| The Library of Maps,
#19 THE MUTE ROOM Slowly the librarians
pieced together the stories of the Blind Child and the Mute
Singer. Each had gone separately
to the edge of the world, as we know it, and then beyond. The child
had become blind the first time he had visited the horrifying chaos
that exists, literally, off the map. He had gone seeing,
and returned blind. Just as the Mute Singer
had once spoken until, when five years old, she had visited the chaos
and was silenced by its horrors. The librarians were
committed to their grand vision of a Library of Maps that would chart
all spaces and times
… Until they realized
that chaos cannot be mapped. There were those who
thought that the task therefore should be abandoned. Others, however, wanted
some sign of chaos within the Library. It was decided that
the room originally designated to contain the map of ”chaos”
be created after all. But that it remain
permanently empty of any map. Permanently dark. Permanently silent. At first its only
visitors were the Mute Singer and the Blind Child.
They came not to find
solace, but rather to be in a place in which they could be somewhat
safe with their fears. But that was, they
discovered, a definite kind of solace. Other visitors slowly
joined them, people who had not directly experienced themselves what
was beyond the edge of the known world. Indeed, it was an
act of solace for the narrator of the Library of Maps Series not only
to describe this space from afar but to enter it herself. Visitors who had first
immersed themselves in the room’s mute darkness would then seek
out the Lake of the Heart. Those who had been
breathing the rose-scented air of the Lake
would brace themselves to spend time in the Mute Room. Slowly the pathway
between the Lake of the Heart and the Mute Room became the customary
path for almost all who came to study at the Library of Maps. On this pathway many
strangers met and embraced one another. Many found here the greatest solace. by Moira Roth |
