Spindlefish and Stars

by Christiane M. Andrews

  “Ugh.” She wrinkled her nose.

  A turnip. Old. Shriveled. Scarcely larger than a thumb. Almost more dirt than turnip. “Ugh,” she said again.

  She sniffed it. It smelled of dirt and dark and bitterness. She knew it would taste of bitterness and dark and dirt. Why had she traded a pastry for this? It seemed a mean trick. She thought of how the woman had dug beneath the tree, of how she had so insistently asked to trade.

  But… Clo sniffed it again. The dirt… It didn’t just smell like bitterness. It had—she raised it to her nose—something else. Not just darkness.

  “Clo?” Cary put his hand on her shoulder.

  Keeping her eyes closed, she inhaled deeply again.

  Home. The word came to her. “Home,” she whispered, to see what it sounded like.

  It sounded empty—but not without meaning. She was suddenly full of longing.

  Longing for what, exactly, she could not say. She had no memory of a specific place or person, and when she tried to imagine meaning in the word, she had a sense of a pallet of straw, of rats and fleas, of watery soup, of dirt and weeds. But even these ugly things—paired with the dream of the man smiling at her as she finished the pastry—felt suddenly irreplaceable. The endless gray comfort of this island felt suddenly desolate.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “Home. Whatever that means for us.”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FOURTH

  WHEREIN NO ONE IS FISHED FROM THE SEA

  CLO, WHO HAD NO MEMORY OF HER WEED-PICKING OR wall-jumping or forest-trekking days, nevertheless felt it right that she was hurrying now with Cary, a barrow balanced between them, down the cliff path. Under one arm, his bristly fur prickling against her skin, she held the cat, which squirmed and hissed and clawed at her.

  “Now, now,” she soothed the beast. “It’s for the best.”

  When they finally arrived at the shore, Clo found—as she had expected—the old woman again roving the small beach and keening over the loss of her cat. Her cries bounced and echoed off the stones, so that the sea itself seemed to be wailing. The tidesman trailed the woman helplessly; here and there, a villager knelt by the cliffs, peering into cracks in the rocks, or stood knee-deep in the water, looking beneath the surface for the lost beast.

  “Mischief! Mischief!”

  Cary and Clo set their barrow on the stones.

  “Grandmother!” Clo called.

  The old woman did not hear her.

  Clo raised her voice over the wailing. “Grandmother!”

  This time, the old woman looked up. For a moment, her gaze was blank, her face a bruised apple, red and overwrought. Then relief came flooding over her features as she saw the animal snarling in Clo’s arms.

  “Mischief!” She hurried across the stones. “Mischief!” Reaching Clo, she gathered the cat up and cradled him against her. He rumbled contentedly. “Oh, Mischief,” the old woman crooned. “There, there. You have not been lost. Not been lost.”

  Clo watched the reunion of weaver and beast. The woman tickled the creature behind his ears; he nestled into the folds of her body. The cat purred, a kind of grunting. “Grandmother,” Clo interrupted at last.

  The old woman looked up. “Granddaughter.” The word was and was not a question. “There is something changed about you.” Again, the words were and were not a question. They hovered, uncertain. She peered at Clo, her eyes narrowing in her cheeks.

  “Yes.”

  “You unwove your thread in the tapestry.” Another hovering.

  “Yes.”

  “Ah.” She paused. “I did not expect this. Such a… thing to give up.”

  “I suppose… it was.” Clo did not know now what she had given up.

  “Without memories… you will wish to stay, then.”

  “No.” Clo shook her head. “No. I want to return.”

  “And yet you bring Mischief to me.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know what he does. Know how wide and deep the holes he tears.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know what you will return to.”

  Clo hesitated.

  “The weaving,” the woman went on, “it is pleasant and easy. Your work—it is pleasant and easy. You would be content here. Boy.” The woman turned to Cary. “Boy, your work—the nets, the fish—this is pleasant and easy. There is no grief here. The days are the same here.”

  “Yes,” Clo said. “The days are the same here. I know it would be easy to stay. I know the world is…” She thought of the little boy coughing alone in the dark; she imagined herself alone and ill in the dark. “I know the world is full of suffering. But…” She thought of the way the man had smiled at her when he came across the field of green and gold. “There’s also joy. The world is full of joy. You showed me yourself—one is not possible without the other.”

  “And you want that? Though you do not remember, still you want it? Though you might weave it, might see it, still you would rather be of it?”

  Clo wavered. “I understand how important the weaving is. How important the spinning is. But…” She thought of the way the threads glowed around the edges of Mischief’s torn holes. The way they glowed where the mother had bent over her coughing children, the way they glowed where the cauliflower-nosed boy had carried the painter back to his house. “In the world, there’s also care. You told me that. Help and care are for the world. Here…” Clo lifted her hands toward the barrenness of the island.

  “In the world, your gestures—however full of care they are—will still be small, granddaughter. A handful of threads. A few bright edges. Here you might weave the whole tapestry.”

  “Yes. I know. A handful only.” She reached and scratched behind Mischief’s bristly ear. “But here I cannot help at all. Cannot care at all.”

  Her grandmother sighed. “You have too much of your mother in you.” Shaking her head, she turned to Cary. “And you, boy? You too? After so long?”

  Beside her, Cary nodded. “She helped me remember…a little. I remember there is more. I remember I was…” Moony cheeks bright, he glanced at Clo. “I remember I was loved. My father loved me.”

  “Love,” the old woman hemmed. The word was and was not a statement. She stared hard at the flushing boy. “Yes.” She nodded. “The world is the right place for that. The only place.”

  “Will you…,” Clo said after a moment. “Will you help us?”

  “No,” her grandmother said firmly. “As you know, it is not my place to help. It is not even my place to hinder. I place the threads only.”

  “But—” Clo held up the yarn she had unraveled from the cloak. “Can you not help with this? Can you not place this for me in the tapestry so I can return?”

  Pinching the tail end of the thread, her grandmother squinted at it for a long moment.

  “Granddaughter, this is your own.”

  “Yes.”

  “Lovely. The fiber, the spinning is lovely. Even the color”—she held a strand against the gray sky—“it has taken its color from the world.”

  “Yes.”

  “A gift from your mother.”

  “Yes.”

  “You might weave it yourself.”

  “I do not wish to stay.”

  “Yes. But even so, this—this is yours. Your mother spun it in the world—it is of the world. You might weave your own life with it. All your own. It will still be mirrored in the tapestry.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will.” Pressing the skein back into Clo’s hands, the old woman turned to go. “This gift is precious. Keep it with you.”

  Clo tucked the ball of thread back into her pocket. “Grandmother,” she called after her departing form. She thought of the old woman all alone in front of the tapestry, endlessly tapping threads into place, endlessly shaping indistinct bright fields and dark forests and glimmering mountain heights into the design, endlessly at work alone… but
for the cat and his claws. She felt a flood of guilt. “I’m sorry not to stay… not to help with the work.”

  Still walking, the little woman waved her hand dismissively. “Ah,” she said over her shoulder. “You’ve spun enough. I have thread enough for centuries. I have thread enough to wait for a return.”

  “She is returning, you know,” Clo called up the shore. “My mother, she told me to tell you. I saw her.…”

  The woman and the cat were disappearing into the shadows of the cliff. “Yes,” her grandmother’s voice echoed back. “But that is not the return I will wait for.… When your thread is all unraveled, when you have had your fill of joy and sorrow, you might return again. I will be waiting for you.”

  As the old woman’s voice died away, Clo and Cary found themselves alone on the shore. All the villagers had returned up the path when they saw the cat cradled in the woman’s arms; only the tidesman remained. He was standing as silently as he always did, but on the pebbles of the beach, not on his line of stones.

  “Take it!” he called when he saw them looking at him. “Take it!”

  “Take it?” Clo asked.

  He flapped something at them. “Take it.”

  Clo and Cary crossed the beach to him. He flapped a little slip of something. Two little slips of something.

  Cary reached out and took the slips from his craggy hand.

  The tidesman nodded. “Tickets,” he said. “For return. Island return only.”

  As the tidesman hopped, stiff-legged, rock by rock back to his post, Clo and Cary examined the slips.

  “Half passage,” Cary said, his eyes growing wide. He looked up at the island cliffs.

  Clo ran her thumb over the words. “Half paffage.”

  “Someday.”

  “Yes.”

  “Or not,” said Cary with a quick glance at Clo.

  “Or someday,” Clo said feeling the word grow certain. She tucked the slip of half paffage deep in her pocket for safekeeping. She glanced once more at the cliffs—Yes, someday—before turning her eyes to the sea.

  Water that is full of salt and has no edge.

  No. Somewhere, somewhere else, there was another edge. Another land. “Ready?” she asked.

  Cary followed her gaze. Clo saw fear flash across his cheeks, saw his moons grow papery and gray. She saw how he must have looked when he fell from the sky, but still, he nodded and raised a smile.

  The thing they built from the objects they had gathered—the barrow, the wing, the bucket, the oars—could not really be called a boat. Cary, remembering his father was an inventor, blushed and fretted that Clo might expect more of him in the creation of this craft, but she did not notice his discomfort or have any expectations—she did not wish the thing to be anything more than it was—a barrow box ripped from its wheel, a thing that could float, a thing that could hold them holding the wing.

  Under the tidesman’s stony gaze, they pushed the barrow box into the water.

  “Get in,” she said when they were knee-deep.

  First Cary, Clo steadying the box, settled himself into the craft beside the wing, then Clo, Cary doing his best to keep the thing upright, settled herself next to Cary. Each raising an oar, they began paddling.

  The barrow wobbled under their efforts and threatened to tip or simply to spin in place. But after a few minutes of fruitless exertion, they found a rhythm, and the boxy craft began to skim across the water.

  From time to time, Clo glanced over her shoulder. The island seemed to be departing from them—its great gray cliff walls shrinking into the distance. Only the ever-growing line of waves ahead gave Clo the sense that it was they—and not the island—who were actually moving.

  As they drew closer to the waves, the noise began to reach them. Cary, eyes wide, stared ahead at the crashing wall of water.

  He lowered his oar. “Clo…”

  She realized in the trembling way he said her name that, of course, he had only ever seen these waves from a distance. He had fallen from the sky. He had been fished from the sea. He had not had to cross this line before.

  “Clo,” Cary said again, his voice full of urgency. The barrow pitched beneath them; they were reaching the first of the breakers.

  “It’s possible,” Clo said. “The bosun rowed me through. I know it’s possible. I remember he said it’s only a bit of time.”

  “But…” A wave crested over the edge of the barrow box. Cary stared horrified at the puddle that now sloshed in the bottom of their craft. “This isn’t really a boat. And I… I’m not a bosun. I’m just a net boy. Neither of us knows how to guide a boat through waves like that! We’ll never make it through.”

  “We will.” Clo tried to make the words sound certain. “And you’re not just a net boy, but I don’t want you paddling.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll paddle.” Clo raised her voice over the roaring of the water. She took the paddle from him and placed it on the floor of the barrow. “You need to play your flute.”

  “What?” Again, a wave rolled over the edge of the barrow.

  “Cary, the waves, I think they’re… the real edge of this island. I think when we cross them, we cross into the world. Into the time of the tapestry. Like the bosun said, they’re a bit of time. And I think… I think it’s easier to enter the world if the fabric is not pulled so tight… if there’s a pocket. A bubble.” She glanced ahead at the line of watery mountains, hoping she was right. “If the fabric bubbles, I think the waves also open.”

  Cary stared at her, panic-struck and uncomprehending.

  “Your flute, Cary!” Clo mimed the instrument. “Play it! ”

  Cary raised his flute from his pocket and lifted it like a question.

  Yes! Clo nodded vigorously. “Play it!” she called. “Think how the tapestry bubbles, how art changes it, changes time… if you play something true”—she shouted to make herself heard—“the tapestry will bubble. The waves will open for us. Open enough for us. Even the bosun sang when he rowed me through. Play!”

  A mountain of water had begun to grow in front of them. Clo could see foam cresting at the top.

  “Play! Cary, play!”

  A few wan notes pipped out of the flute. Cary’s eyes, his moons were flat with terror.

  “No!” Clo was truly yelling now, paddling furiously up the wall of water, but she could not even hear herself over the thundering of the waves. “Play what I saw you playing in the tapestry! The song about the warmth of the hills and the tide… or play the song I heard you play on the street that was full of sunlight.…”

  Clo could not hear the words, but she saw Cary’s mouth form the shapes: “I don’t remember!”

  “You do!” The water tore violently at the paddle in her hands. They were halfway up the mountain of water. Its top had begun to curl over them. She looked desperately at the boy who was lost in his own horror of falling again into the sea. “You do! Play the song you played on the shore about the sea, the song about the starry darkness… Anything,” she pleaded, though she knew he could no longer hear her. “Silver fish. Wings made with wax and string. A barrow-boat. Anything, Cary! Anything true!”

  They would not make it over the water-mountain; it was going to collapse over them. On them. They were falling with the falling of the wave; Cary shut his eyes. Clo pushed her paddle deep; she felt the depth of the ocean—the force of water that is full of salt and has no edge—wrench the oar from her: it was in her hands, then it was not. She grabbed the second paddle, but the water, gray, frothing, was all around them, over them. She saw Cary, in the moment before the collapse of froth and salt and air, put the flute to his lips: she heard a piping melody—then he was lost behind the wave. Clo gasped, struggling to breathe, to see.

  In darkness, in water, she thought she saw, in what space there was to think, something yawn over them—some dark shadow, boat bottom, gloomy craft. “Girly,” the barnacled darkness seemed to howl, “not again.” She could not breathe, she could not see, she coul
d not find air or light: she was lost beneath salt and terror and sea. She heard, under the roaring that had covered them, another trill, the high piping of a flute, but it could not be Cary—we must be, she thought in the darkness that was all water and lost air, we must be drowning.

  We will not, she thought—the last thing she thought before the darkness became simply darkness and all the roaring became a single high-pitched piping trill—we will not be fished from the sea.

  CHAPTER THE LAST

  IN WHICH OUR TALE ENDS

  THEY WERE NOT FISHED FROM THE SEA.

  Clo opened her eyes to darkness.

  To stars.

  Thousands upon thousands of stars. She felt herself rocking in the cradle of the universe. She stared into the measureless expanse swaying above her.

  The stars prickled in the darkness, and she shivered with the damp and cold.

  Had she fallen again into the grotto?

  Where was the fishing boat above her? Where were its paddles turning the waves? Where was the boy to fish her out with a net?

  She breathed, and the air was cold. Salty.

  She breathed.

  She was breathing.

  “Clo?”

  She felt a hand touch her shoulder.

  “Cary?” She grasped the hand. Yes, Cary. She could see the form of a boy beside her.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m… I’m not sure.” She considered her body. It felt wet and cold, but it felt like her own. Like she was within it. “I think so.” Then, hesitating, “Are you?”

  “Yes, I think so.… Where are we?”

  “I thought… I thought we might be in the sea. Where I fell into the grotto. Where you saved me with the net. See the stars? All the stars?”

  “Stars…,” breathed Cary. He tilted his chin and stared up into the swathes of light. “I had forgotten… it’s so…” His voice caught.

  She gestured in the darkness. “But…”

  “But?”

  “The stars, they’re simply there. They’re still; in the darkness, they’re still. Before, they swam like fish, and I was sinking through them.… Now… I don’t know where we are. There’s no fishing boat above. No one to fish us out of the sea.”