She places a hand on top of the shuttle resting in my lap. Her fingers brush it briefly before settling on the polished wooden surface. Its shape is a familiar fit against her touch. She looks at me, face close to mine, and tilts her head again. Her expression poses a question.
It is quiet enough to hear a hundred simultaneous breaths drawn in the hall. Only those chosen as apprentices are allowed to weave in the house. Anything else is forbidden. Everyone stares at us.
I nod.
The girl nods back. I feel her breath brush my neck. She picks up the shuttle and begins to pass it through the warp. Her movements are swift and sure. The yarn slides without clumping, and I see immediately that the resulting weave will be smooth and dense. When the wall-web is ready in its frame, it will show the place where the shuttle passed from my hands to hers: the lumpy, sometimes too tight and occasionally too loose texture turns even and made with skill.
I remain seated, although the seat is too narrow for both of us, and she is tightly pressed against me. There are footsteps at the door. Alva steps into the hall, her face red and her breathing heavy.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘She disappeared while I was outside drawing water from the well. I will take her back immediately.’
I look at the girl’s hands again, the endlessly intertwining strands sliding through her fingers.
‘I don’t think she wants to go back,’ I say.
The gondola from the Hospital Quarters arrives that evening and takes away six rash-covered, violently coughing weavers. The girl is not among them. On the second day after I have handed my shuttle to the girl, she steps into the halls with Weaver. Together they set up a new loom in the corner and stretch the warp between the upper and lower beams. The girl carries a seat in front of the frame and sits down, places the shuttle, a skein of yarn and a weaving fork next to her, and begins to work. Weaver keeps an eye on the girl for a while, and when she leaves, no one says anything. We all take secret glances at the girl. Once she glances back at me. I can only see her face diagonally from the back, but the cheek turned towards me lifts as if she is smiling.
After supper I sit in my cell, detach the coin pouch from my waist and pour the coins in front of me on the bed. The House of Webs pays a small monthly salary and clothes its residents, because the servants of Our Lady of Weaving are expected to look tidy. But my socks have worn thin, and there will not be new ones on offer until spring. I begin to count the coins to see if I can afford to buy a pair of warm socks at the market for winter. My fingers brush something oblong. For a moment I am confused, but then I remember the metal object the dark-clad woman dropped at my feet on the day of the Ink-marking. I pick it up. It is a small key. I turn it in my fingers. Its teeth are simple, but one end is unusually shaped: it is tapering, like an eye, and in place of a pupil an eight-pointed sun shines at the centre, the emblem of the island and the Council.
There is a knock on the door. I drop the key back into the coin pouch, collect the coins from the bed in a hurry and tighten the mouth of the pouch. I get up to open the door. Weaver stands behind it with the girl who is carrying a pile of clean bed linen in her arms.
‘Eliana,’ Weaver says and places her hand on the girl’s shoulder. ‘She will stay in the house for the time being. At least until we find out where her home is.’
I glance at the bed linen and understand.
‘Can we come in?’ Weaver says. ‘I have no doubt she would like to prepare her bed.’
‘Can’t she live in the sick bay?’ I ask, and my voice sounds harsher than I had intended. The girl shifts her weight from one foot to the other. ‘Or in one of the dormitories?’
‘The sick bay has five new cases of rash, and we do not want more infections. After what she has been through, I trust you understand that she would prefer more privacy than a dormitory can offer.’
‘I cannot sleep when there is someone else in the room,’ I try.
Weaver looks at me from her heights, eyes black in the dark face.
‘I thought you did not sleep anyway,’ she says. ‘She is your roommate for the time being. I will leave you to make closer acquaintance.’
I know the conversation is over. I move to the side and let the girl in. She places the bed linen on the night table next to the empty bed. The table is too small, and the sheets fall to the floor. She picks them up with hasty hands and begins to make the bed without looking at me. Weaver simply nods and leaves.
I do not know where to look. There is little to do in the cell in the evenings after work. My former roommate usually wanted to chat about seamen and jewellery sold in the market, or how many children each of us would have when we found husbands and left the house. I mostly responded with a few syllables, if at all. That never seemed to bother her.
The girl gets the linen in place and begins to take off her dress, which seems slightly too big for her. I look away and hear her slip under the blanket in her thin undergarment.
‘It would be good for you to know that I sleep less than most others,’ I say. ‘I’m often on night-watch.’ It seems like a sufficient explanation.
Her eyes are wide in the dusk, their colour metal-sharp.
‘I didn’t mean to be rude,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry. I just haven’t shared a room with anyone for a long time.’
I close the curtains. The glow-glass globe on the night table dims slowly. I take off my jacket, change into my nightgown and lower myself to bed. I turn towards the wall.
I hear the sheets rustling and the bunk creaking under the girl. Apparently she too has turned her back on me. It feels as if I can sense the warmth of her body across the room. I close my eyes and fear falling asleep. From her breathing I can tell she is not sleeping, either.
As weeks pass, the girl and I try to get used to each other’s presence in the small space that is now new to both of us: to her because she does not yet know it, and to me because the strange, shifting element of her limbs and hair and shape has been added to my former privacy. I begin to understand I am also responsible for introducing her to the ways of the house. She follows me into the washrooms in the morning and to the supper table, although she cannot eat normally yet. She bends her head down to the floor of the Halls of Weaving after me and goes to sleep when I do. I stay awake and watch her, but some nights exhaustion eventually drops me to sleep. When images begin to form behind my closed lids, she seems to chase them, too. The walls of sleep fall quiet into deep water, and she climbs on them before me. I follow her through low and tall doors to dream-rooms where branch-stiff lattices cover the windows. I seek her in dream-halls where black water rushes in the rifts of cracked floors and walls are fraying webs, because the threads run from their meshes and everything unravels. I want the floors to be unbroken and they close their cracks in front of my footsteps. I want the walls to be whole again and the yarn interweaves back into meshes, but it escapes my grasp and I cannot reach it, and each new wanting is without strength.
When I wake with a start in the light of night or dawn, I hear the girl’s breathing on the other side of the cell.
I should perhaps know how to read these signs:
That morning, when I arrive at the Halls of Weaving with the girl at my heels, I see two City Guards enter Weaver’s study.
My shadow has moved two palm-widths on the wall, when a weaver who is on messenger duty steps into the hall, bows her forehead to the floor, walks to the girl and says something to her in a low voice. They leave the hall together.
The air gondola cables screech under the weight of a vessel.
At lunch I keep a vacant seat next to mine, but she does not come.
No one touches her wall-web for the rest of the day.
I am on my way to the cell after supper, when Weaver stops me in the corridor.
‘Come to my