Chapter 24 Silver and Ambar eyes Two men witnessed her that night. One through glass. One through something older than glass. As the car glides away from the restaurant, Tarmo leans forward and taps Mikhail’s shoulder, voice low. “Close the partition, please.” Mikhail’s eyes find mine in the rearview mirror — silver, unreadable. Then he…
The Holographer’s Atlas
Henk en Cees — Benidorm, winter ’89 By the time Henk and Cees arrived at the Sunset, I already had a name in town. La chica de los sombreros — the girl with the hats. It had started in Ibiza, with a purple one, and grown its own legend the way nicknames do when nobody…
The Holographer’s Atlas
Pichi VenyVeras Benidorm, late winter I am nineteen, almost twenty, and I am still trying to find the right handles for this world. Benidorm in those years was not the place people picture now. La Zona Nueve on a Friday night was Spanish — entirely, deliberately Spanish — the sons and daughters of Madrid money…
The Memory Cartographer-Book V The Alkebulan Chronicles-Part II
Chapter 24 Abomey The city is already inside her before she reaches the restaurant. This is Benin. The old stories don’t wait to be invited. The city of Abomey hums beneath dusk’s golden light. I descend to the lobby and step into the car that’s appeared — another detail polished by Tarmo. Dressed, awake, flesh…
The Memory Cartographer- Book V The Alkebulan Chronicles- Part II
Chapter 22 Recovered Ritual isn’t something that happens only in temples here. The whole city throbs with it: festivals erupting into trance and song, women possessed by spirits, ancestors remembered with offerings, the boundary between the ordinary and the divine blurring in music, dust, and sweat. Nearby, Tarmo’s phones are arrayed like instruments. He switches…
The Memory Cartographer-Book V The Alkebulan Chronicles-Part II
“Where the gods keep office hours” Southeast. The destination is set. Now Elena does what Elena does best — research at thirty thousand feet, tea steaming, gods at the kitchen table. I find a seat in the main cabin—spacious table, panoramic window, high-grade leather. A discreet flight attendant approaches. “A device to research Benin, please….
The Memory Cartographer-Book V The Alkebulan Chronicles- Part II
“Where the gods keep office” Tarmo has always known exactly when to look. The belly’s glow doesn’t help. Tarmo sits in one of the plush chairs, his gaze fixed somewhere far beyond, adrift in private oceans. Karim hasn’t bothered challenging the master of the plane in his own territory. Fair enough, I think, wryly amused…
The Memory Cartographer-Book V The Alkebulan Chronicles- Part II
“Where the gods keep office hours” In the private cabin of Tarmo’s jet, somewhere over Mali, Elena collapses. What follows is not a dream. I press my palms flat against the tile, lower my head, and let the water wash over me for a while. But under the relief, the same question bubbles up—the one…
The Holographer’s Atlas
Maurice ’85/’91 In 1985 my mother left with Kahlil Gibran, her piano, and the ice-cold brain food she had served on a daily basis. What remained was my elderly father, a smaller house in the village, and suddenly — space. I stopped cycling thirty kilometres to school. I was tired of doing what was good…
The Holographer’s Atlas
The Constant There are men who loved you and failed you in the exact way that you have others, and you file them under known coordinates and navigate accordingly. Decades pass. Children grow, postcodes change, land numbers too, bad decisions, good ones, everything in between. Coasts remain. You teach yourself to call it nostalgia whenever…
The C.O.M.C. Files 