Spindlefish and Stars

by Christiane M. Andrews

  She held the paddles up. “Carding combs?”

  The woman clicked her tongue and took Clo’s hands in her own. “Ruoy krow.” Guiding the paddle in Clo’s hand into the basket, she scooped and raised a clump of fish. The silver bodies rested lightly on the spikes.

  “Oh—” Clo, motherless Clo, who had learned from her father to skin and debone and gut all manner of small game he captured on their journeys, who had herself never flinched when readying any part of an animal for eating—not tongue nor brain nor bowel—who was not delicate or squeamish or under any illusions about the innards of creatures, still found the thought of raking the fish through the combs entirely too much.

  “Oh,” she said again, and shut her eyes as the woman guided the paddles together. She felt the combs pull through the fish. A thick and squelchy tearing. The combs swiped again, again, the sound wet, squishy. Again.

  “Ruoy krow,” the woman repeated, still manipulating Clo’s hands, the steady combing growing lighter, softer, drier. Then a pause, a swiping back. The woman took the paddles from Clo’s hands.

  Eyes still closed, Clo felt the woman place something soft in her hands. “Llor,” she said, pinching Clo’s fingers around the soft thing.

  Clo opened her eyes. In her hands was a puff of wool—or something wool-like—airy, silvery, fine. Except for the color, the same gleam of fish scales, there was nothing fishlike about it.

  “Llor.” Guiding Clo’s hands, the woman showed her how to roll the fish-wool, and when it was curled into a cylinder, she placed it on the table. Lying there, an oval tube of wool, it looked again like fish, at least the shape of fish, eyeless, finless, gill-less.

  The woman nodded approvingly at the cylinder. “Ereht.”

  Though not damp, there was still an oiliness about the fish-wool. A stickiness. A smell. Not the lanolin smell of wool from sheep—the smell of earth and animal and light and green—nor even the humid smell of fish—the smell of pond and mud or salt and sea. This was a prickling smell, like darkness. Like sour milk. It felt cold and burning on her skin. Clo rubbed her palms back and forth across her tunic, trying to clean away the film.

  The woman pointed at Clo, then at the basket. “Lla fo ti.” She pointed again more emphatically, and Clo understood her to mean she was to comb all these fish, the entire basket of fish, turn them all into airy cylinders of fish-wool.

  “I don’t want any fish,” Clo said quietly, shaking her head. Is this what Cary had meant when he had said all the fish were for her? She stood, still trying to rub her hands clean. “I don’t want to do this.”

  Putting her hands on Clo’s shoulders, the woman pushed Clo back into her seat. “Ruoy krow, rethguaddnarg.” She pointed at the paddles, and then, reaching into her apron pocket, removed a long iron key. Lifting it for Clo to see, she crossed to the front door, locked it with a heavy thunk, and dropped the key deep into her apron pocket.

  Clo stared in horror.

  “Ruoy krow, rethguaddnarg.” The words had become a refrain. The woman patted her pocket, pointed to the carding combs. “Krow.”

  Clo picked up the paddles. The woman smiled. It was not a smile at Clo. It was not a smile for Clo. The woman smiled to herself, the smile of long hours of work being suddenly lifted away. She chewed emptily.

  “Sey, sey, rethguaddnarg.” She watched Clo scoop up a clump of fish, a little smile of relief still floating in the folds of her cheeks. “Sey, sey.”

  CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH

  WHEREIN OUR HERO LEARNS HER KROW

  SO CLO’S DAYS—IF THEY WERE DAYS—OF CHEESE-NIBBLING and cliff-walking and sea-watching came now to be formed by fish-carding. Each time she thought she might be through, a new basket of fish appeared. Either the parchment-skin man would arrive for his soup carrying another load of fish, or the little woman would pull another basket from some hidden corner of the house: there was never an end to the fish. From time to time, Clo would nibble some cheese, or drink some water, or stare out her window and wish for the sight of a boat. From time to time, she would sleep on what she—with a wave of revulsion—came to realize was a mattress stuffed with fish-wool. But always the woman would rouse her to return to the baskets. Once, she saw Cary, his bluish face pressed against the front window, knocking lightly at the glass and trying to catch her attention. But Clo turned away, pretending not to see. It was he who had said all the fish were for her. He who said she could not go on the boat. She felt he was to blame. At least, somewhat to blame. Partly to blame. He should have warned me, she thought. He should have told me that I would be locked away with the never-ending fish. When she thought of him, she scraped the paddles more fervently so that the fish ripped apart with ever greater squishing.

  And so Clo combed and scraped and rolled, combed and scraped and rolled. Paddleful by paddleful, she lifted clumps of silver, black-eyed fish from the baskets; paddleful by paddleful, she combed the silver fish through the spikes, a grisly fleshy tearing that never ceased to turn her stomach; paddleful by paddleful, she saw the grisly, tattered flesh and spindly bones grow suddenly airy, light, woolly. She covered the table with clouds of silvery fish cylinders, while the fish oil seeped into her skin and coated her in a sour haze. She stared longingly at the locked door, which opened now only for the old man and his baskets of fish.

  But as the hourless hours and dayless days passed and the fish-cylinder piles—stacked against the walls—grew higher and higher, the old woman looked more and more satisfied. And when Clo had at last lined all four walls of the front room floor to ceiling with rolled fish, the woman clapped her hands with childish delight. “Doog!” she cried before disappearing behind her own bedroom door.

  She reappeared a moment later dragging a monstrous wheel behind her. Its feet squeaked across the stone as she pulled it toward Clo.

  A spinning wheel.

  Clo had seen such contraptions, of course, running under the hands of village women, but she had never used one herself.

  The old woman, spreading her palms grandly before the machine, looked at Clo expectantly.

  Clo stared back.

  Sighing, the woman gestured to the fish-clouds. She lifted one of the cylinders and waved it over the wheel.

  “Oh…” Clo understood. She was now meant to spin the carded fish into yarn. “No, I don’t—”

  “Sey, rethguaddnarg—”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Won eht gninnips—”

  “I don’t know how!”

  The old woman clucked her tongue. “Uoy od.” Placing a fish-cylinder in Clo’s hand, she tugged lightly on one end. It lengthened into a fluffy fishtail. She tucked the tail against a piece of string and, stepping on the treadle at the base, set the wheel spinning. The wool began to pull from Clo’s hand, flying into yarn. The woman rocked her foot up and down, up and down, then gave Clo’s ankle a small kick to join hers. When the motion fell under Clo’s foot, the woman stepped away from the machine.

  After the first few moments of stutter and stop and awkward pulling and bunching, Clo found a rhythm. Her foot tapped up and down, up and down: the wheel hummed, the spool spun around the spindle, the fish-wool flew into yarn, the yarn wound itself into ordered loops on the spool.

  Clo marveled at the ease with which the wool slid through her fingers, felt it could have been sliding through her hands in this way for thousands of years. Had she really never touched a spinning wheel before? She watched it extend and slip, extend and slip, twist and wind, lengthening and transforming itself. It felt as though time itself were pulling through her fingers as the fish-cylinder coiled into yarn.

  When at last all the wool in Clo’s hands had been wound onto the machine, the woman reached over her shoulder. Removing the bobbin from the wheel, she unraveled an arm’s length of the gray yarn to inspect—here, thick and ropy, there, thin and threadlike. She fingered the variations, tutting disapprovingly at them, but nodded anyway at Clo.

  Her hand swept over the tower of fish-wool. “Eht tser.�
� Dropping another carded roll into Clo’s lap, she turned away.

  Clo gazed with dismay at the piles. “Not all, surely.”

  “Lla,” she said, opening the door to her own room. “Lla eht tser,” she said, closing it behind her.

  And so Clo continued to spin. And her days (such as they were—or were not—in the time between sleep and sleep) slipped through her fingers in the form of fish-wool. From time to time, the little woman would step from her room to fetch a newly spun bobbin, and she would cluck at the thickness of the yarn here, or the thinness of the yarn there, then shut herself away again. Sometimes, when all seemed still, when even the cat lay piggishly grunting by the coals, Clo would tiptoe to the front door to try the latch in vain. But no sooner would the latch rattle than the woman would bustle out in spluttering anger and push her back to her seat. “Eht tser, eht tser!”

  Once she thought she heard a hesitant Cary-like knocking, and she sprang up, thinking she would see his moony face again in the glass—but no: the knocking was only the boarish cat batting a gem lethargically over the floor. Scowling, she sat again at her wheel. “Mutton-headed creature,” she whispered, though she was not entirely sure whether she was berating herself or the cat. She should not have turned away before. She should have not pretended she had not seen him. Now he would not come again.

  The yarn was all the same. All gray, colorless. Only sometimes, if Clo tilted her head just so and if the light from the coals fell upon it just right, could she see a bit of silver shimmer in the thread—the liveliness of a fish underwater. But mostly it was gray, the same flat gray as the sky and sea that surrounded the island. Only the thickness or thinness that Clo spun provided any variation.

  Every spool Clo spun disappeared into the woman’s apron pocket. Occasionally Clo wondered what the woman could possibly do with so much colorless thread in her chamber—a hushed shuffling, a constant soft tap, tap, tapping the only noise behind the door. But mostly, as the wool ran through her fingers, Clo wondered only how she might leave this room, this house, this island.

  The fish-wool towers shrank slowly.

  One day—or not-day—the woman emerged from her room and did not take Clo’s newly spun bobbin. She watched Clo for a moment, nodded—“ Doog, retteb”—and gestured at the remaining towers.

  “Eht tser,” she said, removing the key from her pocket. She unlocked the front door.

  Clo’s heart leapt.

  “Lla fo ti.” The woman pointed again at the towers, then to Clo. She stepped into the street.

  Something about this motion unnerved Clo. She saw the woman framed in the light of the doorway, a small, shriveled figure, arranging a shawl over her head, settling a basket over one arm. The cat, lounging as close to the coals as the heat allowed, caught sight of its mistress leaving and streaked toward her skirts.

  “On, on, feihcsim.” Pushing the cat away with her toe, she shut the door quickly behind her. The lock turned with a dreadful click. Through the window, Clo saw the woman tie her shawl beneath her chin, and this gesture—the tightness of the knot, the firmness of the jaw—seemed full of satisfaction.

  The cat yowled.

  No, thought Clo. She’s never… she’s never left before.

  The cat clawed the door, a pitiful guttural sound arising from its throat.

  For a few moments, Clo sat in stunned silence, staring vaguely at the space the woman had left. Then, throwing her fish-wool aside, she raced to the door and pulled desperately at the handle. The latch rattled beneath her hands: the door was firmly bolted.

  She looked at the front window. She could break it, break the panes and kick out the frames holding them. But when she looked through the glass, she could see that the street was filling with the hunched townspeople, pushing their barrels and carrying their baskets. She would be noticed.

  Clo paced, crossing back and forth between her bedroom and the front room. By the door, the cat had worked itself into a snorting fit, and the wood was scored with its claw marks. Clo paused, watching it panic, recognizing her own desperation in its frenzy.

  There was another door.

  She looked over her shoulder. The woman’s room.

  Crossing to it, she put her hand on the latch and pushed: the door rocked against its lock. The noise startled the cat out of its yowling, and it turned, bristling and hissing at Clo’s attempt to open its mistress’s door.

  “Shh,” she hissed back. “Stay away, piggy thing.” She pushed again on the door, feeling the space around the lock. The movement felt loose, loose enough that it might give way.

  Clo, lithe, boyish Clo, Clo of the cheese-nibbling and water-sipping, threw her insubstantial weight against it. The door rattled; the cat, hissing and snarling, crouched, ready to spring at her.

  Clo swung her foot emptily toward the cat. “Get. Shoo.” Rubbing her shoulder, she tried the door again. Looser.

  She took a step back. “I’m going in,” she told the cat, which was wriggling with its own anticipated attack. She eyed the door, then launched herself at it—leaping against its wood. She heard the crack, felt the pain in her shoulder as she fell backward from the impact, but standing, feeling her arm sore but functioning, she realized it was the door and not her bone that had given way.

  She gave a small push. It swung open.

  The cat, yowling, tore past her into the dark chamber.

  Clo stepped inside.

  At first, in the half-light, Clo saw nothing that would distinguish this room from her own. A low bed, a small table, a jug, a bowl, a shuttered window letting in thin lines of gray light. But as she crossed the room to open the shutters, she felt a movement on her left side. A stirring. A soft swinging. Something moved when she moved, something responded to the changes she effected in the air.

  She reached. Something soft moved under her hand. Gasping, she jumped forward, grabbing at the shutters, throwing them open.

  Gray light filled the chamber. The soft thing she had touched was still moving, a gentle undulation. Clo blinked, trying to understand: it was as though the entire wall were moving. Rippling. The wall was rippling.

  No. Clo’s eyes adjusted. It was not the wall. Not the stones, though it was the same dull gray color as the stones.

  The thing she had set in motion was suspended from a vast wooden frame that occupied the entire length of the room. Threads, hundreds upon hundreds, perhaps thousands upon thousands, of gray threads stretched up the frame, rising in taut lines nearly to the ceiling.

  Clo stepped closer. Waist-height, the vertical threads were joined by gray yarn that had been woven into them; here and there, sharp bobbins dangled where the fabric was still being formed. Above them, another arc of gray thread looped toward the ceiling.

  Clo picked up a bobbin. It was full of the yarn she had been spinning—the fish-wool yarn. The entire tapestry—for that was what it was—was nothing but gray fish-wool.

  She felt the cat brush past her. Rising on its hind legs, it kneaded the tapestry, its claws catching and pulling at the yarn. Clo could see where it had left its marks before: small runs or holes or pulls in the fabric were the only variation in the otherwise dull gray blanket.

  Pulling aside the vertical threads, Clo looked behind the loom. Here, a mirror had been hung against the wall to reflect the front of the tapestry, the smooth side of the weaving, which should show some design. Some picture. Some thing the weaver would be trying to portray. But no—even from the front, nothing but the same flat gray.

  Around the bottom beam of the loom, more masses of the tapestry had been rolled. Clo felt the rolls with her thumb. Layer after layer of woven gray fish-wool.

  No color. No form. No decoration.

  Next to her, the cat continued its kneading. Pull—catch, pull—catch, she could hear the ticks of its claws against the fabric.

  Clo felt anger beginning to bubble in her, an uncomfortably hot feeling pushing against her chest.

  The carding. The spinning. The endless stacks of fish-wool.<
br />
  For this? For THIS?

  Something inside Clo broke.

  No.

  She stared at the weaving, at the beastly cat pulling threads from the weaving, at the thousands upon thousands of flat gray strands that made up the weaving.

  No.

  She turned away.

  Clo moved through the rooms slowly. The front window framed the sedate parade of barrow-pushers and basket-bearers. She could see the black-eyed silver fish spilling from their containers onto the cobblestones.

  No.

  She thought of the boat Cary had shown her, the boat that gathered all the fish, the boat that rested tucked into the innards of the island, the boat with its wooden woman and mewling babes, its piles of fishing nets and barrels, its fishing nets and barrels that could surely hide a spindle-shanked girl so used to staying in the shadows.

  She had done this before.

  She gathered her last crescent of cheese rind. Her father’s notebook. The painting. His cloak. She tied the cloak over her shoulders and around her waist and tucked her few belongings into the folds at her back. She tugged at the knots of the cloak, pulling it even tighter.

  Cheese-bearer. Wall-jumper.

  From the fireplace, Clo took the long-handled poker the old woman used to stir the coals. She returned to her own room. She hesitated only a moment.

  Window-breaker.

  CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH

  IN WHICH OUR HERO REMEMBERS SHE CANNOT SWIM

  HAVING KNOCKED AWAY THE REMAINING GLASS, THE shards falling with a bright crackle into the empty air, Clo leaned out her window as much as she dared. Far, far below, the water rocked against the cliff wall, and she felt herself grow faint with its motion, as though she were already falling into it. Breathing deeply, she forced herself to examine the cliff dropping away beneath her: it was steep, but not entirely smooth. Notches here and there, small fissures in the stone broke its expanse. Handholds. Footholds.