The Weaver

CHAPTER FIVE

Valeria stares at me. The blue-tinted shine of the glow-glass highlights the shape of her face, an unfamiliar landscape rising from the dark. I hear my own breathing, which fills the air between us, fills the room, fills the house and perhaps the city and the world, until there will be no one left who cannot hear it. I try to read in Valeria’s expression, in her posture, what she intends to do. She sits frozen on the edge of my bed and does not move for a long while. Eventually something crosses her face; a decision, perhaps. She stands up. The mattress rustles as the seaweed filling is released from under her weight. She turns her back on me.

She will walk out of the door and get Weaver, I think. Even if I tried to run and made it as far as the city on the air gondola, the alarm would be raised everywhere by the time I stepped to hard ground from it. If I could reach the harbours and had something with which to buy myself a place on a trading ship, my tattoos would reveal me. No ship would let me on board, because merchants cannot afford to lose the favour of the Council. If I am not caught tonight, I will be found within a week, and from then on I will wear a mark upon my face and walk between one wall and the next, one lock and the next, one barred window and the next, and no one will know which other marks will appear on my skin, and which marks inside. I will never again breathe like free people, will not take another step that has not been confined with visible or invisible chains.

Valeria shifts, stops. I watch her back, tall and narrow, and her smooth shoulders. I wait.

She walks across the room to her own bed, sits down on the edge and looks at me. She raises two fingers to her lips as a sign of silence. My heart still beats blood into my veins, cold and hot at once. I do not know how to respond to Valeria. Her fingers fall to the blanket. She lifts it, lies down underneath and closes her eyes. I sit and wait. Sand flows in the hourglass on the wall. Its stream is black and blue and endless.

Much, much later I lie down again, but I do not turn my face away from Valeria or let the glow-glass fall asleep. Every time she moves, I start and my chest clenches.

The slow-growing light outlines the window. When the morning gong sounds, Valeria rises, makes her bed and gets dressed. She does not avoid my gaze, or seek it. Her movements are no different from those I have seen her make on other mornings while preparing to leave the cell.

We walk together to break our fast, and she does not turn towards the building where the Halls of Weaving lie, nor towards Weaver’s study at its end.

My neck feels strained. I turn back to my wall-web and order myself not to look towards the corner of the hall until I have woven thirty new rows. If someone has noticed, I hope they interpret it as concern for Valeria’s wellbeing. This is her first day of work after she heard about her parents’ death. Her face remains pale, her eyes red, but she is fully focused on work. She has only left the hall to go to lunch, where she sat next to me, and, once, to the lavatory. I saw through the windows how she crossed the square. She did not stay long. I try to estimate if she could have had time to go and see Weaver on the way back.

Silvi looks at me, but the look is bored, passing. It does not examine or cling. The weaver sitting on my right side gets up and straightens her loom, moves it a little towards the door, away from me. But she does not even glance in my direction.

On my way to supper I see Valeria among the group of weavers, but in the dining hall I lose her. After swallowing a few forkfuls of root vegetable stew I get up and leave to return to the cell. The chilled air of the room stands empty. I walk to the end of the Halls of Weaving where Weaver’s study is. The door is slightly ajar. No one moves or speaks behind it. The glow-glasses on the corridor walls have dimmed down, but not yet fallen asleep.

I hear talk from the halls then, quiet words and long breaks in between.

I stand still, trying to pinpoint which hall the voice is coming from. When I begin to move, I take care to keep my footsteps as faint as possible. I recognize Weaver’s voice.

‘It is against all the rules.’

I do not hear a response. Something clatters to the floor. Perhaps a shuttle.

‘Other weavers will notice soon, if they haven’t already.’

Breath catches inside me, tries to hide in my throat.

I imagine the cell where I no longer live, the space Valeria can fill alone from now on. Maybe she will move to my bed, claim my half of the closet. If I have left a mark of myself in the room, it will wear away quickly. I try to imagine the new cell in the other house, behind even higher walls. There is only darkness.

I hear Weaver again.

‘Is someone out there?’

I have not been silent enough, after all.

‘Come in,’ Weaver calls.

I step into the hall, all muscles tight, my heart pounding.

‘Eliana,’ Weaver says. ‘Shouldn’t you be on night-watch?’

She stands in the corner of the hall. Next to her, Valeria sits in front of the loom. On the floor, at her feet, lies a shuttle from around which the yarn has unravelled slightly.

‘Not tonight,’ I reply.

Weaver raises her eyebrows but does not press the matter.

‘I just told Valeria that her work is extraordinarily skilled,’ she says, ‘but that I cannot give her special permission to weave patterns that depart from a wall-web. Perhaps you could help her unravel the weave and create a new warp.’

Weaver’s face is in shadow, and I cannot see her expression. Yet nothing in her voice suggests that she is not telling the truth or that she has something else to say to me.

‘Of course,’ I reply.

Weaver nods and approaches me. She walks past. At the door she stops for a moment and says, ‘You are going to the House of Fire tomorrow, are you not?’

‘Yes,’ I say.

She nods again. Her tall back disappears around the corner and her footsteps draw further in the corridor.

Weaver has never failed to raise immediate alarm over a night-maere possession. She believes it is best to tell the truth right away, to cut the cord in one strike. I have seen it many times in the years I have spent in the house.

She does not know.

Valeria looks at me in the dusk. I pick up the shuttle from the floor and hand it to her. I study her face as she takes it. Her expression is focused, but not tense, and a short smile appears on it. I look at the result of her work. Weaver is right. It is carefully crafted and skilled. Even when they are half-finished, the patterns invite the gaze, draw a strange path you want to step on.

‘Do you want me to help?’ I ask.

Valeria’s fingers squeeze around the shuttle. She shakes her head, cuts the yarn and begins to unravel the tapestry with slow movements.

‘Are you certain?’

Valeria stops working and looks at me. I nod and leave. In the corner of the room the yarn runs in reverse, makes an emptiness where the patterns were growing.

The light shines dim in the cell. Our shadows are larger than ourselves. Valeria has returned to the room. She sits on the bed and stares at the grey surface of the wool blanket. I do not know what she sees. Another room, and there someone who is not me. Perhaps a pattern that is clear in her mind and does not exist for anyone else.

Finally I speak.

‘Are you going to tell anyone?’

Valeria turns her face to me. She looks like she does not realize immediately what I am asking. Then she shakes her head.

‘Why not?’

She stares at me, unmoving. I do not know what to think. I ask the question that has been bothering me since I felt her hand shaking my shoulder, pulling me out of the night-maere possession.

‘Aren’t you afraid that you will catch it from me?’

Her gaze is direct, unfaltering, and filled with absolute certainty. She shakes her head again.

‘Why not?’ I say.

There it is once more, the unmoving stare through which I cannot see. She draws a deep breath, tries to form words, but they dissolve in her mouth. The sounds that emerge are unfamiliar to us both. I taste them as pain in my own mouth.

Yet I cannot be silent, because another question has been on my tongue for a long time, ever since Valeria came to the house. I keep my voice careful, stripping it of all demand.

‘Why is my name tattooed on your palm?’

Valeria’s expression grows more alert. She turns up her palm and opens her mouth, searches for the sound slowly and with care.

‘Muh,’ she says.

‘Muh?’ I repeat.

She shakes her head.

‘Fuuh,’ she says and finds the correct sound. ‘Fatthh.’

‘Fath,’ I say. ‘Is that it?’

Valeria concentrates.

‘Myy. Fatthhh. Err.’

I think.

‘Myy-fatthh-err. My father?’ I look at her. ‘Your father?’

Valeria nods. A quick unexpected smile changes her expression.

‘Your father made your tattoo?’

Valeria nods again.

‘Why?’

She sighs. I see tears in her eyes. I understand that forming just two words has taken enormous effort, and it is all she is capable of for now.

‘It doesn’t matter. Another time.’

Valeria closes her eyes and her expression closes too. We sit in the cell, and outside night scratches the walls. I do not get up. I do not walk across the narrow strip of floor separating the beds, and I do not sit down next to her. I do not place my hand on her skin, because I have no permission to do so. Somewhere within other walls people press against each other, and the air is a little lighter to breathe for them. But all we have is a wordless space and thoughts drowned in it, and no bridge across.

I spread a shawl over the glow-glass and turn to the wall. Later, after the last light of the globe has fallen asleep, I hear the small sounds Valeria makes whenever she does not want me to know she is crying.

We leave the house after breakfast. The mist rising from the canals swells past us on the paths of the web-maze and on the city streets. A red flag waves on many rooftops in the Hospital Quarters: no space for new patients. Valeria walks next to me narrow and tense as a tight-strung cord, closed within her own grief. I think of taking her hand in mine but dismiss the thought. When she takes the first wrong turn, I assume she either knows a shortcut I do not, or is disoriented. I say nothing. We can always return to our route in the next block.

When she takes the second one, I think she does not know the way.

‘The House of Fire is in the other direction,’ I say.

Valeria does not stop. She turns another corner, straying further from the route.

‘Valeria,’ I call, because she is a few steps ahead of me.

She stops and looks at me. Her mouth is tight, her gaze direct, and something cracks inside me when I see the grief behind it. She nods, just once, and continues to walk. I realize she is going somewhere else, whether I am going with her or not.

‘I can’t let you go alone,’ I say. ‘Weaver sent me to accompany you.’

She stops again and makes a gesture with her hand.

I think for a while. We could both get in trouble for this. She repeats the gesture: follow me.

Clouds drift further. Sunlight falls upon the mist. She stands as a sharp silhouette in its hazy wrap.

I follow.

Valeria leads me towards the north side of the island. We cross Halfway Canal and walk along the narrow streets. Smaller canals break the landscape, their flow slow and their edges stained from dead algae. The water is murky, and nothing seems to move under the surface. A strong, metallic reek rises from the canals, with a subtle undercurrent of rotting flesh underneath. Gondolas come and go with their cargo of blood coral and red-dye, and the sky is splintered by the high outlines of dye factories.

I no longer know where we are. She could be taking me anywhere. I could turn away, or I could give up all maps and trust that her path will carry me.

We stop in front of a large house. One of the fish-shaped drainpipes decorating the edge of the roof has split in two. Another is missing altogether. The balcony rail above the entrance is rusty. There is a niche in the outer wall with the pedestal of a statue in it, but the statue is missing. Valeria lifts the heavy iron knocker and knocks four times.

A woman whose bare arms are covered in images of tree branches with snakes gracefully curling around them opens the door. Her expression changes when she sees Valeria. She pulls her inside.

‘You too,’ she says to me. I cross the doorstep. She pushes the door shut. Her hand is quick, the screech of the key sharp in the lock. She looks at Valeria’s face for a moment, during which the flames on the torches shiver and change the shapes of shadows, on the walls, on the floor, on all of our skins. Then she pulls Valeria into her arms.

She is a head shorter than Valeria. After a spasm-like embrace, she draws away and stares at her.

‘What has happened to you?’ Her face is like a fruit that wrinkles and dries before my eyes. ‘I have been looking for you for weeks!’

Valeria points at her mouth and makes a sound. A tremor of pain on her forehead follows it.

‘What is it?’ the woman asks. ‘Tell me.’

Valeria glances at me.

‘She cannot,’ I say.

The woman turns to stare at me in turn.

‘I will throw you out this very moment,’ she says, ‘if you don’t have a damned good explanation for what is going on. What happened to Valeria? Who are you?’

I tell her my name and craft.

‘She was attacked. She sought refuge in the House of Webs,’ I say. ‘We are on our way to collect her parents’ ashes. Who are you?’

As the question leaves my mouth, I realize I know the answer. The woman’s face darkens. I glance at Valeria. Her eyes are red, but there are no tears in them. I want to step closer and touch her. I do not.

‘Yes, the ashes,’ she says. ‘I thought that task had been left to me. My name is Irena Petros. Valeria is the daughter of my deceased brother, Jovanni.’ She wipes her hand on her leather apron and offers it to me. I shake it. The sea-wool of her fingerless glove is coarse against my palm.

Irena turns back to Valeria and pulls her into a wordless embrace. They remain there for a long while. I hear Valeria sob, and I feel like an intruder in the room. This grief is strange to me, but they inhabit it together.

Eventually Irena detaches herself from the embrace. She looks at Valeria carefully and strokes her cheek.

‘What have they done to you?’ she asks quietly.

Valeria opens her mouth with reluctance. I have noticed she avoids doing it. I thought it was because of the pain. Now I realize she does not want people to see.

Cold horror appears on Irena’s face when she understands.

‘Monsters.’ She drops the word like it is poison on her tongue. ‘I should have believed Jovanni when he told me.’

I wait for an explanation, but Irena does not give one. She rests her hands on Valeria’s shoulders, concern in her eyes.

‘Are you in a lot of pain?’ she asks.

Valeria shakes her head slowly.

‘I thought our house-elder had already been in touch with you to let you know Valeria was alive and receiving medical care in the House of Webs,’ I say.

‘I haven’t received any messages,’ Irena says. ‘I thought she too might have been killed in the accident, perhaps washed away by the floods. She should have come to me immediately after she was attacked.’ She turns to Valeria. ‘Why didn’t you?’

‘She has not been well,’ I say. ‘I think she was also afraid to leave the house. That the attacker would pursue her again.’

Valeria looks at me and nods.

‘Do you know who attacked her?’ Irena asks.

‘No.’

She looks contemplative.

‘Is the City Guard investigating the matter?’ she asks.

‘They came to the House of Webs once, but we haven’t heard from them since.’

Irena’s face focuses towards me, examines.

‘Is that so?’

Valeria makes an annoyed sound to show that she is still present.

‘Did you see the attacker?’ Irena asks her.

Valeria shakes her head and places hands over her eyes. Then she raises two fingers.

‘But there were… two of them, you say?’

Valeria nods.

Irena turns to me.

‘How was she when she came to the House of Webs?’ Irena asks. ‘Did she have other injuries, anything else unusual?’

Valeria grasps one hand between the fingers of the other.

‘No other injuries,’ I say, ‘but something else. Do you have any glow-algae light at hand?’

Irena looks at me warily.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘It’s the only way we can show you.’

‘As it happens,’ Irena says, ‘I do.’ Her tone is sharp and strange.

Irena gestures for Valeria to take a simple wooden seat at the table. I realize this must be the room where she receives the clients who are coming to get tattoos. There are needles and inks on the table, and intricately designed patterns that could be laid out on human skin. Irena walks to the other end of the room, opens a door in the corner and disappears through it. She returns a moment later, carrying a glow-glass globe.

‘Where is it?’ she asks.

Valeria turns up her palm and offers it to Irena. Irena brings the glow-glass close to her skin. The shape of my name grows out, white-bright. Irena’s face changes, as if the letters mean something to her.

‘Invisible ink,’ she says. ‘My brother was well prepared. Too bad he couldn’t foresee everything.’

‘Do you know what the letters mean?’ I ask.

Irena looks at me.

‘Do you know what the tattoo says?’ she asks.

‘My name,’ I say. ‘Eliana.’

‘Would you let me speak alone with Valeria for a moment, please?’ Irena’s tone tells me it is an order rather than a request. ‘There are a couple of chairs in the room next door.’ She nods towards the door in the corner.

I give a slight bow. Valeria nods at me. I step into the other room and hear Irena close the door behind me.

No fires burn in this room, but glow-glass globes hang in three corners. The fourth hook juts bare from the ceiling. The blue shine of the glasses seems to be falling asleep, shrinking. The walls are full of drawings made on paper, but there is not a single picture of the Council. I realize I did not see one in the other room, either, or on the outside walls. That is unusual on the island.

There is also a small bookshelf in the room. I pick up a book and expect to see its pages filled with images. Instead, I find words. I place the book back on the shelf and pick another one. Again, the pages are crowded with words. They describe places outside the island: strange animals, other cities.

Either Irena knows how to read, or she has a lot of clients who do.

The door isolates sound well. I cannot hear anything from the other side. I return the book to the shelf. Time gnaws at the walls, far away the sea clings to the wind and never stops moving. In strange rooms pens scratch marks on paper, fingers run along threads, threads take a different shape and begin to lose it as they do.

Eventually the door opens and Irena invites me to enter the room again.

‘I will call for a messenger to take a message to your house-elder today,’ she says. ‘I will tell her about your visit. I believe, and Valeria agrees,’ she glances at Valeria, who gives a nod, ‘that the House of Webs is the safest place for her for the time being. If we learn anything else about who might have attacked her, I ask that we keep each other informed.’

‘I agree,’ I say.

‘Take good care of her,’ Irena tells me.

I promise I will, although I have not received any of the answers I had hoped for.

We stand in a large hall and wait. Valeria stares at the dark walls, unmoving. The light of the flames burning in the wide fireplace flickers on her skin. I wish I could step closer, reach my fingers towards the heat.

A man in a red jacket steps through the door, carrying an opaque glass urn. It is no larger than a portable glow-glass globe. He hands the urn to Valeria. Valeria’s face does not stir, but I hear an unusual weight in her breathing.

‘This is both of them,’ he says. ‘I need your mark here.’

He hands her a piece of paper and a pen. I offer to take the urn, and Valeria places it in my hands. She draws an X at the bottom of the paper. I glimpse the text, but do not let my understanding show. It is important not to look away too fast, or to stare for too long.

‘That will be everything,’ the man says. ‘I am sorry for your loss.’

He holds the door open for us. Valeria does not look at him as we leave the room. The air outside stings and dulls, ice on our bones.

‘Is there somewhere you want to go?’ I ask.

Valeria takes the urn from me. She stands on the street, her face blank and her eyes turned down. I expect to see tears falling on the lid of the urn, but there are none.

‘Or do you want to keep it for now?’

She moves her fingers slowly across the lid. I see dust on her fingertips, lines on the glass where her touch has crossed it. They had not even bothered to clean the urn in the House of Fire after picking it from a dusty storage shelf. Slowly Valeria shakes her head.

‘I know a place,’ I say.

The black cliff stands apart from the lights and crowds of the taverns, fish markets and loading wharfs of the harbour. From here, you can see the tides beating the shore, and the ships as they come and go. I used to come here with my family, when my parents were still alive. As children, Janos and I would invent stories about the faraway lands the ships were sailing to: blue and bright vaults of ice, forests bathing in rain, hot-baked sand and streets so far inland those who walked them had never known the scent of sea. We used to imagine all the adventures we could have in those places. Now I am old enough to know I will probably never leave the island. Neither will my brother. Few people do.

The wind tugs at our clothes. Valeria kneels on the rock and places the urn in front of her. She is quiet, her movements bare. She does not look at me. I squat down next to her.

‘I paid my respects to your parents,’ I say. ‘In the Glass Grove. I wanted to make sure they had food to make the journey to Our Lady of Weaving.’

Valeria turns to look at me. I can see that she is finally crying. Tears run down her face, her upper lip under her nose is glistening. She hugs the urn with both arms, pulls it close to her, and shakes with sobs.

‘Do you want me to go?’ I ask.

She grasps my hand and holds it tightly. I stay where I am.

The tall tide crashes to the shore. Seagulls shriek, sharp-winged. I taste salt in my mouth, and water.

Valeria gets up, takes several long steps towards the edge of the cliff, and I feel a jab of chill when her warmth is taken away from me. For a moment I think she is going to continue walking, through the air until the air gives in and the sharp stones and hungry waves below will pull her down. But she stops at the very edge, and with one swift movement flings the urn into the abyss. The lid stays in place all the way. The urn makes a distant splash and floats for a few moments, then the weight of water fills it and it becomes part of the sea.

The wind wraps Valeria’s hair into knots. I walk closer and stop. She is only a step away from me, the final one. I take it and throw my arms around her. My heart beats heavy beats, each one of which I feel separately, twining her grief into me and simultaneously cautioning me of a line I may have crossed. I half expect Valeria to push me away, but she does not. Her breathing is a heavy downpour, and she shakes against me. I hold onto her until she is still. A teardrop falls onto the back of my hand. It does not take long for it to cool down.

We stand there for a long time. I feel tiredness from walking in my muscles, and she seems weary from crying. A blister has grown on my sole. The day descends slowly closer to the sea, the sea rises and falls, pulls the night nearer, obeys the swelling and shrinking of the moon. Nothing stops.

It is already dusk when we make our way up the hill through the maze. Winds fray the wall-webs and stones grow a little thinner under our footsteps. Moths stuck to bright glow-glass globes among soft yarns have the shapes of fallen leaves, or hearts embroidered on fabric.

Valeria goes straight to bed. She will not move, or look at me. It is cold in the cell. I pull my own blanket from my bed and spread it on top of her, spread rest and darkness.

‘Are you hungry?’ I ask. We have not eaten since the light lunch we had before leaving the house.

Valeria is quiet. She curls up more tightly inside the blanket. I touch her shoulder, without weight. Unintentionally my fingers brush her neck. The skin is warm and smooth. I pull my hand away, a little faster than I had intended.

‘I will go and see if I can find something,’ I say.

I hear nothing but quiet breathing as I leave the room.

We are not supposed to steal food from the kitchen, but everyone does it from time to time. I find a few dry heels of bread waiting to go to the hens, a couple of apples that do not look too maggoty and a bowl of nuts, of which I push a fistful into my pocket. There is nothing warm to eat or drink at all, and the house is as cold as a stone at the bottom of the sea in midwinter.

I head to the sick bay. I find Alva looking sweaty and exhausted.

‘Please don’t tell me you are catching it too,’ she says.

The curtain is slightly open. All six beds are taken, and there are four mattresses on the floor. A violent rash stains the faces that I can see, and the air is thick with coughing.

‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I was just wondering if you could make one of your herbal brews for Valeria. She has had a rough day.’

Alva wipes her brow. Her hair is escaping from under the scarf she wears.

‘Who hasn’t?’ she says. ‘But you could actually trade in a favour for me. I have run out of poppy. I have watergraphed the Hospital Quarters to send me more, but I haven’t received it yet. I know Weaver keeps an emergency supply in her study. Do you know what poppy looks like?’

I have seen her use it often in her medical brews.

‘Yes.’

‘It will be on the shelf behind the tapestry that shows Our Lady shaping the Web of Worlds from starlight. Third or fourth jar from the left, top shelf. Look inside just to be sure, and bring me five poppy heads.’ When I do not move immediately, she adds, ‘I will need it for Valeria’s brew.’

Without further questions, I go.

The building is full of shadows. Nothing moves in the Halls of Weaving. The door of Weaver’s study is closed. I knock. The algae drifts in the glow-glass pipes, its shine nearly gone out. I knock again. When the silence is not broken, I push the door open.

Dusk floats in the room. Far below the window the world is kindled and extinguished again, insects open their wings or close them in the hollows of the coming night. The table is empty, wiped clean.

I find the jar on the shelf behind the tapestry. Poppy, the label says. I lift the lid and look into the jar. There are only five heads left. I take them all.

The air remains still. Then, unexpectedly, it moves. I feel the draught on my bare neck.

I know immediately which direction it is coming from. A sharp-edged streak of darkness splits the corner of the room. The low wooden door was still closed when I stepped in.

I could turn away and forget about it.

I walk past the watergraph to the door in the corner, push it open and step into the darkness, which grows around me and embraces me like a long-abandoned home.