Long ago, after kingdoms without bodies had been encountered, after shapeshifting gods of trade had been named, after giants without flesh and invisible roads and oracles without eyes had all revealed their secrets, people believed the deepest mysteries had already been uncovered.
The traveller too believed this.
He had descended through the mountain.
He had walked among shadows.
He had watched monsters dissolve one by one.
He had learned that many strange things existed not beneath relations but within them.
And yet one final puzzle remained.
For everywhere in the world there existed boundaries.
Kingdoms possessed boundaries.
Fields possessed boundaries.
Cities possessed boundaries.
Maps overflowed with them.
People crossed them.
Defended them.
Died for them.
No one doubted their existence.
So the traveller asked:
"Where exactly is the border?"
The question seemed almost laughably simple.
People pointed immediately.
"There—the border is that wall."
Others pointed toward rivers.
Toward mountains.
Toward lines drawn upon maps.
Toward checkpoints and gates.
Yet the old unease returned.
Walls could fall.
Rivers changed course.
Mountains eroded.
Maps could be erased and redrawn.
Checkpoints moved.
Still people spoke of the same border.
Again the thing itself slipped away.
Rumours spread.
People whispered that perhaps boundaries were ancient spirits.
For they possessed peculiar powers.
They divided spaces while occupying almost no space themselves.
They changed what people could do.
Changed where people could go.
Changed who people believed themselves to be.
And stranger still:
People spoke of them as both natural and made.
A mountain might justify a boundary.
A river might justify another.
Yet the mountain itself knew nothing of borders.
The river carried no passport.
The traveller became troubled.
For the creature seemed to be drawn across the world without being entirely contained anywhere within the world.
So once again he descended into the mountain.
Through familiar chambers he walked.
Past the kingdoms.
Past the god of trade.
Past the giant Houses.
Past the invisible roads.
Past the Oracle.
Past the chamber of the Torch-Bearer.
Deeper and deeper he went.
Until at last he reached the final chamber.
There sat the old keeper.
Only this time there was no pool.
No web of threads.
No roads.
No shadows.
Only an empty room.
The traveller looked around in confusion.
"Where is the final creature?"
The keeper smiled.
"Show me the room," he said.
The traveller frowned and gestured around him.
"There—the walls, the floor, the ceiling."
The keeper said nothing.
After a while he asked:
"And where does the room end?"
The traveller pointed toward the walls.
The keeper nodded.
"And if the walls vanished?"
The traveller hesitated.
"Then... there would be no room."
The keeper continued watching him.
Slowly a strange unease spread through the traveller.
For he began seeing something he had never noticed before.
The room did not simply contain distinctions.
Distinctions made the room.
The walls did not merely reveal divisions already waiting in the world.
The walls participated in organising the world into this and that.
Inside and outside.
Here and there.
Self and other.
Kingdom and wilderness.
The traveller suddenly remembered every creature he had encountered.
Kingdoms.
Money.
Giants.
Roads.
Oracles.
Consciousness itself.
None now appeared particularly monstrous.
Instead something else had begun to look strange.
For hidden behind every question had lurked a silent expectation:
That reality arrived already divided into separate things.
That the world came pre-cut like pieces of fruit waiting to be collected.
Then the traveller looked around once more.
And suddenly he saw the final creature.
It had been there all along.
Not hiding in shadows.
Not lurking beneath the mountain.
Not waiting at the end of the journey.
It was the cave itself.
The walls.
The chambers.
The pathways.
The divisions separating one room from another.
The oldest monster had built the labyrinth.
And because it had built the labyrinth, every creature encountered within it had appeared monstrous.
The traveller began laughing.
First quietly.
Then uncontrollably.
Because the walls had already begun dissolving.
The chambers were becoming open sky.
The monsters were becoming neighbours.
And the cave itself had started forgetting how to remain a cave.
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