Keeper 2: Chapter 5

Chapter 5

With the headache still throbbing in  his skull, Jamie was less than enthusiastic about settling down with the Huffington book.  As he feared Albe’s journals would have a similar spell attached to them, they too had lost some of their appeal. After swallowing a couple of aspirin, Jamie returned to the map room and after deliberately turning away from the family tree, he began searching for the location of the other Keepers. 

As cluttered and disordered as the map room appeared on first glance, Jamie soon realized there was a system in place with items grouped together.  He found a large stack of quad maps that not only covered all of Albe’s land, or at least the land on the human side of the crossroads, but maps of the surrounding areas.  Jamie flipped through the maps, double checking in case what he sought was misplaced or hidden.  He found Albe’s collection stretched through three entire counties.  In the quads where towns were listed, such as Centerville, Denerton, Makery, Loston and Foster, detailed maps showing the town’s layouts were interspersed with the quad maps. 

Jamie saw different areas marked on the quad maps and on the town maps.  He paused at the Centerville map and looked at one of the marked places.  On the northern side of town a section was outlined in red and then shaded with what looked like a pencil.  The marked off area included a section of a subdivision and a chunk of undeveloped land.  He checked the streets and frowned.

“That’s in Oak Hill,” Jamie said as he reviewed his mental map of Centerville.  As he said the name, he could hear Bella sniffing in distain at the thought of it.  Oak Hill was not on her list of acceptable places.  There was nothing wrong with the neighborhood as far as Jamie could tell.  Its houses were solidly middle class and didn’t really stand out in any way.  They looked as though they had been rolled out of a factory and placed on identical looking lots in the same way one would set up a neighborhood on a model train set up. 

“They even have the same landscaping,” Jamie remembered from one of his few visits there as a child. It had struck him as strange that every house had one large oak tree located thirty feet to the right of the front door.  With every house painted the same color, with the same mailboxes and the same neatly trimmed boxwood hedge across the front it had struck Jamie as very peculiar. He had asked Dave, the friend who lived in Oak Hill, how he managed not to get lost when everything looked the same. Dave had shrugged and told him it was just like every other neighborhood.

“And that was the last day Dave talked to me,” Jamie remembered. He remembered being puzzled when Dave began sitting at a different table for lunch and no longer acknowledged him in the hallway.  He remembered being upset at being shunned for what seemed to him to be no reason.

“All the Oak Hill kids are strange,” his friend Mike told him with a shrug.  “I never liked him anyway.” And that had been that.  Jamie had pushed Dave and Oak Hill out of his mind.

“I wonder if Oak Hill would look the same to me now,” Jamie wondered.  He turned the thought over in his mind as he continued his search. In addition to the three local counties, Jamie found stacks of quad maps for various counties located throughout the United States. Some states had only one county marked while others had several and some had none.  Jamie ran through his mental list of states and found several missing.

“But Canada and Mexico are well represented, I see,” Jamie added finding additional stacks of maps. Jamie sighed and continued his search. “At least the headache is fading.”  Deciding to leave the stacks alone, Jamie shifted his attention to the individually rolled maps sticking out of repurposed umbrella stands, flower pots and other assorted containers. Behind what Jamie thought might have once been a large stock pot crammed with a multitude of rolled maps, he found an umbrella stand that looked as though it were made from an elephant’s leg. There was only one rolled map inside.

“I wonder why you warranted your own space,” Jamie asked as he pulled it out. The map was nearly as tall as he was and smelled of dust. “I guess you aren’t consulted much.  He started to unroll the thick paper and realized it was much longer than his arms could stretch.  He peeked into the roll and saw what he thought might be a world map.

“Promising,” He told himself.  Deciding there was no way to stretch it out completely in the map room, he took it to the front parlor.  Unlike the formal parlor where Jamie greeted guests and drank seemingly endless cups of tea, this parlor was meant more for family and was warmer and cozier. He spared a smile for the curio cabinet, remembering the multitude of stories Albe would tell about each object. Unlike when he was younger and just visiting Albe, he now knew that those stories were true.

Jamie turned away and began shifting furniture aside to create space for the map. As he was moving around, Del came in bearing a plate with a sandwich in one hand and a large glass of milk in the other.

“Another map?” Del asked watching Jamie shift a chair to the side of the room.

“It is,” Jamie told him.  “Although not as much of a puzzle as the last one.”  The last time Jamie had stretched a map across the parlor floor it had not been in one large roll.  It had been in several detailed squares that had to be assembled like a puzzle. It had also helped him figure out why people were intent on trying to kill him.

With the space cleared, Jamie placed the rolled map on the floor.  As it had been curled up for quite some time, Jamie knew it would want to spring back up into its accustomed position.  He moved the discarded chair closer and used it to hold down one corner of the map. A second chair held down the second corner of that edge and Jamie stretched the map across the floor, securing the other edge with the coffee table and part of the fainting couch.

“There,” Jamie said as he looked at the map stretched across his floor.

“Very nice,” Del told him.  “Now perhaps you’d like to eat while you look it over?”

“Huh?” Jamie said.  He saw the brownie holding a plate out to him “Oh, yeah sorry,”  He took the plate and glass of milk.  He set them on the coffee table and picked up half of the sandwich, taking a big bite as Del looked over the map.

“So what is it you are looking for?” Del asked as Jamie swallowed and washed the bite down with some milk.

“The Houses of the other Keepers,” Jamie told him. “Have you ever met any of them?” he asked remembering that not only was Del several hundred years old, he had spent a great deal of time wandering around.

“No,” Del replied, dashing his hopes.  “I’ve always used this crossroads.”

“Oh,” Jamie said, trying not to sound disappointed. He took another bite of his sandwich and looked over the map as he chewed.  The map was a map of the world and appeared to be hand drawn using colored inks.  The artistry that went into it was amazing.  Jamie stepped closer and frowned as he noticed something odd about the map.

“Those aren’t latitude and longitude lines,” Jamie said pointing to the golden lines that crisscrossed the map. His knowledge of latitude and longitude came from a middle school geography class but even he knew that there were certain rules those lines followed.  The golden inked lines that crossed his map seemed to have no sort of set guidelines, looping across the page seemingly at random.  

“Do you know what they are?” he asked Del, figuring it might be something the Fae used.

“Not a clue,” Del replied shaking his head. Jamie continued to study the map as he ate his lunch.

“Major cities aren’t marked,” Jamie said between bites.  “Not even just capitols.”

“Some Cities are marked,” Del replied as he looked at the map.  “See there,” he pointed to the United States.  Jamie stepped close and peered at the spot Del indicated.  He nearly choked on his sandwich as he tried to swallow and laugh at the same time. The only city marked on the United States map was Centerville.

“And people think no one knows where our little town is,” he said when he finally stopped coughing and sputtering.

“Well it is the closest town to the crossroads,” Del pointed out.

“True,” Jamie replied as he finished the last of his sandwich and drained the last of his milk from the glass, finishing his lunch before any more surprises hit him. “So it would stand to reason that the other cities marked are the ones located nearest to crossroads as well.”

“Unless they are important for another reason,” Del added. Jamie conceded the point.

“How many crossroads do you think there are?” He asked seeing quite a few towns marked, now that he was looking for them. Del shrugged. As he scanned the map, the gold lines drew him again and he found his gaze tracing them. He followed one that flowed across the map very near Centerville. Just to the north of Centerville it crossed a second looped line of gold.

“Hey,” he said, half to himself.  He began tracing other lines and noticed that many of them crossed near towns.  None of them crossed exactly on a marked town but it was close.  The other towns marked on the map were actually located along one of the golden lines but not near the crossing points.

“Crossroads,” Jamie said to himself. Even though he knew that his title was the Keeper of the Crossroads a part of him had always envisioned the crossroads as a sort of gateway.  He had come across a book dealing with the crossroads and nothing he had read in its pages had changed his perception. “So what are these lines?”

A knock on the door startled him from his contemplation and he and Del both jumped. “I wonder who that is?” Jamie said.  “We aren’t expecting anyone are we?”

“Keeper, the High Talbot has arrived,” House told him.  “He seems agitated.”

“Thank you, House.”  Jamie replied. “It’s the High Talbot,” Jamie told Del.  Del looked surprised and quickly tugged his shirt straight and brushed himself down, lest an errant crumb be visible and offensive.  Jamie smiled as Del rushed to the door.  The High Talbot was an extremely fastidious man who detested any sort of mess. When dealing with errant magic intent on killing Jamie his shirt had become rumpled.  The rumpling seemed to bother him more than the death magic.

Jamie’s smile dropped as he remembered that House claimed the High Talbot was agitated.  Somehow that did not seem like a good thing. He heard Del usher the man into the receiving parlor and Jamie took a moment to brush himself down.  As he did so he realized that he had neglected to put on shoes and his feet were still clad only in the thick woolen socks. Jamie sighed.

“Well if they won’t make appointments ahead of time they will just have to take potluck.”  Jamie told himself unconvincingly.  Somehow he had the feeling the High Talbot would not break protocol by arriving uninvited without a good reason.