Cartomancer

by John Xero

Tears of night bled from his emerald eyes, dripping into a copper chalice, a pooling void. He dipped his archaeopteryx feather quill and began to draw.

The pale leather he worked on was stained and yellowed as his teeth. His voice was the long death of mountains groaning as ice and wind scour and devour them. His words were slow, like drips of drying blood.

“Time is just as measurable as distance, as contoured as any landscape. Demonstrably not linear: this skin is from my grandfather, killed before my father was even conceived. Yet here I am, still, mapping eternity.”



Author bio: John Xero thinks all stories are maps of sorts, and maps are just a different way of telling a story. He’s been writing for twenty years, exploring new storyscapes and finding ways to capture them for others to travel.
Napkin maps: xeroverse
World maps: xeroverse.com
Biographical maps: instagram.com/johnxero

Cartomancer is part of 101 Fiction issue 22.