The Dragon's Tapestry

When the villagers found her, she was sifting through the ashes with the hearthspoon, singing the spells of coming together and of finding, her face and hands gray with fine powder. Marwen did not seem to hear or see them and did not resist when they forced her to come away.

They laid hands on her and brought her before the Council, a group of village women who sat in a row like podhens on a roof. Marwen sat on the ground before them, rocking gently and whispering the words of a spell over and over. All around her, at a respectful distance, were gathered the villagers, some laughing and some talking angrily among themselves. The children played chasing games, and mothers passed out sweets to bribe them into stillness. The laughter of the children began to draw Mar­wen out of her trance. As she surfaced, a squeezing pain in her upper chest gripped and grew more intense until it seemed it would suffocate her.

Lirca and Dalett were whispering and staring at her with wide-eyed fascination. Into the village yard, Leba had her moth­er, Sneda, carried, where she lay drooling and moaning. Leba’s face above her was full of malevolence.

Gumbe Clayfire stood with his arms across his huge stomach and triumph in his smile. Only Master Clayware looked sad and older.

Maug stood apart from the crowd, tossing and catching rocks that, when he missed, fell close to Marwen.

The Council head rose, and everyone gradually fell silent.

“Marwen, apprentice to Grondil, this Council has been called to accuse you. You will listen, and before we pass sentence, you may speak.”

The Council head was Merva Leatherworker, sister to Srill. She rarely spoke to Marwen except when Marwen came to cast spells on her kitchen garden, and when she did speak, she would often smirk and say, “You look nothing like your mother. Pray you have not her evil heart as well.” Now she looked pleased, as though it were a great relief to have this opportunity to vindicate her family’s shame.

“You are accused of using your magic to a dark end, Marwen: that is, the living death of Sneda Shoemaker. You are also accused of the death of Grondil Oldwife. Let the witnesses testify.”

One by one members of the village came forward: the women who had seen Marwen cast the spell on the knife, the many who had heard Marwen and Grondil whispering the Taker’s name and Leba who reported her mother’s condition in great detail. When Merva spoke again, her voice was calm. “It is obvious to me that the Taker came to retrieve the life that you robbed, and somehow you tricked her, tricked her again into taking Grondil’s life instead of your own,” Merva said.

The villagers all murmured their agreement. One of Maug’s rocks fell on Marwen’s back with a soft thud. “I could turn you into an ip,” Marwen thought. “I could turn you all into...” Just then a man came running to Merva and whispered something to her. She looked at Marwen.

“Where is Cudgham Seedmaker, girl?”

Marwen felt Cudgham-ip’s warm heaviness in her lap, sleep­ing as he was in her apron pocket. Horror at the enormity of her deed chilled her. It was true. She was soulless, an empty shell with no purpose at all on Ve save to cause hurt at every turn.

“I do not know where my stepfather is,” she whispered.

Leba’s voice screeched near her. “Liar! You have probably killed him, too. I have seen you repel his attempts to be an affec­tionate father. Do witches have hearts?” She spat on Marwen’s face.

Marwen felt the saliva slide down her cheek, warm and thick. It was true, she was a liar. But she did have a heart. She knew she did, for it was heavy and swollen in her breast, and she knew it must burst at any moment. She sat in the dust unmoving.

Merva was speaking again, but Marwen did not hear. Remem­bering the Tenets of the Tapestry, she whispered a brief spell for help and understanding. She looked up at the villagers. One by one she looked into their eyes, and this time she saw what lay raw behind them: fear. They were afraid of her, they had feared her power as a child and the power she would have as Oldwife. But more than that, they feared her as a soulless one, as one born without a tapestry.

A glimmer of hope flashed in the wash of her despair like a bright fish swimming upstream in Stumble Brook. She was not soulless. Not anymore. She had a tapestry, Grondil had made her a tapestry after all. One who lost the tapestry and who died before it could be remade was destined to be lost or to suffer in the lands of the dead. But suffering was better than not existing at all, she thought. She looked around at the villagers, compas­sionate in her new hope. In her they saw all the dreadful possi­bilities of their own lives. She thought of Grondil, gentle as she touched a sore with her finger, and her heart swelled so full there was no room left for hating.

“And so, Marwen, by law, you have the opportunity to speak,” Merva was saying, each word like the crack of knife against bone. “Begin.”