The Mapmaker's Children (19 page)

Gypsy leapt from her curled rug but, sensing trouble, abstained from her usual sprightly welcome. She sat on her haunches, gazing up with a worried expression. George's and Priscilla's welcoming grins dissolved. They all stood.

“What is it, son?”

Freddy looked to Sarah and Annie, then sighed and removed his hat. His black hair stuck to his forehead, slick with sweat and rain from a strenuous ride through the storm.

“On the road from Purcellville, a posse of local bounty hunters confronted us as to the nature of the Browns being back in Jefferson County. Bloodthirsty for hard coin. Annie and Sarah are not safe here.”

A raw wind swept through the house, causing the fire to suck loudly against the chimney flue. Sarah shivered and drew herself closer to Annie.

“The posse circled round, impeding our passage,” Freddy continued. “They said they knew John Brown's daughters were under our roof and while New Charlestown might've charitably embraced them, the greater southern constituency would just as soon…” He stopped and looked to Sarah with such intensity that her earlobes panged.

“Go on,” urged George.

Freddy set his jaw. A blue vein pulsed above his eye. “They'd just as soon have them follow in their father's strung footsteps.”

Priscilla gasped and came between the girls, putting her arms about them protectively. “George?”

“Don't worry, Prissy. I'll put a bullet in any vigilante that dares enter
my
home.”

“Each man packed a rifle, suh,” said Mr. Fisher. “Four, by my count, but they's said they's got more than that who's ready to take up.”

Freddy balled his fists with capped rage. “Claiming some fool mission to clean the county of Yankee interference. Tried to take Mr. Fisher, alleging him to be a runaway slave, without any warrant.”

“But I gots my papers.” Mr. Fisher patted his chest pocket. “Never
without my free papers. I sleep with them in my pocket. You never knows when some crazy hunter be thinking he snatch you from bed, chop off however many fingers be necessary to fit the description. Never mind if the slave master says you ain't his, they's after money, and by then, you's a hundred miles from home, bleeding buckets.”

At the sound of her father's voice, Siby came down the hall, close enough to hear but still in the shadows.

“I'd have shot them through if they came within a foot, Mr. Fisher.” Freddy's eyes glowed like embers.

George waved a hand in disgust. “It's the November election. Got everybody spun up. Lincoln versus Breckinridge—about to tear this country apart.” He patted Freddy's shoulder to calm him, then moved the curtain to see out the front window. “I reckon this storm will slow them.”

“You need me to take up arms, Mister George?” asked Mr. Fisher.

“I'd be greatly obliged for a strong shot like yours. But I'd hate for you to leave Margaret and the children unguarded.”

“My family be safe where they is. Men ain't coming for my house, suh. They's coming for yours. 'Sides—Margie ain't never let a man sneak up on her. She sleeps with a scoring knife under her pillow.”

George nodded and turned to Siby. “I think it safer for you to go on down to your ma's for the night.”

Siby put her hands firmly on her hips. “Mister George, I been working in your house since I was no bigger than a dandelion weed. You think I'm going to turn feather and run soon as there's a sniff of danger?”

Alice began to cry and pull at her hair. “Don't leave, Siby.”

“I ain't going nowhere,” Siby said to comfort her and led her away from the ruckus.

George didn't argue.

“I'll keep a lookout on the barn and wood line behind,” said Mr. Fisher.

George nodded. “Freddy and I will take the front road.”

“We should hide the girls,” said Priscilla. “Just in case.”

Beside Sarah, Annie was stone cold as a belly-up trout, except for her hands, which did a Saint Vitus' dance. Sarah took her sister's palms and rubbed them to still the tremors. “It's going to be okay, Annie.”

“It's like Pa, Watson, Oliver…the raid at Harpers Ferry. They're all going to die,” she whispered.

Sarah shook her head. “Nobody is going to die. Not us, the Hills, or the Fishers. Nobody.” By saying it, she hoped to make it true.

Priscilla bid them hurry, and they followed her through the kitchen to Siby's quarters and the pantry.

“We have a root cellar here,” she explained.

She got down on her knees, frantically feeling along the wall until she'd found the handhold. She gave a pull and the boards came up, revealing not only a door in the floor but four pairs of eyes peeping back at them from the dark.

Annie's knees buckled. Sarah shrieked. It was a surprise to Priscilla, too, and she dropped the door with a bang. Freddy came running at the sound.

“Passengers?” she asked him.

Unlike Sarah's mother, Mary, who emphasized God's domestic role for women and feigned ignorance of her husband's illegal affairs, Priscilla was as active as George in the UGRR. A co–station master! This new knowledge thrilled Sarah, despite the danger at hand.

Freddy looked from his mother to the cellar, ignoring Sarah and Annie. He nodded. “I thought Father told you. Tom and Bettia Storm and their daughters. It was an emergency stop. The older child has a fever that's nearly done her in. We sent word to Auntie Nan. She telegrammed that the goods would be here today.”

Priscilla rubbed her forehead. “Yes, I wondered as to the nature of her delivery.” She lifted the door gingerly again. “My deep apologies, Mr. and Mrs. Storm. Did I hurt you?”

“No, ma'am.” Mr. Storm's voice was anxious but composed. He held a young girl wearing a tattered capote. She hid her face in his neck. “We're sorry to have startled you but are grateful for the safekeeping.”

“How's your sick child?”

Lower in the darkness, Bettia cradled her older daughter's body. “Better, ma'am. Miss Siby just give her a cup of remedy, and it 'pears to be working.”

“There trouble?” asked Tom.

Priscilla did her best to smile. “We'll take care. You rest quiet. A big journey is ahead.”

She went to close the cellar door, but the girl in Tom's arms whimpered: “I's scared of the dark, Pa. I's scared.”

The judder in her voice ripped open a seam in Sarah. She recalled the soothing doll of lavender she'd given to the runaway babe those many months ago. Sitting in the pantry was the crate in which Auntie Nan's medicine dolls had been carefully packed. Sarah pulled a shiny porcelain head from the straw.

“May I?” she asked. It had helped once before.

Priscilla nodded.

“Here.” She handed the doll through the floor. “A friend to ward off fear.”

The child was wary to accept until her father chided, “Honest lady gives you a gift, you best to take it.”

She obediently took the dolly. Priscilla closed the door over them.

“The Underground Railroad,” Annie whispered.

“Right now, the less you and Sarah know about the particulars, the better. For your protection,” said Priscilla.

“Upstairs,” Freddy said. He took Sarah's hand and rushed her up the steps and into the master bedroom. There he pulled her close and locked his charged eyes with hers. “I won't let any harm come to you. I swear it.”

She believed him—believed
in
him. Her father's thundering theology taught of a belief that could move mountains. She swept back the dark, damp locks from Freddy's forehead. His gaze ran the whole of her face, and she let it without blinking. Maybe if she believed hard enough…Her heart pulsed hot through her fingertips to the words and the rhythm of approaching hoofbeats outside.

N
EW
C
HARLESTOWN
, W
EST
V
IRGINIA
A
UGUST
2014

“H
ello?” Eden called, limping into the bookstore. The blisters were raw and bleeding round the edges. “Ms. Silverdash?” The squeals of children prevented her voice from carrying.

Inside the Reading Room, the Hunter twins lay with their tummies flat on a rug with the alphabet sewn in a whimsical rainbow from
A
to
Z
. They were pretending to slide down the spectrum. The other children stood beside Ms. Silverdash in what looked to be a heated debate. Eden recognized a majority from her last visit.

“Oh, please,
The Little Mermaid
,” begged the Hunter girl.

“Ew, not love stuff,” argued William.
“Puss in Boots.”

“
Cinderella
!” piped in a sprightly pigtailed new girl. “I love Gus-Gus!”

“Children, children,” Ms. Silverdash hushed them. “I warn you, these are not Disney cartoons. These are the
real
fairy tales.” She held up two thick books with weathered covers. “Perrault and Andersen. No sing-alongs here. ‘The Little Mermaid' does not end happily. Puss in Boots is a deceitful kitty. And Perrault's ‘Cinderella' isn't a lesson on magical transformations. It's a tribute to the godmother who helps Cinderella though it benefits her not.”

The children quieted, but their arms and legs twitched impatiently.

Ms. Silverdash looked to Eden and held up the book in her left hand. “The Fur Fairy has decided. In honor of our new Story Hour leader, we are to read her namesake—Andersen.”

Years earlier, Jack had surprised her with tickets to
The Steadfast Tin Soldier
, performed by the New York City Ballet. The love story between soldier and ballerina had made her cry in the gilded theater. At that point,
they'd been trying to get pregnant again for a year with no luck. She'd wondered if her weepiness was a sign of something, but no: just the beginning of the emotional seesaw. The characters on the stage were poignantly familiar: a paper girl, a tin boy, blown by fate into the fire.

Ms. Silverdash extended the book to her, and the children's faces turned like evening primroses to the moon.

Ander
son
, Ander
sen
. To-may-toe, to-mah-toe. It was close enough. Eden took the book.

“Children, this is Mrs. Anderson,” explained Ms. Silverdash. “She's moved to New Charlestown from Washington, D.C. We know who else lives in Washington, D.C., right?”

“The president.”

“Very good, Will,” praised Ms. Silverdash.

By their awed response, Eden's address might as well have been 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The world was so big and simultaneously so small.

“I live on Apple Hill Lane now,” she explained. “Next door to Cleo Bronner.” Seeing as how everybody seemed to know everybody.

She was right. The children nodded with familiarity, and instead of an intrusion, Eden felt included, welcomed, one of New Charlestown's fold—if only in the juvenile readers' circle.

Ms. Silverdash swept her upturned hand toward the rocking chair and the Fur Fairy within. “Mrs. Anderson. The hour is yours,” she said, then sashayed out of the room, leaving Eden. Alone. With the children.

Her throat suddenly dry as cotton, she fidgeted with the book, moved the Fur Fairy aside, and sat on the edge of the wooden rocking chair. The whole thing tilted forward precariously. She'd never sat in a rocking chair before. She scooted deeper into the seat until it righted itself.

“So now…” She opened the cover. “How about we just jump in. ‘The Tinderbox' is up first.”

The Hunter girl's hand shot up like a spear.

“Yes…uh, I'm sorry, what's your name?”

“Susannah Leigh, but everybody calls me Suley.”

“Soo-lee,” said one Hunter twin.

“Soo-lee,” repeated the other.

Suley looked down at her lap and didn't look back up to ask her question. “What's a tinderbox?”

Eden had only ever heard it used as a description for danger—a ticking bomb, an impending disaster—but this was a fairy tale, and she didn't want to turn the kids off before they'd begun.

“It's like a matchbox.”

“My Grandpa Pete collects matchboxes.”

“Then you know what the title means.”

Eden relaxed into the page turn.

“ ‘The Tinderbox,' ” she began. She'd never heard or read it, either. “ ‘A soldier came marching down the road: Left…right! Left…right!' ”

The story described three dogs:
one with eyes as big as teacups, one with eyes as large as mill-wheels, and a third, whose eyes were like towers
. Eden imagined three incarnations of Cricket and hoped no tragedy befell the faithful animals. The soldier, on the other hand, seemed like a character of few scruples.

“ ‘The wedding festivities lasted a whole week, and the dogs sat at the table, and stared with all their eyes.' ”

If it weren't for the dogs in the tale, she thought, she might've despised it. A soldier fills his pockets, steals from and kills an old woman, spends his loot, then has the genie dogs fetch him some more, including a princess and a kingdom? That hardly seemed like a good moral compass. And wasn't that the point of these early allegories—to encourage virtuous behavior in the reader?

“The End,” she announced and flipped the page to see what Andersen had up his sleeve next.

Despite the ethical ambiguity involved, the children were quite pleased. She read “Little Ida's Flowers,” “Thumbelina,” and began “The Princess and the Pea.”

“ ‘Once upon a time there was a prince who wanted to marry a princess; but she would have to be a real princess.' ”

While it started much the same as her high school production of
Once
Upon a Mattress
, it was far less theatrical and ended abruptly: “ ‘There, that is a true story.' ”

Eden added a disgruntled “True as Santa's sweatshop elves.”

The children gave each other side glances. Eden pretended to have spoken to the Fur Fairy—which somehow made it all right.

Ms. Silverdash pushed open the door and poked her head through the purple archway. There was no clock in the Reading Room, giving the illusion of being shut away from the real world—like in Andersen's tinderbox.

“Mothers are waiting. It's seven minutes past the hour, but we didn't hear a hullabaloo, so we figured you might still be in fairy tale.”

She said “fairy tale” as a matter-of-fact destination. As if it were on the map between New Charlestown and Washington, D.C.

The children rose and went clamoring toward the exit.

Before reaching it, Suley turned. “Thank you, Mrs. Anderson. You'll be here next week?”

Eden nodded. “We'll continue with ‘The Saucy Boy.' ”

Suley smiled, and the rest of the children followed her exemplary thanks.

Ms. Silverdash moved aside to let them pass. “Have a lovely weekend, my dears.” Then, to Eden: “I had a feeling about you—a natural storyteller.”

Eden wasn't used to praise from other women. She couldn't recall the last time her mother had paid her a compliment, and, thus, she was unprepared on how best to respond.

“You could probably teach a parrot to do what I did,” she said, deflecting.

Ms. Silverdash ignored the reply and led her out of the Reading Room. The children were gone, but they weren't alone. A silver-haired man sat at a small reading table pushed up against the one shelfless wall in the store. In front of him was an enormous salad, not contained by a take-out box but heaped on a dinner plate so that leaves dangled off the sides. He forked the lettuce as if it were a steak, spearing with force but acquiring little.

“Eden,” said Ms. Silverdash. “May I introduce Mr. Morris Milton?”

He wiped his mouth with a napkin and stood with one extended upturned palm. “Call me Morris.”

She shook. Finally, the man she'd heard so much about. “Morris Milton whose name appeared on my real estate agent's contract? Also of Milton's Market and Morris's Café fame?”

He gave a humbled grin. “I'm just a name on paper—the financier. The market is my elder son, Mack's. My younger, Mett, runs the café next door.”

“I met Mack the other day. Congratulations on your grandson.”

He cleared his throat. “Mighty kind. First grandchild in the family, though I've yet to see him.”

“Children have a way of changing even the hardest of hearts,” chimed Ms. Silverdash. “Evidenced by history and literature. People will do anything for the good of their child, meet every kind of danger head-on, battle monsters, sacrifice, die…even swallow their pride.”

Morris sat, pushed at his greens. “Got me
swallowing
this lettuce stuff right now,” he said to Eden. “Trying to keep me alive until my grandson is as old, lumpy, and gray as his grandpa.”

“And wouldn't that be a blessing,” she teased.

“If I have to eat like a turtle, I think I'd rather someone boil me and enjoy themselves a hearty stew.”

“That could be arranged,” Ms. Silverdash laughed. “Years of eating café food are catching up to you.” She turned to Eden. “A body can't have ham hocks, corn bread, and pie to the sky every day and not expect a thing or two to turn funny.”

“My daddy and granddaddy ate exactly that, and both lived to nearly ninety.”

“Mr. Morr-is,” she said, breaking his first name into two exasperated syllables. “Your granddaddy spent the last decade of his life in his bed, pained with arthritis and a weak constitution. Your daddy had eight of his ten toes taken off from the diabetes. God rest both their souls, but why would you ever want to follow down either of those paths? For what?”

“Lemon pie is what.”

Ms. Silverdash shook her head but smiled. “There's lemon chicken in that salad. Dig down deep and get a piece.”

He dug: a curly stem of frisée dropped to the table, and he left it where it fell. “Must be hiding from me.”

Ms. Silverdash threw up a hand. “Fine, fine. If you're going to keep on like this, I'll go next door and have Mett make you a fried peanut butter and bacon sandwich, but when your heart gives out from the clog, don't expect me to give you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”

“A man has one little surgery and wakes up to a world upside down—and tasteless.”

“Little surgery? You had a heart bypass, Morris!”

“I clean forgot!” He gave his breastbone a dramatic tap. “Well, by all means, bring on the turtle food.” He plowed the lettuce until he found a misshapen chicken chunk. “But don't tell me that's lemon pie.” He grinned sarcastically. “A yard rock is not a diamond, no matter how well you polish it.”

“Rocks or diamonds—it matters little what you're buried beneath. Grave is grave.”

Morris looked to Eden. “A touch dramatic, wouldn't you agree, Mrs. Anderson?”

“I'm not the best person to ask. We—I try to eat organic.”

“Indeed. Even her dog is on the path of clean health. You should take a cue.”

Morris gave a wan grin of defeat. “I'm surrounded.” He ceremoniously lifted his fork to them. “The South concedes.”

“As well it should.” Ms. Silverdash winked. “If you ate instead of talked, you'd fill up and feel better. You know your mood is improved by a full belly.” At that, she brought a cup of tea to his table. “Peppermint is good for digestion.”

He looked to her then with such affection that Eden cast her eyes to the floor. It seemed strange that they weren't married and never had been. She thought of what Cleo had told her—about Morris marrying
Ms. Silverdash's best friend—and it saddened her to think that they'd lived side by side yet divided. She wondered if they'd ever been lovers in their youth. Even just once? It seemed cruel of fate to deny them that. Perhaps even crueler to grant it. After nearly a lifetime, did love still need ordainment? Maybe, maybe not. But Eden thought Ms. Silverdash deserved
something
official. If even just a token of fidelity. Love was a tricky flame to kindle and keep, Eden knew well.

“I ought to be going,” she said. “I'll let you two enjoy your lunch break without a third wheel.” She bit her tongue after she said it, worried that it gave the wrong suggestion.

“Not at all. We enjoy the company.”

Morris nodded. “The bookstore used to be full of people every hour…”

Ms. Silverdash sighed. “Times have changed.”

Eden felt caged. She wanted to stay to talk to Ms. Silverdash about the porcelain doll's head but was hesitant to bring it up in front of Mr. Morris. He and Mack had been the property owners from whom they'd purchased the house on Apple Hill—and, unknowingly, the relic therein. Their real estate agent, Mrs. Mitchell, had negotiated down the Miltons' asking price, dropping it by more than ten thousand dollars. The doll alone could be worth that much. The house, far more. Eden didn't want to put all her cards on the table just yet.

“I'm sorry. I would, but the dog—my dog—Cricket is waiting. My brother, Denny, is here, too, and my husband, Jack, is home. He's not usually. So anyhow, I best go.” She stepped toward the door. “Monday, same place, same time?”

Ms. Silverdash bowed. “It's your Children's Story Hour.”

“Nice meeting you, Mr. Milton—Morris.”

“Happy to have you folks in the old Potter place. A welcomed new neighbor, even if you subscribe to the turtle diet.” He waved a red radicchio leaf as good-bye.

Eden backed out of the bookshop. Her first step on the sidewalk tore more flesh from her foot. The blisters hadn't bothered her for the entire
Story Hour, but now they stung. She kicked off her sandals as soon as she reached her car and drove home barefoot. By the time she parked in her Apple Hill driveway, the pain and heat had left her sweaty despite the air-conditioning.