She ran the last twenty steps and ducked into the dark entryway. Stopping to catch her breath, she looked out into the immense, domed cavern. The sight made her dizzy. The city seemed small, like a cluster of spun-sugar houses. She could still hear the occasional burst of gunfire. The Sandman was nowhere to be seen. The seeds she dropped had burst into brilliant bloom, climbing up the limestone wall and casting a piercing white light into the chamber. If they look up they’ll know where I went, Sophia thought, her breath painful in her chest. They can’t possibly miss it. I can wait here until they notice.
She looked out over the city desperately and suddenly saw a pale glimmer from among the buildings—a brief silver flash. It was not a torch or a sword blade; it reminded her of something. Light reflected on a mirror, moonlight on a windowpane, something else—what is it? There was the flash again, and she realized that it was Theo’s hand, wrapped in the silver thread. She took a deep breath. “Theo!”
A chunk of rock burst from the wall beside her leg. The Sandman was still several flights below, and the angle of the stairs did not permit him a clear shot. But he would keep climbing, and sooner or later he would reach the doorway.
Sophia turned away in anguish; she would have to keep going. It was impossible to see inside the tunnel. She dropped a seed and waited impatiently as the vine climbed the tunnel wall, springing to life with a hundred blossoms. The air smelled like honeysuckle; the flowers shone like tiny stars, and as they bloomed Sophia saw the wide tunnel that curved upward along a set of wide, stone stairs. “More stairs?” she cried in despair.
She kept her strength by walking at a measured pace, and whenever the faint light of the last vine grew dim, she dropped another seed so that the sweet-smelling flowers would light her way. Soon the sound of shots faded, and she could hear nothing but her own steps and rasping breath. Although there were no footsteps behind her, she did not allow herself to believe that she had outrun her pursuer.
The climb felt interminable. Her feet in the wet boots moved woodenly. She knew that she had to keep climbing, but she felt a sense of despair at having left the others. They will see the vines, she said firmly. They will see the vines and know where I went. She tried to keep track of time by counting her steps. One step per second. One seed every fifty steps.
When she reached five hundred steps, her legs began to shake. At eight hundred steps, she was certain she could not go on. But if she stopped, surely she would lose track of time. If she rested for what felt to her like a moment, an entire hour might pass and the man behind her would catch up. I have to, she thought desperately. Just for a few seconds. Her legs seemed to stop moving of their own accord. Leaning against the wall in the dark, she closed her eyes. Her knees were shaking so hard she could not even stand. With an involuntary sob, Sophia sank to a crouch and rested her head on her bent knees. She counted carefully: one, two, three, four, five, six . . .
The seconds passed. Sophia counted. She realized, as the numbers grew larger, that what was happening to her was the thing she had always feared the most: being alone, in a place where time passed invisibly, where she might close her eyes and suddenly wake up to find that days, months, years had passed. This is what I’m afraid of. This is what I’m always afraid of. But the thought brought her no terror. It seemed, rather, to bring a kind of clarity. What really keeps me here, in the present? Nothing. I could open my eyes and be in the future. Instead of memories of a whole life, I’d have . . . She opened her eyes and stared into the darkness. She had forgotten to count. The silence around her was absolute. Several thoughts flashed suddenly in Sophia’s mind at once; her eyes widened.
She had a vivid recollection of standing on the deck of the Swan. Grandmother Pearl’s voice came to her in the darkness, clear and sweet: “What else is there, that no one else is seeing because they’re looking at the time?”
“Not bound to time,” Sophia whispered aloud in the darkness. “Future, past, present—it makes no difference to me. I can see them for what they are.” She rose unsteadily to her feet. The sight of Theo’s hand, bound in silver thread, glinting in the underground chamber, filled her mind like a light. It’s Theo, she realized, it’s Theo who runs toward me when the tower collapses. She remembered the first time she had read the glass map, aboard the Seaboard Limited, sitting across from Theo in the moonlight. Then she had read it again, and again, and each time that same figure—more well-known, more painfully dear—had appeared at the end. The memories had seemed so vivid, so familiar, so real.
“I can see them for what they are,” Sophia murmured.
No longer counting, no longer having any need, she rose and climbed. Her legs seemed to spring forward without effort, despite her exhaustion and the darkness.
She reached into her pocket for another seed. Then she noticed with surprise that it was unnecessary. She could see the steps beneath her feet. A pale light spread toward her from the top of the stairs. Without pausing to look up, she climbed onward. Suddenly a cold rush of air hit her brow and she lifted her head. There was an opening only a few steps above her. Sophia took the final step. Numbly, she dropped the seed pinched between her fingers.
She found herself at the edge of a frozen lake, inside a high pyramid with glassy walls. Beyond their frosted surfaces, snow fell silently while flashes of lightning lit up the gray sky in the distance. It was just as she had seen so many times before on the surface of the four maps. We all thought the memories on the maps came from the past, she thought, but they were from the future. They are my memories. My memories of destroying this place.
36
A Map of the World
1891, July #: #-Hour
Cartographites: The tools of the trade belonging to a cartologer. In portions of the known world where cartologers are believed to possess the skill of divination, cartographites are considered instruments of great power. The belief has some basis in fact, as the cartologer’s tools are frequently found objects from the other Ages.
—From Veressa Metl’s Glossary of Baldlandian Terms
A LONG, SPIRALING balcony circled the walls of the pyramid, leaving the frozen lake in the center untouched. Its surface, a clear slab marbled with white rime, could not entirely conceal the remarkable waters below. Sophia did not need the Tracing Glass to know that the lake was a map—the largest map she had ever seen. The carta mayor.
From the banks of the lake, she could see faint spurts of color swirling like tiny fish trapped below the ice. Lost for a moment in time, she considered how the memories she was about to create had found their way onto the four maps. Her mind folded hours of deliberation into a brief, illuminating second.