The Mapmaker's War

by Unknown Author

  Unlike the other Guardian settlements you had seen, this one wasn’t hidden among the trees. It coiled into the open near a small lake and close to a river. The center contained a well and the Wheels. The road started in the east, curled toward the sun’s curve, and moved around where the sun didn’t rise or fall. Straight roads radiated from the center to the far edges of the spiral. You sketched the image in your mind and recognized the pattern. It resembled a wheel, but more so a web. Spiders cast such orbs, but you didn’t feel trapped.

  Like most of the settlements, it was within walking distance of a mine. Beyond the roads and buildings were tracts of land rich with grain crops and vegetables. Oxen grazed within view of the soil they turned. Ample pens held goats, sheep, and swine.

  In the spaces between the roads were small gardens, little pastures, tiny orchards, and many buildings of all sizes. Some dwellings were equipped with the tools of trades. There were some for storage of food and goods. The rest were for housing.

  In structure, the buildings were much the same, although all faced the heat of the sun. A rare hut was made of stone. For the rest, thick wood timbers set in the ground served to make the rectangular frame. More timbers were used to erect the pitched roof and brace the walls. Mud mixtures or clay filled the hollows around doors and windows. Some of the houses shared walls, and some stood alone.

  Roof material was thatch, clay tiles, or slate. Windows had clever woven screens and heavy shutters that bolted shut. Main entry doors hung on sturdy fanciful hinges. Small narrow doors led to shared covered privies and their stores of ash.

  Each house was similar but had its own character. The outside walls were painted or decorated with whatever delighted the dwellers. Inside, the first floors were covered with tiles or stone. Upper floors had smoothed wooden planks. Heavy woven and braided rugs blocked what chills they could. Walls were coated in thin plaster and painted with single colors, simple designs, or elaborate murals. Solid walls sometimes separated space. More often, thick curtains hung from the ceiling and wrapped to offer privacy. The first floor had at least one fire pit with an elliptical low brick wall with small holes at its bottom edge. A copper-capped opening in the roof allowed smoke to escape.

  Furniture varied in design but not in function. Rough simple tables, benches, and beds were as common as pieces with fine joints and delicate inlays. High-backed seats gave comfort with soft cushions. Chests held what required storage. Baskets held what was often used. Pegs kept overclothes and hats at the ready.

  When you left the visitors’ house, you were given your own curtained space in a home with three other women. | you chose not to live alone | You went into unlocked storage buildings to select your furniture, bedding, and clothes. In one, you found an obsidian mirror that reached the outstretched span of your fingertips. It rested on a base of wooden talons. A carved owl’s head hooked its beak over the top to hold it in place. How long it had been since you chose something for yourself.

  Around you were all manner of arrangements. There were family groups of parents and children under one roof. Near relatives lived in the house or close by. Shared dwellings were occupied by men, women, or both, of all ages. Some chose small, single huts. Others lived in pairs. The term applied to any two people who agreed to a bonded relationship. Some wore symbolic rings and some did not. You were shocked at your shock at the adult consent without scrutiny, and at the seeming lack of formality.

  Most of the members of the settlement bore a basic resemblance to each other. They were strong and solid. Their eyes narrowed at the far edges, and their skin had a warm tone. Many had dark hair and eyes. Although the Guardians as a whole shared the same culture, the groups didn’t all look alike. The people of the other two settlements you’d seen looked different in bone structure, features, and coloring. There were also those born away who joined them and had children of their own.

  They dressed with great variation except for one detail. Each person wore the Guardian blue. Some part of a garment or adornment had that color. It was their acknowledgment of a greater unity.

  Otherwise, the people clothed themselves in what made them comfortable. To your eyes, it seemed some were costumed. Their garments were sewn with elaborate seams and decorated with embroidery and appliqué. Yet most chose basic but finely made tunics, leggings, skirts, blouses, and shifts. Every person could wear jewels or precious metals if he or she wished. You learned that, to the Guardians, gold and the like had no intrinsic value other than beauty. Human perception made it a commodity, easy to trade.

  The Guardians organized themselves with shared effort. Every person who was able worked in some way. You observed trades like the ones people had in your life before. There were smiths, carpenters, and wheelwrights. To provide food and drink, there were farmers, hunters, shepherds, bakers, brewers, and millers. To provide clothing and wares, there were weavers, potters, shoemakers, and tailors.

  The settlement also had singers, musicians, and storytellers. To make beautiful things, there were jewelry makers, painters, and embroiderers. Midwives, healers, and Voices tended the pregnant, sick, and distressed.

  Mundane tasks were not daily chores as you had observed them. Neighbors arranged to help one another with meals and washing. There were cooking spaces in the buildings with the baking hearths. At the river were inventive water pumps, troughs, and wringing cylinders to clean linens. When harvests ripened, extra hands went into the fields and forest.

  Within a short walk of any house or work building, there was a nursery for babies and young children. Elders, young people, and warriors served as tenders. If they wished, mothers and fathers could place the children in the tenders’ care while they worked.

  No one was forced into work based on birth or sex. No one was expected to do the same tasks without change. The Guardians encouraged each other to try new skills and practice what they learned. You observed that it was common for people to work in different trades or service through the years of their lives. They believed each child was endowed with gifts from the start. Adults were expected to nurture the children they knew until the gifts were discovered. That was why children of all ages were so often in places where adults worked. That was why their play received attention. This was insight into who they were to be.

  You realized the Guardians saw their work as reciprocity. The person who grew vegetables made it possible for another to prepare them. The sustenance given to others made it possible for them to mend, build, or sing, which served someone else. These were the connections among them that bent and skipped and leapt. The Guardians saw linkages, not lines.

  You were perplexed by the open stores. There were buildings stocked with goods of all kinds. There was no exchange, barter, or use of money. No tallies were taken. No accounts kept. You were allowed to choose whatever you wanted. If you missed that day’s early beets or milk from sweeter goats, you might be fortunate another day. A wish for something new often meant an exchange at one of the stores. The once-used item left behind, a new one taken in its place. Clothing, jewelry, wares, furniture. It was all available.

  People made gifts for one another. Special requests were sometimes made of those who had appreciated skills. The items were treasured, then perhaps one day given to the stores for someone else to enjoy, or kept with one’s family.

  Your neighbors were not perfect, but they were ideal for you. They exhibited the same emotions as people you knew in your life before. Dark feelings and light ones moved through. What made your neighbors different was their acknowledgment. When troubles arose, they took themselves to quiet places or called upon friends to help. They were willing to find peace and understanding. They were able to nurture those qualities.

  The Guardians’ cooperation perplexed you, their giving perhaps more. They lived simply but not poorly. In the years you would spend with them, there would be hard times of illness and scarcity. We drew together to ease the suffering. We trusted one another.

  Tell the truth.

 
; Their ways were a telling contrast to your life before. Until then, you had been anchored in privilege. Part of you believed that was your lucky fate. You were born better. That made you better. But part of you knew it was a lie. When you traveled as a mapmaker, you saw the lie exposed, although you weren’t looking. You detected few differences among others once you looked past their belongings, comforts, and status. Your crew and the conditions in which you often worked and lived kept you humble. | you allowed that | You knew the king and his nobles collected their portions for the coffers and promised little more than protection. Still, you paid homage to hierarchy and to power, the wielding of it, because of what it offered you. Favor was mutable. | Raef, the steward |

  Continue. Admit it.

  You wanted to find fault in the Guardians. You did not want to believe that all was as it seemed. You felt an elusive unease with their goodwill and welcome. You desired what made you suspicious. The latter was the poison of your past. You had seen little proof that peace within one’s self, one’s home, and one’s world was even possible.

  It was. You had to unlearn.

  TRUE ENOUGH, YOU NO LONGER WORKED AS A MAPMAKER. THAT WASN’T needed among the Guardians. They had other means of finding their place, orienting themselves. They knew the world was round and felt no fear of falling off the edge. You didn’t miss the work as much as you expected. What you loved about being a mapmaker was the freedom to be outside, even though you so often stood still for hours on end. You felt the sun air rain. You liked the precision of the work. The relationship of angles and points. The creation of order and meaning. There, too, were the secret subtleties. You had your own maps of oddities and wonders, favorite cake eaten here, favorite story learned there.

  You liked the art of mapmaking. You, like your adopted people, believed function and beauty belonged together. However, your craft wasn’t limited to creation of a map necessarily. That was the end result, when in fact the pleasure was deeper, wasn’t it? Go beyond the effort, the job you had to do. Yes, you were untethered from the role of a woman, freed from the restraint.

  Do not think for a moment you were unaware of the anomaly.

  Tell the truth, Aoife.

  You had wanted to be free to live as you pleased since you were a small child. You wanted no part of woman’s work, not as it was, not as proscribed by the place and time of your birth. No, you were not to have a poor woman’s life. You would never have to cook, clean, or wash for yourself or others. Your mother had veiled contempt for those who made her life tidy and easy. They were common, beneath her, but she depended on them for her life as she knew it. Instead, she was born and married into an existence of relative comfort, as you were and might have been.

  Your mother covered every strip of fabric she could find with decoration. She was skilled but didn’t adore the task. | her work was beautiful | That gave her hands purpose. Otherwise, she bothered after the servants, her children, her husband. As a girl, you thought she smelled of boredom.

  You lingered with notice of the days she sat with friends. They gossiped and complained. You wondered whether any of them spoke the darker truths of their lives. The secret things that lurk deep but surface unexpectedly. What is forbidden to do as well as to think. What had been their wishes and aspirations, confined by circumstance?

  What had you escaped?

  WHEN THE FALLING APART WAS COMPLETE, YOU FELT GRATITUDE BEyond any you had ever experienced. You wanted to give as others had given to you. There were the practical ways as you took your turns with washing, weeding, harvesting, and cooking. | you did grumble at times, like anyone else | You enjoyed the bakery most and dedicated your mornings there.

  A young boy found you one day and said his mother had told him you had drawn maps of the world. Wide-eyed, he asked if that was true.

  Part of the world, yes. But when I was your age, I drew maps of hidden worlds. What I imagined lay beyond anthills and beehives or deep inside places no one can see, you said.

  He said he wanted to learn. You explained the concept to him. He practiced with drawings in damp clay or on the ground. He had to wait to make ones to keep. You learned the Guardians didn’t keep writing materials in their stores. Their language was not recorded. None of them could read or write.

  You had to make a special request to the Guardians of the trails. They were, in fact, warriors who moved as traders along worn routes and side roads. They returned with goods that couldn’t be grown, unearthed, or obtained near the settlement. In turn, they took what was produced or made among your people to exchange with distant others.

  Somehow, they returned with good ink and acceptable parchment. You understood the cost of what was given and encouraged the boy to be sparing. To explain scarcity to a child who’d never known it required a visit from Aza.

  He was bright and eager. You taught him basic concepts of geometry with a carpenter’s compass and straight edge. He came to have little interest in the mathematics but much in the possibility of design. The maps he abandoned. What he learned flourished within him. He would one day paint an intricate pattern on a wall of your daughter’s private space as a welcome gift. He remembered your kindness.

  You realized you missed the feel of writing and drawing. You missed reading, as rare as that opportunity had been. What you began to do was at first an innocent amusement. You thought, A map is to space as an alphabet is to sound. You began to craft a written form of the language you spoke daily. You told no one, showed no one. There was a childlike thrill in writing what no one could understand.

  YOU LEARNED WHAT YOU COULD THROUGH OBSERVATION. AT TIMES YOU had to ask questions to deepen your understanding. Your friends were willing teachers. Edik was your favorite among them. He was an elder and a Voice. He was the person you asked most about the Guardians’ interaction. They were as human as the people of your kingdom, but why did their difference seem so great?

  We’ve chosen another way. Have you been told the tales that guide us? asked he.

  You had. Although you didn’t believe the myths were of a genuine primordial past, you did admire their care for those who had been abandoned or lost. The Guardians told of a newborn orphan. The child was renewed to life under the care of Egnis the Red Dragon, Ingot the Gold Dwarf, and Incant the White Wisp. Azul grew with the light and dark emotions of their humankind. Yet love prevailed, and all that comes of love. Azul left the realm and returned to the rejecting world to test the strength of this love. They understood that the innate emotions of humans were mutable. Anger didn’t have to lead to violence, hate to cruelty, fear to oppression. There was a space for change between what words were said and what deeds were done. After many trials, Azul sought to create places of compassion and harmony. The children of Azul were born. Their peaceful settlements were built throughout the known world. Many old ones still thrived, and new ones were formed as needed.

  Edik explained disagreements were not bad. This was to be expected, and this was how people learned to consider other points of view. They didn’t believe there was only one right option. They considered what was needed at the moment, what sometimes affirmed the whole rather than a part. No one was completely free from fear, anger, or self-interest. Yet none of that need be the center of power.

  A choice is always present, said Edik.

  Between thought and deed, there is the space of possibility, he explained. Those born away noticed that those born among often paused or breathed before speaking or acting. That pause was learned. That pause was the possibility, what happens after the thought and before the words spoken or action taken. Sometimes a person did lash out and hurt another. The result was an unfettered reaction or deliberate choice. With practice, one learned to consider what brought pain or peace.

  We wish to live in a place where each person feels valued and loved. Whatever gifts each has are respected and brought to bear, said he. The Guardians as a people wished to help one another. They intended that no misunderstanding led to hatred or violence.

&nb
sp; He was quiet for several moments. You watched him rest his hands in his lap and look toward the distance.

  All begins with the helpless little child, said he. It is a creature in one way which must have food, water, and shelter. Without the basic needs fulfilled, it will physically die. Then there are the attendant needs to be kept clean, to be taught skills to survive. This can all be done without affection or care. But humans are complex beings. Without words, they know what is done out of obligation, spite, or love. A child is easily broken and easily warped. A child requires little more than a meeting of its animal needs and to feel it is beloved. A child can endure much change and difficulty if she is surrounded by love.

  As a Voice, Edik helped those born away understand the ways of their new home. He felt much sadness for many of them. They often carried hidden pain that inflicted itself time and again only within. In extreme, they stole, hoarded, struck, lied, belittled. The actions gave life to what was underneath. They had suffered a great lack. They appeared difficult to love, and they were the ones who needed it most. They wanted the comfort and peace offered to them but mistrusted both. Even the ones who behaved with respect and kindness found life among the Guardians difficult to comprehend and accept at times.

  Why do you think that is, Aoife? asked Edik.

  Without a pause, you said, Because we’ve been betrayed.

  How so? asked he.

  You shook your head. You spoke the truth but couldn’t explain why. You had begun to question more deeply the manner of the world to which you’d once belonged, or rather, been born.

  Who might I have been had I been born among instead of away? you asked.

  Fragments of your life streamed out to him. Shattered nonsense. He listened to the pieces, to what you’d been reduced to. Tears pierced your eyes. Edik opened his arms. You leaned away. Deep within, you wanted nothing else but to be held. He didn’t move. You forced your head to his shoulder and wept. He held you until a calm settled throughout your body. When you slipped from his embrace, he smiled with warmth.