Spindlefish and Stars

by Christiane M. Andrews

  “Yes. Your father’s paintings. But any artist, any art may do this. Songs. Dances. Stories. Sculptures. If the art is… true, the fabric will change, even as it’s being woven. And when people see your father’s works—or any artist’s work—they see that moment as he did and live it for themselves. And their own lives change in seeing that moment as he did.”

  The old woman sighed, her cheeks crumpling into softer folds. A line of salt seemed to glimmer in the deepest crease. “Your mother was young,” she said at last. “She was not as used to weaving as I. She did not have the proper… distance. There must always be some distance. The individual threads…” She shook her head. “No. One must stand far back. The design, the whole. Or”—she brushed her eyelids with her fingertips—“one’s sight must not be so clear. I should not have let her begin so young. The carding, the spinning—these are easier. Potential only. But weaving… there is permanence. And she saw your father painting. She watched him the way your father watched the painter.… You saw him? Standing on the pickle barrel at the window?”

  Clo nodded.

  “Yes? Just as he was—she was entranced. And she was weaving and watching—these beautiful paintings. His beautiful paintings. She wanted to see for herself.… She wanted to see more than shadows in the mirror. And she did what she should not have done.”

  The old woman removed a spool from her pocket. Unraveling it a little, she held it so the fibers caught the light, and the thread made a quiet slurp-slurpping noise. Respooling it, she tucked it again in her pocket.

  “She gave herself a thread. She should not have done so. This is not for us—the world is not for us. She jabbed it here, at the edge, where your father’s painting had already opened the fabric. She meant only to see… to watch your father painting, once, and then return. The thread on the bobbin was dwindling, and she wanted to see him work before—”

  “What bobbin? Whose?”

  The old woman looked up in surprise. “Why, your father’s.”

  “My father’s thread was ending?”

  “Yes.”

  Clo felt suddenly cold. “But that—that is your doing. You decide the thread. You can make it longer.”

  “The thread is the thread on the spool. No more, no less. Well, no less if Mischief, with his claws, does not cut it short. But no. The length is the length. It is spun on the wheel. You, granddaughter, you have spun it on the wheel. You have decided lengths. And your mother saw your father’s bobbin nearly empty, and she wanted to see his painting before his thread had all unspooled. She wanted to see the artist who could reshape the fabric, reshape her own weaving, under her hands. She did not keep the distance she needed to keep.”

  “Distance?” Clo said slowly. She could not hold any thought but that her father’s thread had been meant to end and yet had not.

  “Granddaughter. Understand. Your mother, my daughter, went to see your father’s artistry. And the world kept her. How could it not? This mirror”—she tapped the glass behind the fabric—“this reflection… could not compare. She came to love the world. She came to love your father.”

  Clo could not catch her breath. Deep in the guts of her father’s strand, she could see the wisp of real wool—stretched so thin, so far… no more than a whisker, really.

  “But… he has been with me, all this time.…” She thought of her father as she had known him, as others had seen him. The gray and wizened, stooped and shuffling man with a leg and an arm and a foot in the grave. She saw him now and saw the thin hold he had kept on life for so many years. Just a whisker.

  She thought of the cloud that had wrapped around her in the grotto and borne her back to the stars. She thought of the voice echoing in the darkness: Do not let my mistakes become your own… be brave enough to accept what I could not…

  She turned to the old woman. “My mother… she gave him her thread, didn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that is why she died.”

  “Yes…” The apple wrinkles were deep and pained. “Yes. She took herself out of the world. She gave him her thread, so that he might continue to live. So that you might know your father.”

  “And her thread… it was never meant to be here.” Clo’s hand fluttered over the fabric.

  “No.”

  “And that is why it began to rot—even here, even where she first placed it.”

  “Yes.”

  “His thread…” Clo swallowed. “Only a wisp of his own thread is still here. All stretched inside the rot.” She tapped the weaving. “His thread was… meant to end. A long time ago.”

  “Yes.”

  Clo stepped away from the woman’s hand, now reaching toward her shoulder. The gesture fell emptily and marked the space between them.

  “He has been suffering.”

  The woman hesitated. “He has had joy as well.”

  “Why have you not stopped his suffering? Even if you did not cause it, why have you not helped him?” As she motioned toward the fabric, Clo’s voice rose. “Even now, he’s lying on the floor of the swineherd’s hut. Why do you not help him?”

  “Granddaughter, I place the threads. I do not change decisions made in the world. Once the thread is woven, I cannot unweave it. Too many other threads will unravel. One must keep a distance—even here.”

  “But there must be something—”

  “No.”

  “There must be—”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “Your mother wished for you to have a life with your father. To know your father. To know the world. She gave her own thread for this. What can be done? What would you change?”

  With rising desperation, Clo pulled at the fish gut that marked her father’s life. “Can’t this be removed? Or turned again into thread?”

  “No.”

  “Can thread be added?”

  “Only with more rot.”

  “But… new thread from a new spool…”

  “Granddaughter. That was your mother’s mistake. New thread must be for a new life.”

  “If my mother’s thread were removed, would the rot disappear?”

  “If your mother’s thread were removed, see what would happen, granddaughter. Here.” She pulled the strand for Clo to hold. “Pull it a little, granddaughter. Only a little. See for yourself.”

  Seizing the slippery pink line, Clo pulled, trying to tear it away. It arched over the weaving, and as it came up, the threads entangled with it began to twist and rumple. Her father’s thread twisted. Her own thread twisted. As it warped, Clo felt a shivering wave cross over her—a shock of light and blackness. Gasping, she dropped the thread. The weaving grew smooth again.

  “You see?”

  Clo touched her lips; she had felt the impact through her skull, across her tongue. Still, she shook her head. “There must be a way.”

  “No. And it is not for us to find a way. One must keep one’s distance. We place the threads only.”

  “But don’t you miss her?” Clo asked, her voice rising, almost pleading. “Don’t you miss your daughter at all?”

  The woman’s dried-apple face seemed suddenly more shriveled and dry. She glanced away. “Absence,” she began. “Of course one feels an absence, granddaughter.” She ran a fingertip along her daughter’s thread. “But not as you do. Not as you feel your father’s absence. Not as you grieve for him.” Her hand moved as though she meant to touch Clo’s cheek, but she let it drop and turned away. “The tapestry has its own beauty, granddaughter. It is the whole that is beautiful. You will learn this,” she said from the doorway. “You must learn this.”

  For a long time, Clo stood staring at the rotting line that marked her own family. In the next room, she could hear the woman clanking at the pot of stew and murmuring to the cat. “Yes, Mischief, of course. But what can one do? She will come to see this is the only way. One must keep one’s distance.”

  Clo looked reluctantly where the old woman had last tapped the fabric, the decision her
mother had made. In the glass, she could see her mother’s cloudy image moving late at night through the shadows of the house. While her father slept, her mother was piling provisions—a loaf of bread, a skin of water, a few plums—and a collection of things—a shawl, a skein of yarn, a small canvas, a slip of paper—into a basket hooked over her arm. Even in the smeary reflection, Clo could see that all joy had fled from her mother’s face: she was stricken.

  When her mother had finished loading her basket, she stood silently by the bed. Palm on her rounded belly, she lingered, watching Clo’s father sleep, before abruptly turning and, head down, walking quickly to the front door. She opened it and stepped outside but did not shut the door behind her. Instead, she stood in the darkness, her hand trembling on the latch, her figure only half lit by stars. For a long moment, she did not move, but then at last, she turned and went back inside the little house. She unpacked her basket, hesitating only once as she came to the slip of paper. She held it up to the light of the fire, then folded it and tucked it in the pocket of her dress. She returned to her bed and lay down beside Clo’s father. Though she did not sleep, she no longer seemed troubled; she rested peacefully, arms cradled about her middle, her face calm, composed, decided.

  Heart dropping, Clo stared at this moment. Her father’s deep sleep, the woman’s tranquil expression—these might have been gratifying to see if she had not recognized what the woman had folded and tucked deep in her pocket. The slip of paper. The slip of half paffage.

  Her mother’s decision.

  She could have left. She could have returned to the island.

  She could have let her father’s thread end as it was meant to.

  Your mother wished for you to have a life with your father. To know your father. To know the world. She gave her own thread for this. What can be done? What would you change?

  Clo, defiant, disbelieving, tried again to lift the rotting thread, to shift the rotting thread—she pulled it this way, that way. She felt the same glittering blackness burst across her teeth and spine.

  Again.

  The shock carved emptiness through her limbs. Her toes. Her fingertips.

  Again.

  Again.

  Within the carved-out emptiness, rising to fill it, Clo felt despair flooding in.

  Again.

  CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SEVENTH

  IN WHICH A BOY IS FLYING. THEN NOT FLYING

  CLO WORKED AT THE WEAVING, TRYING TO FIND A WAY TO set it right, tugging and twisting the rotten fiber until she could no longer stand the sensation of the threads pulling through her bones.

  The words she had heard in the grotto played again and again in her head. Be brave enough to accept what I could not.…

  “Light and life are fleeting,” she whispered to herself, rubbing her sleeve across her eyes. Could she really do nothing? Nothing but leave her father on the swineherd’s floor?

  All through her tongue and neck and spine, she felt raw. Singed.

  In the front room, she heard the parchment-skin man entering and settling himself at the table. The old woman’s ladle clanged against the pot.

  “Join us, granddaughter,” the old woman called.

  Clo ignored this. She was sitting in front of the tapestry, staring at the fabric without really seeing it. She kept thinking of her father lying in the pigsty. The swineherd who had carried him home. The swineherd’s mother who knelt to tend to her father. Their shining threads.

  Sitting like this, she gradually became aware of a sharp edge pushing into her leg. “Oh,” she murmured, looking. A bobbin. Lifting it, she found its thread attached to the finished folds of tapestry near the floor. Oh, yes, thought Clo. She remembered how she had tripped on this stray spool when trying to show Cary the fabric.

  Absentmindedly, half wondering again why a bobbin would still be attached so far from the unfinished edge, half wishing Cary had been able to see what she saw, she lifted a fold of fabric to tuck it away.

  Poor Cary, she thought. Even after drinking the soup, he had seen nothing, and the soup had made him ill. She thought of how clammy and unsettled he had looked. I had a bit of a… sharp. Something sharp. For a moment, and now it’s gone.

  And just as she nudged the bobbin out of sight, she understood.

  The way he had shuddered, the way the beads of sweat had stood out on his brow… He had looked as she felt now, after pulling and twisting her own thread. Raw. Singed. Shaken.

  Pushing the stool out of the way, Clo lay on her stomach on the floor. She felt with her fingers for the bobbin, found it, and gently—oh, so gently, she did not want to cause any pain—pulled it out.

  Heart pounding, she unraveled an arm’s length of thread and moved the bobbin out of the way. Then she shifted and turned and prodded at the tapestry—There, where the thread left the fabric, could she see?

  She saw some bubbles and distortions in the fabric, like the ones around her father’s paintings. Nearby, she saw some bright holes like the ones the cat had torn. But the mirror was too far above this section of tapestry, and no matter how much she strained, she could not see the images of the thread, this thread, without the mirror. All was vague landscape—and from here, so close, only a wash of color.

  She had to find a way to see its reflection. Could the mirror be moved? Clo looked behind the tapestry. No. A frame held it against the wall.

  Clo tugged on the rolled tapestry in exasperation. Could she loosen it? Was there any way to see its underside? She had to know if it was…

  “Granddaughter, join us,” the woman called again, brisker this time.

  Clo rose reluctantly.

  In the front room, the woman was just sitting down across from the parchment-skin man. Seeing Clo enter, the man paused his eating, his lips crinkled in a dry O at the tip of his spoon. He patted the seat beside him. “Yes. Join us.”

  Clo looked at the two figures, at the walls lined with cylinders of fish-wool, at the woman’s pockets bulging with thread, at the cat crouched over a puddle of stew. She felt ill. “I am not hungry.”

  “You will lose your sight, granddaughter.”

  “Why should I want it? What good is it? You sat here, eating soup, tossing fish to the cat—while your own daughter disappeared. And my father—you sit here doing nothing, nothing to help, while he suffers. What good is your sight if you refuse to help? If you let this beast”—Clo nudged the cat, which had sidled up to her—“tear holes in lives? Why should I want to hear the spools of thread giggle or sob if I can do nothing to make them more serious or less miserable? It was better when all was gray. When nothing made noise.”

  The old man’s lips quivered at his spoon. He slurruped loudly and rubbed his fingers across his mouth to mop the wet. “She has been too long in the world.”

  “Tsss.” The woman flapped her hand at the man. “Even in the world, she kept herself apart from others. She will come to see. You will”—she pointed a dripping spoon at Clo—“you will come to see. It is the whole we create. The whole that is beautiful.”

  As Clo watched the woman run her tongue over the bottom of her spoon, an idea began to form. Yes, she thought. Yes, that could work.

  “You know,” she said slowly, “I think I am hungry.”

  “Hungry?” said the man.

  “She will eat,” said the old woman. “Good.” She set a bowl and spoon in front of Clo and gave Clo’s head a light pat. Clo tried not to flinch. “Eat, granddaughter.”

  Though Clo had never come to like the soup that smelled of ice and cold, she ate quickly, scraping her bowl clean before her tablemates had even half finished.

  “There is not much for Mischief to clean,” the old woman said approvingly. She bobbed her head in a round and satisfied way.

  “Not much.”

  “Well, give it to him all the same.”

  Bending beneath the table, Clo put her bowl on the floor. The spoon she lifted into her sleeve. “I will return to my spinning,” she said, rising. Preparing to sit at the wheel, she
glanced out of the corner of her eye. The old woman was nodding, her soft fruit face round and, Clo thought, almost proud.

  “Before you begin your work, granddaughter, look again at the tapestry. Your eyes are fresh. See the whole, the entirety of the fabric.”

  Clo shrugged. “If you wish.”

  “The whole has beauty,” she heard behind her as she entered the woman’s chamber. “We place threads to form the fabric. But the small details, the decisions that determine the color of a thread, are not ours.”

  “She will only ever see the threads,” came a lower murmur.

  “Ffft. You misjudge my granddaughter. She will come to see the whole. She has no—”

  Clo closed the door partway—not enough to arouse suspicion—and hurried to the tapestry. She knew she would not have much time.

  As before, she lay flat on the floor next to the errant bobbin. She let the spoon drop from her sleeve.

  Carefully, with her fingertips, she worked the threads in the weaving apart as much as she dared: she stretched but did not tear a small opening in the fabric where it already bubbled.

  “Please,” she murmured. Holding tight to the handle, she pushed the bowl of the spoon through the gap.

  It was so dim. The rolls of fabric below, the expanse of weaving above made it hard to see. “Please,” Clo said again. She put her eye to the opening she had made; she twisted the spoon this way and that, trying to get it to reflect what she needed to see.

  There. There was the thread still wound on its bobbin, still dangling from the fabric. The image was silvery and dim, curved in the shape of the spoon, but Clo could see it all the same.