The Crimson Skew (The Mapmakers Trilogy) by S. E. Grove (28)

27

Oakring

THEY HAD MOVED Theo’s bed out of Smokey’s kitchen into a separate room as soon as he could get up and walk about on his own. Most of the day he spent resting, staring up at the ceiling and trying to ignore the throbbing in his left shoulder. But now he stood by the window, watching the charcoal hail pelt the flowers and herbs of the garden until they lay crumpled and beaten.

It was after fourteen-hour when he saw Smokey coming up the slow incline across the field. She was draped in a thin rubber tarp that made her look like a shapeless shadow drifting steadily uphill. Theo left his room and joined Casanova, who was waiting by the front door.

Smokey threw off the rubber tarp, hanging it on a peg. “No one knows what it is,” she said at once. The black pellets rolled off her clothes like tiny marbles.

“Any idea how far it reaches?” Casanova asked.

She nodded. “Hardly anyone out, as you can imagine, but a pair of travelers came in this afternoon, and they said they saw the hail start in Turtleback Valley. About three miles southwest of here.” She moved over to the cold hearth and began to light a fire. “If this ever clears, we can go down to the ring. The travelers will be there, I’m sure, and we can hear the rest. No sign of Entwhistle, though he’s due to come in tonight. If the storm hasn’t stopped him.”

“What’s the ring?” Theo asked.

“We have a circle of stepped stones near the great oak—not unlike a little theater. Whenever travelers come, they give us news there at sunset. You would be surprised how hard it is to stay connected with the world in a place like this. It’s not Boston,” she said, smiling. She had stacked the wood and now she lit the fire; she knelt before the hearth until the flames caught. “I don’t know the girl,” Smokey continued, “but Bittersweet travels through here often. He is the only remaining Weatherer in these parts, since the other three disappeared.”

Theo felt Smokey’s words come into sharp focus. “A Weatherer?” he said.

The other two looked at him, noticing his change of tone. “Yes.”

“I must speak to him,” Theo said. His heart was suddenly pounding. It threw him off balance.

“Easy,” Casanova said, reaching out and taking his arm. “Have a seat here by the fire.” He steered Theo into a chair and looked at him closely.

“I have information about the other Weatherers,” Theo said. He felt dizzy, and his breath came with difficulty, as if he had just been running.

“He’ll want to hear that,” Smokey said, now hovering over Theo, too. “You can tell him when we gather at the ring.”

As Theo nodded and made an effort to calm his breathing, the other two exchanged a look. “Maybe we could ask this Bittersweet to come here,” Casanova suggested.

“That’s a good idea,” agreed Smokey. “As soon as this hail stops, I’ll go find him. For now, Theo, you just rest. Don’t worry—he’s not going anywhere in this storm.”

“Okay,” Theo said. “Thanks.” He sat by the fire, feeling his heartbeat slow. Casanova began helping Smokey with the cooking, and their conversation drifted to people in Oakring that Theo did not know. He listened to the steady pattering on the roof and stared at the fire, hoping it would calm him, but fire these days did not seem peaceful. He still had Casanova’s story ringing in his ears, and he remembered too clearly the memories from the wooden ruler-map: a girl tied to a chair; a bright fire too close to her singed skirts.

—16-Hour 6—

AT SIXTEEN-HOUR, the hail finally stopped, turning to a thin drizzle of ordinary, clear water. Smokey was ready. “I’ll be back with Bittersweet before long,” she told him.

“Thank you,” Theo said. He had not moved from the chair. Now he watched the doorway, where the fading light tinted the passing storm clouds a bright purple. The discoveries he had made in Boston seemed somehow to have taken place years earlier. Thoughts of Winnie and Nettie made him smile, but his memories of them seemed distant and unclear. Even Broadgirdle, the man he knew as Wilkie Graves, had faded somewhat; the fury Theo had felt realizing Graves would go free had diminished to a rumble of discontent. And yet the memories from the wooden map were still clear and bright: perhaps it was the nature of maps to make them so.

He heard Smokey’s voice as she climbed the hill back toward the house, and he realized that a good half hour had passed. Casanova rose to his feet. “Do you want to stand up?”

“Yes.” Theo got up on his own and stood by the chair, ready to sit when he needed to.

Smokey arrived with the travelers: not one, but two. Talking to her was a tall young man Theo’s own age with a calm face and a steady gaze; he had the aspect of a man much wiser than his years would allow. On her other side was a young woman with braided hair and a tanned face; she wore a raider’s cape strung with silver bells. She was smiling at something Smokey had said, and her eyes were lit with laughter.

“Sophia?” Theo breathed.

They all stopped. Sophia looked up at him, frozen for a moment in shock. In the next instant she had crossed the room and thrown her arms around him. Theo held her tightly, certain that if she pulled away, he would fall back, for he could hardly stand. With her familiar face so close to his own, everything about his past life in Boston that had seemed so remote suddenly rushed back to meet him, proximate and full of life. He realized, with faint surprise, that there were tears running down his cheeks. “Ow,” Theo said finally.

Sophia drew back, her own face damp with tears. “Oh, Theo! What happened to you? You look terrible.”

He laughed shakily. He sank back onto the chair but held Sophia’s hand tightly. “A lot has happened. A lot. You have no idea.”

• • •

IT TOOK SOME time for Sophia and Theo to recount the passage of the last two months. They had much to tell each other and even more to explain for the benefit of their friends. At times giddy and incoherent, at times sober and slow, they related all that had transpired since the fateful day in June when they failed to meet at Boston Harbor. Theo began by explaining why he did not arrive, and then he had to tell them about finding the body of Prime Minister Bligh, Shadrack and Miles’s imprisonment, the involvement of Gordon Broadgirdle and the Sandmen, his own knowledge of Broadgirdle as Wilkie Graves, and the long route that led to his capture and conscription, even as Miles and Shadrack were finally freed. Then he told Sophia about his time in the army, about Major Merret and Casanova, and how he and Cas had found their way to Oakring and to safety with Smokey.

Sophia described her journey with the Nihilismians, and her meeting with Errol Forsyth, and her encounter with Goldenrod. She answered many questions about the plague and the Dark Age and Ausentinia. She showed them the Ausentinian maps and the purse full of garnets. She explained the significance of meeting Richard Wren and discovering her mother’s journal. And she related how all of them, including Calixta and Burr, had come to find themselves once more in New Occident.

Theo, Casanova, and Smokey listened in rapt silence as she described Burr’s capture, Goldenrod’s revelations aboard the train, the crimson fog in Salt Lick Station, and the arrival of Bittersweet and Nosh. Finally, she told them what they had seen that very day in Turtleback Valley: a grove of trees that held a secret, a place she hoped might hold the answer to her parents’ disappearance.

It was hard for Theo to believe that circumstances had carried them both to this place, the safety of Smokey’s home, in a small town by the Eerie Sea—a place neither of them had ever heard of before. “It’s no coincidence,” Bittersweet said. “I am sure it is the old one guiding us all here. This is always the way with circumstances that seem coincidental. Sarah knows Shadrack, Sophia’s uncle; she knows Casanova; she knows me. The old one guided each of you to people who would find their way here.”

“But what does it have to gain?” Theo wondered.

Bittersweet smiled. “We are all pieces of a complex puzzle. Who knows? Perhaps something we do is of use to the old one, however small we might be.”

Theo looked at him appraisingly, somewhat surprised by how likable the Weatherer was, despite his earnestness. “And I have a piece of the puzzle to give you,” he said. “It is the reason Smokey asked you to come here.”

“Yes. She said you had something to tell me.”

“It has to do with the other Weatherers.” Bittersweet tensed. “In the course of trying to find how Broadgirdle was responsible for Bligh’s murder, I found a wooden ruler. It was among Bligh’s possessions. He said in a letter that he had gotten it from the Weatherers themselves, and when I looked at the ruler closely, I found that it was a memory map. The memories showed a girl and an old man—but those memories belonged to a third person.”

“My mother,” Bittersweet said eagerly. “They must be hers. My sister and my grandfather are the two people you saw. What was in the map?”

Theo hesitated.

Bittersweet leaned toward him. “Are my grandfather and sister alive?”

“Yes. In these memories, they were alive. All three were captives. They were kept in a closed room. It seemed to be underground. One of the memories showed your sister being . . . threatened with fire. As the fire came closer, flowers bloomed in her hands. In the last memory, I saw the Sandmen making boxes. I think to keep them in winter sleep.”

Bittersweet looked down at his hands, his face creased with worry. “That explains it.” He looked up.

“What does it mean?” Sophia asked softly.

“Mother and Grandfather in winter sleep . . .” He swallowed. “Winter sleep can offer renewal and rest. But when it continues too long, it can lead to death.”

Sophia gasped.

“No plant can live underground forever. This Broadgirdle is keeping their lives hostage. I knew only something terrible would drive my sister to such desperate lengths.”