The Mapmaker's Secret
地図師の秘密
Beyond the mountains, the travellers reached a village called Hollowmere.
An old woman there recognised the ink stains on Finn's hands.
"You carry the ," she said, "that had been passed down for centuries."
Finn asked her what she meant by such surprising words.
She explained that the power had been handed from mapmaker to mapmaker.
"It had been passed down long before you were ever born," she said.
The last person to hold the was a man named Orin.
Orin had been trained in this very village many years ago.
"He could rivers and move whole forests with his pen."
But one day, the great mapmaker had suddenly vanished without a word.
Finn asked her the reason why the famous cartographer had disappeared.
"He grew afraid of the price the forbidden ink demanded," she answered.
"The reason why he vanished was fear of losing his whole self."
Orin had used the ink too often and had forgotten his own name.
"In the end, he did not know the reason why he was crying."
Finn felt a deep and fear settle over his heart.
The had been given to him by forces he could not see.
He had never been asked whether he wanted such a .
"Where did Orin go?" Finn asked in a small, frightened voice.
"No one knows the place where the lost mapmaker finally stopped," she said.
She gave Finn an old, map that Orin had once drawn.
On its edge, a shaking hand had written a single word.
The word was "," pressed deep into the yellowed paper.
Finn understood that this was a from the man he might become.