An Explorer's Cartography of Already Settled Lands by Fran Wilde

Author:Fran Wilde [Wilde, Fran]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

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The captain tended Ship’s sleeping passengers. Settled in for the long wait. Dreamed of fair winds, clean beginnings. Purpose and destiny. Mused on alternate fuels, with no success.

The navigator walked the landscape and watched cities change around them. They removed captain and Ship from their thoughts so they might better see what was before them. They kept walking.

The Map of Kisses Down the Curve of One’s Neck

Now the navigator called themselves historian, though they still made maps to help them understand. They became he or she when it suited; they remained they. The historian learned local patterns of conversation to better be part of those moments when things changed. Sometimes that went right, sometimes very wrong. Sometimes they made unexpected connections, wordless ones.

The historian found themselves in the back of a coat closet in the walled city of thieves, having everything unbuttoned too fast. They discovered themselves unfolding around and climbing over and being too honest with colorful symbols at awkward moments. This was more than uncomfortable.

This was a gross deviation. The captain wouldn’t have borne it for a moment.

The historian learned where the people of this land lived, in between the spaces that they occupied. They learned how fragile people were, in those spaces.

They drew lines between the places where they’d broken, or had been broken, they showed these to anyone who came close. See: this is a map of my mistakes.

These lines were good defense for generations.

In the city of thieves; on the wide prairie of birds that had become a launching place for gliders, then loud winged planes, then rockets that had frightened the birds away; in the salt and blood caverns by the river; the historian paged through people and held up the map of errors when some drew too close. The historian watched the changes and wrote them down.

Until, over supper in the city of sand and images, you studied the map of errors and folded it into angles that fit into your hand, then pitched it away one-two-three skips into a well. And you traced a new set of lines with your lips down the historian’s neck, tasting the metal there, and the salt, the sand, and the memories.

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