Woven

by Michael Jensen

  “You can’t see him because he’s dead.” Tyra winced as she said it. She knew this would make her look mad, but she couldn’t take it anymore. “I went out to meet you in the woods last night, but when I arrived, I found this meddling ghost instead. Now he won’t leave me alone!”

  Realizing that she had spoken louder then she meant, Tyra sensed a new awkward silence in the courtyard, worse than before. Arek’s shoulders trembled as the returning hunters came to a halt. The gardeners stopped clipping their hedges, and a group of squires turned their heads.

  She had caused yet another scene.

  “Maybe we should go inside and consult the physician?” Arek suggested.

  “I don’t need a physician,” Tyra cried. “I need you!”

  “Stay here, Princess, and I will fetch the physician for you.”

  Sir Arek turned and left, leaving Tyra alone with the ghost. “You make this haunting business easy,” said the peasant. “Shall we keep this up? I still have a few good ideas left in me.”

  Instead of answering, Tyra threw down her bow and headed for the castle.

  “Hey,” said the peasant. “Where are you off to now?”

  This was the final straw. She was more than disappointed that Arek didn’t believe her — he didn’t even listen to her. She feared what he thought of her now. Had she scared him away forever? Tyra hoped not. It was time for drastic measures. If she was to have any success in removing the peasant from her life, she had to look into her final option. “The tailor sent me into your woods, and he is going to tell me why.”

  “Didn’t I say that this morning?” The peasant smiled. “You’ve decided to help me then?”

  “Help you?” Tyra spun around and jabbed her finger through his chest with each word she spoke. “Who said I was helping you? Nothing in this world could ever make me help you!”

  “That’s too bad. I’d hate to see how you’d handle two sleepless nights.”

  Ignoring the threat, Tyra stormed off to find the cellar — the darkest, most disgusting place in the castle. She had to know why the tailor had sent her into the woods, and why he had lied to her about Sir Arek. She desperately hoped that he would have all the answers.

  “By the way,” the peasant said, following after her, “you’re quite good with a bow.”

  She already knew that, but she welcomed the compliment.

  Even if it came from him.

  Dim torches guided their descent into the castle’s deep foundation. As they went, Nels wondered when they would reach the bottom of the dark, grimy place — not that it bothered him very much. It was the tailor that concerned him. He may have the answers that Nels was searching for, certainly, but he wasn’t sure if Bosh could be trusted. Nels had to stay alert. Observing was all he could do. Ever since his death, Nels felt nothing, not even the air.

  What about that smell?

  The most curious thing about death was the constant aroma that followed him. No matter where he went, a stale, sugary smell accompanied him. He tried to ignore the scent by thinking of another — Tyra’s hair came to mind. As they walked, he remembered his first impression of her at the festival and how his heart and mind battled over her status and beauty, but he hadn’t accounted for her selfishness. His method of haunting her was cruel — he knew that — but maybe she deserved it; her parents took no initiative in putting her in her place. Then again, no one deserved the ruthlessness that he had put her through. Nels didn’t like his actions and wondered if he had gone too far.

  “I can’t believe it’s come to this,” Tyra said. “This place is so dismal.”

  “I prefer this over that knight of yours.” She didn’t respond, but that didn’t keep Nels from asking further. “Why do you like Arek so much? The guy can’t even wrestle.”

  “He wrestles just fine.”

  Nels laughed. “Do you know this from experience?”

  A touch of pink surfaced on her cheeks. Again, she would not answer him. Nels only meant to tease her, but the awkward silence made him question her all the more.

  “You’ve had other meetings besides the woods?”

  “What he and I do is of no concern to you.”

  “Is that why you wouldn’t kiss me?”

  “Stop bringing that up!”

  Disappointed, Nels let it go. “If that’s what you want.”

  “That is what I want,” she said through gritted teeth. “Stop your babbling.”

  Another minute passed before they reached the bottom of the castle. Its damp walls spread deep into shadowed corridors. Their eyes focused on an oak door in front of them. They stepped up to it and Tyra knocked, long and hard. No one answered. She tugged at the handle.

  The door was locked. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s hiding,” she muttered.

  “If you were coming after me, I know I would.”

  A loud clack echoed down the corridor, followed by the grating of an iron hinge. Tyra backed through Nels as the door opened. A figure stood in the frame, a soft light beside him.

  Bosh held up a lantern. “Why hello, Princess Tyra. I have been expecting you.”

  “Have you? I mean, yes … I’m sure you have … after what you did.”

  Bosh puckered his aged lips. “Did, Your Highness?”

  “Last night at the bridge. Do you remember that?”

  “Oh, that! Yes, I do. Did you find your knight?”

  “I didn’t find my knight. I found something else.”

  “You found the boy who was killed by a tree?”

  Nels and Tyra shared a glance. “How do you know —”

  Bosh stepped aside from the doorframe and waved his hand between them. “Tension,” he said slowly. “There is a great deal of tension between you two. That will complicate things.”

  “What do you mean?” Tyra asked. “You can see him, too?”

  “No, I cannot,” said Bosh, “but I can sense him.”

  “You can tell he’s with us, then? How?”

  “Come inside,” Bosh said, ignoring her question. “Be mindful of what you touch.”

  Nels went first. Lanterns hung from brass hooks in the ceiling, filling the tailor’s chamber with ample light. Tables filled the room, heaped with stacks of fabric. His mother had organized her materials like this, but Bosh’s collection was far more extensive. Shelves lined the walls, stocked with countless rolls of fabric and spools of thread in every color imaginable.

  In the center of the chamber was a loom, the largest Nels had ever seen. On an adjacent table was a small cage with an old squirrel inside it.

  “Please pardon my clutter. I was tending to my little friend here.” Bosh motioned to the caged creature. “It’s dying, you see. I happened upon it as I was coming back from the festival.” The old tailor turned to Nels. “Turns out I was wrong, young man. They are not at all vicious. Immensely tame, if treated right.” Bosh reached into a pocket and gave the small creature an acorn.

  Tyra glanced at Nels with her most incredulous glare yet.

  “Now,” Bosh said. “There is a place to sit in the back —”

  “Arek never waited for me,” Tyra snapped. “You lied to me!”

  “Finger pricks!” Bosh patted his robes, as if feeling for something. “I believe you misunderstood me, Princess. I said you would find your knight. I said nothing about Sir Arek.”

  “He can’t be talking about me,” Nels said. “How does he even know I’m here?”

  “Are you suggesting that this peasant is the knight you are speaking of?”

  The tailor chuckled. “Knights. Peasants. What does it matter, really?”

  “It matters the world to me!” Tyra cried. “This peasant is ruining my life!”

  “I highly doubt that,” Bosh said. “Nels is a knight among his neighbors, eager to help in any way he can. He won the match, and you refused the kiss that you had agreed to give.”

  The very mention of her refusal caused Nels to question what a kiss had to do with anything. He meant only to tau
nt Tyra over the kiss they never shared — to convince her to help him — but maybe they were onto something. The old man asked Nels to go to the festival. He’d suggested the match — and the kiss. Was this done by his design? “He wanted us to kiss!” Nels blurted out.

  “You wanted us to kiss each other?” Tyra suddenly cried at the tailor. “Why?”

  “I will tell you,” Bosh said, “although I am not exactly sure where to begin.”

  “Begin as all stories do,” Tyra said, “at the beginning.”

  “That would take too long. Perhaps it is best if I show you.”

  The tailor shuffled to a closet, opened it, and reached inside. He bumbled through a collection of metallic rods until he found a long wooden handle affixed to a sharp blade. He drew it out and held the handle in both hands. Nels’s eyes widened. All at once, he understood. With some kind of magic, the tailor had created the illusion that his chores were finished, to trick Nels into escorting him to the festival. And then, when the match ended, Bosh vanished. In like manner, the merchant had emerged from out of nowhere with only the single ax in good condition.

  If the tailor could create an illusion, could he change his own appearance?

  “That’s my ax!” Nels turned to Tyra. “Get out of here!”

  She turned to the peasant with a bewildered stare.

  “He’s the one who killed me. Run, Tyra!”

  Without wavering, Tyra backed away. Her hip rammed into the corner of the table where the squirrel’s cage sat, making it topple over. The tailor stood still, surprised, the ax in hand as Tyra gasped and bolted for the door — but she never reached it. As if yanked by an unseen cord, something pulled her back, and she slammed against the back wall. Her impact opened a secret passage and she tumbled into a dark room.

  Nels ran after her, light on his feet, but cursing that he could do nothing to help. The room was small and damp. The tailor stood in the doorframe with the ax in his hands, blocking Tyra’s escape. The princess cowered in the farthest corner, looked at Nels, and pointed to the middle of the room — her arm trembling. On a makeshift bed of white sheets, a gauze-wrapped body had been laid to rest.

  Beneath a thin layer of amber goop, Nels could see his own dead face.

  Nels didn’t move, nor could he speak.

  He stared at himself as Tyra caught her breath.

  What is my body doing here?

  Increasing his surprise, Nels saw a hint of color within his amber-coated cheeks, as if blood still flowed beneath his skin. Many of his bruises and scratches appeared healed, and his body’s brow glistened with fresh sweat. The sticky matter that smothered his pores puzzled him the most.

  “Wait a second.” Nels raised his hand to Tyra. “Maybe Bosh didn’t kill me.”

  She held a hand over her chest, looking from Nels to his body and back. Her lips squirmed with unease. “Then why did you tell me to run?”

  “Rusted rippers!” The old man lowered Nels’s ax and leaned it against the wall. “That was rather unwise of me. Forgive me, Your Highness. I did not mean to startle you.”

  “Explain yourself, tailor,” she said. “Why did you come after me with that?”

  “I only meant to show you this tool, which has been traced with Fabrication by the same man who tried to murder Nels.” Bosh stepped away from the ax and interlocked his fingers. “He placed a stitch on this ax so that he could use it to follow Nels home and lie in wait for him.”

  “What is he talking about?” Nels asked. “What’s a stitch?” He had an idea of what the old man meant, and he’d obviously known something was unnatural about his death. The voice he heard, the way his murderer had made him freeze, and the tree’s trunk exploding: Magic was the only explanation. Everything Bosh said related to weaving and sewing in one form or another, but not always in a normal weaving and sewing way. “Is Fabrication some kind of magic?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” Tyra said, her eyes still wide with fear. Her body shook. “Is that how you pulled me into this room?” she asked Bosh. “With some kind of magic?”

  “Such an observant girl you are,” he answered. “I wanted to keep you from leaving, so I do apologize. The hook I applied to your thread was stronger than I intended.”

  “My what?” Tyra turned to Nels. “My thread? What does he mean by that?” She twisted her torso around, searching her dress for loose fibers.

  Nels looked at Tyra’s slender back and shrugged. He saw the laces of her bodice, but no sign of a hook or a tethered cord. “I don’t know,” he said, “but I want to know how my body got here. The villagers buried me.”

  “Did you steal his body?” Tyra asked Bosh. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  The tailor folded his arms and stood firm in the doorway. “I never really stole his body, Princess. I replaced it. Not with another human body, of course, but with something I altered so it would look like his body. If I had not, Nels would be under the earth now, buried alive.”

  “Alive?” Tyra stared at Nels again. “You mean he’s —”

  “Slightly,” Bosh added. “I implemented some alterations that will delay his decay. This beeswax, for example, is preserving his body.”

  “Beeswax?” Nels thought of the strange odor. “Is that what I smell?”

  Tyra shuddered as she rubbed her arms. It was hard to imagine what she was thinking, but Nels was not about to interrupt. She had more to say. “Are you saying he’s not dead?”

  “Touch his face,” Bosh invited. “Feel the truth.”

  “Touch his face?” Tyra recoiled at first, but then she stepped toward the body, reached out a finger, and hesitantly poked his cheek. She pulled away with a start. “Your skin is warm!”

  Nels wished he could feel it to believe it. “How come I’m not in my body, then?”

  The body’s chest rose suddenly, causing them both to jump back. Nels heard an unearthly groan, an undead sigh exhaling from his nose. The body relaxed and lay motionless again.

  “Speak plainly, tailor,” Tyra demanded. “If he’s not dead, why is his ghost roaming about?”

  A smile creased Bosh’s cheeks. “Because Nels is unwoven, Your Highness.”

  “Unwoven?” Nels didn’t know what to make of this. Tyra seemed just as confused.

  “Everyone is a thread,” Bosh said, “woven into the Great Tapestry.”

  “Woven?” Nels asked. “What’s a Great Tapestry?”

  Tyra shushed him. “Go on, tailor.”

  “The Great Tapestry is the record of our world, the actions of our reality pressed by the very reeds of time.” Bosh paused for a second. “Do you know my trade, Your Highness?”

  She knitted her brow. “You make my dresses.”

  “Yes, like the one you wear now. But is that all I do?”

  “Don’t answer me with questions, tailor.”

  Bosh breathed deeply. “Making dresses and lining the halls with tapestries is my second trade. My first is a rare form of magic called Fabrication. I am a tailor. I maintain the Great Tapestry.”

  Nels and Tyra stared at each other, equally confounded. Magic based on the fundamentals of sewing and weaving? Nels never would have imagined such a thing.

  At the same time, it made a great deal of sense.

  “Would you understand if I called myself a sorcerer?”

  Tyra scoffed as she folded her arms. “And everyone’s calling me mad.” She looked at each of them in turn. “First a ghost, and now a sorcerer. How do I find you people?”

  “We often find what we seek when we do not search for it,” Bosh said.

  With a short laugh, Tyra walked to the body and knelt beside it. She laid her hand on its arm and tenderly clenched its bicep. To Nels’s surprise, he could almost feel her touch. “Suppose I believe in your magic,” she said seriously. “How is it keeping him alive?”

  “Patience,” Bosh said. “Fabrication is a tenacious art that requires meticulous attention.” The man lowered his hands into his inner pockets and removed a
tiny spool of thread from one and then a pair of scissors from the other. “As I have said, everyone is a thread, invaluable to the Great Tapestry’s design, regardless of how insignificant they may seem. Their choices weave it, and time presses it.” Bosh pulled thread from the spool and cut it with his scissors. “When a life ends, that individual’s thread is severed, and they have left behind a pattern that has been permanently woven into the Great Tapestry throughout their life.” His gray eyes rose, staring at Tyra. “Although his thread is unwoven, something keeps Nels bound to us.”

  “Then” — Tyra glanced at Nels — “you say he is not severed completely?”

  “Without me, he would be. For now, he is like a loose thread dangling from the tapestry.”

  The princess nodded. “And what if he remains loose?”

  “An astute question, Your Highness.” As Bosh spoke, Nels couldn’t help but wonder why Tyra had touched his arm. Did she actually care? “If a thread remains loose, it will cause a snag in the Great Tapestry, which can warp the very fabric of reality itself.” A weighty silence followed his words. Aside from the breathing body, the room was quiet. “If Nels’s thread is not woven back into our reality, his thread must be severed, and his pattern in the Tapestry will end.”

  Nels stood speechless. The inevitable had only been delayed; but why would Bosh go to all this trouble to keep him alive?

  “Are you saying he can come back?” Tyra asked, gesturing at Nels.

  Bosh rubbed his beard, a look of concentration etched on his face. “There are two options that may work,” Bosh said. “One way is simple, and the other is not … and it’s possibly even deadly. Either of these choices will require your involvement, Your Highness.”

  Tyra rose to her feet and left Nels’s body. “What is the simple way?”

  Impressed by her willingness, Nels smiled at the princess, his dampened spirit relieved by her sudden change of heart.

  The tailor pointed at the body on the bed. “You must kiss him, Your Highness.”

  “What?” Tyra’s cry rebounded off the walls. “He’s practically a corpse!”

  “I know you think little of him,” Bosh said, “but a kiss has a strong way of drawing forth another’s thread. Your living lips should tug his soul together enough that I can weave him. I would have brought you together sooner, if I had known my other methods would not work.”