The Mapmaker’s Vanishing North

There stood Northbank, a whole neighborhood the city claimed did not exist.

Houses leaned together on painted wheels. Laundry flew between branches. A bakery occupied an old ferryboat.

A girl in a rust-red coat blocked Ivo’s path. Her name was Seli, and her yellow satchel bulged with folded maps.

“If Atlas House sent you,” she said, “your blank page has already told its lie.”