it dawns on him slowly, that he wants to be angry with her.
he wants to take her map in his hands and tear it to pieces, watch as they flutter like bird feathers to the ground before treading purposefully over them–as if to call attention to the fact that it did not require a university education, an office in a white marble building, a pitiful acolyte who doesn’t know any better, for him to put his work underneath his heel.
don’t you get it? he would snarl. she would gape at him he’s sure–when did the boy grow falcon’s wings? when did he learn their fearsome call, that wolf’s howl that does not belong in the mouth of the bird? he would snap his newly grown beak, look at her with his yellow hunter’s eyes, and say don’t you understand yet that none of this matters?
you thought the frontier could be contained, forced into submission and inside of borders made of stark black lines on paper? i’m here to tell you, cartographer, that the frontier is so much bigger than we are capable of understanding–the frontier flays the flesh from your bones and takes root inside of you, makes your pathetic body that is barely capable of containing the terror inside of you part of it.
we go forth, we push boundaries, we discover, not because god has granted us the grace to do so. we go forth because the frontier has decided to spit us back out instead of swallowing us whole.
he wants to be angry–but anger would involve an explanation. anger would involve trying to translate a language that he has only learned through having his jaw forced open, and having each word shoved down his throat until he spat them back up like bile. anger would involve admitting that he was not smart enough to keep himself alive.
because he isn’t, is he? logic would dictate that one who shares his body with so many dead must count himself among them.
“thank you.” he says after clearing his throat, dragging a hand through his hair in an effort to bring himself back to the present, to remind himself of his own physicality. ‘but that won’t be necessary. my hands–” he shakes his head as he spares a glance down at them, bloodied with black ink. “clearly aren’t steady enough at the moment, and accuracy should be prized above all else. especially here, and now, when it seems to be in such short supply.”
here, he thinks, as he drags his thumb across his temple in an effort to soothe the phantom ache that always seems to be lingering there, as we come to the ends of knowledge itself. it leaves a black mark that disappears into his hairline.
he meets her gaze, and in the back of his mind there is howling–if it is lonely, if it is a cry of pain, or if it is a foreshadowing of grief, he cannot tell the difference. “should we–map this place, i mean? maybe–” he exhales slowly, shakes his head. “maybe we shouldn’t be encouraging people to come here. there isn’t anything remarkable about it except death and cold.”
She can tell by the apparent drift of him, by the crackling sound of him, that the lad’s along a mental journey she’s not privy to. Sohrab only studies him, sore-knuckled hands interlaced before her. “Wise.”
The cartographer hums in a clipped syllable as Cyrus thanks her in one breath and doubts his hands in the next. She’s never known maternal instinct half as well as she’s known the mantis’, but as she watches him smear ink across his temple, Sohrab finds she has to resist a sudden and strange urge: retrieving the ink rag and mopping his brow.
“پسر نادان,” she mutters as she twists the rag in her hands instead. “Mankind have thrown themselves at mountains since their inception, and will continue to do so until our collective ruin, with or without our encouragement.” That is to say, “Someday, someone will map this hellscape. We are already here. We have made it this far,” This ‘we’ is more of an inclusion than Sohrab has ever extended to the budding young cartographer; as if to drive the conspiring nature of it home, she affords a passing wink.
“We may as well be the first.”
