The Emerald Atlas Read online

  That left Kate, exhausted as she was, to try and pay attention to where the man was leading them. She’d asked, of course, but the giant had merely grunted for Kate to be quiet, and she’d had to satisfy herself with what she could glean from their surroundings, which, considering the rain and the dark and the fact that one tree or rock looked pretty much like every other tree or rock, was not much. And so they marched on, along crooked, muddy, tree-choked paths, clambering over boulders, jumping across impromptu streams, steadily climbing and steadily climbing, till Kate decided that “wet” and “tired” were just different words for pain and she forgot about picking trees or rocks to mark her progress and just lowered her head and let herself be guided by the thud of the man’s footsteps and the clinking of the chains that hung from his wrists.

  And then suddenly, they stopped.

  Kate raised her eyes. She saw the outline of a small cabin tucked into the hillside. The man pushed open the door and stepped inside, and Kate and Michael stumbled in after.

  The air in the cabin was cold and musty. Clearly, no one had been there in a long while. But for the first time in what felt like forever, it was not raining on the children. They stood in almost total darkness, listening to the man move about. There was the rasp of a match, and he lit a lantern that hung from the center of the ceiling. Without a word, he turned and busied himself at the fireplace, giving Kate and Michael a chance to inspect their surroundings. There was a wide bed with a bearskin blanket on which Emma was already fast asleep, the stone fireplace where the man was piling up kindling, an old wooden table with stools and benches; the walls were covered with snowshoes, fishing rods, ice axes, bows and arrows, knives, a long spear, while from the ceiling hung a collection of traps, along with pots and pans of various shapes and sizes. The cabin was small, certainly, but well cared for, and everything one might need was close at hand. Soon, a bright, warm blaze had filled the room, and when Kate looked to Michael, she saw he’d climbed onto the bed beside Emma and was snoring lightly.

  The man stepped up.

  “Hang your clothes by the fire. And keep the curtains closed. The bed is yours.”

  Then he was gone.

  With effort, Kate got her brother and sister to stand and take off their sopping wet shoes and clothes. Not bothering to open their eyes, Emma and Michael dropped everything in a puddle on the floor, pulled on the dry, knee-length shirts the man had laid out, then staggered back to bed and crawled under the covers. Kate placed their shoes on the hearth; the clothes she wrung out in a bucket, then draped over a rope she’d found and strung before the fire. She felt herself in some country past fatigue, as if she would never need sleep again, but pulling on the last dry shirt, she climbed into bed anyway, just to be next to her brother and sister. Where had the man gone? And who was he? Certainly, he was no friend of the Countess, but could they trust him? He was obviously extremely dangerous. She lay there, her thumb and forefinger making tiny worried circles on her mother’s locket. She felt the heaviness of the bearskin blanket and how warm and dry the sheets were against her skin. The rain overhead sounded very far away. She resolved to stay awake till the man returned.

  Her eyes snapped open. How long had she been asleep? It was still night, still raining. But the man was back. He was sitting on the stone hearth, sawing at the metal cuffs that bonded his wrists as the firelight played over the long scar running down his face. Now was the time to ask him who he was. Why he’d tried to kill the Countess. But Kate just lay there, listening to her brother and sister breathing, listening to the rain on the roof, the soft crackling of the fire, the steady back-and-forth of the saw cutting through metal. She was so tired. She would just close her eyes for a minute. Then she would talk to him.

  Kate fell into a series of troubled dreams. In the last, she saw an underground city. It rose up in the hollowed-out heart of a great mountain, and the buildings were like none Kate had ever seen. They looked to have been sculpted straight out of the rock, as if the city had not been built so much as excavated. The effect was massive, brutal, and strangely beautiful. Suddenly, the ground began to shake and split apart. Buildings crumbled. Fires erupted. Then the earth seemed to swallow the city whole.

  Kate woke, breathing hard, covered in sweat. The fire had gone out. Daylight filtered through the curtains. The chains that had been attached to the man’s wrists lay curled beside the hearth. She was alone. Emma’s and Michael’s clothes were gone from the line. She felt her own. They were dry. She dressed quickly and went outside.

  It was a shock, stepping into the bright sunlight, and she blinked several times, shielding her eyes. The cabin was perched on the side of a mountain and looked out across the valley. It was a beautiful, cloudless morning. The air felt cool and clean. In fact, were it not for the evidence all around her—the still-muddy ground, the rain glistening on the treetops below, her torn and filthy clothes, the dried blood on her hands—she could almost believe that the night and everything that had happened—the storm, the wolves, the sudden appearance of the man—had been no more than a dream.

  “Morning!”

  Michael was sitting on a rock a few yards away, his notebook balanced on his knee. “Just bringing my journal up to date. Be done in a second.”

  Kate glanced around and saw neither Emma nor the man.

  “Michael—”

  “Just a second.”

  Kate closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips to her temples. She needed to think. Were they still going to Westport? If so, where were they now? How far had they walked during the night? The man could tell them. But where was he? And where was Emma? Kate was about to tell Michael to finish his journal later when her dream, which had faded on waking, suddenly returned—not in the way dreams usually returned, with vague, disjointed flashes, but exactly, vividly, so she was watching it all again, the underground city, the earth opening up—

  “Kate?!”

  Michael was shaking her. She blinked and realized she was lying on the ground. Had she fainted again?

  “What happened? You—”

  “I’m fine.”

  The Countess’s words were ringing in her ears: Did you notice the oldest one.… The book has marked her. She was very clearly not fine. But she saw how Michael was staring at her and managed a smile.

  “Just … stood up too fast. Where’s Emma?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, still watching her closely. “She was gone when I got up.”

  When Emma woke, it was just getting to be dawn. A dim gray light had crept into the cabin. Kate and Michael were still asleep. The man was stomping out the fire, black fossils of logs crumbling as ash billowed around his foot. His arm was bandaged where the wolf had bitten him. She watched as he pulled on a shirt, took a knife, bow, and small quiver from the wall, and—throwing a glance in her direction—left without a word.

  Immediately, Emma got up, dressed, and hurried outside. A heavy morning mist hung over the valley, and she was in time to see the man’s large form disappearing into the gray. She padded silently after him.

  Why she was following the man, Emma couldn’t have said. As a rule, she didn’t find adults very interesting. In her experience, they were either to be put up with or openly disobeyed. Abraham was all right, she guessed, and Dr. Pym had been interesting, being a wizard and all. But until this man had appeared, there’d never been an adult she’d actually felt drawn to.

  Emma ducked behind a boulder as the man stopped. He seemed to be listening to something in the fog.

  A memory was coming back to her. It was from a few years earlier. A rich old man had paid for all the kids in their orphanage to be taken to the zoo. Emma had figured the guy was dying and trying to do something nice so he’d get into heaven. Whatever the reason, that trip to the zoo was easily the greatest day of her life. There were pandas and jaguars and long-necked giraffes and spotted monkeys that whooped and chattered as they fell through the trees; crocodiles from the Nile that people used to worship; snow leopards
from the Himalaya; emerald-green snakes that could swallow a man whole. Everywhere you turned, there was more to see. But the animal that caught her attention, the one that held her in quiet rapt amazement, was a lion. He was enormous, twice the size of any of the other lions. His fur was a heavy, brownish gold, his face scarred from many battles, and his eyes the deepest, darkest black Emma had ever seen. Clinging to the outer bars of the cage, she had sensed the power and intelligence in him, and further, beneath the stillness, a pure animal violence waiting to erupt.

  Something about this man reminded her of the lion.

  She watched as he left the path and melted down into the mist. She waited a moment, then followed. The earth was wet and slippery, and as she braced herself against trees, cascades of raindrops showered onto her head and shoulders. She entered a glade and paused. The man was nowhere to be seen.

  As she pondered which direction to go, there was movement, and a stag stepped out of the trees. It was tall and strong, with great swept-up antlers. Hidden by branches, Emma held her breath, awed by the beauty of the animal. It stretched out its neck and nibbled at a bush.

  She wished Kate and Michael were here. Kate especially. Michael would probably have ruined it by saying something stupid about dwarves.

  The stag suddenly raised up, its whole body taut. It turned to bolt, but just then the man flew out of the mist and landed on the deer’s back, driving it to earth. His knife flashed, and in a second the animal’s throat was slit.

  Emma gasped, stunned by the speed and ferocity of the act. She watched as the man knelt and placed a hand on the animal’s head. She could see his lips moving, whispering. Then he looked up; his eyes met hers.

  She knew he meant her to approach.

  Her legs shaking, Emma walked over. Steam was rising from the cut in the animal’s neck, and the smell of blood was strong in the air. She wasn’t scared. Too much had happened in the last few days for her to be scared now. But there was something so naked about the scene, about the man and the stag and the kill in the hushed wood; it made her heart tremble.

  She stopped beside the body. The man’s eyes had not left her.

  “Do not be frightened.”

  Emma wanted to tell him she wasn’t. But she found she couldn’t speak.

  The man’s large hand still rested on the deer’s head. “The wolves last night were evil. I felt no regret in killing them.” His voice was low and strong. “But to kill a creature such as this is a sacred thing. It must only be done when there is true necessity. And you must ask pardon of the spirit.”

  He looked at her for understanding, and Emma nodded, reminded again of the deep, dark eyes of the lion.

  The man cut into the stag’s abdomen and began to clean it. He was expert, and did it quickly and without waste. Emma felt queasy watching him remove its organs and place them in a lined leather bag, but she didn’t turn away. She told herself if Michael were here, he would be throwing up nonstop, and that made her feel better.

  “Last night, with the wolves, you were scared?”

  Emma considered lying, but then said, “Yes.”

  “You did not show it.” Emma thought she heard his approval, and warmth exploded in her chest.

  The man said, “You are not from Cambridge Falls.”

  It wasn’t a question, but he expected her to respond.

  “No. We’re from … well, we’re kind of from, you know, the future.” She was feeling easier now. “See, we found this magic book, and if you put a photo in it, you go to wherever the photo was taken, right? And that’s what we did, we put the photo in the book, and so, we’re here.”

  The man had stopped what he was doing and was staring at her. In a flash, Emma knew two things. The first was why she’d followed him. It was because the night before, as he’d carried her through the rain, she’d felt safer than she had in her entire life. The second thing she knew was that suddenly—the way he was looking at her, the blood on his hands, the knife, the two of them alone in the woods—she did not feel safe at all.

  “Sorry,” she said quietly. “I could’ve told that better.”

  She fought the urge to run. She forced herself to stand there, staring into his eyes across the still-warm body of the stag. The moment passed. Nodding slowly, the man wiped the blade of his knife on the animal’s hide, then replaced it in its sheath.

  “My name is Gabriel.”

  “I’m Emma.”

  He stood, lifting the deer onto his shoulder. “Let us return. Your brother and sister will be awake. We have much to talk about.”

  The first thing Kate saw was the man coming around the bend of the path with a body over his shoulder.

  Oh no, she thought.

  Then Emma appeared, trotting beside him. She smiled and waved.

  As the man went to hang up the stag in a shed attached to the cabin, Emma excitedly told Kate and Michael everything that had happened, that the man’s name was Gabriel, about him killing the stag, how if Michael had been there, he would’ve thrown up—

  “Hey!”

  “Sorry,” Emma said. “But you would’ve.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone off,” Kate said. “It’s dangerous.”

  Emma nodded and tried her best to look remorseful.

  “What did you tell him about us?”

  “Oh, you know … that we were from the future and … about the book.”

  Kate noticed Emma shifting about nervously.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing. Just when I told him about the book. He acted kinda weird.”

  “Weird how?”

  “Oh, you know.” Emma kicked at the mud and shrugged. “Like he was thinking about killing me or something.”

  “What?!”

  Just then the man returned and called them to breakfast.

  They ate at the wooden table in the cabin. The man, or Gabriel, since that was how Emma at least had begun to think of him, had changed his shirt and washed the blood from his hands in the stream that ran behind the cabin. He told them they couldn’t risk a fire during the day. The Screechers would be abroad in the valley, searching for them, and would see the smoke. For breakfast, they would have to make do with bread and honey and the berries he and Emma had picked on their way back to the cabin.

  Kate and Emma hadn’t had a full meal since breakfast the morning they’d gone into the past, and Michael’s meals with the Countess, while lavish, had been magical concoctions where you gorged yourself, then felt ravenous ten minutes later. But still, it was only when the man had laid the food on the table that the children realized how hungry they were. Within moments, they were cramming huge, honey-globbed chunks of bread into their mouths, followed by handfuls of berries that exploded between their teeth. At one point, Gabriel brought over a pitcher of milk, which he poured into four cups. Michael reached for his, slurped half of it in a single gulp, then turned and sprayed it across the cabin.

  The man looked unconcerned. “Goat’s milk,” he said. “Sour if you’re not used to it. Drink; it’s good for you.” And to Michael’s dismay, the man refilled his cup.

  Emma swallowed a large mouthful and did her best not to wince. “It’s great,” she said, forcing a smile. “I love it.”

  Though she ate as greedily as her brother and sister, Kate kept one eye on their host. He was sitting across from them, taking up an entire side of the table, and seemed very intent on his meal. Finally, the man licked the last dabs of honey from his fingers, drank off his milk, and, running the back of his hand across his mouth, sighed.

  “Now,” he said, “tell me everything.”

  Normally, Kate would’ve resisted such a command, her natural impulse being to reveal as little about herself and her siblings as possible. But as the man turned his gaze upon her, Kate felt what Emma had felt earlier, that something about him demanded the truth.

  So, once again, she told their story: how their parents had disappeared, how the three of them had been moved from orphanage to orphanage, how th
ey’d finally been sent here, to Cambridge Falls.

  “And the Cambridge Falls of your time,” the man said, “what is it like?”

  Kate described a bleak wasteland where the trees had vanished and the people were frightened and unfriendly. She said how there was no dam stopping up the river and the water ran down the gorge and plunged over the cliffs. She said the only animals were the wolves that prowled the night. She said there were no children.

  “What of the witch?” The man’s voice was even, but they could see the hatred in his dark eyes. “Is she still there?”

  Kate shook her head. The first they’d learned of the Countess, or her Screechers, was when they’d found the book and traveled into the past.

  “Tell me about this book.”

  With Emma and Michael now starting to chime in, she told about exploring the house, about the door in the wine cellar that led to the underground room, about Michael coming upon the book.

  “We thought maybe it was Dr. Pym’s study or something,” Emma said.

  “Dr. Pym?”

  “Yeah. He runs the orphanage. Supposedly he’s a wizard. Though all we’ve seen him do is start a fire.”

  “Your Dr. Pym,” Gabriel said, “he is an old man with great white eyebrows?”

  “Yeah!” Emma exclaimed. “You know him?”

  The man ignored her question. “Finish your story.”

  So Kate told about going into the past, about watching him try to assassinate the Countess, how Michael was left behind, how she and Emma got another photo from Abraham so they could rescue him.

  “Then we went back into the past—”

  “You left something out.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “She’s not,” Emma said. “I was there. That’s what happened.”

  “Then there is something she hasn’t told you.”