The Cartographer Dreams

by Daniel Braum

The cartographer dreams.

Asleep at his drafting table. Wet ink on the maps he is drawing for the Dutch East India  Company.

Indigo lines blur in his unconscious mind, dissolving into the black night sky.

He traces lines across the heavens. Glowing white paths arcing from star to star.

“These routes are not for merchant schooners,” a voice tells him.

“But what kind of fleet could traverse the heavens,” he asks.

His dream shifts and he is standing in a vast desert. Strange, towering, rock formations surround him.

Dingos howl. A camel snorts and looks skyward. A pair of wallabies hop away. 

The giant hull fills the sky. The vessel is so massive all the cartographer can see is its silver underside, eclipsing the moon and sky.

He wonders how can it be that it is airborne, then he awakes.

#

The cartographer daydreams of the routes between the stars and the great silver ship, but his contracts and deadlines with the Dutch East India Company await.

He draws the Indian Ocean. And the Horn of Africa. Coastlines and ports and dotted lines ocean faring ships must travel with their cargos of spice and precious things.

He works until late in the night and falls asleep at his drafting table again.

#

In his dream the great sky vessel is hovering above the desert sky. The ship is a giant sphere above the primordial landscape. An artificial thing, bathing the stone and sand and parched earth in white light.

“Draw the maps,” the voice tells the cartographer. “Come here, bury them in a chest of lead in the mountains called  Kata Tjuta.”

“Why?” the cartographer demands.

The light flares. In the white brilliance he sees a story of moving pictures played out in the sky before him. The great sky vessel is coming. They are fleeing persecution like the colonists fleeing Britain. Their enemies are far stronger. So they must flee very far away. They are from so far it will take them hundreds of years to arrive. If they are caught they must have no trace of their plans of their final destination with them.

“This is why we need you,” the voice says.

The cartographer awakens. 

#

The cartographer returns to inking the trade routes. He draws for several minutes, wondering where he can procure a chest of lead. Then he stops and unrolls a blank piece of parchment. In his mind’s eye he sees the stars and begins to draw.

– END-