Cartography of Small Islands

A mapmaker has been sent to survey seven small islands that appear on the charts as an unlabelled scatter, like crumbs on a tablecloth. Her employers expect measurements. She takes the measurements — dutifully, in fair weather, at rowing pace — but she has also decided, privately, that a place deserves a name before it deserves a number, and so each evening, over her notebook, she names one.

The ending, given away now: all seven islands are named, measured, and left exactly as they were found. The names are never submitted to the authorities. She considers this the most professional decision of her career.

The first minute

The first island was small enough to walk around between breakfast and the second breakfast a rowing morning insists on, and she did, at the unhurried pace of someone being paid by the day rather than the mile. It had a beach of grey pebbles on its sheltered side, arranged by the sea in order of size with a thoroughness she found sympathetic — here was a fellow professional, clearly, working slowly and without supervision. She measured the island's long axis, noted the heather, the one wind-bent rowan, the absence of any objection to her presence, and sat down on the pebbles to consider what the place had been called all this time by nobody…

Why this one works at night

The longest story in the library, built for the long-haul listener: seven islands, one per stretch, each a complete and self-sealing episode. Drift off at island two and you have missed nothing — islands three through seven were always going to manage without you.

“…the third island was mostly heather and disagreement, being divided about whether it wished to be one island or two, and she decided the map could honour both opinions by—”

The kind of sentence people fall asleep during