OoOoO 

Day number three thousand, six hundred and seventy-two.

Vinie slowly etched another notch onto her calendar. Three hundred and sixty-five notches for each vertical line, ten finished lines. That was a notch for every day that she had spent in the dungeons of Utunma. Twenty-two days ago, Vinie had resignedly traced out another blank year line, her eleventh.

Stepping back from the wall, Vinie took in the sum total of her last decade of life; three thousand, six hundred and seventy-two notches in rocks. Each and every one of those days was indistinguishable from the rest. Only Vinie knew the stories behind the stone lines.

Day number eighteen. Vinie brushed the worn groove with her callused fingertips. That was the day she had finally stopped crying herself to sleep every night. Day number ninety-four. That had been the day she had fallen ill with stomach flu. Pitiful as it might sound, that had actually been a highlight. For a week she had had the company of the prison doctor to break the long, empty monotony of her existence.

Then there was day number three hundred and fifty-seven; her first wedding anniversary. Vinie had celebrated by repeating every single word of the wedding ceremony back to herself, sitting with her knees drawn to her chin on her thin, mouldy cot. Then, with nothing else to do that day but sit, she had repeated the words again.

"From the sea, of the sea, to the sea."

Vinie realized she had said the words aloud. She had started talking to herself somewhere around day two thousand and twelve. It was either that or go days on end without hearing another clear human voice. Occasionally the shouting of other prisoners or the gruff commands of guards could be heard, but they were always muddled, indistinct as they echoed along the black stone corridors. Sometimes the cook would say something like "There ya are" or "Eat up girly" when he dropped off her daily meal. Vinie clung to these words as tightly as she clung to her black pearl each night.

Moving over to the ninth year line, Vinie rubbed the deep mark where the three-thousandth day began. That was the day she had begun work on her map. Today was the day she would finish it.

Inch by painstaking inch, Vinie had carved a copy of the map of Goran into the far wall of her cell. It was enormous, fully large enough to span from corner to corner and ceiling to floor. Working with only a few rusty nails as tools was difficult, and more than a few times Vinie's fingers had bled when the nail slipped. The map was exquisitely detailed though, and looking at her finished progress at the end of every day brought rare and precious flashes of happiness.

The southern peninsula and Utunma nearly touched the floor in the bottom left corner of the cell. From there the western coast dipped and stretched outward, passing the fishing village of Danitesk. North of that was Syrion, a place Vinie had heard much about as a child from traders. Closing her eyes, she could almost imagine the cliffside baths and sandstone buildings laden with ferns. Once she had dreamed of visiting Syrion, a long time ago.

Next came the inlet of the Ramida River, piercing inland straight to Aryna Lake and BlueStone. From there it wasn't far to the vast northern forests. Goran ended in the north at Paledir's Bay, somewhere so cold that water even froze and turned solid. It was at the base of Paledir's Bay that The Teeth started; the mountain range that split Goran cleanly down the center. From her lessons at the school in Utunma as a child, Vinie had learned that there was nothing much east of The Teeth, only open plains and barren deserts. Getting there was only possible by a narrow road through the midpoint of The Teeth, or by sailing around the south coast from the ports at Moaan.

Getting every last detail of her geography lessons etched into the stone had taken Vinie over a year. Now there was only one thing left add; Amenthere. Vinie had been putting off putting the capital on to her map until the last minute. Seeing that place, the heart of her sorrows given its spot in the world, it felt wrong.

"The center of civilization, they call it."

Vinie grimaced, her grip on the nail tightening. There wasn't much left of the tool. After today, what would she do to pass the time? Perhaps she ought to just leave the map unfinished, a never-ending project.

"And then what...spend the rest of my life staring at the blank spot where Amenthere should be?"

Lifting the nail and bracing it with her thumb, Vinie drilled the little dot for a city into the stone. The wall felt wet and sticky against her arm. Water was forever leaking through the foundations of the prison.

It took only a moment to make the mark, another hour to carve the name "Amenthere". When she was finished, Vinie backed away from the map until her shoulders hit the bars of her cell door. The nail fell with a clink to the floor. It was finished.

Sliding down until she hit the hard floor, Vinie propped her elbows on her knobby knees. Ten years. Ten years alone with only her own voice, blank walls, and a pearl. The little sphere weighed hard and heavy between her eyebrows, where it had sat for more than a decade. Apparently the prison guards thought it was cursed, having been created with Obad magic. No one had ever tried to take it from her, not even during the arrest.

Untying the leather thong from around her head, Vinie laid the pearl in her palm next to the white marriage knot tattoo. It was just as endlessly black as it had been the day Zaneo gave it to her. Even the night sky at new moon could not have been darker. Sometimes Vinie would look at the pearl and pretend she could see the stars in it. It had been so long since she had seen the open sky, or the sea.

What would life be like now if Zaneo had lived? Would they have had children by now? What would their names have been?

"Stop that," Vinie told herself firmly. "You haven't survived ten years alone to go mad now."

Still, the longer she looked at the finished map the more she wondered. The Obads had said that Zaneo was powerful in his own right. What could Zaneo have done if Amenthere had not come riding in with their king, their Obads, and their axe?

"What claim did they have over him anyways? Is the capital the only place in all Goran where Obads can live?"

Pearl still in hand, Vinie pulled herself to her feet. She found the nub of the nail where she had dropped it, hiding in a grimy crack between the stones. Standing before the map on the wall, Vinie stared at the space between Utunma and Amenthere.

"What could you have done, Zaneo?"

Placing the worn tip of the nail against the black rock where the southern peninsula started, she scratched a faint, spidery line heading inland from the sea. In her mind's eye, she could see Zaneo; that all-encompassing smile of his, and the way the water had swirled in the marriage cup. She could hear the low hum as he used his magic.

"What could you have done?"

In her imagination, Zaneo raised his long arms and closed his bright blue-green eyes. She saw the sea, calm and vast, stir in answer to his droning summons. The ocean rose, rose, rose until it was a wave the likes of which nearly destroyed Danitesk decades before.

With her eyes closed and mind wandering, Vinie let the nail scratch across the stone. Inch by inch, she carved across the surface of her stone Goran.

The Zaneo in her mind raised the sea higher and higher still. Nothing could stand before the wave he had summoned. And then, with a wave of his arms, Zaneo sent the water thundering toward the shore. It struck hard, cleaving through sand, earth, the very stone upon which Goran sat. The sea sliced through the land as Vinie's iron nail scraped across stone. A channel yawned in the wake of the water, quickly filled in by the hungry, serpentine currents. The land, once whole, was split in two by the sea.

Opening her eyes, Vinie saw for the first time what she had done. A single, wavering line stretched from the western coast to The Teeth, cutting off the entirety of southern Goran. Danitesk, Moaan, Utunma, the Bay of Torbos, all now lay beyond the reach of the capital beyond Vinie's imaginary channel of water.

"Not southern Goran...not part of the king's world, but something else; a new country."

No doubt she sounded mad, babbling to herself alone in the gloom. There was no one to hear though.

"And if the south is free, then so is the east."

With a renewed vigor, Vinie attacked the wall, chiseling a line straight down through The Teeth from north to south. Once that was finished, she scratched another border between Amenthere and the northern forests. Then she divided the east again, and then one more time for good measure—it was so large after all. Every time she started a new line Vinie imagined Zaneo standing on the shoreline, raising the sea to cut off that land from the main.

Only when the nail at last broke, taking one of Vinie's fingernails with it, did she stop. Cradling her bleeding thumb, Vinie took in the product of her momentary madness.

In the shadows of the cell, the map of Goran looked like a spider web. White lines cut across the black stone in every which way, dividing city from city and climate from climate. Amenthere sat alone in this maze of borders, looking very meek and insignificant.

"Where is your kingdom now, Your Majesty?" Vinie asked the empty cell smugly.

It would be a new world. No longer would Obads have to leave their homes to join Goran's Magicol. No more would the south answer to laws written in Amenthere. They would write their own laws. It was incredible. It was...a dream.

"Just a dream, Zaneo, like us."

All the energy that had propelled her only moments ago drained away. Falling onto her rickety cot, Vinie tore off a scrap of dirty blanket to bandage her bleeding finger. All that work, and she had destroyed her map that had taken so much time and effort to make. Now she had to look at that shattered land, and the shattered dream behind it, forever.

With a soul-deep sigh, Vinie rolled toward the wall, turning her back on her mangled creation. Day three thousand, six hundred and seventy-two, the rest of her life left to go.

OoOoO

Vinie was lying on her back on her cot, staring up at the ceiling, when a snuffling sound broke the silence. Jolted by the rare new sound, Vinie swung her bare feet down onto the cold stone floor. There was nothing in the cell, not even the rats that occasionally came looking to steal scraps of food. Then the snuffling came again, from high up.

Craning her neck to the tiny window near the corner ceiling, Vinie realized what was making the noise. It was a dog, a muddy mutt with long tawny hair hanging down over its eyes and muzzle. She could hear it panting in the midday Utunman sun. The sight of another living creature that was not a guard or the prison cook was a delight.

"Hello!" Vinie called up to the dog, careful not to be too loud in case a guard or another prisoner heard. "Stay right there, I'm coming."

As quickly as she could, weakened as she was by her long incarceration, Vinie pulled her cot over beneath the window. The mutt panted as loudly as ever, sounding quite congested.

"Stay there, don't go anywhere!"

Even with the cot to stand on, Vinie was just short enough that actually reaching up to pet the dog through the window bars was out of the question. Disappointed, she settled for talking to the shaggy stray instead.

"You look like you've been out swimming this morning, yas? Was the water nice and cool and fresh?"

Straining, Vinie just thought she could even catch a whiff of seawater from the dog's fur. It was a horrible, wonderful odor. Vinie would have cheerfully given her left arm for a chance to jump into the ocean again.

"Sounds like you have a stopped nose. You aren't sick, are you?"

The dog wriggled forward, and the sound of its tail thumping on the ground outside a muffled drumbeat. It stuck its head right up through the window bars, and Vinie could see why its panting sounded so congested. A roll of cloth was clenched between its teeth.

"What do you have there?"

Before Vinie could reach out or duck, the dog dropped the wadded-up cloth directly on her head. It was soaked with drool.

"Otch, watch it dog!" Vinie squawked, surprised.

Scooting backward, the mutt disappeared from view. Instantly dismayed, Vinie cried out after it.

"Wait, don't go! I'm sorry, it's alright! Please, come back!"

It was too late though; the dog was gone. Vinie mourned the loss of the first companionship she'd had in months. Dropping down onto the cot, she let her head fall to her knees and groaned.

Something wet touched her foot, and she remembered the cloth the dog had dropped. With nothing better to do, Vinie poked at the sodden bundle. It wasn't just a blank scrap though. A corner fell back to reveal the edge of something written on the inside.

Hands shaking, Vinie unrolled the stinky, drooled-on message. How long had it even been since she'd read something not written by herself? The note was short, written in a tiny, looping hand.

When a stranger who is not a stranger comes to call, give no sign.

"A stranger who is not a stranger?" Vinie asked aloud, confused. Then just as quickly, she clapped a hand over her mouth, cursing her carelessness. What if a guard happened to be nearby right at that moment? What if someone found the message?

With thoroughness only someone with endless time and no way to spend it could possess, Vinie tore the cloth to threads. By the time she was finished, nothing wider than one of the spidery lines on her map could be found of it. For good measure, she even stuffed those threads into the cracks between the stones in the floor. Then there was nothing to do but wait. After ten years, Vinie was very good at waiting.

OoOoO

When the bolt of her cell door was drawn back that evening, Vinie was ready. She eagerly scanned the faces of the two Utunman guards who entered, looking for a familiar face. There was nothing there but bored glowers and badly trimmed beards. Still, they were company.

"Over there," the older, fatter guard grunted, pointing at the heavy iron ring on the far wall next to her year lines.

Once, Vinie had railed against being chained to that wall. The first time they had tried to do it, she had called the guards every foul name she ever learned from Gideo and spat at them. There was too much nervous excitement in Vinie's heart to worry about such small matters now. She quickly went to stand by the wall and let the man snap a heavy manacle around her ankle. They must need to do something with her cell, some kind of work perhaps.

"What are we doing tonight?" Vinie asked, dangerously close to cheerful. She couldn't help it, that message had given her more hope than she'd felt in years. The younger guard with the broken nose stared at her.

"'We' are not doing anything. You are going to stay put and keep quiet, yas?"

Reining herself in mentally, Vinie nodded and shut her mouth. The older guard went back out into the darkened corridor and called out to someone. When he returned, he carried a torch and led an old man in a locksmith's apron. The locksmith was wizened and shrunken, a hunched-over figure with a white beard and deep wrinkles in his black face. He walked with a pronounced limp in his right leg.

Vinie's eyes instantly filled with tears and a lump jammed her throat tight. She had to fake a violent coughing fit to stop herself from bursting into tears right then and there. It had been ten years since last she saw her father.

Bakko shuffled over to the cell door and proceeded to inspect the lock, totally ignoring Vinie. The guards were both giving Vinie a severe glare as she brought down her cough attack. Bakko's back was turned to the prisoner though, and so they said nothing.

"These locks are in terrible shape, worst I've seen in all my time in the business," Bakko suddenly declared, waving the guards over. "I'll have to replace them, no doubt about it."

"Fine, charge it to the prison account. Just get it done, Locksmith, and make sure you use something that can't be picked with a bone or anything like that."

The younger guard gave Vinie a glower over his shoulder as he spoke. Vinie had gained a little notoriety in the prison on day one thousand, four hundred and eighty-six for having picked her cell lock with a chicken bone. She had gotten almost to the kitchens before the guards finally tackled her and dragged her back.

"I have just the thing." Bakko was rummaging through his bag. "New made, perfect for this sort of job." He produced a shiny bronze padlock, heavy enough to cause Bakko's scrawny arm to droop under its weight. "See?"

"Fine, fine," the older guard said, waving a hand.

Bakko set to work, prising the old lock out of the cell door as the guards looked on. Vinie did her best not to look at her father, or even in his direction. To do so would be to invite another meltdown. Instead, she took off her pearl and played with it in her fingers. The guards subtly shifted their weight away from her when she did so, and Vinie smiled to herself. So it was true; the guards did think her pearl was cursed.

After nearly half an hour, Bakko straightened up with a grunt and a loud crackle from his spine. Vinie didn't remember her father seeming so...old. How was it that he was here, locksmithing for the prison? The thought of how the years must have changed everyone from her old life nearly made Vinie's head spin.

"Alright, all done. That ought to hold everything from a drunken SkinPainter to a CoinDancer's herd of admirers!"

"I'd like to see a drunken SkinPainter find their way out of a soggy cheesecloth sack," the younger guard snorted.

One guard escorted Bakko from the cell while the other unchained Vinie from the wall. The portly fellow closed the new lock on the door with a sharp, satisfying click. He gave it several experimental tugs before grunting and leaving Vinie alone once again, in the dark.

"A drunken SkinPainter and a CoinDancer," Vinie whispered to herself. That could only mean one thing. Whatever was going on, Gideo and Sahar were in on it along with Bakko. Despite the gloom, the dank and the dirty smells of prison, Vinie felt full of sunlight.

OoOoO