Spindlefish and Stars

by Christiane M. Andrews

  As she wrung her hands and paced to and fro, a flash of movement on the village wall caught her eye. Clo stopped, squinted. A little figure wobbled atop the stones. The figure swayed, then tumbled, and was lost against the darkness of the structure. Clo stared.

  In a moment, she caught sight of the figure moving across the field. It was striding quickly but unevenly, as though struggling under a weight. It did not, Clo thought, have her father’s gait. Though she did not share—fully share—the townsfolk’s opinion of her father as a gray and wizened, stooped and shuffling old man with a leg and an arm and a foot in the grave, she could not help but admit that he moved more… hesitantly than he once had. She frowned, her little garden of dread stirring again. Yes. Hesitantly. Especially in recent months. This figure, moving with long legs and impatient speed, could not be her father. It was, however, moving directly toward her.

  Clo stepped back into the shadows of the trees.

  The figure continued its quick advancement. It was burdened; as it drew closer, Clo could see a pack slung over its shoulder. And it was a boy. A boy a bit older than herself, perhaps fifteen. He was tall and thin and, thought Clo, when she could finally see his face, mottled with angry pockmarks. His nose was as large and bulbous as a branch of cauliflower.

  She stepped behind a thick trunk, hoping he would not see her.

  It did not matter that she hid; he came straight to her.

  He circled the tree and stopped in front of her. Pushing a shock of bright red hair from his eyes, he stared at Clo, his eyes traveling up and down her person. His lip curled. Just slightly. A slight sneer. She pressed her spine against the tree trunk.

  “Are you Clothilde?” he said, though his words, stretched through thick accent and boyish mumbling, sounded more like, “Art tha Clatil?”

  Clo, who had not spoken to anyone but her father in many months, said nothing. The boy smelled like a swineherd, and his boots, mud-and muck-covered, suggested the same.

  The boy dropped the pack he was carrying.

  “If th’art Clatil,” he said, his lip still curling, “thy father said I’d find a lass with all the beauty of th’ stars and sun here beneath th’ tallest pine, but”—he paused and ran his eyes over her again—“th’art but a nipper as spindle-shanked as I’ve ever seen.”

  Clo still said nothing, but her hands, at the mention of her father, trembled slightly. She curled her fingers into her palms to hide her agitation. The boy noticed her small fists and laughed.

  “If th’art Clatil, thy father has given me a silver coin for a letter and a parcel to deliver. So”—he removed and held aloft a square of paper—“art tha Clatil?”

  Clo’s eyes narrowed and settled on the note pinched between the boy’s long, dirt-stained fingers.

  “Clatil? Clatil? Art tha Clatil?” The boy waved the letter back and forth above Clo’s head. She grabbed for it. The boy, laughing again, moved it swiftly out of her reach.

  “Ah. Th’art Clatil. Hold, and I’ll read it.” The boy moved the paper to the end of his nose and narrowed his eyes at it. He huffed, then squinted, and huffed again, and finally murmured out, “Me-yiy dee-arrrrre-esss-teeeee seee-lllow—”

  “Give it here.” Clo jumped and snatched the letter from the boy’s grasp. She scanned the text anxiously. It was in her father’s hand, but scrawled and smudged—not written with his usual care. Inkblots bloomed over and obscured some of the text.

  “Canst tha read?” The boy was incredulous.

  “Of course I can read.” The text swam in front of her.

  He gawped at her. “How did tha come to learn? How did a lass like tha come to learn?”

  “My father taught me,” she murmured. Of course he had taught her. He’d held her at the table on his knees while she traced the letters with her small fingers and learned their sounds—C-L-O, yes, lambkin, that’s your name. He’d made sure—when he could—she’d even had books to practice with—Try this sentence now. Yes, of course she knew how to read.

  Clo shook the letter as though to loosen the distraction and tried to steady herself enough to focus on the words. My dearest Clo, the letter began.

  The boy watched, bemused. “So th’art a spindle-shanked and a clever lass. I’ve not met a lass who could read, and most lasses do li’l more’n scrub pots an’ do stitchin’—”

  “Stop talking, will you?” The boy’s garbled chatter muddled her brain. She shook the letter again.

  Clo read and reread the letter, cursing the ink smudges and rubbing her thumb at them as if she could erase the splotches and leave the text beneath. Of its sense, she only understood forgive and canvas and travel alone. And save me.

  The garden of dread that had been growing all day twisted again, the blossom hot at the back of her throat. She swallowed. ———n—save me. Can save me? Cannot save me? Which was it?

  “Where is my father?” She spun to face the boy. “Where is he?”

  “Th’ last I saw him, he was crouchin’ in th’ pens, like he was a sow rootin’ in th’ straw. And he grabbed me like this”—here the boy hauled at his own collar—“when I come in, and he said I’m t’ have a silver coin for safe deliverment of this”—he pointed to the letter in Clo’s hands—“and this.” Here the boy, kneeling and untying his sack, lifted a bundle, which he dropped at Clo’s feet.

  It was her father’s cloak wrapped and knotted around a heavy parcel.

  Kneeling in the leaf litter, Clo worked at the blue woolen knots. The words crouchin’ in th’ pens made her fingers shake so she could not loosen the fabric; the wool, pulled too tight, did not want to give way.

  “He said I’m to take from th’ lass some wood’n matter. Hast tha got wood’n matter? It’s for th’ payment. ‘Be sure,’ he says, ‘to take the wood’n matter.’”

  Clo, desperately trying to open the parcel, did not look up. The boy was speaking nonsense.

  “Wood’n matter. I’m to take it back or—or tha’ll not get this.” The boy wrenched the cloak-wrapped parcel from Clo’s hands.

  “I have no wood!” Clo tried to grab the parcel back.

  “Woooood”—the boy stretched his mouth grotesquely around the words—“aaaaan maaaaaaattteeer. He says tha’ll be carryin’ it, and I’m t’ have it.” The boy hesitated. “It’s for my payment. Mine.”

  “Look.” Clo stretched out her arms. “I have no wood. No-thing wood. I have my clothes. And”—she gestured to her small sack—“some turnips. And… ah.” Understanding came with unease. Why had her father promised this? Didn’t he need it for his work? Clo hastened to the bag of turnips and things. “Here.” Pushing the turnips aside, she lifted the wilted bundles of garden weeds from her sack and handed them reluctantly to the boy. She did not like to give these away; she had grown them for her father.

  “Wot’s that, then?”

  “Your wooden matter.”

  The boy looked skeptically at the shaggy plants. “’S not.”

  “I promise you. If my father promised it, this woad and madder is exactly what you are meant to have—it’s worth… several coins if you sell it at the market. Now return that package to me.”

  The boy tossed her the cloak-wrapped lump and, relieved of his burden, turned to go. But he took only a few strides in the direction of the town before he stopped.

  “Is’t true wot they say on him?”

  “Is what true?” Kneeling over the parcel, Clo kept working on the knotted cloak. What village gossip had this muck-boy overheard? That her father scraped the night soil? That he had three entire limbs in the grave?

  “Well, th’ cook, he said he knew thy father soon as he saw him arrive at th’ house offerin’ his service. Recognized him right away.”

  Clo kept her gaze on the bundle. Her father had been recognized? Still, this was no cause for panic.

  “That’s right. Th’ cook, right away, he said, ‘That’s th’ thief did steal from my last master.’ He told the steward, ‘You watch him; he’s a chiseler and a thief.’ An’
wouldn’t tha know, there has been a theft. Just today th’ house is all a-tumble with it. Jewels missing out of th’ lady’s chamber.” The boy, raising an eyebrow at the parcel Clo was still trying to open, paused to gauge her reaction, but if he saw how her lip trembled or how her hands grew still at the word thief, he did not let on.

  “My father’s no jewel thief.” Clo chose her words carefully.

  “Well, and here’s th’ thing. The lady’s maid, she argued with th’ cook. She said she knew him, too! ‘That’s no thief,’ she said. She knew him when she was a girl, she said. ‘A famous dra’tsman, he is,’ she told th’ cook. ‘Painted all th’ lords n’ ladies. Lived in th’ great house. Painted my mother, too,’ she said, ‘even though she was just a washerwoman, God rest her soul, and he painted a wee one for me, too.’ And she’d had a locket, even, and she showed it to us, and lo if there weren’t a tiny biddy there, lookin’ so red-cheeked and lively she were almost breathin’.”

  At this, a loud Ha! burst from Clo. Living in a great house? Painting lords and ladies? “That’s definitely not my father,” she said, her voice firm and certain. She rocked back on her heels to gaze directly at the boy. The swineherd waited a moment, watching, but she shook her head. “Stories. Only stories.”

  “Lot o’ stories. In th’ stables, there’s no muck to shovel without th’ pigs to make it.” But shrugging, the boy turned to go.

  Kneeling again over the package, Clo tugged violently at the wool; the knots would not come free.

  “Wait!” she called after the boy.

  He kept walking.

  “Wait!” Clo darted after him into the field.

  “An’ wot, then?” He stopped, turning. “An’ wot?”

  She could not look at the boy. “My father—was he all right? Was he hurt?”

  “He was hidin’ in th’ pens. I’d not call that right.”

  Clo hesitated. “Do you know… where is he now?”

  The boy glanced down at the wilted plants in his hand. “N-no.” He shrugged and looked away uncomfortably. “But I’m sure he’s gone on. I’m sure th’art to go on.” Gesturing to the parcel, he turned again to go.

  “Wait—just one more thing.”

  “I’ve no time t’ wait.” The boy turned so he was walking backward. “Wot? Wot?”

  “What’s a Haros? Do you know what a Haros is? A town? A person? It was in the letter.”

  The swineherd shook his head. “I’ve heard of no such things.”

  “Well, what’s a harbor, then? Do you know?”

  “Tha canst read, but tha hast no idea o’ harbor?” Still walking backward, nearly tripping, the boy doubled over laughing. “And tha thinks me ignorant. All here knows th’ harbor. Th’ harbor? Th’ sea? Th’ water that’s full o’ salt and has no edge?”

  Clo shook her head.

  The boy frowned and waved at the woods before turning away. “A day’s walk through th’ woods,” he called over his shoulder. “An’ tha’ll smell’t afore sightin’ it.”

  Clo watched the swineherd stride across the darkening fields. In all her travels, in all the mountains and valleys and highlands and lowlands she had ever crossed, never, never had she seen a water that was full of salt and had no edge. Clo, wall-jumper, turnip-eater, letter-reader, felt her world shift to include the idea of sea.

  It felt as large and deep and dark as the word alone.

  CHAPTER THE THIRD

  PERTAINING TO THE UNWRAPPING OF A STINKY CHEESE

  FOR A LITTLE WHILE, AFTER THE MUCK-COVERED SWINEHERD had disappeared, Clo continued to sit under the pine. She read and reread the ink-splattered letter and worked despairingly at the woolen knots on her father’s parcel while night thickened around her.

  She turned the word sea over and over in her mouth.

  She thought of returning to the town and finding her way to the barns and the swine among whom her father was said to have crouched, or of sleeping there, at the edge of the forest, and seeing what morning might bring. But the urgency of her father’s note—its hasty scrawl, its ink splatters—and the story of the cook, the worry that her father might have been recognized, compelled her to go.

  A day’s walk through the woods. A night’s walk?

  She would go to the harbor. The sea. If there was nothing there—no Haros, whatever that might be—if she could not find her father, she would return. It was a day.

  She gathered her belongings and entered the dark of the woods.

  Under a thick slice of moon, the forest was more gray than black—shades of darkness that suggested rather than defined forms. Clo followed the space in the darkness, the gray ruts of the wagon path, easily enough. The words of the swineherd, crouchin’ in th’ pens, hurried her along.

  Another girl—wall-climber or no—or another boy—turnip-picker or no—really, most any inhabitant of the town might find the night of the forest too dark to enter. Too full of the shufflings of unseen creatures and windshook leaves. Too full of teeth and claws—of wolf, of bear, of bands of thieves. But Clo, wall-jumper, turnip-bearer, letter-reader, was not scared of the dark. Not truly. She had spent too many nights under the stars on her journeys with her father. The dry rustlings of the forest, even those of wolves and bears, had ceased to startle her long ago.

  And the rustlings of thieves? Thieves with flashing teeth and flashing nails and flashing silver blades? Clo had journeyed too long and to too many distant lands with a thief really to be frightened of them.

  Her father was not, Clo knew, of the knife-wielding brand of thieves. He did not crouch in the shadows and take poor travelers unawares. He did not threaten violence, frighten the innocent, terrorize the populace. He took only from those who had much… and most never noticed their loss.

  Who would miss a pocket’s worth of pastries? A sausage link from the smokehouse? A sack of grain from the storerooms? Who would begrudge a father and his daughter a meal? Even a half dozen meals?

  Who would notice the loss of an obsolete almanac or a well-thumbed primer? A chronicle left collecting dust? Who would berate a father for wanting to give his child some schooling?

  Who would mind that he led away the oldest or lamest or stubbornest ass in the barns? No one would be sad to see those querulous beasts gone.

  Of course, that wasn’t all…

  Clo frowned and touched the cloak-wrapped package she was carrying. His thievery was not always so trifling. He always took one. At least one. A canvas. Some painted thing he found. Some piece of art he could sell. He could not help himself.

  Clo tried to push away her misgivings. His work otherwise was honest. True. Above suspicion. A humble cleaner with his brushes and pots, an unassuming servant who kept to himself in the corners.

  She thought of how he would present himself at the manor house whenever they arrived in a new village. At your service, he’d announce, bowing as deep as his crooked body would allow. Restorer of all decorative arts. He’d sweep his hat over the stones. Servile. Unassuming. For your lords and ladies, I can remove the dirt, the grime, the grease, the dust, the ash, the soot. I can erase cooksmoke and water stain, mildew spot and errant smudge; I can repair the yellowing of whites, the fading of pinks, the crackling of age. The smears along the ceiling frescoes, the tarnish on the gilded platters, the graying hues of family portraits—all can be made fair and bright and new.

  Yes, honest night work, Clo thought, feeling the cloaked package in the dark again. Mostly honest, careful, modest work by candlelight. While the masters and servants of the house slept, he’d remove the grime that collected over years and years by wiping bread or potatoes across the painted surfaces, gently, painstakingly cleaning every detail. Or sometimes he’d mix a bit of color—steeping the woad leaves and madder roots that she grew for him in her garden or grinding a bit of lime or charcoal—and dab where paint had flaked away. “Honest night work,” she said quietly into the dark. Honest gardening. She was proud of the plants she grew.

  They were not really thieves.
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br />   All about her, the woods were silent. The path opened in gray space ahead of her.

  The harbor.

  She hurried on.

  Clo worried she might grow tired, but the farther she walked, the farther she seemed from sleep. Her sack and her father’s parcel both were hooked over her shoulder, and with each step, they shushed against her in a rhythm that said always, always, always. The always carried her deeper and deeper into the woods: it was just that sound, and her steps, and the grayness.

  An hour passed, then another, and another. Her mind rested in a way that it would not have had she stopped: she was walking because she was supposed to walk. She felt full of the quiet and the dark. Always, shushed the bags. The moon, fragments behind the branches, sank deeper in the trees.

  Only when a faint gold light began to rise and give shape to the forest did Clo start to tire and begin to wonder whether she had in fact fallen asleep, whether she was now dreaming of walking rather than actually walking. But by then, something in the air had changed. The woods were heavy with dew and the scent of pine, but there was something else as well. Clo could almost taste it, almost feel it, a stickiness on her skin. She sniffed. Something like salt—Did salt smell?—was thick in the air. You’ll smell’t afore sightin’ it, the swineherd had said. Was this the smell of sea? The idea hurried Clo forward. Asea, asea, shushed the bags at her quick steps.

  In the half-light, the woods were opening up. The spaces between the trees grew larger, the light between them now more pink than gray. Clo’s legs ached with weariness, but still she rushed forward, the thought of sea and the thought that she might find her father there propelling her on. Overhead, a great gray-and-white bird flitted in the treetops. It gave a shrill cry—to Clo, a sound like rusty metal—and was gone. Seaseasea, thumped the bags against her.