Read The Emerald Atlas for Free Online

it is today. Now good night, and no wandering about.”
    Then he was gone, shuffling out the door before she could press him further. Left alone, Michael and Emma were asleep immediately, but Kate lay awake long into the night, watching the firelight on the ceiling and wondering what secret Abraham was keeping. The dread she’d felt when she first saw the house had wrapped itself like cold metal around her heart.
    Eventually, the journey, the large meal, the warmth of the fire all overcame her, and she fell into an uneasy sleep.
    The children got lost trying to find the kitchen. They ended up in a room on the second floor that had at one time been either a picture gallery or an indoor tennis court. They were hungry and frustrated.
    “Dwarves have an excellent sense of direction,” Michael said. “They never get lost.”
    “I wish you were a dwarf,” Emma said.
    Michael agreed that would be nice.
    “Do either of you smell bacon?” Kate asked.
    Following the smell, ten minutes later the children stumbled into the kitchen, where Miss Sallow pronounced herself honored that the Emperor and Empresses (the children had somehow been promoted) saw fit to grace her with their presence and said that next time they were late, she would give their food to the dogs.
    “We need to learn our way around,” Michael said as he tucked into a thick stack of pancakes. Kate and Emma agreed, and, after breakfast, they went back to their room and Michael dug in his bag till he found two flashlights, his camera, paper and pencils for making maps, a small knife, a compass, and gum.
    “All right, I guess it’s obvious I should be the expedition leader.”
    “Hardly. Kate should be leader. She’s oldest.”
    “But I have the most experience in exploring.”
    Emma snorted. “You mean poking around in the dirt, saying, ‘Oh, lookit this rock! Let’s pretend it belonged to a dwarf! I want to marry it!’ ”
    Kate said it was fine if Michael was leader, and Michael said Emma could carry the compass, which was all she wanted anyway.
    Over the next several hours, they discovered a music room with an ancient, out-of-tune piano. A ballroom with cobwebbed chandeliers slumped on the floor. An empty indoor pool. A two-story library with a sliding ladder that came crashing down when Emma tried to ride it. A game room with a billiards table that had families of mice living in the pockets, and bedroom after bedroom after bedroom.
    Michael dutifully recorded each new discovery in his notebook.
    They made it to the kitchen in time for lunch, and Miss Sallow served them turkey sandwiches with mango chutney and—apparently in honor of their visit—French-fried potatoes. After lunch, the children decided to go see the waterfall, it being, after all, what the town was named for. And so, their bellies full, they left the house and walked across the narrow bridge and through the snow along the edge of the gorge. Soon, they heard rumbling, and as they came over a small rise, the ground ended suddenly in a sharp cliff. The children found themselves looking out across a wide basin. In the distance, they could see the blue-gray expanse of Lake Champlain with the dark knot of Westport hugging its shores. And there, directly below them, the river shot out of the gorge and plunged hundreds of feet down the face of the cliff. It was dizzying, standing there amid the thundering of the water, the spray blowing back cold and wet on their faces.
    Emma held on to the back of Michael’s coat as he leaned forward and took a picture looking down the flume of water.
    For a long time, the children lay on their stomachs in the snow, watching the river tumble down the cliff. Kate could feel the snow melting into her coat, but she was content not to move. The sense of lurking danger she’d felt that first moment of arrival had not gone away. She had so many questions. What had happened to this place? What had killed the trees? Made the people so unfriendly? Why hadn’t