by J. F. Penn
Sometimes she would go down to the Thames, past the great buildings of the old city, where the river swept towards the sea. It was wild and untamed and although she was drawn to it, Mila knew that if she were to dive into the water, she would lose herself. There were creatures in the ocean, beasts that would hurt her, whereas in the canal, there were only tiny fish, lithe water voles and diving ducks. A tamer form of escape.
After she left school, she traveled along the canal system, getting odd jobs now and then, helping out and learning the ropes from the other travelers, finding a new form of family among the canal boat people. She had saved up for her own boat and one day, found herself here in Bath, where she met Bridget who recognized her Mapwalker ability.
And now, every day she would walk here, along the Kennet and Avon Canal, away from Bath towards Bradford-on-Avon, a nature walk within hailing distance of the city. Seasons changed but the rhythm of the canal pulsed through her life. She knew this earth, this water and something was definitely wrong. Michael's murder had disturbed the equilibrium of the city, and Mila felt the tendrils of dark mist reach even here. She sighed and Zippy ran back to her, his dark eyes looking up with devotion.
"Good boy." She reached down to rub the soft fur around his ears. "Stay close now."
They walked on under a bridge built from thick blocks of stone, her footsteps echoing as she walked through. The coo of a wood pigeon boomed out as the sun dappled through the leaves of the horse chestnut trees at the waterside. A cloud of midges hung over the reeds next to a patch of purple clover and white flowers of wild garlic. The smell was a heady scent of summer as she walked along the bank next to sycamore trees and hedgerows of dog roses where blackberries would grow later in the autumn. Mila scanned the area, letting her senses spread out over the waterway, trying to pinpoint the source of her disturbance.
Water rippled as fish rose to feed on the midges. In the field above the canal, two great shire horses with shaggy feet stood grazing. A bell tinkled behind her and Mila moved to one side as a cyclist zoomed past. Zippy barked in greeting and ran alongside it a little way until returning to walk at her side. Mila smiled down at him. He gave her a reason to be on land, not mapwalking through the waterways all the time.
A friend on a boat further down the canal looked after him when she was away. A woodturner who roved the canal paths after storms, looking for branches to carve into animal shapes and bowls. Zippy was apparently a great helper in retrieving wood but Mila was always happiest when he was back with her. She loved being with Zippy, his quiet devotion, his lack of judgement for who she was or what she did. She missed him when she went into the Borderlands, but if he crossed over, he wouldn't make it back. He would be lost over there, as sometimes she felt she might be.
When Mila mapwalked the waterways, she became one with the canal and lost a part of herself. Sometimes she thought she would never emerge, that she could stay in there forever. Perhaps the water nymphs of old were born this way? Myths of women who lived in water and came out to tempt the sailors. She had read about them in a library book once. Perhaps her father had really been Neptune, great god of the sea. Mila smiled to herself to think she could actually be an ocean princess, rather than a poor foster child from a London tower block.
It was this search for identity that always drove her back to the Ministry, even though she didn't really fit in there. The other trainees were from special families, those who understood their Mapwalking lineage. She was seen as some kind of throwback, a line that had branched off early. Mila wondered if perhaps back in Sierra Leone, she might find people like her. But she'd never been. She'd never left England, never gone to seek her father's heritage or find others like her, Africans who traveled by water. Perhaps that's what drew her to Sienna, who seemed to know even less about her own ability.
They walked on past a ginger cat lying in a patch of sun on a boat piled high with the detritus of living, a rusty wheelbarrow, logs of wood for the winter. It looked up sleepily as they passed, nonplussed by Zippy's exuberance. Mila nodded her head, acknowledging him as part of this world. In the Borderlands last time, she'd seen a cat there, but it had been misshapen, its eyes rheumy, weeping, diseased.
Mila walked on, past the graveyard next to the road, full of stone markers, Celtic crosses, and headstones marking the passing of time. The Bathampton Church was solid, squatting on the land like it would always be there. But Mila had seen others like it in the Borderlands, those where congregations had died and left the building derelict until the border had claimed it, rewriting it out of this history and into the alternate.
The rules were to always go into the Borderlands as a team. That was the official word, but Mila went over alone sometimes when she felt the need to be on the edge. The Mapwalkers went into the Borderlands to retrieve artifacts lost or deliberately written out but now needed back on Earth-side. The things they brought back were kept in the Ministry vaults. But when Mila sometimes traveled alone into those places, she brought back tiny things, shells or stones, coins sometimes, and she kept them on her boat, evidence of another place where perhaps she felt more at home.
Bridget had said she shouldn't keep things, shouldn't mark herself as a Mapwalker, that there were people who could track her because of those objects, that she left a part of herself behind if she went over too much. Maybe she was turning feral, turning Borderlander.
Mila passed a pair of swans with five cygnets nibbling at the grass at the side of the canal. The smell of elderflower lingered in the air, as the chirps of birds came from the hedgerows. She had walked in wild places in the Borderlands similar to this, but the foliage was different. It was as if the land there had crossed from the edges of the map in different cultures, growing strange plants, turning animals into different versions of themselves.
A thrush flew from the hedgerow, a snail in its beak, darting under the weeping willow on the opposite bank. The cluck-cluck of chickens came from one of the smallholdings just off the path. Mila passed a canal boat with a kneeling river goddess on top, her arms outstretched to welcome the day, a laughing Buddha by her side. A tangle of spiderwebs on the guide ropes glistened in the sun.
It seemed idyllic but something was definitely wrong.
Mila bent and put her hand down into the canal water, closing her eyes as she sensed the movement of the ripples and the deeper current as it swept towards the city and on to the river. Over time she had become attuned to the difference of the Borderlands, how her skin felt as she moved from bright sunlight to shade. And she sensed it now.
The border was being tested.
She stood up. "Zippy, come."
The spaniel darted to her side, bouncing up and down as they turned and walked quickly back towards town, back to where the canal ran alongside the manicured gardens of the Holburne Museum.
They kept walking until the canal emerged alongside allotments, little gardens where city dwellers grew vegetables and flowers. Their personalities were evident in the plots, some with colored buckets and different types of flowers, rows of runner beans on poles next to hollyhocks and poppies. One area had a blue gate with five bars, just a gate on two poles with no fence. It was unusual, but always made Mila smile as she passed. The pride people had in these little gardens in the heart of the city made her even more fiercely determined to protect it.
She walked on towards the lock, where the canal changed level. Water could be let in and out with heavy gates and the boat would move up or down as the canal rose and fell with the gradient of the land. The locks had scared her at first and she had avoided moving her own boat for fear of getting trapped in one, but now they were part of her life here. Mila heard a noise further on, a bubbling and boiling sound that filled her heart with dread.
The border was being breached.
A wild squawking of ducks came from up ahead and she raced towards the noise, Zippy by her side. They rounded a corner just past the end of the lock gate.
At the edge of the canal, the water
bubbled ferociously. There was a smell in the air, the scent of a bombed-out city, spent ammunition and decay overpowering the earthy scent of nature. How could they breach here now? The thought flashed through Mila's mind as a man burst up out of the water. She could see by the half-moon tattoo on his face that he was one of the warlord's men, a Feral Borderlander. The man began to swim to shore.
5
Bridget's words rocked through Sienna. Her heart pounded, her mind whirling. "What do you mean, he's not dead? My mum said he was lost on a mission to Antarctica."
Bridget sighed. "Your mother never knew what John really did. He kept his Mapwalking secret. He wanted to protect you both."
Sienna shook her head. "I can't believe it." That her father might still be alive was one thing, but that he purposefully let her believe him dead seemed unthinkable. She had so many questions but at least there was some hope she might see him again.
Bridget put a hand out and touched Sienna's arm. "It's true. I don't know what else to say. John was lost a month ago on the edge of the Uncharted, along with the rest of his Mapwalker team. It's a place of wild magic, beyond the Borderlands where the Shadow Cartographers rule." Bridget shook her head. "They should never have gone so far out, but there were rumors about a Map of Shadows being created there." She turned away. "They never came back. Time warps the further out you go in the Uncharted, so he could have been lost only yesterday in his time."
"So there's nothing I can do in order to find him?"
Bridget smiled. "We'll see." She turned away down the hall. "You will know your path when the way forks before you."
Her words resounded in Sienna, an echo of something her father had said long ago. Words he had written on her heart. He had clearly wanted her to stay away from this place, but now she needed to know more. If he was still alive, she might somehow see him again. She hurried after Bridget.
They walked down a long corridor hung with tapestries. The maps were recognizable as European, but the contours were wrong, the lines off in some places. Bridget saw her looking. "These are maps of what was and perhaps what will be again."
"What do you mean?"
"People trust that the maps they see in books and pictures are true. They rarely question whether they match the real world. But what is more real? The map in your geography textbook or the world you walk upon with your own feet."
"But you can't know the shape of a land by walking it. You're too close to the ground," Sienna noted.
Bridget smiled. "Exactly, and the borders of these lands have been remade by those who draw the maps. The Cartographers. We make the borders and we have to keep redrawing the maps. There is no status quo. The Borderlanders are always shifting as new places are pushed through."
She pointed to the tapestries. "Maps are not an exact representation of the world, merely a worldview of the creator. For example, there are some maps that don't have Israel on them, others that have no Palestine. All you have to do is erase a name or change a line if you wish to wipe a nation off the map, or create a new one. Look at how the Sykes-Picot line changed the Middle East. Sykes drew his finger across a map, drawing a line that continues to shape modern day. Yet those lines didn't represent people's tribal allegiances, just an ideology."
Suddenly, a whooshing sound echoed down the corridor, like the explosive belch of air as a fire bursts from a furnace.
"Oh no, not again." Bridget ran towards the sound, Sienna following close behind. They reached a thick metal door, riveted with huge bolts and a reinforced glass window in the side. They peered inside.
A young man stood in the blackened room with his back turned, his clothes charred. His shoulders were slumped, and Sienna sensed his disappointment. He wore a blue t-shirt and jeans, but they were patchy with burned holes. He was tall and slender, his arms lightly muscled and now covered in ash. Before him on the table was a map that looked completely unharmed by the flames, if indeed there had been any, because there were none there now.
"Perry is struggling to harness his fire magic," Bridget explained as she knocked on the window.
The young man turned, his ice-blue eyes widening as he saw them. His face looked as if it had been carved from porcelain, so perfect were his features, his lips full with a patrician nose. His short blonde hair was singed and sooty. He made the okay signal with his finger and thumb and gave Sienna a wink as Bridget turned away.
"Luckily, the room is made for fire practice."
"What exactly is he doing?" Sienna asked as they continued to walk.
"There are different types of magic. The fire element enables the Mapwalker to destroy maps in order to remake them, so it's a blend of destruction and creation. Fire can rejuvenate, some seed pods open only in the heat of a flame, some species live only because others die. Those like Perry can walk in smoke and flame and travel in the seams of energy in the earth." Bridget sighed. "There's a strong fire faction in the Shadow Cartographers, so we're lucky to have Peregrine. Of course, as long as he can master it before the next mission."
"Mission?"
"We're training a new team of Mapwalkers. The Map of Shadows is a way to remake the borders, to write us out of history. The mission is to retrieve it from the Borderlands."
"So this team are going after my father?"
Bridget frowned. "Following his footsteps, for sure, but this time, we don't intend to lose anyone in the process."
They arrived at another door carved from a light ash inscribed with a globe. Bridget turned to Sienna. "What you see in here is as true as the maps in your grandfather's shop. Remember that."
Her words puzzled Sienna, and she frowned as Bridget pushed open the door and they stepped into the room.
For so deep under the ground, the room was incredibly bright, filled with mirrors reflecting light into even the farthest corners. It was a library of sorts, but instead of books, the shelves were full of rolled maps, some tiny and frayed, others the size of a rolled carpet. They spilt onto the floor in piles, like a hoarder's den. It smelled of cedar wood, tea and a hint of spices, of rose water and Turkish delight, like a Middle Eastern souk with an endless array of delight for the senses. There was a path through the maze of maps, and a rustling sound came from deeper inside the room.
"Is that you, Bridget?"
A man emerged from the pile as if he had been sleeping amongst the maps. His craggy face was etched with lines as deep as the caves under the Mendip hills, and as he moved, the maps moved with him. He was connected to them, they wound into him and through him, his blood inking the pages.
"They call me the Illuminated Cartographer," he said, and his voice crackled like the maps around him. "I am bound to this room, the beating heart of the maps. But once I walked as free as Bridget here." His dark eyes crinkled as he smiled. "I knew your father, Sienna, and I hope I will get to know you. After all, your place has always been here." He frowned. "Now there is something I have to give you." He spun around, the maps winding themselves around him. The colors changed as if the symbols morphed with his mood. "But I don't know quite where it is."
He walked away from them, pausing at a huge shelf with rows of rolled maps. A ladder leaned against it. "I'm getting too old for this." He looked back at Sienna. "Why don't you go up and get it, my dear?"
Sienna looked up at the miles of shelves. She thought she could spend forever in here, delving into interesting corners, but there was clearly something the Illuminated Cartographer wanted her to see.
She walked through the rustle of maps to the ladder and climbed up. Symbols marked each shelf she passed, the runes of the Mapwalkers. Some she recognized and others were foreign, evoking images of words whispered in forgotten places.
"A bit higher and to your right."
Sienna reached a shelf near the ceiling marked with a row of stars.
"Yours is there, child." There was a hint of regret in his voice as if he didn't want her to see whatever it was. And yet, she was here.
She leaned out to her right, loo
king down to the ground below. She had a fleeting thought that she could jump and land cushioned on the maps below, like a huge bouncy castle. Or she might just crack her head open on the floor. She turned back to the shelf.
The rolled maps had names written on them in tiny writing. Peregrine Mercator. Was he the guy in the fire room and was he related to Sir Douglas, the man who wanted her father's shop? Xander Temple. Mila Wendell. And then her name. Sienna Farren. What the hell?
"The children of the Mapwalkers," the Illuminated Cartographer called up to her. "We map your star charts at birth and store them here. These charts go back generations, Sienna. You are here, as well as your father, your grandfather and those who came before."
"Why?"
"If you are lost, it is your last way home, back to the place where your stars aligned."
Sienna pulled her map from the shelf, wrapping one arm around the ladder to hold herself in place as she unrolled it. A star chart was tattooed on the smooth vellum, dots of stars anchoring her to a specific time and place. In the corner was a five-pointed compass rose, the decoration matching her father's compass that she remembered playing with as a child. Sienna looked down the rows of rolled vellum stretching into the distance. Who were all these other Mapwalkers and how far back did this lineage go?
Suddenly an alarm rang out, the lights around her flashing red, casting the room in a bloody glow.
Mila knew that where there was one Feral, more would follow. When these wild Borderlanders crossed over, they usually sent a scout first. If the scout didn't come back, well, there were plenty more where he came from. This one was young, only a teenager, younger than she was.
She stood back in the shadow of the lock gate, waiting, watching. As far as she knew, the warlord's men had never come through this far away from The Circus and that in itself was worrying. If they were finding new places, new rips in the border, then they could come through anywhere. Perhaps even further out in the countryside where no one was watching. Ministry protocol dictated that she should call this in right now and wait for backup, but the canal was her home, and she would not allow the Borderlanders through here.
