The Emerald Atlas (11 page)

Then, before their eyes, the book faded away and vanished.

There was a cracking in the sky, and a cold wind blew across the patio. A storm was coming in.

“But”—Kate couldn’t stop herself—“how will we get home?”

“My dear,” the Countess said, her eyes shining in the candlelight, “you are home.”

CHAPTER EIGHT
Wolves

Two Screechers appeared and yanked Kate, Emma, and Michael out of their chairs as a wall of rain swept toward the house. Kate could hear Michael protesting, shouting pleas to the Countess.

They were dragged along candlelit hallways, the Secretary scrambling to keep up. Emma clawed at the hand gripping her arm, yelling at the creature to let go. The Screecher responded by throwing her over his shoulder, but Emma just continued to pound, albeit futilely, at its back. Kate knew there was only one place they could be heading.

They stopped at a set of double doors, and the Secretary pulled out a ring of keys.

“Wait—” Kate began, but the doors opened and they were thrown inside. The lock snapped into place behind them, and Kate heard the Secretary’s high-pitched giggle fading away down the hall.

The room was silent and utterly, completely dark. Outside, rain hammered on the roof.

Suddenly, there was a scrambling, a scuffling, someone grunting in pain. Emma had found Michael and thrown herself on him.

“Emma, stop it!” With difficulty, Kate pulled her sister away, getting an elbow in the cheek in the process.

“I hate you!” Emma yelled. “I wish you were dead! You’re not my brother!”

“No!” Kate put her face against her sister’s. Emma’s cheek was wet with tears. “Don’t ever say that! You hear me? Don’t ever say that!”

Emma let herself go limp and Kate held her as she sobbed. Michael was sniffling on the floor. Kate knew she should go to him and comfort him, tell him she understood why he’d done it, but she couldn’t bring herself to, not yet.

There was a thud a few feet away. Emma stopped crying. None of them moved. They stared into the dark, listening.

“Where are we?” Emma whispered.

In answer, the night sky ignited, and for a flickering instant, white light flashed across the room. Kate stifled a cry. Fifty children were standing there, staring at them. Kate could see the rows of beds, the shadows from the barred windows stretching across the floor. Then thunder shook the house, and once again, there was darkness.

A voice said, “Who’s got the light?”

A scratch, the flare of a match, and then a lamp glowed at the back of the room.

“Give it here,” the voice said, and the small globe of light passed from hand to hand, illuminating one pale face after another, till it stopped at the speaker.

“You,” Emma said.

Stephen McClattery stepped toward them, bringing the lamp near their faces. He studied them for a long moment, then said, “Hold ’em.”

A flowing mass of children swarmed around them.

“Wait!” Kate cried as her arms were pinned at her sides. “What’re you doing?”

“He’s with the Countess.” Stephen pointed at Michael. “We seen him.”

“So what?” Emma said, kicking at the children trying to hold her. “We’re not!”

“He’s your brother, ain’t he? You’re probably all in it together.”

Kate saw that most of the children were young, no more than six or seven, their faces half savage with fear and excitement.

“He’s a traitor,” Stephen said. “He’s helping her.”

“No!” Kate said. “He made a mistake! That’s all!”

“Still makes him a traitor. Quiet now. We gotta talk.”

Turning away from Kate, he began whispering to four or five boys and girls, all about his age. Kate had been in enough orphanages to see children this way before. Left alone, they formed their own laws. Their own societies. The secret, she knew, was not to show fear. Show fear, and they’d tear you apart.

Stephen McClattery turned back around.

“We decided. We’re gonna hang him.”

“What?!”

Stephen nodded seriously. “That’s what you do with traitors. I read it in a book.”

Apparently, that was good enough for the other children. They started chanting, “Hang ’im! Hang ’im!”

“Somebody get a rope!” Stephen McClattery said.

“We ain’t got no rope!” a voice called out.

“You could tear up some sheets,” Emma said. “Then tie ’em all together!”

“Emma!”

Emma looked at Kate and shrugged, unconcerned.

“Thanks,” Stephen McClattery said. “You three, tear them sheets.”

Three boys stripped the sheets off a couple of beds and began trying to rip them into strips.

“You can’t hang him!” Kate was still being held by half a dozen hands, and to talk to Stephen, she had to yell across the room. She was trying not to panic. She knew it would only feed their tempers. The mob had taken the children over. “He made a mistake! Everyone makes mistakes!”

“What about this?” A girl ran forward with a velvet rope she’d pulled off one of the curtains.

“Yeah, that’ll work,” Stephen said, and with surprising deftness, he quickly fashioned it into a noose. “Bring ’im here! And you three stop messin’ with them sheets!”

Michael was carried forward so that he and Stephen stood in the middle of the crowd of children.

“Hey, wait …” Emma was starting to look nervous.

“You been found guilty fair and square of being a traitor,” Stephen said. “You got any last words?”

Michael was crying. He mumbled something under his breath.

“What’s that?”

Michael raised his head and looked at Kate and Emma. “I said … I’m sorry.”

Michael’s tears glistened in the lamplight, and it seemed to Kate that he was hardly aware of the other children or what was about to happen, or if he was aware, then he didn’t care. All that mattered to him was that his sisters understood.

“Well, that’s fine,” Stephen McClattery said, “but rules is rules.” When it came to executions, the boy was clearly all business. “You’re a traitor and we gotta hang you.” He looped the noose over Michael’s head, and the cry went up a second time, “Hang ’im! Hang ’im!” The mob began to drag Michael away. Kate knew now that she’d have to fight. She’d have to fight Stephen McClattery and beat him. If she did that, the other children would fall in line. She was about to launch herself at him when a voice spoke—it was a voice she recognized.

“For the love of all that’s—Nobody’s getting hanged.”

Stephen swung the lamp around, and Abraham limped into the light. Behind him, Kate saw a sort of a door in the wall where none had been before.

“Clear off, you hooligans,” he said, pushing through the children till he could take the noose from around Michael’s neck. The children holding Kate and Emma melted away. “Hanging. That’s what you’re up to now, is it?” He cuffed Stephen lightly on the back of the head. “Where’s your sense, boy?”

“He’s a traitor,” Stephen said. “They’re probably all traitors.”

“These two ain’t. I promise you that.” He gestured to Kate and Emma. “I saw ’em nabbed by the Screechers.”

“Well, he is. We can’t just let ’im go.”

Abraham took the lamp and held it up to Michael’s tear-stained face.

“That he is. But listen to me, all of you.” Despite the muffling of the rain, Abraham kept his voice low. “These are bad times. Everyone’s done things that want forgiving. But we start turning on each other, and she’s won. What matters is we hold together. That’s all we got in the end. Each other. Remember that.”

No one spoke for a few moments. Kate saw Emma bend down and pick up something from the floor. Michael’s glasses. They’d been knocked off in the scuffle. Emma turned them over in her hands, then silently held them out.

“Thanks,” Michael said, choking a little.

The other children seemed to have forgotten Kate and her siblings. They were pressing around Abraham.

“What’d you bring us?”

“What you got, Abraham?”

Kate was amazed at how quickly the hysteria had left the children. She had seen it happen before, with other groups of children, but never quite so suddenly.

“Everyone settle down,” Abraham said. “I want to see Annie first.”

A murmur passed through the crowd, and the little girl with pigtails who’d been dangled off the edge of the dam moved to the front. Abraham knelt down. He pulled a handmade doll out of his jacket. “I made this myself. I’d be happy if you’d take it.”

The little girl accepted the doll and hugged it to her breast, not uttering a word.

Abraham produced a stack of letters. “Now, let’s be quiet as I hand these out. Stephen and the others will help you young ’uns read ’em.”

A reverent silence fell across the room. One by one, as Abraham whispered the names on the letters, the children stepped up, received the envelopes, and carried them back to their beds.

When he’d finished, Abraham came over to where Kate stood with Michael and Emma. “The witch don’t know about the secret passageways in the house, so I try and sneak in least once a week. Bring food. Letters from their parents. I’m sorry about earlier, you girls getting nabbed and whatnot. I was just told to take a photo a’ the boy holding that ‘help me’ sign. Didn’t know it was some sort a’ trap. Anyway, I saw them monsters drag you off and I figured you’d end up here. Seems I arrived in the nick a’ time.”

“Thank you,” Kate said. “I don’t know what would’ve happened.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “They’re good children. Just been scared for too long is all. They wouldn’t a’ really hung your brother … most likely. Now, you three best be coming with me. The Countess has something in mind for you, and I tremble thinking what it might be.”

“But if you can just come and go,” Emma asked, “why don’t they all escape?”

Abraham gave a dry laugh. “That’s where she’s smart, the witch. Keeps everyone separate, children, mothers, fathers. Has them monsters a’ hers guarding ’em all. These young ’uns know if they try and escape, their mothers and fathers will be put on the boat. Tortured. Worse, even.”

Stephen stepped up and whispered something in Abraham’s ear. He nodded.

“I need to check on one that’s been sick. Then we go.”

He followed Stephen to a bed a few yards away. Kate felt someone tug her hand. Annie was standing there, clutching her new doll. The little girl raised her arms. Kate understood at once. Most of the children here were younger than Emma. Besides that day at the dam, they probably hadn’t seen their mothers in years. That made her the next closest thing. Kate picked the girl up, and Annie wrapped her thin arms around her neck.

“Kate,” Emma said.

She turned. Twenty small children had gathered around. They were staring at Kate and Annie with eyes of deep longing. Kate felt her heart throb with pain and wished she could comfort them all.

Abraham approached with Stephen. “All right, then. Time to go. There’s no telling when she’ll send one of them ghouls to check on you.”

Kate lowered Annie to the floor.

“You leavin’ us?” Annie asked.

Without thinking, Kate said, “I’ll come back; I promise.”

“She don’t mean it,” Stephen McClattery said.

“Yes, she does!” Michael had spoken hotly, and everyone looked at him in surprise. “When my sister says something, she means it. She came for me, didn’t she?” He looked at Kate and Emma. “If she says she’ll come back, she will.”

“That’s right,” Emma said. “And if any of you try and hang my brother again, you’re gonna have to hang me first!” She nodded fiercely at Michael, and Kate saw it was forgiven.

“Quickly now,” Abraham said, and he stepped into the passageway. Kate followed Emma and Michael through. She looked back at the ghostly faces of Annie and Stephen and the other children. Then Abraham closed the door with a soft click, and all was dark.

“Hold here a moment,” Abraham whispered. And they heard him move off down the passage.

The air was musty and stale, and their shoulders pressed against each other in the tight space. Kate felt Michael shudder, and when he spoke, his voice was raw.

“I thought … I could do something myself. You’ve always taken care of us, Kate. I just thought, for once, I could …”

“It’s okay.”

“And I know Mom and Dad are coming back. I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s okay. Really.”

“Yeah,” Emma said. “Just don’t be so stupid again.”

And there, in the darkness, they sought each other’s hands.

Abraham returned, bringing the smell of rain and mud on his clothes.

“It’s clear. Now we can’t risk a light, so the going’ll be slow. The rain’s a help, but be quiet as you can. All our lives depend on it.”

He set off, Emma behind him, Michael following, and Kate bringing up the rear.

The passageway was only a couple of feet wide, and Abraham would whisper back warnings to duck or step over a board or about holes to avoid. Now and then slivers of light penetrated the walls. But for the most part, Kate could only just discern the dim outline of Michael’s head. Abraham guided them, left, right, up a few stairs, down a couple. After ten minutes of winding through the maze-like corridors, he paused. It had grown lighter, and they could make out each other’s features. Abraham put a finger to his lips, warning them to be even quieter.

It was a good thing he did, for when they turned the corner, the Countess was waiting for them. She was not in the passageway itself. Rather, she was in one of the mansion’s many sitting rooms, staring through an oval window that was set into the wall that separated her room from the passage. Emma couldn’t help but emit a small gasp, and Abraham immediately clamped a hand over her mouth. But it was too late; the witch had noticed them.