“It was like you thought I was disgusting!” you said. “Like I was slime!”
I let you shout. I was terrified then and still am now that the slightest interruption, the smallest bump, will flip a pole and push you away. It doesn’t matter what we fought about. The critical thing is that we fought. Most of the words were yours. I knew that every syllable I threw back at you would be a nail in my tongue. I let you flare like the bombs that ended the world above Liberty Street and waited for your fury to settle.
It was the only thing that felt safe.
Safe for me, that is, and that’s the problem. It was all my fault that I took something wonderful and turned it into sandpaper. I don’t know if you’ve forgotten. I hope you have, but I never will. The prospect of watching you walk out of my life, your last impression of me being frustration and anger, was a knife pressed against my neck. Cold and jagged. It would only have taken a little, so little.
We found ways to make it work. I started to see understanding in your eyes.
I only later stopped to wonder if you’d have been better off without me.
* * *
The fourth and last station, Race Street, was to have been the hub of Cincinnati’s subway. From here trains would fan out across the city, rumbling down tunnels and through portals and along streets. All I can see is an empty hull that’s as dead as the rest of them. The graffiti here is thin; it’s a two-mile walk back to the door.
The edges between possibilities are thin here too. I can see ghostly trains with both eyes, yellow with three green stripes. Everywhere I swing my light, there’s cold and dusty concrete and bright and open platforms full of people. I wonder if they can see me, too — the ghost of a girl caught between who she was and who she’s becoming.
“End of the line,” you say. “We made it.”
“Beautiful,” I say. Even the abandoned version of it is. The station feels wide and open and not at all like a ruin. It puts me in mind of stations the Romans might have built, if they’d had subways. “It would’ve been something.”
“There’s always a chance,” you say. “Come on. Let’s take a look around.”
As the hub station, there’s more to explore than just rough platforms cut into the tunnel walls. There are corridors that should have had spots for buskers and cafe kiosks for people running late, racks full of free daily newspapers and brightly colored murals. Where they would have connected to the surface, there are walls and ceilings. The world above has done its best to pretend this place doesn’t exist, just like it’s done with people like me.
After so long underground, my throat’s caked with dust.
“All those possibilities you’ve been seeing,” I say, uncertainly, clasping your hand tight. “How many of them do you see us in?”
You stop, turn to me, kiss me on the cheek. It’s not as firm as I remember.
“We were always a long shot,” you say. I tighten my grip on your hand, but you feel only half-there.
We find an underpass, but there’s no telling where it was meant to have led. There’s a concrete wall cutting it in half, but you lead me toward it anyway, splashing through a puddle of water. There’s something magical in imagining where it could have gone, what might be on the other side, even though I know there’s only more dusty concrete, more unrealized possibilities.
“The best risks are always long shots,” you say. “That’s how people work.”
You reach out for the wall, brushing your fingers against it, and you push through. Of course you can push through; you’re only half-there. You turn to me, smile, and take another step forward.
I see you pass through the wall. I feel my fingers meet the rough concrete. I watch your hand slip out of mine. I pound my fists against it, but the wall refuses to be anything but a wall.
You’ve stepped through the wall and I’m alone. Abandoned in the darkness, at the end of the tunnel, knowing it’s where I was always heading. I sink to my knees, shuddering, and call your name through my gathering tears. Again and again. I can’t make that long walk without you. I can’t face the night or the day without you.
I wail louder than deformed train wheels shrieking against smooth rails, begging you to come back. I snap my light off and let myself be swallowed by the darkness. There’s no monster in the tunnel that can do any worse.
It’s enough for me to see a trickle of light. At first I can’t tell where it’s coming from, until I realize: it’s the light on the other side of the wall.
“Please,” I whisper. “Don’t leave me like this.”
I hit the wall again, except this time I don’t. I reach through it and find your arm. I pull your head back through the concrete, back to reality.
“This might be your last chance,” you say. “It’s hard getting through.”
I think of the empty stations we’ve seen. I think of the sandpaper world outside. I think of all the possibilities that could have been but never will, not in this tunnel.
I fall through the wall with you. I refuse to let go.
Phoebe Barton is a queer trans science fiction writer. Her short fiction has appeared in venues such as Analog, Lightspeed, and Kaleidotrope, and anthologies from Neon Hemlock and World Weaver Press. She wrote the interactive fiction game The Luminous Underground, a 2020 Nebula Award finalist, for Choice of Games. She is a 2019 graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop and lives with a robot in the sky above Toronto. Find her online at www.phoebebartonsf.com or on Twitter at @aphoebebarton.
Weave Us a Way
by Nemma Wollenfang
Evenya was a weaver of tales, the finest there was. She wove all of the tales for the girls in our tribe — from highborn to low, from shepherdess to chieftain’s daughter. Whenever one came of age, Evenya would pluck three hairs from her head and cloister herself away in the weaver’s hut for three days and nights. When she emerged, it was with a sash that depicted the girl’s future.
Many a time, my cousin and I would sneak out to the weaver’s hut, propping up crates to peek through a high window and watch as she mixed dyes. Saffron and indigo, woad and vermillion.
“Add in a dash of romance,” the weaver would mutter as she blended. “Yes, yes, peppered with daring and sprinkled with gallantry. Mustn’t forgo that sprig of caution. Stir well…”
Pungent scents rolled out of her cauldron — vapours from the heady concoctions she brewed within. They made our eyelids droop and giddy giggles bubble up from deep inside.
Then Evenya would choose the thread — unique for each girl — and head to her loom. But that was only a part of it, for the weaver worked in many mediums.
Such marvellous fabrics she had, from the finest leathers of the southern deserts to the costliest satins of the eastern kingdoms, in all hues and shades. Earthy moss and rich sepia, poppy scarlet and the jet black of beetle shells… Evenya kept her own spiders and silkworms, and sometimes she even tanned her own hides, for the warriors-to-be amongst us.
It was rare for a girl to become such, though last autumn one had joined the Hunters as predicted. Her sash had been made of stiff brown leather. Another, whose sash had been constructed of scale-like discs that shone silver in the sun, had grown to be the tribe’s most notorious fisher. Once, Evenya even wove a sash of pure silk. I was enraptured by the way it shimmered, making orbs of light dance across the dry thatch of the great hut’s roof.
Gold and blue. And not just any blue. Royal blue.
The girl was to be an empress. And not one moon passed before the emperor himself came to fetch her on his brilliant white charger. They rode away into the sunset.
With every emerging piece, we would gather around the great hut’s fire pit, and as the village elders looked on we would hum and coo over the newest girl’s designs, caressing the swathes and admiring such exquisite work.
So, when I finally received my very own sash at the age of sixteen, I had high hopes. Too high, apparently. The colours were dim but still present in patches. The material was not coarse, but it was not
made of soft fur either. A very staid but comfortable story…
“You are to be a lyre player,” Evenya announced. “Not a great one, but you’ll string a fair tune. It will be enough to please the man who weds you and you will bear him three braw sons.”
I tried a smile, mumbled, “Thank you,” and moved away, disheartened.
I did not show the other girls my sash that night. When I ignored those who inquired, they let me be. Instead I sat before the fire, alone, watching the red and gold flames leap as I held the cloth, letting it flutter between my fingers.
A simple life, one of quiet domesticity. It wasn’t a bad tale, all things considered. There were no frayed edges, fraught with peril. There were no dark stains of unspeakable happenings. And it was not cut short — its length was reasonable. A well-woven life, by any standard. A good one. Pleasant. But it was mundane too. Monotonous and unremarkable.
I did not want that. Not at all. I was not even sure I wanted a husband, and I had no wish to learn the lyre. The more I thought on it, the more the idea rooted and anchored, taking hold.
No, this was not the story I wanted to live. It was wrong. It was not me.
There was no adventure, no passion. No masquerades or swordplay or epic sea voyages to faraway lands. I wanted, no, needed those things.
Or at least the chance of them.
* * *
When I told my mother of my woe, she simply sighed and stroked the stray hairs from my brow. “Oh, Rhiann. I’m so sorry to hear that you are unhappy. But now it is woven and the future is set in stone, each thread already tied. Best to accept what is and learn to be content.”
I listened to her advice and tried my best to be a grateful, dutiful daughter. I tried not to complain. But… something about what my mother said gnawed at me. It took a while to place what it was. Then realisation struck, like a flame to a wick. The future was not set in stone — it was rendered in fabric, in stitch and weave. It had been sewn.
And sewing could be unpicked.
Reworked.
The idea was staggering, revolutionary. It even scared me a little. No girl in spoken history had ever changed her story. All accepted their tales as they were told.
Well, perhaps it was time for that to change. Perhaps I could be the first girl to reweave her future.
* * *
I already knew what to do. My mother had taught me the ways of needle and thread at a young age and I had watched the weaver at work for many years.
It was simply a matter of bravery: Did I possess enough courage to proceed?
I would have to work in secret; no one could know what I meant to do. While there was no rule explicitly forbidding what I had planned, I was sure it was something that would be — at the very least — frowned upon, should anyone find out. That was why I took myself away from the main village, over the footbridge, and deep into the darkness of the forest. There was a glen a mile or so in, lit by silvery moonbeams. This, I decided, was to be my sanctuary. The place I would take time to rework my sash whenever I could sneak away. Night, while everyone else was asleep, seemed to be the best time for that. Sitting upon a fallen trunk, spongy with moss, I took out my sash. Where to begin… I supposed by unthreading the hem.
* * *
“What are you doing, Rhiann?”
For three moons I’d had no other company but that of the glowing cicadas as I worked in the glen. But apparently, my cousin had seen fit to follow me this night. Her eyebrows rose high as she stepped from the shadows.
“You’re changing your sash!”
Our sashes were rarely donned for public display, only on special occasions — something which had worked well in my favour — so this was the first she was seeing of its altered state.
I kept still as her astonishment ebbed, awaiting any further reaction. Would she run and divulge my nocturnal activities to the village elders? What would their response be if she did?
I was not sure I wanted to find out just yet, not until I was done.
Something flickered in my cousin’s eyes as they dropped to her own waist, to where her new sash lay. She had been gifted it this very eve, before the great hut’s roaring flames.
“Mine says I am to be a sea captain’s wife,” she said quietly, fingering its perfectly hemmed edge.
I knew. I’d been present at her ceremony when it was announced. She had seemed… subdued then. By her tone, I assumed congratulations would not be welcome now.
She came to sit beside me on the damp log. Close now, I could see the artful depictions of waves, lolling and frothing across the band of velvet, linen, and moth-spun silk. Calm blues, marine greens, seaweed greys, and streaks of turquoise arctic skies…
“My parents were so proud when they saw it,” she sighed, “but I have never liked to travel by sea, it makes me so ill. Even when fishing with my brothers in their little rowboat I cannot stand the rocking.” Her lips trembled. “I always hoped I would become a priestess at the air temple, high in the mountains, away from the sea. I have no wish to be a wife.”
That flicker I had seen, I could place it now — it was an uncanny echo of my own inner turmoil.
“Then… why not change it?” I said. “Why not rework your sash as I am doing with mine?”
If anything, my cousin only grew more morose. “I do not know how to.”
Reaching out, I clasped her hand. “Then I will teach you.”
* * *
As it transpired, my cousin was not the only one who craved some alterations. More girls joined our clandestine meetings where we shared our stories and what we wished to change. For some it was not much: a few tweaks here, one less husband there. One wanted to bake instead of cure meats, another meant to learn the secrets of herbs and become a travelling healer. For some the changes were much more drastic. Some enhanced ambition with strands of beech root, giving themselves the opportunity to rise higher than had been ordained. Others withdrew threads of oak gall that would otherwise have restricted them to lives of quiet drudgery — then soaked their sashes in tinctures of madder or kermes to be sure. A few went so far as to bleach the full length of their linens, to begin afresh after brewing pots of new dye. Some imbued their fabrics with ideas they would never have thought of, or had the audacity to aspire to, alone. The rest of us encouraged them along.
Our little congregation met under starlight and worked by candlelight. Only ever at night. Stealth was key, we decided collectively, in our quest to reimagine our hereafters. It was no small thing, what we did, and for its success we required isolation and time. Now, as soon as the moon rose, half the maidens of the tribe took to the trees where we sequestered ourselves away and whispered as we worked. Like dryads, I often thought, nymphs of the ancient woods.
All was peaceful and companionable in our little forest grove. Until one night a ringing voice broke through our quiet murmurs, shattering it like a hammer to glass.
“What are you girls doing?”
Silence fell. From the shadows she emerged, with all the willowy grace of a swan yet as fearsome as a lioness in her countenance. A wave of dread rippled through me.
Evenya. The weaver had found us.
We should have known. With so many of us absconding our absence was sure to be noticed. We had become lax in our guard, too caught up in our play at rebellion.
As I was the one who had begun all of this, it was I who rose and curtseyed to her respectfully. “Weaver.” The least I could do was follow etiquette.
Those eyes, sharp as flints, snapped to my waist and widened.
“You are changing what I have woven?”
The sash wrapped around my waist was now a medley of magma reds and sunburst oranges and cadmium yellows; fiery, crackling, like a spewing volcano.
A life of unpredictable possibilities.
Maybe I would wed and bear three braw sons… maybe I would not. Now my future was entirely open to me — my own ship to steer.
I held my ground, bracing for her ire.
I had no regrets.
Stepping closer, the weaver took hold of an end to examine its new style. “You thread a fine tale, girl.” Then, raising her head, she looked around at the gathering. “I suppose this means that you are dissatisfied with what I have foretold. Do you all feel this way?”
Most remained silent, avoiding her hard gaze. A few nodded contritely, while others held their chins high, daring her disapproval. She viewed our company with an appraising eye.
“Well, if you are going to do it, you may as well do it right,” she finally concluded — and, rolling up her sleeves, she seated herself on the soft grass. “Hand me that swathe of lace.”
* * *
From then on a new tradition arose: the weaver ensured that all of the daughters of our tribe learned to sew and weave from an early age. Then, when each girl turned sixteen, Evenya would guide her as she crafted her own future with needle and thread. And if, as she aged, she found that the style no longer suited her, she could unpick the threads and rework the fabric, weaving a brand new course.
After all, the fabric was not set in stone. We were all mistresses of our own fates.
This story was first published in Sharing Stories: Stratford Upon Avon’s Literary Festival Felix Dennis Creative Writing Competition Winners Anthology (2017).
Nemma Wollenfang is an MSc Postgraduate and prize-winning short story writer who lives in Northern England. Her stories have appeared in several venues, including: Beyond the Stars, Abyss & Apex, Cossmass Infinities, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and Flame Tree’s Gothic Fantasy series. She is a recipient of the Speculative Literature Foundation’s Working Class Writers Grant for her in-progress novel, I, Phoenix, and two of her stories are due to be included in the Writers on the Moon Initiative, in Astrobotic’s Lunar Mission 1 payload with 125+ other authors, which is scheduled to launch in late 2021. For more information, she can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and at her website: www.nemmawollenfang.co.uk
Content notes can be found at the end of the book.
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