Weaving Man: Book One of The Prophecy Series

by Tove Foss Ford

  So I’m hoping that it’ll be a valtz or javot, one dance looking away over her shoulder and then pass her on to the next unfortunate. But no, the citified orchestra starts trying to play a holta. It’s pathetic, toot-toot, no life in it or anything. I’m wondering how I’m going to get through this, with more of Ufronia showing than should be and all that bouncing around the holta calls for. I gird my loins.

  We get started, I’m keeping my steps very tame, looking anywhere but at her, so I won’t start staring or laughing. Or get my eye knocked out. Now, you’re a buxom girl, so is Eiren, but when you do the holta, the real holta, you don’t end up falling out of your bodice because you dress properly. Well, to my horror, Ufronia is popping out of her dress more and more with each step and she’s smiling and fluttering her eyes at me. Every time I swing her or we come to the jumping part, she’s just about to be naked to the waist. And in these stupid city holtas you don’t change partners so I can’t pass her along and flee.

  The dance starts getting faster, so all these city folks start hooting. They don’t give a good healthy yell like we do in the holta, they let out these little constipated yips and hoo-hoos that are the funniest thing you ever heard. I’ve been watching the floor so I don’t see Ufronia’s blubberous mounds, but when she lets out this wailing little howl, I look.

  Willow, her right guhzonker is just about to flap loose from its mooring and she’s hooting like a flatulent steam whistle. Worst of all, she’s waving her arms around over her head. I’m dancing along, biting my tongue, watching her right business thrashing out of the top of her dress like a fish flopping around in a net. Then the music stepped up a notch and Ufronia really started to prance.

  Both her mighty udders are bouncing and flapping up and down, in and out of her corset like a couple of hopfootle balls. I’m getting a view of them that only a nursing baby should have and I’m absolutely about to bust a blood vessel trying not to howl. She capers on, with her appendages flying up under her chin and Willow, I have wonderful control but nobody, not even Menders, could have stayed quiet.

  I started laughing, haw haw haw haw, and just then the music stopped, and my voice was the only sound in the whole damned room. I couldn’t stop, I just went on and on. Ufronia’s bust had settled back into its casing, so nobody could really tell why I was doubled over and roaring. She gets mad and asks me what the hells I’m laughing at.

  I told her I had the name of a good dressmaker in Erdstrom who could make a dress and corset so a girl didn’t rise up out of them like the moons of Eirdon. She went mad and started calling me names. I just kept laughing and told her it wasn’t like I’d just reached in and given them a jiggle without so much as a by your leave. She’d asked me to dance and then had them bouncing into the daylight and practically hitting me in the face.

  Well, she goes and tells her mamma. It turns out her father is some bloody General and next thing I know, the Commandant has me up on the carpet in his office. So I explain the entire thing to him. He says he understands that there was provocation, but that I still had to stand fourteen days barracks detention for conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. That I was expected to be gentlemanly under all circumstances.

  So I left and what do I hear but him laughing his head off in his office! So I said out loud that he ought to confine himself to quarters for fourteen days, and he hears and asks me if I want to be confined for the whole month.

  It’s turned out pretty well though. Being confined to quarters has gotten me out of having to do maneuvers in this awful heat we’ve been having, so I’ve been working on some new sea chanties to play on my cromar.

  So if the Commandant is reading this, nah nah nah nah! And I still say if he’d been dancing with She of the Massive Unrestrained Chest Balloons, he’d have laughed too.

  That is my tale of woe, my dear. Not quite a badly broken arm, but my heart is sore. Do write to me to ease my pain.

  Love,

  Bumpy

  Beneath Hemmett’s scrawl was a postscript in an entirely different hand:

  Dear Princess Katrin,

  Your friend Hemmett has told me of your injury. I wished to convey my sympathies to you, and my wishes for a speedy recovery. He is weathering his confinement well, and it will probably not be necessary for you to weep on anyone’s neck.

  Faithfully yours,

  Commandant Komroff

  ***

  To Cadet Greinholz

  Sirrah,

  I, Her Royal Highness, Katrin Morghenna, Princess of the Royal House of Mordania, wish to inform you that I am in receipt of your vulgar communication, and am appalled at your lack of gallantry in describing the elastic properties of the goddesslike bosom of your fair dancing partner. Your crude words and offensive turns of phrase have caused me to fall upon my sofa in a faint more than once. If your missive had reached me when I was on royal progress, doubtless I would have been borne home senseless in a cab.

  “Why, low person, would you include such vile and crude phrases as ‘guhzonker’, ‘blubberous mounds’, and ‘massive udders’ in a missive to a fragile and delicate lady of the blood royal? Know you not that such offensive images are as thorns in my pure and unsullied mind? I am highly offended, sir, and hesitate even to give you that honorific, as it is so painfully obvious that you are not worthy of the courtesy.

  “In future, low fellow, your communications with me must be of a more respectful nature, concomitant with my exalted rank and superior qualities. I would suggest that you have them accompanied by a minstrel or small musical ensemble, so that I may hear sweet melodies while reading your humble and properly delicate communications. Mark my words, or risk my wrath, oh spawn of the common soil.”

  “Petra, that looks like I wrote it myself with my bad hand,” Katrin grinned. She was still unable to write, as her arm was encased in the rigid leather splint. Petra had volunteered to act as her secretary.

  “What am I supposed to do with you saying ridiculous things like that and having to write ‘blubberous mounds’? Blubberous isn’t even a word. I’m not even sure how many ‘b’s it has in it!” Petra sputtered, wiping at her eyes.

  “Three, I think,” Katrin laughed. “Hemmett just makes words up when he can’t think of one. Like ‘guhzonker’. Get off me, Dara.” Katrin’s boarhound was trying to insinuate herself onto the sofa where Katrin and Petra were seated, hoping she would get a chance to chew Katrin’s splint. “You can’t chew it. No! Bad girl!”

  Dara gazed at them with grieving eyes and Katrin relented, holding out her leather encased arm. Dara began to nibble the end of the splint.

  “Ugh,” Petra said, picking up Hemmett’s letter and perusing it. “I don’t know how you can let her do that.”

  “I’m hoping that she’ll eventually eat all of it and I’ll be free,” Katrin answered.

  “It must not be hurting much anymore then.”

  “It still hurts like fury sometimes but I’ve learned not to mind that it hurts,” Katrin explained, making Petra give her a puzzled look.

  When Katrin could no longer force herself to swallow the bitter pain remedy but felt as if the bones in her injured arm were being ground in a gristmill, Menders had taught her how to deal with the pain without going into the healing trance.

  “It’s a matter of learning not to mind the pain,” he said, “but without the trance.”

  Katrin had looked at him in confusion. “How can anyone do that?”

  “It’s a similar discipline, but you don’t leave your body. You isolate your pain and don’t allow yourself to mind it.”

  “Sort of like ignoring a headache?”

  “Very much so. You’ve seen me use my hands to put nails into walls and trees, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.” It was something Menders just did, she’d never really thought of it much. He held the nail in his fist, his arm moved so fast you could hardly see it and the nail was driven into the wood.

  “Don’t you think it hurts?” He’d looked at her i
ntensely.

  “I just thought your hands were strong enough…” She realized that no matter how hard and strong his hands were, it had to hurt. “It does hurt, doesn’t it?”

  “It does indeed. But it’s an exercise in mental discipline. I can separate myself from the pain enough that I can drive a nail into a tree trunk with only my hand. Good practice should I ever have to endure pain in a situation where there’s no way to avoid it.”

  “Like the dancers!” Katrin had said suddenly. “They’re in pain, but they still dance!”

  “Exactly. You put the pain in a particular place in your mind, wall it off, and ignore it. You go on with what you’re doing. The pain is there, you feel it, but you don’t fear it and you don’t mind it. Harder to do than the healing trance, but in the long run much more practical.”

  “How do I do it then?”

  “I can’t tell you, because what works for me won’t work for you. You’ll have to find how your own mind can deal with it. Find your own place in your mind. With practice you’ll find that you’ll be able to do it very easily.”

  Katrin found her own place and was able to manage, even when her arm ached incessantly.

  Katrin read over the letter alongside Petra and they were giggling helplessly when they realized Franz was standing behind them with Menders.

  “Oh! I’m sorry!” Katrin laughed, turning to see that Franz was holding an enormous pair of shears. “Decided to become a barber, Doctor Franz?”

  “And what are you pretty maidens up to with all this snickering and hooting?” Franz grinned, brandishing the shears. “Noses will be snipped if you don’t tell.”

  Petra, who wasn’t quite accustomed to the varying forms of madness that ran rampant at The Shadows looked dubious, but Katrin burst out laughing.

  “Defacement of the royal person will net you a hefty fine, sirrah,” she told him.

  “You don’t frighten me, because I know for a fact that you didn’t have a stitch on when you were born,” Franz replied. “Speaking of which, it’s time to divest you of a part of your raiment.”

  “Oh good!” Katrin realized that he’d come to cut the leather splint off her arm. “Hurry!”

  “I would, if there wasn’t a bear on the sofa with you,” Franz said, putting down his bag and nudging Dara, who snuggled down tighter, as if this would make her invisible.

  “Dara, get down,” Menders said in his “dogs will now obey” tone.

  Dara slunk to the floor and stretched out full length, trying to be heartbroken.

  Franz settled in place.

  “Now, this isn’t going to smell very good,” he warned, having Katrin position her arm against his thigh, while working his evil looking shears under the first fastening. “It will have absorbed a lot of sweat. And have you been chewing on it?”

  “Dara does.”

  “Ah. And what was all that tittering going on when we came in?”

  “A letter to Hemmett.” Katrin watched intently as Franz cut the first three lacings. Then the smell hit her.

  Petra thrust the completed letter at Menders and fled, gagging.

  “Oh gods!” Katrin gasped, trying to hold her breath. “I’m not dirty!”

  “It isn’t that, little one, it’s just all the old dead skin and such – aghk!” Menders, who had kindly tried to be unaffected by the stench, fled across the room and opened the window as far as it would go, leaning out. Franz, going red in the face from holding his breath, cut faster.

  “Doctor dear, you’re hurting me,” Katrin said, trying not to breathe.

  “I’m sorry, it’s the stink or the pain.”

  “Go, go, hurry!” Katrin cried as the smell got worse. She turned away, pressing her face into the cushions, trying to breathe through her ears.

  “Just a few more – ugh!” Franz said, having made the mistake of talking so much that he needed to inhale. He sliced through the last ties and gently forced the hard leather cuff open until it cracked. At the window, Menders retched and tried to cover it with a cough. Katrin wiggled her arm desperately and was free.

  Dara plunged in, snatched the malodorous splint from Franz’s hand, and charged out of the suite with it. Franz cut Katrin’s bandages as fast as he could. Menders grabbed them as he held them out and tossed them out the window.

  Just then, Eiren breezed into the suite, home from teaching.

  “Hello darlings! Oh my gods, what are you doing, what is that smell!” She fled into her room, and could be seen holding a fragrant sachet to her nose while she tried to open a window with one hand. Menders dashed in to help her, explaining that it was the splint that smelled and not some very overripe dead rat.

  Franz bumbled up, heaved open all the other windows and stood at one, drawing in huge breaths. Katrin couldn’t help giggling. Poor man, he’d had the worst of it.

  Suddenly Borsen and Tomar could be heard yelling from their workroom.

  “What the… get that daft dog out of here, oh my Gods, what is that thing?” Tomar’s voice had the edge of horror on it that could only be produced by a tailor who was having his precious, pristine bolts of cloth near to being touched by a reeking leather splint.

  “Dara, give it to me… oh no, get out of here, get out!” There was a scrabbling of claws and then a slamming door, followed by some expert swearing from Borsen and the sound of windows being thrown open.

  Dara’s progress through the house could be heard, as she ran back down the stairs to the ground floor, causing a diatribe from Cook.

  “What the hells do you have, you silly dog? Oh! Get out! Get out! Ordstrom, that dog has something dead, help! Get away from the food!”

  Dara then romped with her prize into the Men’s Wing, as a cacophony of slammed doors, opened windows and much masculine shouting erupted.

  “She’s got something dead!”

  “Get it!”

  “You get it!”

  “I’m not touching that!”

  “Oh hells, she’s gone into the Family Wing. She’s in Kaymar and Ifor’s suite! Get out! Dara!”

  “Get a broom, poke her, she’ll come out.”

  “She bit the bloody broomstick in half! What is that thing?”

  There was a doorslam.

  “They’re going to love that dog being in there with whatever that is.”

  Kaymar could be heard next.

  “What have you bastards done now and why is it our suite?” he yelled.

  “It wasn’t us, it’s that bloody dog of Katrin’s with a dead grundar!”

  Kaymar must have decided to evict Dara and her grisly prize, because a door could be heard opening as Kaymar yelled;

  “Dara! Come out of here! Oh my…”

  “Grundar shit, he’s fainted!”

  “Get out of the way!”

  “Kaymar Shvalz bloody fainted? The toughest bastard in the world fainted!”

  “Get him out in the air! Where’s the dog? Oh gods, it’s under their bed!”

  Katrin ran over to the window closest to the Men’s Wing, laughing, and yelled, “Get my splint back from her! I want to wrap it up and send it to Hemmett!”

  There was ringing silence from the Men’s Wing, and then a tentative voice, Haakel’s, drifted up.

  “That’s your splint? Darlin’, do you still have an arm left, or did it rot off?”

  ***

  “I’m afraid in light of the splint incident, your protestations to Hemmett about your frail delicacy pale a bit,” Menders said to Katrin.

  “I only wish I could show him my hideous arm as evidence of me pining away,” Katrin replied, looking ruefully at her shriveled limb as Eiren gently bathed it.

  “It’ll look normal again soon,” Franz told her. “It’s being closed up for weeks in that splint that did it. Imagine a foot that you kept a shoe on for six weeks.”

  “Ugh!” Katrin said succinctly. “I’d rather not, thank you.”

  “Well, it’s the same thing. Once the air is on your skin for a while and you can exerci
se it again, it’ll look normal.”

  Katrin flexed her fingers a little and then rotated her wrist. Her arm worked, although it looked like it should be on a corpse. She’d overheard scraps of conversation and knew that the break had been worse than had been let on to her. Franz and Menders had been very fearful that her arm would be crippled.

  Menders handed her a small ball that compressed when she squeezed it.

  “What is this?” Katrin asked in amazement as she relaxed her grip and the ball returned to its normal shape.

  “A new type of material, from Surytam, a sort of tree resin. You can clench a fist around that,” Menders explained. “It will strengthen your grip again. Start slowly though, no point in hurting yourself.”

  “No, slow and steady, Katrin,” Franz added, gathering his things. “I’m going to go have a look at Kaymar. It isn’t like him to faint.”

  “He can’t bear bad smells,” Katrin said. “They give him a kind of fit.”

  She could have bitten her tongue off, because the festive atmosphere of the room cooled as Menders stared at her.

  “How long have you known about this?” he asked, his voice very level.

  Katrin tried to whip up a feasible lie, but knew it was hopeless.

  “For years. We came across a felschat in the woods when I was seven. It spat toward us and Kaymar fainted,” she said meekly.