Romulus and I walked briskly through the forest, buoyed by possibility.

But some hours later, unsure whether we were making any progress, sure we were going in circles, we sat down on a fallen log.

“Hey,” said Romulus, “Look at that.”

Off the side of the path there was a flash of white in the woods. We moved closer to examine it. A statue, stone carved with some Roman numerals and the words ‘R. Holiday,’ came into relief next to us. He looked like the Greeks or Romans of old, pupil-less smooth eyes in white marble, draped in a carved toga. The statue held a piece of parchment in his hand, and a quill. We went to the base of the statue and a blue aura, like morning fog, appeared around the parchment. I reached out and touched it, and a great crack sounded.

I looked side to side in terror as a large chunk of the statue broke off and fell, thudding into the soft earth. Nobody else was there.

“It’s still glowing,” said Romulus, who picked up the piece of stone ‘parchment’. He dropped it just as quickly. “It’s freezing!”

But as it fell a second time to the earth it floated gently on the way down, a scrap of paper.

On it was an enormous world map, fully filled out, with hills and oceans shaded in once-brilliant pigments. It was written in English but the names of any places I glanced at were totally unfamiliar to me. And I’ve seen my share of maps.

“I’m not sure our task is to map the world for our kingdom, after all,” I murmured. “Maybe it’s to follow an existing map.”

“What do you mean?” asked Romulus. “We’re cartographers. Of course our task is to map.”

“It’s one thing to try to carve your own path entirely, but there’s much to be gained by following the maps of others. I say we should be explorers first, and mappers second. Explorers often keep journals, the good explorers anyway, and their words tell more than any map could. Maps aren’t just a record of where people have been; they’re guides. And how can we be so bold as to map the world without exploring further? Look at all of these places we haven’t been.”

When we looked at the map more closely, it seemed to undulate with movement in certain areas. I could swear the oceans were moving ever so slightly, rocking back and forth. And there—I pointed my finger—there was a golden dot that released an aura, like the rings of some tiny planet.

I looked at the dot, which was hovering in the middle of a large tree-covered region. And I looked at our surroundings: a bunch of trees.

“The Forest of Rebirth,” I said. “I guess it’s time to cut the umbilical cord.”

I could see that appealing mountain in the distance… but I wasn’t able to find it on this map.

“There might be more to gain,” said Jerome, “from this statue.”

We’ve been standing in front of it for almost an hour, inspecting it for hidden mechanisms in the marble. Nothing happened. Except for when I pulled out the map. The golden dot, still emitting its ethereal rings, now had a little arrow pointing towards a nearby body of water. “Mirror Lake,” read the map. There was a little cabin icon next to the lake, unlabeled.

We set off in that direction.