Barker Cartwright spread six maps across his workbench, and every one lied to him in the same way. Each showed the frontier clearly. Each stopped at the same jagged edge, where the ink ran out and the paper stayed blank. Beyond that edge lay the wildlands, and somewhere in the wildlands lay the relic he had spent two years chasing. He tapped the empty space with one claw. No road. No river. No mark to follow. He could pack his boots and his coat and walk east for a month and still die lost, having charted nothing. He rolled the maps and stared at the wall. A frontier trader had once mentioned an old hermit who lived past the last outpost. The hermit, the trader said, had walked places no mapmaker dared. Barker did not trust the story. But a bad lead beat a blank page. He took his coat and went. The cabin sat alone in a clearing of stumps. Weathered logs, a leaning chimney, ivy crawling the eaves. Barker knocked. The door opened a hand's width. A chihuahua peered out from under a dark hood, leaning hard on a wooden cane. He was small and ancient, and his brown eyes moved over Barker like a customs officer counting coins. "Explorers," the old dog said. "Always the same. You want the empty part of the map filled in." He did not sound impressed. "Cornelius Shade doesn't hand out miracles at his door." "I can pay," Barker said. "Everyone says that." But the door swung wider. Cornelius shuffled inside, cane thumping the plank floor. Barker followed. The cabin smelled of woodsmoke and old paper. On a table sat a thick book bound in cracked covers. Barker reached for it. Cornelius's cane cracked down on the table an inch from his paw. "Careful. That's older than your grandfather's grandfather." The chihuahua opened it himself, slow, one torn page at a time. Inside, faded ink showed the wildlands. Trails. Water. A route threading past the frontier's edge, deep into the blank country every other map refused. Barker's heart kicked. "How much?" Cornelius closed the book and rested both paws on his cane. "It isn't for sale. My legs are done walking. But my eyes still work." He studied Barker's coat, his boots, his mud. "You carry it. I read it. We go together, or you go blind. Choose." Barker looked at the book, then at the old dog who owned the only path he needed. Alone, he had a blank page and a death sentence. With Cornelius, he had a route and a passenger who could not walk fast and did not trust him. "Together," Barker said. Cornelius smiled without warmth. "Then we leave at dawn. And when the wildlands try to kill us, you'll wish you'd stayed lost."

By the second morning past the cabin, Barker knew the pairing would not work. Cornelius shuffled along on his cane, three steps to Barker's one. The old chihuahua stopped often, wheezing under his dark hood. They had crossed a single ridge in two days. At that pace, the wildlands would kill them both before the route ever mattered. "You need rest again," Barker said. It was not a question. Cornelius lowered himself onto a stone. "My legs are done. I told you that at the door." He tapped the ancient book against his knee. "The map moves fine. The mapreader does not." Barker looked at the country ahead. Broken rock. Steep folds of land. He could not carry the old dog on his back through that, not for weeks. He unslung his pack and dug out rope and a rolled canvas. Maybe a sling, a litter he could drag. He was still measuring the rope when the brush cracked. Something huge stepped into the clearing. A gecko, wide as a cart, scales ridged like tree bark. It moved slow and calm, tasting the air. Old leather straps crossed its back, cracked but whole. Someone had once ridden this thing. Barker went still. Cornelius did not. The chihuahua rose on his cane and hobbled straight toward the beast. "Stop," Barker hissed. "It wears a saddle, you fool." Cornelius reached up and laid a paw on the giant's flank. The gecko blinked but held. "Wild things near this frontier remember men. Help me up." Barker weighed it. A beast that size could carry the old dog and the pack both. It could cross rock he'd never haul a litter over. He gripped Cornelius under the arms and lifted him onto the saddle. The old dog settled between the straps and gripped the ridged scales. "Now we move," Cornelius said. He almost smiled. Barker took the lead rope and led the gecko forward. It walked steady over the broken ground, faster than Barker had gone alone. For the first time since the cabin, the pace felt like an expedition instead of a funeral march. They came around a stand of trees. The gecko froze. Ahead, filling a gap in the rocks, grew a plant the size of a house. A great pink bloom split open, ringed with teeth. Thick vines coiled across the only path through, twitching, waiting. The air stank of rot and sweet meat. The gecko backed a step. Barker held the rope tight and stared at the thing blocking their way. Cornelius pulled his hood low. "There," he said quietly. "The book warned of that one. It sits on the route. There is no way around." Barker had solved how to carry the old dog. Now the path itself wanted to eat them.