Walking East
In the spring, when the first warmth crept into the kitchen and the snowdrops came out under the apple tree, Saskia began to plan.
She told her mother. Her mother had known about the map; her father had told her, at the end. Her mother said: "I won't try to stop you. But you'll come back."
"I'll come back," said Saskia.
She packed a small bag. Bread. Cheese. A flask of water. Her father's blue cloak. Her father's pens. The map.
She walked east on a morning when the woods were full of birds and the path was wet but firm.
The map filled itself in as she went. At first she watched it after every few steps. By midday, she trusted it. The map drew the path she walked. It drew the small bridge she crossed. It drew, with great delicacy, the stones she sat on for lunch.
Past the woods, the map began to draw places she had never seen. A long valley with a chalk path along its lip. A village she did not know, with a small inn at the centre. A great old oak tree, by itself in a meadow.
The map was not just drawing where she went. It was drawing where she was going.
Saskia walked for three days. She slept in the inn — the innkeeper accepted, in payment, a small drawing she made of his cat. (The drawing pleased him so much that he gave her breakfast as well.) She walked through the long valley, and on the third afternoon, she came to the meadow and the great oak tree.
The map