The Crimson Skew (36 page)

“Sophia,” someone said.

She resisted. She did not want to be drawn away from these memories. She wanted to see them all—every one of them—and then she wanted to see them again.

“You
will
see them all,” someone else said. “There will be time.”

Sophia felt a moment's confusion. She had not spoken. Had she? She realized that her eyes were squeezed shut. After a slight hesitation, she opened them. She had fallen back against the wall of the shelter; her hands rested on the gnarled trunks of the trees.

Standing before her were Minna and Bronson Tims.

Sophia could not find her voice. “Is it really you?” she finally whispered.

Minna smiled, her eyes shining as she gazed at Sophia's face. She reached out impulsively and then checked herself. Slowly, she drew back her arm. As she did, Sophia realized that the brick-red trunks behind her were still visible. Minna and Bronson were fading.

“It is really us,” Minna said quietly.

“We have waited as long as we could,” Bronson said. His voice caught. “And it was enough.”

Sophia could not stop looking at them. This was no feat of the imagination, for she could not have imagined the way their faces were lined with age and long exhaustion. Minna's hair was streaked with gray. Bronson's beard was gray around his mouth, and a long scar ran along his neck. They wore strange clothing—soft leather molded and tucked around their bodies. It seemed alien: a fragment of another world. She felt a sudden, inexplicable sense of betrayal.
They changed,
Sophia thought.
They changed without me.

“How?” she asked out loud. “How are you here?”

“We traveled here,” Bronson replied. “All the way from the Papal States. Through the Middle Roads, into the Russias,
across the land bridge into the Prehistoric Snows. And finally into New Occident. To here.”

“You saw some of it,” Minna added. “It was a dark time, and our memories are no clearer than what you yourself saw.”

“But why here?” Sophia pressed, unable to fully voice her true question.

“We were called here,” said Bronson.

“Our hearts did call us to Boston,” Minna acknowledged. “I believe every movement for years carried us in that direction. Toward Boston—toward you. But then the call began.”

“It promised us wholeness. An end to the life, if you can call it that, we were attempting to survive.”

“But who called you?” Sophia asked. And then she realized: “The old one.”

“Yes,” Minna said. “We came here, to this grove, because we were called.” She gestured at the two trees above and around them. “This grove, this place you stand in, is the start of a new world.” She smiled gently. “We are making it. Not just us—all of us who were effaced.”

Effaced.
“The old one is healing the Lachrima?” Sophia breathed.

“It is more than that,” her mother told her. “Yes, it is healing the Lachrima, but in so doing, it is creating an answer to the kind of grief that burdens the Lachrima. An answer to the war that almost destroyed this valley.”

“This grove,” Bronson said, his eyes shining, “is even an answer to the Disruption.”

“The Disruption?” Sophia did not understand.

“The great conflict that erupted as the Climes faced their own extinction. An extinction they might understand, but we as yet do not. The cause is obscured. The ‘old ones,' as you call them, could not agree on how to prevent their own annihilation. The Disruption was the result of their disagreement—instead of one solution, many solutions. From the Disruption emerged a world with old ones in different times, different Ages. But we hope that this disagreement has ended. We hope that this place will prevent such a thing from ever happening again.”

“How?” Sophia wondered.

“By bringing to the surface what is hidden. By making the past always visible in the present. With the surfeit of memories we—the effaced—carry, a place
made
of memories can come into being. For now it is just this grove, but the Ages will slowly be remade so that they are entirely made of memories.”

“What do you mean, ‘made of memories'?”

“Just that,” Bronson said. “Every blade of grass, every stone, every drop of water—they will contain the memories of what they have been part of.”

It was as Sophia had imagined, considering the wheel of wood, the antler, and the birch bark. Here, in the grove, the old one had rendered memory in a way that everyone and anyone could see. It required no expert knowledge, no skill of discernment, no elaborate device. The old one wished these memories to be attainable at a single, thoughtless, touch. “Everyone will
know what the past is made of,” she murmured, comprehending at last.

Her mother nodded. “And though there are many who are misguided in this world, we believe, as does the old one, that knowing the past so entirely will offer guidance.”

“But to make such a place,” Bronson continued, “to begin, the grove had to emerge from memory itself. And that is what Lachrima are. What we are.”

“Then these two trees . . .” Sophia began.

“The two of us are everywhere in the grove, but mostly we are here. When we came to the valley, we wished to make a space that you would find one day, and this is it.”

“We knew you would come,” Minna whispered.

“But I can see you—your faces. Can you not leave now, as you are?” Sophia heard the desperation in her own voice.

For the first time, Minna and Bronson took their eyes from Sophia's face and glanced at one another. “No, we cannot. We are hardly here at all,” her father said, with a sad smile. “Everything that we are has gone into the making of this place. But it is right,” he added gently. “This is how it should be.”

Sophia's vision blurred, and she felt the tears begin. “But I just found you,” she whispered.

“It is more than we ever hoped,” her mother said, her face softening. “And it is better to see one another briefly than not at all. Isn't it?”

Sophia could not speak. She nodded wordlessly.

When she looked up, she saw that they were both kneeling
before her, their insubstantial figures as close as they could be without touching her. “Won't you tell us about the young woman you have become, dearest?” Minna asked. “You have our memories here,” she gestured to the trees, “but we have only you. Tell us.” She tried to smile. “Tell us everything.”

At first, Sophia could not bring herself to tell her parents about her own past—it seemed impossible when there was so much else to think about in their presence. And she could not imagine where to begin. But slowly, with her mother's gentle questioning, she found herself talking about what had happened beyond the grove, with the discovery of Datura and the two armies, and then she found herself explaining the realm of the three sisters, and the long journey that had led to the Eerie Sea. She described the wonder of Ausentinia, and the terror of perceiving its memories; she recounted the Atlantic voyage with the Nihilismians and the earlier journey to Nochtland; she told them about Blanca, and the anguish she had felt hearing her cry. All the people she had met on her voyages, all the sadness and disappointment she had felt with Shadrack, all the changes that had brought her to the present began to fall into place.

What had seemed impossible became easy. She found herself describing who she was, recounting things great and small: memories from growing up with Shadrack, early days at school, the discovery of favorite books and favorite places, her anxiety losing track of time, and the notebooks she had drawn to mark the days. Minna and Bronson wondered and asked and
exclaimed. When her mother laughingly told her own tales of how she lost track of time, and when her father spoke of his own drawing notebook, she marveled at how things that had once made her feel so strange and solitary now made her feel secure and rooted. To her surprise, there were even moments when the three of them found themselves laughing, and she saw, then, brief glimpses of what a life with them might have been like.

She was astonished when the light around her began to fade; night was approaching, and she had spent the entire day between the two Red Woods, in her parents' company. “I don't want to go,” she said, looking out at the clearing in the growing darkness.

“You can stay, of course,” Minna said.

“Will
you
stay?”

“We will stay as long as we can,” Bronson replied softly.

Sophia gazed at them. Already, it was difficult to see their features. She could not tell if it was the fading light or their figures slowly fading from the grove. Abruptly, she realized that she was exhausted, and she fought to keep her eyes open. “It is beautiful, this place you have brought into the world,” Sophia told them. “It is going to change everything. It is the most remarkable thing I've ever seen.”

“But not the most beautiful or remarkable thing your father and I have brought into the world,” Minna whispered, leaning over her.

Sophia closed her eyes without meaning to. She heard
a hummed melody that was familiar, though she could not remember how she came to know it. It reminded her of something: a time and feeling she had lost sight of for years. There was an unshakable sense in her very center that all was safe and well, that she was encompassed and known, and that everything was as it should be.

W
HEN
S
OPHI
A WOKE,
Minna and Bronson were gone. At first, it struck her like a blow, and she wanted to return to sleep to forget how irrevocable was their departure. But then she realized, to her surprise, that the sense of comfort and security she had fallen asleep with was still there. Yes, Minna and Bronson were gone, but they had left her with that unshakable stillness that was the heart of the grove.

She stepped tentatively out of the Red Wood shelter and found Theo sleeping outside it, curled up among the ferns. She smiled. Instead of waking him, she sat beside him and waited,
letting the morning light filter in through the trees. In the east, the sun rose over the hills and reached them in the clearing, slowly igniting the red trunks with orange light. The grove itself was awake. Sophia could feel its watchfulness, its steady purpose. She listened to it with all her senses, awed and profoundly glad that she had been so fortunate to find her way to such a place.

When Theo woke, he sat bolt upright. Then he groaned. He eased his arm out of the sling and stretched it gingerly. “Are you okay?” he asked anxiously, searching her face.

She smiled. “I'm fine.”

“Are they gone?”

Sophia nodded. She glanced at the two trees. “Yes. Though not entirely. Their memories are there. And they will be—always. I will get to spend more time with them that way, at least.” She turned back at him. “Thanks for waiting with me.”

Theo drew one of Smokey's food packets out from under him and unfolded it, revealing a flattened piece of bread, a squashed apple, and crumbled nuts. “I saved you this delicious meal,” he announced.

Sophia laughed. “Thank you.” She took it, grateful for anything to put in her rumbling stomach. As she ate hungrily, she asked, “Where are the others?”

“They camped out by the river last night.” He smiled at her sideways. “We have company.”

“Company?”

“When you're done, we'll go join them.”

She glared at him. “I can walk and eat!”

Theo put his arm back in the sling, pulled himself to his feet, and took up his stick. Sophia followed him along the path, eating hurriedly. The luxuriant ferns were still, and the clover seemed damp with dew. Sophia gazed at the foliage and the fibrous trunks of the trees with new eyes, imagining how all of it contained the memories of people like her parents. They had, indeed, created a perfect place.

When the trees parted and the valley came into view, Sophia saw an astonishing ship on the riverbank: a ship built around the roots of a living tree, its broad sails, made of leaves, tightly furled. It was out of place here, far from Nochtland: a boldevela. At the base of the boldevela's steps, Nosh was happily eating grass. The pigeons were pecking at the ground nearby, keeping their safe distance from the larger bird that now perched on his antlers. Sophia squinted.
Not a pigeon,
she thought.

A falcon! Seneca!

Goldenrod, Errol, Bittersweet, and Datura sat nearby, talking quietly.

Sophia raced toward them. “Goldenrod! Errol!”

They rose and hurried forward, both of them embracing her so tightly that she had to fight for breath. She drew back, a little laugh of happiness escaping her. “I am so glad to see you well!” Then she realized that Errol's shoulder was wrapped in bandages.

“We are well now,” Goldenrod reassured her, taking Sophia's hand. “Though there were some difficult moments. And we have heard a great deal from Bittersweet about all the difficulties you have overcome.”

“Did you find them, Sophia?” Errol asked, with intensity.

“Yes. I was even able to talk with them before they had to go.”

“We have been speaking of this grove, and how it was made,” Goldenrod said, looking up at it wonderingly. “Though I know it cannot amend their loss, to have been a part of making such a place . . .”

Sophia nodded. “I know.”

Datura, Bittersweet, and Theo had joined them. Theo yawned. “Where do all the memories in the grove come from? In the trees, even the ferns. I still don't totally get what the grove
is.”

“A living memory map,” Sophia told him.

“But there are lots of memory maps.”

“Yes. But they are difficult, if not impossible, for most people to read,” added Goldenrod. “These are fully manifest. Anyone can experience these memories.”

“It's like the difference between talking to someone in person and reading about them,” Sophia continued. “To read about them, you have to know how to read. But when you actually
talk
to them . . . they are there—right in front of you, obvious and alive. The grove is like that, but with memories.”

“It will change everything,” Goldenrod said gravely. “Imagine the power of the garnet map that you brought here—but everywhere, in everything. When the past is so visible, so present, it counsels our actions—it makes us considered and aware.”

A sound aboard the boldevela drew Sophia's attention.
“How did that boldevela come to be here? And what has happened to Calixta? And Burr?”

Errol smiled wryly. “Oh, you will find them quite well. In fact, I advise you to speak to the others before the pirates wake, or else you will not get a word in edgewise.”

“Others?”

As if in reply, a figure appeared at the tree-ship's railing. “Hello!” the old man cried, cheerfully waving a cane.

“Martin?”
Sophia exclaimed. She took a step forward.

“And Veressa,” Theo said. “Oh, and Miles.”

“And Wren,” Errol added.

Sophia shook her head in wonder, hurrying to meet Martin at the base of the stairs. “My dear Sophia,” he said, embracing her warmly. “How good it is to find you—older and wiser, I can see, but safe and sound.”

She smiled up at the familiar bright eyes and wrinkled cheeks, feeling a surge of affection. “Martin, I cannot believe you are here.”

Martin Metl laughed happily. “Nor can I! Here with you! At the foot of the greatest botanical wonder of the world!” He raised his cane triumphantly. “We have a great deal of catching up to do.”

• • •

A
ND CATCH UP
they did. All of Sophia's fellow travelers—with the exception of Casanova, who had left the day before to assure Smokey of their safe return from the Eerie Sea—were in one place. She could not stop being astonished, as the happy
day wore on, to see her beloved fellow travelers together in one place: Miles and Theo, Calixta and Burr, Martin and Veressa, Goldenrod and Errol, Bittersweet and Datura, and Richard Wren, who was looking more like himself now that the Indies tattoos had faded.

It touched Sophia deeply to see so many people of diverse Ages, many of whom had never met, folding into one another's company as if they had known one another forever. The only person who was missing, she reflected, was Shadrack. As she looked around at her gathered friends, she committed the sight to memory—so that she could record it in her notebook and describe it to Shadrack when she returned home. They filled the deck of the boldevela: Miles standing at the mast, gesticulating wildly as he argued with Theo, who looked quite content with the argument; Calixta in her linen skirts, eating blueberries with her feet propped up on a chair; Burr snoozing under his hat; Martin, with his pant legs rolled up, engaging in enthusiastic conversation with Goldenrod, who examined his leg of wood and leg of silver with interest; Veressa, her thorned arms relaxed as she leaned out over the deck, describing to Errol the route they had taken from Nochtland; and Richard Wren, creating a sculpture out of paper for Datura's entertainment. She and Bittersweet watched the Australian captain as he folded and unfolded, cut and clipped, until a miniature moose appeared in his palm. Datura laughed, enchanted, and Wren smiled in satisfaction. Sophia realized that despite their disparate origins, varied dress, and oft-incompatible senses of humor, they also had a great deal in common. They acted on
principle; they were courageous; and they helped fellow travelers.
With such friends behind me,
she thought,
it is no wonder we did not fail.

When Burr finally awoke from his nap, Goldenrod and Errol began the story of what had happened to them in Salt Lick Station. They were interrupted by Calixta, who insisted that they were telling it wrong. “I saw a giant troll come out of the mist,” she said. “And he was holding Errol's sword.”

Errol rolled his eyes. “A troll,” he scoffed.

“Naturally, I shot him,” she continued.

“And what a good thing that you are such a lousy shot, or we would all be attending my funeral in Salt Lick.”

“I was aiming to disable you,” Calixta said defensively. “Not that
your
aim was any better.” She raised her injured leg. Being Calixta, she had managed to find new linen skirts that complemented her bandages.

Sophia had already come to the conclusion that the knight she had seen was Errol and the dragon was Calixta, but she had very deliberately failed to mention the illusion to the pirate captain. She leaned forward. “But then what?”

“Then,” Errol said grimly, “we all fought for our lives.”

“And when the fog finally cleared, all the Encephalon agents were gone,” Wren put in.

“Gone?” Theo asked. “Or dead?”

Burr was blunt. “Quite dead. And no one”—his voice was a trifle peevish—“has mentioned the fact that I managed to emerge—unscathed—with my hands still tied. Which I believe deserves notice.”

“Well done, my dear brother,” Calixta said dryly. “We have taken notice. There must be a prize of some sort, awarded to the valiant soul who emerges unscathed from the fog in the most unlikely way, and you would no doubt be the happy recipient.”

“Actually, I believe I would,” said Wren as everyone laughed. “If that fog hadn't struck, I would be aboard a vessel to Australia right now, on my way to serve a life sentence.”

“Do you see?” Calixta said, patting Datura on the knee and beaming at her. “Your fog did us a great service.”

Datura looked scandalized. “But it also ruined and ended many lives!”

“And it's exactly what Broadgirdle intended,” Miles growled, frowning at no one in particular. “He knew the moment he found you that he would be ruining and ending
many
lives, all in the name of his dream for westward expansion. That was exactly what he wanted. You never had a chance against him, my girl.”

Datura considered this in silence. “Consider that he also got the best of Mother and Grandfather,” Bittersweet reminded her gently.

“Not to mention me,” Goldenrod said.

“And me,” Theo added quietly.

“
We
had the best of
him
in the end!” Miles exclaimed, pounding his fist against the mast.

“But did you know all this about Datura already when you left Boston?” Sophia asked.

Miles shook his head. “Not a bit of it. Well—we knew
about the existence of the fog, and we knew, of course, that Broadgirdle was pressing westward. That's all. We had no idea what the fog was. Shadrack wrote to Martin and Veressa, urging them to come north to investigate it, and I headed west to meet them. We had just found one another in the Indian Territories when Shadrack sent us a message by iron pigeon to say that you were here, in New Occident, and headed to Salt Lick.”

“But we arrived in Salt Lick too late,” Veressa said, speaking for the first time. “We found not only the destruction wrought by the fog, but also the second wave of destruction brought about by the New Occident troops. They had burned much of the city.”

“And where were you by this point?” Sophia turned to Goldenrod, Errol, and the pirates.

“We,” Burr said grimly, “were nursing our wounds. Or rather, I should say I was nursing Calixta's wounds and Goldenrod was nursing Errol's. You can imagine who had the better bargain there. I heard not a word of complaint pass Errol's lips. Meanwhile, Calixta . . .” He made a flourish with his arm, as if his sister's complaints were too many to enumerate.