Chapter 6 - The Cartographer's Daughter

The inside of the house was covered in maps.

They hung from every wall, layered three and four deep in places. They were pinned to the ceiling, spread across tables, rolled into tubes that filled every corner. Old maps, new maps, maps drawn on paper and cloth and what looked like animal hide. Maps of coastlines and mountain ranges and cities she'd never heard of.

The Cartographer's Daughter moved through the chaos like she knew exactly where everything was. She was small, bent with age, but she moved with purpose. Led the way past stacks of parchment and towers of books to a table near the hearth where a kettle was already warming.

"Sit," she said. "You look like you're about to fall over."

She sat. Her legs thanked her for it.

The old woman poured tea into two cups that didn't match, handed one over, and settled into a chair across the table. The firelight caught her face, deepening every wrinkle, making her eyes look like dark stones at the bottom of a well.

"You came from the port city," the Cartographer's Daughter said. It wasn't a question. "Took the western road. Had trouble with it, I imagine."

"It loops."

"Only if you walk it facing forward." A thin smile. "Walk it backwards, facing away from where you're going, and it lets you through. Most people never figure that out. They try reversing direction, cutting across the hills, giving up entirely. The road is a filter. Keeps out anyone who isn't paying attention to the old ways."

"An old woman in the city told me about Forgetting Day. Walking backwards through the streets."

"Some people still remember fragments of how things used to work. Before the cuts, there were places where you had to walk backwards, or speak in riddles, or close your eyes to see. The rules were different." The Cartographer's Daughter took a sip of her tea. "Most of that knowledge is gone now. Erased along with everything else."

She thought about Thren, stuck for five days, and wondered how many others had wandered that loop until they gave up or died.

"You said I look like someone you used to know."

The smile faded. The old woman set down her tea, wrapped her hands around the cup like she was trying to warm them even though the fire was right there.

"I did. And you do." She studied the visitor's face with those dark-stone eyes. "Around the jaw. The way you hold your shoulders. Even the way you knocked on my door, three times fast, like you were afraid I wouldn't answer."

Her throat was tight. "Who did I remind you of?"

"Someone young. Someone who came here... months ago? A year?" The Cartographer's Daughter frowned, pressing her fingers against her temple. "Time is hard. It slips. I write things down but the writing fades and then I'm not sure what was real and what I imagined."

"I know." She pulled the journal from her bag, set it on the table between them. "This is mine. The pages go blank. Entries I wrote yesterday are gone today."

The old woman looked at the journal for a long moment. Then she reached out and touched the leather cover, the same way Morrow had in the tavern, like she was greeting an old friend.

"They had one like this. The person you remind me of. They sat right where you're sitting and showed me a journal just like this one." Her voice had gone distant. "They were looking for proof. Collecting inconsistencies. They said the world was full of holes and they were going to find out why."

"What did you tell them?"

"I showed them my maps."

The Cartographer's Daughter stood, slower than she'd moved before. Crossed to the nearest wall and pulled down one of the larger maps, carried it back to the table, spread it out over the tea cups and the journal and everything else.

It was a map of the coast. She recognized the port city, the lighthouse where they sat now, the western road winding through the hills. But there was more. Islands off the coast that she'd never seen on any other map. A peninsula jutting out to the south where, as far as she knew, there was only open water. Names written in a language she didn't recognize.

"This is what the coast looked like fifty years ago," the old woman said. "Before the cuts."

"The cuts?"

"That's what I call them. When pieces of the world get removed." She traced a finger along the coastline, stopping at the peninsula. "This was called the Vethren Reach. Fishing villages, mostly. Good people. I visited once when I was young." Her finger moved to the islands. "The Sorrow Chain. Seven islands, all connected by bridges that were supposed to be impossible to build. Traders came from everywhere to see them."

She stared at the map. At places that should exist but didn't. "What happened to them?"

"Gone. Cut out. The Vethren Reach disappeared when I was thirty. I woke up one morning and it wasn't there anymore. No one remembered it. My own husband looked at me like I was crazy when I asked about it." The Cartographer's Daughter's voice was steady, but her hands were shaking. "The Sorrow Chain went ten years later. I watched a ship sail right through where the islands used to be. Just open water. Like they'd never existed at all."

She thought about the old woman in the market, weaving crowns for a holiday no one remembered. The statues in the plaza with blank pedestals. The shadows that fell wrong in a city that had been stitched back together from pieces that didn't quite fit.

"How do you still remember?"

"I don't know." The old woman sat back down heavily. "My mother remembered too. She told me stories about places that weren't there anymore, and I thought she was making them up. Then I watched the Vethren Reach disappear and I understood." She gestured at the maps covering the walls. "I've been collecting these ever since. Old maps, before the cuts. Proof that the world used to be bigger than it is now."

She reached for the map on the table. Touched the peninsula that wasn't there anymore, the islands that had been erased. Real places. Real people. All of them gone, and almost no one left who knew they'd ever existed.

"The person who came to see you," she said. "The one I remind you of. What did they find?"

The Cartographer's Daughter closed her eyes. Her face twisted with effort, the same expression she'd seen on Morrow's face right before he forgot everything.

"They brought documents. Records from archives in the port city. Testimonies that contradicted each other, maps that showed different coastlines depending on when they were drawn." Her voice was strained. "They said they'd found a pattern. That the cuts weren't random. That someone was doing it deliberately, systematically, following some kind of plan."

"Who? Who's doing it?"

"They didn't know. But they said they were going to find out. They were going to follow the seams."

"The seams?"

The old woman opened her eyes. Stood again, moved to a different wall, pulled down a different map. This one was stranger than the first. It showed the same coastline, but overlaid with a web of lines that didn't correspond to any roads or rivers. They crisscrossed the land seemingly at random, some thick and dark, others thin and faded.

"This is what's left when something gets cut out," the Cartographer's Daughter said. "The seams. The places where reality gets stitched back together." She pointed to a thick dark line running through the hills east of the port city. "This is where the road loops. The seam is weak there. Space folds back on itself because it wasn't sewn together properly."

She thought about walking backwards, about the wrongness she'd felt pushing against the grain of something. "The cuts leave scars."

"Everything leaves scars. The world is covered in them, if you know how to look. And your—" The old woman stopped. Her face went pale. "Your... the person who came to see me. They were going to follow the seams. They thought if they could find where the cuts were made, they could find who was making them."

"Where did they go?"

"I gave them a map. One that shows the seams." The Cartographer's Daughter turned away, started rummaging through the stacks and piles that covered every surface. "I have a copy. I think I have a copy. I made copies of everything because I knew I might forget..."

She watched the old woman search, her heart pounding. A map of the seams. A trail to follow. Something concrete, something real, something that might lead to answers.

"Here." The Cartographer's Daughter held up a rolled piece of parchment, yellowed with age. "This shows the major seams in the coastal region. The thick ones, the ones where the cuts were deepest." She hesitated, holding the map against her chest. "They took the original. The person you remind me of. They said they were going to a place called the Sutured Lands."

"The Sutured Lands?"

"That's what I call the places where everything comes together. Where multiple cuts overlap, where the seams are thickest." The old woman's hands were trembling now. "There's one to the south. A week's travel, maybe more. They said they would go there and find proof of what was happening. And then..."

She trailed off. Her eyes went unfocused.

"And then what?"

"I don't..." The Cartographer's Daughter pressed her hand to her forehead. "They came back. I think they came back. There was a night when someone knocked on my door and I opened it and there was—there was—"

She was losing her. The same way she'd lost Morrow, the same way she'd lost the sailor. The memories dissolving right in front of her, running through the cracks like water through a broken cup.

"Please." She stood up, crossed to where the old woman was swaying on her feet. "What happened when they came back? What did they find?"

"They found—" The Cartographer's Daughter looked at her, and for one moment her eyes were clear and sharp and full of something that might have been fear. "They found out who was doing it. And then they were gone. And I can't remember their face anymore. I can't remember their name."

She grabbed the old woman's shoulders, steadying her. "It's okay. You don't have to remember their name. Just tell me what they found."

"The Editors." The word came out in a whisper. "That's what they called them. The ones who make the cuts. The ones who decide what gets erased."

The Editors. The same word Morrow had tried to say before he forgot everything. She had a name now. Not a person, but a name.

"Where are they? The Editors. How do I find them?"

But the Cartographer's Daughter was shaking her head, her eyes going cloudy again. "I don't know. I don't know. They told me, but I can't—it's gone. It was there and now it's gone."

She felt the old woman's weight sag against her. Helped her back to the chair by the fire. The map of the seams was still clutched in the old woman's hands, and she took it gently, carefully, trying not to think about how much had just been lost.

"I'm sorry," the Cartographer's Daughter said. Her voice was small now, confused. "Did I invite you in? I don't remember opening the door."

"You did. We were talking about maps."

"Oh. Good. I like talking about maps." She looked around the room, at all the paper and parchment covering every surface. "I collect them, you know. Old ones. My mother used to say the world was bigger than it looked, and I've been trying to prove her right."

She knelt by the old woman's chair. Took her hand. It was thin and fragile, bones like a bird's.

"You already did prove her right. You showed me the proof."

"Did I?" The Cartographer's Daughter smiled, distant and confused. "That's nice. That's very nice."

She stayed until the old woman fell asleep in her chair. The fire crackled. The maps rustled in a draft from somewhere. Outside, the sun had set and the lighthouse beam was rotating overhead, throwing light out into the darkness over the water.

She looked down at the map in her hands. The seams. The places where the world had been cut and stitched back together.

The Sutured Lands were to the south. A week's travel. They had gone there looking for proof and found something. Found the name of the ones responsible.

The Editors.

And then they'd been erased. The same way the Vethren Reach had been erased, the same way the Sorrow Chain had been erased. Cut out of the world and sewn over like they'd never existed.

She opened the journal. Found a blank page. Started writing.

The Cartographer's Daughter remembers things that got cut out of the world. Whole places, gone. She has maps that show what used to exist.

She remembers someone who came to see her. Someone who looked like me. They were following the seams, the places where reality got stitched back together. They went to the Sutured Lands to find proof.

They found out who was doing the erasing. They called them the Editors.

Then they were erased too.

I have a map now. I know where to go. The Sutured Lands, to the south.

I don't know what I'll find there. But it's more than I had this morning.

She closed the journal. Looked at the old woman sleeping by the fire, surrounded by her maps, holding onto memories that kept slipping away.

Tomorrow she'd leave. Tonight she'd stay here, keep the fire going, let the Cartographer's Daughter sleep.

It was the least she could do for someone who'd helped the person she was searching for. Even if that someone couldn't remember doing it anymore.