He spoke of it all so lightly, with the casual, almost sloppy diction of the Northern Baldlands that made the words seem thrown together every which way. But his easy manner could not entirely muffle the sharp edges of pain that lay underneath: shards of broken glass under a thin rug. Sophia felt something odd in her chest, like a surge of admiration and sadness all at once. His air of being above it all—above every danger, above every indignity—came at a price. “I guess you don’t miss Aston, either.”
Theo grinned broadly. “Nope.”
Now it was Sophia’s turn to look away. She kept her eyes on the moon as she said, “I can’t remember my parents, but I know a lot about them. I’m lucky. I had Shadrack to tell me. They left when I was little. To go exploring. And they got lost and never came back. Shadrack could have gone to look for them, but he had to take care of me.” Sophia didn’t know why she had put it that way, except that it had occurred to her for the first time that she had prevented Shadrack from going in search of Minna and Bronson. She had lost her parents, but Shadrack had lost his sister, and yet he had never even suggested that Sophia had stood in the way of finding her.
They sat in silence for a minute, watching the moonlight flicker onto the table as it hit the trees. “Shadrack was teaching me how to read maps,” Sophia continued, “so we could go find them together. But the truth is they would be strangers to me. Shadrack was my mother and father.”
“You mean he is,” Theo corrected her. “We’ll find him. Have you figured out how to read the glass map yet?”
Sophia reached for her pack. “How did you know this was a map? Most people only know about paper maps.”
“They’re not so uncommon.”
She drew the glass map from the pillowcase and placed it carefully on the table between them. As the two of them peered at it, something remarkable happened. The moon rose above the tree line, and its light fell fully onto the pane of glass. Suddenly an image sprang to life on its surface. The map had awoken.
12
Travel by Moonlight
1891, June 22: 19-Hour #
Among those maps that have made their way into museum collections and university libraries are certain maps of the New World that cartologers of New Occident have not yet learned to read. Either because they were crafted by ancient civilizations or because they reflect some yet undiscovered learning, they are simply illegible to even the most expert Western cartologers.
—From Shadrack Elli’s History of New Occident
“MOONLIGHT!” SOPHIA BREATHED, leaning in toward the map. “I should have thought of that.”
Theo bent forward. “What’s it doing?”
“The glass maps respond to light. Usually just lamplight or sunlight. It never occurred to me that there might be some made for moonlight.” She kept her eyes on the map, trying to understand the lines that were unfolding on its surface.
It was unlike those she’d seen in Shadrack’s map room. Apart from the mapmaker’s insignia, there were no clocks and no legend of any kind along the edge. Luminous, silvery writing filled the pane from top to bottom. Most of it was unintelligible. In the middle were five sentences in different languages using the Roman alphabet. The sentence in English read, “You will see it through me.” Sophia still remembered enough of the Latin taught to her by the diligent graduate student to realize that the Latin words a few lines down said exactly the same thing.
She shook her head. “I can’t even tell if this is a map. I’ve never seen anything like it. But if it’s a memory map we can read it, even if we don’t understand the writing.”
“It has to mean something.”
She glanced over the map, unsure of where to place her fingertip. “Try touching part of the surface.” They placed their fingertips on different points at the same time.
Sophia had never before experienced such violent emotions from reading a map. Before even seeing anything, she felt awash with an overwhelming sense of desperation and fear. Her heart was pounding; she kept turning her head one way and then another; but nothing was clear and the sense of panic gathered, making every detail around her meaningless, confused, and chaotic.
She felt surrounded by people who were clearly present, but indistinct. They stood to her left, as if lining a long corridor, and they stepped forward to speak with her. Each voice drowned out the next, and she could not make out anything they said. With a sense of mounting alarm she climbed upward, but she could not see the stairs below her feet. She pushed past everyone toward a quiet spot high above. The feeling of desperation mounted. She knew the memory was not hers, but it felt as though she, Sophia, were shoving against some heavy object with all her might. Then she felt it giving way, and then rolling, and then, quite suddenly, falling.
For a few moments she felt herself standing, immobile, as the tension of waiting made every nerve in her body tingle. And then the unseen structure around her began to tremble and shake. She knew without a doubt that soon everything around her would collapse.
She dove back into the corridor lined with people. She ignored them, her heart about to explode in her chest as she ran down along the spiraling passageway. The floor shook beneath her feet and she stumbled and scrambled back up and ran on. People appealed to her as she passed, but their words made no sense; she would not hear them—they were unimportant. Her running grew more frantic. A door awaited her—an unseen door that lay somewhere ahead—but she had not yet reached it and the walls around her had begun to fall to pieces. The fear was blinding. All she could see was the blank space in front of her where there had to be a door and there was not. She felt the steps crumbling beneath her.
Then, suddenly, she burst through a doorway—though the door itself was nothing more than a blur. Ahead of her, beyond the opening, there was no one and nothing. The world was empty. There was a faint glimmer in the distance that grew brighter: someone was running toward her. The memory faded.
Sophia pulled back abruptly and saw that Theo had done the same. “What did you remember?” she asked.
“I was in a place filled with people,” Theo said haltingly, clearly shaken. “And I pushed something, and then the place started falling apart and I ran out.”
“I saw the same thing.” She found that she was breathing hard. They stared at one another. Sophia saw her distress and need for comprehension mirrored in Theo’s eyes. “What do you think happened?”
“I don’t know,” Theo said slowly. “I guess someone destroyed this place—whatever it is. No way to know why.”
“I think whoever did it might have been the only person to survive.” Sophia said. “And this map is their memory of it.”
“But where is it? When did it happen?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell, because all we can see are the people. We can’t see the building or the area around it. We need the other layers of mapping to see those.” She shook her head. “There must be some reason why he left it for me. Maybe I’m not supposed to understand it. Maybe I’m just supposed to take care of it.”