Blanca pressed Sophia’s hand. As they watched, the storm overhead drew north, passing over the pyramid and following the advancing glaciers. Blanca turned her back, releasing Sophia’s hand. “The storm is moving quickly,” she said, more to herself than to Sophia. “There isn’t much time.” Reaching into her cloak, she pulled out the four maps and handed them to Sophia, who held them for a moment, surprised, before stowing them in her pack. Then Blanca drew from her neck the silk scarf that had once been her veil and dropped it over the pyramid that stood on the round stone. “Take this map,” she said. “It will hold some of the answers you seek.”
Sophia took the wrapped pyramid-map in her arms. “What are you going to do?”
“We must disperse the waters of the carta mayor.”
“But why?”
“I know it is difficult to accept without explanation, child, but the glaciers will stop their advance if we take the carta mayor out of its path. The map must be prevented from joining with the glacier.”
“I don’t understand,” Sophia said desperately.
“It is a living map of the world. As its contents freeze, so does the earth freeze. Do you understand?” Sophia nodded hesitantly. “Then understand that, if we can ensure that the waters of the map travel into the warm soil below ground, the glaciers will halt.” She paused. “You know what we must do—you have seen it.” Blanca’s voice was gentle, reassuring “We will roll this stone into the lake. When the stone falls, it will rupture the lake bed, and the waters will channel into the underground tunnels. Unreadable, yes. But safe.”
“But the hall will collapse! All the maps—and the waters below. Shadrack will never read them. I’ll never find out . . .”
Blanca looked at her in silence, her scars furrowing with pity. “I know, child, I know. I know what a loss it will be. But you must understand: the carta mayor below us is freezing as we speak. The living map of the world will turn into a solid block of ice. It is too late for me to rewrite the history of my Age, and it is too late for you to read the history of yours. If we preserve the map, you will not read it, but perhaps someone else, in the future, may. The waters could be pooled together, made to figure the world once more. Would you stand in the way of such a possibility?”
It seemed to Sophia that all the loss she had felt over the years had swelled, drop by drop, into a vast pool as wide as the lake. Now she hung suspended over it. She would fall into it and drown, she knew, and there was no choice but to plunge in. “No,” she whispered.
“I knew you would say so,” Blanca replied gently. “Then help me bring it down.” And she threw herself against the stone. Her face contorted horribly as she pushed with all her might, but the sphere remained immobile. Sophia stood, paralyzed with indecision, then she put her pack and the map down and moved to help her. The moment she added her own weight, the stone gave way and began rolling. “Hurry!” Blanca cried. “Step back!” She heaved with all her strength, so that the sphere rolled more and more quickly and finally reached the edge of the balcony where it burst through, shattering the railing, meeting a long silence as it fell toward the frozen lake below.
Time slowed, and the stone hung in midair. It was as if Sophia stood before a window, through which she could see the disappearance of all the truths she would never learn—the mysteries that would remain mysteries. And then, to her surprise, she saw a face. It was her own: the sad, forlorn child who had waited by the dusty window of her imagination. The child did not seem frightened by the prospect of seeing the glass shattered; on the contrary, she seemed relieved—even glad. After all, the window had never given her the vision she so wanted; it had only kept her closed in, away from the world.
And then time sped up. A violent crash pierced the air as the stone broke the surface of the ice. The walls began to shake. Then a sudden explosion, dulled by the water, struck the pyramid with full force. The lake bed had ruptured.
She cried out inadvertently.
“You must leave,” Blanca said. “Hurry!”
Sophia scooped up her pack quickly, stowing the pyramid map of the Southern Snows alongside the others. “Aren’t you coming?”
Blanca stood limply at the center of the balcony, which had begun to tremble as the nearby wall supporting it shuddered over the breaking ice. “I have no reason to,” she said. “Go.”
“Please, come with me.”
“Where would I go? I am an outcast. Many times over. I do not belong among men, because of my face. I do not belong among Lachrima, because of my memories. I do not belong to any living Age, because the world I was part of has ended. I have no place; I belong nowhere; I am nothing.”
Sophia felt tears streaming down her face, and she reached out again for Blanca’s hand. But perhaps the sight of those tears had reminded Blanca of the truth behind her own words, for a terrible cry escaped her lips: a wail, a scream that was heartbreaking beyond measure. She fell to her knees, covering her face with her hands, and her cry poured out into the air, echoing off the breaking walls and filling the hall with the sound of unspeakable grief.
Sophia could not bear it. “Good-bye,” she whispered. She ran toward the stairs to begin the long descent. The walls were collapsing around her, and she dared not stop to look at the breaking ice below. With her hand against the wall, she ran onward. And suddenly, when she touched the wall, the vision from the four maps burst into view before her. As her fingertips brushed the glass, the graven images seemed to contain more than memories; Sophia felt the throng of people around her, speaking to her urgently from within the maps. They sent their vanished makers out into the world for the last time.
As Sophia ran she heard Blanca’s cry reverberating through the hall, and she realized with astonishment that she, too, was weeping out loud, a ragged cry of anguish pulled from her throat. Her feet fell clumsily, and suddenly the stairs buckled. The top of the pyramid had collapsed, plummeting into the draining lake bed. The snowstorm raged within the hall. “Not yet, not yet!” Sophia cried, running faster. She lost her footing and slid, the stairs knocking painfully against her legs and back, but she clutched her pack and stopped herself with her feet. Whimpering aloud, she ran on.
She realized, as she rounded the last turn and saw the wall above her folding inward like a collapsing sheet of paper, that she did not know how to find her way out. She had emerged through the tunnels, and she had seen no opening above ground. Her hand still gliding against the wall, she tried to take comfort from the people around her. They were mere memories, but they had a life of their own. Were they not speaking to her? Were they not pointing urgently to a place in the pyramid wall? Sophia heard, suddenly, a pair of voices that seemed to emerge from the confusion: a man and a woman who called out to her with confidence and tender encouragement, Fly, Sophia, fly! She looked ahead and saw, with astonishment, a triangular entryway that stood intact. It was nothing but a slit in the wall. It was the way out.
But it lay several steps away. As she reached the base of the stairs, Sophia realized with horror that the floor had disintegrated. She was standing on a floating piece of ice. Stepping as quickly as she dared, she hurried across and jumped onto another piece that drifted before the entryway. She was almost there. Only a few more steps. She tipped across the ice, and as she breached the doorway with a sudden lurch the floating slab broke into pieces, leaving nothing but icy water in its wake.