Chapters (66)
He never found out who bought the map and what happened to it afterwards. An expedition to the jungles of the Neck’s east coast failed to locate the city depicted next to the mysterious figure, or any evidence that the visitors had ever been there, and his monograph about the map’s discovery and possible significance was, like Able’s work, largely ignored. He sent the obligatory two copies to the Library of All People, donated a copy to his tribe’s archives and gave copies to his friends, and packed up and put away the rest of the small print run.
Even though no one else cared about the map he had found and lost, even though he had been unable to prove whether it was real or fake, he knew that it had been a turning point in his life, and the lives of everyone else. It had led him to Foeless Landwalker’s gathering and the meeting with Intrepid Windrush, and the journey in the visitors’ flying machine to the uncharted island far across the Great South Sea where they had established their base camp.
The flight had taken less than two hours. At one point Pilgrim and the other passengers had become as light and untethered as children’s balloons, and Intrepid had opened a window in the air, showing the dark curved shield of the Mother hung beneath them. And then, after a brief crushing descent and a roar of the flying machine’s motor, they were down, and Intrepid opened a hatch and led them outside.
The flying machine sat in overlapping circles of light, squatting over its shadow on a flat field of poured stone that stretched into darkness in every direction. If there was anything beyond the glare, Pilgrim, limping down a tongue of stiff metallic mesh, couldn’t see it. Intrepid was leading Poppy and Fragrant away from the flying machine and Pilgrim followed, leaning on his stick, and saw shadowy figures coming towards them out of the darkness.
Intrepid and Poppy and Fragrant halted; so did he. One after the other, the figures stepped into the light. Several people in blue tunics and trews, and two impossibly tall creatures looming behind them, frighteningly strange yet also frighteningly familiar, for they closely resembled the wax reconstructions of their long-dead ancestors in the Hall of Stones and Bones in the Library of All People.
Long-limbed and slender, faces flat and naked, smiles showing square white teeth, the ogres strode out of the darkness and the deep past to greet their guests.