Rosamund Hallam

Rosamund Hallam wrote for readers at home. Lanterns Past the Edge of the Map: A New Londoner in the Celtic Union, printed in New London in 2821 UCSD, is a traveller's book about the Celtic Union, and its fourth chapter, The Elves of Wood, Sky and Water, is the one the Survey Archive keeps. In it Hallam sorts what the Union calls the Good People into three kinds by where they are found, as a field guide sorts birds: the wood, the sky and the water.

Known History

• Travelled in the Celtic Union as a guest, on the coast and in the uplands of Tír na nÓg, and talked with Union people from further out.
• Saw none of what the chapter describes, and says so on its first page.
• Was told by three people in two coastal towns that the Good People are seen at the tide line on the night of the Conjunction: the first Union accounts in the Archive's holdings to place them there, now carried in the record on the Tír Tairngire page.
• Was asked by a Union host to leave out every date, and printed none.

Character Notes

Hallam uses elves knowingly, asks the Union's pardon for the word once, and then uses it throughout, because it is the word a New London reader already has. The book is sincere and a little too neat: it lets three homes decide three kinds. It is also careful about its own standing. It says the sorting is the author's own and offers it as a reader's first map rather than the last, and its one new fact was gathered by asking the same question in two towns of people who did not know one another. The receiving desk's filing note finds the sorting wrong in kind on every count and right about where to look three times out of three.

The record holds nothing of Hallam beyond that chapter: no species stated, no age, no other book, no year for the journey beyond its coming before the 2821 printing, and no word on whether Hallam ever went back.

See also

• The Elves of Wood, Sky and Water
• Caomhari
• New London Space Habitat