Crewel

by Gennifer Albin

  Jost shakes his head, but his gaze remains distant. ‘No, I didn’t want to worry her. I should have, but I was scared to repeat what I had heard. Turns out I was right. There are Spinsters trained to find these plots and anti-Guild groups.’

  ‘Yes, we learned about it in training. The tapestry begins to bleed and stain. When people are loyal, their threads remain true to their original colour.’

  ‘I bet Rozenn’s was the most beautiful thread imaginable,’ he says with reverence.

  Hot tears prick at my eyes when he says her name.

  ‘I wonder what Saxun looked like when they came.’

  ‘I can’t imagine. I’ve never seen a taint,’ I admit. ‘My parents trained me for eight years to fail the testing, and no one came for us. I don’t know how deeply spread the staining has to be before it’s identified.’

  ‘Were your parents openly anti-Guild?’

  I shake my head. Despite their actions, I can’t claim them to have been rebels. ‘No, they never spoke against the Guild. They were very careful about that. And besides, my mother was just a secretary and my father was a mechanic.’

  ‘Was?’

  ‘I wasn’t the only one punished,’ I say quietly. ‘I assumed you knew.’

  ‘I guessed,’ he says. ‘Anyway, the town of Saxun was filled with rebels. Your parents were only two people.’

  I think of the tunnels under my house. They had to lead somewhere. There’s still a lot I don’t know about my parents. ‘I guess a little treason can be overlooked.’

  ‘But only a little,’ he murmurs.

  ‘Yes.’ My smile is ragged around the edges. ‘What happened?’

  ‘The Guild made an example of the town.’ Jost’s voice fades, and I lean in to hear him. ‘They ripped out our sisters, our mothers, our daughters . . .’

  ‘Your wives,’ I add, and he nods.

  His head drops and the distance between us is gone. When he speaks again, his words are broken. ‘I saw it. You have no idea, Adelice. What it’s like to see that.’

  I recall being sent away from my grandmother’s room. How the nurse closed the curtain and waited with her back turned as though she couldn’t stand to look.

  ‘She was on the dock, waiting with the other women for us to come in for lunch. She just slipped away. First her legs faded, and she looked so confused that I screamed for help, but there was nothing we could do. Those of us on the boats watched it happen. Her mouth disappeared next and she couldn’t cry for help. The last thing to fade was her body.’ He makes a choking noise and I realise he’s crying. ‘She was holding our daughter.’

  I weep with him. For his loss and for the confusion I feel. This isn’t the boy with the crooked grin who fed me sweet potatoes, and my grief isn’t just because of what the Guild did to him but because of how different we are. I cry because I’m a stupid girl who can’t curb the jealousy and inferiority I feel towards Rozenn for getting him first. And for the distance that will always exist between us. He was a husband, a father, and I’m nothing and never will be. I guess the Guild assigned us our roles after all.

  ‘It was the last time I saw either of them. She was sixteen, and my daughter was three months old.’

  I have no words to comfort him so I take his hand and hold it softly in my bandaged one.

  ‘I’m here because it’s the last place they’ll look,’ he confides, finally answering my question.

  ‘Look for what?’ I ask, unsure I want to know the answer.

  ‘Revolution.’

  14

  I dream of people I love. I am five, and my mother puts on cosmetics at the bathroom sink, but every cosmetic detracts instead of enhancing. The mascara erases her lashes, the rouge hollows her cheeks, and the lipstick removes her smile. She brushes her copper-red hair and the locks fade into air. Her decapitated body turns to me and gestures for approval, and she asks, as she did every day: ‘How do I look?’

  Amie is a baby and I cling to her, but the tighter I hold her, the more she disappears. I can’t protect her. I see her rewoven, now a young girl with wispy blonde braids. I wave to her, and she stares through me. I am the one who’s gone. I’m the ghost.

  A large white cake the size of a loom rests on a simple table and under it my father melts into a pool of sticky black liquid that oozes closer and closer to my bare feet. He calls for help, but I’m too scared of getting my shoes dirty, so I watch as he fades into nothing.

  And in the background of the dreams, Jost stands frozen. Only the blink of his eyes shows that he’s awake and watching, waiting for me to help him. But when I step toward him, I see her, more beautiful than me – laughing and pregnant – holding his hand, and I look away. When I turn, he shifts into Erik, whose free arms stretch out to me, beckoning for me to come to him.

  I erase and rebuild the world in my sleep, and in the morning I try to remember how to rebuild myself. Every day I wonder how I can go back to the loom. Can I keep weaving now that I know? I can’t erase Jost’s story. I had nothing to do with it, but that doesn’t change anything. I’m still a Spinster.

  Jost comes daily to salve my hands with renewal cream, and they heal quickly, but no stylists come. A week has passed and even Enora is absent, and I wonder if I’ve gotten her in trouble, too. Food continues to arrive at meal hours. I stay in my nightdress, lounging by the fire, and living for the minutes when Jost comes to check on me. Today he brings lunch, and we eat together. The conversation sounds light, but only because we’re speaking in code. Some of our stories we can share openly, but the things I really want to know can’t be spoken out loud where surveillance might pick up our words. We can only spend so much time in the bathroom – where the sound of running water hides our voices – without raising alarm, but despite my attempts to steer all conversation toward his plans, he seems more interested in me.

  ‘It wasn’t a real fight.’ I laugh as I continue a story about my neighbour Beth. ‘She was bullying Amie, and I was tired of it. So I sort of knocked her over.’

  ‘But you loved your kid sister, right?’ Jost presses. ‘It sounds like you two got into trouble a lot.’

  ‘Amie followed the rules better than I did, so when I did anything that could get us in trouble, she freaked out,’ I say. ‘When I fought with Beth she worried that I’d be taken away for deviance counselling.’

  ‘But you weren’t,’ he says.

  ‘I wasn’t, but Beth was.’ I had forgotten that until now. It was one of those memories that stuck in your head although you tried to push it back and ignore it. Beth had gone away when we were twelve, and when she came back, she was different. Just as unfriendly, but not with me – with everyone.

  ‘My big brother was only ten months older than me,’ he says, calling back to the conversation. ‘My mom called us hooligans.’

  I smile at that, but then my eyes widen as I do the math. ‘Ten months?’

  His grin gets a little more crooked. ‘Not a lot to do in a poor fishing village.’

  I know more about babies and stuff than most girls my age. Well, I guess the other girls in Romen would have started marriage-preparation courses now. That’s where they tell you about sex. Of course, my parents told me about the birds and the bees in excruciating and embarrassing detail years ago. Another one of their best-laid plans to make sure I understood my world. But sitting here with a guy who makes me tingle all over, in the Coventry where the ‘privileges of marriage’, as my mom called them, were way off-limits, that info was pretty useless. And then there was the fact that he had first-hand experience that I would never have. It was definitely time for a change in conversation.

  ‘So you were a hunter?’ I ask, returning back to our code and carelessly scooping rice into my mouth: my bandaged hands still proving a nuisance to fine motor skills – and forks.

  Jost nods, serious again. ‘I was interested in large game. The kind that feeds a lot of people and brings in money.’

  ‘What kinds of animals constitute large game?’ I keep my
voice casual. No companel would detect anything unusual – or even interesting – this way.

  ‘Bears and cougars, mostly.’

  ‘You can eat bears and cougars?’ I screw up my face in mock disgust.

  ‘Ad, you can eat anything if you’re hungry enough.’ Jost grins over a chicken leg.

  The conversation falters, and we lapse into silence as we eat. Hunger is not an issue to discuss, even in code. It borders on treason, because the Guild claims there is no hunger. I lived on the borders of a large metro with my family and both my parents were assigned work, so although our meal rations were never exciting, we didn’t want. Jost, however, worked hard for his food and many in his small village went without, save for the kindness of the fishermen, but even that was limited to what was left after they had delivered their quotas to the Guild.

  But of course Jost never hunted a day in his life. He worked fifteen-hour days to feed his family and a handful of neighbours, but at sea. I know this because during the brief distractions we can call up, we’ve established a few code words. It’s been trial and error, with more than a few misunderstandings, but we’re getting better at the double talk. The bears are ministry officials and cougars are Spinsters. Jost is looking for who is responsible for the attacks on the women of Saxun. What he’s planning to do when he finds out, we haven’t figured out a code for, and I’m not sure I care to know.

  ‘Did you ever have a cougar attack a stag?’ I’m trying to ask about Erik, but no matter how many ways I ask, Jost has no clue what I’m saying.

  ‘I’m sure one did,’ he says, giving me a slight shrug to let me know he’s sorry he doesn’t understand. If only my questions were as easy to follow as his body language.

  And that’s when I realise the solution to our problem. It’s so simple, it never occurred to me. ‘Jost, is sight or sound more important when hunting?’ I ask excitedly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If you were hunting, would you want to see or hear your prey?’

  He understands and gives me a slight nod. ‘Sight is good, but most prefer being able to hear.’

  So there it is: the Coventry listens in private quarters but, unlike in the studios, doesn’t watch. At least, that’s what Jost thinks, and he knows a lot about how things work here. Now I know what to do if I can manage it, but it means breaking a promise.

  ‘Well, thank you for bringing me my lunch,’ I tell him, and lead him to the door. He follows, but it’s clear he doesn’t understand. Most of the food is finished, but he usually stays longer. When I open the door and then shut it noisily before he can leave, he stays silent, waiting for me to make my point. I gesture towards the rug in front of the fire. He walks to it, and I follow behind him, concentrating hard on the strands in the room until they glimmer around me, revealing the room’s weave. The time and matter are knitted closely together, and I have to focus on the golden bands of light until I’m sure I can pinpoint just the time threads. It’s so much easier to see on the loom, but at least time always moves across, so I can find it if I look closely enough. Slowly I reach out with my wounded fingers and pull the strands and twist. The fire in the hearth roars up and crackles in the room so loudly it fills my ears. A chill dampens the air around us despite the climate control being on. I weave the tangled time into a web of golden light, and it domes us in a shimmering glow, stopping at the rug under our feet. We can still see the fire and the room through the translucent web, but we no longer hear the crackle of the logs, and the licking flames seem to slow until they are frozen, like a picture, when I connect the last bits of twisted gold.

  ‘What did you do?’ he whispers.

  ‘I wove another moment.’ I’m as surprised as he is that it worked. ‘I wasn’t sure I could.’ This is what I’d done at testing. Slipped, and caught the weave of the actual room, not the one they’d given us on the loom, and messed it up a little. I’d smoothed it right back out, but that was all it took. I’d been studying the weave around me for years, enough to know that what I’d done would be noticed by the proctors administering the test. But I’d never considered how I could use this skill until now.

  ‘What does that mean?’ he asks, reaching out toward the golden web, but pulling back before his hands touch it.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I admit.

  ‘Can they hear us?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Biting my lip, I gesture for him to be silent and then carefully pull the strands separating us from the nearby fire. It roars back to life. I quickly reweave them, and it stops again.

  ‘It’s frozen,’ he murmurs in disbelief. ‘But how?’

  ‘This moment exists outside of that reality. I can’t really explain it.’ But he’s staring at me like I’m a freak. I don’t blame him. It’s not supposed to work this way. ‘I know you are supposed to need a loom to weave, but I can see the weave without one.’

  From the way he falls back in surprise, I can guess he’s decided that I’m definitely a freak.

  ‘Have you always been able to do this?’ he asks.

  ‘Not exactly like this, but I’ve been able to weave since I was a child.’

  ‘Without a loom?’ he asks in awe.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you messed up the room?’ I can tell he’s having a hard time with this. I barely understand it myself.

  ‘These,’ I say, fingering the strands of light, ‘are time. They always move across the weave. I guess it’s because time flows forward.’

  ‘Can it be moved backward?’ he asks quietly, and I know what he’s thinking.

  I shake my head no. As much as I wish I could turn back the weave and save my parents, for the first time part of me is glad I can’t. If I could take Jost back to save his family, would I? It’s not a decision I want to face.

  ‘But how do you do it without the loom?’ he asks, trying to hide his disappointment. ‘How can you even see it?’

  ‘I wish I knew,’ I say with a hollow chuckle. ‘Maybe then I wouldn’t be in this mess.’

  ‘Do they know this?’

  I pause, because I’m not sure. Cormac says they saw me do it at testing, but I’ve been careful not to manipulate without a loom here. I don’t share all this with Jost though. ‘Enora told me not to tell them.’

  Jost lets out a low whistle as he paces the small dome, inspecting it as closely as he can without touching it. ‘Enora is smart. What would happen if someone came into the room right now?’

  ‘That’s just it,’ I explain. ‘They couldn’t. That moment’ – I point to the room outside my woven moment – ‘is frozen.’

  ‘So we could stay here,’ he says slowly, ‘and no matter how much time passes here, no time would pass out there.’

  ‘Exactly.’ I pause, realising I don’t know this for sure. ‘I think. Actually, I have no idea.’

  ‘Then it’s true.’

  I look at him, trying to understand what he’s telling me.

  ‘There are whisperings that Loricel’s successor has come. Everyone has been trying to figure out which of you it is,’ he explains. ‘If it’s you or the other one.’

  ‘Pryana?’ I ask, mildly offended.

  Jost nods, too busy gawking to notice. ‘I’ve known it was you since they threw you in the cell.’

  ‘But how did they know?’ Was one slip enough to mark me as a Creweler?

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admits, ‘but the way they treat you – afraid of you, but still deferential. They know it’s you.’

  I think of the threats made but never carried out.

  ‘Crewelers don’t come along often. They can’t afford to lose you,’ Jost tells me.

  ‘But how is this Crewel work?’ I finger the time woven around us. ‘Loricel has only ever used a loom in my presence.’

  ‘Crewelers don’t merely embroider.’ Jost sits down on the rug, and I join him, safely cocooned in my moment. ‘Once a year Loricel visits the mining sites and separates the elements from time, so the machines can purify and distr
ibute the material to the coventries to maintain Arras’s weave. I serve at the meetings when the officials come to schedule the trips. Without her talent, the looms would be useless. That’s why she gives them so much grief.’ There’s a note of appreciation in his voice.

  ‘In academy, they told us machines discovered the elements.’

  ‘You don’t feel like a machine?’ he asks. ‘Oiled and maintained and made to do the will of those who control you?’

  I don’t answer. I have no response except to warn him, but even that sounds mechanical and automatic. ‘You can’t tell anyone.’

  ‘I won’t,’ he promises. ‘But they already know.’

  ‘They think they know,’ I argue.

  ‘They know, Adelice.’

  The dreams are more vivid, but I control them now. I repaint my mother’s eyes and weave my sister back into my arms. My father, taken so violently, remains unsaved. I continue to try. Meanwhile, Jost and Erik take turns watching me, and I wake with their eyes burned into my conscious thoughts.

  By the time Enora finally shows up to brief me, I’m seriously considering weaving myself right out of the compound. This time there are no pleasantries or small talk. Instead she gets right to the point.

  ‘As you know, the Guild has made unprecedented advances in mind-mapping technology.’ Her voice is as stiff as her posture. There’s no spark of friendliness. I must have really got her into trouble for her to act like this.

  ‘And they will be utilising this new capability by mapping every Spinster,’ she continues.

  ‘What?’ I shout, jumping up from my bed.

  Enora barely bats an eyelash at my outburst. ‘Since Spinsters have unique abilities that are vital to the continued prosperity of Arras, the Guild is mandating that all Spinsters undergo this testing.’

  ‘At the State of the Guild they said they could change people. Are they mapping us or remapping us?’ I ask, studying Enora’s placid demeanour. Something isn’t right.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she says, but her eyes are empty. ‘You can’t remap something that hasn’t been mapped.’ There’s no familiarity in her voice, and her usual maternal tone is now mocking.