A tale of the map maker Penelope and her lover the Captain, the legend of the spider, the arrival of the crab and deep, uncharted waters…

Leaning in to the workshop, the Captain spread a tattered roll of parchment upon Penelope’s desk. It was a map which once had been fresh and now was so faded and eaten by insects that soon it would be illegible. It showed part of a southern country across the water, a mansion in the heart of that country, and a road that led to the mansion and led away. The Captain told Penelope that he needed a copy of the map, for he was afraid that the original would not survive the journey he must make. Poring over the map, Penelope saw that it had once been beautiful, that the maker of this map had adorned it with miniatures: a cliff-hewn village rising on terraces, a river that wound through margins of iris and the tumbled ruins of an ancient amphitheatre. When Penelope looked through her magnifying glass at the drawing of the mansion she saw, in letters so faint she might have been their last reader, the word treasure written beneath its threshold.

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