The Golden Specific by Grove S. E

Author:Grove, S. E. [Grove, S. E.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2015-06-17T07:00:00+00:00

25

The Lost Signs Are Lost

March 15, 1881

It was no surprise to us that Bruno had not only been kind to Rosemary but had become her teacher and friend. She told us how, during the year he stayed at the farm, Bruno had related stories of all his adventures, sung often, and laughed more. He tried to coax her out of silence with his poor Castilian, and when this did not work, he switched to his native English. Neither drew Rosemary into speech, but she slowly learned the unfamiliar language, even as she communicated with him mostly by signs. Bruno read out loud to her from his many books in English, sharing the world of New Occident through their pages. Bruno was never impatient or vexed at her muteness, which he treated with a delicacy that, at times, almost allowed her to forget its existence.

These qualities were the same ones that had endeared Bruno Casavetti to us when we first met him in Boston years earlier, and they were the qualities that had made him such a beloved companion on more than one expedition. They were the reasons why we had gone into such a remote Age to find him, leaving little Sophia behind. We listened with great emotion to Rosemary’s stories of Bruno’s kindness—and, finally, with dread to her account of his final months in Murtea.

“Bruno became captivated by Ausentinia,” she told us, “as I knew he would. He had originally traveled to the Papal States with the intention of mapping the perimeter of the Dark Age, but Ausentinia had distracted him. Rumor of the House of Saint Antony drew him to Murtea, and once he discovered the rumors were true, its marvels kept him close by. Bruno wanted to understand how such a wondrous Age had come to be. He crossed the stone bridge to Ausentinia every day, returning only at dusk. He visited each map store asking every manner of question and receiving friendly but uninformative replies. None of them had a map for Bruno. He became convinced that the entire origin and existence of Ausentinia was something the inhabitants concealed: the one lost answer for which no map would be drawn.

“And then, one day in November, he returned to the farm with a stricken look that filled me with fear. He would hardly meet my gaze. I pressed his arm and signed to ask him what had happened. He looked up at me then, his expression filled with grief. ‘It is gone,’ he said quietly. ‘Ausentinia is gone. The Dark Age has taken it.’

“I was shocked, naturally, and my face said as much. Bruno explained as best he could. ‘As I took the path to the stone bridge, I came across Pantaleón, the priest’s nephew. He was heading into Ausentinia as well. We walked together, talking, toward the stone bridge. But then when we crested the hill we saw’—he swallowed—‘we saw that the paths to Ausentinia were gone. Not even the hills were there. Black moss met the stone bridge on the other side.

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