The Mapmaker's Sons

Dedicated to
B
OB
, D
AVID
, and C
ATHERINE

for their unending love and support.

With special thanks to the team of

A
MY
, E
ILEEN
, J
ENNIFER
, H
AROLD
, V
IRGINIA
, and J
OE
,

who used their magical talents to bring this book to life.

— V.L. Burgess

for
O
RNA

— Jon Berkeley

Note from the Publisher:

To list everyone here to whom we are grateful would take pages, since the seeds of this company began to grow many years ago. So we at Move Books will just say thank you. Thank you to all those who helped get Move Books up and running and made this first book possible. Thank you for your dedication, love of children and commitment to their growth.

Text copyright © 2012 by V. L. Burgess

Illustration copyright © by Jon Berkeley

Back cover parchment background ©
iStockphoto.com/tomograf

All rights reserved. Published by Move Books LLC.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Move Books, LLC., Attention: Permissions, P.O. Box 183, Beacon Falls, CT 06403.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012943226

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1    11 12 13 14 15 16

Printed in the U.S.A.

First edition, October 2012

P.O. Box 183

Beacon Falls, Connecticut, 06403

“T
HERE IS ANOTHER WORLD, BUT IT IS IN THIS ONE.”

—William Butler Yeats

T
here were three rules the students at the Lost Preparatory Academy for Boys were expected to follow at all times. No fighting or rough play of any kind. No climbing buildings or trees. And lastly, no leaving the dormitory after lights-out. In one single evening, Thomas Hawkins was about to break all three.

He gave a low whistle as he exited his room. All along the darkened hallway, doors creaked open in response. He heard the soft padding of footsteps as his friends filed out and fell into step behind him. They crept down the carpeted stairwell, silently making their way to the dormitory's lower lobby. Tom eased the front door open and stuck his head out into the blustery March night. His gaze swung across the horizon; then he flashed a grin over his shoulder, indicating to the pack of boys accompanying him that the coast was clear.

They bounded down the steps to the green and turned cartwheels in the soft grass, sending silent salutes to those who hadn't had the guts to come—younger boys mostly, too afraid of the consequences of being caught to risk the thrill of taking part.

To those not familiar with the school, the Lost Preparatory Academy for Boys appeared to offer all the amenities a prospective student could want: lush soccer fields, basketball courts, an indoor swimming pool, and state-of-the-art technology. On the surface, it looked pretty good. Like it might even be a fun place to go to school. But anyone who believed that didn't know Mortimer Lost, a man who was as much fun as blisters on a marching band.

Mortimer Lost, founder and headmaster of the Lost Academy, had never met a rule he didn't like. Tall, perilously thin, and rumored to be nearly a century old, he ran the school with sour-faced intensity, his affinity for structure and order matched only by his affinity for bells.

Bells rang promptly at six in the morning to rouse the students from their beds. Bells told them when it was time to shower. Bells called them to meals. Bells sent them to class and sent them out again when class was over. Bells told them when to study, when to clean their rooms, when to report for inspection, and when to go to bed at night. Nobody at the Lost Academy moved, spoke, or even
thought
without first being prompted to do so by the ringing of a bell.

Tom Hawkins had entered the Lost Academy at the tender age of five. Now, after eight years of constant clanging and clamor, of reacting to stimuli and responding like a circus poodle taught to leap through shiny plastic hoops, he had reached a decision.

It was time to silence the bells.

Tom and his buddies sprinted across the manicured lawns to the old chapel building where the bells were housed.

He reached a towering sugar maple that grew beside the chapel, and stopped. He zipped up his sweatshirt, tightened his shoelaces, then removed a pair of rubber-palmed gloves from his pocket and drew them on.

“You sure you want to do this, Tom?” Matt Copley, one of his best friends, came up beside him. “I mean, nobody's gonna blame you if you can't make it all the way to the bell tower.”

Tom gave the roof, the steepest on campus, a cursory glance. “I'll make it.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Look, don't worry about it. I'll be back in five minutes.”

He grabbed a sturdy branch, swung himself up, then shinnied up the tree until he reached a limb that extended horizontally toward the chapel roof. He eased across it until it started to bend beneath his weight. With one quick jump, he gained the base of the roof. His friends greeted the action with a whisper-soft roar of approval.

Tom smiled to himself and crept upward. Matt Copley might be nervous, but Tom wasn't. Though none of his friends knew it, there wasn't a roof in all the Lost Academy he hadn't scaled at least once. Usually he'd slip out on nights like this, when storms were sweeping in—the more violent and intense the better. Some inner restlessness drove him to the rooftops whenever the weather turned foul, as though the storms carried within them some private message only he could read.

A stiff breeze sent a volley of leaves skittering past him. Thunder boomed and lightning slashed the sky. The storm promised to be an intense one. Tom turned toward it, judging it to be maybe twenty miles away. Disappointment coursed through him. It would be impossible to wait and watch it come in with his friends clustered below, eyeing his every move. Pushing the thought aside, he returned his attention to the task at hand.