On the other side of the door, Theo cleared his throat, letting us know that he had been listening.
“We could ask him,” Anya whispered. “He might have an answer—”
“No way,” I said. “He’s a liar and a con man. Besides, this doesn’t involve him.”
“There are four tickets,” Anya countered. “One has his name on it.”
“And we don’t have any better ideas,” Dante added.
I turned to him in disbelief. He couldn’t be serious.
“The plane leaves tomorrow morning,” Dante said softly. “We don’t have much time.”
I let out an incredulous laugh. “We just caught him going through my things. If we hadn’t found him, he probably would have stolen the chest. I know he’s lying to us about who he is. He could be anyone. He could be wanted for murder—”
“He isn’t a
complete
stranger,” Anya said. “We’ve already stayed with him for three days, and nothing awful has happened yet.”
I looked to Dante for help, but he leaned against the windowsill. “He did know about the Cartesian Map.”
“What if he’s lying?” I couldn’t understand why they weren’t listening to me. “What if he has no idea? Or worse—what if he does, and is trying to take the chest from us?”
Dante considered my point, then said in a calm voice, “So what?”
I blinked. Had I heard him correctly?
“He already knows we have the chest. He knows where we’re heading. He could try to take it from us either way. I think it’s better to keep him close. Keep an eye on him.”
“I agree,” Anya said.
Dante studied me. His eyes begged me to say yes. To trust in things I didn’t understand or have any reason to trust—just like I had trusted him, just like he had trusted me. To walk into the future with him and face what was coming, because that was our only hope. “Okay.”
When Anya opened the door, Theo was leaning against the door frame, polishing a bit of wood with sandpaper. He quickly slipped it into his pocket.
Sandpaper,
I thought, catching my breath. But before I could point it out, Dante spoke.
“Does Paris mean anything to you?” he said.
A mischievous smile spread across Theo’s face. “Yes.”
R
ENÉ
D
ESCARTES DIED
on a frigid winter’s evening in 1650. Candles flickered in the chambers. He wasn’t at home; he no longer had a home. Instead, he found himself far from his birthplace, in the house of the French ambassador to Sweden. He tossed in the guest bed, sweating through the sheets, his body weak with pneumonia. The bustle of the staff—pots clinking in the kitchen, the footsteps of the maids on the stairwell—was absent. They knew what was about to happen. But he didn’t look frightened; not of dying.
His thin hair was matted to his forehead. He coughed: a spatter of blood. Someone stepped forth from the shadows. A French nursemaid leaned in to blot his temples with a damp washcloth. While she was close, he uttered something in her ear.
“Quoi?”
she whispered.
He coughed again. She pressed a handkerchief to his mouth, patting it dry.
“What, to you, is a second soul worth?”
he repeated in French, his breath sour.
The nurse hovered over him.
“Je ne comprends pas,”
she said.
He blinked, his gaze trained on the ceiling. He was nearly blind, nearly deaf; his mouth was so parched he could barely speak. He had been traveling for months, but to where, no one knew. A farmer had discovered him weeks prior, wandering the French countryside, lost, confused, and speaking in tongues. When the French authorities realized who he was, they turned Descartes over to his friend, the French ambassador to Sweden, who whisked him away to his guesthouse in Stockholm, where Descartes could recover in peace. But his illness was persistent, and mysteriously untreatable. A strange lifelessness had overtaken him.
“An early death, a wombless rebirth?”
he continued, his voice weak.
The nurse set down her rag and reached for the ink and paper on his bedside.
“Que voulez-vous dire?”
He wheezed, his chest heavy beneath the sheets.
“The way follows the soul’s path after death,
With each step it is cleansed, with each point one less
breath.The nethers first call from their hollows by dark,
In the shape of a bird, with each sense the route has been
marked.Sounds, they fade to the ground, the earth’s music
unsung,Then taste, until food is but dirt on the tongue.”
His lips were dry. He pressed them together, resting his voice, while the nurse transcribed his verse.
“The nose, it next decays, death the only stench to stay,
The eyes follow, the jaws of the mountains a colorless
gray;Touch, the noblest, is last to decline,
The final remainder of life in this soul of mine.”
He swallowed and closed his eyes, as if he were traveling back into his past.
“In its world it is dust, in the hand it is coal,
At long last I found it, the ephemeral soul.”
The scrawl of the nurse’s quill grew still as he sank back into his pillow, a calm passing over him. She didn’t know what his verses meant; perhaps they were just the last musings of a man on his deathbed.
“Please,”
he said, his voice cracking.
“A glass of water.”
She set the pages down on his nightstand and picked up the metal pitcher, which was nearly empty.
“Bien sûr,”
she said, and left the room.
Five minutes passed.
She returned to an unnatural silence. His body lay twisted and limp on its side, the sheets tangled around him as though he had tried to reach something by the candle. Water sloshed out of the nurse’s pitcher as she rushed to him. His face was wan, its warmth already fading. A smudge of black grazed his cheek. Nothing more than a stray bit of ash, she thought. She checked his pulse, then ran to get the doctor.
According to legend, the nursemaid gave the doctor the verses she’d transcribed, and the doctor gave them to the French ambassador who had taken him in, and then to Descartes’s family. Word trickled down to the staff, and out to the circles in which Descartes had traveled. His last words were whispered at dinners and parties, in small groups behind closed doors. Those close to him knew he had spent the latter part of his life writing about the Undead—about how, after the body died, the soul left it and traveled to a mythical underworld, where it was purified before being reborn into a new body. The
Netherworld
, he’d called it.
In his
Seventh Meditation
, he’d described what he believed the Netherworld would be like: a hollow in the earth where millions of souls traveled to after they were cleansed, waiting in a swirl of particles to be reborn into a new human. He’d believed that if he could only find the way into the Netherworld, he would be able to then capture one of the purified souls, breathe it in, and live a second life. It didn’t matter whose soul he took, for once they entered the Netherworld, they belonged to no one, to anyone.
His deathbed verses were curious.
In its world it is dust, in the hand it is coal,
At long last I found it, the ephemeral soul.
To many of his friends, those final lines seemed to imply that he had found the Netherworld and taken a second soul. But his death contradicted them. He hadn’t disappeared; he hadn’t burst into life again. He had died in bed of pneumonia, and had been buried the following morning, per his wishes. Or so they thought.
Not long after his burial, rumors began to circulate. There were sightings of him. One person claimed they saw him in France. Another in the Netherlands. Another in Sweden. Another in Belgium. They dug up his grave, but all that was left inside was dust.
Had his bones dissolved in a trick of disease or parasites? Perhaps someone had robbed his grave. Or perhaps his final verses had been true. Perhaps he had found the Netherworld, and after burial had reanimated and dug himself out to live a second life.
Scholars and fellow philosophers scoured his belongings, but found nothing they didn’t already know. So instead, they took to decoding his final words.
It was a map in riddles, they realized. If solved, it would lead to the Netherworld: a place where anyone could claim a second soul and live another life.
The way follows the soul’s path after death,
With each step it is cleansed, with each point one less
breath.
The path to the Netherworld follows the path the soul takes when it leaves the body and is cleansed.
The nethers first call from their hollows by dark,
In the shape of a bird, with each sense the route has been
marked.
The route lay in the shape of a bird, each point representing one of the five senses that is washed from the soul to purify it.
Sounds, they fade to the ground, the earth’s music unsung.
The first mark on the path represented sound.
Then taste, until food is but dirt on the tongue.
The second mark represented taste.
The nose, it next decays, death the only stench to stay.
The third: smell.
The eyes follow, the jaws of the mountains a colorless
gray.
The fourth: sight.
Touch, the noblest, is last to decline.
The fifth: touch.
Or at least that’s what Theo claimed.
“People have been trying to locate the five points in his riddle since the eighteenth century,” Theo continued. “Over time, it came to be called the Cartesian Map, though no one believed Descartes had ever written it down. The riddle was all anyone had, and even that is a matter of belief. Maybe it never existed in the first place, and all Descartes did was ask for water. No one ever found the nurse’s transcript. Even more strangely, the French version is so similar to the English one that it, too, rhymes, as do many versions in other languages. To me, that makes the riddle all the more believable. Descartes always paid extreme attention to detail; that he would arrange his riddle to make even the rhymes translatable into many different languages is something I can imagine him doing,” Theo said. Then he added, “Though I suppose almost everything in French rhymes, since consonants at the end of French words are typically not pronounced.”
His eyes lit up as he gazed between us. “But now we know. Don’t you see? The shape of a bird? The five points? It’s just like the markings on your chest.”
I felt my heart stammer as I lifted the lid of the chest just enough for the light to catch the five points engraved inside, each surrounded by strange swirls and shapes, forming a dramatic and foreign landscape. The Cartesian Map. Could it be?
“But Descartes didn’t hide this chest,” I said, remembering the trail of riddles I’d followed in Montreal that had led me to the chest, which was at the bottom of the lake at Gottfried Academy. Riddles that sounded oddly similar to Descartes’s final words. “It belonged to the Nine Sisters. And they were going to destroy it, if the ninth sister, Ophelia Hart, hadn’t betrayed them and hid it for someone to find.”
“The Nine Sisters supposedly found the secret to eternal life,” Theo said. “Right?”
I nodded.
“What if they decoded Descartes’s riddle and found the Netherworld? After they were murdered, the last remaining sister, Ophelia, carved it on the inside of a chest. She could even still be alive.”
The Cartesian Map
was
their secret. As I traced the engravings on the inner lid, I felt Dante’s breath on the back of my neck, cool and thin. I walked my fingers through the strange landscape etched into the metal. The sweeping lines and symbols that marked the path made me shudder. They didn’t look like they belonged to this world.
“So what was inside the chest?” Theo said.
My eyes flitted to Dante’s.
“Nothing,” Dante said.
Theo gave him a curious look. “It seems awfully strange that the ninth sister would have etched the map into a chest, of all things, without wanting to put anything inside with it.”
“Does your legend say there’s supposed to be something included with the map?” Dante countered.
Theo’s gaze drifted to Dante’s bag. “No,” he said thoughtfully. “It doesn’t.”
Anya broke the silence that followed. “So what exactly does Paris have to do with all of this?”
Theo pursed his lips, a silent acknowledgement that if we were going to keep our secrets, he was going to keep his, too. “I’ll show you once we get there.”
“We?”
I said. “Who says you’re invited?”
“I do,” Dante said, surprising all of us. “Under the condition that once we get there, you’ll show us what you know. In exchange, I’ll show you what was inside the chest.”
A crooked grin split across Theo’s face. “Deal.”
We landed in Paris at night, its skyline covered in a swirling winter flurry like a city enclosed in a snow globe. While Theo hailed a taxi, I stood on the curb with Dante and gazed out at the rooftops in the distance—the city so bright that it set the horizon aglow, as if dawn were approaching. I was about to turn around when I felt a wisp of cold air tickle my neck. I froze.
“Do you feel that?” I said.
“What?” said Dante.
“The Undead,” I said, and looked to Anya and Theo to see if they had sensed it. They followed my gaze toward the dark field that flanked the airport.
“I don’t feel anything,” Anya said after a moment.
“Me neither,” said Theo. “Probably just a draft.”
“Yeah,” I said, as Dante picked up my bag. “It must have been in my head.”
I tried to shake the feeling as we squeezed into a tiny taxi, Theo in the front, Anya, Dante, and I in the back, the aroma of vanilla and sweet tobacco clinging to the seats. It was exactly what I had imagined Paris to smell like. Tinny Christmas music played from the radio.
Theo leaned toward us over the passenger’s seat. “So where are we going?”
I stiffened. Wasn’t he supposed to know?
“This was your side of the deal,” Dante said, his voice losing its warmth. “I think you’d better figure out quickly what exactly we’re doing here, because if turns out you lied to me, I’m not going to be generous.” His tone was so callous that it sent a chill through the car.
“Relax,” Theo said, swallowing. “I was just joking. Of course I know where we’re going. But it’s closed now. We have to wait until morning.”
My stomach sank as I realized that even though I didn’t believe him, I wanted to, for without Theo, we were already lost.
Dante ignored him and spoke directly to the driver.
“Pourriez-vous nous amener—”
he began to say. I was so used to hearing him speak Latin that I didn’t realize the deep voice belonged to Dante until Theo interrupted him, giving the driver conflicting directions.
“Menez-nous à la rue Chartreuse, s
’
il vous plaît,”
he said, in an immaculate accent.
The driver shot Dante an impatient glance in the rearview mirror.
Theo turned to Dante. “I’m not lying to you, okay? So let me do the talking.”
After a moment, Dante nodded.
As we pulled away from the curb, I turned and cast one last glance at the darkened field by the airport. Had the sensation just been a chill? I focused on the field, searching for that cool wisp again, and I thought I noticed headlights blink on in the distance, pull away from the curb, and drive after us. Was it just another taxi? I watched the lights bob behind us until we turned onto a highway, where they got lost in the sea of cars zipping around us.
We drove in circles, whizzing through roads crowded with tiny European cars that looked like toys, down winding streets lined with cafés, and finally through cobblestoned alleys crowded with pigeons, our car splashing through slushy puddles. Every so often I gazed over my shoulder, unable to shake the feeling that we were being followed.