The entry ended there. Horrified by the image of Carlton Hopish ruined, Sophia drew back. What had Shadrack suspected? Could he have seen something at the hospital that had placed him in danger? There was no message for her in those pages, as she had hoped—only an ominous riddle that left her even more frightened. She felt the tears welling up in her eyes and took several deep breaths to stop them.
Shadrack’s armchair, where he always read for an hour or two before going to bed, still bore the impression of where he had sat the night before. Sophia stumbled over and dropped down into it. It smelled of cedar and pine and paper; Shadrack’s smell. What if she had seen him reading in his armchair for the last time? She could already imagine how the room would look in a year, or five, or ten. It would look just like her parents’ bedroom down the halclass="underline" the walls would discolor in strange patterns; the books would warp from one humid summer after another; the clothes and shoes would seem to shrivel and age. She had been trying to hold the thought at bay, but now that she pictured Shadrack’s room slipping into abandonment, she could not avoid it. Again, the moments expanded, and Sophia imagined a long future without him, without her parents—entirely alone. The thought made her curl up in the chair, and she wrapped her arms around her knees.
Sophia felt something sharp against her side. She ignored it. But the more she ignored it the more it jabbed into her ribs, until finally she sat up and shoved the pillow aside. To her surprise, it felt hard. She lifted the pillow. Propped behind it was one of her old drawing notebooks.
What is my old notebook doing in Shadrack’s armchair? she wondered dully, picking it up. The notebook felt heavy. She untied the two leather laces that held its covers closed, and the book fell open to what looked like a note. She recognized Shadrack’s handwriting at once, even though the message was brief. It read:
Sophia—go to Veressa. Take my atlas. Love, SE
Beneath it was a glass map.
Sophia stared at the map and the note in wonder. Shadrack had left her a message after all! And he had found the perfect place for it. Between the heavy pages of her drawing notebook, the thin pane of glass lay well protected. Sophia ran her fingers tenderly over her uncle’s writing. The message sounded urgent, but not despairing or afraid. Shadrack hadn’t told her to hide or run away. Sophia felt something—not relief, but determination—course through her. She remembered what Shadrack had said before under very different circumstances: “All you need, Sophia, is something to do.”
And now she did have something to do: she had to take Shadrack’s atlas and find Veressa, wherever that was. And perhaps when she found Veressa, she would find Shadrack!
Sophia jumped to her feet. First, she decided, she had to read the glass map. The fading sunlight from the window had no effect. She hurriedly lit the flame-lamps and held the map up to one. Once again, nothing happened. The glass had no inscription as to its time or place, and it was completely transparent. Could this simply be a plain piece of glass? she wondered. No, impossible. Why would Shadrack leave her a sheet of glass unless it was a map? She examined it carefully, holding it close to the light. Sure enough, in the bottom left corner was the etched mapmaker’s sign: a mountain range atop a ruler. But the map would not wake. She bit her lip and carefully placed the glass back between the pages of the notebook. It would have to wait. She had to find Shadrack’s atlas.
— 17-Hour 45: Searching for the Atlas—
NOTEBOOK IN HAND, Sophia rushed back down to the library. She took a deep breath, placed the book on the sofa, and dropped to her knees. Shadrack’s atlas could not be hard to find; it was tall and wide and would stand out from the other volumes. She rummaged through the piles impatiently, searching for the burgundy-colored binding. Then she realized it would be easier if she simply reshelved them.
She began placing the books back on the shelf closest to her. Slowly, the familiar white and slate-blue pattern of the carpet began to emerge. She filled four shelves without spotting the atlas. The books had fallen every which way, and some had torn pages. Sophia tried to be careful while moving quickly. She was filling a fifth shelf when she heard footsteps and looked up to see Theo standing in the doorway.
Sophia hardly recognized him. Without all the feathers, he looked like an ordinary person. He had brown hair that was a little long—just below his ears—and a small dimple in his chin. Wearing Shadrack’s clothes, he looked older. Sophia had thought he was about fourteen, but now she wondered whether he wasn’t fifteen or sixteen. He even held himself in an older way, with one hand—deeply scarred, as if from years of injuries—resting on the doorframe. But even without the feathers, he was still unlike anyone she had ever met in New Occident.
The boys her age at school were nice or harmless or erratically cruel, depending on their temperaments. None was very interesting. And the older boys, some of whom she had come to know through theater and field sports, seemed to have the same qualities in advanced form: more decidedly nice, harmless, or cruel. Theo seemed none of these. He had the air of calm authority she remembered from the circus. Sophia felt herself blushing when she realized she had no idea how long she had been staring at him.
His brown eyes met hers in amusement. “Are you cleaning?”
Sophia blushed a deeper shade of red. “No, I’m not cleaning. I’m looking for something and this is the easiest way.” She quickly rose. “You have to see what I found.”
Sophia had not yet learned, in her thirteen years, that it is not unusual for strangers in extreme circumstances to find themselves sharing a sudden familiarity. The shock of a shared threat makes the stranger an ally. Then the stranger does not seem strange at alclass="underline" he, too, is a person in danger attempting to survive. And if the stranger who is no longer a stranger happens to be someone likable, someone who has seemed appealing and intriguing from the very beginning, then he will fit all the more readily into place, almost as if he was always meant to be there.
Having no internal clock exaggerated this effect for Sophia; a brief moment with someone could feel much longer. Theo was a stranger who was no longer a stranger: an intriguing and unexpected ally. If someone had asked her at that very moment whether she had reason to trust Theo, she would have had difficulty answering. The question did not occur to her. She liked him, and so she wanted to trust him.
Sophia opened the notebook to show him the glass map and the message. “It is a—”
“Map,” Theo said, picking it up carefully with his scarred right hand. “I figured.” He held it up to the light, just as Sophia had, while she looked on in surprise.
“How did you know?”
He carefully replaced it, seemingly not hearing her question; then he frowned thoughtfully over the message. “Is this supposed to be the map to Veressa?”
“I thought it might be. Or Veressa might be in the atlas.”
“You’ve never heard of it before?”
“No. Have you?”
Theo shook his head. He glanced around the room. “What’s the atlas look like?”
“Large—about this tall—and fat, and dark red.”
“All right, let’s hunt it down.” He smiled. “And then, when we find it, maybe you can get me a map of New Occident.”
He crouched by the closest pile and began shelving books alongside her. They were almost halfway done when Sophia dove toward a pile a few feet away, exclaiming, “There it is!” She hadn’t recognized the book because it lay open, pages facing upward.