Spindlefish and Stars

by Christiane M. Andrews

  The next several pages were dotted with sketches of a young man with a fine nose and fierce gaze: these grew more and more detailed and exact until a finished image finally took shape of the young man in an elaborate lace ruff posing with his hand on the hilt of his sword. Clo pulled at the collar of her own tunic; she could not imagine wearing such an absurd, starchy creation around her neck. Study for MB Portrait, read her father’s script beneath.

  Then another two-page illustration: Wedding Feast, her father had titled it. A trio of musicians with bagpipes stood at the edge, playing to tables filled with men and women and children, raising cups, lifting spoons, talking with wide gestures at one another. The scene was chaotic, noisy, jubilant; the image had no center. But in the far corner, holding a jug, stood the apple-picker, the beggar at the gate. Again, she had been drawn with more care and detail than anyone else in the image, even the apparent bride and groom. She was looking directly, Clo realized, at Clo’s father drawing her, and she was smiling, a wide, warm smile.

  Had her father felt this happy when he attended this feast? Clo tried to imagine him there. Had he danced to the bagpipes? Even danced with this woman?

  More small sketches followed—a lady with a child resting on her lap, a wagon brimming with hay, a washerwoman hanging clothes to dry. A washerwoman! Clo thought wryly, remembering the swineherd’s story of the lady’s maid and her laundress mother. And then Clo turned to a page that brought her up short.

  It was a scene of home life: the woman again. Her father had drawn her sitting before a fire, a drop spindle dangling from her hands. Her lines were soft, indistinct, almost cloudlike. She was gazing, as before, at Clo’s father, but here she seemed to be looking beyond him, across a great distance, her expression again caught between joy and sadness.

  Her dress was stretched over her middle. She was with child.

  Spinning, her father had chalked as the title, but it was not this word that took Clo’s breath. It was the smaller, hasty letters he had penned beneath, a smudge of ink that read Spinning for Clothilde.

  For Clothilde.

  Clo stared for a long time at this image and at the words her father had written in the margin.

  The woman was a stranger: Clo felt nothing for this cloud portrait she felt ought to be called Mother—except perhaps the pain of absence, of not-knowing.

  Clo traced the chalk lines with her fingers, searching for anything familiar in the image. The cheeks? The chin? The nose? She rubbed her own cheekbones, the bridge of her own nose. Perhaps the nose. The same sharp edge.

  Why had her father never told her anything about this woman?

  Tell me about my mother, she used to beg when she was very small. What was she like?

  Not now, lambkin, her father would always answer, his voice strange. He would turn away; he would begin some task with his hands. He would wash his brushes, slice an onion, stir the coals. Not now. One day.

  But once, she had pestered him. All afternoon. They had been traveling, walking through the woods, and all day, over and over, she had pleaded. Father, tell me. She had pulled on his hand, wrapped her arms about his middle, hopped up and down by his side. He had been patient. No, no. Not now, lambkin. Let me tell you a story instead. Finally, she had stopped asking. But later, as evening settled and they stopped to gather kindling, she had asked again. What was my mother like, Father? Do I look like her? Am I at all like her? He must not have expected to be surprised like that, scrounging in the leaf litter, arms full of sticks.

  How his face had twisted. How his chin had trembled.

  He had put down his bundle. He had taken her by the shoulders. Shh, shh, shh, shh, shhh, he had said, a kind of quieting, a kind of comforting, but Clo, seeing her father’s eyes wet, his face strange, was not comforted. Fate took her away from us, he whispered. A punishment. I loved her. And still now, fate punishes me. Do you see how I am punished? Taking her was not enough. And you… I can’t bear more… if you, too… when you, too…

  I’m sorry, she had said hurriedly, feeling she had done something wrong.

  She had not wanted to ask again. She had not wanted to see her father’s face like that again.

  Clo ran her fingers over the lines of the cloud portrait. “Mother,” she said aloud experimentally, seeing how the word felt in front of this image. The sounds were strange in her mouth. Lopsided. Uncomfortable.

  “Father,” she said, and this word felt full of sorrow… heavy and empty all at once. She thought again of the way her father’s face had twisted. Yes, that twisting expression was how she felt now. It was grief. And love. And fear. And confusion. And… anger. Yes, even anger.

  He’d sent her here alone with nothing but a stolen painting, a wheel of cheese, and a notebook that showed only how much he had hidden from her for so long.

  She stared at her father’s chalk strokes, wishing she could see his hand in the lines he had marked on the page with such care.

  The next leaf held an unfinished sketch—a few graceful strokes that suggested the shape of a woman with babe in arms—but without details, Clo could determine nothing about the woman or child. She turned another page, expecting to see more of her father and mother’s story play out, perhaps even the story of her own infanthood. But abruptly, the elegant sketches ended. The chalk figures that seemed to breathe on the page were replaced by hundreds of the grotesque angular images Clo had once seen her father draw. The lines were clumsy and heavy, carrying marks of her father’s frustration. Some had been x-ed out or hastily scrawled over. Again and again, Clo saw the image of the woman, distorted and scarcely recognizable—almost monstrous. And she saw what must be her own self as a child, but again, gruesome and misshapen.

  The scribblings grew angrier and more desperate as Clo flipped through the book. The last few pages had been ripped out altogether.

  What had happened to her father? What had happened to the talent he once possessed?

  Where was he now?

  Clo closed the book and retied its leather band. In front of her, the horizon was flat. And gray. On and on and on. Endless gray.

  Spinning. For Clothilde.

  The gray seemed the same gray of her father’s chalk. Of the cloud-woman. Of the angry scrawls. She stared at the horizon, wishing for a boat, wishing, really, for anything to break the terrible blank expanse and its terrible unsolvable refrains.

  They fished me out of the sea.

  Spinning. For Clothilde.

  CHAPTER THE TWELFTH

  WHEREIN THE APPLE-FACED WOMAN JABS THE DESPAIRING GIRL

  CLO SAT. AND SAT. AND SAT. HOURS PASSED. HOURS? DAYS? Something passed. Some time passed, time that felt like minutes swallowing—a snake consuming eggs—whole entire days. She was determined. She would wait for a boat. She would wait until dark, at least. But the gray sky and gray sea remained interminably gray, the line between them unchanging and dull. No sun, no moon, no light or shadow, rose or set.

  She felt fatigue fill and overtop her. Hunger came. And left. And came again. She stared so long into the flat expanse, she felt she could count the grains of salt dissolved into it, felt she herself might be dissolving into it. Sometimes it seemed that she slept, her chin dropping onto her chest. Perhaps she dreamed? But if she dreamed, it was a dream of a flat gray sea, a line of distant waves.

  No ship, no sail, no dinghy, rowboat, raft, or log crossed the waves.

  “Always,” she whispered. And the always was as vast and empty as the sea and sky before her.

  When a quiet, rhythmic clicking finally roused Clo from the stupor into which she had fallen—a stupor that seemed impossibly to hold days and days and days—the sea and sky were still the same dull gray. She stood unsteadily, listening to the little waves slip against the shore. Alone, alone, alone, they lapped at her. A dull panic enveloped her. A boat was not coming.

  “Where are the boats you wait for?” she tried to shout at the stony tidesman, but her throat was too dry for her words to carry. It didn’t matter. He did n
ot even turn his head; he would not answer.

  Behind her, she saw, a trio of villagers had arrived. Gray mantles draped over their hunched forms, looking more like misshapen lumps of clay than people, they were combing the beach silently, dropping black stone after black stone into the wide, deep baskets they dragged behind them. The steady dropping of the stones—click—punctuated their travel along the shore.

  Clo, legs tottery beneath her, moved toward the figures.

  “Has a boat arrived?” she asked the smallest of the three.

  A pair of button-like eyes, dark and coppery and deep in the folds of brow and cheek, peered up at her.

  “Heee?”

  Clo tried again. “I’m waiting for my father’s boat.” She pointed at the sea. “When does the next one land?”

  The little figure turned to the larger stone pickers. “Tahw seod eht lrig yas?”

  The two forms raised the lumps of their shoulders. They picked their stones. The button-ish eyes blinked and turned away.

  Clo’s voice broke in frustration. “Can’t you tell me?” Before, on her travels with her father, she had never had trouble learning a language. Wherever they had gone, she had only had to listen, and she came to understand. This… this helpless feeling was new. She did not like it.

  “Yhw si ehs ton ta reh krow?” one of the figures murmured. They shuffled on, plucking their stones.

  Clo spun away from the trio. At least the Cary-boy understood her. She could take comfort in that.

  She looked again at the boatless expanse. Having sat for so long, she felt not right, not like herself; she was dizzy. Light-headed. Wobbly. She shook her head; she tried to stiffen her knees.

  Perhaps boats did not land here, she thought. Perhaps the island had another harbor.

  If the boat was not here, she at last determined, she would look for it elsewhere.

  The island was not large. She would walk around it.

  Leaving her boots and her father’s cloak and notebook on the shore, she stepped tentatively into the water, the cold at once numbing the bones of her ankles. Pushing on, she waded out, trying to follow the wall of the island around its visible edge—Was there a harbor around the corner? Another place for a boat to moor around the cliff?—but as soon as she moved from the beach, the pebbly bottom dropped away. She found herself quickly up to her waist, her chest, her chin in the frigid water.

  Standing on her toes, she struggled to keep herself upright. The icy water lapped about her lips. She felt herself slipping. “Help!” she cried, a salty burbling. Fanning her arms desperately, she caught herself on the cliff wall. She found her footing again.

  She looked back at the shore. The stone-pickers still combed the beach. The tidesman still stood at his rocky post. No one seemed concerned that she might have gone beneath the waves.

  Shaken, she turned back. She tried the other direction, maneuvering around the tidesman’s jetty. Again, the seafloor dropped away. Chest-deep, shuddering with cold, hand on the cliff wall, Clo stood staring into the water—there was the bottom, rocky and gray, there, a step forward, was drowning—just darkness and shadows falling into the deep.

  Water that is full of salt and has no edge, she thought bitterly. She could not walk around the island.

  As she stood staring, shivering and numb, she heard a voice calling in alarm. She glanced up, strangely grateful that one of the stone-pickers had finally noticed her near drowning.

  No, it was not them. Hurrying past the imperturbable figures on the beach, waving in clear consternation, was the moon-cheeked boy. “O-o—C-clo!” He flapped his arms. He hollered at the water. “C-Clo. T—… Wh-what are you gn—… doing?”

  Still in a fog of cold, Clo turned and began to make her way back to the beach.

  The boy watched her as she climbed to the pebbly shore. His cheeks puffed with concern. “Are you all th—… right?” he asked as she wrapped herself in the cloak. “E—… H-have you been here all this time? Have you been here ec—… si-since I left you?”

  Teeth chattering violently, Clo gathered up her belongings. “How long have I been here?”

  Cary’s eyes widened. “Ll-long. Very long.”

  “I was waiting for a boat, but…” She gestured vaguely. Out of the shocking cold of the water, she felt herself growing faint again. She tried to right herself.

  Cary shook his head, a sad No boat. He peered at her. “Here. Te—… Let me h-help you.” He held out his hand. “You need to eat. You’ve been here and ev—… have had nothing. No one es—… else will come to help. The old na—… wo-woman—”

  “I can walk,” Clo said, but as she stepped forward, she swayed unsteadily.

  “Let me help,” Cary said again.

  Clo shook her head, No, she could walk on her own, but as they started toward the cliff path and her steps wobbled precariously, she was relieved he was beside her.

  “They fished you out of the sea,” she said as they began the slow climb to the town.

  “Yes.”

  She wanted to ask, How did you come to be in the sea? but she was breathless with the effort of the ascent. “How?” she at last managed.

  “I… fell. I think I fell. I re-remember… falling.”

  “From here?” Clo pointed to the top of the cliffs.

  Cary shook his head. “On… No. My re—… father…”

  Even light-headed, Clo recognized the sadness shifting over the boy’s face as her own. She had no breath left for questions, but she did not want to ask more. She concentrated on the climb, on keeping her feet moving up the stairs. She did not want to fall on the boy walking behind her with arms half outstretched in case he needed to catch her.

  When they at last reached the village, Clo’s breath had become so thin, her head so cloudy, she could not be sure she was still moving forward.

  Her legs trembled. Her head swam. Did she even remember which was the old woman’s home?

  Cary guided her to the end of the street.

  The apple-faced woman opened the door at his knock. “O, rethguaddnarg.” Her face crumpled as she reached to support Clo. “O, yob…”

  Cary stood in the doorway as Clo was led inside. “Y-you need to ta—… eat and drink,” he said. “T—… Re-rest… ehs sdeen ot tae—” he called as the little woman closed the door in his face.

  “Tis, tis, rethguaddnarg.” The woman pointed to an empty bowl and spoon at the table. A pot of soup burbled above the fire.

  Clo shook her head. Letting go of the old woman, she stumbled into the room she thought must be hers and sat heavily on the bed. Under the bedclothes, she felt the wheel of cheese, the sack of turnips, the painting. She reached for a turnip and ate a desperate, bitter mouthful; gagging, she forced herself to chew and swallow.

  The old woman entered carrying a bowl and a mug.

  “No.” Clo pushed the proffered bowl lightly with her fingertips. Something slithered in the liquid. “No. I don’t want it.”

  “Uoy tsum—”

  “No!”

  “Rethguaddnarg!” The woman’s face grew heated and pink in its creases. She pushed the mug into Clo’s hand.

  Clo peered into the cup: Water, it was water. A few silver fish scales floated in the liquid. Clo drank gratefully, catching and holding the small, sharp scales on her tongue. When the mug was empty, she spat the silver flakes into her palm and handed the mug back to the old woman.

  The old woman sighed and touched her fingers lightly to Clo’s forehead. “Ruoy seye…”

  Clo turned away from the gesture. The turnip and the water now sloshing in her stomach, she felt fatigue rolling over her. She collapsed into the softness of the wool. Vaguely, almost dreaming, she felt the old woman stroking her hair.

  “Rethguaddnarg…” The woman patted her head. “Ew detiaw rof uoy rof os gnol.… Woh dalg ew era taht uoy era ereh ta tsal… ereh ot ekat pu ruoy krow…”

  Clo, shrugging the hand away, pulled her father’s cloak over her head. It still smelled of home.<
br />
  The woman’s voice came muffled and dark through the wool.

  Clo felt no surprise when she awoke to the same flat gray sky outside her window. She stared at it for a time from the bed. Would the air here ever be anything but tepid and dull? Would it never rain? Or snow? Or grow hot? Or turn windy? Would night never come? Would the sun never rise? Would nothing ever change?

  She thought longingly of the mornings in the village, the pink stain of sunrise above the houses, the smell of woodsmoke from cooking fires, the clatter of hooves on the streets… even the voices of the gossiping old women, the raucous laughter of the children in their games.… Truly, she had to admit, she missed these, too.

  Clo sat up. She had rolled over onto the turnips and cheese as she had slept, and she felt bruised where the roots had pressed into her back. Lifting the bedclothes, she took a small bite of the orange wheel.

  The painting, she noted, had been hung on the wall beside her bed. In the gray light, even the jewels seemed flat and dull.

  She could hear the woman muttering to herself in the next room—“ Feihcsim… od uoy ees reh ereht? Woh hcum uoy tsum ssim reh… sey, feihcsim… sey, ehs si gninnips ereht, nrobbuts dlihc, gninnips daerht ni eht dlrow, tahw did ehs kniht dluoc eb enod htiw ti”—and the cat responding with its own guttural rowling. The woman had been kind, stroking her hair as she went to sleep, but Clo felt something was… not right.

  She patted the bedclothes, then, with increasing agitation, stood up. Cheese. Turnips. Cloak. “Where is it?” she whispered. She yanked at the sheets, shook them, threw them to the floor, shook them again. The turnips rolled across the chamber.