Armand’s First Letter. Amelia’s First Letter.
18 July 1018
17 Rue Thomas, Toulouse
My dearest cousin Armand,
Maximilian has just received an answer to a question he sent to Dr. Tillotson, his tutor in wizardry at Edenford. It seems that no one has ever actually surveyed the ley lines of Cumbria—not in any rigorous and methodical way. The maps that first-year Edenford students pore over so eagerly are based on random wizard’s diaries, traveler’s tales, straight lines on the maps published by His Majesty’s Geographic Society, and a great deal of conjecture. This, we have discovered is why no graduate of Edenford takes the study of the nodal network with any gravity at all—they are all perfectly aware that the data is flawed, incomplete, and frequently imaginary.
“But the tyros take such pleasure in their investigations that we would never dream of telling them so,” Tillotson wrote to us. “It shows that they have the spirit of investigation, and to the side, it would be rather like kicking a puppy, don’t you think?”
Not all of the data is misleading, of course; the lines and nodal points within a day or two of Edenford have been well established by those same students in the course of their endeavors. But little is known of a certainty beyond scattered points.
We, however, have three things the undergraduates of Edenford do not.
First, we know that seeming perfectly straight ley lines are segmented. Even if the straight lines on the Cumbrian map are ley lines, there are undoubtly more nodal points than previous students have assumed.
Second we know that some ley lines “run off the edge” of the Land, as it were, a finding completely unknown to the Edenford studentry.
Maximilian, who is looking over my shoulder, insists that “unterminated” is the proper way to describe such lines; I have rejoined that we do not know that, that each of them may have a terminus in some other Land; and so we have agreed, provisionally, to refer to them as “stubs” in daily speech.
And third, we have our caravan, which allows us to follow ley lines wherever they go, measuring along the way.
Since last I wrote we have discovered five more “stubs”, all pointing more or less in the direction of Cumbria, and have surveyed all nodal points in another small area of Provençe; and now, as you no doubt have guessed, we are going to take our caravan to Cumbria and examine the Edge on the opposite side of the Abyss.
It took some fast talking to persuade the Masters of L’École du Sorciers to fund the trip—fast talking by me, I mean to say, for of course Maximilian is not a student at L’École, and so he has no say in the school’s affairs. And as “our caravan” was purchased by L’École, the Masters’, alas, do.
But they could not deny that we have already made significant discoveries, Armand; and as it happens, traveling in the caravan has proven to be much less costly than they had anticipated: we have needed to purchase only our food, and as we prepare most of it ourselves the cost could not be lower.
In the end the Masters agreed that it was worth surveying le Bord opposée, though they expect us to make a quick voyage of it and return speedily to our survey of Provençe; for as they say, the wizardry of Cumbria is not their concern.
We have arranged to be carried, caravan and all, aboard a trading vessel. We leave tomorrow; and we leave the Masters contemplating the cost of shipping, and pondering whether they might wish to procure a Tuppenny packet of their own.
But that is to the side, and for the future.
Here in the present, there are great things to be discovered, Armand! I am sure of it. Who could have said that when I knocked He Who Is Not To Be Named into the duck pond that it would lead to such things? Not I, to say the least.
Your most inquisitive cousin,
Amelia
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Photo by Joshua Fuller on Unsplash
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