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Thud, thud, thud. Ixxy awoke with a start. She wasn’t sure if she was still dreaming. She reached for her water cup and drank what was left in it.
Thud, thud, thud. Then the mutterings of an annoyed Captain. Thud, thud, thud. Mutter, mutter, mutter.
Ixxy knew she wasn’t going to get back to sleep while the noise went on, so she slipped her boots on, threw a blanket from the bed around her shoulders and made for the makeshift curtain that separated the infirmary from the Captain’s quarters.
Thud, thud. The Captain turned then stopped again, “Did I wake you?”
“Uh, huh. I’ve slept pretty well though.”
“Sorry child, it’s just this blasted map, it’s confounding me. My pads are numb from tracing it. I think I know every bump and line of the thing and it still makes no bloody sense.”
“May I cast a paw over it?” said Ixxy.
Wenna let out a huge sigh, “Sure, why not. Come, sit here at my desk. We can lay it out and I’ll tell you what I think.” The Captain pulled out another of the folding chairs that seemed to be such a feature of this boat. On the Razor, no-one seemed to sit quite so much, unless they were rowing. She rolled out the parchment and weighed it down with things she had on the desk. Then she guided Ixxy’s hand to the page. Ixxy enjoyed reading books — what books she could find. River-folk weren’t big readers and books were scarce due to the effort required in the scribing of them. But she’d never laid paws on a map before. Her first pirate map. Wenna was kind and gentle, guiding her digits to where the map started, so she could orient herself, but Wenna was right, this map was hard. It had been scrawled in a hurry, by someone who had other things on their mind. The hand it was scribed in was unsteady, distracted. The lines were hard to trace—scribed with a knife and not a stylus. As if that wasn’t difficult enough terrain, the parchment itself had seen better days. It was dog eared if not weighted down and it had been folded in more directions than Ixxy could count, so telling a scribed line from a fold was trouble too. And finally, there were rips and tears in the parchment on top of all of that. It was a sorry excuse for a map really, considering the reverence such things were normally held in by the Folk.
“Poor map,” said Ixxy.
“Aye, it’s had some misuse and that’s a fact.”
“Well, maybe I can feel a pattern to it somewhere.”
“I’ve worked out where it’s supposed to be,” Wenna took Ixxy’s paw again and placed it carefully in position. “Here. The Lychgate. The Last Lake. All that, but there’s no treasure, no X and it just tails off. Maddening.”
“Oh, yeah, ok, I get it. I mean I’ve never been there, but I get the idea.”
“I wish I did. Feel free to paw over it as long as you like. I’m back over to the Razor. I’ve got crew rosters to decide on and two sets of books to balance for me sins.”
Ixxy delivered a ‘thank you’ at Wenna’s departing back, but she’d already gone, and either hadn’t heard or hadn’t replied. She set to work learning every fold and tear. Eventually, she fell asleep curled up with it and dreamed of the world as a huge parchment bag leaking water from all of its holes.