Keeper: Chapter 28

Chapter 28

The long shadows created by the evening light made the dusty store room seem a little foreboding. Instead of making due with just the over head light he turned on a few of the extra lamps to chase the shadows away. He was a little chagrinned that the extra light made him feel better about the space.



“I’ll need to see the markings on the boxes,” he rationed aloud. Privately he hoped he wasn’t getting to the stage where he wanted a night light. Jamie scanned the inventory in case any of the older journals were mentioned but couldn’t find any. He picked a box at random, checked the numbers against the inventory. He smiled at the words Maps, assorted. Jamie pried the lid off and hoped that the maps would prove to be of some use. Instead of finding the maps rolled as he expected, Jamie found a stack of maps, each with a sheet of archival paper between them. The maps themselves were more artwork than map and each had the name Alexander Fulton scrawled in the now familiar handwriting. In various parts of the maps buildings had been depicted in great detail, nearly popping off the page while the map itself faded to the background.



Many of the places depicted Jamie had never heard of while others were familiar only from Albe’s stories. He was beginning to realize that those stories were a different sort of fairy tale. Some of the names were familiar to him but he couldn’t place why he found them so familiar.



“Perhaps I’ll see them in my dreams,” he muttered, thinking of what he had been told about the training of a new Keeper. Jamie thought of all the new terms and names he had come across in the last few days. The house of the Fiery Lilly, Stedovan, High Talbot Aldrous of the House Duval, the Gederan and the Federan, the Lustan, and Longrin of the Fedalas as well as Queen Genivia. All were things he looked out for as he carefully paged through the maps.



“After all who knows how long the Queen has ruled,” Jamie thought. The Lustan, it turned out had a page all of its own. There were roads leading to and away and they were marked only with arrows and numbers. For a moment Jamie stared at the numbers. 3, 6, 6, 9. They didn’t mean anything to him taken in total.



“Except they are all multiples of three.” Jamie leaned back from the page and took a broader view. Each of the numbers was placed squarely in the center of what looked like roads leading away from Lustan.



“Maybe they are mile markers,” he thought. The two sixes were in opposite directions. According to the corner compass, they were the east and west roads. The two roads ran straight in opposite directions. The other two roads, marked with a three and a nine did not seem to be as carefully placed.



“Almost like they were an afterthought,” Jamie mused. He placed the map to the side for later study. Other maps revealed details of towns and cities he did not know. Three pages later he came across a page with the House of the Fiery Lilly marked on it. It was located near the center of a the territory of the Federan. He pulled the map out of the stack and kept looking. Soon he found a map marked as the territory of the Gederan. There was also a House designation in it’s center.



“House of the Golden Rose,” Jamie read aloud. He did not think any of his visitors had mentioned the house. “But the week is still young.” Jamie stood to stretch and felt his back pop. True night had fallen and Jamie stifled a yawn. He looked down at the maps he had pulled and realized that the territory of the Federan had a road running due east from it’s center and continuing off the page. At the edge of the page a 6 was placed in the center of the page. He shifted his gaze to the one showing the Gederan. It too had a road running straight from the center house. This one ran due west but it had the same six written on it. Jamie place the three maps, with the Lustan in the center. The roads lined up perfectly.



“Maybe it is all one map,” Jamie thought. He looked around. There was not enough room here to lay out all of the maps flat on the floor. “There would be in the family parlor if I moved the furniture towards the walls.” Jamie gathered an arm load of the maps carefully. With the archival paper between them they were slick and inclined to slide. Jamie rethought his plan and decided to take only a couple at a time to minimize damage. It took five trips to bring all of the maps to the family parlor.



The kitchen was dark and Jamie realized that Del had gone to bed. Trying to work quietly so as not to disturb Del, Jamie moved all of the furniture to the walls. He carefully placed the knickknacks out of the way, thankful that he had at least completed the inventory of this room. When the floor was clear, he even rolled the oriental carpet up and leaned it in the corner.



“Nice flat surface to work on,” Jamie said to himself as he rolled up his sleeves and began to lay out the squares on the floor. Some of the squares were easy to place. On those the roads marked typically had whatever town they led to scrawled along its length. Those were relatively easy to match. The trick was in reading the faded handwriting. Jamie turned on all of the room’s lights. His shoes were kicked off and in his socks he padded between the squares, leaving just enough room between so that he could place his weight on the bare boards of the floor rather than on the old paper. He meandered the room, placing squares where he thought they would fit, only to have them moved a little while later. It was like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Finally Jamie was left with one square left to place. It had a three on the road leading north. With a smile he placed it below the Lustan and stepped back. With a start of surprise he realized that the last square he put in place was the one containing the house of the keeper. The garden’s placed around it had kept him from recognizing it immediately. In this map the Keeper’s house the small herb and vegetable garden stretched to the forest’s edge and was much wider.



“A lot more mouths to feed, I suppose,” Jamie said thinking of the many children Alexander and his wife had raised in the house. “Kids eat a lot.”



“Are we getting children?” Del asked. Jamie jumped and turned as Del chuckled from the doorway. Del’s hair was wet and he was dressed for a day of work.



“No,” Jamie said. “Just thinking of Alexander’s kids. Did I wake you?” Del chuckled again.



“I was just getting up to start the morning bread.”



“Oh,” Jamie said, looking out of the front windows with a puzzled frown. Through the windows he could see red gold light lining the edge of the earth and starting to rise into a sky that was beginning to fade from black to gray.



“Stayed up all night did you?” Del asked.



“I kinda got sucked in,” Jamie admitted running his hand through his hair. Del walked over and looked down at Jamie’s project.



“Wow,” Del said after a moment of flabbergasted silence. “I didn’t know such a map existed.”



“It was in storage.” Jamie looked at a few of the questionable placements. “Do you think I got all the pieces right?” Del circled the edges of the map, as careful of his foot placement as Jamie had been.



“Exactly right, as far as I know. Some of these places I’d heard of but never traveled to. But they seem about right.”



“These numbers,” Jamie said pointing to the three that lead from the keeper’s house to the Lustan. “Do you think that is marked in miles or some other measurement?”



“Who drew these?” Del asked.



“One of my ancestors,” Jamie admitted.



“Human then?” Jamie nodded. “Then probably miles would work. It’d be different if it was one of us.”



“So it might be walk-able,” Jamie said. He looked out at the lightening sky. “It is supposed to be a fine day.”

“Would you want to eat breakfast and just pack a lunch for our trip out or do you want to eat breakfast while we walk?” Del asked. Jamie smiled.



“I think we can eat breakfast here,” Jamie said. I still have to sketch out a portable version of the map, just in case we need it. Del nodded.



“I’ll just get started then.” Del returned to the kitchen while Jamie retrieved Albe’s field map and began marking out the various components of Alexander’s map n it.



“Hopefully this will lead to something more concrete about Albe,” Jamie thought. When he was finished, Jamie put the map aside and slowly began to stack the larger map squares up into a pile, careful to replace the archival paper between. Jamie then un rolled the carpet and began to put the furniture back in place. The scent of coffee and biscuits wafted from the kitchen and Jamie took a deep breath and smiled. His smile faded to puzzlement when he heard a car door slam.



“None of my visitors have driven cars.” Jamie walked to the front door and saw his mother, brother and strange man exiting his mother’s car. They hadn’t seen him and his first thought was to duck back inside and pretend he wasn’t home. He had done that before. However he didn’t think they would go home that quickly.



“And I don’t have time for this,” Jamie said. He stepped fully onto the porch, shutting the door behind him and waited for them to notice him.