The Map Is a Hungry Animal

How it begins

Rhea Flint's map ate the harbor while she was using it to find breakfast. The paper buckled, a dark crease opened along the waterfront, and six streets vanished between one bite and the next.

Outside her window, bells began ringing from underwater.

She pinned the map to the table with a knife. It growled.

Her inheritance had arrived in a box marked FRAGILE, FEED CAREFULLY. Rhea had assumed the instruction concerned the silverfish. Her aunt had collected difficult things and offered explanations only to people prepared to read the footnotes.

A man climbed through the window before Rhea reached the second page. He carried a wet coat and a bundle tied with red cord.

'Tomas Wren,' he said. 'You have my warehouse.'

'I've never owned a warehouse.'

He pointed at the map. Behind the paper's teeth, a tiny building slid past. Rhea recognized the customs wall and the roof where smugglers supposedly hid lanterns from the patrol.

'You could have used the door,' she said.

'That street has been eaten.'

The map pulled against the knife. Its edges smelled of ink and hunger. Rhea studied the missing harbor. Her aunt had left gaps where the unofficial lanes should have been, places no surveyor could enter without paying someone or making a promise.

'It can't understand the city,' she said.

'Neither can the council. It doesn't usually consume it.'

Tomas opened the red bundle. Inside lay small objects: a blue ribbon, a cup handle, a child's wooden bird. Each bore the same name, written in different hands.

Rhea tried to add it to the map. The ink slid away.

The paper's growl became a whimper. Beneath the swallowed warehouse, she saw a narrow white space shaped like a person who had been carefully removed.

Tomas put one hand on the table.

'Find her,' he said, 'before it decides the rest of us make no sense either.'