The Dragon's Tapestry

Chapter Four

When the villagers found her, she was sifting through the ashes with the hearthspoon, singing the spells of coming together and of finding, her face and hands gray with fine powder. Marwen did not seem to hear or see them and did not resist when they forced her to come away.

They laid hands on her and brought her before the Council, a group of village women who sat in a row like podhens on a roof. Marwen sat on the ground before them, rocking gently and whispering the words of a spell over and over. All around her, at a respectful distance, were gathered the villagers, some laughing and some talking angrily among themselves. The children played chasing games, and mothers passed out sweets to bribe them into stillness. The laughter of the children began to draw Mar­wen out of her trance. As she surfaced, a squeezing pain in her upper chest gripped and grew more intense until it seemed it would suffocate her.

Lirca and Dalett were whispering and staring at her with wide-eyed fascination. Into the village yard, Leba had her moth­er, Sneda, carried, where she lay drooling and moaning. Leba’s face above her was full of malevolence.

Gumbe Clayfire stood with his arms across his huge stomach and triumph in his smile. Only Master Clayware looked sad and older.

Maug stood apart from the crowd, tossing and catching rocks that, when he missed, fell close to Marwen.

The Council head rose, and everyone gradually fell silent.

“Marwen, apprentice to Grondil, this Council has been called to accuse you. You will listen, and before we pass sentence, you may speak.”

The Council head was Merva Leatherworker, sister to Srill. She rarely spoke to Marwen except when Marwen came to cast spells on her kitchen garden, and when she did speak, she would often smirk and say, “You look nothing like your mother. Pray you have not her evil heart as well.” Now she looked pleased, as though it were a great relief to have this opportunity to vindicate her family’s shame.

“You are accused of using your magic to a dark end, Marwen: that is, the living death of Sneda Shoemaker. You are also accused of the death of Grondil Oldwife. Let the witnesses testify.”

One by one members of the village came forward: the women who had seen Marwen cast the spell on the knife, the many who had heard Marwen and Grondil whispering the Taker’s name and Leba who reported her mother’s condition in great detail. When Merva spoke again, her voice was calm. “It is obvious to me that the Taker came to retrieve the life that you robbed, and somehow you tricked her, tricked her again into taking Grondil’s life instead of your own,” Merva said.

The villagers all murmured their agreement. One of Maug’s rocks fell on Marwen’s back with a soft thud. “I could turn you into an ip,” Marwen thought. “I could turn you all into...” Just then a man came running to Merva and whispered something to her. She looked at Marwen.

“Where is Cudgham Seedmaker, girl?”

Marwen felt Cudgham-ip’s warm heaviness in her lap, sleep­ing as he was in her apron pocket. Horror at the enormity of her deed chilled her. It was true. She was soulless, an empty shell with no purpose at all on Ve save to cause hurt at every turn.

“I do not know where my stepfather is,” she whispered.

Leba’s voice screeched near her. “Liar! You have probably killed him, too. I have seen you repel his attempts to be an affec­tionate father. Do witches have hearts?” She spat on Marwen’s face.

Marwen felt the saliva slide down her cheek, warm and thick. It was true, she was a liar. But she did have a heart. She knew she did, for it was heavy and swollen in her breast, and she knew it must burst at any moment. She sat in the dust unmoving.

Merva was speaking again, but Marwen did not hear. Remem­bering the Tenets of the Tapestry, she whispered a brief spell for help and understanding. She looked up at the villagers. One by one she looked into their eyes, and this time she saw what lay raw behind them: fear. They were afraid of her, they had feared her power as a child and the power she would have as Oldwife. But more than that, they feared her as a soulless one, as one born without a tapestry.

A glimmer of hope flashed in the wash of her despair like a bright fish swimming upstream in Stumble Brook. She was not soulless. Not anymore. She had a tapestry, Grondil had made her a tapestry after all. One who lost the tapestry and who died before it could be remade was destined to be lost or to suffer in the lands of the dead. But suffering was better than not existing at all, she thought. She looked around at the villagers, compas­sionate in her new hope. In her they saw all the dreadful possi­bilities of their own lives. She thought of Grondil, gentle as she touched a sore with her finger, and her heart swelled so full there was no room left for hating.

“And so, Marwen, by law, you have the opportunity to speak,” Merva was saying, each word like the crack of knife against bone. “Begin.”

Marwen stood. She wiped the spittle from her face, but it mixed with the ash and streaked her skin with two black stripes. She looked over to the hills and garnered strength. Perhaps her tapestry had a spirit of its own, perhaps if they killed her, she would find it while she wandered in the dead hills.

“I—” She stopped. She looked into the faces of the crowd, her throat closed tight and finally her eyes fell on the kindly old face of Master Clayware. People were not like stones, she thought numbly, becoming smoother with the squeezing and scrubbing of years. Master Clayware’s face was as wrinkled and folded as dried fruit. She looked into his eyes and spoke. “I do have a tapestry,” she whispered. There was a shifting in the crowd but the faces did not soften. The silence swelled up like a bubble, and Leba broke it with a hissed, “Liar!”

“But it’s true. It’s true!” Marwen cried. “And there is some­thing wonderful in it—wonderful enough to frighten Cudgham. So he burned it. Grondil made it for me after all, but she hid it so that you wouldn’t...” Her words were tumbling over one another like rolling pebbles, and she forced herself to stop and breathe. “I’m sorry. The Tenets of the Tapestry says that no one has an enemy without a cause. I should have tried to under­stand, I should have served....”

There was shuffling and coughing throughout the crowd, and a woman began to make a fuss over her child. Someone pushed Marwen back down into the dirt.

Merva lifted a hand to the people.

“Silence!” Her head, neck and back were as straight and stiff as a drying pole. “Your ‘shoulds’ are eloquent Marwen, but they will not recover the past. Your sentence is banishment to the northern wilderness without beast or bag. The Taker shall decide if you live, as she should have done at your birth. So be it.”

Marwen listened. She felt lighter, as if relieved of a burden. Her tapestry was gone, but fate was mindful of her and would force her steps for a little while at least.

Maug and two of his friends, Bero and Japthas, stepped for­ward. Merva smiled at them and then at Marwen, benignly.

“These young men have volunteered to see to the task. Take her.”

Maug approached her with a rope.

“Do not bind me,” Marwen said, her fingers clutching at the dust. “I will go willingly.”

Maug looked at Merva who nodded her head slightly. While Maug stood there, Master Clayware stepped forward to speak. The crowd murmured, but Merva could not silence Marmawell’s most respected citizen.

“Do not bind her,” he commanded in a quavering voice. Maug hesitated, then dropped the rope, and after a silence Mas­ter Clayware continued speaking. “The sentence has been passed, but I would ask you to consider: Buffle Spicetrader has brought news of a dragon in Ve, heading west from Verduma. Without Marwen, without an Oldwife, we are defenseless.”

Some of the younger people smirked, and someone laughed aloud. But most people glanced anxiously at the sky, and the children ran to their mothers.

“Dragons?” Merva said in a condescending tone. “I do not believe in dragons anymore than I believe there is a wizard, Mas­ter Clayware.”

The old man nodded patiently. “Believe what you will. In the old days, we listened in faith to the Songs, and we were happy. Grondil’s grandmother told me herself before she died that she had seen the wizard and believed. This child, though—will you not for Grondil’s sake be more lenient? As a child she obeyed the laws perfectly, excelled in letters, and spoke of the wizard with passionate innocence. You thought she held herself above you, you thought she rejoiced in her superiority, and so you despised her and ostracized her. Do you not take any responsi­bility for the misuse of what is obviously a great gift of magic?”

Merva answered in a loud voice, her composure gone. “If her magic is great enough to save us against dragons, let her save herself!” She looked at Marwen. “Return to us, and I will recon­sider your fate, but the wilderness is a place that cares not for lit­tle girls’ tears. The Council is ended.”

She turned and walked away.

“I didn’t cry,” Marwen called after her, and she thought Merva’s step faltered.

In a few moments, the entire crowd had returned to their work and their play, leaving Marwen alone except for the three young men and Master Clayware. The old man opened his mouth, then closed it again.

The three young men mounted wingwands, and Marwen was instructed to ride behind Maug. He smelled sour, and there were pimples on the back of his neck. She hung on to the wing-wand’s shell rather than put her arms around him, but the take­off jolted her and she grabbed on to his shirt. He turned his head toward her.

“Don’t be shy, witch. If you think I’d fancy an ugly like you, you are wrong.”

Master Clayware raised one hand, and Marwen thought he would have called them back if he could.

They flew north into the desert hills where few streams ran, and the predominant inhabitants were insects and ips. She thought of Opalwing waiting without socks on her antennae, able to fly, and she called out to her with her mind but without hope. She was not afraid of the wilderness, but the immortal hills could be harsh with those of the world who needed food and water to survive.

At some point Marwen fell asleep, for she awoke as she was pushed off the wingwand, still too groggy to steel herself against the fall. It was freshwind. Maug, Bero and Japthas loomed over her, silently, their eyes shifting. Marwen scrambled to sit up, but Maug pushed her back down with his foot and held her there, his weight on her chest. She could smell wingwand manure on his boots.

“You may be a witch, but you are also getting to be a woman,” he said, “though a scrawny homely one. I think she should grant us a wish, don’t you boys?”

Bero laughed, and he and Japthas punched each other. Mar­wen struggled to breathe against the weight of Maug’s foot, but she did not try to sit up. She felt a coldness in her throat and stomach, as though she had swallowed a large stone. She was still, her eyes locked on Maug’s eyes. They were as hard and shallow as mirrors, and in them she was tiny as an insect. He lift­ed his boot from her chest and toed her spidersilk further up her thigh.

She forgot her speech to the villagers about understanding. She reached into her apron pocket and drew Cudgham-ip out by the tail.

The boys staggered a few paces back, their eyes full of wonder and terror.

Marwen sat up, swallowing air.

“Aye, you should be afraid but not only of ip poison. For this, Maug, is Cudgham Seedmaker, my stepfather.” Marwen could not keep her voice from shaking. Even with all the magic in the world, she would be afraid of Maug who had another power, one she did not understand, a shrinking power. She watched their confidence crumble a little with only a slight less­ening of her fear. She crawled forward, shaking the ip at them.

“You hag!” Maug screamed as he and the others ran to their mounts. “I hope you die in these hills like you should have when you were born!”

She watched them fly away until they were mere blemishes on the cloud-stippled blue of the morning sky.