Free The Emerald Atlas by John Stephens Page A

something unintelligible, but she bent over and started to mop the floor. Kate wet her brush and went to work scrubbing one of the dragons. As they worked, two small foxes watched them from the depths of the fireplace.
    When dinnertime rolled around, Abraham still wasn’t back, and Kate and Emma ate alone in the kitchen. They told Miss Sallow they’d bring a plate of food to Michael. Climbing the stairs, they felt none of the lightness that had followed the interview with Dr. Pym. They were bone-tired and desperate with worry.
    It was their second night trying to sleep while staring at Michael’s empty bed. The children had never been apart this long. Tomorrow, Kate told herself, tomorrow we’ll get him back.
    In the middle of the night, she awoke with a gasp. She realized she hadn’t checked to see if the book was still there. She got out of bed and reached under the mattress. She felt about, her heart tight in her chest. Then her hand touched the leather binding. She pulled the book out slowly.
    The moon was up, and a silvery light fell across the bed, giving the book’s emerald cover an otherworldly shimmer. She opened to a page in the middle. It was blank. She ran her fingers over the parchment; the paper was dry and rippled with age. She turned over one stiff, creaking leaf. Blank. Another page; also blank. And another. And another. All blank. Then, just as she was about to close the book, something happened.
    Her fingers were resting on the page she had open, and it was as if an image was suddenly projected in her mind. She saw a village on the banks of a river. There was a tower. There were women doing laundry. And the picture wasn’t still. She could see the water moving, the wind rustling the branches of a tree. She thought she heard the far-off clanging of a bell.
    “What’re you doing?” Emma groaned.
    Kate shut the book. She slid it back under the mattress.
    “Nothing,” she said, climbing under the covers. “Go back to sleep.”

CHAPTER SIX
The Black Page

    Miss Sallow put them to work first thing the next morning, and between finishing tasks for the housekeeper and avoiding Dr. Pym, it wasn’t until midafternoon that Kate and Emma were sitting beside Abraham’s fire, drinking cider and listening to him gripe about how far he’d had to go to find a goose.
    “Not that I’m complaining. I like a fat goose as much as the next man, but sending an old fella like me wandering over half the country on a day cold as yesterday? Cold as the grave it was. As two graves! More cider?”
    Abraham’s room in the tower was completely round, with windows facing out in every direction. But the room’s most notable feature, apart from its perfect circularity, was the fact that every available bit of wall was covered with a photograph. And the pictures didn’t stop there. There were piles on the floor, piles stacked under chairs, loose piles sliding off tables. There were hundreds, thousands of photos, all of them yellow and faded with age.
    “Used to be,” Abraham said when they’d entered and were gazing about in amazement, “I had a great passion for photography. Perhaps because I was born with this bad leg and couldn’t work the mines. But times change. I haven’t taken a photograph in years.”
    He leaned forward, topping off their mugs with cider.
    “You’re sure nothing’s amiss? You two seem a bit off. Hope you haven’t caught what your brother has.”
    “We’re fine.”
    Unspoken between Kate and Emma was the fact that it was Christmas Eve and ten years to the day since their parents had disappeared. As they were getting dressed that morning, Emma had suddenly and without explanation hugged Kate. They’d stood there in the center of their room and held each other for almost a minute, wordlessly.
    “So you met the Doctor. ’E’s not from Cambridge Falls, you know. Just showed up one day and bought this old place, oh, more’n ten years ago. Took on me and old