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‘We’ll need a gondola,’ she says. ‘We cannot keep her here.’
‘I will send for a gondola to take her to the Hospital Quarters as soon as I can,’ Weaver says. ‘The watergraph pipes are too badly flooded.’
‘Again?’ Alva picks up a glass jar from the tall shelf that fills the space behind the table. I see dozens of teardrop-shaped wings stirring, hair-thin legs moving, and something round and black and bright. Eyes stare directly at me.
‘There is nothing we can do but wait,’ Weaver responds.
Alva turns towards us with the jar in her hand.
‘She’s awake,’ she says. ‘But she can’t talk.’
‘Why not?’ I ask.
‘It’s best if you see her now,’ Alva says. ‘She’ll need a new singing medusa in any case.’
Alva walks across the room to the medusa tank. It sits on robust legs of stone, as wide as the wall: a smooth, oblong pool of glass rounded on the edges, covered by a lid with a slim opening at one end. The singing medusas float through the water without hurry, their translucent swimming bells pale green and blue, weightless in their water-space. Alva unscrews the lid of the jar and holds the jar upside down over the opening. Wings and limbs and eyes move, first behind the glass and then briefly in the air, as she shakes the jar.
The medusas reach their thin tentacles towards the insects raining into the water, close their round, murky bells around the black-green gleam of the beetles and flies. Alva lets the last sticky-limbed insect fall into the tank. Then she dips the glass jar in, collecting some water into it. She picks up a small hoop net from a hook on the wall and pushes it into the tank. The bloom of medusas opens and pulls away, their tentacles wavering like broken threads in a breeze, but Alva has already caught one. It is small and slippery and blue-green, and it seems to shrivel, to lose its colour and grace as soon as it is out of water.
Alva slips the medusa into the glass jar, where it opens again like a flower, but now constrained, without joy. As we watch, it begins to open and close, open and close, and in an echo of its movements, the bloom in the tank begins to do the same. A low, faint humming vibrates in the water, refracts from the glass walls, grows towards the ceiling until it seems to ring through our bones.
Alva hangs the hoop net back on the wall hook. The water dripping from it draws a dark trail on the wall towards the floor. She parts the curtains covering a wide doorway into the back room and steps through. Weaver and I follow. Slowly the singing recedes behind us and fades into a silence as dense as mourning, or farewells left unspoken.
There are only six beds in the room, and despite the faint lighting I can see that five of them are empty. In the furthermost bed by the back wall lays a narrow, motionless figure. She is covered by a rough blanket, but I can discern her form under it: long limbs, softness sheltering angular bones. The warmth from the iron stove spreads across the skin of my neck.
Our shadows fall deep and shapeless, interlacing where the fragile halos of the glow-glasses overlap, hemming in the bed we are approaching. There is no light on the back wall. Thick curtains cover the window.
Dimmed glow-glass globes hang on the walls. Weaver picks one, shakes it and places it on the girl’s bedside table. A blue-tinted light wakes up within the sphere. Slowly it expands and falls on the girl’s face. I notice there is also an empty cup on the table.
The girl is approximately my age, between twenty and twenty-five. There are still dry, rust-brown tangles in her red hair, but the garment she is wearing is clean. Or so I think at first, until I notice the burst of tiny speckles on the front. As if someone had tried to paint an impression of faraway stars on it, the sparkling Web of Worlds that holds the skies together.
She struggles to sit up on the mattress. Her eyes are grey and full of shadows in the glow-glass light, and her skin is very pale. Her lips are squeezed together so tightly it makes her face look older, shrivelled upon itself. I realize Alva has made her drink a calming herbal brew. Yet behind its artificial languor the girl is tense and all edge, like a dagger drowned in murky water, ready to cut the first skin that will brush it.
‘In order to help you,’ Weaver says, ‘we need to know who you are.’
The girl nods slowly.
‘She is not island-born,’ Alva says.
The lines on Weaver’s face seem to sharpen. She looks at Alva.
‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier?’
‘I wanted to show you,’ Alva says. ‘May I?’
The girl’s eyes close and open again. The question seems to sink in letter by letter. Eventually, she moves her head slowly up and down. I do not know if this is because nodding hurts, or because she is too dazed to make faster movements.
Alva directs the girl to rotate her upper body slightly, face turned away from us. She gathers the girl’s hair gently in her hand and lifts it. The skin of the neck is bare: there is no trace of ink where the sun-shaped tattoo marking everyone born on the island should be. I glance at Weaver, catch a glimpse of the shadows on her brow. There are not many people on the island who were born elsewhere. Seamen and merchants come and go, but most islanders avoid mingling with them.
‘May I see your arms?’ Weaver asks.
Alva lets go of the girl’s hair and the girl turns her face back towards us, her movements still underwater-slow. She nods again.
‘I already checked,’ Alva said. ‘She must have moved to the island when she was very young.’
Weaver pulls up the sleeves of the girl’s garment. One of the arms is bare. Not from the Houses of Crafts, then. The other has a row of short, black lines on it, like wounds on the pale skin. Weaver counts them.
‘Twenty-one,’ she says. That is two less than I have.
Weaver lets go of the girl’s arms. The girl leans back into her pillows in a half-sitting posture.
‘Were you born on the continent?’ Weaver asks her.
The girl nods.
‘Are your parents from the island?’
Now she hesitates. Weaver sighs. A mixed marriage, perhaps. They are rare, but not impossible. Or perhaps she does not know her parents. But foundlings have their own mark in place of the birth tattoo, and she does not have one.
‘Never mind,’ Weaver says. ‘We can talk about that later. I brought pen and paper.’ She pulls a slim notebook from her pocket. The covers are well-worn, stained leather, and the pages are yellowed on the edges. She places the book on the girl’s lap and a pen on top of it. ‘If you know how to read,’ Weaver says, ‘please, write down your name.’
The girl stares at the blank page. We wait. After a long moment, she shakes her head, slowly and painfully.
None of us is surprised. Word-skill is only taught in the House of Words, and women are not allowed there. Most women on the island are illiterate.
‘Whereabouts in the city are you from?’ Weaver tries. ‘Can you draw that for us?’
The girl’s face changes slowly like shadows on a wall. Eventually she draws an elongated lump that bears a vague resemblance to a fish.
‘The island?’ Weaver asks.
The girl nods. Her hand shakes a little, as if the pen is too heavy between her fingers. She marks a cross in the northwest corner of the lump.
‘The Ink Quarters?’ Weaver says. I have only been there a couple of times. I remember narrow streets thick with pungent smells, canals where water ran strange-coloured, and tall, vast buildings with darkened windows you could not see through. Gondolas carrying blood coral in large cages to be ground in the ink factories, and red-dye transported from the factories to the harbours in big glass bottles.
The girl nods again.
‘Are you able to tell us anything about the person who attacked you?’ Weaver asks.
The girl lifts two fingers.
‘Do you mean there were two of them?’
The girl begins to nod, but pain cuts across her face and stops the movement short.
Weaver looks like she is about to say something else, but a few red drops fall onto the page from between the girl’s lips. A narrow trickle of blood follows. Alva’s face is taut. She pushes Weaver and me to the side. The glass jar in her hand is still holding the medusa, which lies motionless, like a plucked petal.
‘Open,’ Alva orders.
I only realize now why the girl cannot talk. I only catch a brief glance at her mouth, but that is enough. Where the tongue should be, there is only a dark, marred mass of muscle, still a bleeding, open wound. I have to turn away for a moment. Alva holds a towel under the girl’s chin, fishes the medusa out from the glass jar and slides it into the girl’s mouth. Relief spreads on the girl’s face.
‘She is in a lot of pain,’ Alva says. ‘She must rest. But there is one more thing.’
She places the jar on the night table and picks up the glow-glass. She turns to look at me.
‘Are you certain you don’t know her?’
The question makes no sense. I look at the girl again, just to be certain, although I do not need to. She has closed her eyes and her breathing is turning even. Her muscles twitch slightly. She does not open her eyes.
‘Of course I’m certain,’ I say.
Weaver stares at Alva, then at me, then at Alva again.
‘Why do you ask such a thing?’ she says.
Alva steps right next to the girl. She does not react when Alva takes her hand and gently coaxes open the fingers closed in a loose fist.
‘Because of this,’ Alva says and turns the palm upwards. The light from the glow-glass falls on it. Bright marks begin to glow on the skin, the letters forming a word I recognize immediately.
Eliana.
My name.
CHAPTER TWO (#u589817c1-a7af-587e-bc07-cd7a9ed2f842)
The girl’s hand is narrow in the grip of Alva’s fingers, the angles of her bones sharp around the dent of her palm. I am aware of Alva’s and Weaver’s attention, a tense net around me. But I have done this countless times before. I turn the perception inside out, as if I am focusing my eyes on something close by and letting the background soften into a haze where all boundaries are unclear. I look at the letters as if they are mere contours and colours in a landscape, akin to cracks in the walls of houses, or the black and green algae growing in the canals.
I turn to look at Weaver, taking care not to let my face reveal a thing.
‘What does it say?’ I ask.
Weaver does not answer immediately. Her gaze perseveres in the dusk, but I do not shiver under it.
‘Has your brother not taught you anything?’ she asks.
‘He never thought it necessary,’ I respond.
Weaver is still looking at me when Alva says, ‘Eliana, someone tattooed your name on this girl’s palm in invisible ink.’
I let my face and body react as they should. They adjust to the situation. I know what Weaver reads on them: surprise, confusion, just the right amount of alarm.
‘I don’t know her,’ I say. ‘I’ve never seen her before.’
‘Eliana is not a common name,’ Weaver says.
It is true. I am the only one in the House of Webs, although there must be others on the island.
‘Maybe it’s her name,’ I suggest. ‘Have you asked?’
Alva sighs.
‘Of course I did. And no, it’s not her name. Or so she claims, at least.’
‘Quite a coincidence,’ Weaver says. She turns to Alva. ‘This is no ordinary tattoo.’
‘No,’ Alva says.
She covers the glow-glass with a towel, reaches for the window and parts the curtain slightly. The early-morning light floats into the room, settles on the girl’s skin. The letters turn invisible. Her palm looks no different than mine; only a few lines and callouses are discernible on it.
‘Interesting,’ Weaver says. ‘I have not seen one of those before.’
‘Neither have I,’ Alva says.
She lets the curtain fall back to cover the window and removes the towel from the top of the glow-glass. My gaze turns towards the letters as their outlines slowly grow visible. They run across the narrow lines on the girl’s palm, towards the fingers closed around my name, as if to keep it safe. Alva places the girl’s hand back on the blanket.
‘We must let her sleep.’ Alva’s voice is firm.
Weaver turns to face me.
‘You may return to your room,’ she says. ‘I will let the City Guard know about this as soon as the watergraph is working again.’
I bow my head slightly in acknowledgement of the order.
‘And keep me up to date about her condition,’ Weaver says to Alva.
The girl’s eyes crack open and close again. Her breathing flows calm and even. The pain seems to be gone for now, and the bleeding has stopped. Very gently Alva coaxes the girl’s mouth open, holds the towel and the glass jar against her skin and pulls the medusa out. Its lifeless weight drops into the jar, where the bright-red blood tendrils begin to spread through the water cradling its dead body.
Alva picks up the cup from the night table. We turn to go.
After the warmth of the sick bay, the morning is cold around us. Weaver stops a few footsteps ahead of me.
‘I don’t expect you in the Halls of Weaving until this afternoon,’ she says.
I am grateful that she remembers. It is nearly time for the morning gong. I bow. Weaver nods at me and continues towards the building where the Halls of Weaving are located. I suspect she sleeps even less than I do. The incoming day is unfolding on the horizon, and for a moment I am alone under the sky of the house.
The cell is cool and silent. The thick curtain lets in a thread-slender rectangle of light around the edges of the window. I turn the key in the lock and shake the glow-glass on the table. As the water inside the globe moves and wakes up the algae, the shine begins to grow. In the dim light I examine my skin from head to toe more carefully than usual. The back is always the most difficult; there is no mirror. I find nothing apart from the perpetual callouses on my fingertips and soles. I look for clean clothes to wear and fold the dirty ones into a pile I will carry into the laundry room later. I can sense the faint scent of Alva’s brew on them: herbs that bring sleep and rest. Perhaps I should have asked Alva to mix me a similar potion. She would have said no at first, but then done it anyway.
I sit on the bed until the morning gong begins to echo in the stone walls and vibrate on the webs.
I walk together with the weavers who are on unravelling duty and on their way to work in the web-maze today. It is said on the island that the district of the House of Webs is mapless, a shapeshifter: careless travellers never find their way out if they wander too deep. Yet the weavers know the way. The three solid buildings of the house are surrounded by a zone where the streets and buildings are formed only by woven webs hung between stone pillars, seemingly arbitrary narrow alleys and dead ends. It is here that strangers will lose their way, and sometimes weavers too, when they have not yet learned how the routes are shaped and transformed. Here, walls are unravelled as soon as they are completed and woven anew somewhere else when they have ceased to be. Everything follows a predetermined order, yet you must hold the exact keys to it in order to perceive it.
As I draw further from the heart of the House of Webs, stone fences grow onto the landscape almost unnoticeably. The city no longer flits and filters light everywhere, but takes a more solid shape. Amidst the soft view of yarn frayed on the edges rise stairways covered in dark algae, walls eaten by humidity and whole houses with no woven parts. Eventually all of the maze is left behind: a city of stone where the work of weavers does not belong swallows the walker. The canals flow brown in the chasms among the buildings, and gondolas rise and fall between water and air. None of the other weavers come to the city with me.
The banks of Halfway Canal are still burst and rippling. The pavements have been claimed by water, and I have to climb up steps cut on the outer wall of a tall building to one of the rope bridges that are lowered from rooftops during floods. The bridge wobbles under my footsteps. There is a small crowd standing at the far end, waiting for their turn to cross. Below, people are wading in water, some of them in high-leg oiled leather boots, others barefoot. They are all scooping up something limp and leaf-like, placing armfuls of it in half-drowned wheelbarrows and small boats and large baskets. At first I think it is just seaweed, not the web-thin algae used in glow-glasses, but a leafy variety that grows deeper. Floods often throw large amounts of it across the island.
The bridge comes to an end and I begin to climb towards the next one. I have to cross a high rooftop, and there I stop. Usually this would cause pushing and shoving and protests, a rush that tries everyone’s patience. But today there are others beside me who have stopped on the roof to stare at the sea and the rising tide that is slowly swallowing the shores.
At first it looks as if the waves are bubbling, or growing soft scales, translucent and circular. Their surfaces turn coarser, their density different. When the first wave carrying the dead weight crashes onto the rocks, I am not certain. When the second one does, I could not be wrong if I wanted to, and I understand the people with their baskets and boats, the scooping movements of their hands.
