Emilie and the Sky World Read Free Page B

eyes and mouth were slight. And she looked vaguely familiar, as though she resembled someone Emilie knew, though she couldn’t think who it would be.
    When he got to Emilie’s part of the story, Professor Abindon considered her, her expression skeptical. “How do we know you aren’t working for Ivers?”
    “I distracted him while Miss Marlende shot him,” Emilie said.
    “And me,” Daniel added ruefully, indicating his arm. “I was in the way.”
    “Hmm,” the professor said, but didn’t comment further.
    When they were done, Professor Abindon said, “At least Marlende had a good excuse for not answering my wires, but this doesn’t change the situation.”
    “What situation?” Daniel asked. “What was so urgent?”
    Professor Abindon started to speak, then hesitated, eyeing Emilie thoughtfully. She still doesn’t trust me, Emilie thought, which she supposed was fair. Fair, but not pleasant. Though she was burning with curiosity, Emilie said, “I can walk back to my cousin’s house.”
    As she started to stand, the professor gestured impatiently. “Don’t go. If you work for Vale… I trust her judgment. Come upstairs, I’ll show you both.”
     
    They followed Professor Abindon up the narrow stairs to the second floor, then kept following her up a still narrower set of stairs to the third, then up again to what should have been a small attic. Emilie followed the others through the door at the top of the stairs and saw why the professor had chosen this house.
    The room had once been made into an artist’s studio, with one whole side of the pitched roof turned into windows, which could be unlatched and propped open with metal poles. Another set of large windows looked down into the back garden, so the room was full of light. A tiny spiral stair led up to a trapdoor in the roof, which Emilie bet opened into a small railed platform atop the house. She had seen them on many of the houses in Silk Landing and knew they were common for sea captains’ and ship owners’ homes. But Professor Abindon wasn’t using this room for artistic endeavors or to watch the ships come into port.
    A large gleaming brass telescope stood on a stand beneath the slanted windows, pointed toward the sky. Emilie had seen drawings of big stargazing telescopes before, but never one in person. This one had extra parts, wheels and platter-like contraptions, mounted above the eyepiece, as if for fine-tuning the view. A big table in the center of the room was spread with maps and drawing paper. Pencils and inkstands and broken pen nibs were scattered around instruments that looked like they were for navigation. Emilie thought she recognized a sextant, from the same book with the drawings of telescopes, but the rest were a mystery.
    Professor Abindon went immediately to the telescope and looked through the eyepiece. She straightened up and carefully adjusted some knobs. She beckoned Daniel over. “Look here.”
    Emilie hadn’t thought there was much point to using telescopes in the daylight. But Daniel didn’t object, going immediately to peer through the eyepiece. He said, “What am I looking at, Professor?”
    “Nothing, yet.” Professor Abindon took one of the plates attached to the telescope and turned it upright. Emilie saw the silvery stuff running through glass insets on the metal plate and realized it was a device for viewing aether. An aetheric telescope? she wondered, taking an involuntary step forward. She had known there were aether currents in the air, just like there were in the sea, but she hadn’t thought about what the devices for detecting them might look like. And did the aetheric streams in the air lead to another world, like the aetheric streams in the seas? Emilie’s heart started to pound in excitement.
    Suddenly the professor’s claim of something urgent to show to Dr Marlende began to seem far more worrisome.
    The professor slid the plate into a slot in the telescope, made another adjustment, and Daniel