IN THE MORNING, SAOUD TOOK the Little Rose with him and went out to see if there was anything in the area that he could hunt. It was odd for them to go off together, but I supposed that watching Saoud hunt would be more interesting than watching us weave mud and reeds all day. I didn’t know if they would catch anything, but I supposed there were rabbits everywhere, and a bit of fresh meat would suit us all well. I didn’t regret my decision not to trap when we were in the mountains, but now that we were away from them I remembered what hunger felt like, and I had not grown any fonder of it. In truth, I saw it as a mercy: Arwa and Tariq and I would spend most of the day weaving, which would mean boredom to Saoud but outright torture for the Little Rose to watch.
Arwa and Tariq went to cut reeds and fetch as much of the mud as our cooking pot could hold, while I went back into the village and tried to find a wooden frame of the right size, if any such thing remained intact. With the new day’s sun on the heather, the buzzing this morning was impossible to miss, and there were bees flying everywhere back and forth between clumps of flowers and their hives. Since they were usually territorial, I knew that the piskeys must be influencing the bees directly to have so many in one place. They were busy at their work, as I planned to be, and I knew that if I didn’t disturb them, they would leave me alone.
I found the ruins of a house that was less overgrown by heather than its neighbors, and didn’t appear to have a hive concealed anywhere in what remained of its structure. I sifted through the ruins of the collapsed roofing material until I found what I was after: the planks that had once framed the window of the house. Windows were a sign of luxury in wattle and daub, so once upon a time, this house had been well done by. I was thankful for it now.
I shook the frame experimentally, and it didn’t fall to pieces in my hands. I tested the joints at the corners. The edges had been fitted together, not fastened, and therefore were much more stable. Whoever built this house had cared for it a great deal. The fact that they had been forced to leave it, for almost certain poverty in the south, turned my stomach.
By the time I returned to the campsite, the pile of reeds was large enough to get started. Arwa was the best weaver of us, having learned from her mother before her death. She selected the largest reeds and used them to set the warp. She took some care with the knots, both because the reeds were fragile and because, unlike a normal weaving, this one would stay on the frame when we were done with it. The warp she set was very tight. We wanted this to be as waterproof as we could make it before we added the daub, because we wanted the finished project to be light enough to be easily moved.
At last Arwa decided the warp was good enough, and turned to look at the reeds Tariq and I had selected for the weft. It didn’t particularly matter if these reeds were too short to reach across the frame, because they could be fastened to the warp itself if need be. The daub would cover over those spots.
They would have continued until the work was done, but I made them stop for lunch when I realized how high the sun had risen. None of us had coughed all morning, which was a relief.
“It’s such a blessing not to feel so ill this time,” Arwa said. “I didn’t like it, and I liked the compulsion to spin even less. Even though spinning did help for a little bit.”
“In any case, we’ve no spindles anymore,” I said, thinking of my own buried leagues away, possibly beyond my reach forever. “And Saoud would stop us if we tried to spin using his kindling.”
Tariq and Arwa exchanged a glance, and Arwa shook her head slightly.
“Come on,” Tariq said, setting his bowl down. “We can leave the dishes. I want to be finished with the weaving before Saoud and Zahrah return.”
We all had slices on our fingertips by the time we were done, and I had a welt across my palm that would itch as it healed, even though it wasn’t very deep. The reeds were tricky to weave, but they held their place, so at least once we did the work we wouldn’t have to do it again. I covered them with a thin coat of the daub, hoping it was enough to seal the reeds from the weather, while not making the whole thing too heavy for the piskeys to lift.