The Emerald Atlas Read online

  Kate looked to where Michael had been standing. Where Michael should be standing. Their brother was not there.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Dr. Stanislaus Pym

  At dinner, they told Miss Sallow that Michael wasn’t feeling well and had gone to bed. They themselves barely touched their food, and barely heard the old woman as she grumbled about her cooking not being up to the standards of Versailles and no doubt they’d be leading her to the guillotine first thing in the morning. Abraham had already built up the fire when they got to their room, and the girls climbed into the bed they shared and held each other.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Kate told Emma. “We’re going to get him back.”

  Sometime during the night, Kate sensed that Emma had fallen asleep. But she lay awake, her mind turning over what had happened. Had one of those Screechers yanked him away at the last moment? Or, even worse, had she put the photo in the book before Michael could touch her? Had he reached for her only to have her vanish before his eyes? She kept imagining Michael grabbing at the air where she and Emma had been just a second before and the terror that must’ve swept through him when he felt the cold grip of the Screechers. Lying there in the dark, Emma breathing deeply beside her, Kate whispered, over and over, “It’s all my fault, it’s all my fault.” Her mother had asked her to do one thing. Keep her brother and sister safe. And she hadn’t done it. What would she say to her? How would she explain it? Her only hope was the book hidden under their mattress. They would use it. They would get another old photo and they would go back in time and bring Michael home.

  The sky outside the window had just begun to lighten when Kate shook Emma awake.

  “Get dressed,” she said. “We’re going to see Abraham.”

  Abraham lived in an apartment at the top of the north tower, and they stood outside his door, knocking for more than a minute, but no one answered. In the kitchen, they found Miss Sallow rattling pans on the stove.

  “Abraham’s gone to Westport,” Miss Sallow said, slapping a pair of sausages on Kate’s plate. “Picking up Dr. Pym.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry I don’t speak French, Your Highness, but if you can understand plain English, I’ll say again, he’s gone to Westport to pick up Dr. Pym. Left early this morning. Should be back anytime.”

  “Kate,” Emma whispered, “remember what Michael said? The book’s gotta belong to this doctor guy. You think he really is a wizard or—”

  “Where’s your brother?” Miss Sallow demanded.

  “In bed,” Kate said. “He’s still not feeling well.”

  “Hmp. Imagine he’s on a hunger strike from the slop I’m serving. Well, you can carry up food to him anyways. Let him throw it down the stairs if he likes.”

  She went off to get a tray from the pantry.

  As soon as she was gone, Emma leaned over the table and hissed, “Dr. What’s-His-Name’s gonna know we took the book! He’ll turn us into toads or something! We gotta—”

  She cut herself off as there were uneven footsteps approaching from the hall. A second later, Abraham limped into the kitchen, still dressed for the cold. “Good morning, young ’uns, good morning.” He crossed to the kettle, rubbing his hands together. “It’s cold as the grave out there today. Said as much to the Doctor, I did, as we were coming across the lake. ‘You’ve hit it there, Abraham,’ says he. ‘It is as cold as the grave.’ Ah, we had a lovely chat, the Doctor and me.”

  “Abraham?”

  “Yes, miss?” He had poured himself tea and was dropping lump after lump of sugar into his mug.

  “We have a favor to ask. We need another—”

  “Are you not finished yet? Too bad!” Miss Sallow had shuffled into the kitchen, and she snatched up Kate’s and Emma’s plates and dumped them in the sink. “Into the library, Your Highnesses. Saw the Doctor in the hallway. He wants you now, he does.”

  “Us?” Kate said. “But—why?”

  “And how should I know? Maybe he wants your autographs. Well, what’re you waiting for? Trumpeters and heralds to announce you? Go! And, you”—she threw an onion at Abraham—“stop stealing my sugar!”

  “Two lumps is all I took, Miss Sallow.”

  “Two lumps? I’ll give you two lumps! And two more! And there’s two more!”

  Miss Sallow chased Abraham around the table, whacking him with a wooden spoon.

  Kate sighed. “Come on.”

  Kate and Emma paused at the door to the library.

  “Remember,” Kate whispered, “we don’t know anything about him. He could just be an ordinary man who runs an orphanage.”

  “An orphanage with only three kids in a weird old house filled with magic stuff. Yeah, right.”

  Kate had to admit her sister had a point, but just then a voice called out, “Come in, come in. Don’t stand there whispering.”

  Not seeing they had much choice, Kate took Emma’s hand and opened the door.

  They had been in the library the day before, when Emma had broken the sliding ladder, and so were familiar with the room. There were two full stories of books and, facing the door, a wall of narrow, iron-framed windows that looked out over the ruined stables. To their left was a small fireplace and four extremely worn leather chairs. A white-haired man in a tweed suit was kneeling with his back to them, attempting to light a fire. A traveling cloak, a walking stick, and a battered old satchel had been dropped on one of the chairs.

  “Sit down, sit down,” his voice echoed up the chimney. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  Kate and Emma each took a chair. Kate wondered if the man had any idea what he was doing. Sticks and newspaper were piled up willy-nilly in the fireplace, along with a few rocks, an old soda can, and some used tea bags. He kept lighting matches, but nothing seemed to happen.

  “Hang this,” the man said. Kate heard him mutter something under his breath, and all of a sudden a cheerful fire sprang up in the grate. “Yes, that’s the ticket!”

  Emma elbowed Kate in the ribs and pointed as if to say, “See!”

  The man stood and turned toward them, dusting off his hands. He was clearly very old, but his movements were easy, with none of the usual creakiness of age. He had thick, horn-like eyebrows that matched his snowy hair, and his eyeglasses were bent and sat slightly askew on his face, as if he’d recently been in an accident. His suit looked as if it had been in the same accident and maybe a few others to boot. “It’s a lost art, building a fire. Not everyone can do it. Now allow me to introduce myself. I am Dr. Stanislaus Pym.” He bowed very low.

  Kate and Emma stared. The man seemed like someone’s harmless, slightly dotty old uncle. Still, Kate thought, there was something strangely familiar about him. Like she’d seen him somewhere before. But that was impossible.…

  Dr. Pym was looking down at them with one eyebrow cocked expectantly.

  “Oh—” Kate fumbled, “I’m, um, Kate. This is my sister, Emma.”

  “And you have a last name?”

  “No. I mean—yes. Kind of. It’s P. The letter. That’s all we know.”

  “Ah yes, I remember that now. From your files. And you have a brother, I believe. Where might he be?”

  “Michael’s not feeling well,” Kate said.

  Dr. Pym looked at her, and Kate’s image of him as a charming, slightly bumbling old man vanished. It felt like his eyes saw right through her. Then, just as quickly, he was smiling again. “A pity. Well, let me know if there’s something I can do. I have certain talents other than starting fires. So”—he sat down across from them—“let’s have it, then. Your life story. Now take your time. One thing I hate is when someone rushes through a story. We have a nice fire. Miss Sallow can bring us tea. We can take as long as we need.”

  He pulled a pipe from his pocket, held a match to the bowl, puffed a few times, then exhaled a large cloud of bluish-green smoke. The smoke didn’t rise so much as expand, wrapping its arms around Kate and Emma and pulling them in. “Begin anytime,” he s
aid amiably.

  For a moment, Kate didn’t speak. She was remembering how, after their interview with the Swan Lady, she’d overheard Miss Crumley on the phone, threatening, pleading, offering bribes, searching for someone, anyone, who would take Kate and her siblings. Out of nowhere, this man had come forward. Why? What did he want? That he had brought them here for a reason, she had no doubt. So what was it?

  “Is there a problem, my dear?”

  Kate reminded herself that what mattered now was saving Michael. She took a deep breath; the Doctor’s pipe tobacco tasted faintly of almonds.

  “We were left at St. Mary’s Orphanage on Christmas Eve ten years ago.…” She was planning to hit a few of the major points, then apologize and say they had to go check on their brother. But a strange thing happened. Before she was even aware of doing it, she heard herself, with Emma chiming in, telling the Doctor every detail of their lives, how kind Sister Agatha had been to them, but how she always smoked in bed and one night she sent herself and the rest of St. Mary’s up in flames, and how their next orphanage was run by a very fat man who stole all the good food for his fat family and many nights they only had a bit of old bread and a little watery soup for dinner, and on and on, she and Emma both talking, telling about all the different orphanages they’d lived in, the children they’d met, how they’d refused to let themselves be called orphans because they knew their parents were coming back one day. She was dimly aware of Miss Sallow entering and setting down tea and toast and jam and then sometime later taking away the empty plates. She and Emma kept on talking, telling things they’d never told anyone: Kate’s memories of their parents, their dreams about the house they would all live in when their family was back together. Emma talked for a long time about the dog she was going to have; he was going to be black with white markings and his name would be Mr. Smith and he wouldn’t do tricks because that was demeaning, all of which was news to Kate. At some point, Miss Sallow entered again, this time with a tray of sandwiches, and they were telling about Miss Crumley and the disaster with the lady in the swan hat, about the train ride north, how thick the fog had been on the lake, and how Abraham had been waiting for them with a horse-drawn cart, which was the first time they’d been in a horse-drawn cart, and suddenly Kate was aware that Dr. Pym was talking.

  “My, what a journey you’ve had! And here the day has slipped half away, tut-tut. Well, as enjoyable as this was, I won’t keep you longer. No doubt you have more important things to do than entertain an old man.”

  Kate felt as if she was coming out of a dream. She looked at the empty plate where the sandwiches had been. Had they eaten them? She couldn’t remember. The fire was still crackling away in the grate, but outside, the sun had passed the windows. How long had they been here?

  “We’ll talk more later. But I would like to give you a word of warning.” He leaned forward in his chair. “There are places in this world that are different from all others. Almost like separate countries. A forest here, an island there, part of a city—”

  “A mountain range,” Kate said.

  “Yes,” Dr. Pym said. “Sometimes a whole mountain range. Cambridge Falls and all that surrounds it is such a place. Now, the town itself is quite safe. But do not go deeper into the mountains. There are dangers there you cannot possibly imagine. One day I will explain all of this more fully, but for now, do we understand each other?”

  He looked at Kate, and once again, she felt that he could see right through her. She nodded, and he sat back, smiling his grand-fatherly smile. “Excellent. By the way, I asked Miss Sallow to do something special for dinner tomorrow. Goose, perhaps. It is Christmas Eve, after all.”

  “What?!” chorused Kate and Emma.

  “Why, yes. Hadn’t you realized?” Then, as if a thought had occurred to him, he murmured, “Oh, of course. It was Christmas Eve you were left at your first orphanage, wasn’t it? So tomorrow will be”—he appeared to be doing the math in his head—“the ten-year anniversary of your parents’ disappearance.”

  Kate was dumbstruck. Was tomorrow really Christmas Eve? How had she not known that? It was almost as if while they were talking to the Doctor, it wasn’t just hours that had passed, but days.

  Dr. Pym stood up. “Perhaps by tomorrow, your brother will be fully recovered and I’ll have the pleasure of meeting him.” He guided the girls, both of whom still felt fuzzy-headed, to the door. “Tell me, are you possibly on your way to see Abraham?”

  Kate didn’t question how he might know this. She just nodded thickly.

  “Ask him to show you the last picture he ever took. I think you might find it interesting.”

  And with that, he ushered them out and closed the door.

  As soon as Kate and Emma were out of the library, their heads cleared.

  “What happened?” Emma said. “It was like my brain got all mooshy.”

  “Me too.”

  “You figure he did some magic on us? I said stuff I never told anyone. You think it’s all right?”

  Kate could hear the worry in Emma’s voice. She probed her own feelings. She knew the normal reaction to having shared too much of one’s heart. You felt shame and regret and wished you could take it back. But the truth was, she felt as if she had been allowed to put down something she’d been carrying for so long that its weight had become part of her. And climbing up the spiral stairway to Abraham’s tower, she felt oddly light. She was aware of the coldness of the air drafting through the walls. The song of a distant bird. The creak of the stairs beneath her and Emma’s feet. And though the task in front of them was daunting—for she had no real idea how she and her eleven-year-old sister were going to rescue Michael from the witch and her demon soldiers—she felt a hundred times better than she had that morning.

  “Yes,” she said. “I think it’s okay.”

  “Me too,” Emma said. And Kate saw she was smiling.

  They pounded on Abraham’s door for a full two minutes, but again, no one answered.

  “He’s really starting to make me angry,” Emma said.

  Downstairs, they found Miss Sallow scrubbing the floor of the main hall.

  “I’ve sent the old coot to get the Doctor’s Christmas goose. He’ll probably have to go back down to Westport. He’ll be here by nightfall.”

  “But we need to talk to him now,” Emma said.

  “Oh, do you, Your Highness? Well, perhaps in the future we should arrange our schedules with your personal secretary. But until that blessed day”—she stuck a mop in Emma’s hands and pushed a bucket and brush into Kate’s—“you two can make yourselves useful.”

  She hustled them to the large formal dining room, where, she said, Dr. Pym wanted to have Christmas Eve dinner. It was an enormous, wood-paneled room with a long oak table in the center. Above the table hung two wrought-iron candelabras between which spiderwebs were strung like tinsel. There was a stone fireplace so huge Kate and Emma could’ve fit their entire bed inside it. At present, a family of foxes lived there. Two stone dragons held up the mantel, and they, like everything else, were covered with a thick coating of dust and grime.

  “Dr. Pym says not to disturb the foxes, but the rest I want clean as Sunday morning at your Paris Louvre.”

  “This is stupid,” Emma said when Miss Sallow had left. “We have to help Michael.”

  “I know,” Kate said. “But we can’t do anything till we get a picture from Abraham.”

  Emma grumbled something unintelligible, but she bent over and started to mop the floor. Kate wet her brush and went to work scrubbing one of the dragons. As they worked, two small foxes watched them from the depths of the fireplace.

  When dinnertime rolled around, Abraham still wasn’t back, and Kate and Emma ate alone in the kitchen. They told Miss Sallow they’d bring a plate of food to Michael. Climbing the stairs, they felt none of the lightness that had followed the interview with Dr. Pym. They were bone-tired and desperate with worry.

  It was their second night trying to sleep whil
e staring at Michael’s empty bed. The children had never been apart this long. Tomorrow, Kate told herself, tomorrow we’ll get him back.

  In the middle of the night, she awoke with a gasp. She realized she hadn’t checked to see if the book was still there. She got out of bed and reached under the mattress. She felt about, her heart tight in her chest. Then her hand touched the leather binding. She pulled the book out slowly.

  The moon was up, and a silvery light fell across the bed, giving the book’s emerald cover an otherworldly shimmer. She opened to a page in the middle. It was blank. She ran her fingers over the parchment; the paper was dry and rippled with age. She turned over one stiff, creaking leaf. Blank. Another page; also blank. And another. And another. All blank. Then, just as she was about to close the book, something happened.

  Her fingers were resting on the page she had open, and it was as if an image was suddenly projected in her mind. She saw a village on the banks of a river. There was a tower. There were women doing laundry. And the picture wasn’t still. She could see the water moving, the wind rustling the branches of a tree. She thought she heard the far-off clanging of a bell.

  “What’re you doing?” Emma groaned.

  Kate shut the book. She slid it back under the mattress.

  “Nothing,” she said, climbing under the covers. “Go back to sleep.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Black Page

  Miss Sallow put them to work first thing the next morning, and between finishing tasks for the housekeeper and avoiding Dr. Pym, it wasn’t until midafternoon that Kate and Emma were sitting beside Abraham’s fire, drinking cider and listening to him gripe about how far he’d had to go to find a goose.

  “Not that I’m complaining. I like a fat goose as much as the next man, but sending an old fella like me wandering over half the country on a day cold as yesterday? Cold as the grave it was. As two graves! More cider?”

  Abraham’s room in the tower was completely round, with windows facing out in every direction. But the room’s most notable feature, apart from its perfect circularity, was the fact that every available bit of wall was covered with a photograph. And the pictures didn’t stop there. There were piles on the floor, piles stacked under chairs, loose piles sliding off tables. There were hundreds, thousands of photos, all of them yellow and faded with age.