When he emerged from his mother’s body into the outer world, some aspect of her had been carried with him, or some aspect of himself remained behind, or both. A connection that persisted despite the fact that, amongst the People, motherhood ceased before the turning of a child’s first sun.
The inner space that was his to access had never been his at all, but that of Sedduq’Hiui.
When his seed rushed out of him into Dyffar, a startling urge to abandon that inner space forever swept through him, even though doing so would change him irrevocably. And while they lay still and quiet afterwards, he found the idea as unspeakable as it was strong.
He also understood that Dyffar, all females, even his mother had once shared this sudden revelation. That they too left it unspoken, waiting for the males to discover this nature of themselves.
And to decide.
*
It was dark inside the room, but darker still outside the palace walls. He could still feel the night, and much more besides. He could feel his escape, on the edge of touching.
The lifelong sensation of Sedduq remained as close as his heart and lungs, but his memory of the secret within Dyffar’s body was like the line she had drawn upon the map, a trail that could be followed though he had never walked that way before. The echo of the fragile balance he had found himself upon, equal voids beckoning before and behind, was an illusion, but one that offered guidance. The absence of Dyffar left a space for him to step into and fill himself, leaving Sedduq behind… if he was able to do so.
He’d always thought females so much more powerful than males, but to his surprise he found his mother’s inner space was not a trap to be escaped through exhaustive struggle. The only struggle was to release his grip upon it—and in doing so he finally discovered that, all his life, the mightiest efforts had been committed to that holding on.
Hiui’Lleyen let go, and emerged.
His lithe frame swelled and hardened, shoulders bowing first under the increasing mass of muscle and then as the creaking chains fought to hold them back. Before the squealing links pulled themselves apart both manacles burst open, the bolts shearing under the pressure of wrists that thickened like sapling trunks undergoing the growth of years in moments.
His head struck the top of the cage, forcing him to bend again, the sharp-edges of the bladed bars cutting into his skin. He reach out to the sloping walls on either side, sank his fingers through the mesh to brace himself, planted his feet and strained. The razor edges sliced his skin, his bulging muscles. His thighs shook with the effort, until the thin layer of metal upon the floor twisted and buckled as the poles anchoring his cage tore through the wood beneath.
He stood upright on quivering legs and tipped the cage behind him to fall with a crash.
The room seemed much smaller than it had before. He looked down, and in the dark his blood-slicked body appeared to have changed in every way, too many to distinguish them well—but the greatest change was unseen. Sedduq’s inner space had become a fading memory. In its place, a new sensation had come into being. No longer something for him to shrink into… in every way, quite the opposite.
The male was gone. The female lived in his place.
From outside she heard voices calling in alarm, hurried footsteps approaching—drawing her attention to the room’s single door.
Hiui slammed both palms against it, exploding the lock and taking the door half off its hinges. Sickly light poured in from the oil lamps in the corridor, bathing two guards in armour crawling from the doorway, knocked prone by the door’s impact. Three more appeared around the corner at the corridor’s far end, but their steps faltered at the sight of Hiui filling her prison door.
She snarled at them, but the passage between the walls was too narrow for her now. Time to make a door of her own. She sank her fingers into the seam between two sheets of metal, peeled them off the cell wall like the skin of a fruit to reveal splintered wood and layers of some dry, chalky paste that turned to dust at one blow of her fist—and she paused.
In one corner, by the broken cage, the remains of the Bilingual tablet lay in the feeble light from the doorway. Dyffar had thought it so important, but it was nothing more than an illusion that would crumble to nothing in her hands—just as this cell had seemed so strong, before.
The shouting from the passage grew louder, closer. Time to leave.
Hiui kicked her way through the feeble wall, her left arm held tight across her belly. She found herself in unfamiliar rooms and corridors, but knew the large, sweeping passage between floors that she had chosen to ignore before was close. The alarm was sounded, guards suddenly afoot all over the fifth floor, but they were unprepared for their situation. Those she encountered at close quarters were no match.
Those who saw her coming fled.
She fell down the stairs to the fourth floor when she found them, her command of her altered body uncertain, the deep cuts in her back and shoulders reopening with the impacts. She tumbled to a stop before a broad, grand window, one arm still cradled protectively to her body. The view below was of an ornamental tree in a small walled garden at the back of the palace, preserved from a time when more refined souls called it home. The glass shattered at a single blow, and she leaped into the tree’s welcoming boughs, spilled down onto the grass, rejoicing at the feel of life under her feet again.
Though well able to see at night, Hiui was disoriented as she fled the grounds. She lost herself in the mazy gulleys of streets and alleys that made up a city, guided only by the pull of the poles and her memory of the day-lit city as seen from high above—an utterly different prospect to charging down them on striding legs that barely felt like her own.
When she reached the city’s defensive wall she climbed awkwardly to its walkway and vaulted to freedom, landed in a sprawl as cries went up from the shocked watch. She stumbled into a loping run, making northward until she was sure the night hid her from their sight, and veered due east across the plain towards the forest.
At last she sensed Dyffar’Kaoi, still waiting for her just beyond the treeline in the deeper darkness, but while her presence was familiar it also seemed different somehow. When she reached the trees and Dyffar stepped out from the gloom beneath the canopy, Hiui found herself looking down into her brief lover’s face.
“Hiui’Lleyen?” Dyffar said, head back to meet her gaze and disbelief in her voice.
Hiui nodded. She flushed, picturing herself as Dyffar must see her: long-limbed and lumbering, a frightening giant possessed of none of her own warrior’s grace.
“But it’s impossible,” Dyffar said. “You’re too young, by a hundred turns or more! I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“I had no choice. They constrained me with metal. I could only escape by… letting go.”
“Hiui…” Dyffar reached out to touch the arm Hiui held awkwardly before her, and found the flesh beneath the pelt strong and dense—and the fur become shades of brown to the root, without its hidden brightness. “No, Hiui no more. It’s Lleyen now, sister. Big sister,” she added. There was still doubt in her eyes, but also something akin to admiration. “What a warrior we will make of you.”
But Lleyen didn’t hear that last. Her mind was both frozen and fired. Hiui’Lleyen, Lleyen’Hiui. Her old name replaced by her new one. She was female, changeless, now and forever.
Dyffar read the tumult of thought off Lleyen’s face and laughed gently. “Well. At least Sedduq can finally drop Hiui from her name. She may not be the first of the Messireen whose offspring was still male when she rose to join their number, but she’s surely remained so the longest.”
Lleyen grunted. “I should tell her.”
Dyffar gave her a knowing look. “She was aware the moment you emerged.”
Of course. How could she not have felt the ending of such a connection as that which they had shared? “Nevertheless. She has had difficulty accepting unexpected news from you.”
This time Dyffar laughed aloud, but it died at t
he reminder of why they were both there. “You did not find the Bilingual,” she said, the dismay on her face growing. “I was wrong, and my error has changed you before your time. I’m sorry.”
Lleyen shook her head. She relaxed her arm where it wrapped across her stomach to reveal the three largest pieces of the tablet, collected from the cell and protected despite the attacks of the Others—and her own clumsiness.
The Others called it a deceit, it may or may not offer the key to understanding their enemy once again, but with it perhaps they could convince the Messireen of what Lleyen now knew to be the truth.
That alone might give them a fighting chance.
“You have it!” Dyffar whispered.
“It is not what you think,” Lleyen told her, “but you were not wrong.”
She saw the hope return to Dyffar’s eyes, and smiled.
* * *
Andrew Leon Hudson
Andrew Leon Hudson is an improper Englishman who writes, edits, designs and publishes books for people, himself included. If you'd like one, drop him a line sometime. He lives in Europe, and plans to spend as much time there as he can before the doors close once and for all. Visit andrewleonhudson.wordpress.com to learn more.
LITERARY WALKS: THE CARTOGRAPHER BY MARTIN CROFT
Neil James Hudson
1. Bootham Bar
Thank you all for coming. The purpose of this tour is to visit a few of the locations that are named in Martin Croft’s classic 1973 novel The Cartographer, set entirely in York and taking in some of its best-known landmarks. We’re starting at Bootham Bar, the only surviving one of the four ancient gates that allowed entrance into the city—it was here back in Roman times. It is fitting, then, that this was also the unnamed narrator’s entry point into the city.
You will recall that the narrator was an obsessive map-maker who was compelled to draw a plan of everywhere he’d been, even in his own house. Some of you may therefore like to imitate his actions in drawing your own maps of our route. It might be interesting to compare your efforts with the narrator’s map, or for that matter, reality.
2. Duncombe Place
It’s actually not until chapter 3 that Croft once more mentions a recognisable part of the city, and we’re here not for any historical landmark, but for this; the tourist map. Those of you who aren’t familiar with the area will see immediately why the narrator’s route was so disastrous. For reasons we aren’t fully told, he’s decided to make a topological map, and treat every road as if it’s a straight line and every corner as a right angle. York actually lends itself rather well to such an arrangement, but not everywhere, and not here.
It’s not the discrepancies between the maps that concern us here though, but the origin of the map itself. Our narrator recognises it as a copy of a map that he has drawn himself on one of his previous visits, but has no explanation for how it has found its way here. His collection of maps form an unbroken line fifteen years into his past, and if anyone has interfered with this, it is as if a lifeline has been snapped.
His only clue is the woman he sees running off towards the Minster. We, too, shall follow her.
3. High Petergate.
As you can see, Bootham Bar is now on our left, and his mistake should be fairly clear; the three roads form three sides of a right-handed triangle, but our cartographer has drawn them as three sides of a square. Consequently, he now has High Petergate on the map twice, at right angles to itself. Unable to resolve the contradiction, our hero (who, it is implied, is recovering from some kind of map-related breakdown) assumes that there are two versions of this road, depending on which way you enter it, and continues drawing a second York on another page of his notebook; all the same roads, but at right angles. Which is fine until he gets to St Leonard’s again, and the city twists another ninety degrees. The narrator quickly realises that the number of cities overlaying each other is potentially infinite, and resolves to explore at least a few of them.
His predicament is therefore clear. If he is not to remain stuck in a city that juts out from the one he entered, he must retrace his steps exactly, and for this his maps are vital. No other map will do; he will be lost, even if he knows where he is.
Perhaps foolishly, he heads back to Bootham Bar. We will not follow him, as we would risk entering the same kind of existential labyrinth that engulfs the narrator. For this reason, I would urge you all to leave the city centre by the same route we used to enter it. Instead, we shall be heading through what appears to be a gap in the wall.
4. Precentor’s Court.
York is riddled with these alleyways and gaps, known locally as “snickleways”. Many of them are almost invisible to anyone who doesn’t know about them, but lead to surprising clearings and courtyards, almost as if there is a second city hidden inside the first, in the dead spaces between the buildings. It is quite apt, then, that so much of The Cartographer takes place in these areas. You may recognise this particular yard as the location for that crucial first meeting between the narrator and Xella.
This raises an interesting question. Martin Croft is a reclusive octogenarian who lives in Vermont, but he insists that he has never travelled outside his own state, let alone abroad and to the city that he immortalised in his novel. He no longer answers questions about the book, but in previous interviews claimed that he wrote the story from a streetmap. You may wish to consider whether this is particularly likely. Most streetmaps do not even include places like this, and Croft writes with an immediacy and accuracy that makes it improbable that he had never visited them. Allow me to quote:
Behind them, the wire fence continued to vibrate where Xella had struck it, and he realised that he did not have to strain to hear it. The city had faded, as if the black painted passageway was too narrow to allow sound to travel through it. He looked again at his map. Although there was an unbroken line from the street to his current position, he wondered if he would have to move on to another page. There was a little rubbish strewn on the ground, used tissues and empty packets of crisps, but it seemed to have sprouted up rather than to have been discarded from above, and he could not view it as evidence of human presence.”
Either our man in Vermont is not being honest about his travels, or—and as we shall see, this is a possibility that I personally believe to be near the truth—he is not the author of the book. Note also the use of the phrase “crisps” rather than “potato chips”, one of the book’s numerous anglicisms that again suggest that the author is not a native and permanent resident of Vermont. I should very much like to see Mr Croft’s maps of the city, but he has refused to give them up.
Our tour will now take us out of sequence with the action of the book. We are, after all, next to the Minster, so let’s brace ourselves and head for the action.
5. York Minster
The Minster is the most recognisable of York’s landmarks, and certainly the most striking. It is also the location of the most notorious scenes in The Cartographer—the perverted orgy that Croft describes in meticulous detail. You will be relieved to hear that I will not be doing the same. It takes up the whole of chapters eighteen to thirty-seven, fully half of the book, despite having no obvious relevance to the rest of the story. Indeed, the first British edition excised the entire section, and I suspect this is the version that some of you have read. And, of course, another version was published that included only these scenes, and I suspect more of you have read that one.
Of course, it goes without saying that the authorities insist that no such event has ever taken place here, or ever will.
Much of Croft’s description of this bacchanalia is blisteringly erotic, in sharp contrast to the almost clinical descriptions of its more cartographic sections. He was far ahead of his time in this regard, and in particular on the subject of same-sex relations, the descriptions of which make it almost impossible that he was not bisexual himself. Many of his male heterosexual readers complained bitterly that the book had awakened desires in them that they would have p
referred to remain sleeping, and one man even tried to sue the publishers for making unauthorised changes to his Kinsey rating. (Although it later emerged that he was a rejected author who had already brought seven unsuccessful lawsuits against the company, including one of unfair discrimination on the basis of literary talent.)
I would add at this point that I do not agree with the usual assessment that these scenes are irrelevant to the novel. For one thing, this is where the cartographer first meets Brent, and he also has several more fleeting encounters with Xella. We should also remember that during the action, he is still obsessively drawing his maps, showing his travels from one end of the nave to the other, his spiralling around the chapter house and even his brief foray onto the roof, all the while skirting around the other partygoers. It is as if he is now trying to chart his way through the various human relationships, rather than the relationships between concrete and tarmac.
Finally, of course, the utterly ridiculous setting for these scenes underlines the point that the narrator’s journey is no mere cartographic anomaly; he is genuinely moving in other versions of the city, each invisible to the others but all occupying the same space and time. This is why his maps are so important, and why he is so near to despair when he realises that Brent has stolen them.
6. Le Kyrk Lane
We are once again in one of the absurd small passages that are hidden within the city; indeed, a map of these back ways would be as complicated as the main map of the city. I very much hope that we do not meet someone coming in the opposite direction as you will see that there is precious little room to pass. It is curious that Croft uses this inner labyrinth as the location for the main scenes between the narrator and Xella, and I urge you to read the relevant part of the novel and compare it to the reality you see around and above you, before deciding if the author could have composed his story from a streetmap. The scene is towards the end of chapter forty-nine, where the narrator has resigned himself to never being able to leave the city, and instead is trying to convince Xella to stay and be his guide through the infinite versions of York which he will haunt forever. He proves his devotion by vowing that he will no longer chart his own movements, but will instead draw maps of Xella’s movements, a gesture that I find quite touching.
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