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.