Maps of the Lost 21
...from a very, very long way down
under construction
In a suburb of Leicester, there’s a small set of red and white traffic cones which cone off a small area of roadworks. There’s not much going on other than a stretch of broken up tarmac, and one of those red and white tents, not much bigger than a Punch and Judy booth, where a workman might sit and have a cup of tea out of the rain.
Not this one though. There isn’t room in the tent for a foldable chair, or a little plastic stool. That is because there is a hole in the ground, inside the tent.
Don’t go in the tent.
If you go in the tent, don’t look down the hole.
If you do, you will see that it goes a very, very long way down and at the bottom of it you can see stars.
Notes from the Cartographer
A different newsletter this time. It's been something of a sad and tiring time out in the real world, so less this time around of the usual accompanying reviews and thoughts because I am not sure I have enough to say, and instead more of the guidebook to some of the things you won’t find on the usual maps.
Wait, I mean more of the fiction. It's all fiction. Really, it is.
I’m playing around with Notes on Substack, and have found some interesting and enjoyable conversations there. If you have any interest in writing either prose or script then I highly recommend Michael Marshall Smith’s ‘So Here’s A Thing’, and Julian Simpson’s ‘Development Hell’ newsletters.
I’ve started posting the occasional old Maps story on Notes, and now and then a new one. You can find Notes at substack.com/notes or on the “Notes” tab in the Substack app if you use it. If you subscribe to Maps on here, you’ll get any new Notes in your feed by default.
For new subscribers, you can also listen to the Maps podcast, or follow on Facebook (the best place to read all the stories), Twitter, or Instagram.
Thanks for reading, and be happier to receive the gift of not knowing.
the giants in the hills
The Cerne Abbas giant stands proud and rather smug on a hillside. The man who originally carved the giant was also a proud and rather smug man, who proclaimed it something of a self-portrait until several of his very close acquaintances pointed out certain significant issues on the question of proportion. Distressed and embarrassed, he threw his tools away, left Dorset, and became an itinerant pedlar who ended up being voluntarily eaten alive by ravens on a hill in Staffordshire while a circle of children sang a very old song, but that is another story.
There are other giants carved into our hillsides, but you will not see them. The carvings are deep in the rock, or they are carved in ways which only the gifted are able to see, glittering like veins of ice in the dark.
There are six people in this land who know how to wake these giants and bring them out of the rock and earth if they are needed, and one of those people is very ill indeed. So if a gaunt elderly man approaches you in a pub and asks you to put out your hand, be very careful about doing what he asks. If you do, he will drop a piece of white chalk into it, and then close your hand around it. In that moment you will become one of the Six, and you will have all the knowledge of the rock and the earth and the ways of seeing.
But you will also know what the giants are there to protect us from, and that is a terrible burden to carry.
The Ooser Speaks
(taken from the wonderful Readers Digest 'Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain')
On St Bartholomew’s Day in 1217, the French fleet met the English in a battle on the waves of Sandwich Bay, in Kent. The French were commanded by an English traitor, Eustace the Monk, who used his command of the black arts to make his ship invisible.
Fortunately for the English, one Stephen Crabbe of Sandwich (not responsible for the later ‘crab sandwich’) was wise to these dark manoeuvres and used his own powers to find the ship, board it, and then to cut of Eustace’s head. At that point, the ship materialised for everyone to sea.
The French fleet were defeated, and Eustace’s head was carried through the streets of Dover and Canterbury, which while triumphal is maybe inadvisory on hygiene grounds.
peripheral
You may find yourself in the countryside in Suffolk, out for a walk on a beautiful spring day. The sky is a clear blue, and the air is fresh but tastes pure and clean, and you can feel the warmth of the sun on your skin. You feel like you are emerging from hibernation after a long, hard winter.
As you walk on though, there is one thing that spoils your mood. You start to feel that prickle at the back of your neck, that feeling that someone else is there. You spin on your heel and look back along the lane. You thought as you turned that you saw movement, but no one is there. You scan the banks and hedges that line the lane, but see nothing, and turn and walk on.
What walks behind you cannot be seen full-on, you can only see it from the very edge of your vision. Don’t look at it, look near it. But maybe just walk on, it probably has no interest in you in the day time, and if you do see it what you see will haunt you all of your life.
through the water
Walking in the hills of Staffordshire, you might come across a tight thicket of trees, with no obvious path through. That doesn’t stop your excitable dog from running in, but after a while you realise that it has stopped your dog from running out. You call and call, but hear nothing. Worried now, you bend and push your way through between the branches and the bracken, getting scratched and scraped, and swearing at your dog as a way of pretending that you are not concerned for him.
You stumble through a tangle, and find yourself in a small clearing, set against the hill which rises up above. Your dog is lying on the ground, front legs out before him, safe and sound, alert but calm, facing a small spring which bubbles out of the hillside and flows a few inches before disappearing down cracks in the rocks beneath it. Despite there being no way in other than the difficult scramble you have just made, the spring is garlanded with flowers, blooms in red and yellow and a beautiful, delicate pink, and you realise that they must be freshly laid. Puzzled, you look around you, but see no other evidence of people having been there, although they must have been within just a few hours.
Your dog stands, lowers its head towards the spring for a moment, then turns and trots towards you. You scold him, though not very fiercely, and you both scramble back through the trees and down the hill to where you are staying, for a beer for you and a bath for him.
When you get back home, you notice a change in your dog. He is less excitable now, the happiest and most content of animals, but at home if you turn a tap on to run a bath or fill the sink, he gets as close as he can, and lies and watches the water run. Sometimes you catch him just sitting staring out at nothing, his tail wagging, and the same expression on his face he gets when he knows you are about to give him his favourite treat.
Your dog saw the goddess of that spring, and it is the most beautiful thing he ever has seen or ever will see and he thinks of her every day: she told him that he was a Good Boy, and promised him that when his time comes, she will come out through the water and take him back to be with her forever.
Beyond This Point There May Be Dragons
You’ve been reading Maps of the Lost. Or have you? It’s hard to tell. Maybe this is all just a dream. Or a prophecy, or a forewarning.
I hope you enjoyed it. Feedback is always welcome, as I’d really like to shape this newsletter to be what you’d like to read and hear. So, ideas, suggestions and comments welcome. You can just reply to this email if you like.
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Thank you so much!
But he is the goodest boy...