Taran Wanderer

So saying, she hobbled to the loom, climbed to the bench in front of it, and with surprising vigor began plying the shuttle back and forth, all the while working her feet on the treadles below, hardly pausing to glance at her handiwork. At last she stopped, cocked her head at Taran, fixed him with her sharp gray eyes, and said, "Thus is it done, Wanderer, as all things are, each in its own way, thread by thread."

Taran's amazement had grown all the more. "This would I gladly learn," he said eagerly. "The craft of the swordsmith was not mine. Perhaps the craft of the weaver may be. I pray you, will you teach it to me?"

"That I will, since you ask," replied Dwyvach. "But mind you: It is one thing to admire a well-woven bit of cloth and another to sit yourself before the loom."

"My thanks to you," Taran exclaimed. "I'll not fear to labor at your loom. With Hevydd the Smith, I didn't shrink from hot iron or the flames of his forge, and a weaver's shuttle is a lighter burden than a smith's hammer."

"Think you so?" Dwyvach asked, with a dry chuckle that sounded like knitting needles clicking together. "Then what shall you weave to begin with?" she went on, eyeing him sharply. "Taran Wanderer you call yourself? Taran Threadbare would be more like it! Would you weave yourself a new cloak? Thus you'll gain something to put on your back, and I'll see what skill you have in your fingers."

Taran willingly agreed; but next day, instead of teaching him weaving, Dwyvach led the companions to one of her many chambers, which Taran saw full nearly to bursting with piles of wool.

"Tease out the thorns, pick out the cockleburs," the weaver-woman ordered. "Comb it, card it― carefully, Wanderer, or when your cloak is done you'll feel it's made of thistles instead of wool!"

The size of the task ahead of him made Taran despair of ever finishing, but he and Gurgi started the painstaking work, with Dwyvach herself lending a hand. The aged weaver-woman, Taran soon learned, had not only a tart tongue but a keen eye. Nothing escaped her; she spied the smallest knot, speck, or flaw, and brought Taran's attention to it with a sharp rap from her distaff to his knuckles. But what smarted Taran more than the distaff was to learn that Dwyvach, despite her years, could work faster, longer, and harder than he himself. At the end of each day Taran's eyes were bleary, his fingers raw, and his head nodded wearily; yet the old weaver-woman was bright and spry as if the day had scarce begun.

Nevertheless, the work at last was finished. But now Dwyvach set him in front of a huge spinning wheel. "The finest wool is useless until it's spun to thread," the weaver woman told him. "So you'd best begin learning that, as well."

"But spinnings are woman's toilings!" Gurgi protested. "No, no, spinnings are not fitting for bold and clever weaver-men!"

"Indeed!" snorted Dwyvach. "Then sit you down and learn otherwise. I've heard men complain of doing woman's work, and women complain of doing man's work," she added, fastening her bony thumb and forefinger on Gurgi's ear and marching him to a stool beside Taran, "but I've never heard the work complain of who did it, so long as it got done!"

And so, under Dwyvach's watchful eye, Taran and Gurgi spun thread and filled bobbins during the next few days. Chastened by Dwyvach's words, Gurgi did his best to help, though all too often the hapless creature managed only to tangle himself in the long strands. Next, Dwyvach took the companions to a shed where pots of dye bubbled over a fire. Here, Taran fared no better than Gurgi, for when the yarn was at last dyed, he was bespattered from head to toe with colors, and Gurgi himself looked like a rainbow suddenly sprouting hair.

Not until all these other tasks were done to Dwyvach's satisfaction did she take Taran to a weaving room; and there his heart sank, for the loom stood bare and stark as a leafless tree.

"How then?" clucked the weaver-woman as Taran gave her a rueful glance. "The loom must be threaded. Did I not tell you: All things are done step by step and strand by strand?"

"Hevydd the Smith told me life was a forge," Taran sighed, as he laboriously tried to reckon the countless threads needed, "and I think I'll be well-tempered before my cloak is finished."

"Life a forge?" said the weaver-woman. "A loom, rather, where lives and days intertwine; and wise he is who can learn to see the pattern. But if you mean to have a new cloak, you'd do better to work more and chatter less. Or did you hope for a host of spiders to come and labor for you?"

Even after deciding on the pattern, and threading the loom, Taran still saw only a hopeless, confusing tangle of threads. The cloth was painfully slow in forming and at the end of a long day he had little more than a hand's breadth of fabric to show for all his toil.

"Did I ever think a weaver's shuttle a light burden?" Taran sighed. "It feels heavier than hammer, tongs, and anvil all together!"