Flash Fiction Friday: For Want of a Map

Our Chuck Wendig challenge this week was simply that the story must contain a map.  That fit nicely with a story I began writing (in my head) while on a hike a couple of years ago. You may draw whatever conclusions you like. 990 words.

For Want of a Map

“You said you knew the route. You said you didn’t need a map.” Rosa’s tone was deceptively calm, and Hal swallowed. After 27 years of marriage he knew when he was in trouble.

“I, ah, must have missed the junction. It can’t be far back, though.” He tried to picture it, but he’d been thinking about a problem at work, and had really no idea where the junction had been.

Rosa looked at her husband a moment, hands on hips, and let him squirm. Then she dropped her pack, opened the top pocket, and extracted a map. Unfolding it, she turned her back to the wind—and to her spouse. The effect was somewhat ruined when she had to dig in the pack again to extract her reading glasses. They never listed those in the “10 Essentials,” but after a certain age a hiker might as well leave the map and compass at home without the pesky things.

Hal watched, not sure if he should get closer or not, while she traced their route with a finger. After a minute Rosa looked up.

“I think we’re about here. That junction was at least two miles back.” She sounded like she’d forgotten she was angry, but Hal knew better than to believe it. He did come closer to peer at the map.

Rosa was correct. Not that there’d been any doubt. “We can double back and add 4 or 5 miles to that ‘easy 8-miler’ you promised, or we can go on to this trail,” her finger jabbed the map, “and follow that on back to here, then cut back over on this one, which will add…” She paused to calculate the distance.

“Four or 5 miles,” Hal said, trying not to sound as nervous as he felt.

“It is too early in the season for a 12-miler, let alone 13,” Rosa said.

There was no answer to make to that, so Hal made none. Twenty-seven years had taught him some wisdom, though obviously not enough. Both of them knew they had to walk it, so there was no point in saying so.

“Do you have any more chocolate?”

He knew the answer to that question. “Yes. Let me give it to you.” If they’d gotten lost together, she might have shared it with him. As it was, he was just glad he hadn’t eaten his share yet. When they talked about wilderness survival, they never mentioned dealing with a pissed-off wife with sore feet and an empty stomach, or the life-saving properties of chocolate, distributed in the right quarter. He dug a little deeper and found a bag of peanuts, which he also handed over to his wife.

Rosa took the offerings, knowing she was being hard on her husband, and needing the food to keep herself from still worse behaviors. Her mood was not improved by knowing that she could read a map, had been carrying a map, and had chosen instead to blindly follow Hal.

“Which way?” she asked when the food had been eaten. She hadn’t given Hal any of the chocolate, but had shared a small handful of the peanuts.

Hal studied the map. This was a trick question, as he well knew. If he made the decision and it turned out badly, or proved longer than they thought, it would be his fault. That was why she’d asked him.

“I really think it’s a crap-shoot for distance. Let’s keep going on this trail. That’s better than back-tracking.” Maybe they’d see something interesting enough or scenic enough to make up for the extra hiking, and Rosa’s sore feet.

Rosa nodded. She knew what he was thinking, and had to agree, though she’d still blame him for her pains. She stood up and slung her pack back into place, shoving the map and her glasses into the deep side pocket on her pants so they’d be handy.

For a mile or so, they even walked together, and Hal recognized a truce. By the third mile, though, Rosa’s feet were hurting worse than ever. She really did need to work up more slowly to these distances, and it had been no part of the plan to push like this.

As she often did when uncomfortable, Rosa picked up the pace. She didn’t wait when Hal stopped to take a photo, and he, feeling it might be safer to give her space, didn’t push to catch up. She’d long since stopped talking to him anyway.

Rosa was charging down the trail at her top speed, hungry and tired, with the pain from the feet working its way into her knees. The spousal truce was over, and she was grumbling with every step about idiot males who didn’t pay attention where they were going. Didn’t he have any consideration for her at all?

She came around the corner and halted.

A bear stood in the trail, looking as foolish and startled as Rosa felt. She scanned for cubs, found none, and fear was replaced by the irritation that was the only thing keeping her going.

“Get the freaking hell out of my way, you hulking idiot!” A part of her mind was surprised at what came out of her mouth. Another part wasn’t. When she had a full head of angry steam on, a bear was small stuff in comparison.

The bear reached the same conclusion. It took one look at the dirty, sweaty, and irate human charging down the trail, and turned tail. A loud crashing told where it had broken a new route through the underbrush in the effort to put distance between them.

Rosa watched for just a moment, hands on hips. “Right. Good plan, bear.” She set herself in motion again.

Hal, coming into sight just in time to see the last of the bear, nodded sympathetically. Rosa could be a force of nature.

He took care not to catch up.

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2016
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

The best grumpy-hiker photo I could find. My husband is too smart to save the really bad ones!

Flash Fiction Friday: The Cartographer's Potion

We're back at last to the Wendig Challenges. This was another random-title generator, and had a great set of words to select from. My offering, at 997 words including title.

The Cartographer’s Potion

The Cartographer gazed at the parchments on the worktable. A frown further creased his age-furrowed forehead. There was something missing, something that would make the maps live. He wanted to make them more than just bits of parchment with lines on them.

“It wouldn’t hurt if they could stand up to being rolled and folded and stuffed into a saddlebag in the rain, and take no hurt,” Lord Alfus suggested.

“You don’t want much,” the Cartographer replied.

“You’re the mage.”

“I am a cartographer.” He rubbed a shaking hand across his aching forehead.

“A cartographer. Yes.” Lord Alfus shifted in his chair, the mail shirt he never removed clinking slightly. “But you were a mage first.”

The Cartographer said nothing. His life was in this man’s hands, and it would be worth little if he did not produce results soon. He smiled grimly, though only in his mind where the lord could not see. His life was worth little in any case. Had the task he’d been set been one less to his taste, he’d have refused and died with a smile.

But to be ordered to produce the best maps ever made! To be given whatever help and resources and time he needed to gather the data and interview travelers and compare every map he could find to expand the limits of knowledge! Only one thing he had not been given. The Cartographer could not himself travel the world and gather that information firsthand. That right, however, was something Lord Alfus could neither grant nor withhold. He glanced down at his legs, withered and useless from a disease no magic could cure. He hadn’t long now. He could feel it.

The Cartographer reopened the long-running debate within himself. Lord Alfus had stolen his freedom for these last years of his life, and set him to serve the very ruler who had conquered and destroyed the Cartographer’s people. For that, he must be hated. The loss of home and freedom could not be forgiven.

And yet.

At home, the Cartographer had had nothing. Crippled by disease, he had been left a beggar. Lord Alfus had somehow learned what he was, learned what his own people had not known or understood, and had brought him here and made him a scholar once again. A captive scholar.

He looked across the room at a small cabinet in the corner. As a scholar, he had done more than make maps, though cartography was his first love. The cabinet held the product of years of study and experimentation. He could make the maps live, but someone must die to do it. Who should die was a decision the Cartographer could not yet make.

Who should die first, he reminded himself. Whatever he did, he would die, and soon. And the maps would live, and the world would know what he had done.

As bargains with demons went, it wasn’t bad.

#

Lord Alfus mingled with the lords and ladies of his realm, goblet in hand. Such parties bored him, but they allowed the nobles to show off to one another, and to demonstrate their loyalty to the crown. That was important.

If the smile he wore could be called supercilious, most saw it as the condescension of great man to his people, and were flattered by his attentions. He made a point of speaking to each person in attendance.

The Cartographer was not present. The strange little man was nearing death, and no doubt did not care to spend what little strength he had left at a party. Alfus could not have said how he knew the man was dying, but he felt it. He thought it, and put the thought aside. It was of little moment, now that he, Lord Alfus, ruled all the civilized lands.

He smiled again, and turned to the man next to him. “And have you repaired the damages to your roads from the spring flooding, Sir Garreg?”

#

In his chambers in a distant part of the castle, the Cartographer laid a shaking hand on the pile of maps. He could do no more. His fingers would not hold the quill. He could barely raise a goblet to his lips without spilling the contents.

Two goblets stood on his table. One held watered wine, laced with something he had concocted to ease his pain. From time to time he took a sip, though never enough to prevent clear thought. He gripped the goblet with both hands to quell the shaking. Between drinks, he sat as though sleeping.

He did not sleep.

#

In the immense Royal Gallery, Lord Alfus patted his stammering noble on the shoulder. “Well done, Sir Garreg. Your tenants must be grateful to have such a lord.”

As you must also be, he had no need of saying.

The knight moved hastily away, dismissed and relieved to so be. Lord Alfus looked about to see who else needed his attention. His eye fell on the one man who failed to fear him, and he frowned. That must change, and soon.

Thinking of his plans, he raised the goblet to his lips and drank deeply.

#

The Cartographer felt the change, and reached for his own goblet. Not the wine this time, but the plain stone cup that smoked a bit as it stood, though the contents were not hot. By force of will he brought it to his lips with his left hand, the right still resting on the maps. He felt the changes begin, and drank deeply.

A surge of power burned the last life from the Cartographer at the same moment that Lord Alfus collapsed. Under the now lifeless right hand, the maps shifted and changed.

When, two days later, someone remembered the Cartographer in the chaos of a realm without a ruler, they found his lifeless body lying beside a set of maps. Maps which crawled with the movements of every living creature in the realm.

###

©Rebecca M. Douglass 2014