The City of Woven Streets

CHAPTER EIGHT

The building must have been beautiful once. Its husk still stands tall among the ruins of the neighbouring houses, on a stretch between the Ink Quarters and the sea, where waters run deep grey-brown and their stench turns people away. The seashell-shaped chimneys are tinted green and white with algae and seagull droppings. We follow Janos’s map: a narrow alley turns left and ends in a wall. There, hidden behind a thick growth of grapevine and thorny bushes, is a small door from which the paint has peeled off almost entirely.

I push the door. Then I push it harder. The wood swollen with humidity creaks, and a decayed strip drops to the ground from the top of the frame. I stare into a dark room where dust floats like sand above the seafloor. Valeria is close behind me. We step in.

The light of our glow-glasses falls upon piles of rubble floods have gathered into the room. The floor feels steady enough under our shoe-soles as we walk among the odd broken piece of furniture, fallen roof tiles blocking the way and dislodged pieces of a stone handrail. This must have been a sitting room once. A wide stairway rises at the centre. I am about to set foot on the bottom step to try its strength, when the shine from our glow-glasses grows bright enough to show the highest step. It ends mid-air, with nothing but a fall into darkness behind it.

We stop at the bottom of the ghost stairway, not knowing where to go. Valeria notices a jarred-open door in the corner and points at it. Before I have time to respond, a dark shadow detaches itself from the wall and begins to move towards us. Valeria gives a start, takes a step back and raises her glow-glass high.

The shadow stops and pulls back its hood. The light of the glow-glass falls on Janos’s face.

‘Valeria, this is my brother Janos,’ I say. ‘Janos, this is Valeria.’

Janos’s expression is friendly as he bows at Valeria. Yet I see his shoulders have stiffened and his smile is wary. I realize I have made a mistake. He had hoped I would come alone. He eyes both of us.

‘There is more light in the other room,’ Janos says and nods towards the jarred-open door in the corner. He glances at Valeria again and I see he intends to say something, but does not.

The other room is nearly as tall as the first one. I discern a figure carved on the stones of the ceiling where the vault peaks: Our Lady of Weaving and her eight limbs holding the threads of all cardinal directions. A few of the glass panes of the skylight have broken. Misty daylight filters through from the outside. Shelves that have fallen out of joint in many places run across the walls, and dark-green algae drips from their edges like the hair of the drowned. Some have crashed to the floor into piles of cracked, twisted wood. I glimpse a slumped shape in the corner and my breath catches, until I realize it is probably a water-gnawed sofa or armchair. On the floor lie shrivelled, torn covers and mushed, yellow-white scraps, like dirt-speckled wet feathers.

‘This used to be a library,’ I say. I can imagine the shelves, straight and steady, and the bright glow-glasses and candelabras in the bruises of the walls. I can imagine my finger running across the spines of the books, contemplating and choosing, picking a volume, weighing it in my hand.

‘Yes, a long time ago,’ Janos says. ‘The house has been uninhabited for a hundred years at least.’

The story of Seashell House is one of the ghost tales of the island. The members of the merchant family that lived in the house perished one by one in strange accidents, by drowning themselves or from what was said to be the dream-plague. The last of them was sent to a Dreamers’ colony during the Reverie Revolt, and Seashell House fell into disrepair, because it was believed to be cursed. This does not seem to have stopped looters. As far as I can see, there is nothing left of any value.

‘We could both have got in trouble because of your letter,’ I tell Janos. I cast the note into the canal on the way, because keeping it did not seem like a good idea.

Janos looks ill at ease. Tension has not disappeared from his shoulders.

‘I know,’ he says. ‘But I couldn’t think of another way. This could not wait until next month.’

Janos looks at Valeria. Valeria understands the situation and looks at me. She raises her hand and points at herself, then at the doorway to the other room. She stirs to leave. Janos’s expression is annoyed and apologetic at once.

‘Wait,’ he says. ‘You don’t need to go. It concerns you as well.’ He clears his throat. ‘I think.’

Valeria manages something akin to a smile. She stops. I nod at her and send a look in Janos’s direction I used to silence him with as a child. Valeria steps back beside me.

Janos pushes a hand inside his cloak and pulls out a bundle of fabric approximately as wide as two palms. As he begins to unwrap it, I see a leather spine I recognize as part of a codex. I see the word painted on the cover.

A cold wave travels through me, like an aftershock of stepping into chilled water. Valeria’s body tenses next to me.

‘What’s this about?’ I ask. My voice scratches the walls.

Janos has produced the whole codex from inside the fabric. I look at the leather covers holding the contents of the book. Apart from the one word there is nothing special about them. They are worn and brown, and could belong to any of the hundreds of codices that are spread on the square every year to be incinerated. Valeria stares at the volume intently.

‘The cover has my name written on it,’ I tell her.

A line appears between Valeria’s eyebrows which looks deep in the light falling from the ceiling. I notice her fingers bending towards her palm, where the tattoo has woken to glow. Shadows are dense in the corners of the room.

‘This codex was on its way to be incinerated,’ Janos says. ‘I saw it on the morning of the Word-incineration, when I was brought some volumes to add to the Dead Codices at the very last minute.’ He pauses and ponders. Before he speaks again, I know he is thinking of his work. Scribes are expected not to share too many details about the practices of the House of Words, just as weavers are sworn to keep details about life in the House of Webs to themselves. Janos chooses his words with great care.

‘Each codex in the House of Words is given a name and a number. The name is dictated by the nameday calendar. I was moving the codices to the gondola, when I noticed.’

Not all scribes may have spotted it. Janos knows, of course, that my name is rare enough not to be on the calendar. As a child I sulked so many times because of it that our parents eventually began to celebrate my nameday the same day as Janos’s.

‘At first I thought that someone had simply made a mistake, or picked a name outside the calendar as a jest,’ Janos continues. ‘But then I read the contents.’

‘What’s in it?’ I ask.

‘I think it’s best if you read it,’ Janos says and offers me the codex.

It is surprisingly heavy in my hands. Valeria takes the glow-glass from me so I can get a better grip of the volume. I open it. The first spreads are empty. I turn the pages until I see pictures run along them.

The drawings are simple coal drafts of everyday life on the island: a fish placed on a table next to vegetables, a bread stall at the market, a butterfly landed on a flower. Hands winding yarn, a fishnet spread to dry, a canal disappearing between houses. In some drawings I recognize the Ink Quarters, and one is a hasty sketch of the edge of the web-maze among the stone walls of the city. A few pictures tell short stories: a flock of seagulls fights over fish in the harbour until a clowder of cats frightens it away and begins to brawl over the catch.

I raise my gaze. Janos stands quiet, the shine of the glow-glasses a distant light in his eyes. Valeria has frozen completely in place. Her breathing seems to have stopped.

‘Are you well?’ I ask.

The sound rising from Valeria recalls the night she arrived at the House of Webs. It is shapeless and wordless, like springing from an animal. She puts down the glow-glasses in her hands so quickly their water storms and tugs the codex away from me. For a moment I think she is going to tear it to pieces. Janos shifts towards Valeria, but I stop him. Valeria kneels on the floor covered by wood and paper and places the open book on her lap. Her hair falls and hides her face. She follows the lines of the drawings with her finger, turns the pages so fiercely that I am afraid they will rip. The spread on which she stops portrays a room with a large desk and papers covering it. Patterns and writing are visible on the papers. There are also numerous bottles of ink on the table and a device I recognize as a tattoo needle: an inkmaster’s workshop.

I see a tear fall on the page, then another. Valeria sobs.

I lower myself to my knees next to her. A woodlouse slips out from under a piece of plank and runs into a crack in the floor.

‘Have you seen this codex before?’ I ask quietly.

Valeria sweeps the hair from her face and nods. Janos bends closer, his eyes full of alertness. I take Valeria’s hand.

‘Where?’

She draws a breath. Her lips move and her expression focuses as she tries to form the word.

‘Mmuh… Mye. Fah. Cher.’ She closes her eyes, her brows frown and frustration twists her mouth. She turns her palm upwards and points at her tattoo.

‘Your father?’

Valeria nods. I place my fingers on the spread.

‘Is that your father’s workshop? Did the book belong to him?’

Valeria nods again. Janos crouches on the floor next to me and examines the picture.

‘It sounds possible,’ he says. ‘Jovanni Petros was an inkmaster. I found the information when you asked me to look into Valeria’s family.’

Valeria glances at me surprised, cautious.

‘I asked for it because I wanted to understand why my name was tattooed on you,’ I say. ‘I was afraid I’d get in trouble with the City Guard.’

Valeria stares at me and then seems to accept the explanation. She squeezes my hand, turns back to the codex and leafs through the pages as if looking for something on them. I have time to notice that among the light-handed drafts are more intricate, detailed drawings that have clearly taken longer. Some of them are drawn with ink. A spread emerges with an image of a woman sitting in front of a loom with a child. Valeria bends toward it. Tears gather in her eyes again. She places a finger on top of the drawing and points at the child. Then she points at herself.

She is much younger in the picture, but I recognize her regardless. Curly hair and pale skin, grey eyes in a face that is no longer as round. The woman of the picture has similar hair, woven into a long braid. She has turned to look at the child next to her with a smile on her face.

‘Is that your mother?’ I ask.

Valeria closes her eyes and nods. She sniffs.

‘Mihaela Petros was a weaver,’ Janos says. ‘She learned her craft in the House of Webs.’ He pauses for a moment and then asks, ‘Valeria, are you familiar with the contents of the codex?’

The light of the glow-glasses sparkles in Valeria’s eyes when she opens them. She begins to turn the pages again, finds what she is looking for and points at the drawing that makes me gasp. I recognize it.

The spread is filled by a map of the island, at the centre of which a dark sun reaches its rays in eight directions. In the north a human figure is seated for tattooing; in the east he sleeps without dreams, in the south the Council observes the events. In the west the dream-images approach the sleeper on whose chest a night-maere sits.

‘Your tapestry,’ I say. ‘You’ve tried to weave something of the contents of the book into it.’

Valeria’s expression is victorious and her nod emphatic.

Janos looks confused. I tell him about the tapestry. Valeria turns back to the beginning of the codex and hands the volume to me.

‘You want me to read it from the beginning?’ I ask.

Valeria nods. I look at Janos. It seems to me that he is trying to hide his excitement. I take hold of the codex and begin to turn the pages again from the beginning.

The inkmaster’s workshop recurs in many of the drafts. In some there is also a master at his table: Valeria’s father. Of the more detailed images drawn in ink the first one portrays the same man sleeping. The expression on his face is calm, and there is nothing but a dim glow-glass next to the bed in the room. A few words are written on the margin of the page.

‘Sea-apple, buckthorn berries, powdered sap, rainwater. Two weeks,’ I read. ‘What does it mean?’

‘Those are ingredients of ink,’ Janos says. ‘The time most probably refers to the time that the dyes are soaked in water.’ He glances at Valeria.

Valeria smiles and nods. I remember something about her earlier fierce leafing through the codex. I find the next ink drawing. I bend very close to the page and tilt the volume so the light filtering through the skylight would fall on it better. I compare two drawings with each other.

‘The inks are different colours,’ I say. ‘Look.’ The lines of one drawing have a dark-green hue, the lines of the other dark-red. The difference is so small it would be easy to miss.

Janos draws closer.

‘You’re right,’ he says.

In the drawing made with red ink the writing is smaller and less noticeable. The words have been embedded as part of the image, but when I look closely, I discern them among the lines. Charcoal, beetle powder, vitriol, resin, vinegar.

‘Your father developed different inks, then?’ I ask.

Valeria confirms this with a nod.

I continue to turn the pages and begin to realize that whereas the drafts portray sole everyday events, the more detailed drawings tell a continuous story. The inkmaster is shown at his desk, drawing, mixing different inks. In one picture he sits at the Ink-marking as the tattooist, in another he is being tattooed. A woman who occasionally vanishes into the web-maze enters the story. A spread-sized ink drawing shows the man and the woman sitting next to each other in a gondola decorated with garlands and ribbons. The woman wears an embroidered gown and holds a bunch of flowers.

A few spreads later the man and the woman board a ship together which carries them away from the island. The eight figures of the Council follow the journey from the Tower. The man sits at his desk again, but the cell is different now: lighter, arranged in a different manner. The woman weaves fabrics and tapestries, winds wefts and yarns. In one drawing she spins yarn from sea-wool. The point of the spindle is as sharp as a tattoo needle.

‘Did your parents travel to the continent?’ I ask.

‘Mm,’ Valeria confirms.

‘Why?’

Janos’s expression changes. I have seen it many times. He is searching for things in his memory, building bridges between this moment and what he has read somewhere.

‘About twenty years ago people could still leave the island on the condition that they returned once a year for the Ink-marking,’ he says. ‘At the time many inkmasters, scribes and healers went there for learning. Perhaps he left in order to study dyes that were not known on the island.’

I look at Valeria. Her face and the movement of her head accept the explanation.

I turn my gaze back to the codex. The woman holds a baby in her arms who smiles at her. The baby sleeps. The baby does not sleep. The baby stares from the pages again and again, her eyes wide open with wonder. Yet another part of the story: the man and the woman stand with their travelling chest ready to go, when the man falls to the ground. The man lies in bed. There are abscesses on his skin and his forehead trickles with sweat. In the direction of his blurred vision a ship carries the woman and the child back to the island. While the woman sits at the Ink-marking getting her tattoo, the man still lies in bed.

The woman returns from the island with the child. The abscesses disappear from the man’s skin. He gets out of bed and settles at his desk again. The images of everyday life continue for a while, but then new ones begin to appear between them.

The man and the woman lie in bed. The woman sleeps, her face calm, the emptiness of night-rest around her. The man sleeps too, but he is surrounded by restless images rising from himself. There are still drawings portraying everyday life, but more and more drawings depicting dreaming grow around them. The man sleeps, and animals and plants and buildings rise from him, entire worlds alien to wakefulness.

And then a picture that confirms everything: a night-maere sitting on top of his chest, a faceless shadow against the fragile sources of light in the room.

I look at Valeria. Her face is quiet and pale.

I turn to a spread on which the man travels back to the island. He sits at the Ink-marking, getting his tattoo together with his wife and young daughter. This is followed by a spread on which the man sleeps again without dreams. Yet his expression is not calm.

While awake, the man sits at his desk and draws. Images spring from his pen showing islanders queueing for the Ink-marking, carrying dreams and night-maeres with them. After the Ink-marking they are gone, replaced by nothing but emptiness. But the tattoos drawn on them begin to shift their shape: they transform into abscesses and bruises, etching their skin like wounds, like chains.

The man sits at his desk and draws. The Tower rises behind him, and on top of it the Council. Page by page they move closer until their dark shadows grow on the wall of the man’s cell.

I arrive at a spread, one half of which has a drawing of an inkmaster dipping a tattoo needle in an inkpot. Under the picture is written:

The other page is blank apart from one sentence.

After that there are only blank pages.

I raise my gaze from the codex.

Valeria looks at me. Janos looks at me. His lips move. He is about to read the sentence aloud. I shake my head as unnoticeably as possible. His mouth goes still.

‘Tell me if I’m interpreting this incorrectly,’ I say to Valeria. ‘Your father fell ill while living on the continent and couldn’t return to the island for the Ink-marking. While sick, he began to have dreams.’

I remember the conversation with Alva.

Why would the Council call it dream-plague, if it is something else?

Yes, why?

Valeria nods. I see the final sentence of the codex which she cannot read bothers her.

‘And when he returned to the island with you and your mother, the dreams disappeared again.’

Shadows stir on Valeria’s face. She drops her chin into a nod.

‘She…’ I go quiet. This I am least certain about. But the thought fits with everything depicted in the codex, it fits with Valeria’s tapestry. If she had wanted to tell one thing, the most important of all, would it not be this one?

I speak the thought out loud.

‘Did your father suspect that… the annual tattoos had something to do with dreaming?’

Valeria’s gaze turns darker and denser. She turns back to the codex spread which her tapestry imitates. She points at every picture in turn. I follow the movement of her hand.

‘Ink-marking brings a calm night-rest,’ I say. ‘The Council watches over to make certain that it will happen repeatedly. If dream images appear…’ I hesitate. ‘The Ink-marking will take them away again?’

Smile spreads in Valeria. She nods, closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. I know I have finally interpreted the pictures correctly. I also see the message in their order now, in the movement of her hand: the cycle remains the same on the island year in, year out.

Janos looks at me. His face draws into contemplation.

‘But some people dream anyway,’ he says.

I have thought of it myself. It is the piece that does not fit.

I return to the spread where ingredients of ink are listed. I point at the list.

‘Maybe Jovanni Petros was not only trying to develop new inks. Maybe he was trying to find out the composition of the ink used in the Ink-marking.’

I see Janos ponder the suggestion.

‘Why would he have done that?’ he asks.

‘Because he wanted to know why it doesn’t work on everyone,’ I say.

Janos is silent for a long while.

‘If he knew all this,’ he then says quietly, ‘that explains the last sentence of the codex.’ He looks at me.

An expression has risen to Valeria’s face that I would not wish to see. She points at the sentence. I take her hand and look her in the eye. She stares back, wants to know, and she has the right to. I take a breath.

‘They plan to kill me,’ I read aloud.

Light clings to Valeria’s skin, makes her look much older than her age for a moment. The corners of her lips twitch and her fingers press around mine.

We are all quiet, and thoughts rise around us like tall shadows growing on the walls, like mist rising from canals. The face of Our Lady of Weaving above us has crumbled, but her web still circles the room. Its threads run as embossed figures on the walls, spiral around the columns carrying the ceiling. Seagulls meow outside and water wears the shore down. In the distance a cable screeches. Wood creaks in the structures of the house like ships in the wind. Strange and dangerous forces are shifting out of sight, and my hand is slight against them, easily crushed under their weight. Valeria is still next to me, does not make a sound. Yet I feel like I can sense every word and sentence ravaging inside her, the scream she is holding fastened within silence.

‘What do you want to do?’ Janos asks eventually.

‘I think,’ I say, ‘that we should meet again. In this same place. A week from now.’

I look at Valeria to be certain, and she nods. Janos nods slowly.

‘That’s what we’ll do,’ he says. ‘I will see if I can find out how the book got among the Dead Codices.’ He pauses. ‘The two of you go first. I will stay behind and leave when you have had a head start.’

We give a slight farewell bow. The shrubs of thorn part like a dream, then fall back, dense and wide enough to cover what they must.

It is the evening after, or the frayed edge of day brushing last threads across skies. I sense a new core under Valeria’s grief, grown since we read the codex. The weight of sorrow has turned into something sterner, more restless. It stirs in her and seeks, and I feel like I could feel it turning if I placed my hand on her skin. We are seated next to each other on Valeria’s bed. She has a scrap of fabric in front of her, on top of which we have formed the alphabet from short pieces of thread. There are still a few threads left. I am teaching her to read and spell her own name.

‘Va,’ I say. ‘Which letters do you need for that?’

Valeria picks up two pieces of thread. She shapes one into a v and the other one into an a.

‘Good,’ I say. ‘What about le?’

I feel Valeria’s breath on the skin of my neck when she bends closer to pick the last two thread-lengths. Her side presses against mine. Her hand brushes my bare wrist. The touch remains glowing under my skin, an invisible trace. Valeria forms the letter a, then her fingers begin to place the thread in the mirror image of e.

‘Almost,’ I hear myself say. ‘Are you certain about the e?’

Valeria puts her head on my shoulder, watches the thread letters. She turns the points of the e downwards.

I shake my head slowly. I feel the arc of her body by my side, the weight of her hand on my knee.

Valeria looks at me and turns the points to the right.

‘That was a guess,’ I say. ‘You would have tried turning the points upwards next.’

The window of the cell behind Valeria frames the darkening evening, and a star has come out about her hair. The light of the glow-glass softens the frolicking of her smile. Her lips are smooth, their bruises have faded long ago. She looks at me, so close I discern every eyelash, the winter-pale freckles on both sides of her nose.

I turn my gaze away.

‘What about ria?’ I say. My voice clutches, flows again. I wonder if she notices.

There are no more unused threads. I wait for Valeria to pick one from the alphabet row. Instead, she places her hand on my wrist and begins to roll up my sleeve, baring my arm. She does it slowly and taking her time. I understand she is giving me the chance to refuse, to pull away or show in a different manner I want her to stop.

I do not want her to stop.

Her fingers brush the bare skin of my arm lightly, back and forth. I notice my breathing has grown narrower, as if it was being pulled tighter from both ends. Valeria looks me in the eye, asking for permission. I do not stir. She places her fingertips inside my forearm, where the row of annual tattoos marks me as belonging to the island. Her fingers are pale against my own brown skin. She draws a letter that breaks the line of the annual tattoos on purpose.

R.

I am only able to nod. I am molten glass inside, and small flames that reach towards her. She pauses, lifts her fingers from my skin, and then draws another letter.

I.

I take a deep breath. I know she hears the pauses in my breath, the weight and burn behind it. She draws the final letter.

A.

‘Just like that,’ I whisper, and although I have everything to lose, I lift my hands onto her neck and kiss her.

Valeria’s arms settle around me and she presses closer. She is warm and smooth and slick, and her arches and angles fit mine. Slowly, slowly she guides my hand, and we are both learning things we do not know how to do yet.