The Wandering Library of MirMarnia: A Series

Part 22: The Cartographer Who Measured Things That Moved

(I drew this in Procreate on my iPad using the oil paint brush, a twig brush and the pencil. - Chaiga T. Cheska)
~~~

Being an account of a cartographer, his equipment, his chalkboard, and a Library that found the whole enterprise absolutely riveting

Compiled by Bramwell Corin, in whose notes the word "fart" appears for yet another time.

Preface

The Library had parked itself on a hillside meadow sometime in the early hours, presumably because it wanted a good view, which it most definitely had. Rolling country to the south, a stream catching the light somewhere below, the particular quality of morning air that belongs to high, open places.

Tavrennic Mossaran arrived at half past eight with a barrow.

The barrow was loaded to a degree that suggested he had not decided, before leaving, what he might need, and had resolved the uncertainty by bringing everything, just in case. It listed to one side. He did not appear to notice this. He was already wearing two pairs of spectacles, one on his nose and one pushed up into what remained of his hair and was consulting a piece of paper that the wind was doing its very best to reclaim.

He was extraordinarily tall. Taller than seemed strictly necessary for a man who spent his professional life measuring things close to the ground. A considerable pot belly completed the architectural statement he made against the hillside sky. He squinted up at the Library for a long moment.

The Library looked back, curious to see what this odd man would do next.

I observed all of this from the reading room window, where I had gone to investigate a slight tilt in the floor that had sent my ink pot migrating toward the edge of my desk.

The tilt, I now understood, was the Library leaning forward for a better look.

Bramwell’s Log

He came in to introduce himself. Tavrennic Mossaran, cartographer, specialist in ambulatory and semi-permanent structures, commissioned by the Guild of Landform Studies to produce the first accurate survey of the Wandering Library’s exterior dimensions, positional habits, and ground displacement patterns.

He said all of this whilst simultaneously patting his coat pockets, locating a stick of blue chalk in one of them, examining it briefly, and tucking it behind his ear. He already had a stick of red chalk behind the other ear. He appeared not to notice either of them.

I said we were not aware of having agreed to a survey.

He said the Guild had been most specific.

I said I was quite certain I had received no correspondence.

He said he had the letter somewhere. He patted his pockets again. He did not find the letter. He found a small brass instrument and a piece of string.

I told him I had a junior member of staff who might be made available to assist.

Pip was in the corridor behind me, reshelving the lower Natural Philosophy section. He looked up, took in the situation with the speed of someone who has learned to read a room quickly, and set his books down with a sigh that was professionally contained but audible.

“Splendid,” said Mossaran.

“Splendid,” I agreed.

Pip came through, nodded at Mossaran, picked up his notebook, and followed the cartographer outside without a word.

Outside: Pip’s Account

His name for me, from the very first moment, was Pop.

Not Pip. Pop.

I said to him, “It’s Pip, actually,” and he said, “Yes, good, Pop, if you could start by unpacking the Blankwyr from the left side of the barrow,” and that was that.

I unpacked the Blankwyr. It was a ledger of considerable thickness and weight. He opened it, squinted at a blank page, made a sound of professional satisfaction, and closed it again.

Then he pulled his chalkboard from the barrow. A portable board on a folding stand, already covered in the remnants of previous calculations incompletely wiped. He propped it against a rock, stood back, looked at the Library, looked at the board, and began to write.

I cannot describe what he wrote. I mean this precisely. It was not a language I recognised. It was not numbers in any system I had encountered. It was a series of shapes and notations and lines with small symbols at their intersections, written in blue chalk at considerable speed. He wrote something. Stepped back. Rubbed at a section with his palm. Wrote it differently. Stepped back again and rubbed the heel of his hand absently over the top of his head.

The blue chalk went with it.

He did seem not to notice.

I looked at the board. I looked at my notebook and attempted to copy his strange notes. I drew a loop, then another loop. Then a shape that might have been a number if numbers worked differently; then I looked up. He had wiped half the board and was writing it again, faster.

I stopped writing and watched him instead, which was at least more interesting than pretending.

Bramwell’s Log (continued)

The lean I had attributed to the Library’s initial curiosity had, by mid-morning, become something considerably more active. Mossaran would set up an instrument, take a reading, note something on his board, and then take the reading again because the Library had shifted a few centimetres whilst he was noting it, producing a different result from the one he had just recorded.

He would frown, adjust the instrument, and take the reading a third time. By which point the Library, absorbed in watching what he was doing with the instrument, had shifted back.

I watched this from the window for rather longer than was strictly necessary. The floor had developed a permanent mild tilt toward the side facing Mossaran, like a dog that has spotted something interesting and pressed its whole weight against the glass. Mistress Spine’s log had slid from her desk twice. She retrieved it both times without comment.

Outside, I could see Pip watching the Library’s movements with the expression of someone following a slow comedy that only they can see.

Pip’s Account (continued)

The Library kept moving, and every time it moved, Mossaran’s readings changed, and Mossaran would go to his board and write something feverishly and then wipe it and write it again, and I started to understand that this could, theoretically, go on indefinitely.

He handed me the Markthred spool and told me to walk to the corner of the building and hold my end. I did. He stretched the thread taut and began reading the angle of it.

The Library leaned toward him to see what he was doing.

The thread went slack on my end.

Mossaran looked at the instrument. Looked at the thread. Went to his board and wrote something new, wiping and rewriting, running his hand over his head. Red chalk this time, dusting his scalp in a fine crimson cloud that settled into his remaining hair and across his forehead. Again he seemed not to notice.

I suppressed a laugh and pretended it was a cough. I’m supposed to be professionally representing the Wandering Library and had a feeling that Bramwell was watching from the windows.

Then he came past, took me by the shoulders with the brisk efficiency of a man repositioning a theodolite, and moved me to the right and slightly forward.

I raised one eyebrow.

“There,” he said. “Hold it level.”

He went back to his board. I held it level. The Library tilted. Mossaran got a result he didn’t expect, went back to his board, rubbed both hands over his head, and turned around covered in blue and red chalk from his hairline to his collar.

“Pop,” he said, “could you move a little to your left?”

I sighed. I moved to my left.

He moved me four more times between midday and half past three.

Each time: both hands on my shoulders, brisk, impersonal, the way you’d move a lamp that is throwing the wrong light. Each time I raised both eyebrows instead of one, which was my only available escalation. By the fourth time I was simply standing where he put me with my arms folded and my eyebrows in a position that expressed everything I was not going to say out loud.

The Library kept leaning. Mossaran kept getting different readings. His scalp was by now a record of every chalk colour used since morning. There was something green near his left ear that I couldn’t account for. His belly had acquired a diagonal stripe of blue where he’d leaned against the board.

He stepped back from a particularly ambitious stretch of calculations, rubbed his hands over his head, rubbed his hands over his belly, and turned to find me standing with my arms folded and both eyebrows raised as far as they would go.

“Pop,” he said, “marvellous work.”

I exhaled through my nose.

The Library, I noticed, had leaned so far in one direction that the windowsills on the Mossaran-facing side were now at a visible angle. From inside I could hear, faintly, the sound of something rolling. The tea trolley, probably.

I looked between the Library and at Mossaran, feverishly writing. It was so ridiculous watching them.

I was fairly certain the Library was finding this funny.

Bramwell’s Log (afternoon)

Mistress Spine appeared in the doorway at approximately two o’clock.

“The tea trolley,” she said, “has made three unsolicited journeys across the reading room.”

“The Library is leaning,” I said.

“I’m aware of why it’s leaning. I’m noting the consequences.”

I looked out the window. Pip was standing on the hillside with his arms folded and his eyebrows doing something expressive whilst Mossaran wrote on his board. The Library shifted another degree toward the cartographer. From somewhere behind me, something on a shelf slid and was caught.

“Pip seems,” Mistress Spine said, looking out the window, “to be expressing himself.”

“He’s attempting professionalism,” I said.

“His eyebrows aren’t professional.”

Pemberton Intervenes

Bramwell’s Log

I cannot say precisely when the Library decided to act. I can say that at some point in mid-afternoon, Pemberton was no longer on the shelf in the Natural Philosophy section where she had been dozing since eleven o’clock.

I noticed this only when I heard, from outside, a sound that was not part of any cartographic survey I am aware of.

I went to the window.

Pip’s Account

I heard her before I saw her.

The squawk was the first indication. Then a sound of wings, short and purposeful. Then Pemberton came around the corner of the Library at a speed that I had not previously associated with her, head low, eyes fixed, with the absolute focus of a creature that has received a mission and interpreted it in the only way available to her.

She was looking at me.

I said, “Hello, Pemberton.”

She squawked.

I took a step back. She took two steps forward. I said, “Pemberton, what are you…” and then she launched herself at me in a short, furious burst of feathers and I yelped and jumped sideways, and she landed where I had been and immediately came at me again.

“PEMBERTON. WHAT DID I DO?!”

She had no answer for this because she is a chicken. She had only forward momentum and a great deal of flapping wings.

I ran, unprofessionally, in the opposite direction.

Not in any useful direction. In the direction available to me, which was sideways, and then back, and then sideways again, because Pemberton was faster than she looked and considerably more committed than I had given her credit for. I went past Mossaran at speed. He lifted his theodolite out of the way without looking up. I went past him again in the other direction. He lifted the Blankwyr. Pemberton came around in a wide arc, squawking, and launched herself at my left shoulder and I spun away and knocked the chalk board stand and caught it before it fell and Mossaran said, mildly, “Pop, do be careful,” and I said, “SHE’S ATTACKING ME!!!” and Pemberton squawked in what I can only describe as agreement about something we disagreed on.

I ran past the barrow. A spool of thread unrolled itself across the grass. Pemberton went through it without breaking stride. I tripped over it, recovered, kept going. Mossaran was rotating slowly on the spot, watching the proceedings with the faint interest of someone whose instruments were being preserved by instinct alone and who had, as yet, no framework for what he was observing.

“PEMBERTON!” I shouted, “I AM ASKING YOU, PROFESSIONALLY, TO STOP!!!!”

Pemberton flew at my head.

I ran for the Library door.

Bramwell’s Log

I watched all of this from the reading room window.

I watched Pip run in four directions simultaneously. I watched Pemberton pursue him with the systematic focus of a creature acting on deep instinct. I watched Mossaran lift his instruments clear, one after another, with the unhurried efficiency of someone who has simply incorporated this into his working day.

I felt the Library around me shaking as if trying very hard not to laugh and losing the battle incrementally. The floor tilted further. A shelf shed two books. The tea trolley, which had been stationary for twenty minutes, began rolling again of its own accord. I grabbed my ink pot.

Outside, Pemberton had achieved a trajectory that left Pip no option but the front door, and she knew it, and Pip knew it, and they both committed to it at the same moment.

The door opened. They went through in a flurry of feathers and shouting as the door closed behind them.

Inside the Library: Pip, breathing hard, Pemberton ruffling her feathers with satisfaction on top of a catalogue stand. Pip looked at me. I looked at Pip. Pemberton looked at nothing in particular with the expression of a job adequately done.

The Library made a sound. A deep, structural, building-wide sound that had never previously featured in its repertoire.

Then the ventilation shaft produced a gust of air of a calibre and character that I will not attempt to describe except to say that it was significant, it was audible, and it was, beyond any professional doubt, a gastric event which frequently is called a fart.

This fart was so powerful that it caused Mossaran’s chalkboard to take flight. Then the Blankwyr shed its pages in a pale arc across the hillside, and Mossaran himself went sideways downhill in a series of rather spectacular cartwheels, collecting his equipment around him as he went in the manner of someone involuntarily gathering things he would rather have set down deliberately. The Markthred spool unrolled in three different directions. The Hlystren rod described a long parabola into the long grass. The Silmere spun and rolled and went in a completely different direction. The chalkboard went independently and with commitment.

Mossaran came to rest in the meadow below, sitting at a slight angle, his spectacles askew, the Markthred draped across one shoulder, the Faldric calliper caught in his coat pocket at a jaunty angle, and his chalk-covered hair redistributed by the journey. He sat quite still for a moment. Then he reached into his coat, found a pencil, and appeared to begin taking notes.

I closed the window.

The Library was not moving. Not a creak, not a settle, not the ordinary small adjustments of a building at rest. It was absolutely, completely, architecturally still, in the manner of something that hopes very much that if it does not move, recent events will cease to have occurred.

I picked up my pen and opened a fresh page in the log.

Mistress Spine’s Account

I came through from my office at the sound of the ventilation event.

Bramwell was at his desk, writing. His expression was engaged in an act of professional documentation that he intends to treat with complete seriousness regardless of the subject matter.

“Was that,” I said, “the Library?”

“It was,” Bramwell said, without looking up.

“Through the ventilation shafts.”

“Yes.”

I looked at the window. In the meadow below, I could make out Mossaran, sitting in the grass at a slight angle, apparently writing something.

“Bramwell,” I said.

“I’m documenting it,” he said. “The Library has, it appears, gastric capacity. I’m noting this as a new architectural discovery.”

“It farted at the cartographer.”

“It did.”

“With force.”

“Considerable force, yes.”

I looked at him. He looked at his notes. The Library remained completely motionless around us, radiating the specific stillness of something that has surprised itself and is hoping nobody will bring it up.

“I’ll add a section to the operational log,” I said.

“Under what heading?” Bramwell asked.

I considered this.

“Ventilation,” I said. “Unscheduled.”

“Mm,” said Bramwell, and wrote something down.

We both looked up at the same moment.

Pip was lying face down on the reading room floor. Pemberton was perched on his back, surveying the room with proprietary calm. Pip’s shoulders were shaking. His fist came down on the floorboards, once, twice. He turned his head sideways and looked at us with streaming eyes and an expression of complete incoherence, and made a gesture with one hand that seemed to be trying to indicate both of us and the Library and the ventilation shaft and the cartographer in the meadow below and the entire sequence of events, all at once, and couldn’t quite manage it.

Bramwell looked at him.

“Ventilation,” he said again, with great dignity. “Unscheduled.”

Pip put his face back on the floor.

Closing Notes: Bramwell’s Log

The Library has not moved since the incident. It has adopted the posture of a building that has said nothing and intends to continue saying nothing, and I respect this position even as I document against it.

Mossaran did not return. I observed him from the window for some time. He sat in the meadow, taking notes for approximately forty minutes, then gathered the equipment he could find, packed it with the methodical patience he had shown on worse days, and walked down the hill without looking back. The Markthred trailed behind him for some distance before he noticed it.

The survey does not exist in any meaningful form. I have noted this in the acquisitions log under correspondence received: none.

Pip is, as of this evening, more himself. Pemberton is on the end of his bed. I have chosen not to document the precise chain of decisions that led to this arrangement.

I am, however, still making notes about the ventilation.

Mistress Spine adds:

Under no circumstances is the Library to deploy its ventilation capacity toward visitors, scheduled or otherwise.

I have communicated this. The Library has not responded.

I am choosing to interpret its continued stillness as agreement.

Thaddeus left a note:

The cartographer’s survey produced seven pages of calculations, four of which were wiped during the production of the other three.

(The Library moved forty-one times during the survey. Thirty-seven of those movements were toward the cartographer. Four were away, which I am recording as restraint.)

(Pip’s notes from the day contain sixteen loops, three spirals, one drawing of a barrow, and the word PIP in large letters, crossed out. Preserved in the personal archive.)

(The ventilation event occurred at 4:23 PM. It lasted approximately two seconds. The force generated was sufficient to relocate a cartographer, a barrow, a chalkboard, four instruments, and a considerable quantity of vellum pages down a hillside of moderate gradient.)

(I have filed this under: Building Capabilities, Newly Discovered.)

(I did not know buildings could do this.)

(I find I am not surprised that this one can.)

Author’s Note:

Bramwell shared this with me when presenting this week’s post:

“The above account has been released for public readership by Archivist Bramwell Corin, who wishes it noted that the events described herein were, at all times, managed with appropriate professional composure, and that any suggestion to the contrary is both uncharitable and, in at least one instance, face-down on the floor. The Library has made no official comment. This is consistent with its position on most things.”

I find his attempt to maintain his professionalism during an unscheduled ventilation event exceedingly funny, prompting me to reflect on why I am still finding these sorts of topics amusing in my fifties.
- Chaiga T. Cheska