The Book Eaters(58)
It also held maps. The one Jarrow wrested down to spread open covered the kitchenette table completely and flowed over the edges in an ocean of excess paper.
Devon had never seen a map before in her life and couldn’t stop staring. “Is this England? Where are we, on it?”
“It’s the United Kingdom, which includes England, and we are here.” He pointed. “Norfolk Coast.”
She touched the spot he pointed to. “I had no idea our country was so large.”
Jarrow burst out laughing.
“What’s so bloody funny?”
“Ah, not your fault. Look.” He took down another map from the cupboards and spread it atop the first. “That’s our country, Dev, compared to the rest of the world.”
Green-tinted continents shouldered up from matte blue seas. Swathes of land and vaster swathes of ocean. Landmass after landmass, populated with people, and there at the very top sat an impossibly small island that she barely recognized the shape of, from the first map: her dinky little country.
She’d eaten a fantasy novel once, a lush and alien book full of words that made her dizzy, containing a sketchy map of invented places. At the time it had seemed vast, but it hadn’t been nearly as large or detailed as the real-world variety in front of her.
“The world is so big,” she said, dumbfounded. “How did I never know?”
“Because they don’t teach girls things that matter.” Jarrow pushed the maps toward her, across the table. “Get eating. It’s the fastest way to learn information and I’ve got loads of copies.” He grinned.
“Pardon?” She must have misheard. “Surely eating maps doesn’t work?”
“Yes and no. Paper is paper, up to a point. I’ve eaten copies already and it’s worthwhile. I know a lot of placenames, have a sense of where they are. It helps.” He gestured at the graphic novels. “Similar to eating those, yeah? And picture books you had as a child. Mostly the words remain but you still get a feeling for the images. Sort of.”
A chance to expand her knowledge into something useful and forbidden. Devon unsheathed her bookteeth and bit through the folded world map. It tasted of air-conditioned factories and slick, slightly bitter ink. The petrochemical coating sat heavy on her tongue, sticking to the insides of her cheeks. She grimaced.
“I brought you some ketchup,” he said, taking a squeezy bottle from one of the shelves. “It’s a human condiment, but the acidic content works like a charm on glossy coated paper.”
No plates in the games room, so Jarrow squeezed ketchup all over the map and rolled it up like a printed tortilla wrap. Devon bit into her map roll.
Words formed in her mind, a long list of places. If she concentrated, she could almost picture them laid out. As if someone had scrubbed away the drawing of the landmasses and left the city and country names unchanged, roughly marking out relative locations.
Only, there were so many. Countries and their capitals stacked up inside her head and the glossy paper made her nauseous. The ketchup tasted like an absurdist comedy, but Jarrow was right; it took the edge right off that plastic coating.
“Lemme show you something,” he said when she’d finished. “If you’re not too tired of seeing things, that is.”
“No.” Devon licked ketchup off her thumb. “I don’t mind at all.” She’d have to remember his trick. There were a lot of glossy books in this house.
“I’ll show you the different Families.” Jarrow unrolled the first map again and stabbed a finger on the map. “This is the Davenports in Powys, Wales.” His finger moved upward, sweeping across dotted networks of cities. “Easterbrooks on the Norfolk Coast; that’s us.” More upward. “Your friendly Fairweathers, up in the Yorkshire moors.” Back down to the south. “The Gladstones, in London.” Somewhere in the forested middle regions. “The Blackwoods were here, though they’ve collapsed and dispersed to other houses.”
“Huh. My mother was a Blackwood. I wonder where she’s living now.”
“In the south somewhere, probably. A lot of them folded into the Gladstones.” His finger moved back out toward the west-middle areas. “This is Winterfield, in Birmingham. Where your daughter is.”
Devon clenched her fists until her nails cut lines into her palms.
“And the Ravenscars are up here, on the north coast. Even more north than your Fairweather Manor.” He tapped the map with a nail. “Do you know about them?”
“The ones who make Redemption?”
“That’s the ticket. Until the Ravenscars developed that drug, dragons were just killed or managed by their own Families. These days, they’re allowed to live, because they’ve been useful, but no one trusts them to run their own household in case they go rogue and draw human attention. That’s where the knights come in. Babysitters for the Families’ unwanted dragons, and matchmakers for our weddings.”
“What’s that have to do with escape?”
“Nothing directly, since you ask! I actually opened this map to show you Ireland. Both Irelands.” He dragged a line across the map to the other side of Britain, pointing at a small cluster of islands. “See this? Northern Ireland is in the United Kingdom, but the Republic of Ireland is a whole separate country. With an unguarded border between them.”