Chapter 4 - The Compass

She didn't sleep that night.

Every time she closed her eyes she tried to see the face, and every time she got the same blur. The shape of a person without any of the details that made them a person. Like staring at someone through frosted glass.

By the time the gray light of morning crept through the window, she'd given up trying. She packed what little she had, left the key on the nightstand, and walked out of the boarding house without looking back.

The city was quiet this early. Fishermen heading to the docks, bakers firing up their ovens, the occasional drunk stumbling home from wherever they'd spent the night. She moved through the streets with her bag over her shoulder and the journal pressed against her ribs, heading for the west gate and the road beyond.

She needed a compass.

The thought had come to her sometime around three in the morning, when she was lying in bed staring at the ceiling and trying not to think about Morrow's blank face. The road plays tricks, the fisherman had said. Most folks give up before they get there. If she was going to find the Cartographer's Daughter, she needed some way to keep her bearings when everything else went wrong.

The market wasn't open yet, but there was a cart near the west gate that sold odds and ends to travelers. An old man sat behind it, wrapped in a blanket against the morning chill, surrounded by lanterns and rope and travel supplies that had seen better days.

"Compass," she said. "You have one?"

The old man studied her with watery eyes. Took his time about it, the way old people did when they had nowhere to be.

"Might do." He rummaged through a box of metal objects, came up with three different compasses. Set them on the cart in front of her. "Take your pick."

The first one was brass, polished, obviously expensive. She couldn't afford it.

The second was tin, dented, the glass cracked across the face. Probably didn't work at all.

The third was something else. Dark metal, almost black, with a cover that snapped shut over the face. Old, but not in the way the tin one was old. This one looked like it had been made a long time ago by someone who knew what they were doing.

She picked it up. It was heavier than she expected, and warm against her palm even though the morning was cold.

"How much for this one?"

The old man squinted at it. "That one? Couldn't tell you where it came from. Was in a lot I bought off a ship that came in from... somewhere. Can't remember now." He scratched his chin. "Give you a fair price. It's old, but the needle still moves."

She paid him without haggling. Didn't have the energy for it, and something about the compass felt right. Like it had been waiting for her, which was a stupid thing to think but she thought it anyway.

The west gate was just ahead. She walked through it as the sun crested the hills to the east, casting long shadows across the road.

Time to go.

The road out of the city was ordinary for the first few miles. Packed dirt, wheel ruts, the occasional farmhouse set back from the path. She walked with the sun on her back and the journal in her bag and the new compass in her hand, checking it every few minutes to make sure she was still heading the right direction.

The needle pointed north. Steady and sure, the way a compass was supposed to work.

By midday she'd left the farms behind. The land opened up into rolling hills covered with dry grass, the road winding between them like a river finding its way to the sea. No other travelers in sight. Just her and the sky and the endless golden hills.

She stopped to eat. Bread and dried meat, the same thing she'd been living on for months. Sat on a rock by the side of the road and watched the clouds drift overhead and tried not to think about anything at all.

The compass was still in her hand. She'd been holding it the whole time, she realized. Her fingers had cramped around it without her noticing.

She opened the cover to check the needle.

It was spinning.

Not drifting, not wobbling. Spinning, fast and wild, like something had grabbed hold of it and sent it whirling. She watched it go around and around, the dark needle blurring with speed, and felt a cold knot form in her stomach.

Broken. The damn thing was broken. She'd paid good money for a broken compass on a road that played tricks, and now she was alone in the middle of nowhere with no way to tell which direction was which.

She shook it. Tapped the glass. Turned it upside down and right-side up again. Nothing helped. The needle kept spinning, faster now, a blur of motion that made her dizzy to watch.

Then it stopped.

Not gradually. Not slowing down. Just stopped, dead, like someone had grabbed it mid-spin.

The needle was pointing at her.

She stared at it. Turned the compass to the left. The needle swung to stay pointed in her direction. Turned it to the right. Same thing. Held it out at arm's length and the needle didn't waver, locked onto her like a hunting dog following a scent.

That wasn't how compasses worked.

She stood up, still holding it in front of her. Walked in a circle around the rock where she'd been sitting. The needle followed her the whole way, never wavering, always pointing directly at her.

"What the hell," she said out loud. Her voice sounded strange in the empty air.

She tried walking away from the compass. Set it on the rock and backed up ten paces, twenty, thirty. The needle didn't move. Still pointing at where she'd been standing.

No, not where she'd been standing. When she moved to the side, the needle tracked her. It was still pointing at her, even from thirty paces away. She could see it turning on the rock, following her like an eye.

She walked back and picked it up. The needle was steady now, aimed directly at where she'd been standing a moment before. At her.

This wasn't a compass. Or it was, but not the kind that pointed north. This was something else, something that shouldn't exist, something that had been sitting in a box on an old man's cart like it was just another piece of junk.

She thought about the old man's words. Was in a lot I bought off a ship that came in from somewhere. Can't remember now.

A ship from somewhere he couldn't remember. A compass that didn't point north. A world full of holes and missing pieces.

Nothing was an accident anymore. Nothing was just a coincidence.

She looked down at the needle, still aimed in her direction. "What are you pointing at?"

The compass didn't answer. Obviously. But she kept staring at it anyway, trying to understand what it meant. A compass that pointed at her. Not north, not toward some destination. Just at her, wherever she went.

She thought about fear.

The word came unbidden, floating up from somewhere deep. Fear. The compass points to what you fear.

She didn't know where the thought came from. Didn't know if it was memory or intuition or something the compass itself was telling her. But as soon as she thought it, she knew it was true.

The compass pointed to what she feared most.

And it was pointing at her.

She sat back down on the rock. The bread and meat sat untouched beside her, but she'd lost her appetite. The compass lay heavy in her palm, needle unwavering.

What did she fear most?

The obvious answer was forgetting. Losing the last traces of the sibling, watching the journal go blank page by page, waking up one day with no memory of why she was on this road at all. That was the fear that kept her up at night, the one that drove her forward even when her body begged her to stop.

But if the compass pointed to what she feared, why was it pointing at her?

She thought about Morrow in the tavern, watching his own identity dissolve. She thought about the old woman weaving crowns for a holiday nobody remembered. She thought about all the people she'd met in the past six months who'd known something, almost remembered something, and then smoothed over into blankness.

She was afraid of becoming them. But that still didn't explain why the compass was pointing at her instead of out toward the world, toward the thing doing the erasing, toward the sibling she was trying to find.

Unless.

The thought crept in slowly, like dawn light through a dirty window.

Unless what she feared most wasn't out there. Unless the thing that terrified her, really terrified her, down in the deep places where she didn't like to look, was something inside her.

She closed her eyes. Made herself ask the question she'd been avoiding.

What scared her more than anything else?

The answer came immediately, and it hit her like a punch to the gut.

Giving up.

That was it. That was the fear the compass had found. Not that she would forget, but that she would choose to stop looking. That one day she would wake up and the journal would be almost empty and she would think, what's the point? That she would set down the bag and stop walking and let the erasure take whatever was left.

Forgetting was something that happened to you. Giving up was something you did.

And somewhere, in the deepest part of her, she was afraid that she would do it. That she was already closer to it than she wanted to admit. That every blank page, every dead end, every informant who forgot mid-sentence was pushing her toward the moment when she would finally break.

The compass knew. The needle pointing at her knew. It had looked inside her and found the thing she was most afraid of, and it was showing her that the enemy wasn't out there somewhere. The enemy was her. Her own exhaustion. Her own despair. Her own willingness to let go.

She opened her eyes. The needle was still pointing at her.

"I'm not going to give up," she said. The words came out rough, barely more than a whisper.

The needle didn't move.

"I'm not," she said again, louder. "I don't care how tired I am. I don't care how many pages go blank. I'm going to find them and I'm going to bring them back and I'm not going to stop until I do."

Still the needle pointed. Still the compass showed her the thing she feared.

But something had shifted. Saying it out loud had made it real. Not a promise to the sibling, who couldn't hear her. Not a promise to the journal, which was just paper and leather and fading ink. A promise to herself, spoken into the empty air of the golden hills, witnessed by nothing but the clouds and the grass and a compass that shouldn't exist.

She wasn't going to give up.

And now she knew what she was fighting against.

She walked until dark.

The compass stayed in her pocket now, the weight of it a constant reminder. She didn't need to look at it to know where the needle was pointing. It would always be pointing at her, at the fear that lived inside her, at the possibility of surrender.

Good. Let it point. Let it remind her every step of the way what she was up against.

The road wound through the hills, climbing gradually toward a ridge she could see in the distance. According to the fisherman, the Cartographer's Daughter lived in a lighthouse at the edge of the world. She had no idea how far that was, or what the road would do to try to stop her from getting there.

But she had a compass now. Not one that pointed north, but one that pointed at something more important. Her own weakness. Her own limits. The thing she had to defeat before she could defeat anything else.

She made camp as the stars came out, huddled in her traveling cloak at the base of a hill where the wind couldn't reach. The journal came out, and the pen, and she wrote by the last light of dusk.

Found a compass. Bought it from a vendor near the west gate. It doesn't point north.

It points at me.

Not at my body. At my fear. The deepest one. The one I didn't want to admit.

I'm not afraid of forgetting. I mean, I am, but that's not the worst thing. The worst thing is that I'll give up. That I'll get so tired and so beaten down that I'll just stop. Let them disappear completely. Let myself forget because it's easier than remembering.

The compass knows. It found the thing I was hiding from myself.

I don't know where it came from. The vendor couldn't remember. It was in a lot from a ship that came from somewhere he couldn't name. Another gap. Another piece that doesn't fit.

Maybe it was meant for me. Maybe nothing is an accident anymore.

Or maybe I'm losing my mind and it's just a broken compass.

Either way, I'm keeping it. I need something to remind me what I'm really fighting.

She closed the journal. The stars were bright overhead, brighter than they ever were in the city. She could see the ridge in the distance, a dark line against the darker sky.

Tomorrow she'd keep walking. The road would play its tricks and she'd find a way through. The Cartographer's Daughter was out there somewhere, with her maps of what used to be, and the sibling had gone to see her, and that meant she had to go too.

The compass was a weight in her pocket. A reminder. A warning.

She wasn't going to give up.

She said it one more time, quietly, to the stars and the hills and the darkness.

"I'm not going to give up."

Then she closed her eyes and tried to sleep.