Ink and Distance

A cartographer's first rule: the map is a promise. Joran had recited it as a boy. He had never, until the eastern provinces, understood it as a threat. It happened on the fourth day. He drew a ridge — carefully, to scale, the way he drew everything — and when he looked up from the page the ridge was there, in the world, where an hour earlier there had been flat heath. He told himself the land had shifted again. Late shifts happened, the texts said so. He did not believe the texts. He drew a small pond, just to test it, a stupid childish doodle in the margin of his good vellum. By evening there was a pond. Round as a coin. Exactly where his ink had been. Joran sat with his back to a rock and did not draw anything for a long time. The blank page felt, for the first time in his life, like a loaded thing.