Mrs. Obi's Impossible Maps

Mrs. Obi had lived next door for as long as Ren could remember. She had: A grey front door. A small garden with one stubborn rosebush. A cat called Nothing who lived up to his name by being somewhere else most of the time.

Ren had decided long ago that Mrs. Obi was ordinary. This was the first mistake.

The second mistake was climbing over the fence to retrieve a football on a Tuesday afternoon in October when the back door was open and the smell coming out of it was like nothing Ren had ever smelled before.

Old paper. Ink. Something like the sea but older than the sea. Something like a library that had been to places libraries don't usually go.

Ren stood at the back door. The football was forgotten.

"You might as well come in," said Mrs. Obi from somewhere inside.

Ren went in.

The house was: Not ordinary. Not even slightly ordinary. Not ordinary in a way that took several seconds to fully arrive in the brain.

Maps. Every wall. Every surface. Every ceiling. Maps on top of maps on top of maps — overlapping and pinned and strung on threads and rolled in tubes and spread flat under glass and drawn on things that weren't paper — on bark and cloth and what appeared to be the inside of a very large shell.

But not maps of places Ren knew. Not countries. Not cities. Not the kind of maps that hang in classrooms and pretend the whole world fits on one wall.

These were maps of: The Valley Where Echoes Go To Rest. The Forest That Exists Only In February. The Sea Beneath The Sea Beneath The Sea. The Island That Appears When You Are Looking For Something Else Entirely.

Ren stood in the middle of it all turning slowly the way you turn when the room is larger than the outside of the house suggested it should be.

Mrs. Obi was at a table. She was very small at a very large table covered in instruments Ren had no names for. She was drawing. Not looking up. Just drawing. With the absolute concentration of someone who has been doing one specific thing for a very long time and has no intention of stopping.

"Are these real?" said Ren. "That depends," said Mrs. Obi, "on what you mean by real."

Ren looked at the map nearest the door. The Corridor Between Sleeping And Waking. Surveyed 1974. Approximate width: one breath. Caution: exits are not always where you left them.

"I've been there," said Ren. Mrs. Obi looked up for the first time. Her eyes were the colour of water over old stone. "I know," she said. "Everyone has. Most people just don't look down while they're there."

Ren pulled up a chair. The football was definitely forgotten now.

"How do you map a place that doesn't officially exist?" said Ren. Mrs. Obi put down her pen. She looked at Ren the way cartographers look at blank spaces on a map — with complete attention and the particular excitement of someone who sees not emptiness but possibility.

"You go there," she said simply. "And you pay attention. And you write down everything you notice before you talk yourself out of having noticed it."

She slid a blank piece of paper across the table. And a pen.

Ren looked at the blank paper. Then at the maps on the walls. The ceiling. The impossible places pinned and strung and spread under glass. All of them started as this. A blank page. And someone who went somewhere and paid attention.

Ren picked up the pen.

"Where do I start?" said Ren. Mrs. Obi went back to her drawing. "You've already started," she said. "You came in when you could have just taken the football and gone home."

Ren looked at the blank page.

Outside the rosebush did something in the wind. Nothing the cat appeared in the doorway looked at Ren and left.

Ren began to draw. Not a real place. Not yet. Just lines. Just the beginning of edges of something that didn't have a name yet but was starting to have a shape.

Mrs. Obi didn't look up. But she smiled. The smile of someone who has just found the one thing every cartographer eventually needs — someone to hand the next blank page to.