On the latest map, the road ended at the water.
Nandi zoomed in until the blue of the reservoir became a flat field of pixels. The road approached from the south, crossed the contour lines, and stopped at the waterline with the blunt certainty of a sentence cut off by a stamp.
The request from the municipality was simple: verify the old road segment marked in pencil on a survey sheet. That segment ended at the reservoir on the current map. The requester had written, Residents say it continues.
Nandi printed the sheet and carried it to the kitchen table. Her mother was sorting a jar of buttons beside a bowl of oranges. She had been doing this since Nandi arrived, separating them by colour and size, though no one had asked her to.
“Do you know this road?” Nandi asked.
Her mother glanced at the map. “Which one?”
“The one to the reservoir.”
“There was a road before the reservoir.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It was the same road.” Her mother pushed a white button into the saucer. “They moved the water. They didn’t move the road.”
Nandi folded the survey sheet along its old crease. The municipality’s records said the valley had been cleared before the dam filled. The access road had been closed, then submerged. There were photographs and compensation forms. There was no track on the other side.
“I’m going to check it tomorrow.”
Her mother’s hand paused above the buttons. “Take me.”
The next morning they drove as far as the security gate. Nandi showed the guard her work order and the survey sheet. He read the page upside down, then said the road was under the water.
“That is what I’ve been told,” Nandi said.
He looked at her mother. “You’re from there?”
“I’m from the road,” her mother said.
The guard gave them a narrow smile that seemed to ask for an explanation. Nandi turned away before her mother could offer one.
They left the car by the gate and walked down the service track. It was hot enough for the stones to shine. Below them, the reservoir lay low in its basin, the waterline exposed in a broad pale band. A few stumps stood in the shallows, each with a dark collar of wet wood.
Nandi checked the coordinates. The old survey's pencil line ended at a concrete marker near the reservoir; the current map showed no route beyond it. She found the marker, half-buried in silt, but no surveyed road.
Her mother had stopped ten paces behind her.
“There,” she said.
Nandi followed her gaze. A narrow strip of gravel ran between the grass and the water. It might have been a vehicle track, or the clean edge of a recent maintenance line. It passed behind a ridge and vanished.
“That strip isn’t on the survey.”
“It was there when I was a girl.”
“You said the road was here before the dam.”
“It was.”
Nandi checked the coordinates again. “The survey sheet ends this road at the old waterline.”
“Your sheet does.”
Her mother looked at the water. “You need it to be a different road?”
Nandi had no answer. She took photographs, set a marker, and recorded the surface as disturbed gravel. Her mother walked ahead, slow and sure, following the strip around the ridge.
The road did not descend into the reservoir. It rose behind the ridge and continued along the slope. Beyond it, the land opened into a shallow bowl. At the centre stood the square outline of a foundation, newly uncovered by the falling water. A line of stones ran from it towards the reservoir and disappeared under the remaining surface.
Nandi checked the map again. There should have been no structure there. The old survey sheet showed a cluster of buildings farther west, in the section marked relocated. The foundation sat outside the recorded settlement boundary.
Her mother approached it, then stopped.
“Is this your house?” Nandi asked.
“No.”
“Do you know whose it was?”
“A house.”
“That isn’t useful.”
“It is what I can tell you.”
Nandi crouched by the foundation. A shard of green bottle glass lay in the dust. She photographed it for scale. The glass had an old, softened edge. It could have surfaced from anywhere in the basin.
Her mother came to stand beside her. “If you put the road back, they will ask who owns the land.”
“It isn’t my decision.”
“Your name goes on the map.”
“The map records what’s there.”
“Does it?”
Her mother said it without accusation. That made it harder to dismiss.
They walked back in the afternoon. At the gate, the guard asked whether they had found anything. Nandi said she had found a feature that needed further review. He wrote this down in a book without looking at them.
At home, Nandi opened the map file. The old survey showed the road as far as the former waterline; her photographs showed gravel beyond the marker, around the ridge, and the uncovered foundation. Neither record established that the gravel route continued the surveyed road. She could draw a clean line and give it a name, or leave the current map's blank untouched. Instead she entered a broken line, labelled surface route; extent unverified, and attached the images.
Then she added the uncovered foundation as an unclassified structure.
The record would be reviewed. Someone could remove both entries. Someone could ask whose house it had been. The map would not protect her mother from questions, or the land from being claimed. It would only stop the absence from looking complete.
Her mother came in carrying the bowl of buttons. “Did you put it back?”
“I marked what I saw.”
“That isn’t the same.”
“No.”
She set the bowl beside the laptop. A blue button had rolled into the white ones. Nandi picked it out and placed it in the jar.
Her mother watched the screen. “Can you see the end?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Nandi saved the file at 18:11. On the new map, the broken line stopped short of the water.
By the next morning, the broken line had extended another two hundred metres. The file's last-saved time still read 18:11.
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