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The Cartographer's Son
A boy inherits a half-finished map and the dangerous habit of finishing it.
Ages 12+264 pages
The story
Tomas's father drew maps for people who paid well and asked few questions. When he dies, he leaves behind a workshop of debts and one unfinished sheet with a coastline that does not appear on any other map.
Finishing it means leaving home, and leaving home means finding out why the map was never finished in the first place.
A journey story in the old style — roads, weather, strangers, and a boy learning that accuracy and honesty are not the same thing.
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The opening chapter, in full, without leaving the page.
The Cartographer's Son
Chapter One — The Unfinished Sheet
His father had a rule about maps: you may leave a space empty, but you may never fill it with something you have not seen.
For seventeen years Tomas had thought this was a rule about craftsmanship. Standing in the cold workshop with the creditors' notices still on the bench, he understood it was a rule about fear.
The sheet was pinned where it had been pinned for two winters. A coast, drawn confidently for perhaps forty miles, and then nothing — not a guess, not a dotted line, not the polite conventional squiggle that other cartographers used to cover their ignorance. Just paper.
Tomas took down the compass, which was the only thing in the room worth anything, and he did not sell it.
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