Chapter 9 - The First Scar

The farmhouse sat alone at the edge of the seam.

She could feel the wrongness before she could see the building. A heaviness in the air, like the pressure before a storm that never came. The grass grew in strange patterns here, patches of green next to patches of brown with sharp lines between them, as if the land couldn't decide what season it was supposed to be.

"That's the place." Linn pointed at the low stone structure ahead, smoke rising from the chimney. "Someone's home."

They'd been following the seam map for two days. The thick dark line ran east to west through the hills, and according to the Cartographer's Daughter's notes, there were people living near seams who carried marks on their bodies. Scars that matched the lines. Maps written in flesh.

She'd thought it was metaphor at first. Poetic language for trauma, for the ways that broken places broke the people who lived near them. But the notes were specific. Certain individuals who were present when cuts were made, the notes said, retain physical evidence of the stitching. Their wounds correspond to the seams. When properly read, these scars reveal coordinates to places that were removed.

Properly read. As if reading someone's scar was a normal thing to do.

They approached the farmhouse slowly. No animals in the yard, no crops in the field, just the stone building and its thread of smoke against the gray sky. The door was painted blue, or had been once. Most of the color had worn away.

She knocked. Three times, out of habit.

Footsteps inside. Slow, deliberate. Then the door opened and an old woman looked out at them with eyes the color of rain.

"Lost?"

"No. Looking for someone."

"Not many people to find out here." The woman studied them both, taking in the travel-worn clothes and the heavy packs. "You've come a long way."

"We have."

"Why?"

It was a simple question. Direct and deserved. She could lie, make up a story about being travelers passing through, ask for water and move on. That would be the safe thing. The kind thing.

But she was running out of time for kindness.

"I'm looking for someone with a scar," she said. "A specific kind of scar. Old, probably from childhood. Shaped in a way that doesn't quite make sense."

The woman's expression didn't change, but something shifted behind those rain-colored eyes. Recognition, maybe. Or fear.

"Why would you be looking for that?"

"Because it might help me find something that was lost."

Silence stretched between them. Linn shifted her weight from foot to foot, uncomfortable. The wind picked up and died away.

Then the old woman stepped back from the door.

"You'd better come in."

The inside of the farmhouse was clean and sparse. A single room with a bed in one corner and a hearth in another and a table in between. Everything made of wood and stone and cloth, nothing decorative, nothing unnecessary. The kind of home you built when you expected to lose things.

"Sit." The woman gestured at the table. "I'll make tea."

They sat. The fire crackled. The woman moved around her small kitchen with the efficiency of someone who'd made the same motions thousands of times.

"My name is Vera." She set cups on the table, poured from a kettle that had been warming by the hearth. "I've lived here my whole life. Sixty-three years in this house, in this spot, next to whatever that thing is out there."

"The seam."

Vera's hands paused mid-pour. "Is that what it's called?"

"That's what the Cartographer's Daughter called it. The place where reality was stitched back together after something was cut out."

"The Cartographer's Daughter." Vera finished pouring and sat down across from them. "I've heard that name. Someone came through years ago, asking about maps. She'd sent them."

Her pulse quickened. "What did they look like? The person who came through?"

"Young. Curious. Asked too many questions." Vera wrapped her hands around her tea. "Wore a yellow scarf, I think. Strange thing to remember after all these years."

The yellow scarf. It was real. They had been here, in this house, sitting at this table. Another piece of evidence, another thread connecting the past to the present.

"What did they ask you?"

"Same thing you're asking. About my scar." Vera set down her tea and pushed up her sleeve.

The scar ran from her wrist to her elbow, a raised ridge of white tissue against weathered skin. It should have been straight, the kind of mark left by an accident or a blade. But it wasn't straight. It curved and branched and doubled back on itself in a pattern that looked almost deliberate.

Almost like writing.

"I got it when I was seven," Vera said. "Woke up one morning and it was there. No memory of how, no wound that needed healing. Just the scar, already formed, like I'd had it my whole life."

"Did anyone else remember?"

"My mother said I must have hurt myself in my sleep. My father said children got into all kinds of trouble and forgot about it. But I knew. I knew I hadn't done anything to myself." Vera traced the scar with her finger, following its strange curves. "It just appeared. Same week the Hendricks farm disappeared."

"Disappeared?"

"There was a farm to the west of us. The Hendricks family. Three generations working that land. I used to play with their youngest, a girl named Mira." Vera's voice had gone distant, remembering. "One morning I woke up with this scar and the Hendricks farm was gone. Not abandoned. Gone. Just empty fields where the buildings used to be. And nobody remembered them. My own parents looked at me like I was crazy when I asked about Mira."

She exchanged a glance with Linn. The same pattern. The cuts and the forgetting and the scars left behind.

"Can I look at it more closely?"

Vera hesitated. Her hand moved instinctively to cover the scar, protective. "The other one asked the same thing. The one with the yellow scarf."

"What did you tell them?"

"I let them look. Didn't understand why it mattered, but they seemed desperate. Same way you seem desperate." Vera studied her face. "You're related to them, aren't you? You have the same eyes."

The same eyes. She couldn't remember what their eyes looked like, but this woman could. A stranger who'd met them once, years ago, could see the resemblance she couldn't even picture.

"They're my sibling." The word came out rough. "They were erased. I'm trying to find them."

"Erased." Vera said the word like she was tasting it. "Same thing that happened to the Hendricks family. Same thing that happens to everyone who gets too close to the seams."

"That's why I need to see your scar. It might show me where to look next."

Vera was quiet for a long moment. The fire crackled. Outside, the wind picked up again, rattling something loose on the roof.

Then she pushed her sleeve up further and extended her arm across the table.

"Go ahead. But I don't know what you expect to find."

She pulled out the seam map and unrolled it on the table. The thick dark line running through the hills was there, along with thinner lines branching off in various directions. According to the Cartographer's Daughter's notes, these corresponded to places where the cuts overlapped, where multiple erasures had left compound scars.

She held the map next to Vera's arm. The lines didn't match exactly, but there was a resemblance. The same curves, the same branches. Like the scar was a smaller version of the map, written in a different language.

"I need to trace it," she said. "With the map underneath. See if the patterns align."

Vera's jaw tightened but she didn't pull away. "Do what you have to do."

She positioned the map under Vera's forearm, lining up the thickest line of the scar with the thickest line on the paper. Then, with her finger, she began to trace.

The sensation was strange. Vera's skin was warm and the scar tissue was smoother than the surrounding flesh, slightly raised, like someone had drawn on her with wax. She followed the curves slowly, watching how they corresponded to the lines on the map.

At first it seemed random. The scar wandered where the map didn't, curved when the lines stayed straight. She was about to give up when she noticed something.

The endpoints matched.

Not perfectly, not exactly. But when she traced the scar to its terminus near Vera's elbow and compared it to the map, she could see that both ended at the same relative position. A spot where multiple seam lines converged, marked on the map with a small symbol she hadn't noticed before.

"There." She pointed at the symbol. "What is this?"

Linn leaned over to look. "It's coordinates. See the numbers? Latitude and longitude."

"The Cartographer's Daughter marked it." She looked up at Vera, whose face had gone pale. "This is where your scar leads. This is what it's pointing to."

"I don't understand." Vera pulled her arm back, cradling it against her chest. "How can a scar point somewhere? It's just tissue. Just an old wound."

"It's not just a wound. It's a map." She started copying the coordinates into her journal, writing fast before they could somehow disappear. "When the Hendricks farm was erased, the cut left a mark on you. On your body. And that mark shows where the cut was made."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"None of this makes sense. But the person with the yellow scarf came here, saw your scar, and went to these coordinates. And they found something there. Something important enough that it got them erased too."

Vera was shaking her head. Her hands were trembling. "I don't want to know. Whatever this is, whatever you're looking for, I don't want any part of it."

"It's too late for that." The words came out harder than she intended. "You've known about this your whole life. You remember the Hendricks family when everyone else forgot. You carry the scar that proves something was cut out of the world."

"I just want to be left alone." Vera stood up from the table, moved toward the hearth like she needed the warmth. "I've spent sixty years trying not to think about that scar. Trying not to remember Mira's face. And now you're telling me it's all connected, it all means something, and I'm supposed to just accept that?"

She should have felt sympathy. Should have recognized the fear in Vera's voice and backed off, given her space. But she was running out of time and patience and every other resource she had.

"You don't have to accept anything. But I need those coordinates."

"You have them." Vera's voice was bitter. "Take them and go."

They should have left then. Should have taken what they'd gotten and walked out the door and never looked back.

But Linn had to ask.

"The person with the yellow scarf," the girl said. "What else did they tell you? What were they looking for?"

Vera turned from the hearth. Her face was drawn and tired, the face of someone who'd spent decades pretending not to see the obvious.

"They said the world was full of holes. That people had been cutting pieces out of it for a long time, and nobody remembered because remembering was dangerous." She looked at the scar on her arm. "They said I was proof. Living proof that the cuts were real."

"Did they say why it was happening? Who was doing it?"

"They mentioned a name." Vera frowned, concentrating. "Something about editors. People who decided what stayed and what got removed. They said they were going to find them and make them stop."

"The Editors." She'd heard the name from the Cartographer's Daughter. Now here it was again, from a different source. Confirmation that the sibling had been on the right track.

"I told them it was dangerous," Vera said. "Told them to leave it alone, stop asking questions, go home and forget about the whole thing. But they wouldn't listen. They said some things were worth the risk."

Some things were worth the risk. That sounded right. That sounded like something they would have said, stubborn and certain and unwilling to let go.

"What happened after they left?"

Vera opened her mouth to answer. Then stopped. Her brow furrowed. Her hand went to her temple in a gesture that was becoming terribly familiar.

"After they left, they..." She trailed off. "I'm sorry. What were we talking about?"

The cold spread through her chest. Not Vera. Not another one.

"The person with the yellow scarf. You were telling us what happened after they left your house."

"Was I?" Vera looked around the room like she was seeing it for the first time. "I'm sorry. I don't remember anyone with a yellow scarf. Are you sure you have the right house?"

Linn grabbed her arm. "We need to go."

"Wait." She stood up, moved toward Vera. "You were just telling us about them. They came here years ago, asked about your scar, went looking for the Editors."

"Editors?" Vera shook her head. "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know why you're in my house." Her eyes were clouding over, the clarity fading. "I think you should leave."

"Vera, please. Try to remember. The Hendricks farm. Your friend Mira. The scar that appeared when you were seven."

"I don't know anyone named Mira." Vera's voice was getting shaky. Scared. "I don't know why you keep saying these things. Please, just go."

She felt Linn's hand tighten on her arm. Pulling her toward the door. The smart thing to do. The only thing to do.

But she tried one more time. "Your scar. Look at your scar. You've had it your whole life. You know it means something."

Vera looked down at her arm. At the raised white tissue running from wrist to elbow. For a moment, just a moment, something flickered in her eyes.

Then it was gone.

"I fell when I was a child," Vera said. "Caught my arm on a fence. It's nothing. Just an old accident."

She felt something break inside her. Not dramatically, not loudly. Just a small quiet snap, like a thread being cut.

Another person erased. Another mind smoothing over. Another witness gone.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry for bothering you."

She let Linn pull her toward the door. Let the girl guide her out into the gray afternoon, down the path away from the farmhouse, away from Vera and her scar and her convenient new memory of a fence accident that had never happened.

The seam hummed in the air around them. She could feel it now, feel the wrongness pressing against her skin. This was what happened when you got too close. The cuts had a gravity of their own, pulling everything toward the void.

"You got the coordinates," Linn said when they were far enough away. "That's what matters."

"She's gone. Another person who knew something, and now she's gone."

"She was going to forget anyway. She'd already forgotten most of it. You just... accelerated things."

She stopped walking. Turned to look at the farmhouse in the distance, its thread of smoke rising into the gray sky.

"Is that what I do? Accelerate the forgetting?"

Linn didn't answer. Didn't have to.

They made camp a mile from the seam line, far enough that the wrongness in the air faded to a background hum. She sat by the fire with the journal in her lap, the coordinates written on the page in front of her.

Numbers. That's all they were. Latitude and longitude, pointing to a spot on a map that probably didn't exist anymore. But the sibling had followed these numbers. Had traced the same scar, copied the same coordinates, walked toward the same destination.

And then they'd been erased.

"Do you think we're making a mistake?"

Linn looked up from the fire she was tending. "What do you mean?"

"Following the trail. Going where they went. They found something and it got them erased. What if the same thing happens to us?"

"Then at least we'll know what happened to them."

"That's not exactly comforting."

"It's not supposed to be." Linn sat back from the flames. "My grandmother used to say that knowing things was dangerous. That's why most people choose not to know. It's safer to stay ignorant, to let the gaps close over without asking questions."

"Your grandmother sounds like she knew a lot for someone who thought knowledge was dangerous."

"She did." Linn smiled, small and sad. "That's what killed her, in the end. Not disease or old age. Just knowing too much. She woke up one morning and couldn't remember her own name. By nightfall she was gone."

She thought about Vera in the farmhouse, her memories smoothing over, her past rewriting itself into something safe and bland. That was the future. That was what waited for everyone who got too close.

"I'm going to get you killed," she said. "Or erased. Whichever comes first."

"Probably." Linn shrugged. "But I was already dying slow. Forgetting pieces of myself a little at a time, watching the holes get bigger. At least this way I'm doing something. At least this way I'm choosing."

She looked at this girl across the fire. Young and stubborn and probably doomed. But there was a kind of courage in her that she'd almost forgotten existed. The courage to walk toward the danger instead of away from it.

"The Sutured Lands." She looked down at the coordinates in her journal. "That's where these lead. According to the Cartographer's Daughter, it's where multiple cuts overlap. Where the seams are thickest."

"How far?"

"Maybe a week. Hard to tell when the maps keep lying."

"Then we should sleep." Linn lay back from the fire, using her pack as a pillow. "Big day tomorrow. Lots of walking toward certain doom."

She almost laughed. Would have, if laughing didn't feel so impossible.

Instead she wrote in the journal, documenting everything. Vera's scar. The coordinates. The way the old woman's memories had dissolved mid-sentence. All of it, captured on paper that might be blank by morning.

Another person touched by the search. Another mind starting to unravel. I used her scar to find coordinates and then watched her forget everything.

Is this what I am now? A walking plague, spreading the forgetting everywhere I go?

Maybe. Probably. But I can't stop. The sibling went to these coordinates and found something. I have to find it too.

Even if it kills me. Even if it erases me.

Some things are worth the cost.

She closed the journal. Lay down near the fire. Stared up at the stars and tried not to think about Vera alone in her farmhouse, looking at a scar she could no longer explain, remembering a fence accident that had never happened.

Some things were worth the cost.

She had to believe that.

Otherwise, what was any of this for?