Half Lost (The Half Bad Trilogy #3) - Sally Green Page 0,45
to different places in the world.
Nesbitt jabs his finger on one of the lower-level rooms and says, “She went through that cut to New York.”
Then he spreads the other parchments in front of us, saying, “These maps show territories: areas belonging to White Witches and those belonging to Blacks. They’re all dated and go back two hundred years.”
I love looking at maps. I can’t read books; most sentences are beyond me and I struggle to even make sense of some words, but maps are something that I can read easily. Looking through them, it’s obvious that the extent of White Witch territory has grown in Europe. Britain has become a place only for Whites, and there are smaller changes in other places too, but this change only happened in the last forty years. Before that, for decades—in fact, for over a century—the areas seem to have hardly changed, and on some older maps the White and Black territories even overlap. There’s a similar pattern in Australia, Africa, the Far East, and the USA. But in the rest of America, from Mexico and through South America, and in Canada and Russia, the territory of the Black Witches has grown. The major change is that two hundred years ago there were more and bigger areas that overlapped, and some are labeled “mixed,” which I guess means Blacks and Whites lived together, and amazingly Britain was one of those places. But on the map made last year there are only five areas where this is still true. I’d like to visit them and see what they’re like but it looks as if I’d need to go a long way: China, India, Tasmania, Mexico, or Zambia.
Nesbitt flicks through the top of the pile of maps, saying, “It’s these recent ones that show the map room.”
“The what?” I’m thinking of the rooms in Mercury’s bunker and which one the map room might be.
But before I can ask Nesbitt pulls out a map from 1973, saying, “To get to Ledger you have to go to the map room. It’s in Philadelphia. Here.” And he points to a brown dot, barely visible, that’s marked near the east coast of the USA. “The key says what it is: it’s the ‘Map Room.’”
I look to Gabriel and ask him, “Do you follow this at all?”
He shrugs and smiles. “If it was easy everyone would go there.”
“Exactamundo,” Nesbitt agrees. “I don’t know where Ledger lives but I know that Van got there through the map room.” He goes to the hidden shelf again, coming back with a few of Mercury’s handwritten diaries, saying, “These are what Van got really excited about.” He clears his throat and starts to read, then stops and looks at Gabriel and me and says, “It doesn’t tell you much but I reckon it’ll be useful for you guys. But if you’d rather I didn’t bother . . .”
“Nesbitt, just read it,” I tell him.
And he reads:
“First of January, 2005. Dawn of the new year for some, though the end of an era for others. Another Black territory in Mississippi was abandoned last month after the oldest of them, Destra, died. She was a fine witch. Destra’s Gift was a strong ability to heal others, an unusual Gift for a Black Witch. I met her a few times. She was confident, serene, and capable—an impressive witch. I heard that Marcus and Destra have become acquainted in the last year. Destra is supposed by some to be the mother of Ledger, though I don’t believe this. I’ve heard several other stories about Ledger’s parentage and Destra indicated to me when I met her that she had no children. I wonder why Marcus was interested in Destra; because she was an interesting woman or because he’s trying to find out about Ledger? If so, he’s wasting his time. Destra can’t help him. I met Ledger once, years ago—awful woman (man? thing?)—though one rarely hears of her these days and I rather hope never to hear of her again.”
Nesbitt closes that diary and puts it on the floor. He looks from me to Gabriel, saying, “Good, huh?”
We both look blankly at him.
“Knew you’d appreciate it, boys. So we found that and then we checked back through all the diaries looking for when Mercury had met Ledger. And we found this from 1973.” Again he starts to read and then stops, saying, “You keeping up with me? The map”—and he points to the parchment—“is from 1973.”