*
The village lay nestled in a valley, bisected by a rocky-bottomed creek that emptied into the sea—now that there was a sea. The shallow banks were lined with moss, and Elsa’s shoes sank into the springy stuff as she hurried upstream.
She crossed a little wooden bridge and wove her way between the scattered cottages with their dark thatched roofs and whitewashed wattle-and-daub walls. Past the gentle slope of the hill was the cottage she shared with her mother. There was a vegetable garden along the side and a chicken coop behind, and as Elsa reached for the door she reminded herself that one needed weeding and the other needed sweeping.
The cottage itself had one large room on the ground floor and a loft for sleeping space. Hearing the door latch, Jumi glanced up from her writing table.
Looking at Jumi was like looking in a mirror that showed the future. Elsa’s skin was a shade darker, bronze-brown to her mother’s sienna tan, but they shared the black hair, clear green eyes, and even the shape of their faces: strong cheekbones sweeping low over an expressive mouth and sharp chin. Elsa took pride in the similarity, and if anyone saw parts of her father reflected in her, they did not dare to say. She herself had no idea what he had looked like when he was alive, and this was one of the few ignorances she felt no desire to correct.
“Elsa, dear. You’re back early,” Jumi observed.
“Afternoon, Mother.”
Elsa came around the table to look at what her mother was working on. Jumi was scribing in a large worldbook—one that did not look familiar to Elsa, though she couldn’t be sure since it was open to a mostly blank page.
“What’s this?” Elsa said, curious.
“It’s our freedom,” Jumi said.
Elsa eyed her mother, wondering if she could press for a less cryptic answer. Veldana had been created by one of those self-superior European scriptologists, a man named Charles Montaigne, who had treated the Veldanese as subjects of an experiment. The damage he wrought to the Veldanese language alone had taken Jumi years to correct after she learned the scientific discipline of scriptology and negotiated Veldana’s independence. How, exactly, she had wrested control of the world from Montaigne was a subject Jumi always skirted around.
“What do you mean?” Elsa asked.
Jumi did not answer. Instead, she set her fountain pen aside and brushed her fingers across one thick off-white page, a soothing gesture, the way another person might stroke a nervous animal. “You’ll be seventeen next month. A grown woman. I think it’s time you have access to the Veldana worldbook. It will be your job to care for our world someday, and you’re skilled enough now to take a more active role in the expansions.”
Elsa felt a swell of pride. Nothing mattered more than being worthy of Jumi’s approval, worthy of inheriting her role as caretaker of Veldana. “Thank you, Mother.”
Jumi smiled one of her rare, soft smiles and put a hand to Elsa’s cheek, a gesture of affection that would have been embarrassing if they hadn’t been alone. “I could not have asked for better,” she said.
Elsa covered Jumi’s hand with her own, holding it against her face for a moment before letting it go. Flustered by her mother’s praise, she wasn’t sure what to say, so she changed the subject. “I think we might have a problem with the newest revisions. I’m not sure.…” Despite her earlier threats, Elsa found herself reluctant to betray the boys to Jumi. She decided to leave them out of the story. “The Edgemist was behaving strangely. It looked disturbed. And there was this starfish that seemed stable, then it up and vanished right out of my hand.”
Jumi frowned. “I scribed the expansion hours ago. The Edgemist should have settled away to its new location by now.”
“I know.” Elsa shrugged. “Perhaps it was nothing, but—”
There was a loud crack, like the sound of a branch breaking. The room began to fill with smoke, and Elsa covered her nose and mouth with her sleeve. A sickly-sweet smell crept through the fabric as she ran for the door, but she stepped on something and slipped, and the hard slate floor came up to meet her, knocking the wind from her lungs. The smoke was making her dizzy, too dizzy to get back up. Somewhere nearby Jumi coughed and wheezed, but Elsa couldn’t catch sight of her through the smoke.
Her thoughts seemed to be slowing down, like her brain was turning sticky as honey, her skull heavy. Her head dropped and her eyelids closed.
*
On Earth, in the city of Pisa, Leo Trovatelli was dreaming.
In the dream he was on a walkway beside a canal with his brother, Aris. Mist clung to everything, the way it always had in the early mornings of Venetian winter. Aris flashed him a knowing grin, then spun around and sprinted off down the walkway. Leo tried desperately to catch up, but he was a child again, and his short legs weren’t fast enough. Aris pulled farther and farther away, fading into the mist. The cobblestones beneath Leo’s feet shook, throwing him off balance, and he fell over the edge into the black waters of the canal.
Leo jerked awake, but the shaking didn’t stop. He was slouched awkwardly in the armchair in his bedroom; he’d meant to rest his eyes for only a minute and now the whole room was vibrating. An earthquake? He’d felt his share of earthquakes, and this was somehow softer and faster, more frenetic, as if it were tuned to a different wavelength.
Knickknacks jounced around on his shelves, clattering against the wood. Something fell to the floor and shattered. Through the half-open balcony doors, he heard someone shout in the cloister garden below.
After a moment the shaking stopped, but it left behind a sick, hollow feeling in his gut. Somewhere in the world, something had gone wrong.
He shook his head and pushed himself out of the chair. Aunt Rosalinda had always discouraged his superstitious feelings, and if she were here, she’d tell him it was nothing. Better to focus on the practicalities, like cleaning up whatever the earthquake had broken.
He knelt beside the shattered ceramic. There were so many pieces he didn’t recognize it at first, but then he found part of the eye socket and realized: it was the carnevale mask, one of the few possessions he’d brought with him from Venezia. From his childhood with Aris.
This wasn’t a sign, he told himself. This wasn’t a sign of anything.
2
READING SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN, I HAVE TO WONDER: AM I NOT THE VILLAIN OF MONTAIGNE’S STORY? AM I NOT HIS MONSTER? OR AM I REAL ENOUGH FOR THIS TO BE MY STORY, AND HE THE VILLAIN?
—personal notes of Jumi da Veldana, 1886
Elsa swam her way back to consciousness through a honey-thick sea of heavy dreams. When she finally forced her eyelids to peel themselves open, she was greeted by a splitting headache and a unique perspective on the underside of Jumi’s writing table.
“Ugh,” she said, lifting a shaky hand to press against her temple. “Mother, what happened?”