Dell's Journey

Chapter 24: The Sorrowful Lands

The Sorrowful Lands lay west of the forest where

Monster dwells. It is difficult to accurately chart their

borders, for the surprising reason that they are different

on different maps. For instance, a map in one of Monster's

reference books shows them as a perfectly circular

territory with decisive borders all around, as though some

minor-deity had reached down with a compass and carefully

sketched them out. Other maps, particularly those found in

many university libraries, have a tendency to place other

lands (which are thought by their own inhabitants to be

sovereign and distinct) within a larger and more inclusive,

but still perfectly round circle of influence.

The real heart of this cartographic dispute is grasped

when one views one of the maps the people of the Sorrowful

Lands make themselves. It may take you a moment to

understand just what is going on if it is your first time.

You will see the continents and the oceans, the islands and

so forth, as usual. What you will not see are borders –

anywhere. This is because the Sorrowful People claim as

their rightful possession the entire globe without

exception. There are no circles of any size, no lines of

demarcation, no territories, provinces or protectorates;

just the Sorrowful Lands. Finally, it should be noted that

the inhabitants of the Sorrowful Lands refer to their

domain as merely, "The Lands," and therefore do not appear

to acknowledge their most defining feature.

It may strike you as odd that this border debate has

never aroused argument or war. Why, you may ask, have the

residents of, say, Norway not taken offense at such

imperialistic claims and picked up their plowshares and

beat them into spears? And why have those who claim the

entire world as their province, those citizens of the

Sorrowful Lands, not mustered their hordes and laid-hold of

what they see as their national soil?

It is partially because the Sorrowful Peoples have

developed a Gnostic way of thinking that is sophisticated

enough to bar the use of physical force in nearly every

circumstance. Generally this is an admirable position.

More practically, they dislike fighting because none of

them ever did very well at sports and don't put much stock

in their physical coordination. In fact, this is one of

the reasons (though not the main one) that the people of