Spindlefish and Stars

by Christiane M. Andrews

  “Yes, yes.” The old woman scurried past her. “Mischief!”

  Outside, they joined the villagers swarming over the street calling for the cat. Mischief! Mischief! Clo followed the crowd, halfheartedly calling the cat’s name. But when at last she was sure no one was watching, she scurried back to the woman’s house and shut the door tight behind her.

  The noise of the villagers quieted with the closing of the door. Clo brought the ball of yarn from her pocket. Though she liked its shimmering, all the possibility it carried, she felt a growing sense of dread about what she thought she must do.

  In the tapestry, she found her father’s fish-gut thread. There he was, his smeary reflection, lying on the floor of the swineherd’s hut.

  “Father,” she whispered.

  He was dreaming. In his present, he was dreaming. Pale, waxy, feverish, he had been moved next to the fire and wrapped in blankets, but still he shivered in his sleep. A bowl of broth sat untouched on the table near him.

  Deep in the center of the pink-and-gray viscera was his own wisp of thread. How far it had been stretched.

  Never should have known him.

  She followed the threads back and back and back, past their travels across silty bogs and wind-scrubbed fields, past her earliest toddling steps, to when he was a new father, all alone, swaddling her and rocking her through the night when she would not stop wailing.

  She saw her mother at the moment she let go. In the middle of the night, she stroked her baby’s cheek, touched her husband’s hair. She lay down beside him, then did not rise again.

  How had she given him her thread? The old woman said she took herself out of the world, but she only seemed to sleep. Clo stared, trying to understand.

  It was her father who had taken to his bed earlier in the day. He had held his head, complained of pain. Of numbness. Her mother’s face had twisted strangely, but she had soothed, It’s all right. Rest, my love. She had sat beside him all day, infant Clo bundled in her arms. When night came, she had swaddled her child and set her to sleep in a cradle. She left a folded square of paper on the table beside the sleeping babe. She stroked Clo’s cheek. She ran her fingers over her husband’s hair.

  He did not stir. His sleep was stiller than sleep. Quieter than sleep.

  Her mother lay beside him. Her hands fluttered over her own brow, a quick plucking-like fluttering; then she, too, grew quiet and still.

  The room was dark. The infant slept. At last, Clo’s father turned in his sleep. He placed his hand over his wife’s. “All right, my love,” he murmured, then all was silent and dark until morning, when her mother did not rise, and her father found the quiet body.

  Clo, leaning away from the tapestry, placed her hands over her face.

  She could see that her mother had saved him. She could see that the stillness of her father’s sleep was—her chin quivered—where his thread had been meant to end.

  But—she shook her head in frustration—she could not see what her mother had done. However she had given him her thread, it was outside the tapestry. Beyond it.

  Experimentally, Clo touched her own brow as she had seen her mother do, her fingers flickering at the crown of her head, but she felt nothing. Her mother understood something she did not.

  Clo again took the shimmering blue sphere of thread her mother had spun from her pocket. Well, she thought. She looked from the sphere of thread to her thread in the tapestry.

  Never should have known him.

  Hesitatingly, Clo picked up her own bobbin hanging at the fabric’s working edge. It would not hurt just to see, she thought. Just to see what happens. Tugging lightly, she braced for the same shock of blackness across her mouth and spine that had come when she pulled her mother’s line.

  An iciness curled along the edges of her skull. The top of her spine. The bones of her body. She paused, shuddering.

  The pain was different this time. Colder. Emptier. More of a hollowing.

  Gritting her teeth, trying to see, for she had to see if she could remove the line that should not have been hers, she pulled it a little more. The thread slid out of the fabric. There and there and there, the shore and the woods and the swineherd under the pine… she pulled the thread away from these places.

  Her memories—under the coldness, she felt her memories growing fuzzy. Had she come through the woods? What had the boy, the one, the one who had—something about his… She could not recall.

  Something was giving way inside her.

  Horrified, Clo pushed the thread back into place in the tapestry, frantically smoothing the weaving, and she knew again how the boy, the swineherd, had helped her. He had red hair and a cauliflower nose and muck-covered boots and he had spoken with a garbling accent.

  Clo, breath as dry as wool, sat for a long while trying to steady herself. The tapestry’s patterns wavered before her. She felt a buzzing in her head, a trembling in her heart. In her hands, over and over, she turned the ball of yarn.

  She knew what she would need to give up to save her father.

  CHAPTER THE THIRTIETH

  IN WHICH A STORY IS TOLD AND RETOLD

  SHE ALMOST DID NOT HEAR THE KNOCKING.

  Between the buzzing in her head and the warm buzzing of the yarn in her hands, the knocking rattled for a long time before she became conscious of it. Even then, she rose slowly and opened the door slowly, still confused, until she saw Cary, claw-marked and bloody, gripping the snarling Mischief in his arms.

  “I found him,” Cary huffed, setting the cat down in the doorway. Immediately, the animal bounded under the table and bristled at them, hissing.

  Clo scowled at the cat before looking down the narrow street: empty. “Where is everyone?”

  “I saw them on the beach, looking. They came down the path, calling and calling, and now they’re on the shore. Even the tidesman is searching for him. The little old woman is splashing in the water. But I found him when I returned to… where I sleep. He was…” Cary’s gaze shifted to the cliffs above the town. “He was under the wing. He did not want me to pick him up.”

  Clo made room for Cary to enter. “It’d be better if he disappeared.”

  “Would it?” Cary looked surprised.

  Clo hesitated. “No, but”—she frowned—“you don’t know… what he does.”

  “Hm.”

  Cary paced the small chamber. He peered into the soup pot, the fire under it having now gone out, and he peered into the old woman’s room—only a little, only out of the corner of his eye, not enough to look as though he were actually looking, but Clo saw all the same.

  “Cary?”

  “I…” Cary shook his head. He crossed the room again, agitated.

  “Do you want to wash…” She touched her cheek to indicate the scratches on his.

  “What?” Cary ran his fingers along his face. “Oh. No. I’m all right.” Stopping in front of the old woman’s room, he leaned in the doorway, no longer trying to hide his interest.

  “Cary?”

  He spun abruptly. “Will you show me?” His voice cracked. “Will you show me my thread? I know I can’t see it, not like you can, but will you show me all the same?”

  “Yes.” Clo took a spoon off the table. “I can describe what I see… if you like.”

  “Just… show me. Please.”

  Nodding, Clo led the way to the tapestry. “It’s still gray for you,” she said, more a statement than a question.

  “Yes.”

  Clo lay down in front of the rolled weaving. She ran her hand under it until she found the bobbin. Carefully, so as not to tug the fabric, she pulled it out, unraveling it a little, and held it up for Cary.

  Kneeling beside her, Cary cupped his hands gingerly around the bobbin. “This is mine?”

  “Yours.”

  He squinted. “What’s on it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What’s meant to happen to me?”

  “It’s not like that. There’s nothing set.” Clo lifted t
he bobbin from his palms. She held the thread up to the light. “If you could see, it’s all shifting color. Everything is left for you to decide.”

  “For the old woman to decide.”

  Clo shook her head. She put the bobbin back in Cary’s hands. “She gives you a thread. And weaving, she places the thread. She shapes your”—Clo cast about for the word she wanted—“ circumstances, I think. But your decisions shade your thread.”

  Cary pulled at the thread to see where it entered the tapestry. As the fabric puckered, Clo saw him shiver.

  “It’s there—” He pointed where the thread left the fabric. “That’s where I fell?”

  “Yes.”

  “And my father searched for me?”

  “Yes.” Lying on her stomach, Clo slipped the spoon through the weaving. She saw Cary’s father flying, circling, calling. “He was desperate to find you. He was… heartbroken when he could not.” She paused, glancing at the boy, who had now shut his eyes. His cheeks were bright with the effort of remembering. “He loved you,” Clo said sorrowfully. “So much.”

  Cary nodded, his lashes dark and damp. Clearing his throat, he looked again at the tapestry, running his hand over his own thread. “What is this?” he asked.

  “This?” Clo looked where Cary touched the fabric—a bubble in the weaving. “It must be one of your father’s sculptures.” She moved the spoon to look and squinted at the reflected image. “It happens around art. Paintings, sculptures, even dance and song. It’s almost as if the art… changes time. Slows time. And your father’s sculptures… they were so lifelike, people mistook them. They thought they were real. Alive. But…” She squirmed, trying to angle the spoon for a clearer view. “I don’t see your father here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “At this pocket. I don’t see your father. There’s no sculpture. It’s only”—she shifted again—“you.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re sitting alone. Your father…” She twisted the spoon. “He’s way over there. He’s building something… but the fabric isn’t bubbling around that. It’s…” She looked again. “It’s you. You’re reshaping the fabric. You’re sitting on some rocks, by the sea. You’re on an island, like this one, but the water is blue and green, and the hills are covered with trees, and the sky is an even paler blue, and you… you’re a little younger than you are now. You have your flute, only it’s not cracked, and you’re playing…” Clo leaned into the tapestry. “Oh, Cary, the song is so… it’s full of the warmth of the hills and the tide… the colors of the sea and sky and the bright air… it’s happy.… You’re happy.”

  Cary closed his eyes. His chin quavered. “I don’t remember.”

  “You were. You were happy. And your song…” She traced the bubble in the fabric. “You can see you had something true. You held it in your song.”

  Clo rocked back onto her heels. Cary took a long, shivering breath.

  Opening his eyes, he looked searchingly at Clo. “If I leave here… what will I return to?” He touched the tapestry at the moment of his fall. “Will I return to this? To the island you describe? To my father?”

  “I—” Clo hesitated, looking over the fabric. She thought of how her mother had jabbed herself into the weaving, right where her father’s thread was. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “But I think wherever your thread is… I think that is where you will return. Or at least, near where you will return.”

  “I don’t want to. I don’t want to go alone.”

  Clo took the bobbin from Cary’s hand and let the thread spin out. No, she thought, remembering the icy uncoiling that had come when she pulled her line. No one wants to be alone.

  She looked at Cary’s dimpled hands. She thought of how he had sat with her on the shore. How he had played his flute to cheer her. How he had fished her from the starry darkness. How he had been left to sink beneath the waves. She was not sure what she could do, but she knew she could not leave him alone—here or in the world.

  She looked up and across the weaving at the unfinished edge, where her own bobbin still hung. “If I can find a way to bring your thread near mine… or near where mine is now, at least, near the working edge of the tapestry, the present…” She eyed the distance Cary’s thread would need to cross. “Will you go with me? Would you travel with me?”

  Cary’s moons were pale, but he nodded. “Y-yes.” His gaze settled on the thread she held in her hands. “Yes,” he said again more firmly.

  Even from here, Clo could see the slick line of fish gut. “But you should know…” She turned away, trying to steady her voice. “I know you don’t remember the world, but… there is so much. So much more, and I want you to see it all again. I want you to come with me. But you need to know… I’m not certain what I will have to return to. The way I need to return… I don’t know if I will know anything. Remember anything. Or anyone.”

  Cary’s brow furrowed, questioning, but when Clo did not elaborate, he did not press further. “Whatever we return to, I will be happy if we are together.” He smiled just enough to lift the curve of his moons. “I would like to see the world again—how you describe it. Hills covered with trees… and bright air… water that’s blue and green… and sunlight… and starlight… I don’t remember, but sometimes I dream, and I see things that are not here.…”

  Clo tried to return the smile, tried to say I will be happier if we are together, too, but neither smile nor words came. “I will need your help,” she managed at last.

  “Help?” Cary paused, confused. “Are we… now?”

  Clo shook her head. “No. I mean that I will need your help later. Afterward. But now we have to ready everything we’ll need. We’ll need to be quick once I”—she looked again at the slick line of fish gut—“once I start.”

  “What can I do?”

  Still staring at the rotting line, Clo rubbed her temple. She could not repeat her mother’s mistakes. “We need… a boat. With a boat, I know we can find the world again beyond the waves.”

  “No. It’s impossible. I cannot sail the boat. You cannot sail it. They would never… they would notice… and then, the fish, how would they fish—”

  “Not the fishing boat. I know we can’t take that. Can you find a barrow? The best. The—the one that’s least dented. Not rusted. And a bucket.”

  “A barrow?” Cary’s face twisted in puzzlement.

  “And,” Clo added, “oars. Do you think you can filch two oars? Will they notice?”

  “Not… immediately.” He gazed blankly at her, still not comprehending. “Where should I bring them?”

  “To the shore. But not all the way, not so the tidesman can see. I’ll stay here and try to bring your thread closer to the present. When you’ve collected everything, come back. I’ll need… I’ll need you.”

  “Won’t the old woman come back? And won’t she not like you… doing whatever you will do at the tapestry?”

  “She’s already looked here for the cat. I’m hoping she won’t return until she finds him.”

  Nodding, Cary turned to go.

  “Cary?”

  He paused in the doorway.

  “Your wing. Bring your wing as well.”

  Cary blanched. His lips opened once, twice, before he managed to speak. “My wing. Yes.”

  When Clo heard the door shut, she sat at the tapestry holding her ball of yarn and Cary’s unfinished bobbin. How would she bring Cary’s thread to the fabric’s working edge? How could it cross so much time? Tentatively, she raised it, unraveling as she went, and lifted it so it reached her own, but when she tried to secure it, the thread drooped and slipped—it would not stay.

  She tried sliding it beneath other fibers, tried knotting it to the warp threads, tried looping it around two, three, four, five other lines… stomach turning, she even tried lacing it up through Mischief’s claw-rent patches.… No matter how tightly she twisted or tied, each time she took her hands away, the thread would fall again. She bit her lip in frustration. �
�Stay,” she commanded as, fingers shaking, she tied another knot. No. Another. She pleaded. The thread dropped again. “Why won’t you stay?”

  She cast about despairingly, her gaze landing on a stray bobbin. Could she take a bit of extra thread? Cut a few small pieces to tie Cary’s line and anchor it to the weaving? Still thinking, she picked up the spool and unraveled a little.

  A delicate coo rose from the fiber.

  “Oh!” In her horror, Clo nearly dropped the spool. What was she thinking? There was no extra thread. Nothing she could cut without harm, nothing she could insert without rot.

  Had she made a promise she could not keep? She put her hand to her mouth. She felt ill.

  Lying on the floor, she looked again at the moment of Cary’s fall—the way the feathers drifted away, the way he tumbled into the sea, the way his father, anguished, heartbroken, searched and searched for him. She thought she must feel now a little like his father did then—desperate to help but able to do nothing but leave the boy lost in the waves.

  Did his father ever forgive himself for leaving his son? She followed his thread forward as far as she could: she saw the man years later, still thinking of his lost child. He told his son’s story over and over and over. And others repeated the story—how could they not? The story of a father who had tried to save himself, tried to save his son by creating wings? The beauty of the flight, the terror of the fall into the sea…

  He flew too close to the sun, said a thick-knuckled goatherd as he shielded his own eyes in the late-afternoon light.

  He did not heed his father’s warning, said a young mother nursing her child. He did not take the middle way.

  Almost serves his father right, said a man in heavy gray robes, chiseling a wing out of marble, for going against nature. Man was not meant to fly.

  Again and again, following the threads across the tapestry, from one person to another, Clo saw the story repeated. Or painted. Or sculpted. Or sung about. And each time it was repeated with a detail about the feathers—Goose feathers, they were—or a detail about the sea—There was a ship that saw ’im fall—a tradin’ ship filled wit’ silk, an’ all t’ men on deck seein’ a boy fallin’ through t’ sky—or a detail about Cary, even if it was wrong—A golden-haired lad, eighteen and old enough to know better—the fabric bubbled. Just a little. And one or two fine gold threads, light as gossamer, almost invisible, appeared near the bubble.