The Emerald Atlas (14 page)

“Sorry,” she said quietly. “I could’ve told that better.”

She fought the urge to run. She forced herself to stand there, staring into his eyes across the still-warm body of the stag. The moment passed. Nodding slowly, the man wiped the blade of his knife on the animal’s hide, then replaced it in its sheath.

“My name is Gabriel.”

“I’m Emma.”

He stood, lifting the deer onto his shoulder. “Let us return. Your brother and sister will be awake. We have much to talk about.”

The first thing Kate saw was the man coming around the bend of the path with a body over his shoulder.

Oh no, she thought.

Then Emma appeared, trotting beside him. She smiled and waved.

As the man went to hang up the stag in a shed attached to the cabin, Emma excitedly told Kate and Michael everything that had happened, that the man’s name was Gabriel, about him killing the stag, how if Michael had been there, he would’ve thrown up—

“Hey!”

“Sorry,” Emma said. “But you would’ve.”

“You shouldn’t have gone off,” Kate said. “It’s dangerous.”

Emma nodded and tried her best to look remorseful.

“What did you tell him about us?”

“Oh, you know … that we were from the future and … about the book.”

Kate noticed Emma shifting about nervously.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. Just when I told him about the book. He acted kinda weird.”

“Weird how?”

“Oh, you know.” Emma kicked at the mud and shrugged. “Like he was thinking about killing me or something.”

“What?!”

Just then the man returned and called them to breakfast.

They ate at the wooden table in the cabin. The man, or Gabriel, since that was how Emma at least had begun to think of him, had changed his shirt and washed the blood from his hands in the stream that ran behind the cabin. He told them they couldn’t risk a fire during the day. The Screechers would be abroad in the valley, searching for them, and would see the smoke. For breakfast, they would have to make do with bread and honey and the berries he and Emma had picked on their way back to the cabin.

Kate and Emma hadn’t had a full meal since breakfast the morning they’d gone into the past, and Michael’s meals with the Countess, while lavish, had been magical concoctions where you gorged yourself, then felt ravenous ten minutes later. But still, it was only when the man had laid the food on the table that the children realized how hungry they were. Within moments, they were cramming huge, honey-globbed chunks of bread into their mouths, followed by handfuls of berries that exploded between their teeth. At one point, Gabriel brought over a pitcher of milk, which he poured into four cups. Michael reached for his, slurped half of it in a single gulp, then turned and sprayed it across the cabin.

The man looked unconcerned. “Goat’s milk,” he said. “Sour if you’re not used to it. Drink; it’s good for you.” And to Michael’s dismay, the man refilled his cup.

Emma swallowed a large mouthful and did her best not to wince. “It’s great,” she said, forcing a smile. “I love it.”

Though she ate as greedily as her brother and sister, Kate kept one eye on their host. He was sitting across from them, taking up an entire side of the table, and seemed very intent on his meal. Finally, the man licked the last dabs of honey from his fingers, drank off his milk, and, running the back of his hand across his mouth, sighed.

“Now,” he said, “tell me everything.”

Normally, Kate would’ve resisted such a command, her natural impulse being to reveal as little about herself and her siblings as possible. But as the man turned his gaze upon her, Kate felt what Emma had felt earlier, that something about him demanded the truth.

So, once again, she told their story: how their parents had disappeared, how the three of them had been moved from orphanage to orphanage, how they’d finally been sent here, to Cambridge Falls.

“And the Cambridge Falls of your time,” the man said, “what is it like?”

Kate described a bleak wasteland where the trees had vanished and the people were frightened and unfriendly. She said how there was no dam stopping up the river and the water ran down the gorge and plunged over the cliffs. She said the only animals were the wolves that prowled the night. She said there were no children.

“What of the witch?” The man’s voice was even, but they could see the hatred in his dark eyes. “Is she still there?”

Kate shook her head. The first they’d learned of the Countess, or her Screechers, was when they’d found the book and traveled into the past.

“Tell me about this book.”

With Emma and Michael now starting to chime in, she told about exploring the house, about the door in the wine cellar that led to the underground room, about Michael coming upon the book.

“We thought maybe it was Dr. Pym’s study or something,” Emma said.

“Dr. Pym?”

“Yeah. He runs the orphanage. Supposedly he’s a wizard. Though all we’ve seen him do is start a fire.”

“Your Dr. Pym,” Gabriel said, “he is an old man with great white eyebrows?”

“Yeah!” Emma exclaimed. “You know him?”

The man ignored her question. “Finish your story.”

So Kate told about going into the past, about watching him try to assassinate the Countess, how Michael was left behind, how she and Emma got another photo from Abraham so they could rescue him.

“Then we went back into the past—”

“You left something out.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You’re lying.”

“She’s not,” Emma said. “I was there. That’s what happened.”

“Then there is something she hasn’t told you.”

Kate saw Emma look at her, confused, questioning. She had wanted to skip this part; it scared her to think about it and she didn’t want to share that fear with Michael and Emma. But the man was giving her no choice. So, her heart racing, Kate told about putting her hand on the blank page of the book, about the visions she’d seen, about the blackness that had seeped into her fingers.

Afterward, Emma and Michael stared at her, their mouths literally hanging open.

“You saw dragons?!” Michael gasped. “Fighting?!”

“What do you think that black stuff was?” Emma asked. “Maybe it was ink, huh? Like magic ink? And why didn’t you tell us?”

Kate started to explain. She didn’t understand what it meant. She didn’t want them to worry—

But the man interrupted and told her to continue. He was looking at her more closely than ever.

Kate felt Michael tense as she arrived at their capture by the Secretary and his own betrayal, and though for his sake she glossed over it as best she could, once again the man pounced.

“You helped the witch to lure and trap your sisters?”

Kate saw Michael open his mouth. She could see the arguments forming on his lips, the explanations why at that time turning over his sisters had been a reasonable course of action. Then he sighed and looked down at the table.

“… Yes.”

A sound, almost like a growl, escaped from the man.

“We’ve forgiven him,” Kate said quickly.

She went on, telling how the Countess had taken the book only to have it disappear in front of their eyes, how she’d locked them in with the other children, how Abraham had smuggled them out through secret passages. She told about running through the forest and hearing the howl of the first wolf.

And there she stopped. He knew the rest.

The man picked up a crust of bread and dunked it in the honey jar.

Kate felt drained. Telling the story had been difficult. She looked across at the man. He was chewing, pondering what he’d heard. Her gaze traveled to his scar. It started an inch from his left eye and curved crookedly down to his jaw. It gave his face a terrifying aspect. But even so, it occurred to Kate that he was broodingly handsome. Her face flushed hot, and she stared into her lap. What was wrong with her? Here they were, trapped in the past, pursued by who knew how many of those awful Screechers; what was she doing thinking about how good-looking this man was?

“So, will you tell us your story, then?” Emma asked. “Please?”

Kate and Michael gaped.

“What?” Emma said.

“You said ‘please,’ ” Michael said.

“So?”

“You never say ‘please.’ ”

“Yes, I do.”

“No,” Kate said, “you don’t.”

“I didn’t think she knew what it meant,” Michael said.

“Oh, shut up,” Emma muttered.

“Very well,” the man said, the rumble of his voice silencing them. “You have told the truth. You deserve the same in return. What is it you wish to know?”

Kate thought their first priority should be finding out who this man really was.

“What’s your name?”

“Gabriel Kitigna Tessouat.”

Michael giggled. “Really?”

Gabriel looked at him.

“Because it’s a very nice name,” Michael added quickly.

Kate asked if the man was from Cambridge Falls.

He shook his head. “For centuries, there were two human communities in these mountains. Cambridge Falls. And my people. The way it is handed down, one day a magician came to our village. He told us how, in every land, the magical world was withdrawing. He said the rest of the world would no longer be able to see us. They would forget we had ever existed. We and the people of Cambridge Falls were given a choice. Resettlement, somewhere out in the normal world, or we could stay in our mountains and be hidden for all time. We both chose the latter.”

He paused to refill his milk, and Emma leaned over, whispering to Kate and Michael, “I bet that magician was Dr. Pym, huh? That’s how he knew about him having white hair and all.”

Kate shushed her. She was thinking how something about the man had hinted of another, older world. Now she understood why. She asked how he’d come to be there that day at the dam.

Gabriel said that he periodically came to Cambridge Falls to spy on the Countess. He’d seen the witch and her secretary leave the mansion and, curious, he had killed a Screecher, dressed in its clothes, and followed them to the dam. Once there, he saw the Countess dangling a child off the edge. Before he knew what was happening, he was striding toward her with his sword raised to strike.

“And then she cast that spell on you,” Emma said. “Otherwise, you’d have killed her for sure. I know it.”

“When I awoke, I was in a cell,” the man said. His face grew dark remembering. “There was no light, and at first I did not know where I was; then I felt everything move and heard the lapping of water.”

“The boat!” Emma cried. “Abraham told us about it! He said it’s a prison where they torture people. Do experiments on ’em and stuff!”

“It is not a prison,” said Gabriel. “It is a cage. For a monster.”

It seemed to grow very still in the cabin.

“The first thing I did was to call out and see if I was alone. No one answered. But I thought I heard something below. The stench in that place, so thick with death!” He closed his eyes, as if waiting for the smell to clear. After a few seconds, he went on. “The floor was an iron grid, and I could see that a large cage ran below all the cells on my level. I called again. Again, no answer. I became very quiet. Then I heard it, deep in the blackness: raspy breathing, the clicking of claws, and a faint whispering voice, promising itself, ‘Soon … soon …’ And I knew then what the creature below me knew. I was not a prisoner. I was food.”

If it had been quiet before, it was nothing compared to when the man finished speaking.

Finally, Emma said, almost hopefully, “Maybe it was a Screecher.”

“No. This was something else.”

“But why would the Countess keep it on a boat, whatever it was? Why not keep it under the mansion?” Kate asked.

The man shrugged.

“I bet it’s hydrophobic,” said Michael.

Kate asked him to explain. Michael coughed and pushed his glasses up his nose. Emma groaned. That was the signal he was going to tell them something really boring he’d read in a book.

“In stories, it’s not uncommon for witches and evil wizards to keep a monster around. Kind of like a weapon of last resort. Of course, dwarves never did that sort of thing. They were too honorable—”

“Michael—”

“Right, well, the thing about having a monster around, whether it’s a werewolf or a dragon or a mud troll or whatever, lots of times it ends up attacking its master. So people build in all these protections and safeguards. I was thinking if this monster is afraid of water—that’s what ‘hydrophobic’ means—”

“That’s what ‘hydrophobic’ means,” mimicked Emma under her breath.

Michael ignored her. “The Countess could control it by keeping it on the boat. Then if she needs it, she just has it brought ashore.”

Gabriel nodded. “You are probably right.”

“Really?” Emma said, unable to hide her annoyance. “Are you sure?”

“But how did you escape?” Kate asked.

“The cage has not been built that can hold me.”

He said it as if no further explanation was necessary. And looking at him, Kate agreed.

“So are you gonna try and kill the Countess again?” Emma asked. “We can help. We’d love to kill her!”

“No,” he said. “I will return to my village. I must tell them what you have said. The things that will happen to our forests. And our wisewoman must be consulted about this book the witch desires. She will know what it is.”

“What’s a wisewoman?” Emma asked.

“It’s a woman that does magic,” Michael said.

“I wasn’t asking you,” Emma growled.

“He is right,” Gabriel said.

Emma glared at Michael.

Kate was quiet. An idea had come to her. She held it carefully in her mind, afraid it might slip away. Now she spoke:

“Take us with you.”

The man shook his head. “I will have to move quickly, and the path I will take is dangerous. You will be safer here. With the stag I killed, there is food enough. The stream behind the cabin is safe to drink. Wait till night to light a fire. As soon as I can, I will send someone to look after you.”

“But—” Kate said.

“We—” Emma said.

“No!” And he slammed his huge hand flat on the table, rattling the plates and cups and ending the discussion. He stood and took a brass telescope from the wall, saying that there was a ridge above the cabin from which he could see the entire valley. He would make sure there were no Screechers nearby. Then he must leave.