The Book of Maps

The village's great prize had always been its book collection. Generations of mayors had striven to add to it, and there was now a full dozen. Of course, only a small few could actually read them, but they were generous with their skill, teaching those they could and reading aloud to the rest. Literate or not, the villagers treated the books with an awed reverence, and this is why they were so upset when they discovered that one of the books had been destroyed.
"Peace, friends!" the mayor called to those assembled outside of his house. "We must remain calm until the true nature of this travesty is uncovered."
Behind him the door opened, and his two sons carried out the family's dining table. The crowd parted to let them pass and the table was set down in the middle of the square. The mayor's wife followed them, with the wretched book held gently in her arms. She put it on the table. The crowd let out a sigh.
"The Book of Maps!" she said. "Of them all it was the most beautiful. This is too cruel."
Overcome, she covered her face with her apron. Her daughter took her arm and murmured sympathetically. The villagers looked, dismayed, upon what had been the most well-loved book in the collection. Fairy-tales were well and good, and had their place as all things do, but no fairy-tale had ever been as remarkable as a story that was true. The Book of Maps had been compiled by the Salamanders, a family of explorers and lore-gatherers of almost mythical fame. The detailed maps were accompanied by long descriptions of the places - of its climate and vegetation, of the local people and their customs. For a long time nobody spoke, and then the goose girl stepped forward.
"May I touch it?" she asked. The mayor hesitated, but she was one of the few present who could read, and he was at a loss for what to do. He nodded.
She opened the slightly buckled cover carefully. Ink oozed across her fingers like blood from an open wound. She wiped it onto her skirt.
"The map-pages have been torn out," she said. "There are only crumbled fragments here where they should be."
As if to illustrate her words, a breath of wind scooped up the fragments and swirled them away.
"But the words -" she frowned. "It's as if the ink has been taken up from the page, except for a few letters..."
Her lips moved a little as she looked at the remaining letters, turning the pages faster and faster until she reached the final page and closed the book with a snap.
"What do they say?" the mayor asked, though he was not sure he really wanted to know.
"Only three words, over and over," the goose girl said. She ran her fingers through her hair, not knowing about the ink streaks she left there.
"Over and over. It only says, 'she is dead'."

Succession

At the top of a rather small mountain, the temple of the Mapmother waited. The scribes and parchmenters were on edge - the Mapmother was ailing, and her successor had yet to be found. Usually the new acolyte would appear before the 'Mother even fell ill, and there was time aplenty for their apprenticeship. But this time there was no acolyte, and this was very worrying.
What would become of the temple, if the 'Mother were - North forbid! - to die without training a successor?
The oldest of the scribes - whose hands were permanently shadowed by a lifetime of ink-stains - seemed to fear it most. They muttered about a dark time, an unspeakable time, when things were wrong. The youngest parchmenters found this dreadful and exciting, but could never manage to press anything more out of their elders.
"By the Four Cardinal Points," the scribes said, making the mark of the compass on their chests, "May we never be so directionless again."

But weeks passed, and no girl came to them, and the 'Mother died.
All across the world ships' sails shuddered and cart-wheels creaked. The pieces of sextants and compasses fell apart and ever map that had ever been scribed crumbled. Watchmen on their rounds halted, suddenly unsure of which street they were on. Carters' horses fought the reins and travellers on isolated roads wandered from the path. Many of them perished - into bogs and lakes, over cliffs or simply into the dark and merciless forests.
In the Mapmother's temple everyone fell to their knees and, in a little village that the world had never heard of, a girl with a strange birthmark on her face woke with a start.

PvN

When I first saw John Sterling I knew he was a man to be admired. He was tall and muscular, sun-brown and salt-flecked, shaped more like a bear than a man. I was a kitten beside him. One swing of his paw would tumble me across the room.
I had never known anyone like him - all the men of my home town were small and lithe, with the kind of muscles that were hidden beneath the surface. John Sterling left nothing to the imagination. Even in his sleep he was intimidating - here was a man to command a whole fleet.
Here was a man it would be a pity to kill.
So, yes, I hesitated.
And that was when he woke up.

Burn Burn

Of course there was always something strange about Sandra, but nobody picked it until the day that she snapped. The day that she came to school naked, and ran through the halls screaming until the nurse managed to catch her. The day that, escaping the nurse's office, she got into the art room and doused herself in chemicals before running outside into the yard. I was eating a sandwich when she set herself on fire. Multi-grain bread with lettuce and cold roast chicken. When Sandra was burning, she didn't scream at all. She just stood on the faded hopscotch grid, flames dripping from her fingertips, looking at us all with the deadest eyes. I'd always thought that was a dumb expression, until the day Sandra snapped.
It wouldn't have been so bad if she was the only one, but only a week later a kid from the preschool down the road somehow eluded his teachers and, standing on the exact spot where Sandra had stood, at the exact time of day, he took his daddy's lighter out of his pocket and touched it to his sleeve. I had an apple that day. It was green and shiny and juicy and I only had one bite, and later that night, when I couldn't sleep because I kept smelling the kid burning again, my appetite returned and I wished I hadn't thrown the apple away. It seemed even more tragic than the kid's eyes - dead like Sandra's, dead like the eyes of a fish laid out on ice in the supermarket - that I'd wasted such a delicious apple. My stomach rumbled loudly, and then I felt sick, and I only made it as far as the door before I threw up.

They closed the school but people kept coming there to light themselves on the hopscotch grid, even when the school gates were padlocked and security guards were hired and policemen with dogs patrolled the fenceline. Somehow, at 12:24 in the afternoon week after week, somebody was there, ready to die, and nobody could stop it and nobody understood what was happening.