S. Grove - The Glass Sentence

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.”