I already knew Agloe existed only within its map—and so was visible only when the map was being used. It was why we had to open it and follow the road into and out of the town each time, rather than navigating by sight or memory. And when I’d folded up and hidden the map on you, Nell, I sealed the town away from you, your father, and all our friends. It disappeared because they could no longer see it on the map, because they no longer knew where the map was. They had no idea it hadn’t burned up, too. And they also didn’t know that I’d just barely begun my own copy of it right before that terrible day—the roughest preliminary outline of my half of the Dreamer’s Atlas—and had it here with me, inside Agloe.
My theory, impossible as it was, had been right all this time.
A map could make things real—literally.
I realized that I could use my skills as a cartographer to save myself and the town. That if I made a map of part of the town using the printing press, I could change Agloe with it. It would become real within its map, just like Agloe was within its own. Buildings could have furniture in them. Shops could have provisions.
And more.
At first, I used the press only to stay alive. I mapped places onto my draft of Agloe to make what I needed to appear in the town. I drew a restaurant to get water and food, a clinic to get bandages and medicine, and a clothing store to get new, unscorched clothes. But after my basic necessities had been satisfied, after my lungs cleared and I’d started to heal, I began to realize there was something much more important to consider than simply surviving and hiding. Something that would cost everything I had left, but I didn’t see any other way.
By the time your father came back, I knew what we had to do.
It was one week until your mother and I finally saw each other again, after the fire in Agloe. A week of not knowing what had happened to her, or her to me. Without the map, she was trapped inside the phantom settlement, and with everyone’s eyes on me, I was trapped outside of it, trying to breathe through the grief and fear in order to take care of you. And all the while, Wally was always lurking, haunting the silent, empty countryside day and night like a vengeful spirit, searching for a way back into the town.
Even after finding the map hidden on you at the hospital and realizing I could go back after all, it took planning. Wally could not know that this map hadn’t burned to ash like the rest of them. With only a single copy left, there’s no telling what he’d do to obtain it. Every night, I followed him as he went back to the part of the field he knew was the entrance to Agloe, where he paced and paced for hours. I waited in the shadows, studying his routine, learning when he gave up and went home, and when he was only checking some other part of the field and would return, so I could finally slip inside unseen.
That first time, I didn’t bring you with me. It was probably irresponsible, but you were exhausted every day from crying and slept like the dead, and if you had woken, Romi’s room was right next door.
It wasn’t that I wanted to leave you. It was that it was impossible to know what would be waiting inside Agloe. What if your mother had died in the fire, and you saw her body before I could shield you? That kind of a memory could never be erased. Or what if the fire had never burned out? What if it was still burning, engulfing the whole town? I had to face it alone first.
It was the middle of the night, but your mother was wide awake, waiting. There was no way she could have known I would finally return to Agloe that evening, no way for me to have gotten her a message from the outside, but somehow, she knew anyway. When I walked up the dirt road into the town, the map clutched desperately in my hands, she was already there on the sidewalk at the very first intersection.
I don’t know how long we cried. My throat was so raw, my eyes so swollen from the salt of my tears, I could hardly even speak or see her when we finally quieted.
There was so much to tell her. The house we’d burned as a decoy, the police investigation, the agonizing days and the endless nights at the motel. The way our friends had become hollowed out. How everything had broken apart and could never be put back together again. And how Wally, in his guilt, had become even more consumed with finding and controlling this place again.