S. Grove - The Glass Sentence

“Everything?”

“All the memories that I had the day they were lost.” Blanca sighed. “I remembered my home—my Age.” Sophia could hear a smile in her voice as she continued. “The wondrous Glacine Age. I remembered being only a few years older than you are now when the Great Disruption occurred. The beautiful and terrible Disruption, which felt like falling into a deep pit of endless light.” Blanca stood and walked to the window. She looked out into the gardens with the glass bells tinkling quietly above her. “It was the day I turned twenty. I had gone to our Hall of Remembrances to spend my birthday among its beautiful maps.” She saw Sophia’s enquiring look. “It was a great chamber, with maps recounting the city’s history. The Glacine Age has many such edifices.” Blanca paused. “You have seen one, as a matter of fact.”

Sophia blinked in surprise. “I have?”

“The four maps,” she replied quietly. “The memories in the four maps took place in such a hall.”

Sophia recalled the long climb up a spiraling stairwell, the many people around her, and the building’s slow collapse. “But does that mean the Disruption occurred in your Age?”

“I do not know,” Blanca said so softly that Sophia almost could not hear her. “I do not know. I am still attempting—” Her voice suddenly broke with frustration. “I am still attempting to understand the maps. What I do know,” she went on more firmly, turning back toward Sophia, “is that the carta mayor will explain everything.”

She crossed the room to open a low cabinet and returned holding something which she handed to Sophia: her pack. “I believe there are other things besides the maps of value to you here.” Sophia took it in silence and held it closely to her chest. “I cannot stop the glaciers. But I have appealed to your uncle to do what he can—not only for my Age, but for all the Ages: for the world. Now I make that appeal to you, as well. You are the only one who can persuade him.” Blanca’s voice, musical and mournful, filled Sophia with a sudden sense of longing for all the things she would never see once the Southern Snows had encased the world in ice. She would never see the distant Ages she yearned to explore; she would never see Boston again, or the house on East Ending Street; and she would never, she thought desperately, see the parents she hoped were still somewhere far away, waiting to be found. “This New World is ending,” Blanca went on, as if reading Sophia’s thoughts. “But we can still determine what takes its place. If your uncle helps me to find and rewrite the carta mayor , we can ensure that the world emerging from the destruction is a whole world—a good world. Now that I have read the four maps, I am more convinced than ever. He is our only hope.”

“Shadrack will not do it,” Sophia said matter-of-factly, without hostility. “Even if he could. He said so.”

The tinkling of the glass bells mingled with the distant laughter and music that drifted up from the gardens. “Perhaps your uncle has not told you,” Blanca finally said, “how complete the carta mayor is. The map shows everything that has happened and everything that will happen. Do you know what that means?”

Sophia gazed at the scars on Blanca’s face, a slight spark of an idea forming in her mind. “I think so.”

“It means that if Shadrack read the map, he could tell you anything you might want to know. Anything. All your curiosities about the past, satisfied. The carta mayor would allow you to know, once and for all, what happened to Bronson and Minna Tims so many years ago.”

Sophia felt a sharp sting at the edge of her eyes.

“Yes, I know of their disappearance,” Blanca said gently. “I know many things about you, Sophia: I know of your illustrious family past; I know that you and Shadrack are inseparable; I know that you have no sense of time. Carlton Hopish’s memories of you are fond ones.” She paused. “I cannot give you your parents back,” she continued, her voice heavy with sadness, “but with the carta mayor I can tell you for certain what became of them.”

Sophia stared down at her lap and struggled to hold back her tears. To know for certain what became of them, she thought numbly.

As if sensing her confusion, Blanca leaned forward. “Think what that would mean.” Then she gracefully stood and walked slowly to one of the wardrobes that stood against the wall. “Have you ever seen a water map?”

“No,” Sophia said dully. “I was only starting to learn about maps.”

“It may interest you to see one,” Blanca said, returning with a white bowl and a tall glass flask. “They are rare. They require skill and a patience few possess. They are made of condensation. Drop by drop, the mapmaker encapsulate the meanings of the map in vaporized water, then gathers those vapors to make a whole. This one was made in a cave far north in the Prehistoric Snows. The mapmaker, who was also an explorer, recounted his journey there.” Placing the bowl on the table that stood between them, she uncorked the flask and poured out its contents. To Sophia it looked like an ordinary bowl of water, except for the fact that it was unnaturally still.

Blanca returned to the wardrobe and came back with the glass map, which she held over the bowl. “Do you see how it changes the appearance of the water?”

Sophia beheld what looked like a bowl full of shimmering light. She nodded.

Putting the glass aside, Blanca held a small white stone over the bowl of water, which looked ordinary once more. “Now watch the surface.” The stone fell from her fingers into the bowl. The ripples that formed in the water took on extraordinary shapes, rising like hills, dipping into shallow valleys, and curling into unlikely spirals high above the rim. Fine lines of color wove through the water, giving the shapes texture and depth.

Sophia gasped despite herself and leaned in to see more. “How do you read it?”

“It requires years of study. I am barely able to understand them. Your uncle,” she added, “is the only person I know who can both read and write water maps. Both are difficult, but it can be done. The Tracing Glass before you makes it easier; it is one of the most powerful instruments in the world, and with it your uncle could certainly revise the water map you see before you.”

Sophia could not take her eyes from the color-laced terrain. “It is beautiful,” she whispered.

“Imagine a map like this one, but as wide as a lake and with the mysteries of the world written upon it,” Blanca murmured. “Wouldn’t you wish to see it? Wouldn’t you wish to gaze upon the living world on the water’s surface? To ask it your questions and hear its secrets?” She gently lowered the Tracing Glass and sat down. Before her lay an ordinary bowl of water with a small stone at the bottom.

Sophia sat back with a sigh. She listened to the laughter from the garden and let her eyes drift from the water map to Blanca’s face. The sense of sadness she had felt, imagining the Ages that would be lost beneath the glaciers, changed as suddenly and swiftly as the surface of the water. What had been lying still within her suddenly rose up, taking definite shape. She saw the course she had to follow clearly, as if it were drawn on a map. She stood up. “Give me a chance to talk alone with Shadrack,” Sophia told Blanca. “I will convince him.”

1891, July 1: 2-Hour 21

Tell me whether you hear the Lachrima,

That voice of Ages lost.

It has wept beside me once before

When I had no sense of its cost.