The Dragon's Tapestry

Maug lay down on his back. He was panting, his arms spread out. Marwen watched his chest rise and fall and noticed how large his hands were. She sat up.

“Why does the Taker follow us?” he asked, rolling his head toward her.

Marwen frowned. Her breath was coming more easily now.

“Who am I to explain the ways of the Taker?”

“Can you feel her presence still?”

“No. She is gone.” She was holding Cudgham-ip by the tail, glaring into his mobbleberry eyes. The tip of his red tongue was sticking out.

Maug stood up. “I will return for the pack,” he said.

“No, please, don’t. I am afraid,” Marwen said, dropping the ip into her apron pocket. She did not want to return to the place where Opalwing lay dead. Worse still was the thought of remaining alone.

Maug looked at her strangely and said, “I cannot see the Taker, but I can see these hills, that they grow no leaf or berry. Even ips can starve to death in a desert. Since the wingwand is dead, we must either carry the pack or the Taker herself on our backs, for we will soon starve.”

Marwen looked around at the rolling hills, bald and brown and stretching into the horizon. It was as though they walked upon the back of some vast gold-furred monster that threatened to awaken and devour them.

“I will come with you,” she said.

When they reached Opalwing lying dead, her wings spread softly on the sharp grass, Maug spat.

“By the Mother! You should chase that ip into the desert for this.”

Marwen said nothing but watched as he shouldered the pack with ease.

“Better still, throw the thing.”

“No,” she said.

“Why not? The creatures can’t run very fast. Toss it and be rid of it,” he insisted.

Marwen felt her heart’s blood drain. It was all different now, just the two of them alone in the desert, but she was still afraid of him.

“You forget that this is not an ordinary ip, Maug. It is Cud-gham.” She drew him from her pocket and watched as he batted the air with his stumpy legs but less energetically than before.

Maug snorted. “All right, then, say he’s Cudgham—so what?” He gestured with his head confidingly, as if to keep it from Cudgham-ip. “Chuck him. Good riddance, right?”

“You don’t understand, Maug. I need Cudgham-ip like you need me. He is the only witness to my tapestry, and by one wit­ness it may be remade.”

“But you don’t have—” He broke off.

A slow realization made her eyes narrow.

“You just want me to get rid of him because then you will be stronger than I am.”

Maug spat again and shook his head.

“And what should I do for a tapestry without you?” he said, but a shifting of his eyes told her she had guessed right.

“Do remember that,” she said.

She set her face toward Kebblewok, and they began to walk.

She listened for the water as the grandfather stone had advised her and often found natural wells surfacing in the hol­lows. There they would drink and dig up the roots of stickstem and sleep uneasily, and always the Taker followed in her dreams.

The only creatures they saw were ips and insects and some­times the track or spoor of a bisor beast. Wind after wind, through many cycles of winds, they walked. Their food ran out quickly, and along the way they discarded the remainder of their gear as even the slightest weight on their shoulders became a torture. Marwen left their things as gifts for the little gods of the wells, and so usually they found water. Sometimes she caught Maug looking at her, but always he would look away. He was not kind to her, but he was no longer cruel either. Their suffer­ings bound them. Spiny bloodpetal pierced their ragged shoes and filled their feet with slivers when they became tired and acci­dentally stepped on them. Their homemade shoes were soon rags, their ankles and calves were scraped and raw from brushing the thorns of ghostflower that proliferated on the dry slopes. But they kept the dawnmonth sun to their right and Marwen thought that, if she lived, she would make a song for this.

One day they saw a wingwand flying overhead. They screamed and jumped until they were sure they had been seen, and long before the rider landed, they recognized the red-legged mark­ings of Peggypin and knew that it was Buffle Spicetrader.

Relief flooded Marwen’s being like a warm bath. He must have escaped, being away on a journey to the market in Kebblewok. She ran toward him, waving and smiling, feeling terribly young, promising herself to be humble with the man. Maug, too, waved and called out.

But as she approached, Buffle’s eyes grew wide with recogni­tion. He made the sign to ward off evil and flew away. Maug did not seem surprised but said nothing.