The Cartographer's Vow

You are the last cartographer in Hollowmere, and the commission on your desk asks the impossible: map the Saltwash Road -- a road three witnesses swear they walked, though none has left the town's west gate in forty years. The seal is the magistrate's; the fee, a year's wages. Outside, the fog has not lifted since the request arrived.

You shoulder your instruments and walk west. The gate groans open onto packed earth that should not be there -- a road, pale as bone, curving into the fog. Your compass needle turns lazily, refusing north.

You climb to the magistrate's house instead. Elder Voss receives you without surprise, as if she had counted the hours. 'You felt it too,' she says. 'The road remembers a town we tried to forget.'

The road ends at a second Hollowmere -- your town, mirrored, lamps lit in windows that are dark at home. A figure at the well looks up wearing your own face.

Voss spreads an old chart: Hollowmere, and beside it a twin struck through in red ink. 'We unmade them to spare ourselves a flood that never came. The road is their way back.'

You draw it true -- both towns, the road between -- and sign your name beneath the seal. The fog thins. Hollowmere stops forgetting. -- ENDING: THE TRUE MAP

You hold the commission to your lamp until it blackens and curls. Some roads should stay unmapped. You leave Hollowmere by the east gate at first light. -- ENDING: THE BURNED COMMISSION