Children of the Wrong Century

The Salt Chapel had a rule against drawing on the courtyard stones. Someone had drawn on them anyway.

A square lay inside a circle of chalk. One side of the square stopped at the chapel wall, then began again beyond it, where no courtyard could have been. Celia stood over the break with her survey case in hand. The chalk had worn thin under small shoes, but the line on either side still met at the same angle.

“Is it yours?” Sister Ilse asked from the doorway.

“No.” Celia took a step back before her shoe could rub out the corner. “I was going to ask you.”

“Then come in before they decide you’re here to inspect their sums.”

Ilse led her past a room where children were peeling potatoes for the evening meal. The chapel smelled of boiled linen and salt damp. A little girl at the table tucked a potato under her apron when Ilse passed.

“That one will turn up at supper with half her work undone,” Ilse said, not slowing. “And she will offer the other half to whoever looks hungry.”

Celia had come to ask about dreams. Mira had described a courtyard with a low wall and a gate that opened where no gate stood now. She had been exact about the angle of the wall. Exact enough that Celia had checked it against a salt page, then checked it again when the figures agreed.

Ilse brought her into a schoolroom. Sheets of drawing paper hung from a string to dry, held by wooden pegs. At the nearest desk, a boy was trying to make a stub of blue pencil last by gripping it close to the point.

“These are the children I mentioned,” Ilse said. “Miss Marrow makes maps.”

The boy looked up. “Of real places?”

“When they hold still long enough,” Celia said.

He considered that, then bent over his paper again.

Ilse fetched a stack from a cabinet. “They draw in the mornings. We keep the papers dated because the children like to know how much better they’ve become.”

Celia opened her case, but Ilse set the stack on the desk before she could take anything out.

“Look first,” Ilse said.

The top sheet held a crooked square in blue pencil. A gate was marked by two heavy strokes on the lower side. Near the upper corner stood a small circle. Celia turned to the next sheet. Here the square was green and the gate had been drawn wide enough for a carriage. The little circle was a tree, with seven branches that filled most of the page.

On the third, the square had no fourth side. A child had written WALL FALLS HERE in large letters beside the gap.

The lines were rough. Their relation was not. In each drawing the gate faced a narrow passage that ran along the same side of the square. In each, the far corner cut inward instead of making a right angle.

“When did they see Mira’s drawing?” Celia asked.

“They haven’t.”

“Has Mira been here?”

“Not since she was little.” Ilse drew out a chair. “Sit, if you please. You’re making the boy nervous.”

The boy’s pencil had stopped. Celia sat.

Ilse laid the papers out by date. The earliest was from winter, well before Celia’s arrival. Its courtyard was drawn in blunt black strokes, with no gate at all. Yet the passage and the cut corner were there. Another sheet had been made in spring. Two children had used the back of an old hymn notice on the same day; one had crowded the page with people, the other had left the place empty. Both had put three steps beside the passage.

Celia held the papers by their edges. “Did you give them a model?”

“No.”

“Ask them to draw the same place?”

Ilse rested her hand on the desk. “I asked each what had kept them awake. They told me. I gave them paper.”

The girl from the kitchen appeared at the door, still wearing her apron. Her eyes went to the drawings.

“That one’s mine,” she said, pointing to the green tree.

“It is,” Ilse said. “Would you tell Miss Marrow about it?”

“The tree’s wrong.” The girl came closer and tapped the seven branches. “I made too many. There weren’t leaves. You could sit on the wall and see over it, only you weren’t meant to.”

“Who told you not to?” Celia asked.

The girl rubbed a thumb across the pencil dust on her finger. “I don’t know. In the dream I already knew.”

From the desk, the boy said, “The wall’s too high in hers.”

“It was high for me.”

“You’re short,” he said.

Ilse gave him a look. He lowered his pencil.

Celia placed two sheets beside each other. The children disagreed about the height, the tree, even whether anyone had been in the courtyard. Neither had made the passage straight. Celia opened her case and took out a dry tracing of a salt page. Its surface was ordinary paper, safe beneath her fingers. She set it alongside the drawings.

The passage bent at the same point.

She had measured that bend twice from the page, certain the first reading was spoiled by a crack in the salt. Now three separate hands had drawn it without a ruler. The black winter drawing put the steps just beyond it. Celia had not found steps on the page, but a small set of close marks sat there, marks she had taken for damage.

She reached for her ruler.

The girl leaned across the table. “That’s our gate.”

“Yes,” Celia said. “I believe it may be.”

The girl watched her set the ruler against the tracing. Celia measured from gate to corner, then from corner to the marks. The drawings were not to scale; no child had been counting feet. But the order held, and the shape held. A wall, a turn, three steps. A place that was not on any approved chart had arrived here on scraps of school paper months before its line washed onto Celia’s desk.

“May I copy these?” she asked Ilse.

“I’ll ask them.”

The boy set his pencil down. “Will you put my name on yours?”

“If you want me to.”

“Then don’t give it to the warden. He took Ada’s shell because she found it past the ropes.”

“I won’t give him your drawing,” Celia said. She had meant to say she would keep names separate. His request was plainer.

The girl held out her hand for her sheet. “You can copy mine. You have to put the branches in, even if I did them wrong.”

“I will.”

Ilse went through the room, asking each child whose paper Celia needed. Two agreed at once. One wanted to watch. Another refused until Celia showed him the blank paper she would use and promised not to take his original. She worked at the long table while the potato peelers finished in the next room. For once, she copied a line without correcting it. Seven branches belonged in the copy of the girl’s drawing. The high wall belonged in the boy’s.

By the time she finished, the room smelled faintly of supper broth. Ilse collected the originals and returned them to the cabinet. Celia marked dates on her own sheets, along with the children’s names where they had allowed it.

“There are older accounts,” Ilse said. She had remained by the cabinet, one hand on its door. “Not all drawings.”

Celia looked up. “May I read them?”

Ilse reached to a shelf above the children’s papers. She took down a leather-bound register and carried it to the desk, but did not open it. Its corners were worn smooth.

“I should know what you intend to do with them first,” she said.

“I intend to compare what can be compared. I won’t put the children’s names on a public chart.”

“That is one concern.”

Celia laid her ruler across her closed case. There was no useful measure for the pause. “What is the other?”

Ilse’s gaze had gone to the folded vellum envelope near Celia’s hand. Celia had taken it out with the tracing without meaning to. The old query to Keeper Vey lay inside, still unanswered.

“May I?” Ilse asked.

Celia passed it over. Ilse unfolded the letter and read the first lines. Her thumb stopped beside the address. She held the sheet nearer the window, away from Celia.

“You know the hand,” Celia said.

Ilse did not answer at once. From the kitchen came a child’s voice insisting that a peeled potato still counted if some skin remained.

“Elena Marrow wrote this,” Ilse said.

“My mother.” Celia kept her hands on the desk. “You knew her?”

Ilse folded the vellum along its old crease. Carefully, this time. “I knew her hand.”

“That is a narrow answer.”

“It is the one I can give you today.” Ilse returned the letter. The paper was warm where she had held it.

Celia looked at the closed register. “Does her name appear there?”

Ilse placed her palm flat on its cover. “I haven’t said that.”

“No. You haven’t.”

Outside, a shoe scraped over the chalk courtyard. Celia slid the letter back into its envelope, taking care not to catch the fragile edge. She had copies of the drawings, dates, and a bend in a passage drawn by children who had never held a salt page. Ilse had given her that much.

“May I come back?” Celia asked.

“Yes,” Ilse said. “The children may wish to see where you put their lines.”

Celia gathered her case. Ilse carried the register to the shelf and set it above the cabinet, within reach. She left it closed.