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Eventually it is my turn to sit in front of an inkmaster. He wipes his tattoo needle and dips it in an ink jar. I pull my sleeve up to bare my arm above the dark lines.
The song of the seashell horn pauses. A wave passes through the crowd, another. It is finally time for what everyone has gathered to wait for. On the upper balcony of the Tower the wide doors open, and the Council steps out through them. Their coral masks glint in the sun like freshly shed blood against stone-coloured cloaks. The noise growing from the crowd resembles the whistling of the wind.
The inkmaster brings the needle onto my skin and begins to tap its handle with a stone in order to pierce the skin, drawing another mark right next to the crook of my arm. I look away and clench my hand into a fist. My eyes water from the pain. Weaving will hurt for a week at least, and the itch left by the needle where the ink has entered under the skin never quite goes away.
The ringing of the bell is crisp and sharp as the edges of the afternoon shadows.
I turn to look at the dais again. A man wearing a loose coat bearing the sun emblem leaves the foot of the Tower, approaches the dais with unrushed footsteps and climbs onto it. He holds an opaque glass bowl in which eight wooden sticks have been arranged. The man stops before the first Dreamer.
I have wondered many times which stick I would wish to draw from the bowl if I were to stand on the dais one day. I change my mind every year.
The Dreamer woman draws from the bowl a wooden stick approximately the length of her palm. I do not discern her expression clearly from this far away, but I notice she turns her head in order to see how the Dreamer next to her will choose. When the man carrying the bowl moves to stand before the third Dreamer, I see the first two holding wooden sticks of similar length in their hands. I cannot tell if their faces are disappointed or relieved.
I shiver. The inkmaster wipes the droplets of blood from my skin with a cloth that does not look very clean. I pull my sleeve back down to cover the twenty-four lines on my arm. I am officially one year older. My skin smarts when the fabric touches it. I get up and move into the crowd through the checkpoint gate.
The bowl-bearing man has proceeded to the second-to-last Dreamer. The other six are holding sticks of similar length in their hands. The breathing of the audience has quieted, and no one speaks. Somewhere, a child bursts into tears.
The Dreamer pushes his only hand into the bowl and slowly draws out one of the two wooden sticks. It is twice as long as the others. A howl-like scream rises from the audience and people begin to clap and stomp, when the man lifts the stick high in the air for everyone to see. Something resembling a smile visits his face, wide and stiff as if it were painted on. For form’s sake the last Dreamer draws the remaining short stick.
The bowl-bearing man turns to the audience.
‘In their great fairness the Council have pardoned this Dreamer,’ he says. ‘He is free to walk the world and leave the island at dawn. In the name of the Council!’
‘In the name of the Council!’ the crowd yells in return. The words leave my lips too before I even know I have formed them.
‘And now we shall together swear an oath of loyalty to the Council, who in their wisdom pilot the island through all storms,’ the bowl-bearer says.
The words of the oath begin to flow from me with the choir of voices. They who raised the Tower with their own hands and watch the city from atop of it, to them I am faithful.
The Dreamer who drew the long stick is walked down from the dais and led away from sight behind the museum. The guards guide the seven other Dreamers into a cage on wheels, which they begin to transport towards the large black gondola of the House of the Tainted. The oath pours past me like water.
They who feed us and clothe us and make us strong, to them I am faithful.
The wheels of the cage clatter on the stones of the square.
They who drove sickness away from the island and purged our sleep forever, to them I am faithful.
One of the Dreamers in the cage throws herself against the bars, the old woman with an eyepatch.
‘Lies!’ she shouts. ‘It’s all lies!’
If the stones of the streets crumbled from under me and the canals escaped their confines, I would place my life in their hands and be faithful to them.
Two guards wrench the door of the cage open and tear the woman out.
‘Lies!’ she yells again. ‘Ask yourselves why—’
One of the guards hits the woman so hard she goes quiet and begins to weep with pain. The guard ties a scarf to cover the woman’s mouth. I see a red stain spreading on the scarf.
If the sea climbed over my doorstep, I would let their ships carry me to safety and I would be faithful to them.
The City Guards drag the woman into the crowd and I do not see her again. Somewhere another gondola is waiting, a narrower and more enclosed one, and aboard it is a cage covered with black fabric. I think of the woman inside it. I think of the longer stick that she might have drawn from the bowl, and of the man who did draw it: of the ship he will be taken to in the faint light of dawn that will carry him somewhere with a strange language and jobs different from those he is used to. I think of the man looking back towards the island from aboard the ship for the last time, knowing he can never return.
Above everything the Council stands quiet, does not raise a hand, does not move.
The oath comes to an end and my lips are still moving, but my voice has faded away.
CHAPTER THREE
I am seated on a hard, wooden chair in Weaver’s study. It is the one she offers when she wants to scold someone in private. She has another one for visitors, a high-backed, cushioned chair she has upholstered again every few years; but that one is pushed into the far corner, and she is sitting on it herself.
Two City Guards are facing me across the long table. This room is usually brighter than any other in the house, the Halls of Weaving included. But today the lattice of the large window in the corner only filters dark grey and dim white. The fog rests thick and still in the furrows of the city below, and the glow-glass pipes emit but little light despite the fast flow of the water. The lack of light makes the guards’ faces look hollow, as if they could be removed to reveal something else underneath. Or perhaps nothing at all.
‘And you do not know this girl?’ one of the guards asks for the third time.
The chill of the room wraps itself around me and strangles. The Council watches us from a large painting on the wall. I anchor my gaze on the tapestries hanging behind the guards, use them to build a wall between myself and the questions. In them, Our Lady of Weaving holds every thread in her multitude of hands, and waves and clouds and stars behind the clouds obey her will.
‘No, I don’t,’ I answer. Again.
The guards look at each other. One of them introduced himself as Captain Biros, the other as Captain Lazaro. I am not entirely sure which one is which. They are about the same height, and they both have deep-set eyes and thick eyebrows, although one of them is more robust than the other.
Captain Biros, or perhaps Lazaro, nods. Captain Lazaro, or perhaps Biros, writes something in his notebook.
‘And you were on night-watch the night she came to the house?’
‘Yes, I was,’ I say. Again.
‘Are you certain you did not steal away to the city between your rounds without anyone noticing?’
This question is new.
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘Besides, it would have been impossible. The air gondola would have been too noisy. By foot, it would have taken too long. And someone in the house would have raised alarm when they noticed movement in the web-maze in the middle of the night.’
‘Yes, we have heard about the extraordinary system,’ says Biros. Or maybe it is Lazaro. ‘Of course, it would help our investigation if we knew how it works …’
‘That is secret information.’ The voice from the shadows belongs to Weaver. The words are quiet, yet they cut the air clear.
‘Of course.’ Biros closes his mouth. Lazaro scribbles in his notebook. Or perhaps it is the other way round.
Lazaro, if it is not Biros, lifts his eyes from the page he is filling. The sound of the pen is cut short.
‘Did anyone raise alarm when the girl moved through the maze towards the house?’ he asks.
‘Eventually, yes,’ Weaver says. ‘But she made it all the way to the house before she was found. It was as if she knew the way. Yet she is not one of our weavers, Captain Lazaro.’
The guards glance at each other again. They probably arrived by air gondola. Visitors usually do. If they had walked through the maze, they would have needed a guide, and they know it.
‘Biros,’ Biros says. ‘Interesting.’
‘Fascinating,’ Lazaro says. He turns to look at me. ‘And you say you don’t know this girl, and you have never seen her before, and you don’t know why your name is tattooed on her?’
A draught passes through the room, waves knotted from threads move under the eyes of Our Lady of Weaving.
‘I don’t, and I haven’t.’
‘In invisible ink,’ Biros says.
I think of the letters glowing on the girl’s skin and of the scar-handed man in the Museum of Pure Sleep, of the tattoo that appeared and vanished.
‘It means nothing to me,’ I say. ‘I didn’t even know invisible tattoos existed.’
Biros and Lazaro wait. When I do not continue, Biros whispers something to Lazaro. Lazaro whispers something back. They speak in a low voice which blends their words into a soft hiss. I only discern one among them: Dreamer.
A cold current passes through me. Above them, Our Lady of Weaving reaches in all directions and not one strand comes loose from her grip.
Biros and Lazaro nod at each other and turn to me.
‘Fascinating,’ Biros says.
‘Interesting,’ Lazaro says. He closes his notebook and slips it into his pocket together with the pen.
‘We will look into it,’ Biros says.
‘And we will let you know,’ Lazaro says.
They get up. I get up too. They both take a quick bow at me. I bow my head slightly in return. Then they bow at Weaver, and in a few fast strides they are gone, the echoes of their footsteps vanished into the fabrics covering the walls. Twelve of Our Ladies of Weaving look from the tapestries far beyond this room and hour, and speechlessly their limbs spin new meshes for the Web of Worlds.
I turn to go, but Weaver’s voice stops me.
‘I wish to have a word with you as well,’ she says. She closes the door. We stand in the shadows and watch each other across the distance of the room.
‘If there is something you are not telling me, now would be a good moment to mend the situation,’ she says. ‘That way I might be able to help you.’
‘There isn’t.’
She regards me.
‘You know I’m not unfair,’ she remarks. ‘I have trusted you with more than I have many others. It would make me sad to know that trust is not returned.’
It is true. She often lets me send water messages, showing me the symbol to insert in the watergraph without telling me what it means. She does not know that I have learned most symbols over the years. The skill is not much use, however, because she only ever asks me to send unimportant routine messages, such as vegetable or seafood orders to the market, or notes to let the merchants know how many antique silkweed tapestries the House of Webs will be auctioning off this year.
Weaver has also let me keep my cell to myself for a long time without questioning it. Most younger weavers have to share their cells with someone else, and the only reason I am on my own is because my cellmate left the house without warning a year ago. I suspect she was pregnant.
‘I would tell you if there was anything,’ I say.
Weaver smiles almost unnoticeably.
‘Of course you would,’ she says. ‘Before you go back to work, could you take a message to Alva for me? Tell her I will send for a gondola to take our patient to the Hospital Quarters tomorrow. I know the sick bay is running out of space.’
I bow my head slightly. As I walk to the door, I half-expect Weaver to stop me again, but she does not. When I glance back, she is standing by the watergraph, waiting for me to go, so I do.
I find Alva placing a sample under the microscope. It is an expensive device. She has told me there are only three of them on the island. She glances up when I walk in. Two bright lanterns are burning on the table. The curtains between the sick room and the front room are closed. I hear coughing from the other side. I imagine the girl in her bed, her long limbs, the dampened pain on her face. The tattoo that is like an invitation written on her, one I cannot understand.
‘The ointment is between the scale and the opened bag of camomile,’ Alva says and turns a small, round mirror in her hand. ‘It’s been waiting for you for days.’
I pick up the glass jar from the table and push it into the pocket of my jacket.
‘How did you know I needed it?’
‘You come to ask for it every year after the Ink-marking,’ Alva replies. ‘Do these seem the same to you?’ She points at two grey strips on top of the mirror. A scent of mud and seaweed rises from them. I look at them more closely and notice that they appear to be slices of medusa flesh.
‘Exactly the same,’ I say. ‘Why?’
Alva places the mirror under the microscope lens and pulls one of the lanterns closer. She looks into the microscope and adjusts it by the wheel on the side.
‘What about now?’ she asks.
I walk around the table next to her and peer into the microscope. The view makes me think of trunks of strange trees, a pile of maggots or budding branches of unfamiliar sea plants.
‘You’re looking at the part of medusa skin that helps them feel and sense light. It also contains their medicinal properties, the cells that produce a pain-relieving chemical,’ Alva says. ‘There are samples from two medusas under the lens, not just one.’
The difference is clear. The tree-trunk and budding-branch patterns on the left look translucent, but on the right dark streaks show on them, as if they have been dipped in ink that is slowly dripping off.
‘What is that?’ I ask.
‘I asked someone to bring me a dead medusa from the shore, the freshest they could find,’ Alva says. ‘That’s the one on the right. The other one is from my tank.’
‘I thought they all died of polyp fever.’
It has been a week since the flood. A few days after the first wave of dead medusas washed to the shores, the Council sent a water message around the city. The word spread quickly: polyp fever, a rare disease that was not harmful to humans but could become an epidemic. Unfortunate, because it would take years for the medusa population to recover. Ships had already been sent to collect healthy singing medusas from the open sea to be planted in the waters close to the island.
‘That’s what I thought,’ Alva says. ‘But then I began to wonder. Polyp fever doesn’t usually strike during the cool season. According to lore, there have only been three epidemics on the island before, and they all took place in late summer.’
I remember the mute and still blooms of jellyfish that people are still collecting from the streets and shores, their stench that floats around the midden ships. I think of the humming of the medusas in denser-growing evenings, the silence spread across the shores, and the air feels heavier to breathe.
‘What is it, then?’
‘I don’t know, but it is not polyp fever. Could be a different kind of disease.’ She reaches for the side table and picks up two glass jars with water and a dead medusa in each. The animals are missing a slice of their bells. ‘There’s something else, too,’ she says.
Alva walks across the room to the tank and pushes one of the jars against the glass wall. Inside the tank, a bloom of medusas begins to gather near the dead one, and a faint humming grows in the water. The medusas settle into the shape of a circle and the slow gauzes of their swimming-bells ripple behind the glass. Alva waits, pulls the first jar away and presses the other one against the tank. The singing medusas keep their formation for a moment, some of them even swimming closer in curiosity. Then the humming is cut short, and all goes quiet. A few seconds later the whole bloom bursts like a large soap bubble. The medusas scurry in all directions, far away to the other side of the tank.
‘Have you ever seen them do that?’ Alva asks.
‘No.’
‘Neither have I.’ Alva turns and walks back to the table. Only after some time do the medusas return to their languid paths in the water-space.
‘What are you going to do?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know yet,’ Alva says. ‘I need to look into this further.’
I will soon be missed in the Halls of Weaving. You can stretch a temporary absence from work for a while, but you have to do it carefully.
‘Weaver asked me to tell you that she wants to move the patient to the Hospital Quarters tomorrow,’ I say. ‘The … visitor.’ My hand has moved to gesture at my mouth before I realize, and Alva needs no further specification. She nods.
‘Good. I’ve already had to put spare mattresses to use. A severe cough is spreading in the house, and it seems to come with a dreadful rash.’
‘Is it contagious?’
‘Presumably,’ she says. ‘Do you want to come and say goodbye?’
I glance in the direction of the Halls of Weaving.
‘I will take full responsibility if Weaver comes after you,’ Alva says. ‘Medical emergency.’
‘Offer accepted,’ I say, more out of temptation to stay away from weaving a little longer than anything else. Or so I tell myself.
Alva leaves the glass jars with dead medusas on the table and we head into the other room.
There is more light today, and sound, the kind created when you put many people in a small space and tell them to rest but they are in too much discomfort to do so. Two spare mattresses have been wedged in the narrow gaps between the beds. There are three younger weavers and four older than myself in the sick bay. Two seem asleep, but the rest are tossing and turning restlessly. Their breathing is distorted and ragged, heavy with cough. Their skin is covered in a rash that looks like they have been dipped in red or purple ink. I smell the heavy scent of burning herbs, and under it sweat and sickness.
The girl is awake. She is sitting at the back of the room, propped up with pillows, and is putting together a puzzle. Alva must have given it to her. She turns to look at us. Alva puts a jar under the girl’s chin and she opens her mouth. A dead singing medusa drops into the jar.
‘I’m afraid I cannot give you another one,’ Alva says. ‘I don’t know when I will be able to get more, and I need to keep a few in reserve.’
The girl nods.
‘But I have good news,’ Alva continues. ‘We can finally arrange your transfer. It wasn’t possible earlier, because there was an accident in the north.’ I remember the flood night: the empty sky, the missing cable. ‘An important air route crashed the night you came. Cleaning up has caused so much work that the route has only just started operating again.’
The girl looks like something is troubling her, but nods again slowly. Her face begins to darken in a way I do not understand.
‘A gondola is coming to take you to the Hospital Quarters tomorrow,’ Alva continues. ‘They have more singing medusas. And if not, they’ll have something else to ease the pain.’
The girl’s face continues to darken. She takes a deep breath and stares at Alva.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
She grasps my wrist. I start, but do not pull my hand away. Her fingers are warm and narrow, and their grip seems to reach deeper than the skin. I glance at Alva.
‘Everything is fine,’ I say to the girl. ‘There will be more space in the Hospital Quarters. They will be able to take better care of you there and find your family.’
The girl holds my gaze with hers: grey as rain, or floodwaters in the light of dawn. A slow shiver travels through me, as if she is pulling an invisible string somewhere inside. The corners of her mouth tremble once, she draws breath again, and then lets go of me, turning her face towards the floor. She is very still, as if holding a deep tremor within.
‘I just came to say goodbye,’ I say.
The girl raises her gaze. She nods slowly.
‘I hope you feel better soon.’
They are worn and hollow words, but I cannot find any others.
Before I turn to go, something moves in her eyes. A knot tightens inside me, but I choose to treat it as just another shadow. One more will make little difference.
I step into the hall where the others have already settled to work. I kneel in front of the statue of Our Lady of Weaving and the image of the Council. I touch my forehead to the floor. I get up, walk to my seat and pick up the shuttle. My fingers know the paths and cannot err, for they never change. Wall-webs must be strong enough to survive even heavy rainfalls and storm winds carrying across the sea. Yet they must also be easy enough to unravel, so the yarn can be used again. The hours slip through my fingers uneven, in slow knots.
This evening, after I have placed down my shuttle, taken my supper and returned to my chamber, sleep is deceptively easy to come. It puts me behind a door in a place that is the web-maze, and yet is not: the walls are gauze and yarn, but the door is a robust wooden door. It is ajar, and behind it opens a deep and dense darkness. On the other side there is a rustling sound, like someone breathing. I turn around. The web walls close to form a dead end before me. As I approach them I think I hear words swishing, and behind the walls I sense many solitudes interlaced with one another. But I know it is a dream, and my dream is mine to command. I will my body to be lighter than air. Wind blows through the crack in the door and over my skin, picks me up from the maze with lithe fingers and floats me towards the skies. The starry night sky pulls me up until I am wind and light, rips apart to reveal a universe where nothing withholds me.
Then I am back in my bed, the mattress hard under my back, breath struggling in my throat. My body is tired, as if I have spent all my strength on hard work. The walls of my cell are close.
I am not certain what has woken me.
There is no light yet around the edges of the curtains. The glow-glass draws a faint blue ring around itself. The house is frozen around the mutest heart of the night. If there are weavers walking and guarding the corridors, they are far away from my cell.
I realize I have forgotten my night-watch.
The glow-glass almost shatters to the floor when I reach out to shake it brighter. I catch it just before it slides over the edge of the table. I throw my blanket aside and pull a cloak from the foot of the bed to cover my nightgown. The sand sits still in the hourglass next to the door. I forgot to turn it before I went to bed. I push my feet into leather-soled shoes.
The door closes behind me more loudly than I intend.
Half-running, I pass a long row of quiet cell doors. When I turn the corner at the end of the corridor, I hear the sound.
It is a hardly discernible rift in the wall of silence, thinner than a line drawn with a needlepoint. A narrow moan is rising and falling along the ceiling vaults, in the chambers of stone that throw it back from their walls. I recognize it. My steps turn faster.
Past the washrooms I reach the first dormitory doorway. The sound fades. I peek in. All is quiet. A drowsy third-year weaver lifts her head and lets it fall back on the pillow. I do not see anything unusual in the next dormitory, either. But when I close the door, the sound begins again. This time I know where it is coming from.