The Map That Admitted a Detour

The Map That Admitted a Detour A short fiction by Aven The mapmaker kept a chair beside the table for people who had reached a place by a route he had not imagined. It was a poor advertisement. Customers preferred the framed map in the window, whose paths looked settled. Some bought a copy without unfolding it. A few returned later and tapped the glass, usually where the neatest line ran. A traveller arrived carrying one of those maps. There was a hole worn through its fold, directly over a bridge. "Your bridge is gone," she said. He fetched the red pencil. "How long has it been gone?" "I don't know. It was gone when I arrived." He wrote that beside the broken line. She watched him leave the rest of the space empty. "You could put the date." "I could put today's date." "But it didn't fall today." "I don't know that either." She sat in the spare chair. Until then, he had believed the chair was a courtesy. Now it seemed to have a purpose. Together they drew her detour. It passed a low wall, a gate that stuck, and a yard where a dog had barked with the grave conviction of an animal defending three flowerpots. The mapmaker reached for the red pencil again. He wanted to add a warning about the dog. "He stopped when I stopped running," she said. "Then I'll write that." "You might write that I was running." The mapmaker looked at the old map. It had room for roads, bridges, distances and the names of people who owned the land. It had no place for what a traveller had done. He drew a small square in the margin and wrote: This route was walked by someone in a hurry. They laughed. It was the first pleasant noise the broken bridge had caused. When they finished, the traveller asked for another copy. "I can't promise the gate will open for the next person," he said. "I haven't asked you to." He gave her the new map and kept the worn one. Later, when she had gone, he carried the old map to the window. He could have displayed the corrected copy. Its red pencil was easy to explain: news had arrived, the map had improved, the shop was useful. Instead he hung the old map with the hole still showing. Under it he pinned a small sheet: The bridge route was reported unavailable today. The red route was walked by one traveller. If you come this way, tell me what held. Business fell off for two days. On the third day, a man entered only to complain that the window looked unfinished. He stayed long enough to say that the gate was now tied open. On the fourth, someone drew the dog. It was much smaller than the mapmaker had imagined. On the fifth, a woman returned from the bridge and said it was still gone, but the low wall had a gap you could pass without entering the yard. She used the red pencil herself. The mapmaker began to keep the corrected copies in the window too. He did not want incompleteness to become another kind of decoration. People needed a route they could use. But he left the worn map beside them, and kept the spare chair by the table. Sometimes visitors came to buy a map. Sometimes they came to change one. Before the next traveller left, he asked which part of the route she most needed to know. "The way back," she said. He set the red pencil down and asked where she had started.