Spindlefish and Stars

by Christiane M. Andrews

  “So much color… and light…,” she whispered, touching her fingers to her eyelids. After so many many days of gray, her eyes ached with the radiance of the fabric. She shook her head, overwhelmed.

  She thought of the little apple-faced woman, chewing emptily, sitting alone on the low chair and drawing through the bobbins one by one, weaving thread by thread, hour after hour, to create this vast work. She was surprised to feel a sudden rush of sympathy for the woman, her quiet weaving alone in this dark room.

  This is your work, granddaughter. You must see it.

  Clo walked slowly toward the tapestry, fingertips buzzing with the memory of the wool sliding through her hands. This was the fiber she had spun?

  She wondered if the threads would sigh or make noise as she drew close. But no, the room was silent but for the tick tick of the cat clawing at the fabric and the faint sound, now and again, of snoring in the next room.

  She sat on the little stool placed before the tapestry and watched the cat pull a long thread away. Up close, the glowing tear it made looked more like a hole and less a part of the design, but Clo smiled at the beast all the same. “Good kitty.” She reached out a hand and stroked its bristly head.

  Hissing, the cat moved away and took up another spot to knead and pull.

  Clo turned her attention to the fabric. Parting the vertical threads, she looked into the mirror placed behind the weaving. There was no clear design as she tried to take in the whole image, but again, she had the sense of vast spaces—deserts and moors, farmland and cityscape. When she tried to focus, all was still undefined. Vast undefined beauty.

  A collection of bobbins dangled in front of a stool where the old woman had last been working. Clo lifted one: the thread spooled around the bobbin still shifted, a little, in light and color, but where it had been woven into the tapestry, the color had set.

  She leaned closer, peering into the mirror at the woven line of thread from the bobbin she held. She followed its path, in and out, its entanglement with other bright lines, the warp and weft, and suddenly, she saw a clear image.

  There was a man. There was a man woven in the thread.

  Her breath caught.

  He was leading an ox to market.

  In the mirror, as though he were there before her, Clo watched him walking the path to town, saw the rough rope he had swung loosely around the ox’s neck, saw the sweat damp on the beast’s white hide.

  Clo traced the thread back.

  Earlier, in the dark of night, the man had risen and comforted a crying babe, had rocked him by the window and shown him the moon through the branches of the trees.

  Clo’s gaze raced backward along the thread, following the man’s woven story. She saw him as a young man, dancing at a village fair, with a young woman laughing at his clumsy steps. Farther back, she saw him as a boy, following his own father into the barn, leaning his cheek against the warm flank of the family goat, learning how to milk. And then as an infant, held in his own mother’s arm, rocked by the fire while snow fell in heavy drifts outside their door.

  There were other threads entwined with his—the babe, the girl, the father, the mother, they each had their own strands. They twisted in and out with his, over and around his, and Clo marveled at the artistry of the old woman who had woven them. Story after story after story. Clo could follow these other threads, too—the girl he had danced with, how she later married another boy, dark and freckled and even more clumsy-footed, and how this boy—he had been apprenticed to a cooper who had once sold his barrels to a scowling merchant. And the merchant had a family. A wife. A son. A daughter. Clo saw them all around a table lit by candles; the little boy had been set upon a wooden box so he could reach his plate.

  Something was familiar about this family. Clo looked at their strands with growing interest. They lived in a city, a finer city than Clo had ever seen. The little boy and little girl had a whole room of their own in a great house, and they had a servant, a tall, angular man, who placed a book before them each morning and showed them how to write the alphabet.

  Clo ran her fingers along their threads. She saw how the little boy had once snuck into the kitchen at night and eaten three rounded spoonfuls of bilberry jam. How his sister had skinned her knees and torn her skirts jumping from the bench of her father’s cart on a whim. How their mother sang them the same lullaby every night—every night, every night, even when she herself was drowsy-eyed and yawning—a song her own mother had once sung to her, about a peahen and a grazing sheep. How their father kept a small coin in his pocket—the first he’d ever earned—and pinched it between his thick fingers whenever he felt uncertain of a sale. How the boy chewed on his sleeve when he was concentrating. How a tiny mole on his left earlobe looked like an earring.

  Clo drew closer to the mirror, squinting. The family’s threads had become difficult to follow. Here the cat had run its claws, and the weaving had become distorted with holes.

  When Clo found their lines again, she saw first the boy, then his sister fall ill. Spots. A fever. Coughing. She saw the mother tending to them, their little bodies barely visible in their vast white beds. The mother stayed with them all night, all day, and where she cared for them, the threads seemed brighter. And then the mother, too, began to cough. And then the merchant, who had not stopped his work to care for his family, became ill himself.

  But then their threads disappeared.

  Startled, Clo studied the place where their lines suddenly left the fabric.

  Nothing. The family had gone to sleep in their beds, the rain pattering outside their windows. The little boy had woken once, coughing an empty hee, and the mother had been too feverish to rise. And then they had all slept.

  Their woven story had simply ended. Their threads simply ended.

  Clo looked at the little boy and his midnight cough.

  Hee.

  His delicate white nightgown.

  Hee.

  Trimmed with lace.

  Hee.

  No.

  With rising panic and rising certainty, Clo pulled at the warp threads. She followed the other threads that linked to the family’s—the other merchants and maids and sailors and servants—their lines distorted and torn by the cat as well. One by one, the rash and fever came to each. One by one, the threads disappeared.

  And here and there, the fabric, run with holes, was lit more brightly at the edges of these tears, where Clo found someone—a mother or father or minister or shopkeep or tradesman or streetsweep—tending a fever or taking in a child or preparing medicine or even slicing onions into a soup.

  But the boy… She returned to the little boy asleep in his bed in the delicate nightgown. His lace-trimmed cuffs. His empty coughing hee.

  The boy from the boat. The full passage.

  His family. Mother. Father. Sister.

  Their heavy trunk.

  Hee.

  Full passage.

  Hee.

  She brushed the little boy’s thread—followed its short path, felt where it ended—with quivering fingertips.

  This is your work, granddaughter.

  You must see it.

  She could not catch her breath.

  CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SECOND

  WHEREIN THREE ROUNDED SPOONFULS OF BILBERRY JAM ARE SOFT AND TREMBLY

  IT WAS THE KNOCKING THAT FINALLY PULLED HER AWAY.

  Clo looked up, bewildered. The weaving swayed under her hands.

  The snoring in the next room—breath, snargle, breath, snargle—had grown more ragged. But at the front door, someone was knocking—hesitant yet persistent tapping.

  Feeling she might be dreaming, Clo walked to the front door and opened it.

  “Clo. You’re here. You’re… Have you recovered?” Cary, who had broken into a wide grin on seeing Clo open the door, now peered at her with puckered brows. His smile faded. “Clo… what is it? What’s happened? You look…”

  “Cary.” Clo stared at the blue-cheeked boy, the curls that clung to his ski
n. She thought of the little boy and his mole and his empty cough. The father and his coin and the trunk. The full passage. She shuddered.

  “Cary.” Clo grabbed him by his hand. “You must…” She faltered, overcome. How could she explain this horrifying thing? “You have to see this.”

  “Clo, are you all right? You’ve been sleeping for so long.… Where is the old woman?”

  Without answering, Clo pulled Cary through the house and into the woman’s chamber. The tapestry was still trembling where she had touched it.

  “Oh… Clo… Is this the old woman’s room? I’m sure I’m not meant to be here.…” As Cary tried to back away, Clo gripped his hand more tightly.

  “Look at this!” she hissed. She pulled him to the fabric and parted the threads. “Look in the mirror. Do you see it?”

  “The gray?”

  “No, don’t you see it? The colors… and light. And here…” She pointed. “The boy. Do you see the boy?”

  Cary shook his head, puzzled. “It’s all just gray.”

  “Oh, Cary, you have to see. There’s a boy. With a mole. And he tiptoed out of his room at night to sneak bilberry jam. Three spoonfuls in his little white nightgown. And he has a father who keeps a coin in his pocket. And a sister who jumped from a carriage and tore her dress. And a mother who sang a lullaby about a peahen. And they had a cough. And, Cary, I saw them. I saw them coming here. They had a full passage. They’re real. Real people… or”—she hesitated—“ were. They were real.”

  “You’re not making sense, Clo.” Cary tried to place his hand on Clo’s forehead, but exasperated, she pushed it away.

  “The soup,” she declared. “It must be the soup. It was all gray for me once too, but after the soup, I could understand the old woman, I could see the colors in the wool.… It’s the soup. Just wait, you’ll see.…”

  Clo hurried out of the room and returned with a bowl of the silvery broth. “Drink this.” She pushed the bowl into Cary’s hands.

  “I don’t think—”

  “Drink this.” She pushed again, nearly raising the bowl to Cary’s lips for him.

  Hesitantly, he swallowed.

  “The whole thing.”

  Cary drank down the bowl and showed her when he had emptied it.

  “Now look.”

  Cary stood staring at the fabric. Clo watched him expectantly.

  Next to them, the cat was still running its claws across the weaving. Its tick-tick-tick reshaped the silence.

  Finally, Clo asked, “Do you see it?”

  Cary squinted and huffed, huffed and squinted.

  Stepping toward him, peering at his eyes, Clo suddenly felt the hard edge of a bobbin beneath her foot. She tried to pick it up; it would not come. She yanked again, and the finished fabric near the floor puckered; she realized the bobbin was still attached—but to cloth that had long been finished, far from the working edge. “What’s this doing here?” she murmured, rewrapping and lowering the stray spool. She smoothed the tapestry and glanced again at Cary. “Can you see yet?”

  Cary had his hand on his brow; small beads of sweat stood out on his skin. “I’m… I’m sorry, Clo. There’s just gray. I think the soup has made me…” He shuddered. “I had a bit of a… sharp. Something sharp. For a moment, and now it’s gone. Where is… where is the old woman?”

  “Something hurt? Perhaps it was the soup changing your eyes?” Running her fingers over the threads, Clo tried again. “Look, Cary, there’s people. Thousands. They’re here… they’re woven in the threads. They are threads. And Cary, I think they are real. Alive. Here…,” she said, parting the warp, “here’s a woman… skinning a rabbit. She’s kneeling in the middle of the woods, all alone, and there’s frost on the leaves, and her knife is more… like stone. And here”—she jumped to another part of the cloth—“here’s a boy whistling. With a blade of grass. Or trying to whistle. He’s blowing and blowing, and there’s no sound, and he’s red-cheeked and barefoot, and he has his feet sunk deep in the soil. And here”—kneeling over the cat, she peered around a dark hole it had just opened in the cloth—“here’s a man—”

  In horror, Clo drew away.

  She looked at Cary wide-eyed, then leaned in again. Her fingers traced the tear in the fabric. In the mirror, she followed all the threads that had been pulled and frayed and torn around the hole.

  “Here… it’s…” She could not bring herself to say. Here was a figure more blood and mud than man. Wounded, gasping, he had become a part of the soil of the ditch where he lay. A chaos of legs and arms and sludge churned above him, as men—more blood and mud than men—rammed their spears and swung their axes and grappled desperately at one another.

  “Clo?”

  Shaking her head, Clo stepped back, trying to take in the whole weaving at once.

  So many holes. Frayed threads…

  Trembling, she pushed aside the warp threads. Here. And here. Here. Wherever the cat had left a tear or a run or a gaping hole. War. Famine. Disease.

  “Clo?”

  By her feet, she heard again the tick-tick-tick of the cat. Perched on its hind legs, it kneaded the fabric, again and again and again. Tick-tick-tick.

  She stared at it. Its hoofish paws. Its bristly face.

  “Get!” she shrieked. “Get, you miserable beast!” She tried to grab the creature, but growling and hissing, it darted away from her. “Get, you horrible creature!”

  “Clo—” Cary’s hand was on her shoulder.

  “Oh, get it out of here! Catch it, catch it! Shut it out! You don’t know what it’s done! Keep it away!” She lurched after the cat.

  “Granddaughter,” said a cold voice at the door. “You are not meant to be here. And, boy, you are not permitted. This is not your place.”

  Clo spun around to see the woman who called herself her grandmother standing in the doorway. All the wrinkles on her face seemed to be frowning at once, but Clo cared nothing for her anger.

  “How could you? How could you let it?” Her voice shook.

  Kneeling, the woman scooped up the cat in her arms. “There, there, Mischief.” She rubbed behind the beast’s ears. “There, there.” From beneath her apple-skin eyelids, the woman looked stonily at Clo. “There is always Mischief,” she said. “Always.”

  “That beast? Mischief? You call it—what it does—mischief? And you let it? Can’t you see what it destroys?”

  Lifting a hand from the cat, the little woman waved at the tapestry. Her cheeks grew ruddy and round, almost beaming. “And can you not see the beauty he adds? Look how the fabric almost glows where he has placed his claws. How he adds depth to the design.” She stroked the beast’s fur, and he rumbled under her fingers. “Certainly, you must see now, granddaughter. I believe you hear and see very well now.”

  “But up close… it’s horrible! There’s so much… so much sadness! So much suffering! You know what he’s done! There is no beauty up close!”

  “Granddaughter. You disappoint me.” She tutted disapprovingly. “You should be able to see the necessity of Mischief. Even your mother never doubted his artistry. But perhaps you have not yet fully recovered. Perhaps your eyes… well. We shall see. And boy”—she turned now to Cary, who had edged into the corner—“I do not think one who has waited so long to be a net boy would risk such disobedience.”

  Eyes on his feet, Cary nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  “And do not think the stew is for you. It will do nothing for you. It is not permitted.”

  “Yes.”

  “The tapestry is not for you. It is not permitted.”

  “Yes.”

  “You should leave.”

  “Clo—” Cary hesitated.

  “Leave now.”

  “Yes.” Casting one last quick glance at Clo, Cary shuffled hurriedly out of the room. Clo heard the front door shut behind him.

  For a long moment, the only sound was the grumbling of the piggish cat lolling in the woman’s arms. Clo stared with revulsion at the woman’s fingers
as they caressed the creature’s bristly fur. How could she touch such a beast? How could she keep such a creature?

  “Well, granddaughter,” the old woman said at last. “I am pleased, at least, that you are awake. Out of bed. On your feet. You may return to your work.”

  Clo thought of the towers of wool that she had carded out of fish, blooming in the next room. Of the thousands of spools that had been tucked into the old woman’s pockets. Of the noises—the giggle, the sigh, the gmmm—that came from their unraveling threads. Of the threads woven into the tapestry… the woman with the knife, the man and the ox, the merchant and his coin… and the boy, the boy with the cough, hee, the full passage, hee. Of the beastly cat, and the nightmarish holes—war, famine, disease… Mischief—torn by the cat. And though Clo would not have resumed her work, had on her tongue a ready “No! This is not my work!” she realized at once that she could not take up this work, that she was physically incapable of this work, that she could no longer stand, really, her legs having turned to something soft and trembly, to something like jam—bilberry jam, three rounded spoonfuls of bilberry jam—beneath her.

  “I…”

  “Granddaughter?”

  “I… cannot… I cannot…”

  Bilberry jam.

  “I will not.”

  CHAPTER THE TWENTY-THIRD

  WHEREIN THE MOON-CHEEKED BOY DOES NOT OPEN HIS DOOR

  ON JELLYISH LEGS, CLO RAN. PUSHING PAST THE OLD woman, she heard a cross Granddaughter! and she heard the piggish cat hiss and felt its claws catch her arm, but still she ran on her trembling legs out of the chamber and past the fire and out the front door into the empty street. The long white smock she had been dressed in twisted around her ankles and sent her sprawling across the cobblestones; the skin of her hands and knees burned on the rocks, but clambering up, she ran on, wishing she could feel the bones in her legs—wishing for anything but the cooked and quivering bilberries that had taken their place.

  Down the street, the smock catching with every footfall, she hurried. The windows of the little huts winked darkly at her and echoed back to her the slap of her bare feet on the stones. Hee, they coughed at her. Hee.