S. Grove - The Glass Sentence

“Are you all right?” Shadrack asked her anxiously.

“What happened?” she asked in reply.

“The pit we were in flooded. It was a long time before the guards heard us calling,” Shadrack said ruefully. “But that doesn’t matter. Are you all right? What did she want?”

Sophia seemed hardly to hear him. “So now they’ve left you here? We’re alone?”

“Did you see Blanca?” he pressed. “What did she ask of you?”

“She wanted me to persuade you,” she said, not looking at him but scanning the enormous chamber, “to change the carta mayor. ”

“Sophia,” Shadrack said, taking her by the shoulders, “what is it? Your mind is elsewhere—what are you looking for?”

“The entryway. When we first came in earlier, I saw it—there was an opening on the other side of the room. If they left us here—”

“It is not an exit,” Veressa said wearily. “It leads to the labyrinth—a maze of ruined passages. They only left us here because they know we would never go in. Father and I have been in the entrance to take soil samples. No one has gone beyond that point since the last court cartologer”—and here she paused— “vanished attempting to map it.”

“I knew it!” Sophia cried, to everyone’s surprise. She ran to the nearest wall, where the pale vines that grew in the corridor and lined the dungeon were faintly luminous in the firelight. “It’s here, Shadrack!” she burst out, unable to contain her excitement. “I saw it through the glass map when Blanca held it up. Before—when she first took it from my pack.”

Shadrack shook his head uncomprehendingly. “What is here, Soph? What do you mean?”

“I saw them through the Tracing Glass,” she said impatiently. “These vines—they’re not just vines—they’re a map. ”

At this, the wet prisoners still sitting by the fire rose and joined her at the wall. Shadrack examined the vines with amazement. “Are you sure?” he said slowly.

“I’m sure. Martin,” she asked, “do you know what kind of plant this is?”

He shook his head. “It has a popular name—Nighting Vine—but I have never been able to identify its origins. The vine is exceedingly rare and only grows underground.”

Veressa, standing beside Shadrack, examined the pale leaves critically. “It has no inscription, no legend of any kind. It may be the beginnings of a map, not yet full grown.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” Shadrack said. “Or, if it is a map, then it is beyond my ability to read.” He let the vine drop and shook his head regretfully. “I would have no idea how to—”

“But it is not on the leaves ,” Sophia cut in. “It is the whole plant . Look! Do you see how here there is one vine growing out of the floor, and against the far wall there is another? There, by the doorway, is a third. And all of them are identical!”

“Identical how?” Veressa asked, as she compared the three.

“The pattern of how they grow on the wall—the vines spread out in the exact same way, with the same twists and turns. Like a map,” Sophia triumphantly finished.

As she spoke, her listeners stood transfixed. The pale creeper, so delicate in appearance and yet so hardy in its growth against the dank stone, fanned out across the wall in hundreds of thin tendrils. The pattern was dense, making it hardly possible to determine whether they were truly similar, and yet if one followed a single route along the vine it became evident that the plants were, in fact, identical. “How on earth did you notice?” Veressa exclaimed, running her hand admiringly across the wall. “They are incredibly complex.”

Shadrack laughed with astonished delight. “It’s your artist’s eye, Soph,” he cried, taking her by the shoulders. “Your artist’s eye!” She smiled as he released her. And Theo, winking, caught Sophia’s eye and snapped his fingers into a little handgun of approval.

“And you think this is a map to the labyrinth?” Veressa asked, deferring to Sophia.

“Couldn’t it be? I don’t know how or why, but I think the maps to the labyrinth grow from the labyrinth itself.”

“Marvelous—just marvelous,” Martin whispered, lovingly tracing his finger along the winding vine.

“But where is the exit?” Veressa continued. “The vine leads to nothing but itself.”

“I can’t be sure,” Sophia admitted, “but look—look at these,” she said, pointing to three white flowers with fragile petals. “They grow away from the wall—upward. Don’t you think these might be three ways out of the labyrinth?”

The others regarded the nighting vine in silence. “It’s impossible to know for certain,” Shadrack said pensively, running a hand through his hair.

Sophia hurriedly retrieved her notebook. “If we can draw it,” she said, “then we’ll have a map to the labyrinth.”

“It will be a great risk.”

“Assuredly,” Veressa agreed, “but I see no better option. We have no other means of escape, and I doubt we have much time—perhaps a day.”

“It is far more satisfying an option than waiting here,” Burr put in, and Calixta nodded.

Shadrack took a deep breath. “Then we must hurry.”

—4-Hour 02: Drawing the Nighting Vine—

ALMOST AN HOUR later, Sophia, Veressa, and Shadrack were still drawing the nighting vine, each creating a copy in the hope that having duplicates would correct any discrepancies. Sophia’s eyes ached from concentrating in the poor firelight as she penciled in the last few lines and began checking the map. “You know,” she said softly to Theo, “you’d be pleased. I lied to Blanca. It was easy.”

Theo lay on his stomach and he turned to face her. “What did I tell you?” He smiled. “Comes in handy, doesn’t it?”

“I told her I’d try to persuade Shadrack to help her.”

He shook his head in mock dismay. “Next you’ll be lying to me. I’ll have to watch out from now on.”

Sophia laughed. She had checked her map twice; Veressa and Shadrack were still working. Setting her paper down on her pack, she closed her eyes and rested her head on her knees. She was dressed once again in her own clothes and her comfortable boots, having changed while Calixta held up her cloak like a screen. Theo had followed suit. They were the only two in dry clothes.

“Hey,” Theo said, holding up his bandaged hand. “Do you still have that sewing box? This is falling off.”

“I did keep it,” Sophia said, opening her eyes, “but it’s not here anymore.” She had found their clothing, spare bandages, Shadrack’s atlas, her pencils, and her notebook when she opened the pack Blanca had returned to her. But the sewing box was gone. “And it was so beautiful, too.” There was nothing she could use. Then something occurred to her, and she reached into her pocket for the spool of silver thread that Mrs. Clay had given her.

“Perfect,” Theo said when he saw it, holding out his hand.

As Sophia wound the silver thread over the bandage to hold it in place, her thoughts traveled elsewhere. There was no way of knowing whether she might see Mrs. Clay again, just as there was no way of Mrs. Clay’s knowing, when she gave Sophia the silver thread, that it would someday serve such an unlikely purpose. Is this what I was meant to use it for? she asked the Fates. No one knew what the Fates had planned; the future was truly inscrutable. As she tied the thread securely around Theo’s wrist, the thought gave her an unexpected surge of hope. Nothing is set in stone. The glaciers aren’t here yet .

Shadrack and Veressa had finished, and as they hastily compared their maps, Burr made two torches from pieces of his torn shirt affixed to foot-long shards of glass from the pit. “We must hurry,” Martin said anxiously, “before the guards return.”