The Indigo King - James A. Owen [55]
John, Jack, and Chaz all stiffened at this, but it was a testament to the swift self-control of all three men that Ptolemy never noticed their reactions.
“I was mocked in other places, other libraries,” Ptolemy continued, using a small stepladder and a pointer to tap out some locations high on the southern wall. “Here, and here, and, uh”—he turned, pointing east—“and over there. I always believed that imagination plays as crucial a part in the making of maps as education. After all, how else is one to test the spatial boundaries of the world, if one cannot first imagine them?”
John pursed his lips. “That’s a great argument, Ptolemy. Is it a viewpoint your understudy shares?”
The mapmaker nodded and climbed down the ladder. “Yes,” he said morosely, folding his hands behind his back. “It is. That man has such a mind, such a mind, it’s a wonder. And such talent! Just look at these works!”
“These are his?” Jack asked, leafing through some sheets of parchment. “Not yours?”
“Some are mine, some his,” Ptolemy admitted. “Our studies we work on together. But our principal works we have done separately—the better to test their merits against each other’s work.”
Ptolemy pushed his way through two shelves laden with tools and buckets and retrieved a large folio. It was bound in leather and contained sheets of parchment.
“Normally,” he said, placing the book in front of them, “I’d just be drawing the maps on scrolls, as scholars always have done. But keeping the latitudes straight in particular necessitated that they be cut into squares and bound thusly.”
“These are maps of the entire world?” John asked as Ptolemy began to display his work to them.
“Much of it, yes,” he answered. “From the Blessed Isles, here, to Thule, here, and Meroë and Serica, here.” He tapped the map proudly. “Pretty good, yes?”
“It’s remarkable,” John agreed.
“Breathtaking,” said Jack.
“The parchments are very clean,” observed Chaz.
“I’d worked out most of ‘latitude’ myself,” said Ptolemy, indicating the horizontal lines drawn across the maps. “But ‘longitude,’” he added, noting the vertical lines, “didn’t really come together until my understudy arrived. He showed me ways to use some underlying cartological principles that haven’t been used since the philosopher Anaximander’s time to clarify my own measurements. You’d be surprised at how clearly he could articulate them.”
“I’ll bet,” John said dryly.
“I just wish he’d been cleverer,” said Ptolemy. “If not too clever to steal, at least too clever to be caught.”
“Why is that?” asked Jack.
Ptolemy closed the book and dusted off the cover. “We finished my Geographica,” he said sadly, “but we’ll never have the chance to finish his.” He put his book on a wide shelf and removed a second one, which was similar in size and shape but vastly more familiar to John and Jack—even in its much earlier state.
“He calls it his Imaginary Geography,” Ptolemy said. “It contains maps to places that no one has seen, and now,” he added with a sigh, “perhaps no one ever will.”
The Imaginarium Geographica, the earliest version of it at least, was right there in front of them. It was all John could do not to grab the book and start hugging it.
“I’m happy to see it too,” Jack whispered, having noted the flare of joy in his friend’s eyes, “but remember—this is not our Geographica. Not yet.”
Jack was right. As Ptolemy paged through the scant few completed maps, some were familiar, others not so much. Some of the islands of the Underneath were there: Aiaia, and Lixus, and the Island of Wandering Rocks. A few were unmarked, but several others bore annotations.
“An addition of my own,” Ptolemy said proudly. “I felt it was essential to know something more about the lands in a Geographica than just how to get there.”
“We appreciate that a lot,” said John. “More than you can know.”
Chaz scratched his head. “How d’you annotate a map t’ an imaginary place?”
“Just the idea was mine, not the writing itself,” Ptolemy said. “But even so, how could you go wrong writing