really know,” she admitted. Shadrack was an exceptional cartologer, of course, but even with all that she knew of his methods, there were many that still eluded her. “He probably talked to an explorer. That’s how he makes a lot of his maps.”
“But with this degree of precision?”
“He’s good at that. If you describe something to him, he can make a perfect map of it.”
Calixta shook her head. “But people never know entirely what they see. They always forget things or miss them. Are all his maps like this?”
“Well,” Sophia replied, hesitating, “he really has all kinds of different maps.” She paused a moment longer and then slowly reached into her pack. “In fact, this map he left me is very different. I still haven’t been able to make sense of it.” Sophia drew out the glass map, which she had left awake. Its etched lines shone faintly. “You see, Shadrack didn’t run off with an actress. He would never do something like that,” she said, giving Theo a scathing look just as he emerged from beneath the fishing net. “He was kidnapped. He left a note telling me to find a friend of his in Nochtland, and he left me this. The men in New Orleans—the Sandmen. This is what they were after.”
Burr gave her a keen look while Calixta sat down beside her.
“It’s a glass map,” Sophia said. “Have you ever seen one?”
Calixta and Burr shook their heads. “They won’t have heard of it,” Theo said. “They’re common in the Baldlands, but nowhere else.”
Burr raised his eyebrows. “Can we take a look?” She nodded, and the two joined her.
“Describe it for me, will you?” Grandmother Pearl whispered.
“It’s a sheet of glass,” Sophia said, “that in the moonlight becomes covered with writing. Most of it in other languages.”
“Here it says in English You will see it through me,” Burr said.
“But that’s just the writing,” Sophia said.
“What do you mean, ‘just the writing’?” he asked, without taking his eyes off the glass.
“It’s a memory map.” Now that she was confronted with it again, she felt reluctant to experience the memories she knew it contained. “Theo and I have read it before. I think it’s the same wherever you place your finger.”
“And then what happens?” Calixta asked.
“You see the memories that are in the map.”
For a moment the pirates stared at Sophia in disbelief, and then Calixta leaned forward. “Me first.” She eagerly placed her fingertip on the glass, and immediately her expression changed. She closed her eyes, her face still and thoughtful. When she took her finger away, she shuddered.
“Heavens, Calixta. What is it?” asked Burr.
“You try it,” she said shortly.
He touched the glass surface, his expression grave as the memories flooded his mind. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said slowly, when they had run their course. “What, exactly, is this map of?”
“We don’t know,” Sophia said. “My uncle left it for me. I’d never seen it before. And it’s strange that it’s all writing. I have no idea when or where it’s from.”
“I’d like to try it, dears,” Grandmother Pearl said, reaching forward. “If one of you will just guide my hand.”
Sophia did so, and as soon as she touched the glass, the old woman gasped. Sophia drew her hand away. “No—I want to see the whole thing,” she said, and Sophia placed her finger once again on the smooth surface.
“Did your uncle ever mention such an event in another context?” Burr inquired.
Sophia shook her head. “Not that I recall.”
Grandmother Pearl finished reading; her face was withdrawn, her brow furrowed.
“The thing is,” Sophia said with some consternation, “I don’t know that much about memory maps. I was only starting to learn about them. Shadrack said that they come from people’s memories of the past. That’s really all I know.”
“Are you very sure, love?” asked Grandmother Pearl.
“What do you mean?” Sophia asked.
“I wonder,” the old woman said. “It reminds me of something. The part in the memory when something heavy is rolled off the edge, and then everything is destroyed. It sounds so much like an old legend my mother used to tell me. Could the map be a story? Could it be something made up?”
Surprised, Sophia returned to the glass map. “I don’t know. Shadrack says a map can only contain what its author knows. I suppose that could be a story, as long as it’s true. It bears the mapmaker’s insignia, which means whoever wrote it swore to make an accurate account. What’s the legend?”
Grandmother Pearl leaned back in her chair. “It’s a story I never told you, Calixta an
d Burton, because it’s too sad and terrible. In truth, it was very foolish of my mother to tell it to me.”
Burr smiled at her. “Well, now we’re all grown up, Granny. Do your worst.”
Her face lit up with tenderness. “You foolish boy. This story strikes terror into any heart, young or old. It’s a story about the end of the world. I believe my mother told it to me because she was haunted by it herself. She called it ‘the story of the boy from the buried city.’”
—18-Hour 20: Grandmother Pearl’s Story—
“THE STORY GOES like this.
“In a city far away, in a time yet to come, there’s a boy—an orphan. The boy is an outcast; no one wants him because of a terrible burn on one side of his face. He doesn’t know where the burn came from; he only knows that it has left him marked forever, and that no one loves him because of it. He wanders the streets alone, and he is cast out of every doorway. Then, in great sadness and despair, he climbs all the way to the high temple, where, at the top of five hundred steps, the stone god that protects the city sits on a ledge. He asks the temple seer how he has come to be what he is and how he can change it. The seer stares for a long time at the bones that fall in a pattern before her, and finally she tells him this: ‘You are not from here,’ she says. ‘You are from an underground city. That is your true home. That is why no one here loves you and you do not belong.’ The boy asks her how he can get to the underground city, but the seer does not know. She too recoils from his burnt face. ‘All I know is that the stone god protecting us will fall before you find it.’
“The boy is haunted by this knowledge, and he searches through the entire city for some entrance, some doorway, some tunnel to the city underground. He never finds it. Finally, in desperation, he devises a plan. He will make the stone god fall. He will destroy the city and find the passage underground in the ruins. He has been too unloved, after all. Perhaps if there were one person in the city he could think of kindly, he would be unable to do it. But there is no one he can think of in that way. He runs all the way up the five hundred steps and from there to the ledge where the stone god sits. The boy is small, but the stone gives way easily and falls. The entire temple begins to crumble around him, and as he races down the five hundred steps, the fires begin.
“The city burns for a whole week, until nothing but ash remains, and the boy picks through the rubble, searching for the entrance to the underground city. What he finds surprises him. There are entrances to the underground city everywhere—in almost every building and on every street. But before the fire they were carefully boarded up; they were sealed and covered and hidden; it seems when the city was created, everyone was intent on keeping whatever lay underground out.
“The boy follows one of the passages deep into the ground. He travels for hours. And at the end he finds the city that the seer promised him. It is a beautiful city, built underground from shimmering stone. It has vast pools of water and wide walkways. Precious metals line the roads and jewels wink at him from the doorways. There is only one difficulty. The city is empty. As the boy walks through it, he hears his own footfalls echoing through the vast, deserted caverns. He spends many days exploring the empty city, and on the fifth day he discovers, to his surprise, another person. At the very center of the underground city he finds an old—very old—man, who says he is a seer. The boy sits down wearily before him. ‘I have had enough of seers,’ he says. ‘So I won’t ask you my destiny. But tell me. Why is this city empty? Where have all the people gone, and why are you still here?’
“The old man gazes at the boy steadily, and though it pains him to answer, he speaks. ‘This city was abandoned long ago. A seer told the city elders: “A boy from this underground city will destroy your entire city, and every one of you who remains in it will perish.” Fearing the seer’s words, the elders abandoned the city, and they moved to the surface, where they hoped to escape the prophecy. My mother was the seer, and she was the only one who remained. She was of the belief that words, once they are spoken, have a way of coming true. My mother has long since passed away, and now it is only I who live here.’ The boy listens to the words of the seer, and he realizes that in his attempt to find his home he has destroyed it. He weeps until he can hardly see, and his tears make a pool, not unlike the underground pools all around him. When he stops weeping, he opens his eyes and sees his reflection in the pool made by his tears. And then, as he watches, the scars on his face begin to vanish. They fade away, and a whole, beautiful face stares back at him. Those who had known him certainly would have loved him. But no one else survives. He remains underground with the seer, living in the buried city for the rest of his days. And that is how the legend says the world ends.”
They were all silent. “Your mother told you that as a bedtime story?” exclaimed Calixta.
Grandmother Pearl sighed. “She lived so much in the dream world, and she had a hard life. She was never very sharp on where ordinary life ended and tragedy began.”
“I should say,” Burr commented.
“But it’s not true, is it?” Sophia asked anxiously. “It hasn’t really happened?”
“Well that’s the strange thing about time in our day and age,” Grandmother Pearl said. “You never know what happened before and what happened after. I really don’t know. My mother always told it as a legend.”
“I don’t understand why that story would be on this map, or why the map would be so important.”
Grandmother Pearl nodded. “I might be wrong, after all. It just sounded similar. These memories could take place almost anywhere. There is no shortage of such destruction.”
Sophia turned the map over gently to still the images, and as she did so she glimpsed something through the glass. She held it before her and peered at the deck, where one of the floorboards seemed to shine as if lit from within. “What is that?” she asked. Without the glass, the floor of the deck once again looked uniform in the dim moonlight.
Burr looked at her curiously. “What?”
Sophia raised the glass again and the floorboard stood out clearly. “There,” she said, pointing. “One of the floorboards seems to have light coming out from behind it.” She put the glass down. “That’s strange. But only when I look at it through the glass.”
“Let me see that,” Burr said, with less than customary politeness. Sophia handed him the glass. “Amazing,” he whispered. “Calixta, look at this.”
Calixta held the glass up and caught her breath.
“What is it?” Grandmother Pearl asked anxiously.
“Seen through the glass,” Burr said slowly, “one of the floorboards appears luminescent.”
“Aceituna’s floorboard?” Grandmother Pearl exclaimed.
“Yes. Captain Aceituna,” Burr said, turning to Sophia and Theo and lowering his voice, “left us all his paper maps and charts. He also left us a map that points to his—what would you call them, Calixta?”
“Emergency funds,” she said, returning the glass to Sophia with a thoughtful expression.
“Buried treasure?” Theo breathed.
“Well, not actually buried,” Burr said. “But yes—treasure. Emergency funds. In case of hostile takeover, he engraved the map in cedar and placed it—face down—in the deck of the ship. It is that floorboard—the one that shines so brightly through your glass, Sophia.”
18
Chocolate, Paper, Coin
1891, June 26: 2-Hour #
We accept ONLY cacao, silver, or Triple Eras bank notes. No stones, glass, or spice will be accepted. Bank notes from New Occident are accepted at a 1.6 exchange rate. To change other currencies see the money changer.
—Vendor’s sign at Veracruz market
IT TOOK ONLY a few experiments to determine why the Tracing Glass illuminated Aceituna’s instructions. Though she examined almost every inch of the Swan through it, Sophia found that only one kind of object shone: maps. The nautical charts that Burr had brought her shone like sheets of hammered gold; the map of the island
drawn by Shadrack glowed as if alive with starlight; Calixta’s cabin, the walls papered with maps, seemed flooded with light that shone through a dozen map-sized windows. As a final experiment, Sophia asked Burr to draw a map on a blank sheet of paper while she observed him through the glass. At first, the blank sheet, Burr, and his quill all looked quite ordinary. But the moment the faint line he had drawn became a route, the paper took on a different aspect. When he drew a small compass in the corner, the sheet fairly glowed.
Clearly the glass map, whatever else its contents, illuminated other maps. Sophia pondered the significance of her discovery while Burr, Calixta, and Theo slept in their cabins and Grandmother Pearl sat beside her on the deck, snoring lightly. In most cases, of course, the glass would be redundant: Burr’s nautical charts were clearly nautical charts, and the glass did not make them any easier to read. But if one were looking for a hidden map, Sophia reflected, her mind whirring, the glass might be very useful. What if a glass map was disguised in a window? she thought. Or what if in a whole library there were only three maps? In such circumstances, the Tracing Glass would be invaluable. So tracing means finding, not outlining, she reflected. The multilingual instructions, which had once seemed so strange—“you will see it through me”—now made perfect sense. Anyone who could read would be told the purpose of the glass at first glance.
It brought her no closer to understanding the memories, but the discovery made her reconsider why Shadrack had entrusted the glass to her. Maybe it’s not to help find him but to help me find another map. A map no one can else can see, perhaps? Is Veressa supposed to help me? Her thoughts drifted, and suddenly she sat up, electrified. She rummaged quietly through her pack and drew out her notebook. Flipping through the pages, she found the drawings she’d made after the confrontation with Montaigne.