Fantasy Magazine Issue 58, Women Destroy Fantasy! Special Issue

by Fantasy Magazine

  “Is she a god? They don’t usually like that sort of idea.”

  Arakhnë was almost frowning.

  “There have been signs,” she admitted. “They say pillars of flame have been seen in the countryside. And all the rats ran away towards Kynestris. But it may just be talk.” She leaned over the bed. “Let’s finish this wine, darling. You won’t dream at all after drinking this.”

  • • • •

  It was midday and the sun flashed over the shining tapestries. A dull ache gnawed at the back of Ann’s skull. She lay feeling slightly sick and slightly dizzy and mostly exhausted, until a savoury wisp of scent prompted her to feel hungry as well.

  With some effort, she sat up. The roar of light that flooded her head almost flung her onto her back; she set her feet on the floor and waited for it to subside.

  The wine jar had been refilled. There was food on the table and Ann, working methodically through dried figs and bread, tasted stony soil and barley roasted before it was ground. Her faintness was passing. She looked for water and found none, then for her Vitulian clothes, which were gone too. Not even a shift remained in her bags. Her money was still there, as was the only notebook she had brought with her. She had left so much behind in Florens.

  She recovered the scarlet peplos from the bed and tried to remember how Arakhnë wore hers. The top of the cloth doubled down over the breasts, she thought, and then it was wrapped lengthways around the body. She struggled to pin it up over her shoulders. She felt naked. Even fastened with a girdle, the dress was flimsy and insecure.

  But she would look less foreign. Looking foreign only made people bother her. She put on the slippers and left the room.

  As soon as she went out, she felt better. The house had a loggia above an inner court like Ann’s house in Florens, although the windows, of course, were not barred and there were no inaccessible rooms set aside for servants and guards. Down in the courtyard, a great many people seemed to be coming and going. Arakhnë sat by a table laden with wine and cakes, the fanciest of Ann’s three gowns lying over her lap.

  She jumped up when she saw Ann, her eyes widening. “Anna, darling!” she exclaimed. “If I’d known you were awake, I would have come to help you dress.”

  “This is wrong?”

  “No—no, you look very fine. You are a beautiful woman, darling.” She twitched the peplos over Ann’s shoulders, unpinning and repinning with busy fingers, and kissed Ann’s cheek. “Did you eat? Have a cake. Come and walk with me in the garden.”

  It was a second courtyard planted with grass and climbing roses. The buds already nodded among the thorns. Arakhnë glanced around with pleasure. “They have no idea of gardens here,” she told Ann. “In Pallatinë, every great house has a garden. They learned that from Khivrenté, which is a great empire beyond the desert.” She must have caught Ann’s interest. “You know of Khivrenté?”

  “My grandfather told me stories. I wanted to go there one day.”

  “And then the wicked duke imprisoned you. I see.” She pressed Ann’s hand. “Darling, you must forgive me for stealing your clothes away. I thought you would want me to wash them. And I wanted to see what Vitulian cloth is like. It is very lovely. But do you not weave even a little true-silk into it?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t make it. What’s true-silk?”

  Arakhnë seemed taken aback. “But how did you—when your dreams appeared last night, how did that happen?”

  Ann shrugged. Standing in Arakhnë’s garden, as small as it was and however shallow the soil, made her feel like a depression in wet sand, filling up effortlessly with energy.

  She looked around for a rosebud. It opened under her fingers, spreading its damp pink petals to the sun. “Like that,” she said.

  Arakhnë’s mouth fell open.

  “Come and sit down with me,” she said, faintly. She drew Ann down to the grass. “Do you not weave at all? Or spin?”

  “No.”

  “You are a remarkable woman. You must have made that duke sorry he ever saw you.”

  The last time Ann had seen Pietro, he had been dying in the rain. She had been trying to forget that moment for months. It still surfaced too often in the depths of the night: his curls, his clothes, his laboured breathing. How, even at the end, he had struggled to smile.

  A heavy lassitude crept over Ann. Arakhnë’s voice seemed to come from very far away: “What happened?”

  Ann closed her eyes.

  “He loved me,” she said. “What happened to the first Arakhnë, the weaver?”

  “Ah, her. There are two stories. I like the tale they tell in Pallatinë better, but the mothers are very strict in Phaiakia, much stricter than in Pallatinë. Arakhnë was a poor girl who thought she could weave better than Pallas. Well, there was a competition and Arakhnë lost, of course, and she was so upset she hanged herself from her own loom. Then Pallas felt sorry for the girl, so she turned her into a spider. It seemed like a kindness to a goddess, you know?”

  “It’s not your real name, is it?”

  “No, no. I left that behind in Phaiakia.” She knotted a filament of gold around Ann’s wrist and kissed Ann’s palm. Ann’s eyes clouded over. “Your hair is so fine, Anna. What would happen if I cut it for you?”

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It was just a thought. You look tired. Sleep.”

  • • • •

  In the dark, she woke to find Arakhnë bending over her. “Get up, darling!” Arakhnë said. There was wine on her breath and she wore a great deal of jewellery. Pipes and stringed instruments jangled below. “Two of the archons are here. They want to meet you.”

  Ann’s head was too heavy for her shoulders. “No.”

  “Come on, Anna, darling, just for me.” She had a fresh peplos over her arm. This one was blue. “It won’t take long, I promise. And you must want supper.”

  She poured wine before she dressed Ann and drank most of it too. “You’re going to be so beautiful,” she said, fastening a heavy collar set with carnelian around Ann’s neck. She gathered Ann’s hair up, knotting and twisting. “You look so slim, darling. But you’re so heavy.”

  “I turned my bones to stone. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  Arakhnë’s breath caught. “I should paint your face,” she muttered. “But there isn’t enough light. No. You look lovely as you are.” She took Ann’s hand, then peered with sudden concern at Ann’s bare wrist. “Where did it go?”

  “What?”

  “Just sit down, darling. Just give me a moment.” She disappeared, reappearing a few minutes later with a length of gold thread wrapped around her fingers. “For good luck,” she said, tying it around Ann’s wrist. “Come.”

  Ann followed her through a golden blur. She could hardly remember where she was any more, let alone what she was doing, or where to put her feet.

  The noise was unbearable. It was a party and it was happening in a room painted to look like a lagoon, the walls awash with sand and sea shells. There were considerably more than two men there. They lay on couches, talking and drinking and picking at dishes on low tables. Three pretty musicians played by the door.

  “Sit here, darling,” Arakhnë said, leading Ann to a couch. Ann sat down. “What can I get you? Wine? Food?”

  Ann stared at her. Arakhnë she could see, but the other faces merged and blurred, voices coalescing into a deafening hum. The painted waves on the walls seemed to tower higher. Arakhnë ran a finger along Ann’s collarbone, and licked her fingertip, and faintness roared in Ann’s ears. Her face was hot. Everything felt unreal.

  She tried to find her way through the fog while the conversation swam around her. Sharp Dorikan words flashed backwards and forwards and Arakhnë, halfway down another cup of wine, gestured with both hands, and Ann thought it might all be a dream. She might really be asleep still in Arakhnë’s bed. Out of the flood of sound, with perfect clarity, a man said, “How did he imprison her?” and Ann stood up.

&nbs
p; “I want to go,” she said. Something cut into her wrist; she snapped it, discarding it unthinkingly. Arakhnë stared up at her with round eyes and a round, startled mouth. “Now.”

  Arakhnë jumped up.

  “Of course, darling, if that’s what you want,” she said, so fast she tripped over her words. She took a lamp from one of the tables. “Why don’t we go out to the garden? You remember, it’s quiet, you like it there.”

  The sounds of the dinner party could still be heard in the garden. It was cool, though, and dark, and Ann’s head began to clear. She filled her throat with the freshness of grass and rose leaves. Salt flew like snow in the sea breeze.

  Arakhnë set down the lamp on a chair. “There, darling. Better?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am glad.” She took Ann’s hands, kissing each of Ann’s palms in turn. “You are so lovely, Anna. Will you make another rose bloom for me? I think it would look very well in your hair.”

  It opened with a burst of scent that flooded the garden. “Beautiful,” Arakhnë said. There was a tremor in her voice. “I would never have thought it possible. But you can do impossible things, I know.” She took a breath. “They say those who die of the plague in Vitulia get up again. That it began in Florens, where the duke kept a witch chained up in a tower. That now the dead walk the fields and the cities. That they can fight, or be herded like cattle. Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you do it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Show me,” Arakhnë said. “Look, show me with this.”

  It was a magpie. It had been killed recently, so recently that its feathers had not begun to loosen and it smelt of meat rather than corruption. Ann turned it over in her hands. There were still mites under the feathers. The wings splayed out, white and black, and the sad, shrivelled feet curled against her fingers.

  The stench of Florens, at the end, rose up in her memory like an angry ghost. It had been early summer and the greasy heat mingling with rot had shimmered in the air. Ann had walked through it blindly and breathed it in and used it to make the dead things get up as she passed by. Just like opening rosebuds. But rosebuds were as fresh as any other green thing, whereas death tasted of decaying meat. One or two would not have been so bad. In Florens, the dead had numbered in the tens of thousands. Swimming in power, Ann had raised them all, and then struggled not to drown.

  They had rotted. On their feet, and all through the city.

  Revulsion surged in Ann’s throat. She cast the bird away compulsively, her skin crawling. It spread its wings and disappeared into the dark.

  Arakhnë sank to her knees.

  “You are truly remarkable, Anna,” she said in a low tone. “You make me think of the saying that only a god or a beast can live outside society. You can restore life to the dead. What do you need city walls for? Are you a god?”

  “It’s not life. It’s just—movement.”

  “Is there a difference? You can do such things. And yet that terrible duke held you in chains. I don’t understand. How could anyone imprison you?”

  Pietro might have got up from his chair. But Ann had burnt his body instead. She wanted to think of him when she had first met him, as he had been through the long, comfortable years she had lived in his house, in his city, but it was the dying Pietro she remembered instead, the man she had gone to save from the mob, the Pietro who had clung to her and told her to burn him and let him go.

  Just movement. “He didn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He didn’t imprison me. He loved me. Of course he couldn’t have kept me there if I didn’t want to stay.”

  Arakhnë’s eyes were very wide. “Could anyone?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  Arakhnë got up slowly.

  “Come to bed,” she said. “I’m sorry. I should never have woken you.”

  • • • •

  The dead magpie scraped its beak against the open shutters. Ann observed it through a soporific haze. The feathers that should be white shone bright as brass, and even the magpie’s black tail had a metallic tinge. A silk braid an inch wide glowed around each of Ann’s wrists. Through the window, Ann saw only yellow sky.

  She was halfway through a yawn that was taking months when Arakhnë burst in. “You’re awake!” Arakhnë said, or seemed to say, since her voice sounded distorted, like someone speaking through water. A cup shook in her hands, three quarters full of wine she had probably been drinking already. “Anna, I have to tell you something. But maybe you should drink this first.”

  It was the old vintage. Arakhnë watched her drink with reddened eyes. “Why don’t we go down to the garden?” she said. “Come on. Get up. You like my garden. It might be better there.”

  The golden air was as heavy as water. It thickened as Ann descended, her head swimming, until she found herself in a garden where she struggled to breathe and all the leaves were gold. The magpie peered down at them from the roof. Arakhnë seemed not to see it. “Anna,” she said, pressing Ann’s hands. “Sit, darling. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I wish this hadn’t happened. I want you to know that. I want your forgiveness.”

  “For what?”

  Arakhnë closed her honey-coloured eyes. It looked as if she had been crying.

  “Darling,” she said. “You never asked me again. Ask me now.”

  It took Ann a moment, or possibly an hour, to realise what she meant. “Your talent,” she said. Her foot was numb; she shifted position. “It must be . . . something to do with cloth. True-silk. What is that?”

  Arakhnë’s laughter frayed in the middle. “Oh, darling,” she said. “It’s our secret. The secret of the women of Phaiakia. You don’t know how much people will pay for just a skein of it. Yes. You’re right. I spin true-silk.”

  “What does it do?”

  “That depends on the woman, darling. We all spin different threads.”

  Ann’s wrists burned. “It makes it hard to think,” she said.

  She stripped off first one silk band, then the other. Most of the pressure weighing down on her lifted abruptly. The edges of things were still gilded, but then the gleaming borders of Ann’s peplos must be shot through with true-silk too.

  She tossed the bands to the magpie, which swooped out of the garden with a triumphant squawk. Arakhnë’s eyes filmed over with tears.

  “No,” Ann said. She thrust her fingers into the grass, seeking the shallow layer of earth and pebbles between the roots. In a moment, she would be able to think clearly. “It’s more than that. What is it?”

  Arakhnë kissed her fingertips and pressed them to Ann’s cheek.

  “It’s useful to be loved,” she said simply. “For a stranger in a strange city. I am sorry.”

  The discarded wrist-bands were pure silk, but the peplos was mostly wool. Ann turned up her hem to the light, looking for colours and patterns. Cloth was not something she had thought about much before. She regretted that suddenly. Now she knew what to look for, she could feel the heat flickering along the golden border. “It’s very good. How do you do it?”

  “Darling?”

  “True-silk.” She glanced up and found Arakhnë looking at her with a peculiar expression. The sweep of Arakhnë’s hair shone in the sun. “Oh!” Ann said. “It’s your hair. You spin it from your hair. Don’t you?”

  Arakhnë opened her mouth, then sat looking bewildered. “Aren’t you cross?”

  “I never heard about this before. Will you teach me how to spin?”

  “There’s something else,” Arakhnë said. “When my hair turned gold instead of white, the mothers knew. You spin your colour into the silk, we say. But I . . . I found how to replenish it. I killed my husband, Anna. I never wanted to get old. And outside Phaiakia, no one knows you can drink the life from your lovers.” She spread her hands helplessly. “Forgive me.”

  Ann, who had already known it, drew in a burning breath. She thought of her occasional faintness, especially in Arakhnë’s
bed.

  “Don’t do it again,” she said. “I wouldn’t like it.”

  “I know, darling. I’m sorry.” Arakhnë’s eyes welled up. “I thought you could stay here. I thought you could do such things for us. For Khelikë. We have enemies. And you have such power . . . but Anna, darling, you frighten me. You frighten the archons. You can do such things, and how could anyone stop you? You broke every spell I laid on you. You can bring back the dead. We thought your duke had kept you in Florens, and if he could then it must be possible, but it wasn’t true. He didn’t. We can’t control you. What if you raised an army here?”

  “I don’t want to. Why would I?”

  Arakhnë rubbed her wet eyes. “That’s what I said, darling, but the archons insisted. You have to understand, I only live here. I’m not a citizen. I don’t have a citizen’s rights.”

  “So?”

  Arakhnë leaned forwards and pinched Ann’s ankle.

  “Did you feel that?” she said. “When the cold reaches your heart, it’s the end.”

  Ann thrust her arms into the earth up to her elbows. She was very much awake suddenly and seeing more clearly than she had for weeks. Hemlock, she thought.

  In a moment, she would be furious. Numbness tickled her knees and ran its cold fingers up her inside thigh. Below the earth, the volatile Dorikan marlstone, shoving and shrugging, sang its cracked song. She reached down to it.

  “I am so sorry,” Arakhnë was saying. “It was in the wine. I thought it might not be so bad to die in a garden. Forgive me.”

  The rosebuds crumbled, then the glossy leaves. Remotely, Ann was aware of the grass collapsing into dust around her. Energy filled her from mouth to stomach, from her crackling hair to her bloodless toes. Sensation flooded back into her legs. She rolled her head on her shoulders, feeling the fault lines dance deep in the earth.

  She got up. Arakhnë rocked back, pressing both hands to her drowned mouth.

  Ann’s head was humming. “Tell me,” she said, “what happened to the second Arakhnë, the one you liked better? Did she win her contest?” Arakhnë seemed unable to speak. Ann brought down her heel on a fault line, hard. The ground jumped. “Tell me.”