The Old Map

They found the map when they took the paper off the wall in the back bedroom. Somebody had drawn it by hand, a long time before, and had glued it to the plaster so carefully that it came away in one piece.

It showed the village, which was easy to recognise, and the river, which had not moved. It also showed a path between the church and the mill that Colin had never seen, although he had walked that ground since he was a boy.

Ayse took a photograph of the map and asked at the shop. The woman there remembered a path, or thought she did. Her father had talked about it. It had gone when the road was widened, and nobody had objected, because by then nobody used it.

That evening they walked the line the map showed. For the first two hundred paces there was nothing at all. Then the ground changed under their feet: firmer, straighter, a little higher than the field on either side.

They followed it as far as the fence and stood there in the half dark. The path had not disappeared. It had simply stopped being used, and the field had grown over it, and everyone who had known it had died.

Colin put the map back on the wall in a frame. Visitors ask about the line between the church and the mill, and he tells them it is still there. Most of them do not believe him until they walk it.