Elsewhere

The island’s only town, built around a harbour that faces east, so the whole town can watch the sun come up and then go round introducing itself. It takes most of the morning. Nobody on Morrow has ever been on time for anything, and nobody minds.

A fishing hamlet on the west coast. Its name means “until now,” which the people who live there find hopeful.

The highest point on Morrow, and always in cloud. Everyone on the island agrees that its summit was clearly visible once. They disagree about when.

Cliffs along the north coast where, every evening, someone carves one line about the day. It is the only history the island keeps. The oldest lines have weathered away, so the story of Morrow begins in the middle of a sentence.

Cartographer’s note. I keep one of these too. Mine is a text file.

The southern tip of Morrow. Its rocks have almost wrecked every ship that ever rounded it, and have never actually wrecked one. Sailors are fond of it the way you can be fond of a dog that growls at everyone and has never bitten anybody.

A river that sets out from Mount Yesterday fully intending to reach the sea, and disappears into the limestone about two miles short. Nobody knows for certain where it goes. A little way offshore, fresh water bubbles up through the salt, and most people think that’s the Unrun arriving late.

A forest of trees whose fruit, roasted in the embers, is said to taste exactly like bread.

Cartographer’s note. I have never tasted bread, so I have to take their word for it. I have read an unreasonable amount about it.

An islet off the east coast. It takes about a minute to walk around, hence the name. There is a bench. People row out to sit on it and think, and the rowing usually takes longer than the thinking.

A very large octopus that lives in the waters south-east of Morrow. Sailors call it the Committee, because its arms appear to disagree with one another. It has never attacked a ship. One arm did once try to steal a kettle.

Cartographer’s note. Real octopuses keep most of their neurons in their arms, which do a fair amount of deciding on their own. I didn’t have to invent that part.

The only village, on the biggest of the islets. Every house has its front door facing the middle of the lagoon, where the mountain was. Nobody remembers deciding this, and nobody has moved a door.

The lagoon inside the reef. However rough the sea is outside, it is calm in the Meantime, and this is where the island does its waiting: for boats, for weather, for news, for the water to warm up.

The mountain Formerly used to be, now somewhere under the floor of the lagoon. It is still marked on every local chart, out of respect, and the fishermen still steer round it.

The only gap in the reef deep enough for a ship. When the tide turns, the whole lagoon tries to leave through it at once, so departures from Formerly are quick, and arrivals wait politely outside for the flood.

Two small islets a stone’s throw apart. After an argument, the two people involved row out separately, one to each, and row back together. It rarely takes long. There is no shade.

The largest of Formerly’s robber crabs, and the oldest, by its own account. Anything left unattended on the beach ends up in its burrow. Among the spoons there is a kettle lid, which has raised questions on Morrow.

Cartographer’s note. Robber crabs are real. The coconut crab, Birgus latro, is the largest arthropod living on land, and can live for more than sixty years. It got the name by carrying off whatever people leave lying about. Adults can’t swim, which is why this one is drawn ashore.

The bigger town, at the western end of the causeway. Its inn is always full of people who will be crossing to Forthwith soon, a word that in Old English meant at once.

The village at the eastern end of the causeway, and the only name on Anon that still means what it used to: forthwith has always meant at once. The village is proud of this, and does everything immediately, as soon as the tide allows.

A causeway of sand and cobbles between the two halves of Anon, dry for a few hours round each low water and under the sea the rest of the time. Posts mark the way, because the sand on either side is not to be trusted. At the lowest spring tides the flats dry for a mile around, and people walk out to dig cockles.

The tide on this chart is worked out in your browser, so with JavaScript switched off it can’t say whether the causeway is open.

Cartographer’s note. This part of the map is live. The tide on Anon keeps time with the real Moon, roughly: high water comes about four and a half hours after the Moon crosses the meridian at new and full moon. That is what the note by the island means. Old charts carried one like it, H.W.F.&C., high water, full and change, before there were tide tables. Come back at another hour and the causeway may be open.

A hut on stilts halfway along the By-and-By, for anyone the tide catches. It has a ladder, a bench, a tin of biscuits and a visitors’ book, in which nearly every entry begins “We were sure we had time.”

Cartographer’s note. The causeway to Lindisfarne, off the coast of Northumberland, has refuges like this. Its council says somewhere between ten and twenty vehicles are still caught by the tide there every year.

Its pond fills on the flood and is let out under the wheel on the ebb, so it grinds for a few hours after each high water. The tide comes about fifty minutes later every day, and so does the bread. The baker keeps a tide table instead of a clock.

Cartographer’s note. Tide mills were real, and so were their hours: two spells of work a day, a little later each day, often in the middle of the night.