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I Her parents and
grandparents had made maps, as had her great-grandparents.
As a child, before
she had even learned to talk, she started to trace maps in the sand
of her playpen—a line here, and a circle there. When she was a young
woman, she was approached by the Chief Librarian. Would she be willing
to record maps, ones that were too large to be brought to the Library
of Maps? And this is what
the Cartographer did, year after year, winter after winter, summer after
summer. She recorded the
Map of the Brain, which was carved out of huge white boulders on the
far side of the moon. She recorded the
Map of the Lungs, which covered many miles in a marshy area of a little-known
island off the coast of Brazil. As the years progressed,
she was given fewer and fewer directions as
to what to seek out. She began to sense, unerringly, how to find the most obscure of these huge maps, sometimes buried beneath the water, or concealed in caves, or (one time) floating in the sky. II The Cartographer
thought for a long while, and then told her: “The Map of Shadows.” The Chief Librarian
had suspected she would say this, knowing it was the unrealized dream
of all great cartographers. For months, the
Cartographer studied shadows—cast by the moon in its eclipse, by
skyscrapers on the streets, by airplanes flying over sunlit desert
dunes, by … Exhausted, and unsatisfied,
she sat in her study early one morning, her head buried in her hands. Silently behind
her, a young woman appeared, offering her a strange small paint
brush The Cartographer
now had no trouble completing the Map of Shadows. When she was finished,
she paused, then gave it to the young woman. “My last
map,” she informed her. The young woman nodded, thanked her for the present, and disappeared, carrying the map. III To one side of the
shelf is a small card explaining that “the Cartographer ceased
making maps in the year 2050, and thus never realized her greatest dream,
the Map of Shadows.” Though the Map of
Shadows remains unknown to the Library, it is actually quite safe in
the hands of the young woman, who often uses it to guide her travels. |
