The Wizard's Map (3 page)

“Onomatopoeia,” said Jennifer, and Peter nodded. “We learned about that in school.” Even as she said it, she was thinking that school, with its concrete walls and concrete playground, seemed very far away.

“We haven't found the hidden room yet,” Peter told Gran. “Can you give us a hint?”

“I told you we've never found it,” Gran replied, setting another kind of cake in front of him.

“I thought that was—you know—a kind of come-on,” Peter said.

“Come-on?” Gran looked confused and turned to Mom.

“A tease, Gran. A riddle,” Mom said.

“Oh, aye,” Gran said. “It's a riddle, all right. Only, we've never managed to solve it. Perhaps it's waiting for the right bairn to come along.”

“Bairn?”
Molly asked.

“Child,” said Jennifer. It was the second Scottish word she'd memorized. “It means child.”

***

They finished their pudding and raced up the stairs, Peter going ahead and taking the steps two at a time. Back in the attic, Molly headed toward another trunk that was sitting against a far wall, but Peter and Jennifer made the rounds again, tapping and listening, and tapping again.

They stopped for a while to figure out a series of games played with two packs of cards that Molly had found in the trunk. The cards were kept in a small blue box with the word
Patience
in gold script on the top.

“Mom always says we need to learn patience,” Peter said. “So here goes!”

Jennifer giggled, and on hearing her sister laugh, Molly wanted to know the joke. Even when it was explained, she didn't understand, but she laughed anyway, not wanting to be left out.

A booklet detailing the rules came with the cards. According to the booklet's first page, it had been published in 1933.

“That's even before Mom and Pop were born,” said Jennifer.

“Even before Granny and Granfa Dyer,” added Peter.

“Are you sure?” Jennifer asked.

He nodded.

“Wow,” said Molly.

Jennifer scanned the contents page over Peter's shoulder. The games had names like The Sultan and Puss in the Corner and The Demon.

“The Demon!” Peter said. “Let's try that one.” He read out the instructions. They were much too difficult for Molly, and she soon lost interest, drifting back to the costumes. In a third trunk she found a china-head doll, which she dressed in the christening gown.

“No patience at all!” Jennifer and Peter said together, then laughed. They took turns reading the rest of the instructions aloud. The cards were to be set out in individual patterns called “tableaux,” and each game had a different setting. Any cards remaining in the hand were called “talon,” and the discarded cards that did not fit into the patterns properly were called “the rubbish heap.” Cards not used in a particular game were known as “dead.”

“Pretty gruesome,” Peter said happily, though even he found The Demon instructions too difficult to understand. “Better start with the first game and work our way through.” He laid out the cards for The Star.

Though the games were all forms of solitaire, the twins worked on the first together. It was too easy, and they finished it in minutes, so they progressed to the next one in the booklet, the one called The Sultan. Peter put the tan turban on his head, rolled his eyes dramatically, and set the cards down with a flourish.

Jennifer laughed, watching Peter's progress for a while. Then she looked over her shoulder to check up on Molly.

Molly was hunched over a small table, making designs with a pen on a piece of paper.

“What are you writing on, Molls?” Jennifer asked.

“Just an old piece of paper,” Molly said. “I found it in the doll's pocket.”

“Oh-oh,” Peter said, jumping up. The turban fell off his head.

Jennifer beat him to Molly's side and snatched at the paper.

“Mine!” Molly said, and Jennifer knew she'd have to cozen her sister or else the paper would be torn in two.

“Can I see what you've done, Molls?” Jennifer asked. “Can I see your drawing? I think you're the best drawer in the family.” It wasn't a lie at all. Jennifer and Peter had not an ounce of art between them.

“OK,” Molly said, reluctantly handing over the paper.

“Oh, Molls, what have you done!” Jennifer held it up to the light.

The paper was an old beige map. It was torn along the edges. What Molly had done was to draw a sequence of seven awkward circles in a row across the bottom of the map. There was a long line coming from the last circle, where her pen had slipped when Jennifer tried to snatch the paper away.

“Maps are valuable, Molls,” Peter said. “Especially old maps like this. You can't just draw on them.”

“But I
want
to draw,” Molly wailed.

Jennifer and Peter looked at one another, and Jennifer said, “Mom's got your coloring books downstairs. And you know what?”

“What?” asked Molly, distracted for the moment.

“It's time for tea!” said Peter.

“More pudding?”

“Always,” Jennifer and Peter said together.

Molly turned and raced down the steps, not even bothering to hold on to the wooden banister—a maneuver as fraught with danger as Pop's driving on the left in the rain.

Quietly tucking the map in her sweater pocket, Jennifer followed behind Molly, ready to help if she slipped.

Peter was last down the stairs, carefully turning off the light as he went. The cards were still spread out in The Sultan pattern, the turban tumbled next to them. Peter had been ahead in the game; he didn't want to put the cards away.

While Molly and Peter gobbled up the pudding—it was carrot cake this time, drenched in cream—Jennifer took Gran aside into the pantry.

“The attic is great,” Jennifer said. “Lots of surprises.”

“Maybe more than you know,” said Gran. “But not more than you can handle.”

Jennifer thought this was a very odd thing to say, but she was beginning to think that Gran was a bit odd herself. Still, Jennifer had brought the map down to show Gran, because she suspected it might be valuable. Drawing the map out of her pocket, she said, “We found this in one of the trunks. Or rather, Molly found it. But she didn't know any better—and she scribbled on it.” Then she added quickly, “Molly's only four, after all.” As she spoke she unfolded the map and handed it to Gran. It made a strange noise, like faraway firecrackers. “I don't think she's ruined it, though. We stopped her in—”

Gran's face paled. She reached out with a trembling hand for the map. “Michael Scot's map!” she said. “O Scotland, that he once drew ye. I thought the blasted thing gone for good.” Then she stared at the map, put her other hand to her forehead, and looked as if she were about to pass out.

“Da! Da!” Jennifer cried frantically. “Come quick!” She put her arms around the old woman and helped her to a ladder-back chair at the kitchen table.

Molly saw the beige paper map in Gran's hand and burst into tears. “I didn't mean it,” she cried, her mouth full of cake. “I didn't mean it!”

Da raced in from the living room with Mom and Pop at his heels. It took some time before the sobbing child and the fainting woman were comforted, and only after everyone was completely calm could the story of the map be told.

But at last Molly was “molly-fied,” as Pop said, with an extra helping of pudding all around. And Gran had caught her breath, the rose color creeping slowly back into her cheeks.

“What about the map?” Jennifer ventured when all was quiet again. “And who is Michael Scot?”

“An evil man,” said Da. “With a de'il of a horse.” He saw they didn't understand him and he added, “De'il, you know. A devil!” He said it with the kind of vehemence reserved for personal enemies. It was the way Pop spoke about their state senator.

“Michael Scot is an astrologer,” said Gran. “And court physician to the emperor.”

“Wait a minute,” said Peter, putting down his fork. “What emperor? There aren't any emperors around now.”

“There were in the thirteenth century,” said Gran. “Which is when Michael Scot first lived.”

Pop shook his head. “What's a thirteenth-century map doing stuffed in a trunk in your attic? Surely it should be in a museum.”

“It didn't look like any thirteenth-century map to me,” said Peter.

“What do
you
know of the thirteenth century?” said Jennifer, too fascinated by what was happening to realize that she had just challenged Peter in public.

“Well, I know they didn't write like
that
in the thirteenth century. Don't you remember, Jen, when we studied printing in fifth grade? That was fifteenth century—Gutenberg and all that stuff. You can hardly read anything written back then. And look!” He nodded his head toward the map, which was the color of a grocery bag, and crinkled with wear.

They all looked. And Molly, with the slow articulation of a new reader, read aloud what was written at the top of the page:

MICHAEL
...
SCOT
...
HIS
...
OWN
...
MAP

She stumbled a bit on the first word.

“That's almost modern writing!” said Peter triumphantly.

“Michael Scot is a wizard,” said Gran. “He can move through time. The map is only as old as the last time he was in this house, a hundred years ago. It mirrors his heart. Once this was the map of all Scotland, and Michael Scot had the country in his hand. Then it was the map of the kingdom of Fife. And now it is but a map of Fairburn, so small has he grown in his confinement.”

“This is a story—right?” Jennifer said.

But Gran shook her head. “Not exactly, child. This is magic.”

“Michael Scot's magic,” added Da.

“But magic is—” Jennifer began. She was going to say “book stuff.” But Gran interrupted.

“You Americans need to understand this about magic. There are seven kinds: Major Arcana and Minor.” Her face was deadly serious.

Peter rolled his eyes and left the room.

Gran paid him no mind, but continued. “The Major consist of earth magic, air magic, fire magic, and water magic. The Minor magics are colors, numbers, and riddles. White magic is the proper use of the gift, and black magic is done by the wicked. Tartan magic is..

Reluctantly, Jennifer followed Peter out of the room.

In the hall, Peter turned on her. “The syrup has definitely slipped off Gran's pancake,” he said. “She's half a sandwich shy of a picnic.” He and his friends collected such sayings. “The bell's ringing but no one's home.” He grimaced. “And so are the rest of you, if you listen to her. She's one batty old lady.”

“She's our
Gran”
Jennifer said, touching his arm as if to emphasize what she was saying.

“She's not our Gran!” he reminded her. “She's just a dotty old Scottish cousin of Mom's who took care of Mom aeons ago. Probably has Alzheimer's.”

“Peter, how can you say that?” Jennifer stared at Peter.
He's changed,
she thought.
He never used to be so mean-mouthed.

“Grow up, Jen, and think. One minute Gran says this Michael Scot character lived in the thirteenth century, and the next she says he was in this house a hundred years ago. And then she says he drew a map of Scotland, but now it's a map of Fairburn. Didn't you see it has street names? And then she says the map is as old as the last time he was in the house. Right! And then all this stuff about earth magic and color magic and arcanas. She should be put in the loony bin.”

Jennifer couldn't think of a single reason to disagree.

Peter started toward the stairs. “I'm going up to finish that Patience game.” Speaking over his shoulder, he added, “
Alone
”

She didn't follow him. When Peter said he wanted to be alone, he always meant it. Instead she went back into the kitchen, where the grownups and Molly were huddled over the map.

“The circles are down here,” Gran was saying, pointing to the bottom edge of the map. “South of Fairburn.”

“That's McIlreavy's farm,” said Da. “He's planted it in corn.”

“I love com,” said Molly.

“Da means wheat. For bread,” explained Mom.

“He said
corn”
Molly was adamant. “Corn's not wheat.”

“‘Com' doesn't mean corn here in Scotland,” said Mom. “It means—”

But before she could repeat herself, Peter stormed into the room, his voice graveled with anger. “All right—who did it? Who finished The Sultan?”

For someone had completed the Patience game and then, ever so carefully, had put the turban on top of the trunk.

No one would own up to having finished Peter's game, and he was furious.

“We were all down here together,” Jennifer told him sensibly.

“Not everyone,” said Peter. He meant that Mom and Pop and Da had been in the living room while the children were having their tea with Gran in the kitchen. In the living room and out of sight.

But it was unthinkable that any of
them
would have sneaked up the back stairs to the attic in order to finish a game they hadn't even known Peter was playing. There was no reason for them to go up in the attic to play such a trick. And besides, Mom and Pop didn't know how to play Patience.

“Or so they say,” Peter grumbled to Jennifer, but out of the grown-ups' hearing.

“Should we go up again?” Jennifer ventured. “Just to check things out?” She wasn't keen to do it, but thought she should make the offer.

Peter was strangely reluctant as well.

Molly was the only one of the three who wanted to head back to the attic, because she wanted to bring down the doll in the christening gown. However, she didn't want to go up alone. “Because of the shadders,” she said.