“Yessss…” The sibilants drew out and faded away. The godmother’s eyes flicked over Marra, dismissed her, and settled on Agnes. Marra wondered if, having said that, the godmother was about to throw them out again.
And then the godmother smiled, her almost lipless mouth pulling tight across bone. “Come in and have some tea.”
* * *
Marra’s hands ached, and the little numb patch of skin had flared as if brushed with the ghosts of nettles. Nothing bad had happened, though. Had it? The godmother had made tea. Hadn’t she? Marra couldn’t quite summon the memory of the water boiling, only the long, withered hands on a black iron teapot, pouring it into little lacquer cups.
Marra concentrated on breathing in and out. The room was not spinning or anything so dramatic, but something was happening inside her ears, a queasy, dizzy feeling. She felt as if she were standing just behind her own shoulder, watching herself breathe.
The godmothers seemed very far away. She could hear them talking and understand the words, but only if she concentrated. It was as if they spoke in a language that she was not fluent in, and had to focus on every word.
“… a curse? Heh. Yes, of course there is a curse…”
Is there something in the tea? Or the candles? No, Agnes was obviously unbothered, and Marra had barely drunk the tea.
She stood up. Neither Agnes nor the godmother seemed to notice. When Marra glanced over at them, she was struck by how similar they looked, which made no sense. The godmother was very tall, wasn’t she? But Agnes was as well, somehow. Had she been wearing black? Marra couldn’t remember. Of course she must have been. It’s not like she could have changed clothes without you noticing.
“… that’s very clever. I couldn’t have done that…”
The godmothers did not seem very interesting. The hangings, though—the hangings were very strange. Tapestry weave, Marra thought absently, but what on earth was the weaver doing? It seemed as if they were switching back and forth between styles with no sense of pattern or structure.
She drifted over to one of them while Agnes and the godmother continued talking. Up close, it was even more complicated and less aesthetic. Blocks of color interlocked or failed utterly to do so. Marra had never been much of a weaver, preferring embroidery. Tapestry weaving required a great deal of advance planning, and she could never get her head around it well. Still, even her worst efforts were neater and more regular than these.
This bit is a weft lock … and this is split weaving here … but why? Weft locks interwove two threads; split weaves left a small but perceptible gap between them. Neither was terribly unusual, but weavers usually picked a style and stuck to it. This followed no discernable pattern. Six splits would be close together, followed by a run of weft locks and then straight runs of a single color. The effect was disorientating. At the bottom right corner, for no apparent reason, the weaver had used golden embroidery thread to make a kind of knot, as if tying off the tapestry, except that was certainly not how you did it—you’d need to tie off the warp ends and this looked more like a child had stabbed thread into the weaving, over and over, leaving ugly loops. Is this a signature?
Agnes laughed, and her voice sounded deeper and somehow older. Marra glanced up, but they were only two women sitting together, cloaked in darkness. What mattered was the tapestry, the strange irregular weavings …
“Are you a weaver?” asked the godmother.
Marra had been leaning so close to the tapestry that she hadn’t registered that conversation had stopped. “No,” she said, pulling back. “I mean … I have. I’m not good at it. I embroider, mostly.”
“I have been working on these for many years,” said the godmother in that strange, flat voice that seemed to echo in some other space. “You might find them of interest.”
“Ah … yes, of course,” said Marra. She schooled her face into a polite smile. You did not tell anyone that they had produced a muddled lump of ugliness. She would not have insulted a novice that way, let alone an undying creature of terrible power.
She went to the next tapestry and found that the bottom third was identical to the first one she had looked at, but then it wandered off into other colors, other patterns, other erratic joinings of warp and weft. The next one also shared the same bottom third as the others, and the next.
Is this supposed to look like something? Regardless of how she squinted or turned her head, she could not make it resolve into anything. There was a blob of red that might have been a sword, but it might also have been a lizard or the head of a rabbit with particularly stiff ears.
She was sufficiently engrossed that she only half heard the two godmothers finishing their pleasantries. “A moment before you leave,” said the godmother. “I will give you something.”
Marra’s pulse leapt, as if the offer of a gift was a threat. Which possibly it is …
The godmother rose to her feet. Marra took a step back, ready to flee.
Agnes gave her a sharp look and offered the godmother her arm. Marra half expected the woman to shun the offer, but the godmother leaned heavily on her colleague, then picked up her cane.
“As I said,” she said, moving slowly to the second tapestry, “I have worked on these for some time.” She stood before it, but her eyes were on Marra. “Do you know what they represent?”
“No?” said Marra. The blocks of color did not look like anything. They were not even enough to be a map or a floor plan, not varied enough to be writing.
The godmother nodded. “Then I may give it to you.” She reached into her sleeves. Metal flashed and Marra thought, Oh god it’s a knife she’s going to stab Agnes, and then, Why am I so frightened? She has never offered us so much as an unkind word.
She knew why, of course. Vorling feared the godmother and Marra feared Vorling, links in a chain from predator to prey. I am a worm and Vorling is a starling. The worm has nothing to fear from the hawk, but I cannot quite convince myself of that …
Shears. They were shears that the godmother carried. She caught hold of the tapestry and closed the blades over a spot not quite halfway up. Marra cried out in surprise. Even as ugly as the weavings were, they represented hours and days of work.
The godmother was ruthless. She chopped off the bottom of the weaving and held it out to Marra. Her hands shook and the stray threads, unraveling from the top, swayed back and forth. Marra was suddenly reminded of the silk threads of the cocoon in the goblin market, the moth that had taken days of her life away, and what would this strange, violent gift take away from her?
“Take it,” said the godmother. “You may find it useful. Or you may not.” Her eyes bored into Marra as she spoke.
The worm has nothing to fear from the hawk. She took the piece of tapestry and their hands touched for an instant. The godmother’s skin should have been cold, but it was the same temperature as the air, as if she had no heat of her own.
Marra noticed that her hands were shaking as badly as the godmother’s. She stared down at the ragged-edged bit of weaving. “I … I … Thank you,” she said finally, as if she were a small child and her nursemaid was prompting her to remember her manners.
The godmother made a noise somewhere between a hiss and a grunt. She nodded to Agnes, and then Agnes took Marra’s arm and led her out of the strange little temple.
The light outside was shockingly bright. Her eyes watered. She blinked, looking down at the strange, butchered weaving in her hands.
Wait … wait—what just happened? Did I really leave Agnes talking to the godmother and go wander around the room?
“Agnes?” she said, surprised at the volume of her own voice. “Agnes, did something just happen? I was sitting with you, and I was paying attention, but then I wasn’t…”
Agnes chuckled softly. “She’s good,” she said. “As powerful as the dust-wife and ten times as old.”
“Was there something in the tea?”