Crewel

by Gennifer Albin

  ‘I must have been confused,’ I tell her. ‘I thought Pryana said she had a sister.’

  ‘She’s an only child,’ her mother says, and her face brightens again. ‘My pride and joy.’

  ‘So what exactly happened to the academy?’ I ask, less interested in the facts than in what she believes occurred.

  ‘It was upgraded. We got called to a town hall meeting, well, the girl neighbourhoods,’ she says, and the automatic tone returns; but for just a moment she seems to struggle with what happened at that meeting. ‘Anyway, they upgraded the girls’ academy. It makes sense to me. We’ve produced more Spinsters here than any other metro in the four sectors.’

  I swallow hard and turn from her.

  ‘Pryana mentioned that,’ I say in a quiet voice, my mind no longer centred on this conversation.

  ‘It sounds like you two are good friends,’ her mother says happily, and I don’t have the heart to correct her. ‘Will you do something for me?’

  ‘Anything,’ I say, expecting her to give me a message for Pryana, but instead, she leans in to whisper, ‘Keep an eye on her for me.’

  That won’t be hard.

  Enora meets me at the rebound station back at the Western Coventry and drags me away before Jost or Erik can join us. I feel awful for not thanking them for watching out for me this weekend, but since Enora can barely control her shaking hands, I go along with her.

  ‘You’re wanted upon arrival,’ she tells me.

  ‘Okay.’ I consider telling her about the conversation I overheard between Cormac and Hannox but don’t know where to start.

  ‘Have you manipulated the weave again without a machine?’ she asks me in a quiet voice. Her gaze is so demanding I almost believe I have. It’s clear she assumes as much.

  ‘No.’ I pause and try to remember if that’s right. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘No or maybe?’ she presses.

  ‘No,’ I repeat more confidently. ‘What is this about?’

  ‘You’ve been called to train,’ she says in a small voice.

  ‘With Maela?’ I ask, not hiding my annoyance.

  ‘With Loricel.’

  Now I understand why Enora is shaking.

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘I met her in Cypress.’

  ‘You must have made quite an impression,’ Enora says.

  ‘She knew about me,’ I tell her, ‘and she didn’t approve of me being there with Cormac.’

  ‘She wouldn’t.’

  ‘That’s what he said. And I agree. He is too old for me,’ I joke, trying to lighten the mood.

  But Enora isn’t laughing. ‘Loricel doesn’t approve of his influence on the Coventry. She thinks we should be self-governed.’

  ‘Aren’t we?’

  ‘Loricel may be, but the rest of the Spinsterhood is closely monitored by the Guild. We may be more powerful than the rest of the female citizenry, but that’s not much to boast about.’

  I think back to Cormac’s orders, his conversation about Protocol Two, and the way he offered me Arras like it was his. Amie’s voice rings in my head: control – Spinsters have control. Had I believed it, too?

  ‘Should I tell her about what I can do?’ I ask under my breath.

  Enora’s gaze stays on me, but behind her eyes she drifts somewhere else. When she finally speaks, her voice is as hollow and distant as her eyes are. ‘No. I’ve learned from experience that some secrets must be kept, even from someone with the best of intentions.’

  I search her face for a sign that she realises she’s made a value statement. She’s been honest and not spoken in riddles, if only for a moment. And though I still don’t confess about Cormac, or Erik’s concern, or Jost feeding me dinner, it brings us closer. I can’t deny the wall between us, separating us from total honesty, but I’m no longer sure which of us built it.

  But one thing is bothering me. ‘Speaking of secrets. Why didn’t you warn me about the Cypress event?’

  Enora’s look says it all: because she didn’t know about it.

  ‘What about the Cypress event?’ she asks quietly. ‘We didn’t get the Stream for that.’

  ‘Nothing,’ I mutter, and before she can question me further, we’re back within the compound’s walls.

  Enora doesn’t give me time to change out of my travelling suit. Instead she drags me to the airy room where I was assigned the first day I became a Spinster. I haven’t been back here since then. The window is open and chiffon curtains swirl around it. I look at the loom – my loom – more carefully. It’s polished and looks untouched. The series of gears on either side of it are still, waiting for me to will them to life. And next to the silent machine, Loricel waits.

  I’m jealous of her simple navy pantsuit. I can’t remember the last time I was allowed to wear pants. I’m also struck by how powerful she looks in comparison to most Spinsters. She’s not overdone like the others.

  ‘Thank you, Enora,’ she says.

  Enora nods. ‘Is there anything I can get you?’

  ‘No, this will be fine,’ she says, drawing up one of the studio chairs. ‘The wall screens are lovely here, don’t you think?’

  I smile, not sure what to say.

  ‘I want to work with Adelice alone today,’ she says to Enora, and my mentor smiles. It’s the first time she hasn’t looked scared to leave my side.

  ‘Access Alpha L,’ Loricel says out loud when Enora’s left the room.

  ‘Access granted,’ a disembodied voice sings from the panel.

  ‘Turn off security monitors and audio surveillance,’ Loricel commands.

  ‘Monitors and surveillance will be turned off for one hour.’

  ‘That’s better,’ she says to me, patting the seat next to her.

  I sit and stare at her.

  ‘How is your training going?’ she asks.

  I blush at the question. I barely know how to turn on the loom, never having woven on the machine unsupervised. ‘It’s not,’ I answer honestly.

  ‘I figured. Cormac never has the right priorities.’

  ‘It’s my fault,’ I confess. ‘I haven’t made training me easy.’

  ‘No Creweler ever does,’ she mutters.

  ‘Oh, I’m not a—’

  ‘You are a Creweler. You have been since you were eight years old.’

  My mouth falls open, and for the life of me, I can’t shut it. I was eight the first time I accidentally caught time while playing in my yard. Mom had made me smooth it out, and then she huddled with Dad at the dinner table, talking in the hushed voices parents use when they’re worried. A scene that became too familiar at supper.

  ‘Part of my job is to find and train the next Creweler. I found you that day when you slipped.’

  ‘So you always knew?’ I ask, my voice barely a whisper.

  ‘For a long time I’ve been worried about my age. I am more capable up here,’ she tells me, tapping her head, ‘than anyone else in this forsaken Coventry, but this body is failing. I needed to find my replacement.’

  I remember the nights I spent training to fail the testing, crawling through the holes under my house, the body bag in my dining room, but it was pointless because they were always coming for me.

  ‘I’ve known it was you for a long time,’ she says sadly. ‘But when your parents tried to teach you to fail, I hoped they would succeed.’

  ‘Why?’ I feel oddly violated by her admission. She’d watched me for years and yet not stepped in when things went very wrong on the night of my retrieval.

  ‘I am sorry about your parents and your sister. I could do nothing to save them.’ Loricel pauses. ‘I had to give you every opportunity to escape this, and that meant sacrificing them.’

  Tears rise up, threatening to choke me. I try desperately to focus my anger on everyone else and not on the old woman sitting next to me.

  ‘There are things I need to teach you that the Guild cannot know about, but things are moving more quickly than I expected,’ she admits with a sigh.

&n
bsp; I know if I open my mouth to ask her what things, I’ll start sobbing, so I stare ahead instead. Rising from her chair, Loricel walks over to the wall and enters a code on the companel with surprising speed. Almost instantly the gears of the loom begin churning. They float against one another and shimmering strands of light snake around them, weaving together. The threads glide onto the surface of the loom, forming a tapestry of light.

  ‘It’s a simple piece.’ She runs a finger along the weave in front of us. ‘I’m assured this is a terminal patient being taken care of at home. Her daughter sent us the request.’

  Ripping. She’s here to finish what Maela started. And what kind of daughter puts in a removal request? I try to imagine signing a form asking the Guild to rip my mother. But even though I want to back away, I move forward to inspect the piece.

  It’s simply woven with long, thick strands. I can almost see it when I touch the weave: a small house in the country, unadorned by a Spinster’s hand, allowed to flourish and evolve by nature’s course. Unlike the last piece I was given to rip, which was intricately woven with thousands of tiny and unique threads, these strands are rich and coarse, woven into a humble piece. The weakened thread is easy enough to find in such an austere piece, but despite its frailty the strand is long and coloured in hints of gold and copper. It’s thick despite wear and even now as it slowly decays, there’s a sense of vibrancy. If Loricel had imagined this would be easier than ripping one of a thousand threads in a complex weave, she’s wrong. Removing this strand feels like a violation – an act against nature. It’s the life force of this piece, and everything this thread touches, regardless of our attempts to repair around it, will be irrevocably damaged once it’s gone.

  Taking a silver hook from the small cubby at the edge of the loom, I slide the crook under the large fraying thread and gently pull it loose. It comes out quickly and the threads around the gap look homeless now that I’ve removed their base. The thread hanging on the end of my hook was the starting place for so many of the other threads. Its loss affects them all.

  But I feel nothing. I wait for tears or vomit to burn up my throat, but there’s nothing but numbness.

  ‘Now this can be sent to Repair,’ Loricel says quietly.

  I nod, and Loricel enters a new code. The rest of the piece moves slowly off the loom, creeping to the Repair Department, which will bind the piece back together, closing up the hole and tidying the frayed ends caused by ripping out that one thread.

  ‘You could fix it,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, I could, but that’s not why I’m here. You must make the hard choice, Adelice, before you can move forward. Decisions must be made. Often between life and death. It is hard to make a decision to save thousands when it compromises one.’ Her voice is a hollow whisper, and ghosts echo in her eyes. ‘It is easier not to be put in that position.

  ‘As Creweler, you can create new places – oceans, lakes, buildings, fields. It can be rewarding,’ she continues, and as I watch she enters a new code into the companel. A moment later, a new piece of Arras appears on the loom. It’s nearly blank, a hint of green glistening against the bands of gold, and she clicks the zoom wheel to bring it into more detailed focus. It’s a simple piece of land. Maybe a park or a field lying outside metro limits somewhere. There are no trees, no rocks, just a valley of lush, green grass. For the first time I notice the small bag she carries with her as she places it at the foot of the loom and gestures that I should let her sit on the stool.

  ‘Normally, I work in my own studio, but I brought my supplies with me today,’ she says with a kind smile. ‘You must get a feel for your own loom. I have clearance to call up the weave on any machine. Now if I must show you destruction, I want to balance that with the beauty of what we can do.’

  From the bag, she draws out spools of thin blue thread. It’s hard to describe what raw material looks like. The colour of the strands is an innuendo – the possibility of colour rather than a clear shade. As though I understand it’s blue only because I’ve seen the colour before. The thread itself is light and cool to the touch, and when she unwraps it from the spool it glimmers and sparks with energy. This is the very raw material that is sewn into the weave by the skilled hands of Spinsters, composing all objects in Arras. I can’t think about it too much, because part of my ability stems from my hands’ natural desire to weave. My conscious mind plays little role in the task. I’ve added to Arras before, but that act adhered to a strict pattern established by more experienced Spinsters.

  After carefully removing some of the green threads from the weave on the loom, Loricel takes a blue strand, and slipping it through a small thin needle, begins to add it to the spot. She works quickly but expertly, subtracting the green and adding the blue in a tight weave. When the entire section has been replaced, she takes another piece of sheer thread and embroiders along the edge. My mother cross-stitched kitchen towels when I was a child and the technique is similar, but Loricel uses no pattern and her embroidery illuminates the section. Even in its abstract state, the weave is stunning.

  ‘This binds the new addition,’ she explains as she finishes embroidering the edge. ‘It’s key to permanently altering the weave.’ When it’s done, she puts the extra raw materials back into her bag and clicks the zoom wheel on the loom. Where previously she’d shown me a simple valley, a radiant lake now resides. A source of water for the residents nearby.

  ‘Later, the farmers can add fish, and the town can ration it as food,’ she explains. ‘I’m particularly fond of adding lakes. Something about water tugs at my soul.’

  I am silent with awe, finally understanding her significance now. With the ripped strand from earlier resting in my palm, I feel in even greater contrast to the woman sitting beside me. She is life. I am death.

  I’m not surprised when Enora announces I’m training for Crewel work as we walk to the dining room that evening during our meal shift. At the table I sit next to her and watch as Pryana takes her spot at the end of the table – next to my empty chair. We’re assigned to sit by rank of importance at the table. Now only Pryana, who is still training, sits at the end. To anyone else she would look oblivious, but I see the slight fury blazing in her cheeks when she spies me towards the front of the table. Her head stays down throughout dinner. I feel badly for her. At least I have Enora, but Pryana sits alone, isolated from the rest of the group. I’m sure she hates me even more now.

  ‘How long have you been training, dear?’ The Spinster who speaks to me draws out her words until they sound like warm, thick honey dripping slowly off her tongue. She must be from the southern stretches of Arras. We don’t have much of an accent in the Western Sector.

  ‘What day is it?’ With the travelling, I’ve lost track of the date.

  The Spinster oozes a slow chuckle. ‘It’s October fifth, dear.’

  The still-warm air had a bite to it the day I made my fateful slip at the testing facility back home. The leaves were barely yellowing, and running home might have pinkened my cheeks, but a jacket wasn’t necessary yet. That was September. Only a couple of weeks of my life have been spent in the Coventry. In many ways my life in Romen feels like a faded, long-past memory, and yet it seems that only yesterday my mother commanded me to clean my room or I braided Amie’s hair. My memories of them are vivid, but blurry at the edges as though they are slipping away.

  ‘Less than a month,’ I say out loud. I don’t tell her how much of that time was spent in cells.

  ‘A month?’ Her eyes widen, and her deeply lined lids look garish and frightening. ‘That must be some kind of record.’

  A few of the others nod in amazed agreement. Enora, who has been busy talking to the woman next to her, notices my discomfort and jumps in. ‘She scored very highly on her aptitude tests and we needed more help in the Crewel department, so we brought her up.’

  She smiles warmly and everyone relaxes into other conversations, except the southern Spinster, whose eyes stay fixed on Enora in a fierce way. She looks l
ike a caged animal, both frightened and eager. I don’t like the way she stares at my mentor. Who could be threatened by Enora? I make a mental note to steer clear of this woman from now on. She’s a climber.

  I pretend to lose interest in everything but eating, but I feel eyes on me. I look up to discover Maela studying me. We are roughly equal in our positions at the table. She heads up the lower Spinsters, and I trail behind the trained Spinsters, apprenticed to Crewel work, so we overlap. I see the wheels turning in her mind. Eyes slightly glazed, the purse of her lips, the tightness of her jaw; she has nowhere to go, and I’ve only begun my own rise in this world. But she’ll find a way to climb further up – her kind always does.

  ‘Are you excited?’ the southern Spinster asks sweetly.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I blush, confused by her question. ‘Should I be?’

  ‘For the State of the Guild ball,’ she says, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. ‘It’s next week.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I say, remembering images from the Bulletin. The ball was always held in the autumn months. ‘I had forgotten.’

  ‘Will Cormac be escorting you to this event, too?’ The sugar is gone from her voice.

  ‘No,’ Enora says, looking directly at the other woman. ‘Spinsters don’t have escorts at events held within the Coventry, remember?’

  ‘I must have forgotten,’ the woman says flatly, and turns back to her other conversation.

  I guess we won’t be friends after all.

  ‘Don’t worry, your dress is ready,’ Enora whispers from her spot a few spaces down.

  ‘I didn’t think I’d have to ward off Cormac for a while,’ I mutter, not sure she can hear me.

  Enora snorts. ‘Think again.’

  11

  The whole event is over-the-top. I should have expected as much with Guild officials in attendance, but despite my being used to feeling surprised at the ridiculousness of the Coventry, this is too much.