The Weaver

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The world stands still around me. The tattoo-eyes stare, unblinking. Somewhere outside and above there are canals and houses, but no one moves in them. The clouds in the sky have stopped, the waves stalled as if their crests are carved in ice. Sand in hourglasses has ceased to flow. I seek within me the certainty that this is a dream, fumble for it with desperate hands, and clutch only the understanding that I am awake.

I stand up. The chair scratches the floor behind me: a long, rending sound, sharp as a scream.

Alva gets up, walks around the table and pulls me into a hug. I stand straight. Perhaps my arms move to wrap around her. Perhaps they do not. She is saying something, soft words that fall into a repetitive rhythm, sorry, so sorry, so sorry. Like a bird’s wings brushing against a confined space.

No one should be able to move or speak in this moment that has fallen outside of time, but Janos and Alva do, and Tirra and Askari. I watch them as if they are behind a thick crust of glass that suffocates all sound and warps every gesture. They belong in some other world where the language is strange and the shape of living things unknown to me. I turn and walk away, along corridors where glow-glasses pick up white-shining eyes floating past me. Fingers grasp my arm, but I yank it away. Finally I find my hammock and climb into it and close my eyes.

Someone stands next to me for a long while. I hear her breathing. I imagine that when I turn and see her face, it will be Valeria. I think of this as a dream-room, where I can make her Valeria. I do not open my eyes because as long as I keep them closed, Valeria is standing next to me.

Eventually I hear her sigh and walk away.

I think about the last time I saw Valeria. I think about the first time, and every time. The way her mouth turned to a smile and dropped it again, the way light fell across her face, and shadow. I speak to her, because there is no one else I want to speak to.

Valeria, I say. Somewhere is another island where we walk, with sand shifting under our footsteps, and a rock we climb up together, still warm to touch with the day’s glow. There, on the blazing late-summer shore, we sit side by side, our shoulders brushing each other. Light-coloured leaves float in the water-space, and when wind folds it, they move away from us, towards winter. There is nothing between us but peace, and we rest in this moment, a premonition of the coming autumn on our skin. It is not harsh, but translucent instead, and bright as the wing of a dragonfly spreading to take flight. On tree-branches years will curl into buds and shrivel up only to grow again, and beyond them the sky is calm and unbroken. If I place my hand on your arm, you will let it stay there, and if I do not, the moment will not be any less full for it. The water is quiet, and moves, and is still again.

I listen, but Valeria is silent. I am silent too.

Tears come and go.

Footsteps come and go.

The smell of food wafts into the room.

It may be night or day.

It may be full moon or new.

Eventually I get up with limbs as stiff as if their flesh has been parted from the bones, buried, turned to dust and put together again. My throat is just as dry. I find a bowl of cold herbal brew on the floor next to the hammock. I sit cross-legged and drink in big gulps.

A noise like long and hollow metal wands being beaten together pierces the room. I stare at the air, expecting to see the source of the sound appear before my eyes until I realize it will not. There is no one else in the dormitory, but I hear running and talking outside.

The noise stops.

After a while, the door opens and Alva peers in.

‘Are you awake?’ she asks.

I nod.

‘The alarm went off because one of ours sent a forewarning that she was bringing visitors,’ Alva says. She looks at me, up and down. There is concern on her face. ‘They wish to speak to you. They say it’s urgent. Do you think you are well enough?’

I do not. I nod. Alva extends a hand to me, and I take it. She gives my fingers a light squeeze.

We step into the round room with chairs around the edges. There is more light this time: live fires enclosed in lanterns blend with the blue spheres of glow-glasses. Tirra sits on a chair with Askari standing by her side. Janos is there too, and three other people. I recognize two of them immediately. Irena turns her head as we walk in, and grief is raw on her face. Next to her I see Moth, the short-haired guard who helped me escape the House of the Tainted. The third person stands in silence, head covered by a hood. Alva points at a chair, and I sit down.

The third person turns around and pulls back her hood, revealing a dark face I know.

I stand up.

‘I won’t listen to anything she has to say,’ I say.

Tirra watches me. Her voice is calm when she speaks, without a rift.

‘That is your choice,’ she says. ‘But before you take your leave, you may wish to know your house-elder has offered herself as a hostage in exchange for the opportunity to speak to you.’

Weaver’s gaze holds mine, black and steady.

‘I am glad to see you are alive, Eliana,’ she says quietly.

I search for any shift, a blotched outline that would reveal unease, and do not see it.

‘You sent me to the House of the Tainted,’ I say.

And there it is: Weaver’s eyes drift, stop on Moth for a brief while, and turn back.

‘I had no choice,’ she says.

The others are watching us. I could easily have gone to the kitchen and taken a knife from there. Now I wish I had. If I used my nails and teeth, bit Weaver and clawed bloody scratches on her, how much damage could I do before they pulled me away?

‘I don’t believe you,’ I say.

Moth does something strange: she steps closer to Weaver and takes her hand.

‘I believe you met someone in the House of the Tainted,’ Weaver says. ‘Your brother might not have found you, had it not been for his message.’

I stare at them, standing side by side. The world around me is still the glass-enclosed world I do not recognize, its creatures still strangers speaking a strange language.

‘I apologize for my mother,’ Moth says. ‘She acted without my approval.’

I only see it then. The similar face shape, the bearing that is the same despite the different build. The same arc of the head under the short, curly hair. I look from Weaver to Moth and back.

‘Is she your daughter?’ I ask Weaver.

Weaver’s expression shifts, but Moth speaks first.

‘Not her daughter,’ she says. ‘Her son.’ She pauses for a moment. ‘My name is Ila.’

And I understand, or believe I do. Her low voice and angular shape that is not without softness. His shape, I correct in my mind. Not hers. But simultaneously, as the image finds its form, a feeling bothers me that it is not whole. There is something I cannot place.

It is entirely quiet in the room. Tirra shifts in her chair. The rustling fills the space.

‘But you lived with the female prisoners and guards,’ I say.

Weaver and Ila look at each other, a slow look that has been exchanged before. Weaver’s mouth opens. Ila moves his head very slightly. Weaver closes her mouth again.

‘When you look at me,’ Ila says, ‘what do you see?’

The mark on his forehead is clear, but my eyes slide down, trying to understand the meaning of his words. I feel strange and rude about looking, as if I am intruding on something private. His hips are narrow, his shoulders wide, and there is a nearly invisible swell of breasts under the jacket. His face has no sign of a stubble, and his upper lip has no more hair than my own.

‘I don’t know,’ I say.

‘Neither did the midwife who helped deliver me,’ Ila says. ‘Do you know what is done on the island to newborn babies whose bodies cannot be named male or female at once?’

I do not respond. I have never thought about it. I did not even know it was possible.

‘If you haven’t seen others like me before, it is not because my kind are not born into this world,’ Ila says. ‘It is because we are not allowed to live.’

‘But you live,’ I say.

‘Only because of my mother’s courage,’ Ila says.

He turns to Weaver and lowers his chin in a nod. Weaver looks at her son and responds to the nod with a similar gesture, and for a brief moment their resemblance is so striking I am surprised I did not see it before. I have never seen Weaver’s face like this, soft with unspoken things.

‘When my son was born,’ Weaver says, ‘the midwife intended to kill him. She said it would be more merciful. But I didn’t let her.’ The words exit her mouth weighty, yet without hesitation. ‘I hid him in the only place on the island where I believed he would be safe.’

I finally understand Moth’s questions, why he wanted to know things about the House of Webs. I see the years he has spent in the House of the Tainted, imagine the childhood that was even more hidden than my own. I imagine the loneliness: reaching in all directions, the few and secret moments when a stranger who called herself his mother visited. The pieces move and come together, settle into an image where it all finally fits.

‘But the Council learned about him,’ I say. ‘Is that it?’

All softness falls off Weaver’s face, and for a moment it is a wide-open wound.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘They could crush him like an insect. And that would be my end, too.’

‘You bought his life with mine and Valeria’s,’ I say. My voice is cold and hollow. Irena stands like a spectre behind Weaver. Orange and blue light flickers across her skin and clothes, tugging them in two different directions.

‘I didn’t know,’ Ila says. ‘I wouldn’t have agreed to it.’

‘He speaks the truth,’ Weaver says. ‘I’m only here because he eventually learned what happened and demanded that I come.’

I turn to Ila.

‘You helped me,’ I say. ‘And I’m grateful for that. But Weaver betrayed us.’ It is almost a cry.

A voice speaks from the edge of the room.

‘Would you not do the same?’

It is Tirra. I turn my head.

‘I ask you,’ she continues, ‘would you not save the life that matters to you most, if you were faced with a similar choice?’

She is right. I would sacrifice Weaver in an instant, if it brought Valeria back. I might sacrifice everyone in this room. The realization is an unfamiliar and chilly undercurrent, yet impossible to deny.

‘I don’t know,’ I say.

Tirra gazes at me across the room, then turns her face to Weaver. She turns up the palm of her hand, bends her fingers to invite more words. The eye on her skin stares.

‘In any case, you are mistaken,’ Weaver says. ‘Valeria is alive.’

Hope flares so white-hot it hurts and is gone just as swiftly. Irena’s eyes widen and her face sharpens. She stands straighter.

‘I’m tired of listening to your lies,’ I say.

‘It’s true,’ Ila says.

‘Where is she?’ Irena asks.

‘In the House of Webs,’ Weaver says. ‘She has been there all this time. The City Guard wanted to take her away. I managed to persuade them to let me keep her captive in the House of Webs without anyone knowing. I was trying to protect her.’

‘But you sent me to a trap,’ I say.

‘It was the only way I could protect you and the House of Webs,’ Weaver said. ‘The two of you had to be separated. Otherwise they would have killed you both.’

Alva has been standing behind me and takes a step forward, to my side.

‘We saw Valeria’s body,’ Alva says. ‘She had the same tattoos. Even the invisible one on her palm.’

‘It is not difficult to find a dead body in this city,’ Weaver says. ‘Or copy those tattoos. I staged her death, because I knew the City Guard would eventually demand to have her.’

I think about it. I want it to be true. Time begins to flow again, clouds move across the sky and shift their shapes, grains of sand fall in hourglasses and sea breaks free from its frozen spell.

‘If that is true,’ I say, ‘why did you leave her in the House of Webs?’

‘The house was evacuated with help from the City Guard. They would have seen her. I intended to go back for her later.’

‘Someone must go to the House of Webs immediately,’ Irena says.

A cold current rushes through me.

‘Not someone,’ I say. ‘I. I must go.’

‘Too dangerous,’ Alva says.

‘I cannot let you,’ Janos says.

I turn to look at him.

‘It’s not your choice,’ I say. ‘I’m the only one who knows the way through the web-maze. All other routes are cut off.’

Janos stares at me.

‘Weaver knows the way,’ he says. ‘We could send her.’

‘Do you trust her well enough to bring Valeria back unhurt?’ It is Irena.

A silence encloses the room. Eventually Alva says, ‘Eliana is right.’

I look at Tirra and Askari, who are whispering to each other. Askari straightens his back.

‘The choice is yours,’ he says. ‘We wish you the best of luck.’

I wait for Tirra’s words, but there are none. Janos says something to Alva, who nods. He walks to me and says, ‘I need to talk to you alone.’ His expression is tense, all taut jawline and dark eyes. I nod at Tirra and Askari and follow Janos out of the round room.

There are few places at the base that offer any privacy. Janos walks me into Alva’s makeshift emergency cupboard and pulls the door closed behind us.

‘It is not safe for you to go,’ he says.

‘Would you not go?’ I ask. ‘If it was me. Or Alva?’

Janos looks away, then lowers his gaze. His mouth is a tight line.

‘I would,’ he says. ‘But you don’t understand. Tirra and Askari will not stop you, but they won’t let anyone go with you, either.’

‘Why not?’

Janos takes a deep breath.

‘Everything they – we – have been working for is ready now,’ he says. ‘Every gear of the plan will be in motion soon. They are just waiting for the right moment. It could be tomorrow. It could be today. They will not be able to spare anyone. We all have our part to play.’

‘All except me,’ I say.

Janos stares at me. His mouth turns, makes a movement like he is swallowing something unpleasant.

‘You were gone for nearly three months,’ he says. ‘We didn’t know if we would see you again.’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘It’s not your fault. But it means I’m the only one whose life counts little enough.’ There are thick strands in my voice, jagged and bitter. ‘Besides Valeria’s.’

‘That’s not true,’ Janos says.

‘And yet it is,’ I say. ‘Dreamers would leave her to die.’

‘You don’t even know if she is alive,’ Janos says quietly. ‘Weaver may well be lying.’

‘I know.’ I look him in the eye. ‘But I cannot turn my back without finding out.’

Janos wears the two vertical lines between his eyebrows again. For an instant I can see how he will look in twenty or thirty years’ time. He gives a nod, another.

‘Be careful,’ he says. ‘And if you hear the flood bell clang briefly, then hear it pause, then hear it again, don’t head back here. Go to the trading harbours instead.’

‘I will.’

I hug him, then force myself to smile.

‘Take good care of Alva,’ I say.

Janos smiles back, but not without a shadow on his face.

When I walk past the round room, I see Weaver still sitting there. Irena is with her, and there is a live-fire lantern at her feet.

‘Wait.’ It is Weaver’s voice.

I take a few steps back. Weaver picks up the orange-burning lantern from the floor and offers it to me.

‘Take this,’ she says. ‘You will need it.’

I take the lantern.

‘I hope you find her,’ Weaver says.

So do I, I think, but I remain silent and turn back to the corridor. Irena gets up and walks to the door to close it.

The last thing I see is Weaver’s face and her expression, which I cannot read.

I drag the skiff a short way up the hill, to where the web-maze begins. I hide it in a side alley where I tie it to a stone gatepost. A silence of empty houses and streets is caught in the webs, it sways slowly in the passing breezes. Weaver was right: the lantern will help. The weight of early evening is already upon the day, and most of the glow-glasses in the maze have lost their light. All algae on the island is dying.

The web encloses me, wraps itself into gauzy layers that protect me against everything, yet nothing. I climb towards the house. It is strange to think that this will be the last time I walk up the hill. For many years, the House of Webs has been the only home I have known. Now it is a cluster of dark dead alleys and buildings, bone-smooth floors and grave-cold rooms where only the slow stirrings of sea and earth and air make sounds.

Something beyond my own ragged breathing and footsteps falling on stones catches my ear. I listen.

Ta-tap, ta-tap, ta-tap.

Someone else is moving in the web-maze, not far away from me.

I stop. The footsteps proceed almost exactly in the precise rhythm of my own. As an experiment, I take a few more steps. Like an echo of mine, the movement proceeds, ta-tap ta-tap ta-tap, soft-soled shoes on the humid stones. Their sound is strangely two-phased, like a heartbeat.

I stop again. The other footsteps do the same.

The movement begins to roll in the wall-webs like a wave: it billows one wall first, then another, something denser than wind and air. A body swaying under a sheet. Someone is looking for me, trying to reach towards where I stand.

‘Valeria?’ I say.

Everything goes completely quiet. The movement in the webs undulates to an end. At some distance I see a small flame through the layers of webs: another lantern. Then I hear approaching running steps and see the outline of a body crash onto a web, harsh and violent. The wall-web holds; its fragile and veil-like appearance is woven to mislead. The bottom edge is knotted to metal rings on the ground with multi-layered threads, so you cannot crawl under it. It is hard to climb over, because the fabric offers little foothold. In the light of my lantern I see how a burnished blade thrusts through the web, begins to pick apart the threads and pierce a hole into the surface.

I realize I have made a mistake.

I am not far from the house any more. I blow out my lantern and cannot help but wonder: did Weaver give it to me so I could be more easily seen in the maze? For an instant, doubt drowns me like sudden deep water. Maybe Valeria is not alive. Maybe this is simply another trap laid out for me. But if ever there was a moment to turn back, it is lost now. I abandon the lantern along the way and begin to run up the hill along a route I would find in pitch-dark. I hear the sound of tearing webs behind me and accelerate my pace.

My feet find the way easily. I take caution not to touch the wall-webs so as not to give any other sign of myself apart from the footsteps. I know from experience that the threads muffle sound and make it more difficult to perceive its direction. The other lantern burns further and further away and moves sideways, not drawing closer. Whoever carries it has lost direction. Or so I hope. But the webs will not hold the sharp knife forever.

The stone buildings rise before me as dark figures against the evening sky. The shortest way to Weaver’s study is across the square, but inside the buildings I will be better hidden if my follower reaches the house. On the other hand, I will not see if he finds his way to the square.

I choose the fastest route. The pool in the middle is a dead, dark eye, without a trace of glow left. The contours of the buildings are already melting into the deepening dusk. Soon it will be impossible to see anything.

The outermost folding door of the Halls of Weaving is slightly open. I enter through it and glance behind me: no light or movement anywhere. I pull the door closed quietly. I fumble my way between the looms and hit my knee against the corner of a wooden frame. Something clatters to the floor and pain bursts along my leg. I stop to listen. It is quiet.

I reach the door that opens to the corridor and slip through it. Weaver’s study is only twenty steps away. Its tall door opens easily and without sound.

There is barely any light in the room. A narrow waxing moon is floating upwards in the sky outside the corner window. The watergraph gleams as a tall, mute statue.

‘Valeria?’ I whisper into the air of the study.

A faint wave moves from one tapestry to the next on the walls. It may be just air flowing through the open door. It may be just imagination. I listen to my own breathing.

‘Valeria?’

The word fades into the space of the room.

I hear a sound, brief, wordless. I walk towards it, taking short, wary steps. I stop before a tapestry falling all the way to the floor near the corner where Weaver keeps her medical store. Our Lady of Weaving stands in front of me, covered in layers of web, face and limbs half invisible. Behind the tapestry I sense a slow and faint breathing, forced into silence. I grasp the tapestry and push it slightly to the side.

I see movement in the dark. I hear water slosh inside a glass. A frail, blue light as thin as a singing medusa’s tentacle begins to grow. The space is a simple alcove with a bench embedded in the wall, a blanket fallen into a heap and a jug of water. Valeria gets up from the bench. Her eyes are big and full of dusk when she steps to me and pulls me against herself. I stay there for many moments, listening to the rhythm of her breathing, always faster than mine, and I let her warmth absorb into me. Each curve, rise and dent of her body fits in with mine.

‘Are you well?’ I ask.

Valeria pulls away from me and nods. Her gaze is serious. It falls upon my brow. She raises a hand to my face and strokes the still-stinging tattoo with her fingertips, a touch light as air. Then she clasps my hand and places it on her chest. We must run and hide, but her face is close to mine and I do not wish to move away from under her touch. The night coils further, the killer’s footsteps draw closer and the world will not stop turning, the sea rolling its wrap over the island.

‘We must go,’ I say eventually.

Valeria picks something from the bench. I recognize it as a piece of charcoal when she begins to write on the wall with it. I notice now the walls are full of faint writing. I discern words among them: Father. Mother. Weaver. Council. Eliana.

Weaver told me to wait, Valeria writes. Something overflows within me. I realize she has continued to learn to read during her imprisonment. I want to ask her to write everything she has wished to say and could not, but time is running out, light is running out, and we must get away.

‘I know,’ I say. ‘But someone followed me here.’

Valeria’s eyes widen and her mouth settles into a line. She nods, takes my hand and picks up the glow-glass. I listen. I hear no movement. We step out from behind the tapestry and walk across the study to the door.

‘We must make it to the maze,’ I say. ‘Other routes are cut off.’

The corridor throws echoes of our footsteps at us as we walk along it towards the Halls of Weaving. The looms stand tall and silent in the dark. We are careful not to touch them. I do not wish to cross the square again, but we must walk the short distance between the Halls of Weaving and the dormitory building outside. After we have passed the dormitories we can turn and exit through the door that will take us nearest to the web-maze.

I open the folding door slightly and peek out to the square. Darkness rests mute against the stones. I am about to start towards the door at the end of the dormitory building, when Valeria clutches my arm.

‘What is it?’ I whisper.

She points towards the dormitories. At first I see nothing. Most of the windows that side of the square are the empty, black windows of the dormitories, hollow and quiet. Yet above them runs another, sparser row, built to bring light to the corridor. At first I think it is some kind of reflection, but as I follow it, I see clearly how the orange-glowing light moves from one window to the next.

Someone is moving towards us along the corridor.

Valeria pulls me back into the Halls of Weaving and closes the door soundlessly. She begins to drag me with her. We cannot stay in the halls. There is nowhere to hide in here. With his lantern, the killer will see us from the doorway. There is no exit at the end of the Tapestry Rooms. We have barely made it into the corridor when I hear footsteps outside, the same two-phased beat as before: ta-tap ta-tap ta-tap. The folding door on the side of the square opens, the same by which we stood mere moments before.

‘Weaver’s study,’ I whisper to Valeria.

We run.

The key to the tall wooden door is gone. I cannot lock it from within. We must simply leave it closed. There is one hiding place in the room, one possible way out.

‘The corner,’ I whisper.

I pull Valeria by the hand behind the tapestries. Our Lady of Weaving looks the other way, does not know her face will conceal or reveal us.

There are footsteps in the corridor. An orange glow draws a line under the door, a sharp-edged cut in the dark. The door begins to open.

I push the worn wooden surface and wish.

The low door lets us into the darkness and closes behind us without sound. Valeria stiffens against me.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ I whisper very close into her ear. ‘I’ve been here before.’

But the truth is I am afraid, too. Not just of the killer on the other side of the door, but also of the creature in the dark. There is no sound at the other end of the room. I wonder if Spinner has already left the house, perhaps the island. Perhaps the world itself. For what do I know about her in the end, except that she is older than time and history, at least the time and history I am able to comprehend? Maybe Spinner is climbing the Web of Worlds at this very moment, seeking other skies, other lands in which to settle and spin her webs. Other spaces inhabited by people wiser than us.

Webs undulate around us, translucent and persistent.

We must move away from near the door.

I begin to thread through the webs towards the dark end of the room. Valeria follows. I lead her as best I can, although I am about to get tangled in the webs myself. They grab me like greedy hands reaching for prey. Estimating the distance turns difficult in the dark; I half-expect my extended arm to meet the large body of Spinner, a part I may not recognize at first touch. I do not know which thought is more frightening: that it will move, or that it will not.

Yet there is nothing ahead but webs. We make it to the end of the room, where it is empty and quiet. I begin to feel the wall. At the same moment when I feel the seams of the door under my fingers, a wedge of light cuts into the room behind us.

I pull at the door. It opens slowly. The stone scratches my fingertips and cleaves my nails. Together with Valeria I drag the door open. I push her into the tunnel ahead of me.

‘Down the stairs,’ I say.

The glow-glass slips from Valeria’s hand. It does not break, but begins to roll down the stairs. I hear it knock against the stones further away. Its echo climbs the walls. Then I hear a splash. I grab Valeria’s hand.

I knew, and yet I hoped. The tunnel has flooded.

At the top of the stairs a wide figure holding a lantern steps to the doorway. Behind him follows another, like a shadow.

Orange light glistens on the long blade of the knife with thin shreds of webs caught on it, reveals

the tale still told on the island.

This is how it goes:

Our Lady of Weaving started with the sky.

She stretched the space with her limbs until the jewels of the Web of Worlds shone through. In their light, under the stars she sighed life into the air, and far below she drew the dark ends of the earth.

Between the sky and earth she made warps of sunlight and rain, tall and taut bones of the world.

Then she began to dream.

From her sleep rose those who walked on four feet, and those who walked on two, and those who did not walk at all. She dreamed oceans and islands and trees. As she dreamed, silk spun from her many fingertips and began to weft its way through the warp binding heaven and earth together. Her dreams wove the thoughts and desires of those who walked under the stars, their gaze and their blindness, for them a will they could follow. And her dreams wove what they began to call a soul.

This is the world she made. This is the world she shelters with her limbs. One day, when she grows weary of those she brought to life, she will pluck a thread and pull, and all will unravel the moment when