Fat Girl in a Strange Land by Bart R. Leib, Kay T. Holt

their words are in these glorious shoes. You could be walking in bare feet and not feel the thorns and arrows, the sticks and stones. There is a lightness of being to your step that you could never find in any other pair.
    You open the shop door, the glass bell rings in the change, and you turn to raise a hand in farewell. “Thank you,” is all you can find to say.
    The cobbler has returned to their ledger, opening the great book and making a mark on the page with a satisfied flourish. “Later, later. Tell me all about it much later.”
    The well-trodden paths through your heart say that you will.
    There is a tailor, a tinker and an emporium to visit. Each of them has just what you need, prepared, packed and ready for you: the clothier, sturdy garments to resist hot and cold climes, a match for your shoes; the tinker a compass, retractable spyglass and trading gewgaws; and the emporium food, cooking instruments, medical supplies, writing tools, a blanket, and a backpack to replace your inadequate city one, into which it all goes.
    You post your final letters, reassured by a familiar-but-not-quite mail box at the entrance to the lane that your messages will get through. You think the cats, already in good homes, will mourn you more than people will. Maybe. Vinnia will make a fuss, but that’s her way.
    One less person taking up space. Walking away is an act of self-love, one you’ve never been allowed. And you do so love to walk, blessed be the shoe makers. So much to see, so little time.
    You reassess what little you have brought with you. The photographs will go with you, books and music you’ll have to consume and discard along the way, and the camera is discarded as useless.
    So too are your maps. They have no bearing here.
    The assistant at the emporium smiles — again a face that has seen much walking, and again a smile so genuine it’s scary how uncomfortable they make you — and points you in the direction of one final shop.
    As you zag back across the cobblestones, an open bazaar of wheels momentarily capture your gaze. Wheels that would take an elephant to pull, others that would fit a small trolley or pram, and yet more with unusual tread.
    These last wheels explain themselves as you enter the cartography shop. The proprietor sits at ease in a wheeled chair, his elegantly embroidered leather gloves to him what your shoes are to you.
    Half an automaton, a pair of copper pants with thick joints at knee and ankle, whisper promises from their rest in a favoured corner.
    It is not this automaton that ensnares your delight, but the maps.
    The maps enter you through your nostrils, mouth, and pores. You can taste the places they all depict. There is spice, loam, sex, sand and death clamouring their way down your gullet.
    There is another customer in the cartographer’s shop. A woman, dressed in well washed linen, hair like the bark of a redwood tree, tangled and alive, deep and rich, hastily pulled back in a tail.
    She looks at your shoes, and her eyes soak into yours. Her mouth doesn’t move, a sign that some beast lurks beneath. You forget for a moment what her face looks like, too. She has forgotten the shape of your hips and belly.
    The cartographer has maps of all shape and size folded out across the large counter, which is just the right dimension and height for all to pour over the wares until the right one is found.
    “Where are you going?” the woman asks, her voice honey, lemon and whisky. You drink her up.
    You discard and dismiss maps, choosing them more by touch than sight. You settle on one with a sigh and a caress, unfolding it to its fullest life. It is big, showing everything from mountain to sea, desert to forest.
    It is also incomplete.
    You point to a blank spot, beyond a stretch of water, and another on the opposite side of the map, beyond a forest. “Here,” you say. “And here.” Your fingers flex above other blank areas of the canvas, but you have to start somewhere. Your toes curl