The Unmapped Sea Read Online Free

their governess howling made the children helpless with laughter. All three were soon reaching for their pocket handkerchiefs, as tears of merriment streamed down their cheeks.
    Penelope held back a smile. “Lady Constance does not howl, at least that I know of. However, I believe she may just have had . . . well, let us call it a rude awakening. . . .”
    But the dream of a happily howling household had caused Beowulf to have an epiphany of his own. “Let us paint family portraits—of everyone!” he suggested, and the sheer perfection of this idea was enough to send the children racing back to their easels. The Nutsawoo portraits were laid carefully to the side, to be finished at a future date. Fresh canvases were found. Beowulf chewed thoughtfully on the end of his paintbrush, always a sign that his muse was speaking to him.
    â€œSo many family portraits to paint,” he murmured. “Nutsawoo and Lady Constance . . .”
    â€œLord Fredrick and Mrs. Clarke,” Alexander agreed.
    â€œMargaret . . . Jasper . . . Old Timothy . . . Simawoo . . .” This last was their nickname for Simon Harley-Dickinson, an especially well-liked friend oftheirs and, more to the point, of Penelope’s.
    â€œMama Woof and the other woofs.” These were the wolves that had tended the children during their early years in the forest. They were very large, very fierce, and frankly, very unusual wolves.
    â€œBertha the ostrich!” Bertha had been left at Ashton Place by a visitor. Although not as clever as Nutsawoo, the tall, flightless, yet astonishingly speedy bird was a favorite of the children’s, who liked to go on wild ostrich rides when Bertha was in the mood to race.
    â€œSurely not all of these people—and wolves, and rodents, and birds, and what have you—belong in a gallery of family portraits,” Penelope protested. “We shall soon run out of walls to hang them!” But then she stopped herself. “Yet it is better to have too many relatives than too few,” she murmured, too low and too sad for anyone but herself to hear.
    The list grew and grew: Miss Charlotte Mortimer, the headmistress of the Swanburne Academy. Madame Ionesco, a soothsayer who, in addition to being able to see Beyond the Veil, also baked tasty Gypsy cakes, which the children liked very much. They even thought of Lord Fredrick’s mother, the Widow Ashton, who had been kind to them the one time she had visited Ashton Place.
    Now that the children’s good cheer had been restored, obstacles melted like snow in springtime, and everything seemed possible. But as you may have noticed, their unshakable conviction that nearly everyone they had ever met deserved a spot on the Incorrigible family tree had cast a shadow of gloom over their governess, who even now was reaching for her own pocket handkerchief. It was not weltschmerz , exactly, for she was sad for a particular reason, which was this: For as long as she could remember, her own family tree had been as bare as the elm that even now stood cold and leafless outside the nursery window.
    She had parents, of course. If not (as Mrs. Clarke had earlier observed), Penelope could never have been born to grow up to miss them so. Now, at the ripe old age of sixteen, she asked herself daily: What had become of the Long-Lost Lumleys after they dropped her off at the Swanburne Academy, so many years ago? And why had they stayed absent and silent for so long? And what about the Incorrigible children’s missing parents, and the strange curse upon the Ashtons, the roots of which were somehow buried in that family’s genealogy? (This she had learned from Edward Ashton himself, and a most unpleasant man he was—but more about him later.)
    â€œOne could plant a whole forest of mystery out of all these family trees, for there are question marks hanging on every branch,” she thought. “If only finding one’s true family was as