Sienna looked up at Finn, tears welling in her eyes. “We have to close the borders. For good this time. We have to shut the gates and stop the worlds bleeding into each other. It’s the only way.”
Finn reeled back and stood up, pacing the tent. “But then the plague will be trapped here. What if it spreads amongst my people?”
Visions of the creatures she had seen within the shadow-weave filled Sienna’s mind, taunting her with the promise of more pain. But now she could see that pain reflected on Finn’s face. She had crossed the border thinking that somehow they could find a way to be together, to save his world, and now her only plan was to shut the door and leave him behind in the path of destruction.
“They can stop the plague as surely as they’re spreading it. But they won’t if it reaches Earthside, and I have to protect my home.”
Finn spun round, his eyes blazing with anger, fists clenched. “Your home? What about mine? You leave us all to die from a plague resurrected to destroy your people.” He shook his head. “But what else would you do? Jari was right, you’ll always be Earthsiders and like the rest of your unwanted and forgotten, you will keep pushing us out, denying our right to live.”
Sienna wept at his words, tears streaming down her face. “No, Finn. I want to help. I—”
“We don’t want it. Your help just makes everything worse.” Finn stalked out of the tent into the maelstrom beyond.
“Wait! Please!” Sienna tried to get to her feet but her legs were weak and her body ached from deep inside.
Mila helped her up and as they stood together looking at the empty doorway, Sienna remembered Mila’s face as they left Ekon behind at the rim of the pool in Ganvié. This was what her father tried to save her from when he hid her Mapwalker heritage. Love across borders could split a soul apart.
She wanted to run after Finn, fall into his arms, kiss him and stay in that moment forever. Yet every moment they stood here meant Earthside was one step closer to a plague that would shatter her home.
Sienna took a deep breath. “We have to go. Right now.”
She turned to the table and pulled her ritual knife from inside her jacket. She held it against the side of her palm where the last cut had barely healed. The blood around it looked almost black and Sienna could see tendrils of shadow that ran deeper through her veins. She was so close to the edge now and part of her wondered what Sir Douglas would have shown her in the room at the top of the mysterious tower. Could she have saved the Borderlands from within? If she became a Shadow Cartographer, could she reshape this side of the world?
“Are you strong enough for this?” Perry’s voice was gentle and Sienna knew he understood. His body and soul were battered from this trip, and Mila’s, too. It had taken a toll on them all.
“Let’s go home.” Sienna opened the cut and drew the lines of a map on the wooden table with her blood. Bath Abbey bound by the lines of the river, the canal and the streets of the ancient city. She reached out her hand for her friends and closed her eyes, shutting out the cries of the damned as she traveled back home.
As the Illuminated Cartographer’s pulse slowed, Bridget looked around at the library. On the surface, it was burned to ash, hundreds of years of history charred and blistered beyond recognition. Maps they could no longer travel through, precious tomes they could no longer go to for ancient wisdom, the past now turned to embers.
But as she looked closer, Bridget could see that not all was lost. There were layers of maps under the burnt ones, where the chaos of the Illuminated Cartographer’s room had protected what lay beneath. Not all the books were ruined in the fallen shelves and even the globe lay on its side, dented, but not broken.
This was not the end. Not on her watch.
She pulled away from John’s hand and her heart almost broke to see the pain in his eyes. He would understand one day but right now, there was no time for debate or argument.
“I have to do this.”
John backed away. “Then you must do it alone. You’ve chosen a path I can’t follow.” He turned and walked out the door, leaving Bridget in the library alone with the dying Illuminated Cartographer.
She leaned down and whispered in his ear, “I choose this path. For Galileo.”
For a moment, she thought she was too late. His eyes remained closed and his skin cooled under her touch.
But then the map fragments that curled around her wrist tightened and more of them began to wind around her limbs until she was pinned beneath the vellum and paper, the lines on them pulsing as if they searched for something in her, something that they could call home.
A sharp piercing pain in her right wrist and then her left.
Bridget screamed in agony as the ink from the maps merged with her blood and the maps transferred themselves from the Illuminated Cartographer over to her own body. They delved deeper into her veins until her heartbeat began to pulse through them.
The pain was still intense but suddenly Bridget could see into the maps themselves, and sense that she could fly into them in a new way. She could travel out through their portals in her mind even though her physical self would remain here, tethered to the library until her own end came.
It was at once terrifying and breathtaking and she desperately wanted to tell John.
But he was gone and she was here alone. Trapped here in the depths of the Abbey, shackled to the maps. The realization struck her. What had she done? Could she undo it?
Bridget began to pull at the maps surrounding her, tugging at their entwined fibers, desperately trying to rip them out of her skin. She sobbed in frustration, blood and ink dripping down her arms as she tried to escape her fate.
Sienna opened her eyes in the Gallery of Geographical Maps. It was still the same place that they had left from not so long ago, but she felt a deep sense of loss this time. Everything had changed but it wasn’t over yet.
Perry and Mila lay at her feet, slowly sitting up as they revived from the vertigo of traveling through the blood map.
Alarms rang through the Ministry, the sharp sound a warning of attack, or perhaps an indication that it had already begun. The smell of burning hung in the air.
The library. The Illuminated Cartographer.
All at once, Sienna understood what Sir Douglas had left to do while she lay in the shadow-weave. Were they too late?
“Quick, we have to get to the library.” Sienna dragged Mila and Perry to their feet and together they hurried down the corridors.
The door to the library was wide open, a scene of devastation within. Her father sat outside, his back against the wall, his head in his hands as he wept.
“Dad?”
John looked up, relief washing over his face. “Sienna, you made it back.”
“Are we too late?”
John shook his head. “I don’t know. But I can’t go in there. I know what she must do but I will lose her forever if she chooses that path.”
Sienna frowned at his words. They didn’t make any sense.
But as she walked into the library, the pieces suddenly fell into place.
The sound of sobbing came from the corner and behind a pile of burnt maps, Bridget sat next to the body of what had been the Illuminated Cartographer. The maps now wound themselves into Bridget’s body even as she tried to scratch them out with bloody fingers, her face puffy with weeping.
“Help me,” Bridget begged. “Get them out of my skin. I want to be free. Please.”
Perry rushed forward to help, but Sienna grabbed his arm and held him back. She shook her head, resolve strengthening inside.
“There’s no time, Bridget. You are the Illuminated Cartographer now. Your blood strengthens the borders. If you reject the maps, we are all lost. Earthside is lost.”
Sienna knelt by Bridget’s side and placed her hands over the wounds on her wrists where the maps entered her body. “I’ve seen the plague, and what the Shadow Cartographers can do now. They’ve bred magic like we have never seen before. We can’t win this right now. We need time to regroup, rebuild, and figure this out.” Sienna took a deep breath. “Close the borders now, Bridget. Seal them shut and stop the plague from devastating our world.”
Bridget heard Sienna’s words as if she was under a swimming pool, the sounds muffled and dense. She felt the young woman’s hands on her wounds and the mingling of their blood from a wound on Sienna’s palm. She was a powerful Blood Mapwalker, only just beginning to know her powers, but there was a darkness, too. The Shadow had its hooks in her and Bridget knew how good that felt.
But it would not win here today.
For in the mingling of their blood, Bridget saw the camp in the Borderlands, she witnessed the plague rats and Elf’s power, the death of Xander and his lion — and Finn’s face as he turned his back on love. Just like John as he walked out the library.
This Mapwalker life had taken everything from them both, but they couldn’t stop now. Sienna was right. Closing the border was the only choice until the plague burned itself out in the Borderlands and they had the magic on Earthside to stop the Shadow.
From all her study in the annals of the Mapwalkers, Bridget knew that the border had only been closed once before centuries ago. She had read the annals about that occasion once but the details were hazy. There were great risks to both worlds in closing the borders but there was no time to review them now.
Bridget took a deep breath and relaxed into the pile of maps, letting their bulk take her weight. They softened around her in welcome and she sensed the possibilities in her new life.
“I’ll do it,” she whispered.
Bridget closed her eyes and reached out with her mind through the loops and byways and mountain ranges of the cartographic world. She sensed the line of the border between worlds battered by the plague-infested hordes and on the other side, Earthsiders walked unaware of the danger. Perhaps it was time they knew of what lay beyond. But for now, the Mapwalkers would uphold the ancient pledge — For Galileo.
Bridget poured her blood magic into the border, strengthening the line until it pulsed a deep scarlet, rising up to new heights and thickening to a huge wall as the border slammed shut.
In the far distance, she heard a howl of rage, a thousand thousand tormented souls trapped inside the Shadow, lost in the darkness. There would be a reckoning, but not today.