The Spring Between Us

Chapter 52: The Map in the Attic

We put the lantern out and lay flat on the floorboards.

The stable door had creaked and the boots had come in, and from the loft we could hear them moving around below, the rustle of hay and the stamp of a horse and the small clink of a bucket. Then the ladder creaked.

Wren came up through the hatch with a lantern in her hand and her grey jacket open and her hair loose, and she stood at the top of the ladder and held the lantern out and looked around the attic.

She did not see us. We were behind the spinning wheel and the stack of hides and the canvas, flat on the boards with our faces in the dust. But she stood there for a long time and she looked at the crates in the corner and then she walked over to them and lifted the canvas.

She opened the first crate and looked inside and then the second. Then the third. She took out a map and held it up to her lantern and looked at it and put it back. Then she went to the fourth crate and opened it and looked inside and stood there with her hand on the lid.

"There is nothing here," she said, to nobody. "He said there would be a box."

She turned and looked around the attic. She looked at the spinning wheel and the chair and the box underneath it and she came toward it and knelt down and opened it and pulled out the bundles of letters and turned them over in her hands.

"Letters," she said. "An old woman's letters."

She put them back. She stood up and went to the hatch and stood with her lantern and her hand on the ladder and said, "He said there would be a box with a hasp on it and the corner of a map inside. There is no box with a hasp on it. There is no corner of a map. There is nothing in this attic but an old woman's letters and a broken chair."

She went down the ladder. The boots crossed the stable floor and the door creaked and shut. We lay in the dust and did not move for a long time.

Then Hank said, very quietly, "He is looking for the corner of the map."

"He is looking for the corner of the map and he thinks it is in a box with a hasp on it." I sat up. "My father's letter said he cut the corner off and gave it to my mother and told her to keep it separate. And the box under the spinning wheel has no hasp. It is a plain box and it has no lock and it was full of letters. So my mother put the corner of the map in a box with a hasp on it and she put that box somewhere else, and Silas knows it exists because he has read my father's letter."

"How would he have read my father's letter?" Cal said.

"Because Ruth had the packet," Hank said. "Elias gave Ruth the packet the night Derya found the map in the attic. Ruth gave the packet to Silas the same night. That packet was my father's letters and your father's letters and probably the corner of a map. And Silas read them and he has been looking for the box with the hasp ever since."

I sat on the floorboards with the dust on my face and the lantern out and the attic dark around us.

"He is looking for it," I said. "And he has Wren looking for it in this attic tonight. That means he has not found it yet. That means it is still somewhere in this pack house." I got up. "Cal. Go down and make sure she has gone back to the hall. Then go to Mira's hut and tell her I need her. Not in the hut. In the graveyard behind the water tower. Half an hour."

Cal went. Hank and I waited in the dark and then we went down the ladder and out the back of the stable and across the yard to the graveyard behind the water tower, and Mira was there already with a shawl around her shoulders and her round face pale in the moonlight.

"Wren has been in the attic," I said.

Mira's hand went to her mouth. "Did she find it?"

"She found the letters. She did not find the box with the hasp on it. She said the Council man told her there would be a box with a hasp on it and the corner of a map inside and she could not find it." I looked at her. "Mira. The box with the hasp on it. Do you know it?"

Mira was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, "Your mother had a box like that. It was a writing box. Her father gave it to her when she became Luna and it had a hasp on it and a little lock. She used to keep her private letters in it and she kept it on the shelf in her room." She looked at me. "It is not on the shelf now. I have been in that room since the funeral and I have not seen it."

"Then it is somewhere in the pack house." I turned and looked at the pack house in the dark with its long low walls and its water tower. "She took it out of her room before she died. She put the corner of the map in it and she put it somewhere and she did not tell anyone. And the last thing she said to me was go to the old maps in the attic." I looked at Mira. "The attic is where the maps are. But the corner is not in the attic. So she meant the maps would tell me where the corner is."

"The map in the attic is cut," Hank said. "The corner is off it. The map does not tell us anything."

"The map tells us the branch goes under the quarry and off the bottom of the page," I said. "And the corner of the map has the name of the place on it. So the place is at the bottom of the map, past the quarry, off the page." I stopped. "The pump house. The chamber under the pump house. It is past the quarry and off the bottom of the page."

Hank looked at me. "The chamber is empty. Wren said so."

"Wren said the chamber is empty and the table is gone and the pump is gone and the map is gone. She said it three nights ago when she went down there with her lantern." I turned to Hank. "But my mother put the box with the hasp in it somewhere before she died. Before the chamber was built. Before the pump was put in. Eighteen years ago my father hid a ring in a place that was on the corner of a map and my mother hid the corner of the map in a box. The chamber under the pump house is not eighteen years old. The pump house is nine years old. Silas built the chamber."

"Then the place is not the chamber."

"The place is under the chamber." I looked at him. "The map goes down and off the page. The chamber is down. What is under the chamber?"

Hank was quiet. Then he said, "There is a floor in that chamber. A concrete floor. I stood on it."

"And under the floor there is rock. And under the rock there is water." I started walking. "Come on. We are going to the pump house."

We went down the mesa road in the dark with Cal and Hank and Mira and Berik and four warriors, and we came to the quarry and went round the back to the pump house, and the pump house was dark and the hatch was locked. Berik broke the lock with a pry bar and we went down the ladder with a lantern.

The chamber was as Wren had said. Empty. The table was gone and the pump was gone and the map was gone and there was nothing but a hole in the floor where the pump had been.

I stood in the middle of the chamber with the lantern and looked at the floor. It was concrete and it had been poured in one piece and it was not eighteen years old.

"Cal," I said. "Go up and get the pick from the shed."

He went. He came back with a pick and a crowbar and we went to work on the concrete, and it took an hour and it took the skin off my hands and it was Hank who found it. There was a stone under the concrete and the stone was loose and it had a hollow behind it, and in the hollow there was an iron box with a hasp on it and a little lock.

I broke the lock with the crowbar.

Inside the box there was a corner of a map folded small, and a key on a leather cord, and a letter in my mother's hand.

I unfolded the corner of the map and held it to the lantern. It fit the map in the attic. The branch came off the bottom of the page and into the corner and the branch ended at a small square mark with a name written beside it in my father's hand.

The name was the old ore shaft.

I looked at the key on its cord. It was the same as the key my mother had left me in the bundle, the one that opened the door at the bottom of the old ore shaft. It was the match of it.

And the letter was in my mother's hand and it was dated four weeks before she died.

Derya. There are two things in this box. The corner of the map and the second key. The first key is in the bundle with the pact and the ring. The two keys open the two doors at the bottom of the old ore shaft. Behind the second door there is a room and in the room there is the ring of the first Luna and the proof of what the Council did to her. I have not been down there. I could not get the second door open because I did not have the second key until last week and last week I found out that the wolf who has been coming to this canyon for nine years is not who he says he is. His name is Silas and he is the son of the man who broke the first pact and he has been looking for the two rings for twenty years. Do not go down that shaft alone.

I read it twice. Then I looked up.

"The second ring," I said. "The ring of the first Luna. It is at the bottom of the old ore shaft behind a door that only this key will open." I held up the key. "And Silas has been looking for it for twenty years."

Hank took the letter out of my hand and read it. Then he looked at me.

"Wren is the trustee of the Kızıltaş pack," he said. "She has the ore shaft and she has the warriors and she has the Council behind her. How are we going to get down that shaft?"

I put the key around my neck.

"We are not going to get down it," I said. "We are going to be let down it. By the one wolf in this canyon who Wren will open the gate for."

"Who?"

I looked at the letter in my mother's hand and the name on it.

"Silas," I said.