Alberto watched the woman’s face as he spoke, saw her lips curl into a smirk. It was clear that she thought the story a colourful elaboration to sell the lie of the map to the gullible. If so, she was the wrong person to be determining its validity.
“The point is, it was not the Hell that Dante later described from his Christian sensibilities. It was true desolation, the metaphysical embodiment of bleakness and emptiness; like the vastness of space given hideous form by something that only half understood the human mind. Canossa had no choice but to walk the road he found himself on. There was no way of measuring the passing of time in that place, but he later wrote that he had spent at least a hundred years walking the broken and deformed terrain, over and over—for the road seemed to come back on itself, and he found himself stepping across the same faces time and again, such that he came to regard some of them almost as his friends and companions in that wasteland. Often he screamed at the leaden sky ‘why am I here?’ but no reply ever came.
“Until finally he saw his own face in the road. Weeping in despair, he collapsed next to his frightening visage and stroked the cheeks, asking ‘what have they done to us?’ And the mouth spoke. ‘You are the road, and you must show the way,’ it said, ‘or this will be the least of your punishments.’ Canossa never said what else his doppelganger said to him, or what bargain had been struck to allow his escape, but he woke on the riverbank, just moments after his retainers had hauled him from the water.”
Alberto grasped the velvet curtain tightly and Vattaya pushed herself up straight. In the movement, Alberto saw a slight bulge at her hip that could only be a small gun. His old heart fluttered for a moment, but once started, the tale had to be finished, and the map seen. It was why he was here, after all.
“Canossa became convinced that he had to create a map of the place he had visited, the Desolation of humanity. But no vellum or parchment, no ordinary material, could hold a meaningful representation of what he had seen. It was an inhuman place that had to be understood by people who did not have the minds—or perhaps even the necessary senses—to see it as it really was. It had to be shown in three-dimensional form at least, and described in a language that spoke directly to the soul, without becoming lost in the contorted labyrinth of the mind. And so.”
Alberto swept aside the curtain, revealing the map.
They always found it underwhelming at first, those who came to view it. A carefully carved mannequin of cedar wood stood, leaning slightly, arms splayed at odd angles. Hung tightly around the torso, groin and legs was a thick, light brown hide, carefully sewn to follow the contours of the wooden body. Upon the material were geometric symbols and odd cuneiform letters in a multitude of colours, wound together in patterns upon patterns, around each other, over each other, all of different sizes and shapes. More than a cursory glance at the tattooed mosaic hurt the eyes.
Alberto watched Vattaya carefully and saw the slight slackening of the jaw that suggested the map was having its effect. Then she refocused, her eyes snapping to Alberto as he stood by the curtain. He saw a trickle of blood run down her chin from where she had bitten her lip.
“This is the map?”
“Your employers did not tell you what to expect?”
Miss Vattaya stepped closer to the mannequin. “The skin of Giovanni Canossa. He had the map inked onto himself, and after he passed away the skin was flayed from the corpse and preserved. What an imbecile.”
Alberto chuckled, though he felt no amusement. “Not quite. Canossa was an aristocrat from a noble house. He was quite deranged when he woke on the riverbank, but that made little difference to his authority. This is the skin of his manservant, Vito Mercuri. Canossa had to be sure the map was accurate, after all. He drew it himself, and removed it himself. The mannequin was carved to exact proportions and arrangement, so that the map was precise.”
Vattaya reached out a hand to the illustrated hide, but Alberto stepped in her way. “It must not be touched.”
“It seems remarkably well-preserved for a skin that is over a thousand years old,” she said. “How do I know it is genuine?”
“What do I gain from lying? I keep its existence a secret until someone comes looking for it. I charge no money to look upon it; I receive no funds for its upkeep. But I have promised to allow those who seek it out to see it. It is a long-standing promise, kept by generations of my family.”
“You are a descendent of Canossa, then? Does madness run in your genes?” The smirk was back, amusement playing across Vattaya’s lips but not her eyes.
“Wrong again, I’m afraid. My heritage comes from Vito Mercuri. The map is a very real part of my family’s history.”
“Why would you keep a thing like this? Why hold to an obligation made so long ago?”
“I have wondered myself. But such oaths have to be taken seriously, and there is much at stake. I know you do not believe the story I have told you, but I assure you it is true.”
Vattaya snorted and shook her head.
“How can this be a map? It’s just a jumble of letters and colours.”
“My ancestors believed that the symbols depict a system, the pseudo-physical realm of the Desolation. They represent both concepts and landforms, showing how the meaning of reality can be expressed from the positioning of ideas and their interrelationships. The size, the colour, the orientation, the shape of each symbol is important, as is the spacing between them. In the same way that most material objects are empty space held together by the attractions between subatomic particles, so that even the hardest objects are mainly comprised of nothing, so it is true for the spiritual realm. Nothingness, with islands of suffering connected by ideas, thoughts and emotions. ‘Hell’ is that, given form. The map shows how to navigate it. To what purpose, I do not know.”
“And it has been studied?”
“Several people have examined the map in great detail over the years,” Alberto conceded.
“And they understood it?”
“I don’t know. No-one has ever returned from the afterlife to tell me if they got lost or not.” Alberto made his best effort at a smile, but Vattaya just stared at the skin again, lost in thought. Then she drew a snub-nosed pistol from her waistband and pointed it at him absentmindedly. His gut clenched.
“Regardless, I will need to take the item to be properly examined by my employers.” She waved towards the entrance to the study. “Accompany me to the front door and allow my associates to enter. We will be out of your way shortly.”
Alberto sighed and shuffled out of the room, Vattaya following behind with the gun aimed at the back of his head. Not that there was much he intended to do. He couldn’t have fought off a ten year old child, let alone a gun-wielding thief. His house didn’t even contain a telephone or an alarm system, as both were likely to involve unwelcome visits for maintenance.
“Most of my guests just offer to buy it,” he grumbled as they reached the front door, but Vattaya ignored him, peering through the door’s spy hole and then nodding to Alberto.
He opened the door and two heavyset men strode in without a word. One pushed Alberto into a chair in the living room, while the other disappeared with Vattaya. Moments later he heard the sound of the mannequin being carried down the stairs, the woman hissing at her companion harshly in another language. Then they were out the door, and gone.
Alberto looked up at the man standing over him. Middle aged with prematurely white hair, he sported a flattened nose and scars across most of his face. He didn’t give the impression of a kind disposition.
“Are you going to kill me?” asked Alberto, hardly daring to hope.
The man shook his head. “I have no desire to kill old men. Besides, I don’t think this is a theft you will be reporting to the authorities. Have a nice life, or what’s left of it.” With that, he walked out onto the Via Mistruzzi and the door clicked shut behind him.
Alberto wasn’t sure whether to feel disappointed or not.
*
His
heart still trembling, Alberto shuffled down the steps into the cool, dry basement that held all the important things in his life. He flicked on lights that he had installed himself many decades before. Against the east and west walls stood the carved mannequins that bore the skins of the others who had come to view the map over the centuries, a fresh representation of some aspect or region of the Desolation on each one. It had been the work of his family for many generations, right back to Vito Mercuri, whose ancient skin adorned a sculpted figure standing against the north wall, next to the mummified corpse of Giovanni Canossa, arranged in a pose of crucifixion.
As always, a rush of chittering burst in his head as Alberto crossed the floor to stand before Canossa. He had never been able to make out words in the torrent of noise, but the meaning was always clear. It had been ever since his father had brought him here when he was just a boy, he alone chosen to continue the family legacy. Canossa’s wrinkled, blackened face gazed down at him with ferocious intent while Alberto calmed himself, drew a deep breath.
“Another visitor,” he said quietly. “A woman this time. Willing to kill, I am sure. I showed her the most recent map, the one on the journalist who came from America. She seemed unimpressed, but she saw it clearly. She has it now.”
A flurry of whispering assailed him again.
“Yes, she will be another piece of the Final Atlas. But this time it will be different.” Sweat ran down Alberto’s forehead, and he could feel the heaviness of it against his eyebrows. He had been dreading a moment such as this, though had known that it must come. “She mentioned a consortium she was contracted by, a group of people interested in the map. If she gets it to them before she loses her mind, there will be several new subjects returning to join the Atlas in the coming months. Enough to complete it, perhaps.”
The noise that was not noise increased in volume, bringing tears to his eyes. “Yes, I know. There will be much work to do to prepare these additions, and I cannot do it alone. I have put off the matter of succession too long. I must call my brother Ernesto in Milan. He has a grandson, young enough to learn. He expressed an interest in visiting me this summer, before he goes to the university. He will come, and I will show him the Atlas.”
The room echoed with a placating trill that Alberto knew was meant to soothe his concerns. He shook his head. “Don’t talk to me,” he whispered to Canossa’s dead flesh, “of rewards. We both know where that got you.”
Alberto made his way through the house to the street, pausing only to collect a book of matches from the kitchen. At the tobacconist’s stand on the corner he bought a fresh pack of cigarettes and then eased himself onto a bench by the fountain in the piazza. For the rest of the afternoon he gazed at the cerulean sky through a haze of smoke as he worked his way through the pack, pausing now and then only to order a fresh demitasse of coffee from Baldini’s.
As he did every day, he thought on the matches in his hand and how he could return to the basement to burn the Atlas and what remained of its demented creator, leaving his family’s legacy nothing but ashes. Abandoning his duty and the promises of salvation Canossa had made for himself and his ancestors. He imagined once more the annihilation that would be brought to humanity once the Final Atlas was completed and the true image of the Desolation was revealed, the pathways between the realms opened.
For that was the bargain that Giovanni Canossa had struck in exchange for a reprieve from damnation, or whatever fate the things that resided there had threatened. Canossa would show humanity the way, and the people would rush to their destruction. The maps were irresistible. Was that not something that he should strive against, despite oaths sworn and held by his family for over a thousand years?
A young mother pushed a newborn around the fountain, taking in the air and enjoying the afternoon sunshine. She looked tired but happy. If Alberto could have chosen one image to hold in his mind to represent hope for the future, he thought it might be that.
As the sun dipped over the bell tower of the church, he stood and made his way to the public phone at the corner of the piazza.
And made the call.
* * *
Robert A. Francis
Rob Francis is an academic and writer based in London. He has published numerous scientific articles and books, and started writing short fiction in 2014. His stories have appeared in various magazines, including SQ Mag, SpeckLit, Swords & Sorcery Magazine, The Lorelei Signal, The Fable Online and Every Day Fiction.
MAPPING THE BUZZ OF INSECTS
Daniel Ausema
Mosquitoes in the Cranue River Valley must have crossbred long ago with alligators. Or perhaps, as some tales had it, they were part swamp panther, adding a touch of feline stealth to their persecution of human intruders. Every stilt-raised village was ruled by the caprice of a foul swamp witch. Or a fiend whose body released deadly fumes. Every tree was capable of lifting its eerie roots out of the shallow water and wrapping enemies in a deadly embrace.
Fanciful stories of course, and yet… As the boat pilot pushed yet another scaly beast away from the boat with his pole, Sargent Tiepool wasn't ready to dismiss the old folk tales entirely. The insects that swarmed him and his small retinue might not literally have any reptile ancestry, but they certainly outgrew the mosquitoes of his highland home. And who could say that the blood their ancestors had surely drained from alligators—and humans and other animals that had wandered into those waters—hadn't somehow been passed along in uncanny ways to their descendents today?
A thud beneath the boat made Tiepool grab the gunwales. The pilot glanced his way and tossed him a bundle of half dried plants. A dozen woody stems were held together by another stem. The leaves were a green so dark they were almost black, and clusters of white flowerlets poked out above the leaves.
“Good luck plants.” The captain grinned. “Local custom, but all you soldiers have taken to chewing them too. Brings luck.” A glance at the water behind them where something had hit the bottom of the boat. “And less worry.”
Tiepool took a leaf from the bundle and bit down on it. Bitter, but only for a moment. Then a sense of calm settled over him, a feeling that fortune would bless him. Such a quick effect, no wonder the other highlanders had adopted it when they came to these swamps.
Tiepool had yet to see any village—or witch, for that matter—but the fame of the lowlands' plant magic made the idea of strange protections somewhat plausible. Whatever they had would be more primitive than, say, Ormenna's celebrated magic, and no match for the weaponry Tiepool's people could command, but it would no doubt form a significant part of the lives of these backwards people.
The real danger wasn’t in witches and magic, though, but in rebels and hidden weapon caches.
As for the trees, they were uncanny all right. The roots sprouted out from the trunks well above the waterline, like dozens of eels latched on and gulping the trees' blood. Well… sap, he supposed, but something about the way they brooded over the water made the word sap far too dilute a word.
He was in the middle of trying to come up with a better word for the trees' lifeblood when the boat glided around a corner, and a village came into view. The captain called out a greeting. Tiepool slid past the gear and a crew member who stood near the front, so he could stand right in the peak of the bow. The stilts were much as he'd pictured them, a thick log in each corner, holding the building high enough that Tiepool would have to stretch from the river boat to touch the edge. A swarm of insects, large and small, gathered at each log, but didn’t fly up to the platforms above.
A face peeked out from one of the further houses then pulled back inside. The village was quiet, but not completely deserted.
The captain called again. "Hello! Don't worry, we aren't staying. Only wondering for news of friends." Or that was the gist of what he said, anyway. The captain had an odd way of talking, to Tiepool anyway, that twisted the pronunciation and threw in strange words Tiepool could only guess at. The influence of an indigenous language, one of th
e crew members claimed.
A woman came to the edge of one of the houses and looked down. She was dressed in the area's traditional, full-length clothing that was said to keep off the mosquitoes and midges but looked unbearably hot to Tiepool. "Not here."
"How can you say that? I haven't told you who my friends are."
She gave him a withering look and turned back toward the door.
"Wait," the captain called. "Have they been through? It would have been a little band, a dozen soldiers led by a man with good-luck flowers woven into his beard. Seen them?"
"A dozen?" She sneered. "Wanted us to think it was only a dozen. The rest stayed out of sight, but we know when that many people are trying to sneak through, sure. So let me ask you, would you guess it was closer to one hundred or three hundred?"
Instead of answering, the captain turned toward Sargent Tiepool. He was the one in intelligence, the one with a real rank rather than just a swamp boat captain. Any secrets given to the locals would have to come from him. Tiepool nodded and stepped one foot onto the gunwale.
The question was a test. He wouldn't have needed his experience in interrogations to know that. The woman wanted to see what these foreigners would admit. So he would speak the truth. "Closer to three hundred at least, ma'am. Maybe even as much as double that. Depending which units he took with him."
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