Penn’s drawer of old maps is a strip of years that has survived more weather than Holt’s last tally.

Year by year the Cinder loops. A sheet from Grand’s time: almost straight. A sheet from your parent’s time: a bend like a thought. Last year’s: oxbow bright as a comma. The territory walked. The map that refuses to follow is the one that will put a wagon in a parenthesis.

“Living landscapes,” Penn says, not unkind. “Coasts move. Rivers migrate. A pretty sheet from a far printer cannot smell peat.”

You compare the drawer to the window. Reedfen is still east, still full, still trying to be inked.

Tansy grins, then stops grinning. “If we say it true in public, do we kill the wonder?”

Penn snorts. “Wonder that needs a blank is a thin coat. Give people the oxbow and the Atlas. They can keep both in a pocket.”