The Weaver

CHAPTER NINE

Irena stares at the last spread of the codex. Janos glances at Valeria, who glances at me. We are sitting around a circular table in Irena’s house. Candles burn orange and white and yellow on the walls. Their smoke gathers into a skein high in the ceiling. The glow of flames ripples on the paper.

‘It reads—’ Janos begins.

‘I can read,’ Irena interrupts. She places her fingers on top of the codex and raises her gaze. There is bright-polished grief in it, and something else.

‘Why did you bring this to me?’ she asks. The words crackle into the dusk of the room.

I sense Valeria’s warmth next to me when she stirs. Her leg presses against mine. I stop the smile that is already growing inside me.

‘We thought the contents might interest you,’ I say.

Irena’s face looks smoother in the soft light, and yet there are sharp angles under her skin.

‘Has it crossed your mind that the codex may be a mere fiction?’ she asks.

‘We talked about it,’ Janos says. ‘Why would your brother have gone to such trouble? And how would he have been able to foresee—’ He glances at Valeria and goes silent.

‘His death?’ Irena says. She fixes her stare on Valeria.

‘Did Jovanni know you had seen the drawings?’ she asks.

Valeria shakes her head. The scent of the candles is pungent and the smoke stings my eyes.

‘I thought as much,’ Irena says quietly. Her fingers brush the words on the last page.

‘Do you believe the codex is a fiction?’ I ask.

Irena does not respond immediately. She looks at each of us, looks at the book before her again.

‘No,’ she says. ‘I believe there are people in this city who would pay a royal reward for finding that codex. Even more for destroying it.’ Her hand squeezes into a slow fist. ‘And most of all for reporting the persons guilty of keeping it in possession.’

Shadows throw themselves closer and retreat again in the flare of the fire. Valeria’s fingers seize my wrist under the table. Janos’s face tenses. I remember our first visit to Irena, the feeling that she left things untold.

‘Do you know something about this?’ I ask. Valeria’s grasp is soft and firm on my skin, like a tightening knot of silk yarn.

‘How do I know I can trust you?’ Irena says.

‘We have just given you something you could use against us if you wanted to,’ Janos says. ‘Is that not enough?’

Irena looks at each of us in turn. Her eyes are black and glistening, like a bird’s.

‘And how do you know you can trust me?’ she asks.

‘Valeria does,’ I say. Valeria nods to confirm this. ‘That is good enough for me.’

Two deep lines appear between Irena’s eyebrows. Her fingernails press onto the skin of her palm. She takes a breath and lets out a sigh. The corners of the room are dark cracks in the world, and flames fumble for air. Irena turns to Valeria.

‘I made your father a promise not to tell,’ she says. ‘But every reason behind his request has now been made void.’ She places her hands on the table and spreads her fingers like roots. The narrow tendrils of vines run over her knuckles and spiral on her skin. ‘The truth is that I have been looking for this codex. I thought it had been destroyed.’

Janos’s face is a surprised shift in the half-light, Valeria’s a pale, alert patch. Her fingers squeeze tighter around my wrist.

‘Did you know about the book?’ I ask.

‘I did,’ she says. ‘But not of its contents. Jovanni was afraid, but he would not tell me why. At the time I thought he did not trust me. Now I think he believed he was protecting me. He feared for his family.’

‘Did he ever mention his dreaming to you?’

The voice belongs to Janos.

‘No,’ Irena replies. ‘Perhaps he didn’t wish to burden me with the secret. He only talked about the inks used on the island and implied he had discovered something important. He had been trying for a long time to acquire the membership of the guild that manufactures the tattoo ink used in the Ink-marking.’

‘You said you thought the codex had been destroyed.’ Valeria’s fingers slide between mine. ‘Why?’

Irena looks at me. Her cheeks are bony, her gaze sharp in its hollow.

‘My brother told me that if something happened to him, Valeria would come to see me and bring a message.’ Irena turns her gaze to Valeria. ‘I was to convey it forward to someone in the House of Words. Jovanni told me he had hidden a notebook there.’

Valeria shifts, and I see surprise run through her.

‘But Valeria did not come,’ I say.

Irena shakes her head. The shadows move back and forth.

‘When my brother died, I looked for her everywhere. No one seemed to know anything. I began to believe she had been killed and thrown into the sea, or perhaps captured. I feared she might have been sent to the House of the Tainted. And then, weeks and weeks later, the two of you appeared at my door.’

She pauses, looking at Valeria and me.

‘You showed me the tattoo, but I did not know what it meant,’ she continues. ‘Then, when I spoke to you alone,’ she says to Valeria, ‘you seemed to know nothing about a message. And that is when I made the connection. If Jovanni had wanted to send me a message without anyone else noticing, tattoos are the way he would have done it.’

‘Why did he use my name?’

Irena shakes her head slowly.

‘That I don’t know.’

Janos shifts on his seat.

‘I haven’t told you,’ he says. ‘I went through the record of Valeria’s family again. You are the only person on the island who shares the exact same birthday with her. Perhaps her father chose the name because of that.’

Valeria looks at me. Her hand squeezes mine under the table.

‘That’s exactly what Jovanni would have done,’ Irena says. ‘He meant it as nothing more than code. He couldn’t have predicted you would ever have anything to do with each other.’

One of the candles on the wall burns out. The tall flame shrinks into a blue spectre and goes out entirely. Orange glows in the remains of the wick for a moment, until there is nothing but black left.

‘Did you convey the message to the House of Words?’

‘I couldn’t,’ Irena says. ‘The scribe to whom Jovanni had asked me to send the message was taken to the House of the Tainted immediately after his death.’

Janos’s expression grows more alert.

‘Ilaro Matis,’ he says. I remember he mentioned it when we visited the Glass Grove.

The stench of the burnt-out candle drifts in the room.

‘So someone else may have read the codex, too,’ I say.

Janos thinks about it.

‘I don’t believe it likely,’ he says. ‘Ilaro was responsible for the storage room where the Dead Codices are kept after they’ve been copied. No one reads them again at that point, so it would have been easy to hide the book among them. He probably intended to move it elsewhere before the Word-incineration.’

Slowly Valeria’s hand withdraws from mine. We are all silent. Winter chill emanates from the walls of the room, besieges us like a skerry amidst sea, and somewhere far away a rising storm gathers strength.

‘What do you want to do with the codex?’ Irena finally asks.

I look at Janos. I look at Valeria. We spoke about this before we came to Irena.

‘We must find out if the claim about the connection between the tattoo ink and dreams is true,’ I say. ‘And if it is, islanders must be told.’

Dusk breathes around us. Irena watches us. After a long moment she speaks.

‘How do you plan to succeed?’ she says.

I glance at Valeria and Janos.

‘We haven’t really thought about it yet,’ I say. The words sound fragile, ready to bend in the first wind.

‘You were all at the Word-incineration,’ Irena says and crosses her arms on her chest. ‘You know what the Council says about Dreamers. That they are deliberately spreading the plague. That they burned down the Museum of Pure Sleep. How will you get people to believe the word of a Dreamer?’

Janos opens his mouth but says nothing. Valeria drops her gaze and frowns.

‘You will need allies,’ Irena continues. Her voice is low and emphatic. ‘Where will you find them?’

‘There must be other Dreamers on the island who are not yet in the House of the Tainted,’ I say.

The words have left my mouth before I have had time to consider them. Irena looks at me carefully. I feel the beating of my own heart and the tightness in my breath. Yet I do not turn my eyes away.

‘Interesting,’ she says. ‘And true.’ Her bright bird-eyes are still fixed on me, wary under the dark brows. ‘They hide because they must, but they have always existed.’

Valeria has frozen still next to me. Janos’s voice is calm, without colour.

‘How do you know this?’

Irena’s gaze turns slowly from me to Valeria and softens a little.

‘A few years ago, clients started coming to me requesting invisible tattoos,’ she says. ‘The kind you can only see in glow-algae light.’

Valeria makes a sound, another. I think I can pick the words in them.

‘Like Valeria’s?’ I ask.

‘Like Valeria’s,’ Irena says. ‘I began to pay attention to it because they all requested to have the tattoo on their palm, which was an unusual place.’

I sense Valeria’s unrest. I know she is thinking about the tattoo on her own palm.

‘I also wondered why there were so many who wanted a similar tattoo who nevertheless seemed to have nothing in common,’ Irena continues. ‘They came from all trades and age groups.’

Again I remember the tattoo I saw at the Museum of Pure Sleep, the scar on the strange man’s hand. I nearly mention it, but Valeria’s hand drops onto my own, squeezes my fingers as if knowing and wanting me to keep silent. Irena’s voice does not break off.

‘When people had been coming to me to get these tattoos for a while, I began to hear rumours about things happening on the island.’

‘What kind of things?’ Janos asks.

‘Long-outlawed Dreamer symbols began to appear on buildings in the deep of the night,’ Irena says. ‘On the cliffs of the shore, on bridges. Once, even on the City Guard’s weapons.’

Janos stiffens in his chair.

‘There was an incident in the House of Words last year,’ he says. ‘When we went to work in the morning, a symbol resembling an eye was drawn on each one of the unfinished codices in the Halls of Scribing. They all had to be destroyed and started anew.’

‘Why do you think it has anything to do with Dreamers?’ I ask.

‘The eye is an ancient Dreamer symbol. They have others, but that is one of the best known.’

‘Another group of people could be using the same symbol,’ Janos says.

‘That is what I thought,’ Irena says, ‘until I was recruited.’

I cannot hear my own breathing, or that of the others. The flames of the candles burn straight and tall, without the slightest stirring of air. A narrow smoke disappears from them into the dusk of the room.

‘What do you mean?’ I ask.

Irena blinks and new lines cross her expression. She gets up and pushes her chair back. The wooden legs screech on the floor. She walks into the other room and returns carrying a glow-glass she places down next to the codex. Its light blends with the amber glow of the flames as she walks to the niche in the corner of the room, pours water from a jug into a pewter cup and brings the cup to the table. She sits down again.

The surface of the water in the pewter cup evens out to reflect the faint lights. Irena turns her palm upward. I see now the barely discernible scar tissue runs on her skin. Irena pulls a handkerchief from her pocket, dips it in the pewter cup and wipes her palm with it.

A shining-white tattoo is drawn visible in the light of the glow-glass: an open eye.

We all stare at Irena. Valeria lets out a sound.

‘A secret for a secret,’ Irena says in a quiet voice. ‘I’m not a Dreamer, but I work for them.’

I remember how the tattoo I saw at the Museum of Pure Sleep disappeared from the skin of the scar-handed man. Of course: a way to reveal the tattoo, a way to hide it from sight where needed. A resistance movement.

‘How… ?’ Janos begins, but the sentence trails off.

‘They have ways of announcing their existence,’ Irena says. She closes her fingers around the tattoo. ‘The contents of that codex might give them – us – the weapon we have been longing for.’

Two of the candles burn out. Their smoke gathers over the table, floats as a veil before our eyes. Its scent brushes my nostrils. Somewhere sand flows through narrow hourglasses, one grain after another, until there are none left, and the glass is turned again. The smoke lifts, clearing the air between us.

I ask the question to which we all need an answer.

‘Do you think they can help us?’

‘Yes,’ Irena says. ‘I also think I will need your help.’ She lets her gaze circulate on all of us. ‘First of all, we need more knowledge of the tattoo inks.’ She points at the drawing on the last spread of the codex and the words written underneath it: charcoal, burnt olive oil, diluted vinegar. ‘This is a common recipe,’ she says. ‘My own inks are based on it. But Jovanni suspected that in the Ink-marking something else is added to the ingredients.’

‘If you can blend me a small amount of ink with this recipe and get a sample of the one used in the Ink-marking,’ I reply slowly, because the thought is only just taking shape, ‘I may know the right person to look into it.’

Valeria’s face is brighter than it has been in ages. Janos’s thoughts move behind his eyes, arranging knowledge and the world and seeing new possibilities. Irena speaks again.

‘And now, we need to talk about a plan.’

I wash my hands in a tub filled with soapwater, one of which has appeared by the doorway of almost every tavern in town. The water is murky and I feel like it leaves my hands dirtier, but this is the only way we will be allowed in. Tavern-keepers are too scared of the dream-plague. I shake water off my hands while Valeria and Janos wash theirs. We step in. A sticky smell of fish stew, malt and unwashed bodies pours in our faces. A picture of the Council watches everything from the wall. The venue is full. I do not see any customers dressed in the uniforms of the City Guard or the colours of the Houses of Crafts. This is a place where fishermen, butchers and the crew of midden ships come to drink and eat. There are no black-clad family members of Dreamers in sight, either. Many taverns in the city no longer admit them.

I point towards the corner where a piece of plank has been nailed to the wall to serve as a table. Janos goes to the bar. Valeria and I head for the corner. She has tied her hair back, and a strip of the skin of her neck is visible between the coat and the hairline. It is difficult for me not to step closer and brush it with my fingers. I still feel the traces of her touch where her hands moved last night and this morning. The disguise is successful: I would not guess she is a woman if I did not know. She has changed the sea-green coat of the House of Webs for a brown, hooded jacket and loose men’s trousers. I wonder if my own disguise is as credible.

Usually fires burn in taverns, but here glow-glasses have been placed beside them to light many of the tables. The globes look new, freshly made by glass-masters. I have seen similar ones elsewhere in the city recently. I almost say something to Valeria about the matter, but just then Janos threads his way through the crowd to us, carrying three tankards of hot cider. He places them on the makeshift table. We have rehearsed this frequently, but this is the first time we have an audience.

I can hear the conversation at the nearest table. They must be able to hear us, too.

‘I heard something the other day,’ I begin. I lower my voice as much as I can.

‘Tell us more, friend,’ Janos says.

‘About Dreamers.’ I say this louder on purpose. A man wearing clothes that have been patched repeatedly glances in our direction.

‘What about them?’

Slowly the man turns his eyes away, but I notice that he and his companions have gone quiet, perhaps in order to listen.

‘A strange thing happened,’ I continue. ‘There was a withered old man sitting by the square and telling a story. I was buying vegetables from the stall next to him, and I couldn’t help hearing. He chatted that a long time ago everyone on the island had dreams. And that it wasn’t a disease at all. That dream-plague doesn’t exist.’

‘A village idiot, no doubt,’ Janos says. Valeria hums in agreement.

‘That’s what I thought,’ I say. ‘But he was dressed in healer-white. He said that more and more people on the island have begun to have dreams, and there will be a time when it’s a normal part of life again. When people will understand there’s nothing to fear about it. That many on the island are already talking about it.’

‘I haven’t heard anyone say such things,’ Janos says. He is good at playing suspicion.

‘Me neither,’ I say. ‘But that’s what the man said.’

‘The City Guard could arrest you for such talk,’ Janos says. ‘Why would you tell me this? You’re not one of them, are you?’

‘Of course not,’ I reply and take a gulp from the tankard. ‘Besides, I’m not saying I believe the old man. I’m only telling you what I heard.’

The men at the next table are silent.

‘Rather bad, those shoe leathers they’ve been bringing from the continent lately,’ Janos changes the subject.

‘You said it,’ I reply. ‘Good luck to anyone trying to make footwear from those. And don’t even let me get started on the fabrics…’

We continue our chatter about shoemaking, tailoring, the weather and other insignificant matters. The men at the next table return to their own conversation. An hour or so later we leave the tavern.

Perhaps none of them will remember afterwards what they heard. Perhaps someone will, and tell someone else. The rumour has been sown. I hope it will not need much in order to start growing. If it returns to us one day, either in the same shape or changed, we will know everything is proceeding as it should.

If anyone asks them to describe the customers who spoke about Dreamers, they will remember three young men in the corner of the tavern. Cobblers, maybe, or tailors. Two dark and one pale, in brown jackets, like most people in the city. No particular characteristics.

The first phase of the plan is in action.

A week later Alva invites me to see her. The curtains between her workspace and the sick room are closed. It is silent on the other side. The water in the medusa tank casts a reflection on the thick fabric, a flickering ghost of moving light. I glance at the tank and see that it is empty.

‘I should ask you where you got the inks,’ Alva says, ‘but I will not.’

‘Did you find out anything?’ I ask.

‘A whole lot of interesting things,’ Alva says.

She opens a cupboard and takes out six glass jars, which she places on the table.

‘I did a series of experiments,’ she says, ‘and concluded that one of the inks has three components that are missing from the other. One of them is a mineral powder used in making red-dye. Another has been extracted from a species of passionflower. The third I could not identify. I tested the impact of the inks on glow-algae.’ She points at the glass jars. ‘I added ink to each jar of algae, doubling the dose with each one. Would you cover those glow-glasses, please?’

I pull fabric hoods over two glow-glass globes hanging from the ceiling, leaving only one bare next to the singing medusa tank. In the diminished light I see clearly that each of the algae jars is dimmer than the previous one. In the first one the algae shines almost normally, but the last jar has barely any glow left.

‘Does it kill the algae?’ I ask.

‘Eventually,’ Alva says. ‘The larger the amount of ink and the longer the contact with the algae continues, the worse the algae fares. The ink seems to damage it in ways which prevent its growth and renewal.’

‘Could the ink have an effect on people?’ I ask.

Alva looks at me strangely.

‘It is hard to say for certain,’ she says. ‘Like I said, I cannot recognize all the components, and algae does not necessarily react the same way a human would. Passionflower deepens night-rest. The mineral powder might cause something akin to symptoms of poisoning. It depends on many things. People have different tolerance levels.’

I stare at her.

‘Are you certain?’

‘Of course not,’ Alva says. ‘It would need to be tested, preferably with large numbers of people and for many years. But that would be highly questionable, of course.’

‘Of course,’ I say.

Alva reaches to remove the hoods covering the glow-glasses.

‘I wrote a completed ink recipe for you,’ she says and digs a piece of paper out of her pocket.

I stare at the note for a moment. I sigh and take it.

‘You know all my secrets, don’t you?’

The corner of Alva’s mouth lifts.

‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’ she asks.

‘Perhaps a time will come when you can,’ I say.

Alva smiles in the growing light.

‘Do you think it will come soon?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ I reply.

‘I promise to be available.’

I hear Alva collect the glass jars from the table behind me as I leave the sick bay. I imagine her writing down in her remedy notebook everything she has discovered, filling the spread with small, knife-sharp letters that have the power to cut open the surface of the world.

I run in the narrow dream-corridor where the floor is stone and the walls are webs, gauzes woven from silver-grey yarn, persistent and far-reaching. A dark wooden door stands tall at the end of the corridor. The night-maere is always a few steps behind me, the echo of my every movement. I want the dream-walls to vanish, I want the night-maere off my heels. Yet the escape has worn my strength small and my will does not bend the shape of the dream into another. I reach the door and want it to be mist-thin, but it is solid and robust under my hands, does not give in. I turn to look at the darkness of the night-maere. Cold gathers around me, and silence. Terror floods into me, carries icy metal on its crest, heavy chains I have no strength to break. The face of the night-maere burns as a lightless hole at the core of the dream. I tell myself to wake up, but the web of the dream will not yield; its threads tie me in place. The night-maere reaches its hand towards me.

The touch sends a bright current through me that fills me with strength.

I draw a breath.

I want the door to be mist-thin again, and this time it lets me through. I fall to the other side. The door settles between us, translucent as glass. Behind it I see the night-maere that has also fallen to the floor. It rises together with me. The power kindled by its touch still sparkles in my body, tingles in my palms and glows in my veins. On the other side of the door the threads of the wall-webs have begun to shine faintly.

Go, I tell the night-maere without words.

It stands and watches me in silence and does not turn away.

The threads of dream let go under Valeria’s touch. It is still early, the night behind the window without the edge of light. The glow grows and diminishes, grows and diminishes in me still, as Valeria moves, wraps around me like a vine.

Slowly I transfer the glow onto her skin.

The creaking of the cables carries to the Halls of Weaving when the hourglass has been turned for the sixth time after lunch. My hands continue to work, but my hearing clings to the sound, because visitors are rare in the House of Webs and the cargo of the day arrived earlier. After some time, heavy footsteps approach along the corridor.

We all cease to work when four City Guards step into the Halls of Weaving. I do not remember seeing any of them before. A few weavers get up.

‘You may sit,’ the tallest of the guards says. His hair curls grey above his ears. He nods at another guard who steps forward, takes a paper from his pocket and unfolds it. He clears his throat.

‘The following weavers are to come with us,’ the City Guard says and begins to read names from the paper. ‘Viola Matia, Sisi Ditos, Kiela Lanero.’

Viola and Sisi look at each other, startled. Kiela stares in front of her. She is one of the weavers who returned from the Hospital Quarters having lost their eyesight. The City Guard continues to read names.

‘Nita Lupolis, Reia Nieves, Leli Nuntio.’

The tallest guard interrupts.

‘Get up from your seats,’ he says.

The other guard reads more names and one by one those whose name has been read aloud get up in front of their looms. Sisi stands closest to me. Her eyes are red. My breathing runs superficial and panicked; I am afraid I will hear my own name. Yet I am beginning to realize it will probably not come. The weavers whose names are on the list have one thing in common.

Agitated footsteps sound from the corridor. Alva appears on the doorway with the weaver who is on messenger duty.

‘What is going on here?’ she asks in a voice that clangs against the stone walls.

All four guards turn to look at Alva. The City Guard reading the names goes quiet. The tallest guard steps towards Alva.

‘We are under orders to take all weavers carrying dream-plague away from the House of Webs,’ he says.

Weaver appears at the door too.

‘To where?’ Alva asks.

None of the guards speaks, but I read the answer on their faces. So does Alva. Her expression thickens like a storm cloud.

‘No,’ she says. ‘They don’t belong there. They are all completely healed. Every last one of them returned from the Hospital Quarters to work weeks ago.’

‘There is no cure for dream-plague,’ the tallest guard says.

Alva turns to look at Weaver.

‘This is senseless,’ she says. ‘I can guarantee they are healthy. A few of them don’t see as well as before, but it has had no impact on their ability to work. Their hands know the routes of the yarn.’

The tallest City Guard stares at Weaver. Weaver’s dark gaze is steady, but eventually he turns it towards the Halls of Weaving and says, ‘According to the new orders from the Council, all carriers of dream-plague must be isolated from other islanders.’

Sisi stirs uncertainly. Reia too.

‘Move,’ the tall guard says.

The weavers treated at the Hospital Quarters begin to move towards the door. Those who do not see walk in short, cautious steps. Others, whose names have not been called out, get up to support and guide them. They settle in a row. I see Sisi holding back tears. I see Weaver look away.

Alva turns her back. Her footsteps beat the floor of the corridor steady and sharp, like wind beating at windows it is ready to break.

We are not permitted to follow the progression of gondolas or to interrupt our work. Yet that evening we do. We gather on the wall outside the gondola port and watch twenty-three torn away from the rest of us sit on board. Their faces are turned towards us.

One of them raises a hand, so far away I can no longer discern who it is. Slowly we raise our hands in response. The rest of the weavers in the gondola do the same. We know most of them cannot see us. We keep our hands raised anyway until the gondola has disappeared from sight.

I only begin to wonder at supper where Valeria is.

She has not been to the Halls of Weaving all day, because she is on kitchen duty. The last time I saw her was at lunch. Silvi thinks she may have seen her doing the washing up afterwards; Ania claims she was feeding the hens in the garden just before supper. When I visit the sick bay, Alva tells me she saw Valeria on her way to Weaver’s study, but cannot remember exactly when.

I approach Weaver’s study in order to ask her if she knows about Valeria, when I hear sounds behind the door. Two male voices speak softly, and I cannot discern the words. Between them, under them, behind them a third voice comes and goes, trying to make its way out, but lacking words and a way of shaping them. A voice without a tongue.

I stand in the empty corridor, frozen in place, and try to determine what to do. Maybe I do not have time to get help. Maybe I am putting myself in danger if I step inside.

I hear Valeria again. I gather my courage, stride to the door and tug at the handle.

Weaver’s study is locked. She never locks it.

I knock on the door. The sounds pause for a moment, then begin again. Their rhythm is now more fervent. Words are still formless on the other side of the thick door. I knock again. When no one opens, I begin to bang on the door.

There is a screech from the room, like a heavy piece of furniture being moved. Then a clank, like something falling to the floor.

‘Valeria!’ I cry out. ‘Valeria!’

The door remains closed. My strength alone will not open it. I turn around and run.

I find Weaver outside on top of the wall.

‘There is something happening in your room,’ I tell her. ‘Could you come and open the door, please?’

Weaver turns to look at me and her face is in the shadow. It is too dark for me to see her expression. Her voice is night-coloured.

‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘Valeria,’ I say. ‘I think she is in your study. I heard noises from there, and the door is locked.’

Weaver is still, like a doldrum in wind, and then she begins to move. She strides down the steps and into the building. I follow. We walk the length of the corridor, past the Halls of Weaving, to the tall wooden door.

It is wide open. There is no one in the room.

‘So there was someone in here?’ Weaver asks.

‘I didn’t see anyone,’ I say. ‘The door was locked. But I heard the voices. Valeria was here.’

Weaver’s gaze is stone and sky, unmoving.

‘Why would Valeria lock herself in my study?’

‘She was not alone,’ I say. ‘I also heard two men.’

‘Two, you say?’ Weaver raises her eyebrows. When they come back down, her expression considers, decides. She stands steady enough to be one of the walls of the building, perhaps the one that supports everything else. ‘When the City Guard came to the house today, they probably checked the cells and dormitories.’

Weaver waits for my reaction. Our Lady of the Weaving in the wall hanging in the corner raises her hand, in invitation or warning. The door behind the tapestry is cracked open, so slightly it might be my imagination, a gateway into dark.

My voice does not falter. My face shows nothing. I can do this.

‘Valeria is not a Dreamer,’ I say.

‘How do you know?’ Weaver says. ‘Would she have told you?’

‘What do they think they will find?’ I ask. ‘If someone were a Dreamer–someone not known to carry dream-plague– how would they know?’

‘According to the new law, they do not need to know,’ Weaver replies. ‘It is enough if they find something that can be interpreted as suggesting dream activity. Tattoos depicting Dreamer symbols. Books or clothes bearing their colours. Amulets or rings. Anything that could be connected with Dreamers in any way.’

A thought that casts me frost-cold takes shape in my mind.

Without waiting or asking for permission I begin to stride towards the cell. I take a shortcut across the square. The air is like invisible rime on my skin. I do not care if Weaver follows me or not. I step into the cell, kneel on the floor and begin to feel under Valeria’s bed. My knees ache against the stone floor. Weaver’s long shadow appears in the doorway. My hands meet nothing but wooden slats and between them the coarse underside of the mattress, the tangles of dried seaweed stuffed inside the fabric. Inch by inch I go through the bottom of the bed despite already knowing I will not find what I am looking for. I turn and lean on the edge of the bed. It presses my back painfully.

Weaver stands in the doorway of the cell.

‘It is gone,’ I say.

Weaver steps into the cell and closes the door behind her.

‘What is?’ she asks quietly.

‘Valeria’s tapestry,’ I say. ‘The one you told her to unravel. She continued to weave it in secret.’

Weaver’s lips squeeze tighter together. She straightens her back.

‘Why was it important to her?’ she asks.

I realize I may have said too much.

‘I… don’t know,’ I say. The words leave my mouth hesitant, slow. ‘Maybe she just wanted to weave something else than wall-webs.’

Weaver gazes at me with dark eyes into which the light of the glow-glass draws cold specks.

‘What did the tapestry portray?’

I wonder if it is wiser for me to lie or to tell a careful half-truth. I decide on the latter.

‘The island,’ I say. ‘It was a map of the island.’

‘Was there anything else in it?’

‘Just people,’ I say. ‘And the Council.’

Weaver’s head turns a little.

‘The Council?’

‘The patterns were simple,’ I say. ‘I think she was just imitating a tapestry she had seen in the Museum of Pure Sleep, for her own amusement.’

‘Could she have hidden the tapestry somewhere else?’ Weaver asks.

‘I don’t know why she would have,’ I say. ‘She—’

My hand hits something on the floor, next to the leg of the bed. I hear metal scrape stone.

That is when I understand.

I should have seen the connection much earlier. It has been in front of me all this time.

The item is not heavy, yet I can feel its weight in my whole body when I slide it to sight along the floor and pick it up. I turn it before my eyes.

The light refracts dimly off the dark-stained metal with a broken piece of grey-green yarn hanging from it. At the centre of an oblong eye shape an eight-pointed sun stares at the world, all-seeing.

The key Valeria carried around her neck

out of sight, in the dark grow things that bear the greatest weight and burn, for in light everything grows slighter. Sometimes strands spend a long time seeking each other, fumbling without light, and interweave without knowing that it is exactly what the web wants.

The door is mist-thin, the door is solid and robust, the door is translucent as glass and time behind it is dream-time, where the threads of the web shine faintly. There wander all those who have begun and ended and gone; their thoughts are open towards dreams every moment, and the threads tremble at their touch, becoming something else under it. The strands twist into painful knots and stretch to a breaking point, they settle next to each other and take a new shape that shatters the world in order to rebuild it. And time, dream-time, is brief and endless, is here and yet not, it is already out of thoughts’ reach although it only just began. A moment or countless ones have passed, and no one else moves the threads any more.

Mist gathers around the island, it fills the streets and fills the houses, it drowns as dregs into the sea and wraps all things alive and dead, clings to the threads as weight that will not wear away. Mist encircles the beds where people carry each other across the sea of night, encircles what must go and what must stay. But dreams will not submit to chains; where the weight and burn are greatest they still roam free. The dream-cliff is ready. The dream-sea is ready. The dream-threads are silent and ready, and deep under the sea one can already sense what is coming. A story that must be carried far away so it would not disappear.

I stand in the broken darkness that is her gate and my home.

The world is ready to drown. The world is ready to rise. On its surface walk creatures who have forgotten their dreams, and only rarely do they remember that their hours are brief and their days are brittle, and there will not be many chances at happiness.

Quiet,