Both Milo and Sikakama instinctively leaned closer.
Their eyes wandered across the streets and buildings drawn upon the map.
Sikakama's attention, however, was quickly drawn elsewhere.
The margins were crowded with handwritten notes, while small circles drawn in black ink marked dozens of different locations, several of them connected by thin, delicate lines.
Sikakama's eyes lingered over the notes. The varying shades of ink suggested that they had been added at different times, perhaps over many years.
"A little different," Milo remarked after his eyes had finished wandering across the map.
"You're right," Uncle Ben agreed.
He slowly brushed his hand across the old parchment, then traced one of the streets with his finger.
"It's an old map. I bought it from a traveling peddler. Some valuable things are owned by people who never realize their worth. He sold it to me for next to nothing."
His finger moved along the faded streets.
"The roads were different from the streets of the capital we know today. New buildings have since been raised, and parts of the city have been reshaped. Geography is always redrawing itself."
He remained silent for a moment, his finger coming to rest upon the faded circle.
Then, without saying a word, Uncle Ben rose from his chair.
The old wooden chair let out a faint creak as it slid back.
One by one, he drew the heavy velvet curtains shut until the last thread of daylight vanished.
The room sank into near darkness.
He secured the heavy iron bolt across the shop door, then quietly turned the old wooden sign in the window until the word Closed faced the street.
Satisfied that no customer would interrupt them, he returned to the table.
Their eyes followed him as he crossed the room toward the tall wooden cabinet standing against the wall.
He reached to one of its upper shelves and carefully picked up a small brass oil lamp. Beside it rested a polished copper mirror, no larger than the palm of his hand. After a brief hesitation, he took that as well.
Carrying both objects with deliberate care, he returned to the table and placed them beside the old map.
Milo and Sikakama exchanged a brief glance, neither quite understanding what he was about to do.
Sikakama's gaze settled on the lamp.
"...A lamp?"
She noticed the unusual brass cover surrounding its flame, unlike any ordinary oil lamp she had seen before.
A faint smile crossed Uncle Ben's face.
"Sometimes, the only way to find the path is to let a little light show you where to look."
He lit the oil lamp.
A narrow beam escaped through the brass cover, which allowed only a thin shaft of light to pass.
Then he picked up the polished copper mirror and slowly adjusted its angle until the beam struck the surface of the map at a sharp slant.
Milo and Sikakama watched in silence, their eyes following every deliberate movement, curiosity growing with each passing second.
At first...
nothing happened.
Then, as the angle shifted little by little, delicate lines began to emerge across the ancient parchment, as though they had been hidden within it all along.
It wasn't magic.
The lines revealed themselves gradually, appearing in places where nothing had existed only moments before.
Sikakama and Milo stared in stunned silence, their eyes fixed upon the hidden paths spreading beneath the northern district like the roots of a great tree buried beneath the earth.
They did not follow the streets drawn in ordinary ink.
Instead, every one of them converged toward a single point beyond the northern edge of Pendralice.
"I've never seen this place before," Milo said, his voice filled with disbelief.
"No."
Uncle Ben replied quietly.
"It was never meant to be known."
His fingertips rested upon the edge of the parchment.
"I spent years comparing this copy with newer maps."
"I believed the truth lay in what had been erased."
He shook his head.
"But I was wrong."
His gaze drifted toward the lamp.
"The truth had been hidden..."
"...within what had never been allowed to appear."
Sikakama felt her heart tighten.
For a moment, she could not bring herself to look away from the newly revealed lines.
Then she spoke.
"So..."
"...you've known about this for a long time?"
He nodded.
"Eight years."
"But I never believed it pointed to a real place."
He paused, his eyes resting on the map.
"At first, I thought I had simply been lucky."
"I never imagined someone like me would be the one to discover it."
A faint, almost self-conscious smile touched his lips.
"I had been working late that night. I couldn't sleep, as usual, so I found myself working by lamplight."
"I happened to have this map open on the table. I was excited simply to have found something this old."
He glanced toward the lamp.
"Then, by chance, a narrow beam of light fell across the parchment."
He gave a quiet breath of amusement.
"And the lines appeared."
His finger traced the concealed routes until it reached the north.
"They all end here."
He stopped over a faded symbol that was barely visible, even beneath the slanting light.
"A place..."
"...that appears on no modern map."
"A district lost long ago."
He looked up at Sikakama.
"The sentence in your book..."
Seek the half of the city the sun forgot.
"At first, I thought it referred to an astronomical phenomenon."
"So I studied the sun's path during winter."
"The surrounding ridges cast their shadows across this part of the city for most of the day."
"Very little sunlight ever reaches it."
He paused.
"I thought that was the answer."
Then he slowly shook his head.
"But it wasn't."
His finger settled once more upon the forgotten symbol.
"The real answer..."
"...had been hidden inside the map itself."
The faint beam continued to glide across the ancient parchment.
And for the first time...
it seemed...
as though a lost piece of the city had finally returned to its rightful place.
"But when I compared this map with every modern one I could find..."
"...I noticed something."
He tapped the circle lightly.
"This place..."
"...no longer exists on any official map."
Silence settled over the room.
Uncle Ben drew a slow breath.
"I can't be certain."
"But if your book points anywhere..."
His finger remained fixed upon the faded circle.
"...I believe it points here."
"...to the place the city itself chose to forget."
"Did you ever try going there?" Sikakama asked seriously.
"I did."
Uncle Ben nodded, his voice lowering slightly.
"I went on an expedition to the area years ago, but I found nothing."
A sense of disappointment crept over Sikakama, though she had not expected to feel it.
Milo, however, made no effort to hide his frustration.
"What? After all that? I was expecting something amazing."
But Sikakama did not answer him.
Her mind remained fixed on one thing.
Something about it didn't make sense.
If someone had gone to such lengths to hide an entire place from the maps, only to keep it absent from every map that came after... how could it simply not exist in reality?
She couldn't bring herself to believe that.
She raised her eyes toward Uncle Ben.
"You said you went there..."
She hesitated for a moment, as though rearranging the thought in her mind.
"But... what if you couldn't actually enter the place?"
Silence settled over the room.
Uncle Ben slowly raised his eyes to her.
For the first time since revealing the map, the calm smile had disappeared from his face.
His gaze returned to the faded circle.
Then back to Sikakama.
As though her thought was not entirely new to him...
but something he had never allowed himself to consider before.
"Sikakama's voice was firm."
"I'm going there."
"What? But Uncle Ben already went there and found nothing!" Milo protested, disappointment clear in his voice.
"We lose nothing by checking again," Sikakama replied calmly, as though the decision had already been made in her mind.
"Perhaps some things are meant to remain unfound," Uncle Ben said softly, his eyes as calm and clear as the surface of a still lake.
"Otherwise, why leave the clues at all?"
Sikakama slowly pushed her chair back and rose to her feet.
She looked down at Uncle Ben, her expression calmer now, but there was a quiet determination in her eyes.
"Thank you, Uncle Ben."
She bowed her head slightly.
"Without what you've told me, I wouldn't have understood what those sentences were pointing toward."
"But I don't think I can stop here."
Uncle Ben had begun carefully rolling up the map.
Then he walked toward her with quiet, measured steps.
When he reached her, he held the rolled parchment out with his usual smile.
Sikakama stared at it for a moment, hardly believing what she was seeing.
"What?"
"Didn't you say you were going there?"
Uncle Ben placed the scroll in her hands.
"Every explorer needs a map to show them the way."
For a moment, Sikakama stood frozen.
Then she gripped the scroll firmly with both hands and held it against her chest, as though afraid someone might take it away.
Milo, meanwhile, sprang to his feet, his eyes widening.
"What?! That map is incredibly valuable, and you're just giving it to her?"
Uncle Ben merely smiled.
Then he turned to Milo.
"And you, Milo... show her the proper way out of the city, and I'll reward you."
Milo raised an eyebrow.
"Even though I don't believe in these stories... I would have done it anyway."
He looked away, as though he wanted to make one thing perfectly clear.
"But not for the reward."
A small smile appeared on Uncle Ben's face.
"Of course."
Meanwhile, Sikakama tightened her grip around the scroll.
For the first time, the words she had read in that book were no longer merely words.
She now had a map.
A path.