The Glass Sentence

1 Closing an Age

1891, June 14: 7-Hour 51

New Occident began its experiment with elected representation full of hope and optimism. But it was soon tainted by corruption and violence, and it became clear that the system had failed. In 1823, a wealthy representative from Boston suggested a radical plan. He proposed that a single parliament govern New Occident and that any person who wished to voice an opinion before it should pay admittance. The plan was hailed—by those who could afford it—as the most democratizing initiative since the Revolution. They had laid the groundwork for the contemporary practice of selling parliament-time by the second.

—From Shadrack Elli’s History of New Occident

THE DAY NEW OCCIDENT closed its borders, the hottest day of the year, was also the day Sophia Tims changed her life forever by losing track of time.

She had begun the day by keeping a close eye on the hour. In the Boston State House, the grand golden clock with its twenty hours hung ponderously over the speaker’s dais. By the time the clock struck eight, the State House was full to capacity. Arranged in a horseshoe around the dais sat the members of parliament: the eighty-eight men and two women rich enough to procure their positions. Facing them sat the visitors who had paid for time to address parliament, and farther back were the members of the public who could afford ground-floor seating. In the cheap seats on the upper balcony, Sophia was surrounded by men and women who had crammed themselves onto the benches. The sun poured in through the tall State House windows, shining off the gilt of the curved balcony rails.

“Brutal, isn’t it?” the woman beside Sophia sighed, fanning herself with her periwinkle bonnet. There were beads of sweat on her upper lip, and her poplin dress was wilted and damp. “I would bet it is five degrees cooler on the ground floor.”

Sophia smiled at her nervously, shuffling her boots against the wooden floorboards. “My uncle is down there. He’s going to speak.”

“Is he now? Where?” The woman put her pudgy hand on the rail and peered down.

Sophia pointed out the brown-haired man who sat, straight-backed, his arms folded across his chest. He wore a linen suit and balanced a slim leather book on his knee. His dark eyes calmly assessed the crowded hall. His friend Miles Countryman, the wealthy explorer, sat next to him, red from the heat, his shock of white hair limp with sweat. Miles wiped a handkerchief brusquely across his face. “He’s right there—in the front row of speakers.”

“Where?” the woman asked, squinting. “Ah, look—the famous Shadrack Elli is here, I see.”

Sophia smiled proudly. “That’s him. Shadrack is my uncle.”

The woman looked at her in surprise, forgetting for a moment to fan herself. “Imagine that! The niece of the great cartologer.” She was clearly impressed. “Tell me your name, dear.”

“Sophia.”

“Then tell me, Sophia, how it is that your famous uncle can’t afford a better seat for you. Did he spend all his money on his time?”

“Oh, Shadrack can’t afford time in parliament,” Sophia said matter-of-factly. “Miles paid for it—four minutes and thirteen seconds.”

As Sophia spoke, the proceedings began. The two timekeepers on either side of the dais, stopwatches in their white-gloved hands, called for the first speaker, a Mr. Rupert Middles. A heavyset man with an elaborate mustache made his way forward. He straightened his mustard-colored cravat, smoothed his mustache with fat fingers, and cleared his throat. Sophia’s eyes widened as the timekeeper on the left set the clock to twenty-seven minutes. “Look at that!” the plump woman whispered. “It must have cost him a fortune!”

Sophia nodded. Her stomach tensed as Rupert Middles opened his mouth and his twenty-seven minutes commenced. “I am honored to appear before parliament today,” he began thunderously, “this fourteenth of June of the year eighteen ninety-one, to propose a plan for the betterment of our beloved New Occident.” He took a deep breath. “The pirates in the United Indies, the hordes of raiders from the Baldlands, the gradual encroachment of our territories from north, west, and south—how long will New Occident go on ignoring the realities of our altered world, while the edges of our territory are eaten away by the greedy mouths of foreigners?” There were boos and cheers from the crowd, but Middles hardly paused. “In the last year alone, fourteen towns in New Akan were overrun by raiders from the Baldlands, paying for none of the privileges that come with living in New Occident but enjoying them all to the full. During the same period, pirates seized thirty-six commercial ships with cargo from the United Indies. I need not remind you that only last week, the Gusty Nor’easter, a proud Boston vessel carrying thousands of dollars in payment and merchandise, was seized by the notorious Bluebird, a despicable pirate who,” he added, his face red with exertion, “docks not a mile away in Boston harbor!” Growls of angry encouragement surged from the crowd. Middles took a rapid breath and went on. “I am a tolerant man, like the people of Boston.” There were faint cheers. “And I am an industrious man, like the people of Boston.” The cheers grew louder. “And I am loath to see my tolerance and my industry made a mockery by the greed and cunning of outsiders!” Clapping and cheering erupted from the crowd.

“I am here to propose a detailed plan, which I call the ‘Patriot Plan,’ and which I am certain will be approved, as it represents the interests of all those who, like me, believe in upholding our tolerance and our industry.” He braced himself against the dais. “Effective immediately, the borders must be closed.” He paused for the piercing cheers. “Citizens of New Occident may travel freely—if they have the proper documentation—to other Ages. Foreigners living in New Occident who do not have citizenship will have several weeks to return to their Ages of origin, and those remaining will be forcibly deported on July fourth of this year, the day on which we celebrate the founding of this great nation.” More enthusiastic cries erupted, and a flurry of audience members stood to clap enthusiastically, continuing even as Middles charged ahead.

Sophia felt her stomach sinking as Rupert Middles detailed the penalties for foreigners who remained in New Occident without documents and the citizens who attempted to travel out of the country without permission. He spoke so quickly that she could see a line of foam gathering at the edge of his mustache and his forehead shining with sweat. Gesticulating wildly, without bothering to wipe his brow, he spat across the dais as he enumerated the points of his plan and the crowd around him cheered.

Sophia had heard it all before, of course. Living as she did with the most famous cartologer in Boston, she had met all the great explorers who passed through his study and heard the much-detested arguments championed by those who sought to bring the Age of Exploration to an end. But this did not make the vitriol of Rupert Middles any less appalling or his scheme any less terrible. As Sophia listened to the remaining minutes of the speech, she thought with growing anxiety of what the closing of the borders would mean: New Occident would lose its ties to the other Ages, beloved friends and neighbors would be forced to leave, but she, Sophia, would feel the loss even more acutely. They won’t have the right documents. They won’t get in and I will lose them forever, she thought, her heart pounding.

The woman sitting beside Sophia fanned herself and shook her head in disapproval. When the twenty-seven minutes finally ran out and the timekeeper rang a loud bell, Middles staggered to his seat—sweating and panting—to wild applause that filled Sophia with dread. She could not imagine how Shadrack stood a chance of swaying his audience with only four minutes.

“Dreadful spitter,” Sophia’s companion put in with distaste.

“Mr. Augustus Wharton,” the first timekeeper called loudly, while his colleague turned the clock to fifteen minutes. The cheering and clapping subsided as a tall, white-haired man with a hooked nose strode confidently forward. He had no notes. He clasped the edges of the dais with long white fingers. “You may begin,” the timekeeper said.

“I appear before this assembly,” Mr. Wharton began, in a deceptively low tone, “to commend the proposal put forth by Mr. Rupert Middles and persuade the ninety members of this parliament that we should not only put it in place, but we should carry it further,” he shouted, his voice rising to a crescendo. The audience on the parliament floor clapped ecstatically. Sophia watched, agonized, as Shadrack’s expression grew hard and furious.

“Yes, we must close our borders, and yes, we must enact a swift deportation of foreigners who leech this great nation of its strength without giving it anything in return, but we must also close our borders to prevent the citizens of New Occident from leaving it and undermining our very foundations. I ask you: why should anyone wish to travel to other Ages, which we know to be inferior? Does not the true patriot stay home, where he belongs? I have no doubt that our great explorers, of whom we are so proud, have only the best intentions in traveling to distant lands, pursuing that esoteric knowledge which is unfortunately too lofty for many of us to comprehend.” He spoke with condescension as he inclined his head toward Shadrack and Miles.

To Sophia’s horror, Miles jumped to his feet. The crowd jeered as Shadrack rose quickly, placing a hand on his friend’s arm and easing him back into his seat. Miles sat, fuming, while Wharton went on without acknowledging the interruption. “But surely these explorers are on occasion naive,” he continued, to loud calls of agreement, “or perhaps we should say idealistic, when they do not realize that the very knowledge they so prize becomes the twisted tool of foreign powers bent on this great nation’s destruction!” This was met with roars of approval. “Need I remind you of the great explorer Winston Hedges, whose knowledge of the Gulf Coast was ruthlessly exploited by pirates in the siege of New Orleans.” Loud boos indicated that the memory was, indeed, still fresh. “And it may not be lost on anyone,” he sneered, “that the masterful creations of a certain cartologer gracing us with his presence today make perfect research materials for any pirate, raider, or tyrannical ruler with an eye toward invasion.”

The audience, taken aback by this direct attack, clapped somewhat reluctantly. Shadrack sat silently, his eyes furious but his face calm and grim. Sophia swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, dear,” the woman murmured. “That was very much uncalled for.”

“In sum,” Wharton went on, “I wish to add an amendment that will put into effect a complete closure of the borders not only for foreigners but for citizens as well. Middles has the Patriot Plan, which will protect us from foreigners. I say good—but not good enough. I therefore propose here, in addition, a measure to protect us from ourselves. The Protection Amendment: Stay home, stay safe!” The cheers that met this were few but enthusiastic. “I propose that foreign relations be restricted and trade with specified Ages be facilitated, respectively, as follows.” Sophia hardly heard the remainder. She was watching Shadrack, wishing desperately that she could be sitting beside him rather than gazing down from the upper balcony, and she was thinking about what would happen if Wharton’s plan passed and the Age of Exploration came to an end.

Shadrack had warned her already that this might happen. He had done so again the night before, as he practiced his speech for the fifteenth time, standing at the kitchen table while Sophia made sandwiches. She had found it impossible to imagine that anyone would hold such a close-minded view. And yet it seemed, from the response of the people around her, that it was all too possible.

“Does no one want the borders to remain open?” Sophia whispered at one point.

“Of course they do, my dear,” her benchmate said placidly. “Most of us do. But we’re not the ones with the money to talk in Parliament, are we? Don’t you notice that all the people who clap for the likes of them are on the ground floor—in the pricey seats?”

Sophia nodded forlornly.

Finally, the bell rang and Wharton triumphantly left the stage.

The timekeeper called, “Mr. Shadrack Elli.” There was a smattering of polite clapping as Shadrack strode to the dais. While the clock was being set to four minutes and thirteen seconds, he glanced up at the balcony and met Sophia’s eye. He smiled, tapping the pocket of his jacket. Sophia smiled back.

“What does that mean?” her companion asked excitedly. “A secret sign?”

“I wrote him a note for good luck.”

The note was really a drawing, one of the many Shadrack and Sophia left for one another in unexpected places: an ongoing correspondence in images. It showed Clockwork Cora, the heroine they had invented together, standing triumphantly before a cowed Parliament. Clockwork Cora had a clock for a torso, a head full of curls, and rather spindly arms and legs. Fortunately, Shadrack was more dignified. With his dark hair swept back and his strong chin held high, he looked self-assured and ready. “You may begin,” the timekeeper said.

“I am here today,” Shadrack began quietly, “not as a cartologer or an explorer, but as an inhabitant of our New World.” He paused, waiting two precious seconds so that his audience would listen carefully. “There is a great poet,” he said softly, “whom we are fortunate to know through his writing. An English poet, born in the sixteenth century, before the Disruption, whose verses every schoolchild learns, whose words have illuminated thousands of minds. But because he was born in the sixteenth century, and to the best of our knowledge England now resides in the Twelfth Age, he has not yet been born. Indeed, as the Fates would have it, he may never be born at all. If he is not, then his surviving books will be all the more precious, and it will fall to us—to us—to pass on his words and make certain they do not disappear from this world.

“This great poet,” he paused, looking out onto his audience, which had fallen silent, “wrote:

No man is an island, entire of itself; Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. . . . Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.

“I need not persuade you of his words. We have learned them to be true. We have seen, after the Great Disruption, the great impoverishment of our world as pieces fell away, washed into the seas of time—the Spanish Empire fragmented, the Northern Territories lost to prehistory, the whole of Europe plunged into a remote century, and many more pieces of our world lost to unknown Ages. It was not so long ago—fewer than one hundred years; we remember that loss still.

“My father’s mother Elizabeth Elli—Lizzie, to those who knew her well—lived through the Great Disruption, and she saw that loss firsthand. Yet it was she who inspired me to become a cartologer by telling me the story of that fateful day and reminding me, every time, to think not of what we had lost but what we might gain. It took us years—decades—to realize that this broken world could be mended. That we could reach remote Ages, and overcome the tremendous barriers of time, and be the richer for it. We have perfected our technologies by borrowing from the learning of other Ages. We have discovered new ways of understanding time. We have profited—profited greatly—by our trade and communication with nearby Ages. And we have given.

“My good friend Arthur Whims at the Atlas Press,” he said, holding up a slim leather-bound volume, “has reprinted the writings of John Donne, so that his words can be known to others beyond our Age. And this learning across the Ages is not at an end—much of the New World is still unknown to us. Imagine what treasure, be it financial”—he looked keenly at the members of parliament—“scientific, or literary, lies beyond the borders of our Age. Do you truly wish to wash that treasure away into the sea? Would you wish our own wisdom to fall out of this world, imprisoned within our borders? This cannot be, my friends—my fellow Bostonians. We are indeed tolerant, and we are industrious, as Mr. Middles claims, and we are a part of the main. We are not an island. We must not behave like one.”

The clock ran out of time just as Shadrack stepped away from the dais, and the timekeeper, caught up by the stirring words, somewhat belatedly rang his bell into the still silence of the State House. Sophia jumped to her feet, clapping loudly. The sound seemed to rouse the audience around her, which broke into applause as Shadrack returned to his seat. Miles pounded him heartily on the back. The other speakers sat stone-faced, but the cheers from the balcony made it clear that Shadrack had been heard.

“That was a good speech, wasn’t it?” Sophia asked.

“Marvelous,” the woman replied, clapping. “And by so handsome a speaker, my dear,” she added somewhat immaterially. “Simply stupendous. I only hope it’s enough. Four minutes isn’t very much time, and time weighs more than gold.”

“I know,” Sophia said, looking down at Shadrack, entirely unaware of the heat as the members of parliament withdrew to their chamber to make a decision. She checked her watch, tucked it back into her pocket, and prepared herself to wait.

—9-Hour 27: Parliament in Chambers—

THE HALL WAS stuffy with the smell of damp wool and peanuts, which the audience members bought from the vendors outside. Some people went out to get fresh air but quickly returned. No one wanted to be away when the members of parliament returned and rendered their decision. There were three options: they could take no action at all, or recommend one of the plans for review, or adopt one of them for implementation.

Sophia looked at the clock over the dais and realized that it was ten-hour—midday. As she checked to see if Shadrack had returned, she saw the members of parliament filing into the hall. “They’re coming back,” she said to her benchmate. Several minutes of rushed scurrying ensued as people tried to find their seats, and then a hush descended over the audience.

The head of parliament walked to the dais, carrying a single sheet of paper. Sophia’s stomach seemed to knot of its own accord. If they had voted for no action—as Shadrack recommended—they would not need a sheet of paper to say so.

The man cleared his throat. “The members of parliament,” he began slowly, emphasizing that he, for one, did not pay for his time, “have voted on the proposed measures. By a vote of fifty-one to thirty-nine we have approved for immediate implementation”—he coughed—“the Patriot Plan proposed by Mr. Rupert Middles—”

The rest of his words were lost in an uproar. Sophia sat, dazed, trying to comprehend what had happened. She pulled her satchel strap over her shoulder, then stood and peered over the balcony railing, anxious to find Shadrack, but he had been swallowed by the crowd. The audience behind her was expressing its collective disappointment by means of missiles—a crust of bread, a worn shoe, a half-eaten apple, and a rainstorm of peanut shells—hurled down at the members of parliament. Sophia felt herself being pressed up against the lip of the balcony as the enraged crowd pushed forward, and for a terrible moment she clung to the wooden ledge to avoid being pushed over it.

“Down to chambers, down to chambers!” a timekeeper cried in a piercing tone. Sophia caught a glimpse of the members of parliament hurrying past him.

“You’ll not get away so easily, cowards!” a man behind her shouted. “Follow them!” To her relief, the crowd suddenly pulled back and began clambering over the benches for the exits. Sophia looked around for the woman who had sat beside her, but she was gone.

She stood for a moment in the thinning crowd, her heart still pounding, wondering what to do. Shadrack had said he would meet her in the balcony, but now he would surely find it impossible. I promised to wait, Sophia said to herself firmly. She tried to steady her hands and ignore the shouts from below, which seemed to grow more violent by the second. A minute passed, and then another; Sophia kept her eye on her watch so that she would not lose track of time. Suddenly she heard a distant murmur that became clearer as more people chanted in unison: “Smoke them out, smoke them out, smoke them out!” Sophia ran to the stairs.

On the ground floor, a group of men was battering the doors of the parliament chambers with the overturned dais. “Smoke them out!” a woman shrieked, feverishly piling chairs as if preparing for a bonfire. Sophia ran to the front doors, where seemingly the entire audience had congregated, choking off the entrance. “Smoke them out, smoke them out, smoke them out!” She hugged the satchel tightly against her chest and elbowed her way through.

“You bigot!” a woman in front of her suddenly shouted, flailing her fists wildly at an older man in a gray suit. Sophia realized with shock that it was Augustus Wharton. As he swung out with his silver-tipped cane, two men with the unmistakable tattoos of the Indies threw themselves against him, one of them wrenching the cane from his hand and the other pulling his arms back behind him. The woman, her blue eyes fierce, her blonde hair clinging to her face, spat at Wharton. Suddenly she crumpled into a pile of her own skirts, revealing a police officer behind her with his club still raised. The officer reached for Wharton protectively, and the two tattooed men melted away.

There was a shout followed by a cascade of screams. Sophia smelled it before seeing it: fire. The crowd parted, and she saw a torch being hurled toward the open doors of the State House. Screams burst out as the torch landed. She pushed her way into the crowd, trying vainly to catch a glimpse of Shadrack as she inched down the steps. The smell of smoke was sharp in her nostrils.

As she neared the bottom, she heard a shrill voice cry out, “Filthy pirate!” An unshaven man with more than a few missing teeth suddenly toppled against her, knocking Sophia to the ground. He rose angrily and threw himself back against his assailant. Sophia pushed herself up from hands and knees unsteadily; seeing a clear path down to the street, she hurried down the remaining steps, her knees trembling. There was a trolley stop right by the corner of the State House, and as Sophia ran toward it a car was just arriving. Without stopping to check its destination, she jumped aboard.

2 The Wharf Trolley

1891, June 14: 10-Hour #

To the north lay a prehistoric abyss; to the west and south lay a chaos of jumbled Ages. Most painfully, the temporal chasm between the former United States of America and Europe became undeniably clear in the first few years after the Disruption. The Papal States and the Closed Empire had descended into shadow. It thereby fell to the eastern seaboard on the western edge of the Atlantic to maintain the glorious tradition of the West. The United States became known as New Occident.

—From Shadrack Elli’s History of New Occident

SOPHIA TOOK A deep breath as the trolley pulled away from the State House to circle Boston Common. She pinned her trembling hands between her knees, but her scraped palms felt hot and began to sting. She could still hear the crowd, and all around her on the trolley the agitated passengers were discussing parliament’s shocking decision.

“It won’t stand,” a portly man with a gleaming pocket watch said, shaking his head. He stamped his patent-leather boot indignantly. “So many in Boston are foreigners; it’s entirely impractical. The city will not stand for it.”

“But only some of them have papers and watches,” objected a young woman beside him. “Not every foreigner does.” Her nervous hands crumpled the lap of her flowered skirt.

“Is it true that deportations will begin on July fourth?” an older woman asked, her voice quavering.

Sophia turned away and watched the passing city streets. The great clocks of New Occident with their twenty hours stood on every street corner. They perched on the lampposts; they loomed from every building facade; they gazed over the city from countless monuments. Ponderous bell towers dominated the skyline, and at the city center the chiming could be deafening.

And every New Occident citizen carried a watch that mirrored the movement of these great monuments: a pocket watch inscribed with the moment of its wearer’s birth, bearing constant witness to a life unfolding. Sophia often held the smooth metal disc of her lifewatch, taking comfort from its dependable ticking, just as she took pleasure in the reassuring chime and ring of every public clock. Now it seemed that these clocks, which had always been her anchor, were counting down to a disastrous end: July 4, a mere three weeks away. The borders would close and then, without the papers they needed to return, the two people she most wanted to see in the world might be stranded forever.

Sophia could hardly remember her father, Bronson Tims, or her mother, Wilhelmina Elli. They had vanished on an expedition when she was barely three years old. She had one precious memory of them, which she had worn out to a thin, faded, insubstantial thing: they walked on either side of her, each holding one of her hands. Their laughing faces looked down from a distance with great tenderness. “Fly, Sophia, fly!” they called out in unison, and suddenly she was lifted from the ground. She felt her own laugh welling up, joining her mother’s trill and her father’s deep chuckle. That was all.

Wilhelmina—Minna, for short—and Bronson had been first-class explorers. Before their daughter was born, they had traveled south to the Baldlands, north to the Prehistoric Snows, and even as far east as the Closed Empires; and afterwards they planned to travel with Sophia—once she was old enough. But an urgent message from a fellow explorer, deep in the Papal States, had forced them to leave sooner than expected, and they had struggled terribly with the problem of whether to take their daughter or not.

It was Shadrack who had persuaded his sister Minna and her husband to leave Sophia with him. The message they had received suggested unpredictable dangers for which even he could not prepare them. If Shadrack Elli, Doctor of History and Master Cartologer, could not ensure that the route would be a safe one, surely it posed too many risks for a child of only three years. Who better to understand the potential of those risks? Who better to leave her with than her beloved uncle Shadrack? They had finally departed, anxious but determined, for what they hoped would be only a brief journey.

But they had not returned. As the years passed, the likelihood of their reappearing alive diminished. Shadrack knew it; Sophia sensed it. But she refused to fully believe it. And now the anxiety Sophia felt at the thought of the borders’ closing had, in fact, little to do with the grand ambitions of exploration described in Shadrack’s speech. It had everything to do with her parents. They had left Boston in a far more lenient age, when traveling without papers was commonplace, even wise, in order to avoid theft or damage on a dangerous voyage. Bronson’s and Minna’s paper were safely stowed in a little bureau in their bedroom. If New Occident closed itself off to the world, how would they get back in? Lost in somber speculation, Sophia closed her eyes, her head resting against the seat.

With a start she realized that the air around her had grown dark and oddly cold. Her eyes snapped open. Is it night already? she thought, panic rising in her chest. She reached for her watch, looked around quickly, and realized the trolley had stopped in a tunnel. Far behind them she could see the bright entryway. So it was still daytime. But when she squinted at the watch, she discovered that it was already fourteen-hour. Sophia gasped. “Four hours!” she exclaimed out loud. “I can’t believe it!”

She hurried to the front of the trolley and saw the conductor standing on the tracks a few meters ahead of the car. There was a sharp metallic clang, and then the man lumbered back toward her.

“Still here, are you?” the conductor asked amiably. “You must like this loop to sit through it twenty-three times. That, or you like my driving.” He was heavyset, and despite the cool air in the tunnel, sweat poured off his forehead and chin. Smiling, he wiped his face with a red handkerchief as he sat down.

“I lost track of the time,” Sophia said anxiously. “Completely.”

“Ah, no matter,” he replied with a sigh. “On such a bad day—the sooner it ends the better.” He released the brake and the trolley began to roll slowly forward.

“Are you going back into the city now?”

He shook his head. “I’m heading out to the yard. You’ll have to get off at the wharf and look for a trolley heading back through downtown.”

Sophia had not been to this part of Boston in years. “Is it the same stop?”

“I’ll point you to it,” he assured her. They picked up speed as they made a sudden sharp turn to the left. Then they emerged from the tunnel, the light dazzling Sophia’s eyes. The trolley stopped once again almost immediately, and the conductor shouted, “Wharf trolley. Final stop. No passengers.” A waiting crowd looked impatiently at the tunnel for the next trolley to emerge. “Walk about fifty paces that way,” he said to Sophia, pointing past the crowd. “There’s another stop there that says ‘inbound.’ You can’t miss it.”

— 14-Hour 03: At the Wharf—

NEWS OF THE borders’ closure had already reached Boston harbor. People rushed this way and that through a confusion of carts, improvised market stands, and piles of crates, shouting orders, hurriedly unloading cargo, and making hasty arrangements for unexpected journeys. Two men were arguing over a broken crate full of lobsters; claws reached feebly through the cracked wooden slats. Seagulls cried out from every corner, dipping lazily, snapping at the stray pieces of fish and bread. The smell of the harbor—brine, tar, and the faint, enduring scent of something spoiling—wafted by on waves of hot air.

Sophia tried to get out of the way and found herself repeatedly pushed aside. As she struggled to find the trolley stop, she gave in to that familiar sense of defeat that always came with losing track of time. Their housekeeper, Mrs. Clay, would be worried sick. And Shadrack—he might still be looking for her at the State House and fear the worst when she failed to appear. As she stumbled along, Sophia suppressed the tears of frustration that threatened to spill over.

It was a frustration she felt all too frequently. Sophia, to her infinite mortification, had no internal clock. A minute could feel as long as an hour or a day. In the space of a second she might experience a whole month, and a whole month could pass in what felt to her like a second. As a young child, she had fallen daily into difficulties as a consequence. Someone would ask her a question, and Sophia would think for a moment and suddenly find that everyone had been laughing at her for a full five minutes. Once she had waited for six hours on the steps of the Public Library for a friend who never arrived. And it seemed to her that it was always time for bed.

She had learned to compensate for her missing internal clock, and now that she was thirteen she rarely lost track of time during conversations. She observed the people around her to know when it was time to eat or finish school or go to bed. And she had become accustomed to keeping a tight hold on her watch, which she checked constantly. In the drawing notebook that was always in her satchel she kept careful records of her days: maps of past and future that helped guide her through the vast abyss of unmeasured time.

But having no sense of time still troubled her in other ways. Sophia took great pride in her competence: her ability to navigate Boston and even places farther afield, as she grew older and traveled with Shadrack; her carefully disciplined work at school, which made her popular with teachers, if not always with classmates; her capacity to order and make sense of the world, so that all of Shadrack’s friends commented that she was wise beyond her years. These mattered deeply to her, and yet they could not compensate for the flaw that made her seem, in her own eyes, as flighty and absentminded as someone who had none of these abilities.

Being from a family famous for its sense of time and direction made it all the more painful. Her parents reputedly had inner compasses and clocks worthy of great explorers. Shadrack could tell the time down to the second without looking at his watch, and no amount of encouragement on his part could persuade Sophia to forget the piece of herself she felt was missing. Their joint creation, Clockwork Cora, made light of a problem that Sophia only pretended to take lightly.

She never spoke of it to her uncle, but she had a dreadful suspicion of how she had come to lose her sense of time. She pictured herself as a very young child, waiting for her parents at a dusty window. The little Sophia’s clock had ticked on and on, patiently and then worriedly and finally desperately, counting the seconds as her mother and father failed to come back. And then, when it became clear that the waiting was futile, the little clock had simply broken, leaving her without parents and without any sense of time at all.

However much Shadrack loved his niece, he could not spend every second of every day with her, and the steady stream of graduate students whom he hired to assist with the combined tasks of cartology and child care were prone to the same distractions he was. While her uncle and his assistants pored over maps, the three-year-old Sophia had spent plenty of time alone and had, in fact, sometimes waited for her parents with hands and face pressed up against a window. In her memory—in her imagination—those moments contained long hours of endless waiting. The sun rose and set, and people passed the window in a constant stream, but still she waited expectantly. On occasion, the figure of her imagination blurred, and it seemed that not a near-infant but an older child—one who had waited for many years—stood at the window. And in fact her uncle sometimes found the grown Sophia sitting at her window, lost in thought, her pointed chin tucked into her hand and her brown eyes focused on something far out of sight.

Now she stood on the busy wharf, wiping her eyes angrily and trying hard to compose herself. Then, amidst all the shouts and the bustle, she spotted about a dozen people standing in line. With a monumental effort, she drew her thoughts away from the four hours she had lost. That must be the line for the inbound trolley, she thought. As she approached, she heard, over all the other noise, the sound of a man shouting through a megaphone. She tapped the shoulder of the woman ahead of her. “Excuse me, is this the line for the inbound trolley?”

The young woman shook her bonneted head excitedly. She was clutching a flyer, which she pushed into Sophia’s hand. “No such thing. They’ve brought creatures from the other Ages,” she said breathlessly. “We’re going in to see them while we still can!” Her laced glove pointed to a sign that stood only a few feet away.

Beside the sign stood the man who was shouting into the megaphone. He was small and sported a small, pointy beard and a tall hat that made his head look tiny. He flourished a silver-topped cane. “Wild men, monsters, creatures that defy your imagination!” he cried, his cheeks red with heat and exertion. He spoke with the accent of the western Baldlands; it made all his vowels sound bow-legged. “Discovered by the intrepid Simon Ehrlach and displayed here for the entertainment and instruction of visitors!” He pointed to a heavy velvet curtain that covered the entryway to the warehouse behind him. A woman even smaller than he was sat to his left, deftly counting money and dispensing and stamping tickets, her small forehead creased with concentration, before ushering each visitor into the curtained warehouse.

“Every man or beast in a continuous exhibition of all the fascinating variety of the Ages!” the little man continued, showering his audience with energetic bursts of spit. “Each enacting constantly the bizarre and indeed mesmerizing habits of its Age, so that the visitor will hardly believe that he stands still in time!” With the tip of his cane, he tapped a large cage that stood to his right. “The wild boy from the Baldlands, in his fierce warrior dress. And inside there are even fiercer creatures from the Baldlands. Centaurs and mermen and children with tails. See them while you still have the chance!”

Sophia stared in fascination at the cage, all other thoughts forgotten. There stood a boy who seemed only a little older than herself, dressed from head to toe in feathers. She could tell at once that he belonged to a different Age. His hair was twisted up around colored plumes that appeared to spring from his skull, and his limbs were covered with multicolored down. A skirt of trailing feathers hung at his waist, while an empty quiver dangled from his shoulder. His costume might once have been impressive, but most of the feathers were broken or crushed. To Sophia he looked like a beautiful bird, trapped in midair and dragged down to earth.

But it was not his beauty that captured her attention. It was his expression. He was imprisoned in a cage, and he was made a spectacle to everyone around him. And yet, for all that, he surveyed the crowd as if they and not he were the spectacle. A faint smile tugged at the edges of his mouth. Gazing calmly at them, he made the cage seem like a pedestal; he was serene, unshakable, magnificent. Sophia could not take her eyes off him. She had lost track of time once again, but in a way that seemed entirely new.

“I assure you, ladies and gentlemen,” the little man went on, “that you will even see battles enacted among these fierce creatures in Ehrlach’s Circus of the Ages. And after today’s decision in parliament, your days to view the wonders of the other Ages are numbered! Seize the opportunity now before it’s too late!” At this he reached with his cane through the bars of the cage and gave the boy dressed in feathers a careless jab.

The boy looked at the cane and grabbed it easily, as if picking up a stray feather. Then he pushed it back toward the circus master, disinterested, and resumed watching the crowd. As the man continued to advertise Ehrlach’s marvels, Sophia realized that the boy was looking directly at her. He raised his hands and placed them on the bars. It seemed to Sophia that he could see her thoughts and that he was about to speak to her. She knew she was blushing, but she could not look away. She could not move; she did not want to move.

“Hey, hey,” she heard someone say. The young woman ahead of her in line was shaking her shoulder. “Didn’t you want the city trolley, sweetheart? There it is—better run for it.”

Sophia tore her eyes away from the boy. Sure enough, a trolley was approaching. If she hurried she would catch it. She looked back once more at the boy, who was still watching her thoughtfully. Then she ran.

3 Shadrack Elli, Cartologer

1891, June 14

And who (in time) knowes whither we may vent

The treasure of our tongue? to what strange shores

This gaine of our best glorie shal be sent,

T’inrich unknowing Nations with our stores?

What worlds in th’yet unformed Occident

May come refin’d with th’accents that are ours?

—Samuel Daniel, Musophilus, 1599

SOPHIA LIVED WITH Shadrack at 34 East Ending Street in the South End of Boston, in the solid brick house her great-grandparents had built. White shutters, an abundance of ivy, and an iron owl perched discreetly over the entryway made it similar to the other brick houses adjoining it on the quiet street. But no other house had the small oval sign, pine-green in color, that hung on the red door, announcing:

In reality, the sign had little use, because anyone who sought out Shadrack knew exactly where to find him; furthermore, they knew that the mere title “cartologer” did not begin to describe his occupation. He was as much historian, geographer, and explorer as he was cartologer. Apart from being a professor at the university, he was a private consultant to explorers and government officials. Anyone who needed expert knowledge of the history and geography of the New World found their way to Shadrack’s door.

They came to see Shadrack simply because he was the best. In a time when most of the world was uncharted and no single person knew more than a few Ages, he was the most knowledgeable. Though he was young for a master cartologer, no one could match Shadrack for breadth of knowledge and skill. He had mastered the history of every known continent, he could read the maps of every civilization known to New Occident, and, most importantly, he could draw brilliant maps himself. The great cartologer who had trained him was said to have wept with wonder when Shadrack Elli presented his first complete map of the New World. He had precision and artistic ability on his side, but any draughtsman had that; it was his bottomless knowledge that made Shadrack so extraordinary.

Having grown up surrounded by her uncle’s work, Sophia sometimes had difficulty seeing it as exceptional. She thought of mapmaking as a noble, learned, and rather messy profession. The house on East Ending Street was papered from top to bottom with maps. Maps of contemporary, ancient, or imaginary worlds covered every inch of wall space. Books and pens and compasses and rulers and more maps, lying flat or rolled up like scrolls, littered every flat surface. The parlor and the study fairly overflowed with equipment, and even the kitchen had begun to shrink from the edges inward as the countertops and cabinets became receptacles for maps. Sophia moved like a tiny island of tidiness through the house, straightening books, rolling maps, gathering pens, all in the effort to stem the cartologic tide around her. The only two relatively orderly places were her room, which had a few select maps and books, and the third-floor apartment of their housekeeper, Mrs. Clay.

Mrs. Sissal Clay had arrived years earlier, when Sophia was only eight, and after a long consultation with Shadrack had simply moved in to the uninhabited third floor. Shadrack had always frowned upon the custom of keeping servants, believing such arrangements perpetuated a system in which the children of the servant class withdrew early from their schooling. Even when he was entrusted with the care of his three-year-old niece, he refused to hire a nanny, relying instead upon the paid assistance of his graduate students—who, he reasoned, were not abandoning their education to perform domestic duties.

Immense love is almost always enough to sustain a child. But it does not always provide the logistical and practical necessities, including a steady supply of clean clothes and an understanding that toddlers can become bored with certain aspects of adult life, such as two-hour university lectures on the glaciation of the Eerie Sea.

Shadrack’s well-meaning but mostly unsuitable assistants had no more command of these necessities than he did, and they were fleeting presences in Sophia’s life: brilliant, inventive, memorable, and usually rather incompetent as caretakers. One had built her a magnificent boat out of lacquered paper that she sailed on the Charles River to the everlasting envy of all the neighborhood children. Another had attempted to teach her Latin and had mostly succeeded, so that she could converse quite fluently in that tongue about farmers, sheep, and aqueducts by the time she was seven. All in all they were very lovable, but few understood the usefulness of mealtimes and bedtimes. Sophia had learned early on to see them as friendly companions rather than reliable guardians, and she did what any reasonable person would do: she learned to take care of herself.

Then Mrs. Clay arrived. For reasons he did not explain, Shadrack broke his own rule. Mrs. Clay became the housekeeper at 34 East Ending Street. Had Mrs. Clay been a different sort of woman, Sophia’s life might have changed dramatically at this point. Mrs. Clay was a widow, and she had been the housekeeper at the academy of cartology where Shadrack had studied for two years in Nochtland, the Baldlands’ capital. The house might have flourished under her guiding hand, so that Shadrack’s high-spirited chaos and unbounded affection would have found some complementary order and good sense. But Sophia soon realized, young as she was, that their housekeeper needed more taking care of than she herself did.

A moody, silent woman with sad eyes and a wide face, Mrs. Clay moved through the rooms of 34 East Ending as she did through the streets of Boston: quietly, almost fearfully, as if the only thing she was looking for was a proper place to hide. She was one part melancholy kindness, two parts mysterious unease; Sophia both liked her and felt that she did not really know her. Over time, Sophia simply accepted Mrs. Clay’s presence and went on relying more and more on herself, becoming the independent and peculiarly practical person that she was.

— 15-Hour 19—

WHEN SOPHIA FINALLY returned home, she found a red-eyed Mrs. Clay and a harried-looking Shadrack at the kitchen table. They both rose to their feet the moment Sophia walked in. Shadrack rushed to embrace her. “Sophia! Finally!”

It was such a comfort to find herself back home, crushed up against the familiar scrape of Shadrack’s chin and the familiar smell of Shadrack’s pine soap, that she held on tightly for a while before speaking. “I’m sorry,” she finally whispered, pulling away. “I lost track of time.”

Mrs. Clay placed her hand on Sophia’s shoulder, murmuring a fervent thanks to the Fates, and Shadrack shook his head with an affectionate smile that still bore traces of his concern. He tucked her hair behind her ears and held her face in his hands. “I was just about to go back to the State House—for the third time—to look for you,” he said. “I thought you were going to wait for me on the balcony.”

“I did, but I didn’t know how long to wait, and then they started shouting about a fire . . .”

“I know,” Shadrack said grimly.

“When I finally got away I took the wrong trolley. And then I lost track of time. I ended up at the wharf,” she concluded with embarrassment.

“It’s all right,” Shadrack said, taking her hand and pulling her over to the kitchen table. “I was worried, but it’s all right. I know the fault is not yours.” He let out a deep sigh as he sat down.

“What happened to you?” Sophia asked.

“I made my way over to the balcony stairs with Miles, and then he started a fistfight with some hothead in a bow tie. By the time I separated them, the balconies were empty.” Shadrack shook his head. “What a day. Mrs. Clay has of course heard the news—the whole of Boston has by now, I’m sure.”

“But at least you are home safely, Sophia.” Mrs. Clay said. She spoke with the clipped accent of the southern Baldlands, and her manner of dress had never lost its foreign eccentricities. She always tucked a stray flower or clover stem or even an autumn leaf into her buttonhole; today, she wore a wilted violet in her hair. Her face was still blotchy and red, and Sophia understood that the tears had nothing to do with her absence: Mrs. Clay had no lifewatch and no papers.

“Thank you. I’m sorry to have caused you so much worry,” Sophia said, sitting down beside them at the table. “Did Miles leave as planned?”

“Yes,” Shadrack said, rumpling his hair tiredly. “His ship left at twelve-hour. He hardly expected the day to be so momentous, and now he was more eager to leave than ever.”

“He is coming back, isn’t he?”

“Let us hope so, Soph. For now, the plan is to close the borders and deport people from other Ages unless they have papers. The so-called ‘Patriot Plan,’” he said dryly, “is generous enough to permit free travel for citizens of New Occident.”

“So we could still travel in and out?” She glanced apologetically at Mrs. Clay. “I mean, anyone with papers can travel in and out?”

Shadrack nodded. “Yes. For now. What you may not have heard over the commotion,” he went on, “is that they plan to reconsider Wharton’s Protection Amendment at the end of August. They may very well implement it.”

“And close the border for all of us? No one could go in or out?”

“It would be sheer stupidity, of course, but that has hardly stopped parliament before.”

“I just don’t understand why this is happening now,” Mrs. Clay protested, her voice dangerously wobbly.

“Fear, pure and simple,” Shadrack said.

“But my impression has always been—and I know I am still a relative newcomer here—but I had always thought that people in New Occident—in Boston, at least—were rather . . . intrigued,” she said carefully, “by the other Ages. They treat foreigners with curiosity, not hostility.”

“I know,” Sophia agreed. “It makes no sense; people love to see the other Ages. At the wharf, there was this circus with creatures from the other parts of the world. And there was a man selling tickets who had a boy covered with feathers in a cage, and the boy was his prisoner, but he was so calm he hardly seemed to care, even though everyone was staring at him.” She found, despite her rush of words, that there was no way she could explain just how remarkable the boy was, or why he had left such an impression upon her.

“Yes,” Shadrack said, eyeing her thoughtfully. He ran his hand through his hair and frowned. “I think the majority of the people here are intrigued—fascinated, even—by the other Ages. For some that means exploration, for others that means befriending foreigners, for still others it means observing them in cages.” His smile had no mirth. “But many others are afraid—not just afraid of people from other Ages who are different, but afraid, however illogically, for their own safety.”

“You mean piracy and raiding,” Mrs. Clay said.

“I do. No one is denying,” Shadrack said, “that the conflicts with the other Ages are real. The pirates in the United Indies are a costly distraction, and it is true that raiding parties from the Baldlands are continually tormenting populations at the edges of New Occident—even more so in the Indian Territories. But,” he continued sadly, “it goes the other way, too. Ships sail from Seminole every day under our flag and then, once they’re out on the sea, they lower ours and raise a pirate flag. And raiding parties from New Occident go into the Baldlands as often as they come out of them.” He paused. “That is why the boy you saw on the wharf, Soph, was a captive.”

“You mean he was kidnapped in the Baldlands?”

“Most likely. They would probably claim that they found him in New Occident and that he somehow broke the law, but most certainly he was taken in a raid, and the circus bought him from the raiders as the newest addition to their show.” His voice was bitter.

“That’s despicable.” Sophia was thinking of how calm the boy had seemed and of how he had stepped up to the bars, as if about to speak to her.

“It is.” The Elli side of the family, Shadrack and Minna, were all from Boston. But the Timses came from many different places, and Sophia’s great-grandparents had been slaves; after the rebellion, they helped to found the new state of New Akan in 1810. Their son, Sophia’s grandfather, had moved to Boston to attend the university. “Sophia’s great-grandfather was only seventeen when slavery ended,” Shadrack explained to Mrs. Clay. Then he turned to Sophia. “It must have shaken you to see a boy behind bars like that.”

“This is what I don’t understand,” the housekeeper said. “Surely people in New Occident see that almost everyone here was once from somewhere else—everyone has a foreigner in their past.”

“Yes, but what we have seen today,” Shadrack replied, “is what happens when fear overwhelms reason. The decision is illogical. It makes no sense to deport some of our finest laborers, merchants, and tradespeople, not to mention mothers, fathers, and friends. They will live to regret it.”

The three sat silently for a while, gazing, each with their own preoccupations, at the empty kitchen table. Sophia sat with her head resting on Shadrack’s shoulder. He stirred a moment later, as if something had just occurred to him. “Mrs. Clay, I apologize. You came in an hour ago quite distressed, and I was full of my own concern for Sophia. We should discuss how we will get papers for you, since there is no time to acquire them through the proper channels.” Shadrack shook his head. “Naturalization can take months—sometimes years. We will have to find other means.”

She looked at him gratefully. “Thank you, Mr. Elli. You are very kind. But it is late, and neither you nor Sophia have eaten. We can speak another time—I do not wish to impose.” She rose tentatively to her feet and patted the bun at the nape of her neck, tucking stray hairs into place.

“Nonsense,” Shadrack said, gently putting Sophia aside. “You’re right, we haven’t eaten. And neither have you.” He looked at his watch. “I will get in touch with Carlton. Tonight, if possible.” Carlton Hopish, fellow cartologer and Shadrack’s friend from the university, worked for the Ministry of Relations with Foreign Ages and owed Shadrack more favors than either of them could count. Thanks to his friendship with the most knowledgeable cartologer in New Occident, Carlton always seemed to be the most informed member of government; and Shadrack, in turn, always managed to be conveniently apprised of classified government information. “As a beginning step, I’ll write him a note tonight about getting expedited papers for you—may as well try the legal route first. Will you stay to have dinner with us? No one should have to bear such ill news as we heard today alone. Please,” he added, when he saw Mrs. Clay hesitate.

“Very well. Thank you for your kindness.”

“Soph, can you wait to eat a little while longer while I write to Carlton and discuss things with Mrs. Clay?” Shadrack asked with an apologetic look.

“Yes, of course. I should write to Dorothy, anyhow.”

“A good idea.” As Shadrack and Mrs. Clay retreated to his study, Sophia made her way upstairs.

— 16-Hour 27: Upstairs at East Ending—

SOPHIA SIGHED AS she climbed the stairs. She passed the room that had belonged to her parents, which had remained almost untouched for so many years, and she tapped the door lightly as she did every time she walked by it. When she was very small she would often take refuge there, curling up with the comfort of her parents’ belongings all around her. A portrait of her parents drawn by Shadrack sat on the nightstand, and when she was small Sophia had believed it had magical properties. It seemed an ordinary drawing, made with passable skill, since Shadrack was more draughtsman than portrait artist. In the first years after their disappearance, Sophia often picked it up and traced her finger along the inked lines, and somehow she could hear her parents’ laughter and sense their presence—as if they were truly in the room beside her. But over time, she visited the room less and less; it came to remind her more of their absence then of their presence. It recalled to her all the times she had gone in and, as always, found the room empty.

There were enough reminders of them elsewhere: the silver star earrings that she always wore, which they had given her on her first birthday; the colorful ribbons her mother often used as bookmarks; her father’s pipe, still sitting next to Shadrack’s in the study downstairs. These small objects made tiny anchors all around her, reminding her quietly that Minna and Bronson had, indeed, once existed.

Sophia’s bedroom had fewer of these anchors. It was filled instead with the objects that made up her life: a potted magnolia that grew in miniature; a watercolor of Salem given to her by an artist friend of Shadrack’s; a wardrobe with carefully ordered clothes; a desk with carefully ordered papers; and a bookshelf with carefully ordered books—school books on the bottom shelf and her own on the top shelf. The popular novels of Briony Maverill, the poetry of Prudence Lovelace, and works by Emily Dickinson and Ralph Waldo Emerson all accompanied the picture books that she still cherished and sometimes read.

Sophia unpacked her satchel, taking out her drawing notebook and her pencils. As she did, she found a stray piece of paper, folded in half, and she smiled, knowing already that it would be a drawing Shadrack had somehow sneaked into her satchel that morning. She opened it and laughed at the little sketch of Clockwork Cora, sleeping soundly through a boring speech at parliament, her tiny feet propped up on someone’s lap. Unfortunately, Sophia thought, putting the folded paper in a tin box, today it had been anything but boring.

Before sitting down at her desk, she opened the window above her bed to let the air in. She leaned on the sill to look out over the city. From her second-story window, she could see mostly rooftops. She had a narrow view of East Ending Street, where at that moment a boy was slowly pedaling along the cobblestones on a Goodyear. The sun was finally beginning to set, and though the air was no cooler, a breeze had started up.

After unlacing her boots and placing them neatly under her bed, she sat at her desk. She began by writing a letter to her friend Dorothy, who had moved away at the end of the school year. Dorothy’s father had an important position in the trade industry, and he had taken a job in New York that inconveniently deprived Sophia of her best—and in many ways her only—friend. Dorothy’s easy good humor had a way of tempering Sophia’s seriousness, and with her gone, the days of summer vacation had so far been very long and rather lonely. Dorothy had written of her loneliness, too, in the noisy bustle of New York City, so much less civilized than Boston.

But now they both had more pressing concerns. Dorothy’s father had been born in the United Indies, and it seemed doubtful they would be able to stay in New Occident. Sophia wrote to express her worry and to say how hard Shadrack had fought to prevent the measure that might now send all of Dorothy’s family into exile.

With a sigh, Sophia folded the letter, placed it in an envelope, and took out her drawing book. She always drew at the end of the day; it allowed her to record the hours that would otherwise, all too easily, slip away unnoticed. As images and words those hours became real, tangible, visible.

Years earlier, she had taken a trip with Shadrack to Vermont, and, as they were happening, the days seem to evaporate before her eyes until they lasted no more than minutes.

Upon their return home, Shadrack had given her a notebook with calendar pages as a way of helping her keep track of time. “Memory is a tricky thing, Sophia,” he had said to her. “It doesn’t just recall the past, it makes the past. If you remember our trip as a few minutes, it will be a few minutes. If you make it something else, it will be something else.” Sophia had found this idea strange, but the more she used the notebook, the more she realized that Shadrack was right. Since Sophia thought most clearly through pictures, she had placed images in the calendar squares to make careful records of her explorations through the year, whether they required leaving Boston or sitting quietly in her room. And incredibly, time became ordered, reliable, constant.

Now she had no need for calendar pages; she had her own method for reining in those slippery hours, minutes, and seconds. She had even devised her own manner of binding the paper, so that her notebook unfolded like an accordion and she was able to see the continuous passage of time in a clear, notched line like a ruler along one side of the page. At the margin she dutifully marked the time and recorded the happenings of the day. She filled the center of the page with the day’s images, thoughts, and quotes from people and books. Often she dipped backward or forward to amend how things had happened or speculate how they might happen.

Perhaps due to Shadrack’s influence or perhaps due to her own natural inclinations, she had realized that her sketches and recordings were actually maps: maps to guide her through the shapeless time that would otherwise stretch boundlessly into her past and future. Straight lines formed the borders of her observations, and dashed lines linked the borders to memories and wishes. Her thoughts connected to them with hatched lines, marking her mental travels, so that Sophia always knew not only what had happened when, but what she had been thinking at the time.

Using a soft pencil and the tips of her fingers, she began drawing June fourteenth. She found herself sketching the absurd, detestable mustache of Rupert Middles and quickly drew a firm line around him, boxing him off in disgust. Not that, she said to herself, trying to put the whole dreadful morning out of her mind. She began again. Soon she realized she was drawing the boy from the circus. It was difficult to capture the expression on his face that had so impressed her: his dark, intent gaze; his careless smile. “He was almost laughing,” she murmured. She glanced down at her notebook. That’s not what he looked like, she thought.

She turned the page to start over and then slowly began turning pages in the opposite direction, back to a drawing she had made on the last day of school.

A woman of middle age with laugh lines and short, wavy hair gazed fondly out at Sophia; a tall man with an impish smile and a bit of a stoop stood protectively behind her. Sophia had drawn her parents many times. She tried to imagine them as they would be now, older and a little heavier; over time the drawings had grown more detailed and vivid. But I will never really draw them if I never see them again, she thought. She closed her notebook and put it in the drawer with a sigh of frustration.

Sophia realized as she did so that the room had grown dark. She picked up her watch: it was almost eighteen-hour. Shadrack has been talking to her for so long, she thought. As she descended the steps, she could hear his voice—steady, reassuring—coming from the study. But when she reached the open doorway she stopped abruptly, seeing that Mrs. Clay was weeping openly.

“I can’t go back, Mr. Elli,” she said, with a note of terror in her voice.

“I know, Mrs. Clay. I know. I only say this because I want you to be aware of how difficult it may be. Carlton will hopefully get us the papers, but the government-issued lifewatch is difficult to procure. That’s all—”

“I can still hear the Lachrima. I can still hear its cries ringing in my ears. I would rather remain here illegally than go back. I can’t.”

Sophia took an awkward step forward. “I am sorry to interrupt—”

“And I am sorry we’ve kept you waiting, Soph. We’ll be in the kitchen momentarily,” said Shadrack, with a look that was apologetic but firm. Mrs. Clay wiped her nose with her handkerchief and did not look up.

Sophia walked down the hallway, the question in her mind—What is a Lachrima?—unasked.

4 Through the Library Door

1891, June 15: 7-Hour 38

This is New Occident’s Great Age of Exploration. Travelers head as far as their vessels, mounts, and feet will carry them. But exploration is dangerous work. Many explorers never return, and most of the world remains unknown. Even those places that can be explored prove terribly distant for all but the most elite traveler. Postal routes are fragmentary or nonexistent. Trade routes are painstakingly cultivated, only to crumble. To be connected to the world is a constant, difficult labor.

—From Shadrack Elli’s History of New Occident

SOPHIA ALWAYS TOLD Shadrack everything; usually he knew what she was thinking without having to ask. And Shadrack told Sophia everything. At some point, he had realized that this oddly grown-up child had the maturity and capabilities of someone far older. He had known graduate students less able to keep their lives in order. And so he even shared the complexities of his work with his niece, making her far more knowledgeable about cartology than any other thirteen-year-old in Boston. They did not keep secrets from each other. Or so Sophia thought.

The next morning, Sophia found Shadrack in his study, writing furiously. The mahogany desk and the ink blotter shook from the pressure of his urgent scribbling. When she came in, he pushed himself back from the table and gave her a tired smile.

“Is Mrs. Clay still here?” Sophia asked.

“She went upstairs around one-hour.”

“You haven’t slept much.”

“No,” Shadrack replied shortly. “Apparently everything that could go wrong has. You may as well read it yourself—you’ll see the news eventually.” He handed Sophia a newspaper that was lying, partially disassembled, on his desk.

The principal story was, of course, the closure of the borders and the adoption of Rupert Middles’s Patriot Plan. But the rest of the headlines took Sophia’s breath away:

FIRE AT STATE HOUSE TAKES THREE LIVES

PARLIAMENT MEMBER MURDERED

LEAVING STATE HOUSE

MINISTER OF FOREIGN RELATIONS

SUFFERS “ACCIDENT”

Sophia gasped. “Carlton!” she cried.

MINISTER of Relations with Foreign Ages Doctor Carlton Hopish was discovered this morning in his house on Beacon Hill, suffering from what appears to have been a grievous stroke to his nervous system. He was found by his charlady, Samantha Peddlefor, who described her employer’s condition when she came upon him as “horrifying.”

Dr. Hopish has seemingly lost critical brain function. Doctors at Boston City Hospital say that it is too early to determine whether Dr. Hopish will be able to speak, let alone return to his duties as minister, any time soon.

Considering Dr. Hopish’s crucial role in implementing the newly passed Patriot Plan, the connection with parliament’s decision at the State House cannot be overlooked. Indeed, certain of Dr. Hopish’s colleagues in the ministry, as well as several respected members of parliament, readily assume that the injury was no accident. “I have no doubt,” said Mr. Gordon Broadgirdle, MP, “that Hopish has fallen victim to the unrestrained violence of foreigners bent on the vengeful extinction of our nation’s leaders.”

“How terrible!” she exclaimed.

“It is,” Shadrack replied, running a hand through his hair. “As if Carlton’s tragedy were not bad enough, all of this will only lead to greater support for the Patriot Plan. They are of course blaming foreigners for all three incidents.” He shook his head. “What a disastrous twenty hours.”

They were both silent for a moment. “We will be all right, won’t we?” Sophia asked quietly.

Shadrack sighed and held out his hand. Sophia took it. Despite her uncle’s look of exhaustion, his expression was reassuring. “We will be all right,” he said. “But there will be changes.”

“What kind of changes?”

“I won’t lie to you, Soph. This is a difficult time, and it will remain that way even after the immediate furor subsides. I am most worried about the end of August. As I said yesterday, I would not be surprised if the borders were closed entirely by the ridiculous Protection Amendment—even to us.”

“If”—she swallowed hard—“if they did that, then we couldn’t leave.”

“No,” Shadrack agreed.

“And . . . the people from New Occident who are in another age now?”

“I see your point,” he said after a moment.

“Their papers are here. If they want to come home now, they won’t be able to get in. And, after August, we wouldn’t even be able to go out to—to meet them?” She looked down, avoiding Shadrack’s gaze.

He stood and put his arm around her shoulders. “You’ve always held out hope, Soph.”

“It is foolish, I know,” she muttered.

Shadrack tightened his grasp. “It is not in the least foolish,” he said forcefully. “To hold out hope, to be willing to expect the impossible—these are courageous things. You have wonderful resilience.”

“I guess.”

“All you need, Sophia,” he went on, “is something to do. You lack the way to apply your exceptional patience, your persistence.”

“I don’t know what I can possibly do about it.”

“Yes, Soph, but I know,” he said, stepping back and releasing her. “I meant to wait a few more years, but we can’t. The time has arrived.” He looked her in the eye. “Sophia, you have to make me a promise.”

“Okay,” she said, surprised.

“Only a handful of people in this Age know what I am about to tell you.” Sophia looked at him expectantly. “I won’t ask you never to speak of it, because I know you will use your judgment and speak of it only when you must. But,” he said, looking down at the floor, “you must promise me something else. You must promise me that you won’t . . . You won’t decide—you won’t even consider,” he corrected himself, “going in search of them without me.” He met her eyes, his expression earnest. “Can you promise me that?”

Sophia pondered in silence for several seconds, feeling confused, alarmed, and hopeful all at once. “I promise,” she whispered.

“Good.” He smiled a little sadly. “I hope the long wait will have served its purpose in teaching you caution.” He walked to one of the bookshelves and removed a thick leather-bound volume. Reaching behind it, he seemed to turn something. Then the entire bookshelf, which reached from floor to ceiling, swung slowly outward. A wide doorway with a set of steps leading downward stood revealed.

Sophia gaped for a moment, too astonished to speak. Shadrack reached into the open passageway and turned on a series of flame-lamps. He smiled at her expression. “Well? Don’t you want to see the map room?”

“This has been here all the time?”

“It has. It’s where I do my most important work.”

“I thought when you closed the door you were working in your study.”

“Sometimes. I am usually downstairs. Follow me.” He led her down the steps, which turned twice before opening onto a basement Sophia had never known existed.

The room was fully as large as the entire first floor of the house. Electric flame-lamps dotted the walls and tables. In many ways, it seemed a grander, more orderly version of the library upstairs. Here, too, bookshelves covered the walls and a pair of sturdy wooden tables showed signs of frequent use. The room smelled of old paper, flame-lamp, and polished wood. A thick carpet that muffled Sophia’s footsteps covered the floor, and on one side of the room a sofa and two armchairs formed a small sitting area. But in other respects there was a sharp contrast. A long glass display case such as one would see in a museum glinted under the lights by the rear wall, filled with all kinds of strange objects. Nearby was a set of four enormous oak bureaus, each with dozens of shallow drawers. And then there was the most striking difference of all: the room was tidy and well kept. Nothing was out of place.

Sophia stood rooted to the spot, staring around her. She was still having trouble believing that such a room existed. “How long has this been here?” she finally asked, in an awed voice. “And why is it so clean?”

Shadrack laughed. “Let me tell you a little family history—some history that you don’t know. My father—your grandfather—was, as you know, the curator of the museum at the university. And as a curator, he was also an explorer.”

Sophia nodded; this much she knew.

“So Father spent a great deal of time not only curating the museum but also exploring the different Ages and purchasing pieces for it.” Again, this was not news. “Well, during his explorations, it was only natural that Father should also acquire things for himself. He was an avid collector, after all. And on his travels to the various Ages, he met people who gave him gifts. The pieces he had purchased for the museum went to the museum, and the pieces that were given to him or purchased for himself were kept here. Father made this space into his own private museum.”

“But why was it secret?” she asked.

“It wasn’t—not always. At first, he simply wanted a place that was cool and out of the light in order to keep his treasures safe. But then, as word of his private collection got around, Father began getting visitors from all over New Occident—people who wanted to buy his pieces. Needless to say, he wasn’t interested. As the attention of other collectors and dealers grew more and more insistent, Father decided he would just cause all of it to disappear. He made it known that he had donated his entire private collection to the museum, and then he built the bookcases to conceal the entrance. It took some time, but after a while the collectors stopped pestering him.”

“And everyone forgot the collection existed?”

“Almost everyone. When I started studying cartology,” Shadrack went on, “Father suggested I keep my more valuable maps and cartologic instruments here. He had a list of rules that I agreed to observe”—he grimaced—“such as keeping everything tidy. I agreed, and over time I had more maps and tools that needed to be kept hidden. Eventually, after Father passed away, I remade it into a map room, and I’ve kept it that way ever since. And of course it’s still secret, because of the work I do here. Most of it is so sensitive that it must be completely concealed—even from those who live under my own roof,” he added apologetically.

“Who else knows about it?”

Something like pain flashed across his face unexpectedly as his dark eyes drew inward, but he recovered himself almost immediately. “Very few living souls know about the map room. My students and colleagues at the university have no idea. Nor does Mrs. Clay. Miles knows. And your parents knew, of course. We spent many hours here together, planning their expeditions.”

Her parents had once sat in those very chairs with Shadrack! She could imagine them huddled over the table, poring over maps from all the different Ages and talking animatedly about routes, and supplies, and strange foreign customs.

“We did make a mess of this room before every trip,” Shadrack said, smiling. “Here”—he led her to a large, worn map pinned to the wall above the armchairs—“is where we would always begin.” It was a map of the world, dotted with pins of different colors. “After they left when you were small,” Shadrack said quietly, “I kept track of where they’d gone. This was their planned route.” He pointed to a series of blue pins that stretched out across the Atlantic and through the Papal States into the Middle Roads. Sophia had heard why her parents had left many times, but the journey took on a different aspect when accompanied by a map. “The message from our friend Casavetti seemed to suggest he had fallen prisoner while discovering an unknown Age here, in the Papal States.” He pointed to a blue pin. “Somehow, though Casavetti knew the region like the back of his hand, he had stumbled upon something new—and clearly dangerous. They planned to arrive, rescue Casavetti, and return.

“But I do not believe they ever arrived at their destination. The green pins show the places where I heard they had been.” They were scattered all over the world—the Northern Snows, the Baldlands, the Russias, even Australia. “For years, explorers I knew would bring me news. Very few claimed to have seen them firsthand, but they’d heard a rumor here, a suspicion there. I collected every scrap of information and tried to track their route—make some sense of it. As you can see, there’s no sense at all.” He gestured at the map. “Then I stopped hearing about them.”

They stood in silence for a moment, gazing at the smattering of pinheads. “But you see, Sophia—I did not give up hope either. I wouldn’t have dreamed of heading off without you to find them, and taking you with me then was out of the question. While you were little, I learned everything I could about where they had been seen. And I waited. I waited for you to reach an age when I could tell what I knew. An age when it would be possible for us to go in search of them—together.”

Sophia took in the far-flung destinations marked by green pins, overwhelmed. “Go in search of them?” she repeated.

“I would have waited another few years, had I been able to,” Shadrack went on. “But that is no longer possible. You and I need to start making our plans now, so that we can leave in case the borders close for everyone—we have only weeks left. We can’t take the map room with us, so we have to take it all up here.” He tapped his temple with his forefinger.

Sophia’s eyes traveled over the room and settled on the hopeful, determined face of her uncle. She smiled at him elatedly. “How do I start?”

Shadrack smiled back, something like pride in his eyes. “I knew you were ready, Soph.” He reached out and placed his large hand gently on her head. “At first, you will have to rely on some of your extraordinary patience, because the first few steps to becoming a cartologer and explorer go slowly.”

“I can do it,” she said eagerly. “I can be patient.”

Shadrack laughed. “Then we’ll commence the first lesson. Before that, a brief tour of the map room.” He strode to the wooden tables. “Here’s where I do the mapmaking.” As she walked past them, Sophia noticed that one table had a worn, leather surface, covered with small nicks and scratches. “And these shelves are full of books that are either too valuable or too risky to have upstairs.” He indicated a few that were unusual shapes and sizes and then gestured at one of the large wooden bureaus. “I’ll show you these later. First—here, in the case, are some really beautiful things. Treasures from the other Ages. Your parents found some of them for me.”

Shadrack pointed to a tall metal cylinder studded with tiny gems. “A map reader from Patagonia,” he said proudly. Beside it was something that looked like an ordinary seashell, but somehow made her think of warm sunlight and the murmur of underwater voices. “A Finding Shell from the South Seas. And this,” he said, indicating a flat, waxy object covered with bright pictures, “is a forest map from the Papal States.” As Sophia looked at it, she envisioned it on a lectern in a room filled with incense smoke and faint candlelight. There were many other mysterious objects.

“So these are all actually maps?”

“That’s the thing, Soph,” he said, his eyes gleaming. “We think of maps as drawings on paper—some lines, some words, some symbols. Right?” Sophia nodded. “But in reality, maps come in all shapes and sizes—and in the other Ages, they are nothing like ours. My theory,” Shadrack continued, “is that your parents went astray because they could not read the maps of the Age they were in. They knew a little bit, but they counted on their paper maps to guide them through everything.” He winced. “I counted on their paper maps to guide them. If my theory is correct, there are places you simply cannot navigate without local maps, and that takes an entirely different kind of knowledge. More than skill—it takes a mental adjustment to read and make maps unlike those drawn on paper.”

Sophia looked at him in wonder. “Do you mean that you make them? You make those other maps?”

“That,” he replied, “is what the map room is for. In New Occident we mainly draw maps on paper. But maps can be cast in almost anything—stone, wood, earth, sand, metal, cloth, leather, glass—even made on a piece of soap or a broad leaf. Every mapmaker has specialties, depending on where they are and what Age they belong to. And some people, like me, have tried to learn the cartology of other Ages.”

“But not my parents.” Sophia’s voice was small.

“They knew the rudiments of other cartologic forms. But not enough, I suspect. They may have found themselves somewhere far from the Age of paper maps, with only a sand map before them. What then?” He shook his head. “That won’t happen again. You and I will be masters of every manner of map when we go in search of them.”

“What other forms do you know?” she asked breathlessly.

Shadrack led her to the large wooden bureaus. “Apart from paper, upon which every cartologer of our Age depends, I’ve learned mapmaking with four of the essential materials: metal, glass, cloth, and clay.” As he spoke, he opened one of the drawers in the nearest bureau and removed a thin rectangle of shining metal, which he held up by the edges. It was no larger than a sheet of paper. In the corner was stamped, “Boston, February 1831.” Beside that was a tiny symbol: a mountain range stacked upon a ruler. The rest of the metal sheet seemed completely blank.

“Let’s leave this out for a moment,” Shadrack said, placing it on the leather-topped table. He opened a drawer in the next bureau and took out a sheet of glass of about the same size. It, too, was entirely blank except for the place and date, “Boston, February 1831,” and the mountain symbol etched into the corner.

“But they are blank,” Sophia said.

“Just a little patience!” he said, opening drawers in the third and fourth bureaus. From these he withdrew a thin clay tablet and a rectangle of linen, engraved and embroidered, respectively, with the same information as the other two. He placed them side by side on the table and looked at the array in satisfaction. “There we are. Four maps of the same timeplace.”

Sophia frowned. “Timeplace?”

“The meeting of a particular place and time.”

“These are maps? They don’t even have anything on them. They’re just blank rectangles.”

Shadrack went to one of the bookcases and ran his hand along the spines of the books. When he found the volume he was looking for, he took it off the shelf and thumbed through its pages. “Here!” he said. He laid the open book on the table. “This is what you’re imagining, am I right?”

Sophia saw that the book was open to a map labeled “City of Boston.” The familiar shape of the city, with its neighborhoods and waterways and principal roads and rail lines lay before her. “Yes,” she said. “That’s a map.”

“Now, what would you say if I told you that each of these ‘blank rectangles,’ as you call them, has more information—a hundred times more information—than this paper map? They not only map the place, they map the time of Boston in February of 1831.”

Sophia furrowed her brow. “Do you mean like how I map things in my sketchbook?”

“Yes, very much like your clever way of recording time through drawings and words. Although in these maps, you won’t see pictures and words; you’ll see animate impressions of what was happening then and there. It will feel as though you are actually there.”

She let out a breath of astonishment. “How?”

He smiled. “I can promise you that, with practice, you will not only be able to read every map in those cabinets; you will even be able to make your own.” He pulled out a chair. “Have a seat,” he said. “And give it a try.”

Sophia sat down eagerly and looked expectantly at the four rectangles lying before her.

“What do you think the first step is?”

She looked up at him in astonishment. “You mean you’re not going to tell me?”

He smiled. “That would defeat the entire purpose. As I said, it’s not skill that’s required—it’s the ability to think about things differently. If I tell you, you will simply memorize the method. If you have to discover it for yourself, you will understand how to apply the principle you learn. When we are out in another Age, confronted by a map neither of us understands, we’ll need as much inventive thinking as both of us can muster. Memorizing won’t help.”

“But I have no idea how this works!”

“Perhaps not at first,” Shadrack said. “But you have imagination, and it will come to you. I’ll give you a starting point. And this is at the heart of lesson one—a lesson about paper.” He sat down in a chair beside her. “Paper maps are valued all across the Ages for good reason. They’re durable, they’re unchanging, and they’re accessible to anyone who picks them up. That has its uses. But other kinds of maps, while harder to read and in many cases more fragile, are also more dynamic and better at keeping secrets. Those qualities go hand in hand. A paper map is always there, but other maps—well, they sleep most of the time. Something you do has to wake them up so they can be read.”

Sophia shook her head, utterly perplexed.

“Trust me, this will be useful,” Shadrack said, getting up. He walked toward the stairs. “Now I have to go finish the letters I was writing on behalf of Mrs. Clay so that they go out with the morning post, and I want to enquire about Carlton. I’ll be back soon to check on your progress,” he said warmly.

After he had gone, Sophia took a deep breath and looked at the objects spread out before her on the table. She ignored the book and concentrated on the four blank rectangles, all with the mysterious words, “Boston, February 1831,” in the bottom righthand corner. What did Shadrack mean about “waking up” the maps? And that the maps showed the time as well as the place? How was such a thing possible? She tentatively picked up the metal sheet. It felt cool to the touch and surprisingly light, and she saw herself faintly reflected in the ochre metal. But no matter how much she stared, nothing on its surface changed.

She put it down and picked up the clay tablet. She turned it over; it was just as blank on the back. The glass sheet was more opaque than she had realized at first. She gazed down onto its milky surface and watched her blurry reflection grow larger. Finally, she picked up the piece of linen by the corners and held it up before her face. “What’s inside you, little handkerchief?” she murmured. “Why won’t you say anything? Wake up, wake up.” Nothing happened. She let out a sharp sigh of frustration. The piece of linen fluttered briefly, and as it settled once again something remarkable happened.

The surface started to change. Slowly, lines began to draw themselves across it. Sophia stared, wide-eyed, as the edges filled with scrollwork and a map appeared in the center of the cloth.

5 Learning to Read

1891, June 15: 9-Hour 22

It took decades, after the Disruption, for cartology to assert itself as the most important form of scholarship in New Occident. But as it absorbed the field of history and became essential to the country’s efforts at exploration, cartology became the single most important area of scholarly work. What always remained a specialized—even marginal—focus within the broader field, however, was the study of how the other Ages practiced cartology.

—From Shadrack Elli’s History of Cartology

SOPHIA DROPPED THE linen on the table and ran to the base of the stairs. “Shadrack, come look!” she shouted. “Something happened!”

“All right,” he called down to her. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

She rushed back to the table to make sure the image was still there; it was. The fine, colored lines on the map looked as though they’d been drawn in ink. On the right-hand side, the legend consisted of two pale blue clocks: the first was numbered from one to twenty-eight, the second was an ordinary twenty-hour clock. A detailed web of brown and green filled the center of the linen, creating the familiar shape of the city of Boston. The borders, drawn in gold, repeated an inscrutable pattern of scrollwork and mysterious symbols.

“So how did you discover it?” Shadrack asked, sitting down next to her. He had brought a glass of water, which he set down at a good distance from the maps.

“I’m not sure. I think I breathed on it.”

He smiled, stroking his chin. “All right, good enough. We often discover things by accident. The cloth maps respond to air. A breeze, a gale, a breath—it’s all the same. The reason they respond to air is because they’re weather maps. You can draw anything on a cloth map, but what they show most clearly are weather patterns. This one shows the weather for Boston in February of 1831.”

“But it looks just like an ordinary map. Are those lines the weather?”

“You can’t read it because you haven’t specified a day and time yet.” He pointed to the clocks in the legend.

The clocks had no hands. “These are hours and days?” Sophia asked.

“That’s right. Choose one.”

“How?”

“Well, the traditional way is to use your fingers. But you can use all kinds of things—beads, pins, things like that. I like these.” He went to the closest bureau and removed a small, leather-bound box. Inside it were ordinary pebbles—all of them smooth and smaller than a fingernail.

“Oh, I see!” Sophia said excitedly. She placed a pebble on the day-clock’s 8 and another on the hour-clock’s 9. Nothing happened.

“Nine in the morning on February 8, 1831,” Shadrack murmured. He took a sip of his water.

Sophia squinted at the map. “I still don’t see anything.”

Shadrack looked at her keenly. “Before you look at the weather for February eighth, let me tell you about an important difference between these maps and the maps you’re used to. These are memory maps. They are not just one cartologer’s impression of this place and time. They hold the collected memories of real people. They’re histories. Some maps hold the memories of one person, others hold the memories of many. This map, for example, holds the memories of hundreds of people who were living in Boston in February of 1831.”

“How does it do that?” Sophia breathed.

“That is what you will learn when you start making maps yourself. I can tell you it requires a great deal of research. The important thing to know now is this: when you read the map, it will be like having memories—you’ll experience the memories of the people who were there.”

Sophia’s eyes opened wide. “I want to try it.”

Shadrack leaned over the map, carefully keeping his arms on the table. “Try pointing out Boston Common to me. Can you find it on the map?”

“That’s easy,” Sophia scoffed. She reached out and placed her finger on the five-sided common, drawn in green at the right of the map. And suddenly, as her finger touched the cloth, she had a vivid memory—a memory that seemed her own. She saw the common in the early morning light, with clouds passing overhead. The landscape around her was blurry and dim, but she could recall vividly the cold bite of the wind and the damp in the air. Sophia felt herself shivering, the memory was so clear. She gasped and pulled her finger away from the map. The sensation faded. “Incredible,” she said. “It is so real. As if I am remembering it.”

Shadrack sat back with a look of gratification. “Yes. That is how it should be. That’s what these maps do.”

“But whose memories are they? Did you put them there?”

“Well, no—and yes. I learned about all the memories I could for this time and place. The map can only contain what the mapmaker finds. It’s not an all-seeing eye. The memories come from living people—people who were alive when I made the map—and from written memories.”

“I don’t understand how they are there.”

Shadrack paused. “Do you recall the drawing in your parents’ room? The one of Minna and Bronson on the day they were married?”

Sophia looked at him. “I didn’t know it was drawn the day they were married.”

“It was. You may have noticed that the drawing is unlike others. More alive, perhaps.”

“I had noticed,” she said slowly. “But I thought it was my imagination. When I was younger, I would remember them so clearly whenever I looked at it.”

“Whenever you touched it,” Shadrack corrected. “I used some of the techniques that I use for mapmaking in that drawing. It is not the same, of course—a static portrait is far less powerful than a map. But it is the same principle.”

Sophia shook her head in wonder. “But I still don’t understand how the memories are in the drawing. How did you make this?”

“Imagine that when I made this map I traveled around to all the people I knew who remembered this moment, and I asked them to put their memories of it in a box. Then I went home and dove into all the hundreds of memories and used my knowledge about winds and temperature and humidity and sunlight and sorted out all the memories into their correct place and time.”

“You actually used a box?”

“No, the ‘box’ is this cloth itself. Just as you read the map now by touch, it was written by touch. All of the memories were placed there by people who came into contact with this cloth, but then it was my task to give them order and meaning. The cartologer transforms the material into a legible, comprehensible document.” He smiled. “It will make more sense when we actually practice it someday. For now, concentrate on reading.”

“I’m going to read another time.” Sophia moved the pebbles to the 12 on the day-clock and the 20 on the hour-clock. Then she gingerly put her fingertip on Boston Common and immediately recalled something that she had never lived through: standing in Boston Common in the middle of the night while the snowflakes swirled down around her. The sky was silver with clouds, and the air around her tasted cold. The snow moved across the common in gentle currents, as if shaped by an invisible breath. “It’s just wonderful,” Sophia said drawing her finger away. “I can’t believe it.”

Shadrack spoke with just the slightest hint of pride. “It’s not a bad map, if I say so myself. Took quite a while to pin down the last few days of the month. Very few people remembered the weather.” He considered the other maps on the table. “So what about these? Any luck?”

“Not yet.”

“Let’s look at them then, shall we?” Shadrack collected the pebbles, lifted the linen cloth, and gently turned it over. When he turned it right side up, it was once again blank, save for the inscriptions in the corner. “What about the clay tablet?”

She picked it up dubiously. She tried blowing on it, but nothing happened. “I don’t know,” she said, frowning.

“Your breath caused the linen to change,” Shadrack said. “It was the key to the map—it created a movement, an impetus, a catalyst that unlocked it. What do you think would do that to clay—to a piece of earth?”

Sophia sat silently for a minute, thinking hard. Suddenly something occurred to her. “I know!”

Shadrack raised his eyebrows. “What are you thinking?”

“Hand me your water.”

He edged it along the table and she dipped her finger into the cool liquid. Then she held it over the clay tablet and let a single drop fall. Immediately the surface of the clay began to change, and an intricately painted map appeared on the surface.

“I guessed it!”

“Well done. Earth responds to water. So try a date and time.”

At the far left of the tablet was a legend like the one on the cloth map. Sophia placed pebbles on the day-clock’s 15 and the hour-clock’s 10: midday on February the fifteenth. Then she examined the map. The spidery lines on the clay wove their way tightly around the city center and then trailed off as they worked their way outward.

“Clay maps are topographical,” Shadrack said. “They show the earth: hills, fields, forests, rivers, and so on. I think for this one it might be a little disorienting to look at the city center. Try an outlying region, out here.” Shadrack indicated the western part of Boston, where there was a green expanse of land and almost no lines.

Sophia held her breath with anticipation and touched the map. She was flooded with a memory of rolling hills. In the distance she saw a small pond and farther on an orchard of bare trees. She lifted her finger, pulling herself away from the memories. “What happens if I move?”

“Go ahead—try it.”

She carefully edged her finger upward on the map; it was like moving through a cascade of memories. She remembered pine forests and the thick needled carpet that lay underfoot; she remembered a long avenue lined with bare maples; she remembered the edge of a stream that was entirely frozen, dry leaves clumped in bundles at its edges. “It’s beautiful,” Sophia said quietly. “So many places—and so detailed.”

“The clay maps are usually less work-intensive,” Shadrack said. “In this case, the terrain didn’t change much over the course of the month, so I was able to spend more time working through the details of the landscape.”

“I want to see the others!” Sophia removed the pebbles and then gently turned the clay map face down. She picked up the metal map. “I think I need some matches. Am I right?” She looked at Shadrack inquiringly.

Without speaking, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a box.

Sophia struck one and held it over the metal map. The small orange glow spread from the spot below the match outward, across the coppery surface. As she dropped the match into the glass of water, a clear, silver-lined map appeared in the center of the sheet. It seemed etched, rather than painted, and the lines shone like mercury against the copper surface. Sophia admired the map for only a few seconds before eagerly placing pebbles on the clocks.

“For this one I’d recommend something more precise,” Shadrack said, rising from the table. He went to the bureau where he’d retrieved the pebbles and returned holding a long quill. “Should be sharp enough. The maps that contain more detail can sometimes be difficult to see with your fingertip. Try catching a smaller surface with the tip of the quill.”

“Can I go back to the common?” she asked hesitantly.

“By all means—try it.”

She placed the quill on one corner of Boston Common and at once recalled standing at the intersection of Charles Street and Beacon Street, between the common and the Public Garden. The landscape around her looked blurry, but the brick houses along Beacon Street stood out sharply. There were fewer buildings in the city center. She had a clear memory of looking up the road and seeing the Park Street Church and then the State House at the top of the hill. She drew the quill along Beacon Street, heading west. The roads unfurled before her, and buildings sprang up as if emerging from a mist. She passed the mansions in the city center, the high churches, and smaller brick row houses, all the way to the small farms at Boston’s outskirts. She had a sudden, vivid memory of standing before a red tavern with a low, wooden door. Sophia drew back the quill. “It’s beautiful. Just beautiful. I can’t believe you made this!”

“Can you find East Ending Street?”

Sophia moved the quill tentatively, hovering over the South End. “There it is!” she suddenly exclaimed. “That’s East Ending Street!” She placed the quill on the map. In the memory that flooded her mind, some of the houses she knew were missing and some were unrecognizable, with newly laid bricks and oddly colored doors. But then something stirred in her mind, and she realized she was looking directly at a familiar house—her house. It was almost unchanged—sturdy and dignified, with its white-shuttered windows, its ponderous owl, and its bright red door. Only Shadrack’s oval sign and the creeping ivy along the brick walls were missing. “It’s our house!” she exclaimed.

Shadrack chuckled.

Sophia lingered over the memory a moment longer and then touched different areas of the map, locating her school and her favorite place by the river. After several minutes of eager exploring, she put the quill down. “So if the cloth map is the weather,” she said slowly, “and the clay map is the ground, and the metal map is the buildings—”

“Construction,” Shadrack clarified. “That includes roads, railways, bridges, and so on. Everything manmade.”

“Everything manmade,” Sophia repeated. “That’s all there is. What does the glass map show?”

Shadrack raised his eyebrows. “You tell me. What is missing from the memories?”

Sophia stared blankly at the sheet of glass. She picked it up and examined it closely, but all she could see was her cloudy reflection. Suddenly something occurred to her, but the thought was so marvelous that she couldn’t quite believe it. “Not . . . people?”

“Try it and see.”

“But I have no ideas about how to wake it up.”

“You’re right—this one is the toughest. And it’s a little difficult to come up with, in this particular room.” He stood. “Normally, you would have a window with daylight, and you would keep the glass covered. Bring it over to the table lamp.”

“Oh—light!” Sophia exclaimed. She carried the glass sheet carefully to where her uncle was standing beside the two armchairs. She held the pane under the bright lamp, and immediately the spidery white lines of a finely etched map spread across the surface of the glass like fragile threads of frost on a winter windowpane.

Shadrack took it from her and held it up. “The glass map recalls human action—human history. It can be disturbing the first time you see one. It is strange to remember people you don’t know, saying things you’ve never heard. You must keep a clear distinction in your mind between the memories that are yours and the memories that come from the map. But you’ll learn to do that with time. This map I know for sure has nothing too alarming in it. You can savor all of its memories without concern.” He carried the glass back to the main table and gently placed it face up. Then he slid pebbles onto both of the 10s on the two clocks at the left-hand side of the map. “Try the quill,” he said encouragingly.

Sophia wrinkled her brow. She felt strangely reluctant to plunge into the memories that she knew were stored before her.

“Go ahead,” Shadrack said. “How about here, near the market?”

She held the quill over Quincy Market and set it down. She felt a sudden rush and a powerful wave of recollection. People were talking all around her, laughing and shouting and gossiping in low voices. A woman standing next to her carefully counted her money. A boy walked past with a crate full of flowers, and she had a sudden memory of their powerful, hothouse smell. She could remember seeing the clouds of warm breath in the cold air and the sleepy face of a potato farmer who had driven his cart into the city from far away. It all seemed incredibly vivid—as if she had lived through it herself. The space around them remained blurry. It was as though she had erased all the buildings and streets and the very ground beneath her feet. Beyond the people, her memory was dim.

Sophia lifted the quill and blinked a few times. “It’s odd. As though I can remember people, but nothing else. It feels like I could be anywhere.”

“I know—it’s strange to see ourselves without the world around us, isn’t it?” Shadrack gently moved the glass pane aside. “I’ll show you what makes it better—what makes them all worthwhile, really.” He picked up the cloth, gently blew against, it and placed it face up on the table. With the tip of his finger he drew water onto the clay tablet and placed it on top of the cloth, their corners perfectly aligned. Then he added the metal sheet, with its map still intact. And finally he set the glass pane, with its pebbles on the 10s, on the top of the pile. “Have a go,” he said.

Sophia took the quill and hesitantly stared down through the glass. She could see the silver traces of the metal map lying beneath it. Then she took a deep breath and placed the quill at the corner of Beacon and Charles.

All of it—a whole world from February of 1831—came back to her clearly. In Boston Common people were hurrying down the walkways, stamping their feet against the cold. The bare trees nodded gently in the chilly breeze, rattling a little against the gray sky. A small group of skaters whirled over the frozen pond. Along the streets people rushed with their baskets full of purchases or rode past on their Goodyears, the rubber wheels spinning soundlessly. And in all the windows of the houses people moved through their endless routines of eating and talking and working and sleeping.

It was like plunging into another world, but the world was her own. She knew the memories did not belong to her, and yet they were there—so vivid, so lucid that they seemed to be entirely hers. Sophia lifted the quill with a sigh. “My memories are never that clear,” she said. “They are always so patchy. But these are so perfect.”

“We are all like that,” Shadrack agreed. “That’s why it helps to make the maps in layers. We cannot all remember everything at once. In fact, it’s surprising how little detail people actually remember. But if you add together what everyone remembers about each piece, it comes together.”

Sophia said what had been on her mind since she had first discovered the purpose of the glass map. “Do you think—is there any way . . . Could it be that Mother and Father might have left memories this way, stored in a map somewhere?”

Shadrack ran his hand through his hair. “Perhaps,” he said slowly. “They did not know how to make memory maps when they left Boston. But they might have learned.”

“Or someone else might have made a map that shows them in it.”

“It’s a very good thought, Sophia. Even a glimpse could be invaluable. You’ll see what I mean if you take a look at East Ending, now that the maps are layered.”

Sophia placed the tip of the quill on the map. She remembered a gray sky and a cold, damp breeze. The street was quiet. A few candles shone weakly in the windows, despite the fact that it was midday; the dark sky made them necessary. The bright red door she knew so well was closed. She could see someone through the upstairs window—a boy. He was reading intently at a desk, his chin in his hand. The memory suddenly grew sharper, as if a veil had been lifted from her eyes, and the boy looked up from his reading. He peered straight out at her—at Sophia—and smiled. Sophia gasped and pulled the quill away. “He looked at me.” She turned to Shadrack. “The boy in the window. Who was he?”

“You saw him!” Shadrack said, taking the quill. He placed it on East Ending and smiled as the memory came to his mind. “You know who he is—think about it.”

“Is it Grandfather?”

“Yes—it’s my father; your grandfather.”

“But why did he smile at me?”

“Because that is your great-grandmother’s memory—Grandmother Lizzie. She was there to see your grandfather smile at her through the window.” Shadrack put the quill down a bit wistfully. “Nice one, isn’t it?”

Sophia felt a wave of awe: she was seeing the world through the eyes of her great-grandmother, a woman she had never even met. But some part of her felt uneasy, as if she had trespassed on another person’s private thoughts. “It’s a lovely memory,” she said slowly. “But it’s not mine. Is it really all right to—to take it like that?”

Shadrack’s face was thoughtful. “It’s a valuable question, Sophia. It has to do with what I was mentioning before—knowing where your memory stops and the memory of another begins. It may help to know that no one loses their memories in making the map. People share them. But that raises another problem: everyone’s memory is imperfect. I tried to learn everything possible about this month in Boston. I put together as many memories as I could find. And I combined them with what I knew—the kinds of clothes people wore, the buildings, the ships, all that. But you must know that memory maps—maps of all kinds, really—are inexact. They are only the best possible approximation. Think of them like books of history: the author will try to be as accurate as possible, but often he or she is relying on slim pieces of evidence, and there is as much art and interpretation as there is factual content. The best maps will show the cartologer’s hand at work rather than conceal it, making plain the interpretive work and suggesting, even, other possible interpretations.”

“Does that mean that people could create maps that distort what really happened? Maps that are made up?”

“They could indeed,” Shadrack said gravely. “It is a serious crime to do so. But all honest mapmakers swear an oath to tell only the truth, and you must look for the mark of that oath when you examine a memory map. Look here,” he said, pointing out the small symbol of the mountains atop a ruler that appeared beside the date on each map. “This is the Insignia Rule. It is required on those maps whose truth can only be vouched for by their maker. But even a truthful mapmaker may be inaccurate. For example,” he confessed, “there are some streets on this map that no one remembers at two or three in the morning on some day or another. Who is to say that something did not happen that I failed to record? In that way, my map, too, might be a distortion.”

“But it is still incredible. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Shadrack shook his head. “My maps are still those of a novice. There are maps that make mine look like mere scribbles. You’ll see some of them, soon enough. I have read memory maps so real one forgets oneself in them. Some so large they fill an entire room. Truly, the maps created by the masters are astonishing.”

Sophia bounced in her chair with excitement. “I want to read them all.”

Shadrack laughed. “Someday you will. But there’s much yet to learn, and we must work quickly. Come, let me show you how to navigate seconds.”

6 A Trail of Feathers

1891, June 15 to 21

The lenient laws of New Occident have long allowed foreigners to enjoy the benefits of residency without requiring their formal application for citizenship. Only foreigners wishing to vote, run for office, or form a corporation have been required to apply. As of July 4, these laws will change. Full naturalization will be necessary for all foreigners. If you are a foreigner and you wish to work or reside in New Occident, you must apply through the attached form for documentation and a foreigner’s lifewatch. All those without documentation and watches will be deported on July 4.

—From Application for Citizenship Pursuant to the Patriot Plan

FOR THE REMAINDER of the day Sophia studied the maps of Boston in February 1831, and Shadrack taught her the intricacies of the four map forms. She learned how to use different quills in order to see more or less detail; she learned how to close in on a particular minute or second; and she began to grow more accustomed to the flood of memories that weren’t hers.

The glass map still made her uneasy; remembering people she had never met left her feeling disoriented, as if she had woken up in someone else’s skin. But she began to find ways of distinguishing between her memories and those she experienced while map-reading: the memories from the maps were far clearer and more vivid than her own. At least one aspect came so naturally that she had nothing to learn: the fact that days, minutes, and hours unfolded at different paces; the sense that time could be short or long, depending on how one chose to read. More than anything, Sophia loved this quality of the memory maps. Though they revealed unknown places, their manner of compressing and expanding time made her feel entirely at home.

In the days that followed, Shadrack began his ambitious plan to teach Sophia about the cartology of the other Ages. She learned that these maps needed particular care; they had to be cleaned and stored carefully to ensure their safety. Mapmaking, Shadrack explained, was a science and an art practiced in every Age, all over the world. The dynamic memory maps had probably been invented in either the Baldlands or the Middle Roads. No one knew for certain, but he believed their invention would only have been possible in one of those regions where the various Ages had been so jumbled that past, present, and future were interwoven.

Shadrack had learned to make memory maps at the academy in Nochtland. The mapmaker’s guild was powerful there. The production and circulation of maps was carefully regulated; every Nochtland-created map had to bear the insignia that guaranteed its truthfulness—the tiny mountain range atop a ruler.

His collection of memory maps opened Sophia’s eyes even further to the wonders of cartology beyond New Occident. She saw parts of the world she had never imagined she would see. The maps varied in scale: some recalled only a few rooms, others an entire city; some contained memories from only a minute or an hour; others held the memories of a whole year. One map captured twenty-four hours in the Alhambra, in Granada. Another showed the passage of a year in the capitol of the Russias. And another recalled the crucial four months of rebellion that led to the creation of New Akan. It occurred to Sophia, as she studied the maps, that space and skill were the only constraints. On the third day of her studies she turned to Shadrack. “Shadrack, do you think there could be a memory map of the entire world?”

His face had an odd expression. “It would be unimaginably difficult to make such a map,” he finally said. “Though there are stories of something called the carta mayor, a hidden map that traces the memories of the whole world from the beginning of time to the present.”

“That would be incredible.”

For a moment, Shadrack’s face tensed. “Explorers have spent entire lifetimes pursuing the carta mayor. Some have lost themselves searching.”

“So it exists?”

“It almost certainly does not exist,” he said quickly. “I have always argued that it is a Nihilismian myth—one that serves their purposes well but has no basis in fact.”

“How is it Nihilismian?” Though there was a large following of Nihilismians in Boston, Sophia knew little about them beyond what she had learned in school.

Nihilismianism was one of the many religious sects that had sprouted in the wake of the Great Disruption. Many people still followed the old religions of the West, but a growing number believed in the Fates, whose temples depicted over the entryway the three goddesses, each holding the globe on a string. Others practiced Occidental Numism, or Onism, which held that all material and immaterial things were a form of currency to be bought and sold, exchanged and bartered with the higher powers. Sophia had seen an Onist’s account book once, when Dorothy—always more intrepid—had stolen a look at the private Book of Deeds and Debts that one of their teachers kept on his desk. It was filled with precise and, to Sophia, terrible calculations. One in particular often occurred to her when her mind wandered: “Twenty-one minutes of daydreaming about last year’s trip to the seaside with A, to be paid for with twenty-one minutes of housework.” It was said that the Onist lifestyle was wonderfully productive, but Sophia found the prospect dreadful.

And there were Nihilismians who believed that the true world had been derailed by the Great Disruption and replaced by a false one. It was unsettling to think that a world no longer in existence was thought by some to be more real than their own.

“The Nihilismians are sure that the carta mayor would show the true course of the world—not this one,” Shadrack said now. “But I fail to see how such a thing is even possible.”

Sophia squinted pensively, considering.

“It is a dangerous myth to believe in,” he concluded, with an air of finality.

Every so often during her studies, Sophia would wander over to the wall map, where the blue and green pins marked the voyage her parents never took and the places where they’d appeared. Shadrack told her everything he could. An explorer from Vermont believed he had traded food with them somewhere deep in the Prehistoric Snows. An explorer from Philadelphia had spoken to a street vendor in the Papal States who had sold salt to a pair of young adventurers in Western clothing. A cartologer from the university had spoken to a sailor who might have boarded a ship with them in the United Indies. All of the encounters were brief and vague and inconclusive. Shadrack had noted every one.

Sophia felt a terrible impatience when she contemplated the eventual purpose of her studies. Part of her wanted to leave at once, tracing the path of the green pins wherever they led. She had to remind herself that gaining the right store of knowledge for the journey posed a more significant and important challenge than any she might face later. Every moment of learning was essential. “Step by step,” Shadrack encouraged her, gesturing towards the wall map. “We have little enough time as it is, Soph. In truth, I wish we could work more slowly.”

While Sophia learned to work with the maps, Shadrack shuttled back and forth between the map room and his ground-floor study. He had managed to secure forged papers and a lifewatch for Mrs. Clay, but this task had been only the first of many. Desperate friends from every corner of New Occident began arriving at 34 East Ending Street with requests for maps and route-guides to other Ages. Explorers were leaving the states in droves, panicked by parliament’s decision. Shadrack barely had time to answer Sophia’s questions.

For her part, she became so engrossed in her studies that she hardly noticed how many days had passed, let alone hours and minutes. Her fascination with map-reading was genuine and all-absorbing; moreover, there were no competing distractions. Yes, it was summer, a time when ordinary schoolchildren spent all day swimming and wasting time and wandering with friends. But with Dorothy gone to New York, there was no one to knock on the door and drag her out into the sunshine.

At the end of the week, Shadrack descended into the map room after a long meeting with an explorer who was leaving for the Russias, and he looked with some concern at his niece, hunched over the leather-topped table. With her dark blonde hair messier than usual, her face pale from lack of sleep, and her light summer clothes uncharacteristically rumpled, she looked more like an overworked office clerk than a child.

Sophia was entirely unaware of Shadrack’s scrutiny; she was wrestling with a puzzle that she’d stumbled across while comparing two maps. From the shape and configuration of the islands rendered up them, she could tell that the maps depicted the exact same location. But one was labeled United Indies and the other Terra Incognita, and they seemed to show two different Ages.

The former held the sound of bells at midday in a quiet stone courtyard; a pair of nuns walked past Sophia in the memory, talking quietly to one another, and the smell of the sea was in the air. The latter showed a cold, stony landscape with no signs of life. The only clue to their difference lay in the fact that the Terra Incognita map had been made more recently: ten years after the United Indies map.

How is this possible? Sophia wondered. How could the place have changed so much so soon? She was studying Terra Incognita, scouring the map for signs of what had happened to so alter it, when Shadrack’s voice yanked her out of the memory.

“Sophia!”

“Yes?” She looked up, startled.

“You’re getting pale from living in this basement. I know we have a lot to do, but you mustn’t entomb yourself here. Your limbs will turn to jelly.”

“I don’t care,” Sophia said absently. “Shadrack, did anything happen recently at the eastern edge of the United Indies? I can’t figure this out. These two maps show the same place, but one of them shows a convent and the one from ten years after shows . . . well, nothing.”

“I determined that the map was mislabeled,” Shadrack said peremptorily. “We can look at it later; right now, you need to escape this room for a little while. It will clear your head.”

“I don’t think it’s mislabeled. It’s the same spot, but different. And it occurred to me—do you still have the letter Casavetti sent? I think—”

“Sophia!” Shadrack walked over and pulled back her chair. “Your enthusiasm does you credit. But it will not serve our purposes if you can’t carry a heavy pack or walk ten paces without collapsing. We’ll make a deal. Six days of being an indoor cartologer and one day of being an outdoor explorer.”

Sophia grumbled. “It’s too hot outside anyway.”

“How would you know? You haven’t even been outside! I’ll tell you what. I have hardly left the house myself, what with all the incoming traffic. When we do leave on our voyage, we’ll be utterly unprepared. Let me give you a list so you can begin gathering our supplies.”

The prospect of buying supplies made the journey seem suddenly quite real; her pulse quickened. “That’s a good idea.”

Shadrack chuckled. “I’m glad you approve. All right, I think your best bet will be Harding’s Supply out on the wharf. You were near there the other day.”

“I know where it is.”

“So I have an old pack that will do fine, but you need one. Don’t get one that’s too big—have them size it for you before you buy it. The other thing we need is a hard roll-tube for paper maps. Mine have all fallen apart, I haven’t used them in so long. Get two. And look for a weather-proof case for your lifewatch.” He thought for a moment. “That’s enough for now. Put it on my credit at the store; I have an account. Sound good?”

“Pack, roll-tubes, watch-case,” Sophia repeated. “Sounds good.” She climbed the steps to the study, noticing as she walked through the house that the rooms had grown messier and messier during the days she had spent in the map room. Mrs. Clay did her best, but she was really no match for Shadrack’s explosive fits of energy. Sophia reached her room and sat down to change her shoes. As she did so, her eye lighted on her sketchbook, and a thought made her rise slowly and turn back the pages to June 14, the day before she’d first gone into the map room—the day she’d gone to parliament. She found herself looking at the drawing she’d made of the caged boy from the circus. Who knows what will happen to him, she thought. She stared at the bars she had drawn. Maybe he’s still there. I might see him again. The prospect gave her a brief flutter, but it was accompanied by a sobering thought. I wonder if he’s ever let out of that horrible cage. I can’t believe he might have to eat and sleep in it and everything. A sudden idea flickered through her mind. He doesn’t belong in that cage, she said to herself, her thoughts soaring. He shouldn’t spend another minute in that cage.

With a rising sense of excitement, she finished lacing her boots and ran downstairs. Seeing that it was almost lunchtime, she hastily wrapped a piece of buttered bread in a napkin and tucked it into the apron pocket of her dress. “Bye, Shad,” she shouted before heading out the door.

— June 21, 11-Hour 57: Leaving to Buy Supplies—

THE HEAT HAD let up somewhat, dropping into the low nineties. During any other summer, such temperatures would have driven every resident of the city to Cape Cod, but with parliament’s deadline hanging over New Occident, Boston bristled with uneasy activity. The accusations against foreigners published in the newspaper had grown more frequent and bitter and had resulted in an unending stream of protests.

As Sophia rode the trolley downtown, she noticed knots of people walking in the direction of the State House. As they passed the building, her eyes widened; it was surrounded by police officers, and hundreds of people were shouting and carrying signs. Shadrack had told her that the police were patrolling around the clock, checking the identity papers of everyone they passed. Anyone without papers found themselves abruptly shuttled to the nearest point of exit from New Occident.

The trolley stopped briefly on the far side of the common, at some distance from the State House, and then veered off, careening into the tunnel that connected to the wharf. Sophia felt nervous at the thought of once again seeing the boy in feathers. Maybe I should get the supplies first, she thought. But I don’t want to be carrying the supplies if I try to open the cage. I should go to the circus first.

The trolley emerged from the tunnel and the conductor called the Wharf stop. Sophia stepped off, edgy with excitement, and looked for the warehouse where she’d seen the circus.

The chaos at the wharf made the protest near the State House pale in comparison. Crowds of people—determined explorers, anxious tradespeople, and exiled foreigners—wove along the cobblestone street and toward the waiting ships. Police officers walked tensely among them, truncheons drawn, checking papers and shepherding people into lines. Every manner of vessel filled the waters beyond the wharf and waited to board passengers, seeking to profit from the sudden exodus. Sophia turned away in dismay as she heard a ship’s captain haggling with an explorer over an outrageous fee for passage to the Closed Empire.

Catching sight of a faded warehouse nearby, Sophia pushed past the crowd and hurried toward it. Sure enough, there was the sign for Ehrlach’s Circus of the Ages. But something had changed. There was no line for admittance, and the warehouse door was closed. There was no trace of the little man, the ticket vendor, or the boy in the cage.

For a moment she stood hesitantly, watching people pass. Then she approached the door and gave it an experimental push. It seemed to be barred by something on the other side. She pushed a little harder and the door gave way.

“Oh, no,” she said out loud. The cavernous warehouse stood completely empty. A pile of hay, a few broken pieces of a set, and some netting lay scattered on the dirt floor. Sophia stood and stared. She recalled once again the boy in feathers—his air of careless grace, the easy way he shoved aside the circus master’s cane. Now he was gone. She imagined him traveling to some unknown place, imprisoned forever in his horrible cage, until his lofty expression faded and his eyes lost their animation.

Sophia left the empty warehouse, closing the door behind her. “Excuse me,” she said to an old man carrying a heavy traveling case. “Has the circus gone already?”

“It has, miss,” he said, taking a moment to rest. “They packed up only this morning.”

“I thought they would stay until July fourth.”

“They could have, sure, but Ehrlach wanted to spend the last weeks in New York. Seems to think there’ll be more business there without the parliament protests to distract them.”

“I see. Thank you,” Sophia said. “Bad luck, I suppose.”

“Bad luck it is—for all of us,” the old man replied, shouldering the case again. “I’m sorry, miss.”

Sophia stood, staring at the sign and trying to shake off her disappointment. I should have thought of it sooner, she said to herself. I didn’t realize how many days had passed. The familiar sense of frustration washed over her, but she had to admit that in this case her broken internal clock wasn’t entirely to blame. She’d been thoughtless in a wholly ordinary way. For an entire week she had forgotten about the boy, and now the chance to help him was gone.

With an abrupt glance at her watch, she realized that she had lost more than an hour and reminded herself sternly of her assigned task. She turned and looked for Harding’s Supply with a renewed sense of purpose. It was nearby, its double doors opened wide to allow for the steady stream of customers purchasing last-minute equipment for long overseas journeys. Having lost so much time already, Sophia hurried through the aisles, inspecting waterproof rucksacks, snowshoes, collapsible hats, silk sheets that folded away into a pocket-sized pouch, canteens, and field glasses. She left the store with a small russet-brown pack, two weatherproof roll-tubes for paper maps, and an oiled leather case for her watch.

— 15-Hour 09: Arriving Home—

IT WAS PAST fifteen-hour when Sophia headed home. The summer sun was still high in the sky, and as she turned onto East Ending Street it occurred to her that she might yet have time to finish solving the puzzle she’d begun that morning. Surely Shadrack wouldn’t mind, now that she had dutifully spent the afternoon out of doors.

Sophia neared the house and was surprised to see the side door wide open. When she reached the steps, something odd caught her eye: a long green feather. She picked it up and examined it. “Very strange,” she murmured. As soon as she had reached the entryway, she could see that something was very wrong.

The house was a disaster. Something intent on destruction had swept through it. Food and broken dishes lay strewn across the kitchen floor. The rugs in the hallway were twisted and shoved together, while remains of burnt papers and maps littered the stove. Almost all the framed maps that normally hung in every room had been knocked down, leaving the papered walls bare. Even some of the floorboards had been torn up. And lying before her near the entryway was a long red feather. She stood for a moment, her panic mounting, and then she dropped the green feather, threw aside the new pack that hung from her shoulder, and ran toward the study.

“Shadrack!” she shouted. “Shadrack!”

He was not there. Maps lay scattered everywhere, many of them torn. The books had been pulled from the shelves and lay on the ground in haphazard piles. With horror, Sophia saw the door to the map room standing open.

“Shadrack?” she called, her voice unsteady, from the top of the stairs. There was no answer. She descended slowly, the wooden treads creaking beneath her feet. When she reached the bottom she stood dazed at the chaos before her.

The glass cases had been shattered, their contents gone. The bureaus lay open, their drawers bare. Here, too, the books had been pulled from the shelves and thrown to the floor. The cabinets that held paper maps stood empty. Sophia took in the destruction, too stunned to call out again. Everything, every single thing in the map room, had been destroyed or stolen. A broken glass map crunched beneath her boot and she looked down blankly at the shards. There was a long, jagged scar across the leather-topped table. She touched it gingerly, as if to make certain that it was real. Then she raised her head and her eye fell on the wall map above the armchairs: the map of her parents’ voyage. It had been torn in half, ripped clear through from one end to the other.

Sophia stared numbly at the pins that lay scattered around her on the chairs and carpet, a single thought running through her mind: Where is he? Where is Shadrack? Where is he? Then she heard a sound at the other end of the room, and for a moment she was unable to run or scream or even move. Heart pounding in her chest, she forced herself to turn slowly in the direction of the stairs. She saw nothing. It had been only a soft shuffle, but she had heard it, and now she was certain: it had come from the heavy wardrobe below the staircase.

She tiptoed across the carpet, avoiding the glass and picking up the broken leg of a chair. She held it before her with both hands. When she reached the steps, she stopped to listen and heard nothing but the rush of blood in her ears. She reached the wardrobe and paused, standing in front of it silently. Then she reached for the brass handle and in one smooth movement swung open the door.

Feathers, she thought, as the thing that burst from the wardrobe knocked her down flat. She lay there, stunned, staring up at the ceiling, and suddenly a face appeared above hers. The face seemed to have feathers sprouting from it in every direction.

Looking down at Sophia was the boy from Ehrlach’s Circus of the Ages.

7 Between Pages

1891, June 21, 15-Hour 52

Consider that we do not even know for certain whether the Great Disruption was caused by mankind and, if so, which Age of mankind caused it. Too many Ages remain unknown, entirely uncharted and beyond communication. Of the Ages we do know, all were thrust into a common confusion and chaos in the first years after the Disruption. All suffered disorientation, or sudden isolation, or unending cycles of violence. What Age would willingly bring this upon itself?

—From Shadrack Elli’s History of the New World

“HEY,” THE BOY said. “Are you okay?”

Sophia blinked.

“I’m sorry I knocked you over,” he said. “Are you okay? Say something.”

She raised herself on her elbow. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’m all right.” She stared at the boy sitting next to her on the carpet. “You were in the wardrobe,” she said.

“I was hiding. Where were you?”

“I just got here. I was out.” Now that the worst was over, the fear began to move in. She felt a cold tremor. The boy reached out a hand to help her, and she recoiled sharply.

“Hey, it’s okay. I won’t hurt you.” He spoke softly, with the truncated words and low twang of the northwest Baldlands. “I didn’t do this.”

Sophia got to her feet. “What happened? Where’s Shadrack?”

The boy looked at her with an odd expression. “Is he your father?”

She shook her head. Her jaw trembled so violently that her teeth had begun to chatter. “He’s my uncle. Where is he?” She glanced quickly across the room. “I have to look upstairs.”

“No, wait.” The boy held up a hand to stop her. “Don’t. He’s not there,” he said quietly.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know—I don’t know where he is now.”

“But you saw him?”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah, I saw him.” He was studying her, trying to decide what to say. “Do you live here? With Shadrack Elli?”

It was strange to hear her uncle’s name on the boy’s tongue. Sophia nodded impatiently. “Yes. Yes, I live here. I told you—he’s my uncle. Please, just tell me what happened!”

The boy paused a moment. “Sorry to have to tell you this. Your uncle is gone.”

Sophia felt as though all the air had been squeezed out of her. The words were a shock, but they also struck her as terribly familiar. Some part of her, she realized, always expected those she most loved to vanish.

“I came here looking for him. When I got here, the door was open. I could hear all kinds of noise inside, but I didn’t know what was going on.” He paused. “I waited in the bushes outside. After about half an hour, some men took your uncle out of the house.” The boy seemed to gauge Sophia’s response before continuing. “There were five of them. They put him and some boxes into a coach, and then they left. After they were gone, I went in, and when I heard you upstairs, I hid. I thought they had come back.” He looked away. “I’m sorry.”

“Who were they—what kind of men were they?”

“I don’t know. I mean, they were ordinary. Thugs, I guess.” He frowned. “A few of them had some”—he paused, drawing a finger across his face—“scars.”

Sophia swallowed hard. “Was he all right?” she asked with an effort. “Was he hurt?”

“He was fine,” the boy said firmly. “He was struggling with them—and he was talking back. He was angry, but he wasn’t hurt.”

Sophia felt her throat tensing, and she realized she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from crying. She turned away. “I need to be alone for a while,” she whispered.

“I’m really sorry,” the boy said. “I, uh . . .” he hesitated. “I’ll just be upstairs.”

Sophia heard him on the steps, and then the door closed, and then she stopped thinking of him altogether. All her thoughts turned to Shadrack and the fact that he was gone. She sank to the ground. Her sobs came in deep, painful gasps that finally gave way to tears.

None of it made any sense. How could Shadrack be gone—just like that? In the morning, she’d been sitting next to him in this very room, reading a map, and now the room was ruined and Shadrack was gone and she was alone—totally alone. She cried until her head ached, and then when her head hurt too much she sat listlessly on the carpet. Her head throbbed and she needed water and she felt empty, terribly empty.

If I hadn’t lost track of time, she thought. If I hadn’t lost track of time at the wharf, I would have been back earlier. I would be wherever he is now. And neither one of us would be alone.

Only a few minutes had passed, but time expanded around her, filled with a seemingly infinite sense of loss. He could be anywhere. He could be hurt, she realized, the thought pounding away at her head insistently.

She heard a sound from the library upstairs and brought herself painfully back to the present. Wiping her eyes, she took a deep breath and got to her feet. She couldn’t look around, couldn’t bear to see the beautiful map room in its ruined state, so she kept her eyes on the ground and made her way slowly up the stairs. When she reached the library, she closed the map room door behind her.

The boy was crouched on the floor, rummaging through maps on the carpet. He looked up at her and stopped what he was doing. “Hey,” he asked again. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

He nodded, then followed her gaze to the strewn papers around him. “I was just looking for a map. Maybe a map of New Occident. Does he have one? I mean, with all these maps lying around . . .”

“Yes,” Sophia said. Her mind moved very slowly. “I can find you one. But I can’t—not right now.”

“No,” he agreed. He stood and tried vainly to arrange some of the broken feathers strung around his waist. He and Sophia stared silently at one another for several seconds. “I’m Theo,” the boy finally said.

“Sophia,” she replied.

“Sophia, I should have explained that I came to find your uncle so that he could help me. I heard about him at the wharf—the famous cartologer in Boston. I thought he might help me get home. I’m not from here.”

“I know,” she said softly. “You’re a wild boy from the Baldlands.”

Theo paused in surprise and then one side of his mouth lifted in a smile. “Yes—I wasn’t sure you’d remember.”

“Dressed like that? You’re very memorable.”

“I guess that’s true.” Theo laughed. He glanced down at himself and then looked at her. “I ran away this morning. When the circus set out.”

“You ran away.”

“Yes.”

Sophia couldn’t think of what to say next. Her mind wasn’t working properly—she couldn’t think why it mattered that he had run away.

“Sophia,” Theo said. “You have to figure out what you want to do, and so do I. Could I—It’d be really nice if I could change out of this.”

She blinked. “You mean that’s not how you normally dress?”

Theo paused. “Of course not,” he finally said. “This was what that idiot Ehrlach put on me for the show.”

“Oh.”

“I could really use some soap,” Theo said. “And maybe some paint thinner. These are stuck on with honey and glue—they’re murder to wash off. And some clothes?”

“Of course.” Having to think about things like paint thinner and soap was a relief. She could tidy the house and put things in order. The paint thinner was in the washroom next to the kitchen; there were clean rags there, on the rag heap. She moved through the wrecked rooms, through the shattered china, torn paper, and broken furniture. It was as if she had been dropped in a stranger’s house. Oddly enough, this thought made it easier to bear. “You can use Shadrack’s bathroom,” she said, climbing the stairs. Theo followed her, leaving his telltale feathers everywhere.

Surprisingly, the second floor seemed untouched. The men must have found what they were looking for or believed there was nothing of value in the bedrooms. “I think there are some clothes of my uncle’s you can wear,” she said. “They might be a little big.”

“Anything you’ve got I’d appreciate,” Theo said. “So long as I don’t have to wear the feathers.”

Sophia looked through Shadrack’s wardrobe and found a small shirt and some pants and a belt. The shoes would all be too big. She pointed out the bathroom and gave Theo the paint thinner and the clothes. He said, “Thanks,” and then paused. “Hey, I—you’re not going anywhere, right?” Sophia looked at him blankly. “I was wondering—I’m going to need a place to stay. Just one night.”

Sophia realized what he was asking. “You can stay.”

“Thanks. I owe you.” He snapped his fingers with a practiced air, ending in a gesture like a pointed gun. “It would be good to get that map, too, if that’s okay. Tomorrow I’ll get out of your hair.”

The door shut, and after a moment Sophia heard the sound of running water.

Standing in Shadrack’s bedroom, which looked so normal, she was once again overcome. The leather armchair, the books on the end table beside it, and the piles of maps—it was as if her uncle had only left the room for a moment and was about to return. The blue rug was worn in a path from the door to the mahogany secretary, which, for once, stood unlocked and open. Sophia moved toward it, feeling a faint flutter in her stomach. Shadrack never left his desk open.

A splatter of ink on the blotter and the open journal left no doubt in her mind: Shadrack had been surprised while sitting here, writing. Seeing her name on the page, she read the last entry anxiously.

I struggle with how much to tell Sophia. She must understand the dangers, but there is a fine line between useful comprehension and needless alarm. While she left to buy supplies, I visited Carlton in the hospital, and I was shocked by his condition. The article did not mention the horrible mutilation of his limbs and face. I can only assume they mean to withhold this for purposes of the police inquiry. He does not recognize me; he recognizes no one. I doubt if he has preserved any cognitive faculties. He is like a helpless child. He makes inarticulate sounds, occasionally, and seems to feel pain when his injuries are dressed, but he has no other awareness of the world around him. It seems to me impossible that this could be the result of some ordinary assault. . . . Rather, I begin to suspect that someone

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 hall: 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 all: 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.

“This is it,” she said excitedly. “This is Shadrack’s atlas.” She flipped through it quickly. “It’s fine—all in one piece.” Then she showed Theo the cover, which read, in gold script, An Annotated and Descriptive Atlas of the New World, Including the Prehistoric Ages and the Unknown Lands, by Shadrack Elli.

“You mean it’s his,” Theo said, clearly impressed. “He wrote it.”

“Oh, yes—it is the best one. The others haven’t half the information.” Sophia opened the atlas quickly to the index. “Veressa,” she murmured. She ran her finger along the V column, but Veressa wasn’t there. “How strange. Every place in the atlas is listed here.”

“You’re looking at cities and towns,” Theo said, pointing to the page header. “Maybe it’s a lake or a desert or a forest or something else.”

“Maybe,” Sophia murmured. She was going through the index again when a sudden noise made her heart jump. Someone was rattling the side door of the house, the door that Sophia had closed behind her. She and Theo stared at each other, and for a few seconds neither of them spoke; they waited. Then they heard the sound of the door opening.

8 The Exile

1891, June 21, 18-Hour 07

New Occident’s northern border with the uninhabited Prehistoric Snows—also called the Northern Snows—remained an unprotected and undefined area. The western and southern borders, however, increasingly became contested zones between the people of the Baldlands and New Occident and its Indian Territories. Though determining an actual border would have been impossible, this did not prevent the inhabitants of the borderlands from going to extreme lengths to defend the boundaries where they imagined them to be.

—From Shadrack Elli’s History of New Occident

SOPHIA DOVE UNDER Shadrack’s heavy oak desk, dragging Theo with her. From the library there was no view of the side door, but as soon as whoever had entered the house came along the passageway they would be visible through the doorway. As it turned out, she didn’t have to wait that long.

“Fates protect us!” a woman’s voice cried out. “Mr. Elli! Sophia?”

“It’s our housekeeper,” Sophia told Theo as she scrambled out from under the desk. “I’m in the library, Mrs. Clay,” she called out. “In here.”

Mrs. Clay rushed into the library and stopped in the doorway, her eyes wide with fear. “What has happened here? Where is Mr. Elli?”

Sophia saw reflected in Mrs. Clay’s horrified expression the full scope of the destruction around her.

“We don’t know,” Theo replied when Sophia failed to answer. “He’s not here.”

Mrs. Clay turned to Theo, pausing as she took in his unexpected presence. “What do you mean? Who are you?”

“He was taken a few hours ago,” Theo said. He gestured at the destruction. “By force.” Mrs. Clay stared at him uncomprehendingly. “Theodore Constantine Thackary,” he added. “Theo for short.”

“Who? Who took him by force?”

“Some men. I couldn’t really see them very well. They had a coach. The coach . . .”

Sophia turned to him. “What is it?”

“I just remembered that the coach had something painted on the side—an hourglass.”

“That’s something to go on, I guess,” she said, disappointed.

Mrs. Clay, seeming strangely relieved by the mention of several men and a coach, reached out for Sophia and embraced her. Her frantic terror seemed to have subsided. “I am so sorry, Sophia. So, so sorry. What can I do to help?”

“Well, Shadrack left me a note.”

“A note!” exclaimed Mrs. Clay. “Surely that’s a good sign. What did it say?”

“He said to take his atlas and go to Veressa.” Sophia looked down at the book cradled in her arms. “We were just trying to find it when we heard you come in.”

Mrs. Clay had an odd expression. “What? You’re sure? He said Veressa?”

“Yes.”

“Show me,” she asked hoarsely.

Sophia put down the atlas and quickly retrieved the note from her drawing notebook. “It says ‘Go to Veressa.’” She looked at Mrs. Clay hopefully. “Do you know where that is? Do you think he might be there?”

Mrs. Clay took a deep breath and seemed to collect herself. “Sophia, this is so unexpected. I—I think there are some things I should tell you,” she said. She looked around. “Is the whole house this way?”

“No, they didn’t go upstairs.”

“Let’s go to my rooms, then, and get away from this terrible wreck. We will have something to eat, and I can tell you what I know. It might help.”

Sophia felt suddenly exhausted. She realized that the last thing she had eaten was the slice of bread on the way to Harding’s Supply. She was probably still trembling, in part, from hunger.

“Thank you, Mrs. Clay.” It gave her a pang to leave the library in such disorder, but she knew there was nothing else to be done now. She carefully tied her notebook closed and held it tightly along with Shadrack’s atlas.

The housekeeper’s third-floor apartment always made a striking contrast with the rest of the house; today, it did even more. The rooms were tidy and prettily arranged, with as much light as could be permitted through the open windows. A pale blue sofa dotted with white blossoms, a collection of empty birdcages, and a fragile white coffee table were the principal furnishings of her sitting room. Potted plants, many in bloom, dotted every surface: violets and palms and dozens of ferns. The air was thick with the smell of sun-warmed soil.

What always struck Sophia most was the sound—a light but constant tinkling, as if from hundreds of tiny bells. From every inch of the ceiling hung delicate sculptures: webs of thread strung with crystal, ceramic, and metal. The small globes, bells, mirrors, cylinders, and myriad other shapes turned slowly, colliding gently against one another and emitting a quiet chiming that filled the air. The sculptures almost gave the impression of living things, as if a flock of drowsy butterflies had come to rest in the rafters. Theo craned his neck to stare, fascinated. “I don’t like the silence,” the housekeeper explained to him. “I hope the noise doesn’t bother you.” She motioned toward the sitting room. “Why don’t you rest? I’ll just see about some coffee.”

Sophia perched herself on one of the chairs and tried not to think about what was waiting downstairs. The chimes soon began to have the soothing effect that was, no doubt, their intended purpose. She and Theo watched the sculptures turn slowly overhead as Mrs. Clay opened cupboards and set the kettle on the stove. “I’m sorry Shadrack won’t be able to help you,” Sophia finally said to Theo.

Theo shrugged. “That’s how it goes.”

“Is Ehrlach going to send someone after you?”

“No. He has no time,” Theo said with a half-smile. “He would have before, but now all he wants is to get in one last show in New York. The only good thing about the borders closing is that Ehrlach is out of business. Can’t really run a circus when every act in your show is illegal, can you? Although I guess,” he added, his smile fading, “he’ll just take the show somewhere else. People like the circus everywhere.”

Mrs. Clay came in with a tray, which she set on the low wooden coffee table. She’d brought cups and plates, butter and jam, and a loaf of brown bread with raisins. “I’ll be right back,” she said. When she returned with the coffee pot, she poured them each a cup and then sat back. She traced her temples with her fingertips and patted the bun at the nape of her neck, composing herself. Theo and Sophia ate hungrily. Sophia covered her brown bread with butter and jam and took big bites. As she sipped the warm coffee from its blue porcelain cup, she began to feel better.

“I’m afraid what I have to tell you is unpleasant,” Mrs. Clay began, focused on something neither of them could see at the bottom of her cup. “These are very painful memories for me. But Shadrack has told you to find Veressa, and I should explain to you why I can’t ever return to the Baldlands.”

Theo leaned forward. “You’re from the Baldlands?”

Mrs. Clay met his eyes. “Yes.”

“So am I.”

“I thought you might be. So I’m sure, once you hear my story, you’ll understand the difficulty I’m in. But to Sophia it is all new, and it will take some explaining. People here sometimes have trouble believing what it’s like outside—in the other Ages.”

Sophia drew her legs up underneath her on the velvet chair. Mrs. Clay’s voice, high-pitched and fluttery, echoed the quiet tinkling of the chimes overhead. “I don’t know how much your uncle has told you,” Mrs. Clay began, “about when we knew each other in the Baldlands.”

“He told me about the academy. That he studied there—for a couple of years, a long time ago. And that you worked there. Not much else.”

“That is correct. Many years ago, he was a student at the Royal Cartological Academy in Nochtland—the capital of the Baldlands and the largest city of the Triple Eras. You’ve never been to the Baldlands, Sophia, so it’s very hard to explain what it’s like, but I’m sure you’ve read about it and heard about it from your uncle.”

Sophia nodded.

“It has many regions, and each region contains many former Ages. Nochtland, where I am from, is a beautiful place—sometimes I miss it so much. I miss the gardens. And how, when it rains, it really rains. And the pace, so much slower and calmer.” She sighed. “But it’s also a terrible place. It’s a place where anything can happen and everything can change.” She shook her head, as if to clear her mind. “Let me tell you the story from the beginning.

“I first met Shadrack more than fifteen years ago. He was a young man in his twenties when he arrived at the academy of cartology in Nochtland. I was the housekeeper. It is a grand old stone building near the center of the city, with lovely courtyards and covered walkways. I had a staff of ten, and I ran everything—the cooking, the cleaning, the laundry. The academy had perhaps fifty students and teachers at any given time. I think it’s fair to say that I was good at my job.” Mrs. Clay smiled wistfully. Sophia smiled back, but in truth she had difficulty imagining the timid and rather scattered Mrs. Clay overseeing even one employee, let alone ten.

“I’d already been there several years when Shadrack arrived,” Mrs. Clay went on. “From the first moment we saw him, we knew he would do well. You see, having students from New Occident is very unusual. The professors, of course, come from almost all over the globe; but the students tend to be from the Baldlands. We were not certain students from New Occident even knew of our existence. Shadrack had somehow learned of the academy and was determined to go there despite—you’ll excuse me—the backwardness of his home age.

“During the two years he spent in Nochtland, he grew particularly close to one of the other students in his class, a young woman from the Baldlands—a very gifted cartologer. After the first year, when their degrees were conferred and they began their apprenticeships, they became inseparable. We all were sure they would get married and leave together, heading either north to New Occident or south to her family in Xela.

“But they didn’t. Shadrack finished his apprenticeship before she did, and their friendship seemed to cool. No one knew what had happened. And then, instead of waiting a month for her to finish her apprenticeship, Shadrack simply said his good-byes and left. It seemed to me that a part of her had left along with Shadrack. I liked her very much, and I worried about her.” Mrs. Clay paused. “Her name was Veressa.”

Sophia sat up straight. “What? Veressa is a person?”

Mrs. Clay nodded. “She was at one point your uncle’s closest friend.”

“But he’s never mentioned her,” Sophia protested.

“Well, as I said, the two of them evidently had a falling out just before Shadrack left. For all I know, they never spoke again. I wouldn’t be surprised if Shadrack hasn’t mentioned her because the recollection is painful.”

Sophia shook her head. “He never told me any of this.”

“I’m sure he has good reasons,” Mrs. Clay said quietly. “You and Shadrack are as close as two people can be.” She furrowed her brow. “Let me tell you the rest.” She poured herself more coffee and took several sips. She seemed to be gathering her thoughts—and her strength.

—19-Hour #: Mrs. Clay Tells of the Lachrima—

“AFTER SHADRACK LEFT,” Mrs. Clay began, “Veressa was slow to complete her apprenticeship. She was not well during that time; she seemed only a shadow of her former self. I think she must have loved your uncle very much. When she graduated, she came by my room to say good-bye, but I wasn’t there. She left me a box of sugared flowers.” Mrs. Clay smiled. “Even when she was unhappy, she was always very kind. Well . . . I never saw her again. I heard her name now and then from the professors, but Nochtland is a big city and you can live within its walls a lifetime without ever seeing most of its inhabitants.

“Then we had some quiet years. The students came and went, and the professors continued their teaching and their research. I was very happy. Then, about seven years ago, my troubles began.” Mrs. Clay stared into her coffee cup and sighed. “No matter how much you’ve read, Sophia, there are things you don’t know about the Baldlands. There are,” she paused, “creatures there that don’t exist here. Oh, I know they make a fuss about the raiders at the borders and people with wings or tails or whatever else. But those are, after all, still people. There are other creatures that few have seen and that no one understands. It was my misfortune to meet one.

“I remember that I first heard it on a beautiful Sunday in October. Most of the students spent Sunday resting in the gardens or visiting attractions in the city. I had hung all the bed linens to dry on the back patio, and because the sun was so pleasant I sat at the edge of the courtyard, watching the white sheets flutter in the breeze. My staff took Sunday afternoon off, so I knew I was alone. In those days I wasn’t afraid of the silence, the way I am now—on the contrary. I sat there for nearly half an hour, simply soaking in the sun and the silence. And then I heard it. At first I thought it might be coming from the street, but it sounded much too close. It was the quiet, unmistakable sound of someone weeping.

“I sat up, concerned. The sound was quiet but piercing; a stab of grief pulled me to my feet. My thought was that one of my staff had holed up on the back patio to have a cry. I went to look, and as a sheet fluttered in the wind I saw someone hurrying away. Perplexed, I tried to follow, but the person was gone.

“The sound of weeping continued from one of the rooms—I did not know which—and as it did all the sadness of those muffled cries pierced me, so that tears spilled down my cheeks. Suddenly, I was grieving, too. I took all of the bed linens, which had dried, off the laundry lines, and then stood in the middle of the empty patio, trying to control my tears and pinpoint where the sound came from. That’s how two of the girls who worked in the kitchen found me—standing there, crying. As soon as they approached me, the weeping stopped and the sense of despair I had felt lifted. ‘Did you hear that?’ I asked them. They shook their heads, shocked at my appearance. ‘Hear what?’ they asked.

“The next day, I heard it again—the moment I awoke—and the horrible sensation of grief returned. Before even getting dressed, I knocked on the doors of the rooms to my right and left. No one was weeping; no one could tell me where the sound I heard came from. Still, I believed that there had to be someone who was hiding, sneaking into corners to cry in private. And over the next few days, the weeping grew more constant. I began to hear it everywhere, all the time, even when others were present. And then they began to hear it, too.

“Wherever I went, the sound of weeping followed, and the sadness began to wear on me; though I knew it had no rational cause, as long as the weeping was audible my grief was uncontrollable. The sound was heartbreaking. At times, the thing I heard wept quietly, bitterly. At other times, it moaned and sobbed. And still other times it nearly screamed, as if subjected to some terrible violence. I had no choice, then, but to accept the truth: I was being followed by a Lachrima.”

Theo made a noise of surprise. “A real Lachrima?”

Sophia remembered what she had heard Mrs. Clay saying to Shadrack, on the day parliament had closed the borders, and she asked the question she had been unable to ask then. “What’s a Lachrima?’

“I’ve never seen one,” Theo said. “They’re supposed to be horrible.”

The housekeeper nodded sadly. “They are. No one knows what the Lachrima are or where they come from. Some believe they are spirits. Others believe they are creatures from a terrible future Age. There are so many stories about them that it’s hard to know which are true. All I know is what I heard—and saw.”

“You saw it?” Theo asked breathlessly.

“For several weeks, the professors at the academy put up with it very kindly, insisting that the presence of the Lachrima was no fault of mine. But the truth is that everyone—not just me—found it unbearable. Imagine what it is like to hear the sound of weeping all the time—even when you are trying to sleep. Imagine feeling that burden of inexplicable, inconsolable grief. For the sake of the others, I shut myself up in my room, thinking that, if I simply waited, the Lachrima would tire of following me and go on its way.

“One night that week, I finally saw it. The exhaustion of several days without sleep caught up with me, and I fell finally into a heavy slumber. I woke in the middle of the night to a terrible sound—horrible cries, like those made by a frightened animal. I sat up with a start, my heart pounding. And then I saw it. The Lachrima was huddled by my bed.”

“What did it look like?” Theo asked eagerly.

“Very much as I’d heard it described, only far more frightening than I’d imagined. It was tall and slender, dressed in thin white robes that trailed down to the floor. Its hair was dark and very long, and its face was buried in its hands. Its whole appearance was worn, as if it had lived for years in some dirty corner and was only now emerging. And then, as it continued to weep, the Lachrima lowered its hands from its face.

“I could never have imagined anything so horrible. I saw that its face—its face wasn’t there. The Lachrima had only smooth white skin: skin that showed clearly the shape of its eye sockets and mouth and jaw; skin that looked as if someone had smoothed away all its features.

“For a moment I was too terrified to do anything. And then I bolted from my bed and ran. Though I fled to the other side of the house, I could still hear its distant wails. When I returned to my room at dawn it was empty, but the sound was still in my ears, and I knew, then, that I had to leave. That very morning I packed my belongings and told the director of the academy. He didn’t try to stop me.

“Part of me had, perhaps, hoped that if I left the academy the Lachrima would remain behind. But of course this didn’t happen. For months I tried to outrun it, staying first in Nochtland and then in the smaller towns outside it. Everywhere I went the Lachrima followed, bringing me and everyone near me nothing but terror and despair. After many months of attempting to elude it, I finally made my way north to the border. I no longer cared where I went or what I did, as long as the sound of weeping stopped. The grief wore so heavily upon me that I could not remember what it felt like to live without it. In those days I had yet to discover my faith in the Fates, for the people of the Baldlands follow other religions. But now that I know and believe in those fickle, kind, cruel, and mysterious powers, I believe they were setting me on a deliberate path. They had woven a terrible net around me and were insistently drawing me forward.

“On a day in November, more than a year after the Lachrima first appeared, I found myself in the northern Baldlands, near the border of New Akan. A family of traders was leaving the state, and they took pity on me and took me with them. We entered New Occident at night, and I remember that I fell asleep in the open wagon, listening to the quiet, incessant weeping and watching the stars above me. Then I fell asleep.

“When I awoke, it was midmorning and the young mother sitting next to me in the wagon was quieting her crying baby. The baby began sucking its fingers and a complete silence fell upon us. I could hear the steady clomp of the horses’ hooves and the creaking of the wagon wheels and the satisfied noises of the drowsy baby. The weeping of the Lachrima had stopped.

“I knew only one person in New Occident—your uncle, Sophia—and I went about trying to find him. Fortunately, he had made quite a name for himself, and it wasn’t difficult to learn that he lived in Boston. I took the train, and when I arrived I asked Shadrack to help me. He was kinder than I ever could have expected—as you know, Sophia. You have both been very kind to me. With time, I discovered that though the Lachrima was gone, it had left me changed. Now I cannot bear to be in silence. And I find that I can no longer concentrate as I used to.” Mrs. Clay shook her head. “My mind isn’t what it was. Still, living with the memory of the Lachrima is better than living with the Lachrima itself. You see now, don’t you, why I can never go back?”

9 Departure

— 1891, June 22, 0-Hour 54—

Citizens of New Occident who wish to travel beyond its borders must now carry the identity papers and lifewatch issued at birth, along with an official birth certificate. The serial number engraved on the lifewatch must correspond to the identity number found on the birth certificate. Certified copies by a clerk of court are acceptable in cases where originals have been destroyed.

—Parliamentary decree, June 14, 1891

THEO HAD TO satisfy his curiosity about the appearance of the Lachrima, and Sophia had to learn as much as she could about Veressa. Mrs. Clay told them what she knew, and it was very late when they finally exhausted their questions. She persuaded them to stay the night in her sitting room, in case anyone came to the house, saying that they would all decide what to do in the morning.

The tinkling sound of the chimes above Sophia’s head and the anxious thoughts coursing through her brain prevented her from sleeping. The image of Shadrack being led out of the house returned to her, followed by a vision of a faceless creature, wild with grief. Sophia opened her eyes to dispel the image. She could see in the dim light that Theo, bedded down on the carpet, wasn’t sleeping either.

“Poor Mrs. Clay,” Sophia whispered. “I had no idea she had such a terrible story in her past.”

“I wish I’d seen the Lachrima,” Theo whispered back.

“Why would you wish that? Look what it did to Mrs. Clay!”

“I’ve heard that if you get close enough you can see through their skin, and that they actually have faces underneath. But hardly anyone gets the chance. If you ask me, the risk is absolutely worth it.”

“I suppose. But if I have to go the Baldlands, I would rather not see or even hear one.”

She could feel Theo’s attention sharpening. “So you’re going to the Baldlands?”

“I have to. Shadrack said to find Veressa, and that’s probably where she is. I think I have to go to Nochtland and ask at the academy.”

Theo lay silently in the darkness for a several seconds. “Tell you what,” he said eventually. “Seeing as I don’t have papers, it’d be a lot easier for me to get back to the Baldlands if I traveled with you. If you see me to the border, I’ll help you get from there to Nochtland.”

Sophia knew she could not ask Mrs. Clay to accompany her. Miles and the other explorers Shadrack counted as friends were gone, quick to leave after news of the borders’ closing. Traveling by train to New Orleans, the closest point to Nochtland, would be easy, but traveling into the Baldlands by herself would be a significant challenge. Sophia knew she could do it; she had confidence in herself as an explorer. She also knew that she could use help. “Okay,” she said. “Thanks,” she added, after a moment.

“No problem. Only fair—you help me, I’ll help you.” She heard him turn over and settle himself for sleep.

Sophia closed her eyes, somewhat relieved now that she had a way forward, a way to follow Shadrack’s instructions. But she did not sleep. Her mind turned gratefully from the disturbing images of Shadrack and the Lachrima to train schedules and other preparations. She began listing the items that she would need to pack.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a sound beyond that of the chimes. She lay with her eyes closed as Theo rose from his pallet and left the room. Sophia thought nothing of it until she heard, with surprise, that he was opening the door to the downstairs apartments. Her eyes flew open. She lay motionlessly for a moment longer, listening as he walked down the steps, and then she got to her feet.

She could hear Theo downstairs. He had stopped on the second floor. Sophia could see the pale yellow light of the flame-lamps stretching over the floorboards of the hallway. She frowned, a sense of unease spreading through her. What is he doing? she wondered. Very quietly, she began descending the steps to the second floor.

By letting her sense of time relax, Sophia could move so slowly that she made almost no sound. Several minutes later, she stood in the doorway of Shadrack’s bedroom, watching as Theo opened and closed the drawers of her uncle’s wardrobe. “What are you doing?” she demanded.

Theo jumped. Then he saw Sophia in the doorway, he shook his head, chuckling. “You’re good at that. How’d you walk down so quiet?”

“What are you doing in Shadrack’s room?”

“Don’t get upset,” Theo said placatingly. “I just had an idea.”

“What idea?” Sophia asked. For a moment she thought he might have remembered a clue, a sign: something that would lead them to Shadrack.

“I was thinking that, you know, likely your uncle didn’t have time to take his papers and lifewatch.”

The next moments expanded in her mind to encompass a much longer sense of betrayal. “You were going to take them?” she whispered. “You were going to steal Shadrack’s papers?”

“No!” Theo protested. “No, I wasn’t going to . . . steal them.”

“Then what?”

“I just thought it would make the trip easier if I had them—you know, if I borrowed them.”

“You were going to take Shadrack’s papers and leave on your own,” Sophia said, her tone hardening.

Theo rolled his eyes. “I was not. I was going to use the papers so it would be easier along the way and then give them back to you when we got to the Baldlands.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Why would you need to travel with me anyway if you had papers? Stolen papers,” she added bitterly.

“Because I already said I would,” Theo replied, suddenly angry as well. “I said I would go with you—we agreed.”

“Then you could have just waited until the morning and asked. Don’t you think I know where Shadrack keeps his papers?” Sophia’s voice was trembling.

“Fine, if you don’t want to believe me,” Theo shot back. “So what if I was going off on my own? What’s that to you?”

“I—”

“Your uncle can get new papers any time.” Theo took a deep breath. “I’m used to looking after myself, and that means worrying about myself first. You think I worried what would happen to Ehrlach without his caged pet? No. Where I come from you can’t think about other people first. It’s every man for himself.”

“I see,” Sophia said, stung. “So I’m just like Ehrlach then—Shadrack is just like Ehrlach. Every man for himself. Is that what you were thinking when you saw them taking Shadrack away?”

Theo paced angrily. “Yes. That’s exactly what I was thinking. One kid in feathers and five armed men. Not exactly good odds. I could have run into that mess, and right now I’d be wherever your uncle is. That would have been no help to either of us. Or I could have done what I did: watch what happened, stick around to tell you about it, and be here to help you get into the Baldlands.”

“Why should you help me? You don’t even care what happened to Shadrack! You just want his papers.” Sophia clenched her fists to steady herself.

Theo gave a sharp sigh of frustration. “Look, you’ve got the wrong idea. Yes—I’d rather do things on my own. That’s how I’ve always been, and I’m not going to apologize for it. But I keep my word. We agreed to help each other, and I’m going to stick to that. You can think what you like; I wasn’t going to take your uncle’s papers. I was just thinking about what would make getting to Nochtland easier.”

Sophia stared at Theo—his brown eyes, narrowed to wary slits, his hands clenched—and she realized that she had no idea who he was. The sense of sudden familiarity, that she could trust him, that he could be a friend, evaporated. “You should go on your own,” she said out loud, her cheeks burning. “I’ll be fine.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Right now it only makes sense for us to help each other. Come on, think about it,” Theo said in an appeasing tone. “Do you have any idea how to get to Nochtland from the border?”

Sophia was silent. She felt a surge of panic at the thought. “Fine,” she said quietly.

“Good,” Theo said. “Our agreement stands, then.” He smiled, every trace of anger suddenly gone from his face.

Sophia took in his easy smile with indignation, giving him only a grimace in return. “Shadrack keeps his papers in a leather wallet in his vest,” she said softly. “And his lifewatch is on a chain clipped to his pocket. I’m sure he has them both.” Without waiting for a reply, she turned, her hair whisking across her shoulder, and stalked up to Mrs. Clay’s sitting room.

Soon Theo joined her there, stretching out on the carpet beside the sofa. Sophia was still angry; she could feel the blood pounding in her temples. And she was anxious; she knew she had no better alternative, but the thought of relying on Theo, who now seemed so unpredictable and unknown, filled her with apprehension. She tried to calm herself by staring overhead at the slow rotation of the chimes. They reflected the pale light from the window, casting small glimmers on the wall and ceiling. After several minutes had passed, she heard Theo’s heavy breathing and knew that he was asleep. She cast a sharp glance in his direction. Every man for himself, Sophia thought bitterly. What kind of philosophy is that? Not the kind of philosophy that makes you want to rescue someone in a cage, that’s for sure. I wish I’d never even thought of helping him.

— 8-Hour 35: Waking at Mrs. Clay’s—

SOPHIA AWOKE WHEN the sun was already high. She checked her watch; it was past eight. Theo still lay fast asleep on the carpet, his face turned toward the wall. Sophia smelled eggs and coffee. In the kitchen, she found Mrs. Clay standing at the stove, quietly humming. With her hair in its usual tidy bun and her dress protected by an embroidered white apron, she seemed calm and well refreshed.

“Good morning, Mrs. Clay,” Sophia said.

“Good morning!” the housekeeper replied, turning to her. “Come have some breakfast. I’m feeling optimistic, Sophia.” She brought a pan of scrambled eggs from the stove and scooped a large portion onto Sophia’s plate. “I feel confident that the Fates will be assisting you.”

“Do you think so?” Sophia asked anxiously, taking a seat. Shadrack thought the Fates were a tolerable convention, at best, and a dangerous delusion, at worst. Sophia wanted to follow Shadrack’s example and scoff at such fancies, but part of her worried that the unjust removal of her parents rather verified the existence of those three cruel, arbitrary powers who spun sorrow and misfortune and death as easily as others spun cloth. The more Mrs. Clay had talked about them over the years, the more Sophia became convinced that the Fates were real, and they fashioned all the happenings of the world, weaving them into a pattern only the three of them could comprehend.

“I have taken the liberty,” Mrs. Clay went on, pouring Sophia a cup of coffee, “of speaking with the Fates on your behalf.” She retrieved her sewing basket from the sideboard. “They really are the most difficult creatures.” She shook her head. “Totally heartless. They refused to say anything at all about Shadrack. But they seemed encouraging about your reaching Veressa. They were most insistent that I give you this.” She handed Sophia a spool of silver thread. “Who knows what they intend you to do with it,” she sighed. “They are fickle, at best—cruel at worst. But I have found that it is generally wise to do as they say when they make such specific recommendations.”

“Thank you,” Sophia said with sincere gratitude. She tucked the spool into her pocket. “Perhaps they will help me along the way.”

“Perhaps so. It’s the least I can do, dear, since I can’t go with you. Good morning, Theo,” she added.

Sophia turned to see a sleepy-looking Theo in the kitchen doorway. She turned back to her plate with annoyance.

“Good morning,” Theo replied.

“I hope you slept well.”

“Very well. The carpet was extremely comfortable. Were you discussing travel plans?” he asked, sitting down at the table.

“We hadn’t begun. Would you like some eggs?” Mrs. Clay asked, going to the stove.

“I’d love some, Mrs. Clay,” Theo said in his most courteous tone. Sophia stared into her cup. “We talked it over last night,” he went on comfortably, “and we’ve agreed to travel as far as Nochtland together. Right, Sophia?” He smiled at her.

Sophia looked at him unsmilingly. “That’s what we agreed.”

“I could travel as far as the border with you,” Mrs. Clay said uncertainly, handing Theo a full plate.

“That’s kind of you, Mrs. Clay,” Sophia told her, “but the trip to New Orleans will be easy. We’ll probably just have to change trains once.” She did not add that it was the next part of the journey that worried her: where she was most needed, Mrs. Clay could not help. Maybe we’ll get to the border and Theo will just vanish, she thought.

“They will check for papers on the train,” Mrs. Clay said. “I’ve heard that they’re putting foreigners on separate cars.”

“Yes, but I’ll have my papers, and they won’t bother Theo if he’s with me,” Sophia said flatly. “It isn’t July fourth yet.”

“Theo, do you need to get word to anyone? The trip to Nochtland will delay you by several weeks.”

“My family’s not expecting me back for a while,” he replied easily.

“And you’ll take care of Sophia once you reach the Baldlands?”

“Of course. I’ve traveled that route dozens of times—no problem.”

“It seems a terribly long way for you both to go alone,” Mrs. Clay said. She patted her bun and sighed. “If only I knew someone who lived near the border.”

“The greatest help,” Sophia said, “would be to stay here in case Shadrack returns. Otherwise we’ll have no way of knowing.”

“Thanks to him I now have papers and a lifewatch, so I can stay without concern. If something should happen in the next twenty hours, I will send letters by express post to the first major station on your route.”

With a train schedule from Shadrack’s study spread out across the kitchen table, they decided to take the train south through New Occident, all the way to Charleston, South Carolina, and then connect to a train heading west into New Akan. The journey would take several days. The train line ran only as far as New Orleans, and they would have to cross from New Occident into the Baldlands either on horse or on foot.

Sophia looked apprehensively at the blank expanse that bordered New Akan to the west and south. She folded the map slowly. “We should pack,” she said. “Maybe we can catch the midday train to Charleston.”

—9-Hour 03: Leaving for Charleston—

SOPHIA RETRIEVED HER new pack from where she had left it by the front door. She had never imagined it would be put to use so soon. Pulling a small leather trunk out of the wardrobe in her bedroom, she began stowing her clothes, soap, a hairbrush, and a pair of blankets. Though her everyday boots were comfortable enough, she decided to take the laced leather shoes that she used during the school year for athletic competitions. If nothing else went as planned, at least she would be able to run as fast as her feet could carry her. Theo watched from the doorway. “You can borrow any shirts of Shadrack’s that fit,” she said, without looking up. “And his socks are in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe. But you probably remember seeing them there yourself.”

“Very kind of you,” Theo said with a smile, acknowledging the barb. “So you’re still mad?”

“I am fine,” Sophia said, pushing down on the blankets so that they fit.

“All right, if you say so. I’ll be back in a bit—I have to get some shoes.”

Sophia closed her trunk and opened her pack. Sewn from durable, waterproof canvas, it had multiple pockets inside and out. She tucked her pencils, erasers, and a ruler into the pockets. She took a spare pillowcase from her wardrobe, wrapped the glass map in it and put it inside her current drawing notebook alongside Shadrack’s note. The book and atlas fit nicely. Steeling herself, she went once more to Shadrack’s room and opened the bureau drawer where he kept their currency. After folding the bills into a small leather purse beside her identity papers and her lifewatch, she closed the bureau. She tidied the drawers that Theo had left open and straightened the bed. Then, with one last look around the room, she slung the pack’s straps over her shoulders and headed downstairs to find maps for their trip to Nochtland.

When Theo returned, he was wearing a pair of handsome brown boots that looked worn but well cared for. He seemed very pleased with himself. “Where’d you get those?” Sophia asked suspiciously.

“Nice, aren’t they? I went around the block until I found a cobbler, and then I just went in and told him that I’d paid for and left a pair of size ten boots there months earlier and had lost the slip. He searched around in the back room and came back with these. He said he’d been on the verge of throwing them away!”

“Well, I hope someone doesn’t stop you on the street and ask for them back,” she said tersely. She carefully rolled the maps that lay before her on the table and placed them in the new roll-tube. “I have plenty of maps for the rail journey, and I found a map of Nochtland, but there’s nothing with enough detail for the border and nothing for the whole piece of the Baldlands between the border and Nochtland.”

“I told you—I know that part,” Theo said. “No need for a map.”

They heard steps on the stairs. “I’ve packed you some food,” said Mrs. Clay as she entered, handing Theo a basket that appeared full to the brim. “I’m sorry I can’t do more.” Her eyes grew teary. “I’m sorry, Sophia dear, for all of this.” She cleared her throat. “Are you packed?”

“We’re ready to go,” Sophia said.

Mrs. Clay embraced her warmly. “Do be careful, dear. Don’t worry about me or the house—we’ll be fine. Just take care. I have your schedule, and I’ll be here to tell Shadrack what happened should he return.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Clay.”

The housekeeper shook hands with Theo. “You must take care of each other,” she said. “And may the Fates look after you well.”