"The Map"

Day 20

The broadsheets are all reporting a dramatic increase in factory production. They still don't specify what exactly the factories produce, though. Must investigate that one of these days.

I took Miss Diviou to tea today. Tried to enquire, without planting my own thoughts in her head, what she thought of that encounter after the play. Her recollection was that they were nice young men who just wanted to help us get where we were going! Odd.

Day 21

I had a pleasant-enough lunch with Biffy today. He was talking about nothing important (not unlike him, I must admit), and I was agreeing at the right points, but my heart wasn't really in it, because I was still turning over that business with Miss Diviou yesterday. Did she genuinely perceive the interaction differently, was she trying to downplay things...or did they get to her? The ones who are trying to keep me from mapping the city?

Well, never mind that. Something far more important happened today. I was browsing around an antique shop in La Bohemia, and I came across an old leather map case. It seemed empty, but when I peered further in I realized that there was a map stuck to the inside of it, so far to the side that it was easy to overlook. The fools thought they were selling an empty case! Of course I bought it and brought it home at once. It'll take some work to get it out without destroying it, but with luck, this will be a genuine map of the city! What a find that would be.

Day 22

It is a map! Hand-written, clearly labeled San Sibilia, semi-stuck to the inside of the case so I had to be careful prying it out so as not to risk damaging it. I went over every line of it, hoping for a start to help my own work.

And it's odd. It's the San Sibilia I know, yes, but different. Some streets bend in different directions, some squares are in different places...I can't write it off as incompetence, because whoever drew this map was a competent draughtsman and a clear-eyed observer, that much is obvious, so I can only assume the changes were deliberate. But who would do such a thing? And why?

Day 23

Leaving the map in my room, I stepped outside this morning to check some of the places that it contradicted my memory. Didn't get far, though, because something far stranger has happened.

Something changed in the city overnight. The streets are unfamiliar to me now. They turn where they didn't before. Buildings I knew are gone, and different, seemingly equally old ones, have taken their places.

What is happening here? Am I going mad? This can't be real.

Day 24

I decided to check out the theater that Miss Diviou and I had attended, to test what the city has become by reference to a known landmark. Could't find the d—-ed thing! I walked all around where I know we had walked that night, but most of the streets were totally unfamiliar.

Eventually I was forced to ask a local. He seemed confused at first, and then remembered a nearby pub that was said to be built on the ruins of an ancient theater.

So I entered, bought a pint from the publican, and asked him about the story, which he confirmed. A little pourboire got me access to the basement where he keeps his kegs, and sure enough, the ruins down there were the same layout I remembered.

Have I somehow become tangled in time, like in Mr. Wells' tomfoolery of a novel? Can't be—my landlady is still here, and Miss Diviou. Maybe I should look up Biffy, see if he's noticed these changes.

Day 26

I've been looking for Biffy for two days. Couldn't find the place he was staying, or the coffee shop we went to together. Searching around did let me get a sense of the changed city. It's still broadly the same place. Districts are the same, and major avenues and landmarks. It's all the details that have changed. I've seen plenty of familiar faces, too, so that scrubs the time travel theory.

I finally came across him tonight, at a gallery opening. I never knew Biffy to be one for art, so I was surprised to see him there. Turns out he just wanted the free wine and cheese. Fair enough. The art was rubbish, anyway—all these portraits that have become the fashion lately. Treacly, garish, nothing like the stately ones they do back at home.

Of course I couldn't ask Biffy about all this strangeness there. Not with so many foreigners around. But we made plans to meet soon.

Day 27

Biffy and I made plans to meet up at Scylla park to discuss what's been going on in the city. I know, that's where all of that weirdness with the portrait painters happened, but I figured it was a public place and would look less suspicious than if we tried to meet somewhere private. Anyway, I didn't notice anyone drawing us.

He's noticed it too, the change. He knew how to get to his rented flat, but said that the buildings around it are all different. He asked a couple of the locals about it and got no reaction. Foreigners.

We have agreed to work together to map the city as it is now. I'm undecided as to whether to bring in Miss Diviou. She's a foreigner but not a local, so it would be useful to understand how she sees the changes. But what if she's working with them? Biffy of course I can trust without question.

Day 29

As I looked back through this journal, I couldn't help noticing that I keep remarking about a need to find out what the factories here make. So today I thought I'd take a little stroll along the river, get closer to where the factories meet the water, and see what they're loading into the boats.

Whatever it is, they ship it in big boxes. About the size of a coffin, maybe a little bit larger. Totally unlabeled as far as I could see from a distance. When I tried to get closer I was politely (well, as politely as these foreigners can get) but very firmly deterred.

If I want to solve this mystery I, or someone I trust, will have to sneak in.

Day 33

Embarrassing to admit, but I got badly lost today. Me! I know I'm still adjusting to this new shape of the city, but me getting lost is rather like a fish drowning. Not sure that metaphor quite holds up, but I'm a cartographer, not a poet.

I had gone to the pub for a chop and a pint, and coming out I apparently made a wrong turn, and soon ended up in a warren of little alleys that I'd never seen before.

Spent hours there, I did. I was naturally tracking my steps and turns as usual, but nothing made any b——y sense! Pardon the expression. It was almost as though someone was twisting the streets as I was walking them, with the design of keeping me in place.

It was about midnight when I caught a break. Spotted a woman about my age, dressed respectably enough—although out at midnight, unescorted, naturally gives one pause. But I needed help. I asked her how to get to the boarding house, giving the address. She looked at me blankly, so I was forced to use a few words of the local tongue to ask. I don't know all of the address words so I asked about a nearby square. (Honestly, why can't they learn English?)

She understood this time, led me a short distance, then spoke a few words—not in English or the local language, but they sounded familiar. Then she gestured down the alley. I had just come from that selfsame alley, so I gave her an incredulous look, but she was very insistent.

So I walked down the alley, and by G— it opened right into the square. I turned to thank her, but she was gone.

I realized with a start that the words she had spoken—they were in the runic language that I had recognized back in the historical museum. Don't know the meaning, but I recognized the syllables well enough.

Am I mad? Was this woman a witch who first trapped me here and then released me, for reasons of her own? Or is it possible she was talking to the city itself, asking it for an opening?

I should leave. This, more than anything else, proves that any attempt to map this city is madness.

But I've come too far to stop now.

The map will be made.

Day 34

Dash it all. Thought I was being so cautious. Did someone say something? Was the old lady last night working for them? Did Biffy slip up and let something loose?

At any rate, they came to my room and took everything. The map-case and old map, of course, but also all of my equipment, my notes and sketches, every scrap of paper they could lay their hands on. Thank goodness I had this journal quite hidden or it would be gone too.

And they made it abundantly clear that it'll be prison for me if I make any further attempts to map the city.

I shall have to be even more cautious in the future.