The Golden Specific (39 page)

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A Dark Age

A
S
THEY
RODE
the final mile toward the border, Sophia contemplated the changes that had taken place in her since reading Cabeza de Cabra's map. When she thought back on the way she had been in years past, or the last summer, or even the day before, it seemed as though she was contemplating a different person. In all her elaborate fantasies of finding her parents, she had always imagined herself the grateful recipient of some wonderful turn of events. That was gone. In fact, the person capable of feeling that was gone. Her parents would not arrive as a wondrous wish fulfilled by the kindly Fates. Instead, seeking them would be long and arduous. She might not find
them. They might truly have vanished as so many others had vanished in the abyss of memories. And should she find the Lachrima that had been her parents, discovering at last those empty faces would be more painful than anything she had ever lived through.

These thoughts did not make her feel helpless, or defeated; on the contrary—they made her feel steady, with a clearer sense of direction. But the realization did make her feel old. She had left the younger Sophia behind in Seville: an innocent girl who believed in the Fates; another phantom to haunt the city's empty streets at dusk.

Was this always part of growing older? Sophia wondered. Perhaps it was: realizing the world was not obliged to give you what you wanted, and, more importantly, deciding what you would do and how you would feel once the realization arrived. Would you sit back and resent the world? Would you make peace with it, and accept the unfairness without rancor? Or would you try to find and take what the world had not provided? Maybe all three, she reflected, at different moments.

She touched the spool in her pocket and ran her thumb along the coiled silver thread. It was strange to think that this token that had meant so much to her, that had seemed to carry the power of the Fates, now seemed lifeless and inert. It was simply a spool of thread. The greatest force it carried was the memories—dear memories—of the last year of her life. There was no other power there.

Sophia could tell that she had grown older because she did not bristle at how Errol treated her. She knew he had related his
Faierie tale for the purpose of distracting her, and she appreciated both the tale and the intention. And when he said, “Well, miting, you are taking us into the dark heart of the Age. You must be sure to stay near Rosemary and myself at all times,” she did not feel annoyed at being treated like a child. It gave her a strange sense of wistfulness. She wished she were truly as sturdy and little as Errol imagined her.

“I will,” she agreed.

“The caravan will have to stay at the border,” Rosemary said with regret. “The spines are too dense.” She peered ahead. “I do not see any guards at this portion of the border. It is too bad, for I would have left the caravan in their care.”

“The riders are advancing,” Goldenrod said, looking over her shoulder.

Sophia, who could not turn around, instead regarded the dark forest. It was unlike any Age, any landscape, that she had ever seen. Though the sheriff's memories had prepared her for a dark Age, they could not fully render the sense of strangeness emanating from the black moss, tinged faintly purple, and the tall black trees, sharp and bright as polished iron.

Rosemary stopped her horse. She dismounted and unhitched the caravan, tying it to a stake which she drove into the ground. As she did so, Goldenrod turned to the west and Sophia saw the cluster of golden birds that the map had foretold riding toward them, glinting here and there as their masks reflected the sun.

“So we enter the Dark Age,” Errol said. “Are you certain about this, miting?”

“Almost,” Sophia replied nervously.

He gave her a wry smile. “Reassuring.” He led his horse forward. “I will go first. Goldenrod and Sophia travel next, then Rosemary with the crossbow.”

“Remember that every thorn carries poison in its tip,” Rosemary cautioned them. “A single thorn is capable of killing a grown man. I have seen it myself. Do not touch the spines for any reason.”

Errol's horse paced the dry ground. The black moss ahead was lush and wet, as if from some hidden moisture. Two tall spines made a black archway that seemed to invite them onward. The sharp thorns on the trunks were as long as Sophia's forearm, and the branches lined with smaller thorns flexed slightly in the breeze.

Errol urged his horse through the archway. Seneca shuddered. For a moment Errol paused, waiting for some rush of wind to sound, but nothing happened. He looked over his shoulder. “It seems you were right, Sophia. So far.”

Goldenrod and Rosemary followed, the horses' hoofbeats dulled to silence on the moss. Sophia looked around her, fascinated despite herself. The trees, she could see now, had thin, almost transparent leaves that rustled softly, filling the air with a papery murmur. The branches were unexpectedly beautiful, curving in smooth arcs outward and upward. Vines twined around the spiny trunks, with flowers like purple sponges; they expanded and contracted gently, as if breathing. On one long spine overhead, a long, luminescent worm held itself upright, describing a slow figure-eight in the air.

From the moss below, Sophia heard a faint buzzing, and as she peered downward she saw a trickle of beetles, shiny and black, scurrying in a straight line toward a hole. The patch of soil where they burrowed was dark and rich, far moister than the dry soil of the Papal States that they had left behind.

Sophia frowned, wondering how such a thing could be. The Dark Age lay just beside the Papal States. It received no more rain than did its neighbor, and yet it looked like a landscape that received rain daily. Suddenly Sophia's mind recalled a similar mystery: soil that held heat while the air around it was cold. She caught her breath.

“What is it?” Errol asked sharply, turning in his saddle.

“Nothing. I—I realized something.”

He looked at her, waiting.

“I realized something about the Dark Age. Last summer, when we were in the Baldlands, we came across a future Age where the soil was man-made. It could stay warm, even in a cold place. It warmed the water. And it made seeds grow differently, into other kinds of plants. I was thinking . . . Could it be that parts of the Dark Age are man-made? That might be why Goldenrod cannot speak to it.”

Goldenrod's body, behind her, stiffened. “Yes,” she said. “Of course. If it were man-made, it would not hear me. Or speak.”

Errol looked around him, baffled. “That is impossible. How could humans make this?”

“They can,” Goldenrod replied. “I have heard that in future Ages, the manipulation and even invention of animate beings is not unheard of. But I had never imagined an entire Age.”
Sophia felt her shake her head. “It would be remarkable. But conceivable.”

“But the Dark Age is of the remote past, not the future,” objected Rosemary.

“How do you know?” Sophia thought of Martin Metl, the botanist, and his soil experiments. She would have to find a way to gather a sample for him. “Perhaps people of the Papal States
assumed
it was from the remote past because it looks like it should be.”

“I suppose that is possible.” Rosemary shook her head. “Whether made by man or God, it seems to me an abomination.”

“I agree,” said Errol, and he led his horse onward.

“I think it is rather beautiful,” Sophia murmured. Her mind was lit by possibilities. She began to consider what it would mean for a Clime to be both living and artificial: alive and yet not, conscious and yet not. Perhaps the people of this Age had invented ways to adapt, just as the people of the Glacine Age had invented warming soil to counter the extreme cold.

They had progressed some two hundred yards into the forest when Rosemary halted them. “Look behind us,” she said. “You will see they stand at the border.”

Goldenrod turned her horse carefully in the narrow path, avoiding the leaning branches of the spines. Sophia could see the glint of gold in the distance. One of the men shouted into the forest, his voice hard. “What did he say?” Sophia asked.

“He seems to believe we are witches who live in the Dark Age, and he wishes us a speedy return to our maker.” Errol smiled wryly. “Would that we were. But since we are not
witches, let me ask a question: We can ride east for some time easily enough, but the path to Ausentinia is gone. Just how are we planning to find it?”

“I had an idea,” Sophia said. “The map told me to enter the Labyrinth of Borrowed Remembering.”

“Yes,” Errol replied. “Very useful advice.”

She smiled. “The truth is, I have seen the road east to Murtea and the way to Ausentinia many times. Dozens of times. In Cabeza de Cabra's map.”

“And you think you could navigate the route, despite the fact that we are in a different Age?”

“I think so. I have a sense of where we are.” Sophia imagined that the Ages were not unlike memory maps, layered one atop the other. She pictured herself in a map of the Dark Age made of metal, seeing through its man-made landscape to the map of clay below it.

“Very well, miting. I will head east, and you will tell me if we should change course.”

The afternoon lengthened as they continued at a slow pace, choosing the ways less crowded by spines. The air in the forest was cool, despite the sun overhead, and the quiet rustling of leaves alongside the occasional buzz from the black beetles made the ride deceptively tranquil.

Sophia waited for the fourwings to appear, scanning the patches of sky overhead, but they did not. While she reached for the familiar route in the borrowed memories of Cabeza de Cabra, another part of her mind turned over and over the
words from the Ausentinian map.
When you emerge from the labyrinth, you will have a choice. You will defend the illusion or you will not.
She had felt confident that the Labyrinth of Borrowed Remembering meant the sheriff's memories, even if she could not feel confident that she would navigate them perfectly. But she could not fathom what the illusion would be, or how she would defend it. Would it be an illusion of safety? A patch of Ausentinia that would seem safe? Or perhaps the illusion already existed around her: the illusion of a living Clime, which she knew to be false. How would she defend such an illusion?

“Stop,” Errol whispered. He halted his horse. He had already drawn his sword.

Sophia raised her head and strained to look past him. A fourwing lay directly in their path. It was curled up at the base of a spine. The nearest thorns dripped a white liquid, and the fourwing's beak was lined with the same milky substance. It raised its head and made a hoarse, halfhearted cry. Then it buried its head in its wing as if to sleep.

Errol waited, but the bird did not move. Slowly, he led them to the right, making a wide circle around the fourwing.

When it lay safely behind them, Sophia turned to look up at Goldenrod. “Was it poisoned?”

“I think it was drunk,” Errol replied with a surprised laugh.

“The fourwings nest in the spines,” Rosemary put in. “The thorns cannot poison them.”

“Then it was drinking from the tree,” said the Eerie.

At this, Sophia understood why they had not heard the cries
of the fourwings inside the Dark Age; in their homeland, the creatures were always sated and half intoxicated by the milk of the spines. She marveled again at the possibility that people had created this world. However much its creation was mysterious to her, she could appreciate the symmetry: a forest that protected itself from outsiders, trees that fed the creatures who lived in them, soil that gave water to the moss and trees.