The Dragon's Tapestry

Chapter Two

Everyone who had looked in at Sneda’s window was there now, in or out of the house, their heads bobbing and weaving to see. Marwen could feel the eyes of the crowd on her back as she and Grondil passed through. They felt ungentle, but she had almost become used to that. It was the silence that was strange.

In the crowd was Maug who sneered and made jokes about Marwen whenever she passed so that all the boys laughed. It was he who dared Bero to throw an egg at her and he who had laughed Klawss to scorn when he was the only boy who danced with Marwen at the Sunrise Festival. It was Maug who made lewd remarks about her growing breasts. She felt small and stiff in her place beside Grondil, knowing his eyes were upon her.

Master Clayware was there, also, quiet and nearly hidden at the rear of the crowd, leaning upon a cane, his white hair covered by a dark hood, his spine curved. Since she was a child, he had always had a kind word for Marwen, and once he told her that her mother had been the most beautiful maid in the village. Beside him, whispering in the old man’s ear, was long-appren­ticed Gumbe Clayfire whose blond hair hung in oily strands around his ears and in his pale-lashed eyes. Gumbe was father to Maug, husband to Merva Leatherworker, Marwen’s aunt. Merva had never forgiven the Council for allowing Grondil to keep her sister Srill’s baby, the baby who was her family’s shame. Perhaps that was why Merva had worked so hard recently to become the head of the Council.

The villagers shuffled aside reluctantly for them. Sneda was lying on the dirt floor in a pool of blood that still pulsed weakly from the stump of her forearm where her hand had been. Beside her lay the knife that Marwen had sharpened only hours before, and next to that lay the white and lifeless hand that had been amputated.

Sneda’s oldest daughter, Leba, extended a dry chapped finger and pointed at Marwen. “There’s the weirdy witchett that hurt my mother, the very one.”

Marwen felt the unkind eyes of the people touch her like cold fingers.

“Hush,” Grondil said. She knelt, touched Sneda’s face and gently lifted the wounded arm. “Find me clean linen,” she said to Leba who stood biting her red raw hands until the cracks split and bled. The girl went searching.

Leba was a leader among the girls Marwen’s age, accepting into her circle of confidantes only those select few who had a measure of breeding or beauty or wealth. Leba had none of these, but she had wisdom in the matters of people and knew at a young age how to exercise her power. Marwen had never been included in Leba’s circle. One thing had saved Marwen’s skin growing up, and it was that Leba and Maug hated each other more than they hated anyone else.

“This one is too late for spells,” Grondil said. “But when magic fails, there is skill,” and while Marwen stood frozen in place by cold eyes, Grondil worked. Once Marwen bent to help Grondil, but Leba hissed, and the cold eyes, like fingers, pulled her up, squeezed and pushed at her. Grondil did not seem to notice, but Marwen sensed that it was Grondil who kept the fin­gers from becoming fists.

The smell of blood was strong. Marwen gazed at the knife, touched it with her mind and searched for any evil she might have left without knowing. She felt gall rise in her throat. There in the essence of the knife, woven among its point and blade, was the anger that Marwen had felt for Sneda when she sharp­ened the knife. Quickly Marwen looked up, searching for some distraction that would ease her nausea. Only the grains of sand in the hourglass moved, sifting to the bottom of the glass. She remembered the Tenets of the Tapestry, its counsel that the Oldwife be at peace with all men and women.

A mumbling half-blind old woman was slowly working her way through the crowd to Sneda’s feet. She was clothed strange­ly in a dress of rough green weel, clouted at the elbows and cuffs and tattered at the hem. Her apron, no less stitched and worn, was the blue of hot sky, with handprints of flour like clouds. On the old woman’s feet were yellow slippers. In this tiny village, Marwen was sure she had never seen this grandmother in all her life, and yet no one else in the room seemed to take notice of her or even see her. Marwen could not stop staring at the old woman’s free, her cataract eyes the color of ice, her skin falling like spidersilk, taut over the bones and drapey in the hollows.

“Who are you?” Marwen whispered.

The old woman did not speak, but she smiled sweetly at Marwen, nodded inanely and, with a wrinkled splotchy hand, made an arthritic pointing gesture at Sneda.

Grondil looked up and saw the old woman.

And then she did a thing Marwen did not understand at first. Though the Tenets of the Tapestry demanded that the Oldwife be soft-spoken and of gentle heart in all her dealings, never did they require that she be servile. Yet, before this old woman, Grondil bowed.

Leba began to wail.

Like an animal she howled, and two women put their arms around her and helped her to a bed. Marwen began to under­stand.

The old woman was leaning over Sneda with slow sore move­ments, smiling her blind smile and muttering and chuckling sweetly.

“The Taker?” Marwen said, her voice high and incredulous.

“Yes,” Grondil whispered, and there was fear and warning in the stillness of her voice. Perhaps she knew, before even Marwen knew, what would happen next, too quickly for her to intervene.

Marwen picked up the cold blood-smeared hand, and just as the Taker bent to touch Sneda’s foot, Marwen placed the sev­ered member into the hands of the old woman. She was think­ing of the eyes watching her use her magic to do glorious things that would earn her honor and love. She did not think of any­thing else. She placed her hands gently on the old woman’s frag­ile shoulders, turned her around and led her out of the cottage.

The Taker mumbled and chortled like a village aunty, smiling and nodding, and all the while she cradled the hand in hers, as though it had an arm and a person attached. Outside, Marwen let go of her shoulders and watched as the Taker shuffled around to the other side of the house and vanished.

Marwen returned to Sneda’s side and, putting aside Grondil’s hand, murmured the only spell of healing she had ever heard—the simple words Grondil had said over her scraped knees and stomachaches.

At once Sneda’s skin became pink and her breathing more regular.

“She is alive. The girl has saved her.” The words spread like wind, and in a moment the eyes were softer, and the coldness was gone. Sneda opened her eyes and mumbled incoherently. Amid sighs of relief, the eyes became decidedly warm.

But not Grondil’s.

In her eyes were fear and pain, a breathless unbelieving pain that she kept concealed from the people behind closed lips and half-closed eyes.

Grondil said to the women, “She will need broth, warm and wholesome. I will return to change the dressings.” She turned and left, Marwen following.

She would be very angry, Marwen knew. Grondil may even punish her. But before Marwen left, she had met Maug’s eyes, and he had looked away in shame. Whatever her punishment, it would be worth it.

When they arrived home, Grondil, in quiet calm movements, began gathering articles of food to the center of the table: sud-bread, dried fruit and waterphan.

Marwen stared. Her entire body began to prickle and sweat in premonition.

“What are you doing? Are we going somewhere?” Marwen asked. Grondil stopped and looked down, then resumed her task.

“I am not leaving, Marwen. You are. You must.”

The beating of her heart filled Marwen’s head. She could scarcely hear Grondil over the sound of it.

“I’m sorry,” Marwen said. She couldn’t hear herself speak but she could tell Grondil had heard. “I’m sorry! What did I do? It was my fault that it happened, Grondil—I had to do something. I saved her life, didn’t I?”

Grondil began gathering twine and utensils and blankets. “You saved her life, Marwen, yes. But it was all too late.

“Sneda will be an imbecile now, forever a burden to Leba, forever unable to care for herself. When the village sisters see what you have done, they will drive you away like an animal.”

Marwen’s shoulders shook. She forced her voice to calmness. “But you could stop them, Grondil. Please. Where will I go? Who will apprentice a soulless one? I don’t want to leave.” Mar­wen’s voice got quieter with every word until it was no more than a desperate whisper.

Grondil did not answer. With strong articulate fingers, she rolled the food into a blanket and took twine to bind it.

“I won’t go!” Marwen cried angrily. “You can’t make me!”

Grondil jerked the rope into a knot.

“Mama!”

Grondil stopped. She did not look at Marwen but down at her hands. Marwen saw they were trembling and stared at them until Grondil stuffed them in her apron pocket where she fin­gered something nervously.

“It is not only because of Sneda, child,” she said quietly. “You have robbed the Taker. She will be back. A life she was sent for, a life she will have, and now it will not be Sneda’s life but another she seeks. The Taker is old, caring not for youth, and blind, caring not for beauty. You should have been the Taker’s baby, but I hid you from her. Now you have touched her, and she will know where to find you. But she can be slow. You will go. Soon. Now.”

Grondil walked past her into the yard. A herd of wingwands grazed on the near slope and Grondil pointed.

“Of my three wingwands, I give you one. Choose your mount and return to me for your pack.” The sun shone in her eyes clear as water. “I must give you something else before you leave.”

“Who will apprentice me?” Marwen asked again weakly, but Grondil had already turned away.

She walked numbly toward the wingwand herd straggled on the slope, some eating, some sleeping, some uncurling their tongues into the shallow Stumble Brook. Grondil’s house was on the outer yarding of the village, and so Marwen avoided pass­ing all but Tamal Deathsayer’s house. She stopped, remember­ing the day Grondil had cured his child’s fever and how he had smiled at her that day. But not since. No one noticed her, for they were busy rethatching the roof, and the straw dust billowed like yellow smoke. She touched the house as she passed, the mud bricks warm as flesh. The wind on her face chilled her teeth, sucked at the hem of her shift.

“It is time I left,” Marwen said aloud, so that her ears might agree with her mouth. “My magic has surpassed that of Gron­dil’s. I have tricked the Taker. I will not cast spells on knives and kitchen gardens. I have heard Grondil sing of the wizard in her prayers, and if he is a fable, I will know of it before the Taker leads me to her land. Perhaps, for me, the wizard will have a see­ing and give me a tapestry....”

Thus Marwen consoled herself until she was among the herd. The wingwands had never seemed so large before. They lifted their wings in the blowing wind and snorted against the grass. Three of them turned and walked toward Marwen. She stroked the wing of Sheerpaz, tickled the rough cere at the base of Broomstraw’s antenna and ducked under Nightshade’s enor­mous girth. She checked their shelljoints for parasites with an experienced eye.

The wingwands had become Marwen’s friends when, as a child, she had played alone in the fields and hills. The creatures did not know that she was a soulless one, that she had no tapestry. At one time, when she had become aware of her magic and that it gave her power the other children did not have, she had used it to try and win the love of her peers. Then, instead of just fearing her, they also despised her. With time she had learned to embrace her loneliness and treasure it. Even so, there had always been Grondil and the wingwands.

It was a great thing to inherit a wingwand. Few families in the village owned one, and only the richest had two or three. In Marmawell their beauty was more prized than their usefulness. Only Trader Buflle ever used his beast to travel great distances, and it showed. The muscles at Peggypin’s wingbase were thick and bulbous, and her left eye ran with green fluid from an infec­tion, a bit of dirt that had cut into her eye when in flight. On the slope newborn Butterbug looked like a yellow sundewsie with its petals fluttering in the wind; his mother, Rue-the-day, catching the pink rays of the Morningmonth sun like a stempellow in bloom, moved away from Marwen without alarm, calling her baby after her.

Plumbumble was Grondil’s favorite and Rainbow, Cudgham’s. Of Grondil’s three, that left Opalwing. She had a long slender body, cream-colored, but her wings were her great beauty. Almost transparent, they fanned out like iridescent veils, shattering light into soft prism shards. Marwen had rarely ridden her, for she was young and somewhat skittish, but Grondil had told her long ago that one day Opalwing would be her own, that she had chosen her especially for Marwen, had sent Buffle Spicetrader on a long search for her. Marwen spoke softly in the beast’s own language, and Opalwing sidled away. Again Marwen spoke to her, let the beast taste her skin, stroked her antennae until she was calm.

Marwen strapped on her pack, mounted, removed the stock­ings from Opalwing’s antennae, and in a moment they were air­borne. As a child Marwen had longed for the day she would be big enough to fly. She dreamed of the places she would go, of the freedom she would enjoy. But that first flight was brief, for there was no place to go, no hills as beloved as her own hills where she had named every cave and stream. From the air she could not savor every pretty stone or new flower or animal track. The feeling came back to her as she climbed toward the clouds.

Marwen circled back toward the village. She wondered what Grondil wanted to give her and resolved that she would not plead again to be allowed to stay. She would not cry.

Opalwing was descending when Marwen thought she saw someone walking westward into the hills. In another moment she was certain it was Grondil who walked so slowly. And in the next moment she banked Opalwing sharply in pursuit. For beside Grondil, hunched and nodding like an old village aunty, walked the Taker.