Arthur Penhaligon belonged to that old breed of cartographers who believed with an absolute, unbending faith in the truth of lines on paper. He worked amidst dust motes floating in a garret somewhere above sun-flooded London, surrounded by rolls upon rolls of parchment with only the faint but comforting smell of ink and old linen for company. His specialty was historical reconstruction a meticulous filling in of all the gaps left by time and negligence.
The Cartographer:
A parcel came one day. It was not marked and seemed unusually heavy for its size. Inside it was found to contain only one, leather-bound journal, and a set of drawing instruments, their design exquisite almost otherworldly. The journal had been written out in fine elegant script detailing the city of Aethel a metropolis founded upon impossible architecture and shifting geography supposedly somewhere within the remote Caucasus mountains.
The journal spoke of Aethel not as a place but as a mindset, a city that came into being only during acts of observation with its spatial organization determined by the emotional disposition of the observer. Arthur, who was driven by cold logic and empirical evidence wrote it off as beautiful, elaborate fiction. But consider this: so many specifics the exact angle at which sunlight strikes those towers made of obsidian, what exact number, Steps on the Grand Staircase of Whispers started to eat away at his work life skepticism.
He decided to map it. Mapping, not finding. Disproving, not proving. Reduce the romantic fancies to one logical, cartographic impossibility. He began with the first entry of the journal drawing out for him the Silent Square, a great plaza paved with glass that took on so perfectly the reflection of the sky above. This was work requiring such detail as he had never before attempted.
As he drew, something deep shifted. The air in his attic turned cold and there came to him the faint sound of distant chimes that seemed to echo through the window; a sound not of London. He looked at his map. The lines were not just ink anymore, they had taken on some strange internal luminescence, a faint pulsing light city was not shifting its shape because of some outsider. It was changing for him. His focus, his belief, his bare will to hold onto its form, was what gave it any substance at all.
The Glowing Map:
His last entry was to be the Gate of the Cartographer-a great archway which, according to the journal had said, would only reveal itself when the map was completed. He made, at last, that final line-one gentle curve of the arch. The chimes outside his window became utterly the attic hardened, the smell of ink was replaced by the sharp metal taste of ozone and cold stone.
He gazed upward. The barrier of his loft had vanished. Where it once stood was the Portal of the Mapmaker, an immense structure made from sleek dark stone with galaxies spinning on its face, In front of this were bathed by emerald double suns was the town called Aethel precisely how he designed it.
The Gate of the Cartographer:
If You Want to Read more Stories Here are the Links:
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