Fabrick

by Andrew Post

  Clyde’s hope spiked as he watched the very ends reach the underside of the hospital.

  “I’m going to try to let us down easy,” Nevele said, the entire right half of her face beginning to slide off from the bright red muscle underneath. With a flick of her chin, she moved the auburn cascade of her hair to cover most of what was happening to her.

  Clyde could see by how loose the skin on her arms was becoming that she had nearly every inch of her stitches out. His heart sank when she noticed him staring and pitched her head forward to get her hood up . . . and a slab of her face fell from her skull.

  Upon the elevator’s roof, at Nevele’s feet, was her cheek with a bit of upper lip.

  Flam looked positively mortified, apparently having entirely forgotten their dire situation.

  In chorus, Rohm asked, “Will your fibers support us? We were able to bite through them, and this elevator car, if it is of the standard manufacture, cannot be any less than three tons’ worth of steel. Add our weight and Mr. Flam’s, which must be at least another three hundred or so—”

  “Hey, now,” Flam said, shaking out of his trance. “It’s probably that much only because I’m covered in all you mice and your enormous brains.”

  “At any rate, do you think you’ll be able to hold on, Ms. Nevele?”

  She said nothing, even as another piece of her fell with a heavy slap.

  Clyde glanced, despite himself, and saw it was the bit of skin that framed her left eye, the empty socket staring up.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said, barely audibly. “Hang on tight. I think it’s about to—”

  A thunderous crack, louder than any that preceded it, and all of them felt the gravity at once.

  They screamed. Clyde dropped to all fours and gripped the top of the elevator car. Flam grabbed the cable, and Rohm loosed a yelp. The only one quiet among them was Nevele as she stepped to the central part of the elevator roof and stretched her arms as high as they would go.

  Clyde felt the rigid surface beneath him drop out in a moment of panic-inducing weightlessness. The elevator car and cable tumbled. How were they . . . floating?

  Then he understood. They were all caught within a net of Nevele’s stitches. For a moment he felt like laughing, like screaming just for the joy of being alive—but death wanted to give a curt reminder. The end of the cable snapped against itself like a whip directly next to his head.

  It trailed past, following the elevator. The entire thing violently crashed, a triumphant announcement of contact that had undoubtedly been heard far and wide.

  Between the net at her feet and the miles of stitching sprouting out of her hands, Nevele was suspended, slowly being pulled apart. She made small, agonized sounds—grunts, the occasional gasp through gritted teeth.

  Around them in the suspended net, more of her rained down.

  “I’ll try to . . . let us down . . . easy. But I can’t . . . make any promises, okay?” she said, her words barely comprehensible.

  Another piece of her tumbled out from under her hood, and Clyde was quick to reach out of the net to snatch it from the air. It was warm. He didn’t dare look at what he now clutched in his fist but just held on to it for her.

  Gradually, they touched down among the rubble that remained of the reception platform, down in a clearing among the tall, bent trees of the forest underneath Geyser. As soon as Clyde felt the solid ground, and heard Nevele’s boots crunch down onto the tall grass a second later, she let go from above and her miles of threads spooled back into her. She kept herself turned, face concealed. Once her threads were all back together, she took a few limping strides away.

  She squatted to pick up pieces from among the tall grass. It was as if someone had taken the open box of a jigsaw puzzle and cast the entire score into the air. Except here each unique piece wasn’t a bit of cloud or grass or kitten face. It was Nevele, her skin, the skin of the woman who’d just saved their lives. Still, as mortified as he wanted to be, he figured she wanted herself back together just as much. He gathered what he could find, accumulating a mass that required both hands to carry.

  “Look at that,” he heard Flam say to Rohm. “Gentleman to the end, him.”

  Clyde approached Nevele. “Uh, here you go.”

  Without facing him, Nevele reached behind her and snatched the pieces from his hands. She held one out in front of her, turning it in place to find which way was up. Once it was right, she brought the red side in under her hood. Clyde heard a sound like Miss Selby’s big sharp needles through Mr. Wilkshire’s leather riding coat—kind of like a tearing but more like a snap.

  Dawning on the fact that he was staring, Clyde walked away to let Nevele compose herself.

  A short distance away, frisk mice steadily leaped off Flam and formed Rohm’s feet, legs, torso, arms, and head. “That was terrifying,” Rohm said when unified once more.

  Flam stared upward, fists placed firmly on his hips, as if sizing up the corpse of a giant beast he had just vanquished. Clyde remembered that Flam had vented a great many personal trespasses before their jump and he was probably feeling much better about himself.

  Flam laughed, really pulling a good chortle up from his belly, and slapped his knee. “Oh, I can’t wait to write my uncle about that one! They don’t even have thrill rides like that in the amusement parks on Quib. Man, oh, man. I tell you, Nevele, you should charge money for that. I’d hate to see what you’d call a bad time, because that was a Meech-damned hoot and a half right there.”

  “I am truly glad you enjoyed it, Flam.” Nevele knelt to fetch an ear. “Really.”

  Chapter 20

  Two Different Reflections

  The suns set, and the group made their way into a comfortable clearing in the forest. After some flint pried free of Flam’s blunderbuss, which he was now referring to as “an expensive paperweight” with a glare at Nevele, they managed to start a small fire.

  All the while, Clyde couldn’t help but look into the canopy above. He could not recall seeing a forest of such dense and undisturbed quality since looking at the pictures of a book on forestry services Mr. Wilkshire had given him. The photos of the lumberjacks also came to mind. They were all the grizzled sort, with beards and coated in a fine patina of earth. Kind of like how we must look now, he thought. But as much dirt as they’d accumulated on themselves, it still didn’t feel like any hard work had actually been accomplished. Really, it was more like the grand version of stumbling about blindly and falling into mud puddles. Still, he wasn’t used to living like this: being dirty and tired all the time. But, for as much danger as they seemed to be in now and were jumping into voluntarily soon, he had to admit it was kind of a fun change of pace from life at the chateau.

  Finding a comfortable seat on a log, Flam opened his satchel and dispersed some of the food remaining from the market. He threw a hunk of cheese to Rohm, who dissolved around it and ravenously tore it to crumbs. “Your payment for the day’s service,” he said.

  He tossed a can of sprouts to Nevele, and they took turns using the can opener. She sat by the fire and dropped her hood, revealing her face. She looked to Clyde, who offered her the warmest smile he could muster. She held out the opened can of sprouts.

  He shook his head.

  Before he could say anything, Flam informed her, “He doesn’t eat.”

  “Ever?” Nevele gaped.

  “Nope,” Clyde said cheerfully.

  “Don’t you get tired, though?”

  “Actually, I feel pretty good at the moment.”

  “Must be part of your fabrick.” Nevele pulled free a soggy sprout from the syrup and let it drip into the can before eating it. “You must gain nourishment from confessions, if I had to guess. And I’m willing to bet you’re pretty full at the moment.” She glared at Flam across the fire. “By the way, Flam, I heard what you said. You threw up out a window because you were too fat and lazy to get up and go to the bathroom?”

  Flam shrugged and continued eating.

&n
bsp; “I don’t suppose you’ve heard of anyone quite like me before,” Clyde said to Nevele. He removed his tuxedo coat and laid it out flat near the fire. Sediment water was drying on its fine black material in muddy patches.

  “Yeah, you’re quite the unique one. I thought I knew all the basic types of weavers, but one that looks like you and does what you can do? That’s fresh to my ears.” She absently touched one of her ears then, as if making sure it was even with the other.

  “Where does it come from?” Clyde asked, looking at his narrow arms, the veins beneath the snow-white skin. “Does it come from our parents—in the blood?”

  “That’s like asking how, when you choose to watch a certain television program that you rarely ever watch, it’s always the same episode. Or how, when the birds migrate, they know which way is south.” She shot another glare across the fire. “Or why the Mouflons are a bunch of slobs.”

  Flam was clearly too invested in eating to allow any brainpower for a comeback. He merely picked some crumbs out of the fur on his chest and shrugged.

  “My parents weren’t like this,” Nevele said, picking another sprout out of the tin. “I can assure you of that. Kind of an indignity where I come from, a couple of well-to-do business folk giving birth to a couple of . . . well, a fabrick weaver child.”

  “What sort of company do they run?” Flam asked.

  “They were in freight, moving cargo from one rock to another, eighty thousand vessels in their fleet altogether,” she said with a touch of pride. “You don’t suppose these cans of sprouts got to Gleese on their own, do you? These things don’t grow anywhere in this system.”

  “Well, I didn’t know that, but I know they sure are tasty,” Flam said, upending his can and drinking the syrup. He tossed it, once emptied, to Rohm, who took turns scurrying within it, lapping up residue.

  “Do you still see them? Your parents?” Clyde asked Nevele.

  “Not really. Actually, that’s a lie. Forgive me. I haven’t seen or spoken to them in years.” She hugged her knees. “We got along pretty well up until my talent started to become kind of hard to ignore. I was just a kid, and—”

  “Careful. Choose thy words carefully,” Flam warned, adopting a ye-olde accent.

  Nevele grinned. “It’s fine, Flam. I’m not confessing anything.” She looked at Clyde. “I remember I was at the playground on the monkey bars. My hand slipped, and I skinned my knee. Well, actually, I cut it. It bled and bled. Went home and told my mother, and we went to the doctor to get it looked at. He patched it up—but it didn’t heal, even after several weeks. It didn’t bleed anymore, but the wound wouldn’t close. He decided to try stitches, and that’s when things got kind of . . . out of hand. That night I was picking at it, as any child would do, and I saw that just by thinking about it, I could make the end of the stitch move. I became fascinated by it. I wondered if it was just on my knee that I could do this.”

  She stopped herself for a moment, broke eye contact with Clyde, looking into the fire. “Where I’m from, just the mention of fabrick is frowned upon. So, naturally, I kept it to myself. I gave myself another knick playing outside a week later and didn’t tell my mother about this one. I got her sewing kit and stitched it up myself—here.” She pulled up her sleeve, and there was the mark, with some brown twine running back and forth over the inch-long gouge. “And I decided to leave it alone. Summer ended, and back to school I went, afraid of anyone learning my secret. Either way, as it happens, it didn’t take long for the girls to begin pestering me why I was wearing long-sleeved clothes all the time. One day they got bold and ganged up on me after school, tore the sleeves off my sweater, and saw. I could tell it scared them, but still they made fun of me. Having grown up with a cruel arse for a brother, I knew how to fight back before it got worse.

  “And as anyone does when they stand up for themselves, I got in trouble, naturally. They believed in lashing there, at my school.” She shook her head. “It took only that one time, and they—as well as I—got to learn what I could really do . . .” She continued, a slight hitch in her throat, “Since I don’t want to confess much more than that to save myself the jinxing, I’ll leave it at this: the third time I was brought in to the counselor’s office for standing up for myself, I accepted that lash.”

  Clyde looked at her stitches on her arm and banding around her knees. Most of the visible stitching was the same color, a warm brown shade like tanned leather. “It’s all . . .”

  “Most of it, yeah. I’ve replaced a lot of it over the years, added some, taken some out that’s started to fray. Put this one in because I liked the color.” She thumbed a strip of sky-blue twine and pulled it out to show them. When she let it go, it cinched back up tight again.

  Flam took another can from his satchel and began working the opener around its lid. “Now isn’t that the happy story?”

  Nevele glared at the Mouflon. “Again, at least I didn’t vomit out of any windows.”

  Clyde interjected before their argument could get stirred up again. “Did they whip your face, too?” Clyde said, wincing. “I can’t imagine, even at a boarding school, that they’d do something as cruel as that.”

  “These came later, unfortunately,” she said, tracing one line that ran the length of her cheek from earlobe to chin. “But that’s a story for another fire. What about you? Do you have parents? Have a delightful upbringing like me?”

  Clyde shook his head, listened to the crickets chirp for a moment. “If I had parents, I don’t remember them. I recall my first master. I assume he was here, in Geyser, but I cannot say for certain. I was kept inside, behind closed doors with no windows, all the way up until Mr. Wilkshire. And even there, I wasn’t allowed in the front gardens. I was permitted aboveground in the house only when his children weren’t home. We used to stroll around the back gardens and discuss all sorts of things. Not just confessions but about life. He often said he wanted to let me go one day, after he had said all he needed to. Having met you, Nevele, it makes me happy to learn there are fabrick weavers who live by their own accord.”

  “Not so fast there,” she said icily. “Some of us get employment, of sorts. Like me, working at the palace and all. But, really, when you have a specific talent and men who wish to utilize it, they may offer you a wage but you’re still owned, by one definition or another. I’ve heard of others who were kept like you, squirreled away in basements under lock and key. I never heard of any that changed hands like you, though. How many men have claimed to be your masters?”

  “Too many to count.”

  “How old are you?”

  Clyde shrugged, staring into the fire. He wasn’t feeling as cheerful anymore.

  “Truly one for the record books.” Nevele finished the can of sprouts and handed it to Rohm. “But that’s fabrick for you. It works in weird and wonderful ways. Never the same for any two gifted with it. I heard they were studying it somewhere, trying to see what made it develop so suddenly after no sign of it in generations of families.”

  “Toxic rays from the suns.” Flam giggled.

  “Do you ever say anything useful?”

  “I have my moments—when necessary.”

  “How about now? Care to tell us your story?” Nevele snapped. “You sure have a comment on everything. Why don’t you open up a little so we can poke fun?”

  “Not much to say,” Flam said, straightening. He crossed his arms and cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, his tone was noticeably more rigid. “I was a normal pup, like any other Mouflon. I was taught right and wrong, learned to herd and farm and all that boring business. Was left to set off on my own, see what I could make of myself. Traveled from one world to the next when I could afford passage.” He waved his hand about, lazily indicating different planets in the various systems he’d traveled. “I’d buy a new auto and start all over again, just roving around, getting into scrapes and weaseling my way out of them.”

  Nevele interrupted. “Never interested in making any of the many wo
rlds you laid your hooves upon a better place? Never gave a squat about anything besides yourself?” She took up a fresh log and cast it into the fire, embers spraying. “Typical Mouflon.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean? Because I can tolerate a lot of shite, girl, but when it comes to bigotry—bigotry against my people, well . . . I’m easy to upset then.”

  “There’s no bigotry about it. Simple fact: you’re all the same,” Nevele spat, backhanding the air in his direction. “You all think you’re the biggest and toughest things on the planet. Why should you get involved in anything besides tracking down your next meal or trying to pull a fast one on someone? You know, I got a couple of marks on me that are thanks to your kind.”

  “So you’re going to make a sweeping generalization of my species just because of a few bad apples?”

  “Well, you’re certainly not doing much to prove the bushel otherwise.”

  Clyde sat up. “Hey, let’s not fight, okay?”

  “Get a load of the Stitcher. Thinks she knows everything just because she had a rough upbringing. You go ahead and tell me about tough childhoods after you see your father murdered, okay? You tell me what it’s like when you watch the most honest, hardworking, fun-loving chap you’ve ever known in your whole life gunned down right in front of your eight-year-old eyes.”

  Nevele appeared struck. “I . . . didn’t know.”

  “No, you didn’t know. Just keep running your mouth, lady.” He folded his arms and turned away.

  Rohm finished eating and reassembled. “I couldn’t help but overhear. I apologize for your tumultuous experiences, but it appears a squabble has broken out among our party. Perhaps it’d be a good time to get some rest. We’re all very tired. Having several grumpy individuals among myself at the moment, I know we could use the sleep.”