The Weaver

CHAPTER SIX

The space is bigger than I had expected. I can sense it from the vastness of the air and the sound of my own footsteps before I see anything. The only source of light in the room is the narrow wedge falling through the chink in the door. The far end fades into a dense darkness in the distance. The walls are bare stone, coarse-surfaced boulders on top of each other, and the ceiling arches into a vault above. A thin smell that would be pungent if it were stronger floats in the air. It makes me think of the cat I had as a child and the dead rats it would sometimes drag into the house.

The length of the room is trailed by webs unlike any I have seen before. They begin somewhere in the thick shadows of the dark end and pour towards me. The translucent threads are arranged into ever-changing patterns that flow, meld and morph into each other. The petrified webs of the Glass Grove surface in my mind. The paths of these threads resemble them, but instead of being frozen and worn away by time, the webs before me are alive, they bend and grow with each moment. I touch the threads with my hand. The material is exceptionally fine: thinner even than the silk thread of the old tapestries, yet persistent and strong enough to capture a large animal.

Or a person.

The light strands undulate silently in the draught, cold as if it is rising from the guts of the sea, beyond the reach of the sun. The webs are long and narrow, and there are corridor-like chasms between them.

Something moves at the other end of the room.

Everything in me tightens and lapses. The fright settles as a tremor in my legs. My body wants to turn and flee. Yet I remain still, and under the thoughts tensed to a breaking point, others surface. How tired I am to carry my nights alone, to look away from what must remain hidden from the eyes of the island. To pass the doors I wish to enter, to hide my darkness and fear that it will trickle out, for everyone to see. And the webs stretch in all directions around me: who knows how tightly they will pull me into their embrace, if I turn now and get caught in them in my rush?

I keep every step as faint and wary as I can and begin to wind my way among the webs. Their unfamiliar patterns sway spectre-like around me, maps of unknown lands or skies I will never see. I have watched Valeria arrange her yarn. But her patterns are different: impatient or tranquil, careful or constructed in a rush, bound by moment. The webs brushing my forehead, my back, my arms are slow like things long left behind, and no touch can break their calm.

My eyes begin to tire from the effort. The shapes grow ever more unclear, the further from the faint streak of light at the door I walk. A wind blows past me. The webs lash my face. It is only when I hear the whimper of the hinges that I understand what is happening.

The slam of the door is soft, almost as if it is pushed closed gently, and it seems to come from much further behind me than possible. The darkness falls dense and wide. When light is taken away, the space grows vaster, its confines less defined. I hear my own breathing: thin, nervous.

I hear something hit the floor.

It sounds like a heavy sack of grain striking stone, or a wooden beam wrapped in thick fabric. The first thump is followed by several others in a swift succession, like the first drops of starting rain on a roof. The suffocating web of countless threads absorbs their echo. I stand frozen in place. The sounds on the floor are repeated twice, then stop. Whoever or whatever is in the room, he, she or it has been aware of my presence since the moment I stepped through the door. Possibly before.

The creature is close, but I do not know how close. I cannot hear or feel breathing, but I do sense the air moving around me, before me. In the direction where the thumps came from. I stare into the darkness. I know that if there is any light at all, my eyes will eventually discern something, as long as even a wisp filters into the room.

Nothing breaks the blackness.

I try to make my breathing even. There is a low rustling and wheezing in the dark, as if a worker from the House of Fire who has scorched his lungs is giving a deep sigh. The closeness of the sound startles me.

The sound dies, then rises again. I focus and listen. The rustling rises and falls, stretches and falters. I begin to hear a rhythm. I begin to hear—

‘…True.’

Words.

They shrivel and crackle like dry leaves in the wind, or like dead insects crushed under feet. Then they go quiet. Just as I start to wonder if I heard anything after all, the voice begins again. This time I am able to discern a full sentence.

‘I suppose you could say,’ the creature remarks, ‘that we are now equal. But that would not be true.’

The words roll in the dark like waves, their crests clear one moment, the next, gone. I hear my own voice, but it feels like someone else is speaking.

‘What do you mean?’

The pause is long enough for me to wonder. About the creature’s shape, and size, and strength. If it has a poison sting, or hands to wrap around my throat. Eventually, the rustling returns.

‘I am used to darkness,’ the creature says. ‘You are not.’

My unfamiliar voice speaks again.

‘What do you know about me?’

The rustling is like a sigh, or perhaps a hum.

‘Are you afraid?’ the incorporeal voice says.

‘Should I be?’

No response.

‘Who are you?’ I ask.

The voice lets out another sigh-hum.

‘They once called me Spinner,’ the creature says. ‘But that is the wrong question. The right one is, who are you?’

‘I’m a weaver,’ I say, although it does not seem sufficient.

‘A weaver,’ Spinner says. ‘And what else are you?’

I am quiet. The rustling grows in the silence again.

‘Why are you here?’ it asks.

I say nothing.

‘This is not a test,’ the voice says. ‘I will not reward or punish you based on your response. It has been a long time since anyone in the House of Webs asked so many questions.’ Spinner pauses. Despite her words I have a feeling she is expecting something: not just a response, but a particular one. Words she believes are in me but I cannot reach myself. The hairs on my arms and nape of my neck stand up, as if a chilly wind blows across my skin, ready to float me towards the skies.

I wait for the creature to continue. When the silence remains unbroken, I speak.

‘I haven’t asked anything.’

‘Not all questions are made from words,’ the darkness replies.

I feel the air move and hear her limbs shuffle, and then something brushes my face. I shiver, not with repulsion or fear, but in surprise. The touch does not feel unpleasant on my skin. When I recover from the first shock, it is as if a light tuft of yarn is wavering against my face in a breeze. It is completely quiet. Thoughts rise in me distinct, their outlines sharp and unsheltered. I think of Valeria’s tapestry, its strange, anxious message I do not know how to read. The letters of my name that bind me to her in ways I do not understand. I think of other marks drawn on her, and those that are missing: her bare, smooth skin.

‘Humm,’ the creature makes a sound.

The thoughts keep coming: the key scratching the stones of the city square under my foot, the empty corridors of the House of Webs and the sounds of pure sleep behind the doors. The black gondolas of the House of the Tainted. The night-maere holding me in place.

‘Give me your hand,’ the creature orders, and I obey.

The touch does not withdraw from my face. Another limb–or that is what I think, at least – reaches out to feel me. The light bristles study the shapes of my fingers, the lines of my palms, the indentations of my knuckles and the yarn-hardened spots on my skin. Eventually the touch pulls away and a dark silence takes its place. It continues for such a long time that I begin to suspect the creature has fallen asleep – or possibly receded so deep into its own world that my presence has lost all meaning. In my mind I begin to measure the distance to the door. Finally, the creature speaks.

‘Just as I thought,’ the voice says. ‘You do not belong here at all.’

Chill rises from the bottom of the sea, crosses the water and enters the bleak corridors of this house, enters this room. I wrap my arms around me slowly, with caution. I do not know what my fingers might meet in the dark. My voice tries to shrink and vanish, but I chase the words out.

‘Where, then?’

‘Do you not know?’ the creature asks.

I stay silent. I hear a long, swishing sound.

‘This island and I,’ the creature says, ‘we have been here for a long time. Sometimes I hear it bemoaning its maladies to me, and I tell it about the ache in my joints, the fog that never parts before my eyes any more. But most of the time we are quiet and let the surrounding sea jib, grow calm to mirror the clouds and darken again. Winds come and go, and the light in the sky. And then there are you, your kind: your slight lives that flicker and fade in the moment that it takes me to create one thread. I know why you do not sleep at night, but you are only one of your kind. Why do you imagine I would care if you are imprisoned in this house or some other?’

‘There are no prisoners in the House of Webs,’ I say.

‘Is that what you believe?’

‘That is the truth.’

‘The truth,’ the creature says. Her voice wipes sand and dust out of its way, sweeps the stars behind the clouds. ‘Do you look at this island and believe you see the truth of things?’

I am still looking for a reply, when the creature speaks again.

‘I have upset you,’ it says. The limbs withdraw from my skin. The air between us turns empty. ‘Why have you come?’

Silence stands in the room, fog-like.

‘Go,’ the creature says. ‘And come back when you are ready to tell me why.’

Rustling, stirring of dry twigs.

I turn and begin to fumble my way back to the door. The long paths of threads sliver the dark. I wonder if the room has somehow shifted its shape, stretched further and grown an infinite maze of webs where I will be looking for a way out forever. The touch of the webs begins to fill me with dread. They fall upon me like hands trying to pull me into an embrace. A couple of times my foot slips into the loops of the webs and I fight panic as I struggle to untangle myself. Not once do I hear anything from the end of the room. Eventually my hands meet emptiness, and there are no more webs ahead. I fumble towards the wall where I think the door is.

The door cracks open before I reach it and a wedge of light cuts the floor. For a moment I am frightened, because it looks much brighter than when I stepped into Spinner’s chamber of webs. Has Weaver returned? Then I realize my eyes are betraying me. The light is the same. It simply looks different, because I have spent such a long time in the darkness.

I glance behind me. The other end of the room is pitch-black. Nothing moves there.

When I step through the door into the light, it is as if I feel a light touch against my thoughts, tangible enough to be a moth in my hair. But it could be just air flowing past me.

I take the poppy heads to Alva.

‘That took a while,’ she says, and begins to grind one of them in a mortar.

‘I was looking in the wrong place,’ I say.

She raises her gaze.

‘Are you well?’ she asks.

‘Just cold,’ I reply and wrap my arms around myself.

Alva stares at me, frowns and places a cauldron on the stove. The dark-boiling liquid swallows the poppy pieces. A strong, sweet stench rises from it that makes me think of rotting fruit and a herb garden roasting in the sun. When the brew is ready, I thank Alva and lift the hot cup with sleeve ends pulled to cover my hands so as not to burn my fingers.

The corridors are cold and quiet.

Valeria raises her head when I enter the cell. She takes the drink from me. I place a piece of bread and one of the apples on her bedside table. I take a bite of the other apple. It is mushy and a little stuffy, but not rotten.

‘I’m sorry it took so long,’ I tell her. ‘Something happened along the way.’

Valeria’s head jolts and her posture turns more upright, as if pulled by invisible strings.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ I say. ‘I’ll tell you another time.’ When I understand it myself, I think. The trembling in my limbs is finally subsiding.

She finishes the brew, lies down and turns to face the wall. Her hair falls to reveal the skin of her neck. The light from the glow-glasses catches on the soft fuzz and falls asleep together with her.

Two days later, the squeaking of the air gondola cable blends with the background noises of the morning in the Halls of Weaving. I do not pay particular attention to it. Freight gondolas run between the house and the city several times a week, and not always at regular hours. When the hourglass on the wall has been turned twice after breakfast, a weaver on messenger duty appears in the doorway. She presses her head to the floor, gets up and walks to Valeria.

I do not turn to look, but sense the movement from the corner of my eye. I stare at my moving hands and at the threads before me. Soft footsteps approach across the floor and stop next to me.

‘Weaver is asking you to come to her study,’ the messenger says. I see Valeria’s face behind her, paler than usual.

I place the shuttle on the seat.

The sun behind the window of Weaver’s study draws a lattice of light on the floor. Weaver gets up behind her long table, and simultaneously with her two City Guards get up. Captains Biros and Lazaro nod. Weaver points at the hard wooden chairs on the opposite side of the table. I did not even know there were two Scolding Chairs.

‘Please, sit down,’ Weaver says.

We do. Biros and Lazaro sit down on their chairs at the same time. Weaver remains standing.

‘Captain Biros and Captain Lazaro have good news,’ Weaver says.

Captain Biros smiles, and it is not an unkind smile. In the bright daylight I see that he is a little taller than Lazaro and there are winter-faded freckles on his face. He directs his words at Valeria.

‘We have caught the man who attacked you,’ he says.

‘He is guilty of other crimes, too,’ Captain Lazaro says. His voice is calm and lower than Biros’s. He has placed his notebook on the table. A drawing protrudes from between the pages: a gondola against a cloudy sky. ‘We have been looking for him for some time.’

I glance at Valeria. Confusion has settled on her face.

‘He is a Dreamer,’ Captain Biros continues, ‘who escaped before he was taken to the House of the Tainted. He has spent several months living in abandoned buildings in the Ink Quarters area.’ He looks almost concerned. ‘That is where the attack took place, is that not right?’

Valeria nods, but her confusion does not dissipate. I stare at Biros’s, Lazaro’s and Weaver’s expressions. The lattice of light fades and appears again, as a cloud crosses the sun.

‘He has confessed to everything,’ Lazaro says and crosses his hands on the table. His gaze is direct.

‘He is waiting for trial in prison,’ Biros continues.

‘The verdict of which we will let you know when it has been announced,’ Lazaro says. ‘Of course, you may be needed as a witness,’ he adds and looks at Valeria.

‘Just between us, he will probably spend the rest of his life in the House of the Tainted,’ Biros says in an ally’s voice. ‘This must be a great relief to you both. You have of course been released from all suspicion.’ He directs the last words at me.

I could stay quiet. That would be easiest. But I must speak. My voice is narrow and cautious.

‘I thought Valeria was attacked by two men?’

Valeria nods and raises two fingers. Biros and Lazaro glance at each other. Biros’s smile does not disappear. Lazaro blinks once too often.

‘You must be mistaken, dear girl,’ Biros says.

‘The man confessed to everything and emphasized he acted alone,’ Lazaro says.

Valeria shakes her head violently and turns her gaze down. Her eyes have begun to redden.

‘The situation must have been very confusing for you,’ Biros says. His smile melts into an apology. ‘A dark night, a stranger who intruded into your home and was much stronger than you are… It is not surprising at all that you felt like there were two attackers.’

‘She told you there were two of them,’ I say. ‘How could she be mistaken about something like that?’

‘The shock and the pain can delude the mind,’ Lazaro says. His fingers fumble with the edge of the notebook. ‘And there are those who claim that Dreamers have unusual powers. Who knows what kind of illusions they are capable of creating?’

I draw a breath.

‘Valeria is certain there were two of them,’ I say.

Valeria raises her eyes and nods again. The corners of Biros’s mouth settle into an expression that no longer resembles a smile at all. Lazaro clears his throat.

‘Do you perhaps have some complaints about the quality of the investigation?’ Biros asks. ‘We are only trying to help.’

I turn to Weaver.

‘But—’

Lazaro gets up. The chair grates the floor behind him.

‘Complaints can be filed directly to the Council,’ he says and turns to look at Weaver.

Weaver’s body tenses and relaxes, as if the words are already finding their shape in her mouth but dissolve and let others in to take their place. She breathes deeply, lets the silence settle before disrupting it.

‘Of course the City Guard know what they are doing,’ she says. Then she speaks to Valeria and me. ‘You should both be overjoyed about this news.’

‘Precisely,’ Lazaro says. He turns to look at me. His face is more angular than Biros’s, his smile narrower. ‘It is a little surprising you are not more delighted.’

‘Perhaps the situation has not yet entirely sunk in, Captain Lazaro,’ Biros says.

‘It’s a relief, of course,’ I mumble and bow. I remember what Valeria told me about the invisible tattoo on her hand. I do not wish to cause her more trouble, but I decide to take the risk. ‘I just thought you might have found out something about the tattoo?’ The question is transparent in my voice, although I do not pose it directly.

Outside, the day is pouring gold and smoke-coloured streaks in the furrows of the walls. Lazaro and Biros exchange a look that is not blank.

‘Indeed, the tattoo,’ Biros says.

‘A coincidence, without a doubt,’ Lazaro says and sits down again. His hands drop to rest on the table.

‘A coincidence?’ I repeat.

Lazaro opens his notebook, moistens a finger in his mouth and leafs through the pages until he finds the spread he is looking for.

‘You told us when we questioned you earlier that you had never met Valeria Petros until she came to the House of Webs,’ he says. ‘How, then, could the tattoo have anything to do with you?’

‘Or is there perhaps something you have not told us?’ Biros asks. His face is kind again.

‘Of course not,’ I say.

I look at Weaver, whose eyes elude mine.

‘If we agree that the tattoo is mere coincidence,’ Biros says and stares at me intently, ‘the case is clear, as far as we are concerned.’ I nod. He directs his words at Valeria. ‘You will be called to the trial, when that becomes timely. It may take a while since the crime is not greater.’

Lazaro closes his notebook and pulls on his gloves.

‘It has been a pleasure working with you,’ he says.

‘A gondola is expecting you at the port,’ Weaver tells the Captains. ‘Now I would like to exchange a few words with my weavers.’

Biros and Lazaro get up from their seats. Light falls from behind them, draws their shadows within the shadow of the window lattice.

‘Thank you for your co-operation,’ Biros says. His smile is as pale as his freckles. He too pulls his gloves on. Their fingers are sharp, like claws. ‘We will return to the matter if necessary,’ he says, to no one in particular and yet to everyone.

They bow and march out of the door. The messenger waiting outside closes it after them.

Weaver sits down behind the table, facing Valeria and me. She takes a rolled-up stack of paper from the drawer and unrolls it.

‘It is my understanding,’ she says, ‘that you visited Irena Petros in the Ink Quarters a few days ago. Would you like to tell me why? It was a working day. You only had permission to go to the House of Fire.’

So, this is the scolding. I look at Valeria. She nods at me.

‘Valeria demanded it. She wished to see her aunt.’

‘I understand,’ Weaver says, ‘but you should have requested permission.’ She puts her fingers on the stack of paper. ‘Irena Petros has sent a letter to me to request that Valeria may stay in the House of Webs. She has shown her skill as a weaver, of course, but this type of rule breaching forces me to reconsider.’

Valeria shifts on the chair next to me. The weight of Weaver’s words gathers within me when I understand what they may mean.

‘Will Valeria have to leave the house?’ I ask. I listen to my body and notice that my shoulders have stiffened, my breathing narrowed.

Weaver’s hand rests on the paper, cuts short the words running on it. Her eyes remain on me, examining.

‘No,’ she says then. ‘But I do need to give a warning. After three warnings I must report undisciplined behaviour to the City Guard, and after six to the Council.’ She turns to Valeria. ‘Make sure this will not happen,’ she says to Valeria.

I hesitate, but ask anyway.

‘Are you certain that the City Guard have discovered the right culprit?’ I choose the words with care. ‘I find it hard to believe that Valeria is mistaken.’

Weaver’s stare turns slowly from Valeria to me and back. She weighs her words for a long time. Eventually she speaks.

‘You heard what the City Guard said. The case is clear.’

Valeria’s face has turned into stone. She rises, although she has not been given permission. She takes a brief bow, and does not wait. She turns to the door and walks out.

‘You may go now,’ Weaver says, and I discern an unfamiliar line on her face. ‘Both of you.’

I rise too. Valeria’s reaction has made me restless, as if something inside me had been pushed into a small but relentless movement. The words I hear from my mouth surprise me, their sudden will to rise against Weaver.

‘May I ask a question first?’ I say.

I see Weaver is surprised, too, although she hides it with skill.

‘Of course.’

‘Irena said she had not received your message about Valeria. I thought you said she had been informed before.’

Weaver’s face is unflinching.

‘I sent the water-message as soon as I knew who Valeria was,’ she says. ‘There must have been a glitch in the communications somewhere along the line. That is all.’

‘But—’

‘That is all.’

That stops the rest of the words trying to get out. I am again an obedient resident of the House of Webs. Yet the restless movement inside me has not ceased, and I do not know if it ever will again. I bow and turn to go. I feel Weaver’s gaze on my back, but I feel more intensely what burns behind Valeria’s frozen face.

I catch her along the corridor. We are supposed to return directly to the Halls of Weaving and to our work. Instead, Valeria strides into our cell, her mouth a tight line, her stare full of ice. I follow. She slams the door shut, throws the nearly finished ribbon against the wall and pulls all the linen from her bed. When she tears the curtain from the window, light lashes her face and I see the tears running from her eyes and dripping to the floor from the tip of her chin. She grabs the glow-glass globe from the night table. I grasp her wrist.

‘If you break that,’ I say, ‘you’ll have to clean it up alone. And I can tell you, it’s a rotten job.’

Valeria’s arm twitches, as if she is going to do it anyway. Her breathing is heavier than mine. She is standing very close to me. Our chests and sides rise and fall out of synch, brushing each other. One by one I pick her fingers loose from around the glow-glass and place the globe back down on the table. Valeria stirs against me. Then she is still.

‘You believe they are lying,’ I say.

Valeria pulls away from me. An empty space takes her place. She looks at me, her face as close to spite as I have ever seen. I can almost hear the words, even if I have never heard her voice as it was: Obvious.

‘But why?’

Valeria does not move, but her gaze is unyielding.

‘Could this man be one of the two who attacked you? Did you see their faces?’

Valeria picks a sheet from the floor and folds the edge to cover a part of her face.

‘They… wore masks?’

A nod.

‘Would you recognize them, if you saw them again?’

Valeria stands still for a moment, her shoulders sagging. She whimpers and then slowly spreads her hands: I don’t know.

‘But you don’t believe the man captured by the City Guard is either of them?’

A slow shake of her head.

Images flash in my mind, but refuse to connect into a whole: the tattoo, the scar-handed man in the museum, strange blood on stones. Something arises from the dark, withered words from an unfamiliar place.

Do you look at this island and believe you see the truth?

‘Is this about something more than just you?’

I can see her thoughts moving, but I do not know how to read them.

‘Help me understand,’ I say. ‘Please.’

Valeria thinks. Then she takes my hand, walks me to the window and points at the view outside.

‘The landscape?’

Valeria tilts her head this way and that. Not quite.

‘The hill?’ I try. ‘The houses, the canals? The city?’

Valeria raises a finger and nods. She focuses and opens her mouth.

‘Eyech,’ she says.

‘The city, the city… the sea…’

She rolls her head and gestures at everything outside the window.

‘Eyech. Chland.’

‘Eye… Island? Island!’

Valeria almost jumps into the air and nods eagerly.

‘Right. The island. What about the island?’

She stares at me, then turns her eyes to the floor. Her lips open slightly and close again. She looks up and draws a deep breath. She kneels on the floor and pushes her hands under her bed. I hear clattering and dragging, wood chafing against wood, as her grasp finds what it is looking for. Carefully she pulls something out from under the bedframe.

I recognize a lightweight, portable loom that is easy to fold and set up again. It is slightly smaller than the ones we use in the Halls of Weaving, and slanted, rather than vertical. I have seen similar ones in the storage rooms. They were used for making silkweed tapestries when the wall-webs were not the only thing produced in the house. She pitches the loom on top of her bed and I see the patterns I have seen before.

‘You did not unravel it.’

Her smile is unexpected, like a falling star.

‘How did you manage to smuggle this here?’

Her head tilts. Her smile stays. Of course: all the hours she has spent alone, recovering. No one looking. Not even me. Or at night, when I was walking the corridors. She would have learned my shifts and known when to work in secret.

Valeria points at the patterns, runs her finger along them. The lines are clearer now, they have grown stronger as the work has progressed. She has even woven in different colours, though sparingly. I can see compromises; yarn other than grey is difficult to come by. A palm-wide strip is still missing from the bottom edge of the tapestry. Despite this, I recognize the incomplete outline that floats water-green around the edges. I have seen it before, drawn in the air by Valeria, but now I realize I have also seen it countless times on the walls of the Museum of Pure Sleep, in large paintings and books placed in glass cases that portray the trading routes of blood coral and red-dye. Not a fish or an eye, but…

‘A map,’ I say. ‘You are weaving a map of the island.’

Valeria grasps my arm, and one glance at her face is enough to tell me I am right.

At the centre of the tapestry I discern a dark circle from which eight points run towards the edges: the stone sun of the Tower. The highest point is directed at a simple but recognizable human figure that has his arm stretched out for tattooing. The point on the right leads towards a person sleeping peacefully. There is a human figure sleeping under the left point, too, but dark shadows hover over him. The largest has sat down upon his chest.

The annual tattoos, night-rest. Valeria tried to tell me about them earlier. Seeing the Dreamer and the night-maere makes me feel uneasy.

‘But why?’ I ask.

Valeria points at the dark sun at the centre of the tapestry, then at the unfinished bottom of the hanging.

‘It is not ready yet, I can see that.’

Valeria shakes her head and raises eight fingers.

‘What is missing?’

Valeria closes her eyes and draws a deep breath. Patiently she points separately at each picture around the centre. She does it again. Her fingers move like celestial bodies, like seasons, but the circle is incomplete and I do not know how to read it.

‘City quarters?’ I make a guess. ‘Canals? Air gondola routes?’

Valeria gives a sigh and turns her palm upward. I see my name glow on it faintly. She points at the letters.

‘The tattoo… your father made?’

Valeria looks at me, waits.

‘Does this have something to do with your father?’

Her expression is complex.

‘Not only that? There is more to the pattern?’

She nods. I continue to make guesses, but all I get from her are increasingly frustrated sighs and eye-rolling. We are both getting tired.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say eventually. ‘I’m sorry. But I won’t give up. Let’s just stop for today.’

Valeria stares at me, her gaze dark.

‘Are you upset with me?’

She takes my hand and raises it to her face slowly, asking for permission. I nod. Her lips are dry against my fingers, their touch light as a moth’s wing. I close my eyes and hear my own breathing. When she finally lets go, cold catches me again.

‘I should return to the halls,’ I say. There is an uneven strand in my voice, as if part of it has been burned away. ‘Are you coming or staying?’

Valeria pulls the stool from under the window and sits down in front of the tapestry. When I leave the room, her hands are already moving.

The flood bells begin to toll just as I have stepped into the corridor for my night-watch round. I pay no heed at first. Yet when I walk into the first dormitory, I see through the tall windows something that should not be there. It is on the far edge of the view, a flicker in the corner of the room’s eye, but it is there, and it moves.

Flames. Far away, but tall and real.

I walk to the window. The view is partially blocked by the wall circling this side of the hill. I am not abandoning my watch, I tell myself; I will come back later. It could be dangerous. It is my duty to find out.

The night air shrouds me with a veil of ice.

I climb on top of the wall outside the Halls of Weaving, and there it is, down in the city. Floods are swallowing the streets, but in the part of the island we all know, on slightly higher ground, a fire burns bright and hungry. The shapes amidst its restless flame-wings are tentacle-like, sharp-toothed like a sea monster’s mouth.

The Museum of Pure Sleep is burning

in the gauze of stenches, amidst the fire, where green leaves curl around their edges and darken into bruise-like, there roots push deep into the ground and spread their persistent fingers, listen to the space closed from light and to the traces left there by other creatures. Where all eyes are turned away, the island bleeds into night-water and the landscape grows strange stains. The wings of a moth beat more slowly. A gull quiets, for the tongue has stopped moving in its mouth. People place their hands on their foreheads, or the foreheads of their children, feel the rash spreading on their faces and the invisible claws digging at their lungs; they burn with fever in their beds. Black gondolas carry glass coffins into the burial ground and ashes make murky blotches in the sea where they silently dissolve into the waves, ghosts of breathing cut short.

In the fire that is slower than flames she stays awake, and when sleep takes her, it carries her between unravelling walls, behind darkness-holding doors, over cracked floors, in the rifts of which black water rushes. It hands her words hidden within covers, in which everything is inscribed, but the writing escapes her, and still she turns away. She wants the floors to be unbroken, she wants the walls to be whole again. She wants to step into the map of threads and follow the girl who walks before her, to fill the hole she has always hidden in herself.

She stands on the dream-cliff and raises her hands, and the dream-sea hears the call she does not know is the call of others, long gone. The strands of the Web of Worlds shine around her, made from sky and stars, ready to receive her touch: pull one thread, and all will unravel.

She drops her hands.

Fire swells like flood, eats words in its way, exhausts itself into ashes again, and in their wrap