Free The Glass Sentence (The Mapmakers Trilogy) by S. E. Grove Page A

table. He went to the bureau where he’d retrieved the pebbles and returned holding a long quill. “Should be sharp enough. The maps that contain more detail can sometimes be difficult to see with your fingertip. Try catching a smaller surface with the tip of the quill.”
    “Can I go back to the common?” she asked hesitantly.
    “By all means—try it.”
    She placed the quill on one corner of Boston Common and at once recalled standing at the intersection of Charles Street and Beacon Street, between the common and the Public Garden. The landscape around her looked blurry, but the brick houses along Beacon Street stood out sharply. There were fewer buildings in the city center. She had a clear memory of looking up the road and seeing the Park Street Church and then the State House at the top of the hill. She drew the quill along Beacon Street, heading west. The roads unfurled before her, and buildings sprang up as if emerging from a mist. She passed the mansions in the city center, the high churches, and smaller brick row houses, all the way to the small farms at Boston’s outskirts. She had a sudden, vivid memory of standing before a red tavern with a low, wooden door. Sophia drew back the quill. “It’s beautiful. Just beautiful. I can’t believe you made this!”
    “Can you find East Ending Street?”
    Sophia moved the quill tentatively, hovering over the South End. “There it is!” she suddenly exclaimed. “That’s East Ending Street!” She placed the quill on the map. In the memory that flooded her mind, some of the houses she knew were missing and some were unrecognizable, with newly laid bricks and oddly colored doors. But then something stirred in her mind, and she realized she was looking directly at a familiar house—her house. It was almost unchanged—sturdy and dignified, with its white-shuttered windows, its ponderous owl, and its bright red door. Only Shadrack’s oval sign and the creeping ivy along the brick walls were missing. “It’s our house!” she exclaimed.
    Shadrack chuckled.
    Sophia lingered over the memory a moment longer and then touched different areas of the map, locating her school and her favorite place by the river. After several minutes of eager exploring, she put the quill down. “So if the cloth map is the weather,” she said slowly, “and the clay map is the ground, and the metal map is the buildings—”
    “Construction,” Shadrack clarified. “That includes roads, railways, bridges, and so on. Everything manmade.”
    “Everything manmade,” Sophia repeated. “That’s all there is. What does the glass map show?”
    Shadrack raised his eyebrows. “You tell me. What is missing from the memories?”
    Sophia stared blankly at the sheet of glass. She picked it up and examined it closely, but all she could see was her cloudy reflection. Suddenly something occurred to her, but the thought was so marvelous that she couldn’t quite believe it. “Not . . .
people?
”
    “Try it and see.”
    “But I have no ideas about how to wake it up.”
    “You’re right—this one is the toughest. And it’s a little difficult to come up with, in this particular room.” He stood. “Normally, you would have a window with daylight, and you would keep the glass covered. Bring it over to the table lamp.”
    “Oh—light!” Sophia exclaimed. She carried the glass sheet carefully to where her uncle was standing beside the two armchairs. She held the pane under the bright lamp, and immediately the spidery white lines of a finely etched map spread across the surface of the glass like fragile threads of frost on a winter windowpane.
    Shadrack took it from her and held it up. “The glass map recalls human action—human history. It can be disturbing the first time you see one. It is strange to remember people you don’t know, saying things you’ve never heard. You must keep a clear distinction in your mind between the memories that are yours and the memories that come from the