The Cartographer’s Loom

In the autumn of 1993, I accompanied my cousin Elias, a cartographer from Lisbon, on a trip to the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. He was there to map ancient trade routes, but I was there for a break from my mundane life. We stayed in a village called Imlil, nestled at the foot of Toubkal, where the air smelled of cedar and dust. Elias had heard of a ruined kasbah, perched on a ridge, that had once been a caravanserai. Locals avoided it, muttering about ‘the Loom’s Song,’ but we dismissed it as superstition.

On a bright Tuesday, we hiked to the kasbah. The sun blazed, but as we approached the crumbling mud walls, a chill settled over me. The hair on my arms stood up, and a weight pressed on my chest. I stopped, gasping. Elias, a pragmatist, laughed and pulled me forward, saying it was just the altitude. But I knew that feeling—I’d felt it once before in a cathedral in Prague, where a relic of a medieval plague saint was kept. I didn’t share that with Elias.

Inside, the kasbah was a labyrinth of shadowy rooms and collapsed ceilings. Elias was ecstatic, photographing carvings and measuring doorways. I, however, felt a growing dread, as if something was watching from the darkness. We came to a central courtyard, where a massive, ancient loom stood, its wooden frame warped, its threads hanging like dry spiderwebs. Elias approached it, marveling at the craftsmanship. I wanted to leave.

As Elias touched the loom, a low hum filled the air, not from any machine but from the stones themselves. The threads began to sway, though no breeze entered. Then, Elias froze, his eyes wide. He whispered, ‘It’s weaving… my past. I see my childhood home in Lisbon.’ I saw nothing, but a cold pressure wrapped around my skull, and the dread intensified. I grabbed his arm, but he was transfixed. I dragged him out, but he kept muttering about patterns and fate.

Back in the village, Elias was a shadow of himself. He sketched obsessively, drawing intricate, impossible patterns that he said the loom was showing him. He claimed that each thread was a life, and that the loom was weaving our destinies. I tried to convince him to leave, but he refused, saying he must return to finish the ‘reading.’

Two nights later, I woke to find Elias’s bed empty. A sour smell of dust and decay hung in the room. I ran to the kasbah, my heart pounding. Moonlight streamed through a hole in the roof, illuminating the loom. Elias sat before it, his fingers tangled in the threads, blood seeping from where the dry fibers had cut him. He turned to me, his eyes unrecognizable, and said, ‘She knows you now. She knows your tread.’ I didn’t see anyone, but the loom’s weave had changed—there was a new pattern, a figure with my face, distorted.

I fled, leaving Elias behind. I never saw him again. For years, I dismissed the incident as a breakdown. But last week, I found an old sketchbook of Elias’s in my attic. On the final page, there was a drawing of a woman with no face, her hair made of threads, and beneath it, my name and a date—next month, on the anniversary of our visit. I’m not sure if it’s a warning or an invitation. But I feel that same dread now, the hair on my neck standing up, and I know that somewhere in the Atlas Mountains, the loom is still weaving, and it has remembered me.