The Weaver

CHAPTER SEVEN

The drumming begins faint, like the heartbeats of a great and strange beast in the innards of the island. Light remains hidden behind the grey sky. The air encloses my skin between all layers of clothing, from where its chill soaks into bones. I wish I had worn more sea-wool. The bare, darkened remains of the Museum of Pure Sleep jut out on the other side of the square. A dense forest of black City Guard uniforms rises at the root of the Tower. I have never before seen so many at a Word-incineration.

The crowd around us stirs, moves and rustles like foliage shifting in a breeze. Anticipation turns us all towards the archway separating the square from the wide canal. People’s faces form a speckled, living mosaic that ripples and flares.

We all stare towards the canal.

It begins as a barely discernible spark, a shooting star sunken into the abyss of the morning, faint enough to be nothing more than an apparition. The rustling of the crowd dies down and the wind withers into calm, until the mute air rests steady and dense. The spark grows, bursts into a tall flame-tree glowing in the wrap of the mist. The music begins with a single long note, and one by one other threads of sound entwine with it, narrow and soft strands weaving themselves into a strange cluster. Slowly, smoothly enough to seem like it is floating in the air, a torch glides out of the mist and after it, ash-white gondolas bearing the scribes of the House of Words.

Soundlessly they tie the vessels to the wharves and step out of them carrying large chests. I search for Janos among them, but their faces are invisible inside deep hoods, and they are as quiet as the stones of the streets. A thin drizzle begins to gather on my garments, rather a veil of fog thickening from all sides than something falling from the clouds.

The procession of the scribes pours into the square in the rhythm of the drumming, an undulating ribbon through the arched gate. They carry the chests to the edge of the incineration field and open them. The chests are filled with words bound in worn leather covers.

These are the Dead Codices: their paper too old and brittle to be leafed. The scribes have carefully copied their words on strong, fresh paper over the past year so their contents would not be lost. When their weight leaves the island as midwinter smoke, the year is ready to turn and new growth begin.

The scribes begin to carry the codices into the incineration field glistening with oil. They tip them over inside the border marked with a red ribbon to make a layer of paper, ink and leather. The threads of the music fray away one by one. The heart-quakes of the drums continue faint. When the final codex is in place, the scribes form a soundless row beside the field. It is the firemakers’ turn.

The firemakers move like flames, and they carry the colours of blaze in their clothing. Their circle closes around the incineration field. They pour liquid on the ground from a large pail on wheels. Some years a rapid and harsh gale blows from the sea, trying to tear sparks from the blaze and fling them all over the square, scatter them around the island. But this liquid raises a wall which they cannot pierce; I have seen fist-sized stars of hell-heat burst and bounce from the flames, and I have seen their way cut short and them being hit back by the fumes.

When the whole field is confined by a narrow streak of liquid, the firemakers step inside.

The sky is dense and grey, the air murky with humidity. It could suffocate the sparks before they can catch. But the firemakers know the ways to feed the flames even in pouring rain. They carry saps and powders on their belts, scatter them on top of the Dead Codices to make certain nothing will interrupt the Word-incineration. A few among them place tall, lidded iron jars on the ground. When all others have left the field, they lift the lids and pick glowing-hot coals from the jars with bare hands. They throw them in the middle of the field, step back and let the flames swallow the codices. The drumming grows louder.

Another anticipation begins.

Every year, they choose their moment with care. The gathering of the people on the square does not move those who occupy the Tower. The music is mere wind to their ears, or creaking of faraway masts. Only the pattern of fire constructed, guided and started with firemakers’ skill summons them to show their form. This year the fire climbs the wall of the Tower like a vine, until it reaches the balcony, encloses the rail and grows into a thick, sparkling curtain of fire. The curtain burns bright for precisely the time it takes for the crowd to gasp in awe.

When it goes out with the last drumbeat, the Council is standing on the balcony.

Their masks carved from coral shine in the colours of blood and flames, as if the echo of the fire remains captured in them: eight faceless figures above everything.

The crowd bows. I count to three before straightening my back. Next to me, Valeria does the same. When I get up, the Council is still standing in a row, unmoving. On another balcony below them, a law-reader appears. We wait. A faint chatter begins to grow on the square. Moving as one, the members of the Council raise their right hand, the coral-red palms of their gloves towards the square. The talk quiets at once. The law-reader speaks from the balcony in a voice that echoes in the very bones of the city.

‘Today,’ the man says, ‘a law will come into effect that the Council has seen it best to pass in order to secure the wellbeing of everyone on the island.’

He pauses and glances at the paper he is holding.

‘In the past few months the city has been haunted by an illness,’ he continues, ‘which has touched almost every family and household in some way. You know the symptoms: the rash, the cough, the blurring of eyesight, and eventual death. After a long-running investigation and deliberation, the Council has found out that what we all feared has come true. The dream-plague has returned to the island.’

Next to me, I see Silvi gasp and bow several times with her eyes closed. Her lips move, as she speaks to Our Lady of Weaving. Whispers and rustlings travel in the auditorium.

‘Our medical advisers are in uniform agreement that this is a new strain of the illness, more contagious and far more dangerous than any we have seen before. But what is yet of greater concern,’ here the law-reader takes a break, letting the audience hold their breath, ‘is that there is a secret movement of Dreamers spreading the illness in our city. Their actions are ruthless and purposeful, and they pose a real threat. Their aim is to contaminate everyone, until life on the island can never be the same. They were responsible for the fire that scorched the Museum of Pure Sleep to cinders.’

An unrest sweeps through the crowd again, a wind tugging at anxious trees.

‘According to the new law, anyone suspected of dreaming tendencies must be reported to the City Guard and immediately isolated from other islanders. Until now, we have believed that only Dreamers suffering from night-maere possession are dangerous, and their kind has been dutifully delivered to the House of the Tainted every year. As of this day, however, all dreaming must be treated as a threat. Protecting a Dreamer is a punishable crime, because it endangers the security of the whole city. The Council has spoken.’

The law-reader rolls up his paper, bows and vanishes from the balcony into the Tower. The Council takes one step forward. The crowd bows again, and when we straighten our backs, a vast cloud of smoke drowns their dark-clad figures. When it dissipates, the Council is gone.

I want to reach out and take Valeria’s hand. I want to look at her to see if anything has changed on her face. Instead, I clap my hands together with the crowd and lose myself in the surge of ovation. I wonder how many others are hiding in it with me, afraid to close their eyes at night.

The fire on the square is still devouring words.

The blaze does not wear out until only a silent layer of ashes that have shed all colour remains.

A slightly bittersweet scent of ashes and burnt herbs floats in the air, wrapping the streets in a thin gauze that shivers in the early afternoon like a butterfly’s wings. The weather is calm, and the smoke has not yet dissipated in the direction of the sea. Weavers stand around the field, scooping ash into large sacks. This year it is the turn of the House of Webs to gather the ashes. I find a place at the edge of the field and open my sack. The ash crumbles into a fine powder in my fingers, smoother than clay. Silvi, who is scooping it next to me, looks at me and her movements stop for a while.

‘Are you well?’ she asks.

A short distance away, Valeria bends down to collect white ashes from the ground. Some cling to her clothes, like mist or traces of a dream.

‘It is just the smoke stinging my eyes,’ I say. ‘I never get used to it.’

I wipe a streak of tears from my cheek and feel the stain left on my skin by the blend of ash and salt water.

A girl of perhaps twelve threads her way through the ash-collectors. She stops to speak to Viola further away. I see Viola look around. Her gaze falls upon me. She turns to the girl, says something and points in my direction. The girl gives a slight bow to say thank you and starts walking towards me.

‘Are you Eliana?’ she asks.

I tell her that I am.

‘One of the scribes sent you a gift.’ The girl hands me a ball of yarn and waits, with her hand extended. I take the ball and dig for a coin in my pouch. I place it on the girl’s palm. She curtsies and sprints towards the edge of the square. Viola winks at me. I ignore the gesture and look at the ball of yarn. It is coarse sea-wool dyed pale-green, sold by many market stalls. I push the ball into my pocket.

If the sun was not far behind the clouds, the shadow of the Tower would fall where I bend towards the ground.

Night wind is metal-sharp on the wall next to the air gondola port, a numb, salt-crusted finger brushing my bones. I am not on night-watch, but I do not want to sleep tonight. I left Valeria breathing deeply under the covers, moving like those who are not awake move. The Glass Grove glints in the distance under the half-moon; the clouds have parted, and the island is a rippling oval of soft silver lights, like a deep-sea creature mariners sometimes see in the dark before losing it again.

I turn the piece of coral hanging around my neck between my fingers. Its surface is coarse and porous. I hear footsteps and turn to look. The white hem of Alva’s coat folds, wrinkles and unfolds against the sea-green of her thick overcoat, flipping in the wind. She climbs on the wall next to me. Silence hangs between us. A stretch of sea ripples on the horizon where I see dark specks, glimmers appearing and going out in them: trading ships anchored around the island.

‘How are things in the sick bay?’ I ask.

Alva’s sigh drifts into the wind.

‘Quiet, at long last,’ she says. Weariness weighs her brow, the curve of her mouth. ‘There are no new infections.’

Some twenty weavers have been taken from the House of Webs to the Hospital Quarters. A few of them have lost their eyesight, and others complain they see worse than before. Yet most have returned to work, and the illness has not killed any of them.

A cloud moves on the sky and the light of the moon draws visible the hulls, masts and sails of the ships. The crews will have already seen the harbours, emptier than usual. They will have sent scouts to land and heard the message about the rash that tightens flesh from the bones, about the cough that scorches lungs into shreds. They will have heard about the fog that settles into eyes and will not dissipate. At dawn, if the wind blows from the right direction, the ships will turn back and carry their cargo to other cities.

‘Do you think trading ships will stop coming to the island altogether?’ I say.

Alva looks out to the sea. The shine of the glow-glasses on the wall falls on her face.

‘Blood coral is too valuable to be abandoned,’ she says. ‘But there will be ever fewer ships.’ She quiets and turns to me. Glow-glass lights stir in her eyes like thoughts.

‘No one wants to carry home the… disease that they call dream-plague.’

She pronounces the last words slowly and with care, as if choosing them with great consideration. I stare at her. She does not avoid my gaze. She waits.

I have known Alva since I came to the House of Webs. She is probably the only one of its residents I am able to think of as a friend. She does not know everything about me, but still more than most others. Now I feel like she is leading the conversation to walk on a ground we have not visited before, reaching out a hand to see if I will take it.

That they call dream-plague.

The thought does not come for the first time.

Alva’s gaze is alert. I too choose my words with care, offer her something to grasp.

‘How do they know it’s dream-plague?’

The moon disappears into clouds. Alva’s cheeks twitch, her eyes narrow and open wide again.

‘What do you mean?’ she asks in a low voice.

I mean the night-maere on my chest, the suffocated moan on Mirea’s lips. I mean the paintings of the Museum of Pure Sleep that now lie in ashes, and the tales of the guide: dark tumours on the skins of the diseased, death that came in mere days and from which few of those contaminated were spared. Not a word about a shattering cough or weakening eyesight.

‘I mean,’ I say, ‘that I haven’t seen anyone show the same symptoms we have been taught to look for and keep an eye on.’

Alva turns to look at the sea. Her voice is steady.

‘You have noticed it too,’ she says.

The silence widens between us again. She has spent weeks and months in the sick bay among those who have caught the disease. If the symptoms were the same as in dream-plague, she would have seen. I wonder how to take the conversation one step further.

‘Why would the Council call it dream-plague,’ I say, ‘if it is something else?’

‘Yes, why?’ Alva says. The words linger in the middle of the silence, floating and growing.

‘Do you believe them?’ I ask.

Alva takes a breath, another. She pushes a wind-flung strand of hair under her scarf. She turns her face back to me and looks me directly in the eye.

‘No,’ she says. ‘That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it?’

We both know she has said something she should not have.

‘Are you going to report me?’ Alva asks. ‘A healer who doubts the word of the Council?’ Her voice seeks lightness, but her shoulders are tense, her neck rigid as glass.

‘I know how to keep a secret,’ I reply.

Alva observes my expression. Something on her face changes. Stiffness does not dissolve from her body. She speaks again.

‘I know.’

I shiver. A cold wind whistles through me, tears thoughts with it. Her tone raises a memory in my mind.

During my first winter in the House of Webs, I spent a week in the sick bay with a cough and shortness of breath. One night, throbbing images pulled me under the surface of sleep against my will. I woke up to chilling cold and a strangling feeling, but it was not the cough. It was the night-maere sitting on my chest. When it fled, I saw Alva standing nearby, holding a strong-scented, steaming bowl of water and a towel. I knew my eyes had been night-maere black and dream-song had sounded on my lips mere moments earlier.

She pulled me to a sitting position, placed the water bowl on my lap and covered my head with the towel. The bright, herb-infused scent of the steam rising from the bowl brought tears to my eyes and scorched my nostrils, but I was able to breathe again.

After that, I was wary in her company for months. When she never said a word about the episode, I eventually began to believe she had not seen my eyes. That she had imagined the dream-song to be breathing, wheezing with cough.

‘How long have you known?’ I ask.

She could still deny it, pretend she does not know what I am talking about. If she does not, I can. We could bury the matter in silence. The choice is hers. The choice is mine.

Something shifts in Alva’s eyes. Her breathing runs fiercer.

‘Don’t misunderstand me, Eliana,’ she says. Her voice is hoarse. ‘I want to help.’ I study her face. Its expression is bare and true. ‘I’ve been trying to find a way. Every time someone has been taken to the House of the Tainted, I have wanted to raise my hand against it. But there’s nothing I can do alone. If I had proof, and others to support me…’

Her voice trails off. The night is dark, the dawn still impossible somewhere beyond the horizon.

I nod slowly, once, twice. She has made her choice. I make mine. I am surprised by the tears that rise to my eyes when I make the decision to step in a direction from which I cannot turn back.

‘I’ve never told anyone,’ I say.

I wipe my face. Alva’s expression does not ask, does not reject.

‘Now you have,’ she says and squeezes my shoulder lightly.

I sigh: out of relief, out of exhaustion.

‘You should sleep,’ I say.

Alva closes her eyes.

‘You’re right.’

She opens her eyes and looks at the piece of coral hanging around my neck. She takes it between her fingers.

‘That is entirely useless,’ she says. ‘For you and everyone else.’

‘I know.’

The light of the glow-glasses flares on Alva’s face. She lets go of the necklace. It falls back onto my neck.

‘Will you help me help you? And others?’ she asks.

‘How?’ I say quietly.

Alva looks at me. She looks at the sea, and at her hands, and eventually at me again.

‘I don’t know yet,’ she says slowly. ‘But I’ll tell you when I do.’

I nod.

‘Thank you,’ I say.

Alva smiles. It is like a flame behind her face blazes higher.

‘You are right,’ she says. ‘I should sleep. And you too.’

I smile back. Alva waves her hand goodbye, turns. Her white coat flutters and flutters, and vanishes into the night. Winter-chilled stars shine like silver coins sinking into the sea, sprinkling their faint light on the streets and canals.

There is yet another hour less left of our lives, but something has changed while it passed.

I knock on the door four times, softly, so I would not wake Valeria. I pause and repeat the knock. We have agreed on a sign so she would have time to hide the tapestry when someone else is at the door. After a moment I hear four knocks in response from the inside. Valeria opens the door to a cell where the algae-light of the glow-glasses is awake. She has spread the tapestry on the bed. Eight masked figures have appeared in the simple map of the city under the dark centre: the Council. The bottom edge remains unfinished.

‘What do you need to finish it?’ I ask.

Valeria sits down on the edge of the bed and looks at me. I cannot read her expression. I sit down next to her.

‘If you need more yarn, other colours or materials, I can try to get it for you,’ I say. ‘If—’

Valeria lets out a deep sigh and closes her eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I just wish I could help.’

Valeria smiles: a weary smile, but not impatient.

‘I can’t sleep either,’ I say.

Valeria takes my freezing fingers between her own. I feel like I could sense the invisible glow of my name on her skin if I shut my eyes. She rubs my cold hands and slides them into the pocket of my jacket, her own hands still around them. The woollen fabric is rough and encloses our fingers in a hidden space, quiet and dark and warmer than the air.

Our hands hit something at the bottom of the pocket.

I pull out the ball of yarn the strange girl gave me at the Word-incineration. I had forgotten about it. I turn it around. It looks like an ordinary ball of sea-wool yarn, the kind from which people knit scarves for winter. Unless…

Janos and I used to hide things from each other as children, and then give hints on how to find them. Whoever found the chosen toy or small stone or piece of ribbon with fewer hints, won the game. One of my best hiding places had been a ball of yarn. It had taken Janos days to find the piece of coral I had hidden inside it.

I feel the ball with my fingers. At first they meet nothing but the prickly softness of the yarn. But then, something rustles and crumples, presses a different surface against my thumb. I push the yarn aside and find a piece of paper rolled tightly and wedged at the centre of the ball. I manage to grasp the edges, and I keep the movement unhurried as I pull it out.

I unroll the note. It has been years since I have seen his handwriting, but I recognize it immediately. A simple map is drawn on the paper. There is also a time written on it, and one word: Seashell House.

Janos never sends written messages.

Whatever it is, it must be important.

‘My brother wants to see us both next week in Seashell House,’ I say.

Valeria has frozen to stare at me. The sheen from the glow-glass lights one of her cheeks and part of her chin. It leaves her eyes in the dark, but I see a chasm has opened in them.

‘Is all well?’ I ask.

Valeria raises a hand and puts two fingers up. She brings them close to my face and points at my eyes. Then she points at the piece of paper in my hand. Her lips have bent into a hard arc.

I do not take the meaning immediately. When she begins to repeat the gesture, I understand. Blood floods my face and it is too late to mend what has been broken.

I have forgotten to look at the words as if they mean nothing to me.

It would be useless to lie any longer, so I tell the truth.

‘Yes, I can read,’ I say and observe her expression. ‘I learned as a child from my father’s books, while I was looking at the pictures. I was not trying to learn. It just happened.’

Valeria is still.

‘My brother knows. And now you. No one else does,’ I continue.

Valeria turns her head very slightly. The blue shine of the glow-glass reflects in her eyes, stirs. A low, slow voice emerges from her throat. Her lips open, sounds push towards the roof of her mouth, attempting to make words without the guidance of the tongue that is not there.

‘Ch-ee…’

She gives up, draws a deep breath and tries again. I follow the movements of her mouth, trying to imagine the tongue shaping the sounds.

‘Ch-ee-’ She swallows and forces the final letters out. ‘-chh. Chh. Chee-ch…’

I want to place a hand on her knee to encourage her, but I do not know what she wants. Her face struggles.

‘Mmwee.’ She sees I do not understand, and tries again. ‘Mmee. Chee-achh mmee.’

She waits.

‘Teach?’ I say.

Valeria nods. I hesitate.

‘Mm… me?’

Valeria nods again. Light spills in her eyes.

‘Teach me?’ The meaning of the words begins to unfold for me. ‘You want me to teach you… to read?’

A nod. A line surfaces on her brow and disappears.

‘And – to write?’

Another nod. She waits for my answer, her face in half-shadow, ready to turn to me, or away.

This time I nod. I realize how much easier everything can be for both of us. And the most important thing, which is written all over her expression: with the word-skill she will finally be able to tell what happened to her.

‘Of course I will teach you,’ I say. At the same moment as the words fall between us I understand it is the only response I can give. Valeria knows things about me that I am used to hiding alone. Now she must hide them with me. I do not wish to ask it of her, but I have no other choice.

My fingers tremble a little as I loosen the cords of the coin-pouch hanging from my belt and push my hand into the pouch. I find the metal edge I am looking for. I pull out the flat key with one end shaped like an eye. I place it on my palm and offer it to her.

‘Here. Take this as a pledge.’

Valeria breathes deeply and stares at the key, then at my face. The shine of the glow-glass flashes off the key as she takes it from me. She gives a thank-you nod. She picks up the ball of yarn I have placed on the bed and unravels an arm’s length of yarn. She breaks the yarn with her teeth, threads one end through the key and knots the ends of the yarn together. Then she puts her head through the loop. The yarn settles around her neck. She squeezes the key in her hand, looks at me and slides the key under her clothes.

I feel like she has not only accepted my offer. She has also offered a pledge of her own.

When we go to sleep, I imagine the warmth of her skin gathering around the key out of sight.

I walk in a narrow corridor where the floors are stone and walls are web, gauzes woven from silver-grey yarn which a draught sways like water does dead plants. My footsteps make an echo as they hit the stones: tap tap tap. The ceiling arches into a high vault and vanishes into dusk.

Behind the wall-web a shadow moves at the same pace as me. The sound of its footsteps is an echo of mine, tap tap tap, and its shape is not unlike my own. I touch the web and move my fingertips along the threads. The shadow on the other side does the same. I feel the touch of its fingers against my own.

‘Valeria?’ I ask.

The shadow withdraws, stops. I hear its breathing. It begins to move forward. The sounds of the footsteps fall on the stones in a swift succession, like the first drops of starting rain: tap tap tap. I follow the shadow.

Something clatters to the stone floor behind me. I turn to look and see a metallic shimmer. I take a few steps towards it. It is the same key I gave to Valeria, and yet it is not: a dream-key, shifting its shape before my eyes. A metal chain threaded through it leads to the other side of the wall.

The chain pulls the key slowly towards the wall. The key scratches the stones, begins to slide behind the bottom edge of the web. I grasp it. Someone on the other side of the wall yanks, and the key comes loose from my grip, disappears from sight. I am on my knees on the floor. A shadow whose outline could be mine has knelt behind the web. I grasp the web and rip it. The wall-web of waking would never give in under my hands, but in dreams my strength is different, and the web splits in two. Behind there is another web-gauze, and through that I discern a shadow. I tear this web away too, and behind is yet another. I shred layers of web, and my fingers grow sore and my arms ache until I remember my dream is mine to command. I want the webs to vanish and the shadow to show itself.

The shadow is in front of me, its back turned to me. In the half-light of the dream its clothing is black, or perhaps sea-green. I hear the shadow’s rustling breath. The shadow moves, begins to slowly turn its face towards me, and I see it does not exist. It is the face of the night-maere upon which light never falls and the features of which I can never discern. It looks directly at me, and its name is darkness.

The night-maere raises a hand towards me. I get up and flee. I run along the narrow dream-corridor, an undulating alley of webs, and the footsteps of the night-maere echo after my own, tap tap tap. I want myself out of the corridor, and the corridor is gone, a hall in its place, dusk-clad, tall enough for its roof to be the top of a tower. On the edges of the hall stand people. Their eyes are closed, their faces unmoving, and their skins are etched with tattoos, like wounds, like chains.

The night-maere stands at the centre of the hall and approaches me. I want the walls to fall away, I want an open landscape and light. But the escape has worn off my strength, and the dream does not obey. I push the wall with both hands, I want it to be air through which I can step, but there is only stone on my way that does not give in, and the touch of the night-maere is only a step away from my skin.

I open my eyes in a cell where the glow-glass shines in the dark, faint as a moth’s wing. Valeria’s face is discernible as a light, sleeping patch across the room. The night-maere is away, but I can still sense its touch.

I do not sleep again before morning.