The Golden Specific by S. E. Grove Read Free Book Online Page A

indication of her meaning. But the Nihilismian dusted with perfect discipline, and she betrayed nothing.

 5 
    News from the Eerie Sea
    â€”1892, June 2: 15-Hour 22—
    Once called “great lakes,” the bodies of water in the northwest corner of New Occident transformed with the Great Disruption. They are now glacial expanses trafficked by few. The name “Eerie Sea” has multiple meanings. One of the lakes was known as Lake Erie before the Disruption, named for the Indian tribes that lived near it. Now the sea is home to these tribes as well as the Eerie, a people who migrated east from the Pacific Coast. And lastly, there can be no doubt that the sea is, indeed, eerie. Glacial palaces with great caverns and frozen pools, the icy chambers of the sea have befuddled explorers with strange lights, sudden fogs, and mysterious sounds.
    â€”From Shadrack Elli’s History of New Occiden t
    S OPHIA HAD SPENT three days reading the indexes for A.D. 82. In those three days she had read through nineteen volumes. Remorse encouraged her by commenting impassively that she read very fast. But Sophia knew otherwise: it was not fast enough. The three days she had known would be safe were over, and she would now need to gamble every morning as she arrived at the archive with the likelihood that she would be discovered and accused of fraud.
    Find us while we still draw breath,
she heard in her head, as she walked back to East Ending Street from the trolley stop.
I don’t know how to,
she thought.
I don’t know what else to do.
There was no guarantee that A.D. 82 was even the right year. What if the clue she was looking for lay three shelves away on A.D. 83?
    So it was an especially disheartened Sophia who walked up the steps to 34 East Ending Street. She opened the side door, dropped her satchel on the bench, and suddenly froze.
    The sound of laughter reached her from somewhere inside the house. Three voices—no, four. Her pulse quickened. She listened a moment longer as a slow smile crept across her face. Then she raced down the hall, into Shadrack’s study, and down through the open doorway to the underground map room. “There she is!” she heard Shadrack say merrily as she clambered down the stairs.
    Sophia burst into the room, dimly aware that Shadrack was seated at the table and that Mrs. Clay and Miles Countryman were in the armchairs near him. Standing at the foot of the stairs, with his arms crossed over his chest and his brown eyes looking up at her expectantly, was Theo. Sophia pulled herself up short just one step shy of where he stood. Pausing for a few moments—which felt to Sophia like no time at all—she registered the astonishing sense of happiness and relief that flooded through her at the sight of him: worn-looking, taller than she remembered, but essentially the same.
    He uncrossed his arms and held out his scarred hand, a surprising tremor running through it. “Are you going to make mewait another hour for a hug, or what?” he demanded gruffly.
    Sophia pitched herself forward with a delighted laugh and wrapped her arms around him. “Where have you
been
?” she cried. “You’ve been gone forever!”
    â€œStill having trouble keeping time, I see,” he said laughingly, but the pleased smile on his face as Sophia pulled back left her no doubt that Theo had missed her, too.
    She turned away with effort to greet Miles, who embraced her happily, and whose mane of white hair, looking even more unkempt than usual, threatened her with imminent suffocation. “My dear Sophia,” Miles exclaimed, finally releasing her, “we have fought our way back to you tooth and nail, and here we are at last, back where we belong.” He grinned conspiratorially. “Although if you ask me, it is the perfect moment for another journey.” Shadrack and Mrs. Clay groaned. “It is!” Miles protested. “Sophia is finally done with