The Dragon's Tapestry

Politha chuckled. “I should have known better than to try and keep this one under a story spell.” Crob grunted and bent over his work again.

“Grondil, my mother, interpreted the tapestry without error and wove both truth and prophecy with her threads,” Marwen said. “Her spells graced the spice gardens, for which Marmawell is known, and brought safely into the world every child in the village. And you, Politha, who learned the art of weaving so well, you who wove a blanket of invisibility, can you say that there is no magic in those hands that see what your eyes do not?”

Politha smiled and nodded.

“The Oldwives of the smaller villages have not entirely lost their art, it is true. But did your mother not teach you, child, of the way it was in ancient times, when the Oldwives’ spells were not restricted to kitchens and gardens and inkle looms, when an Oldwife could be granted the gift of the staff as was Farrell of Old. Ah, Marwen, once there was a time when the Oldwife of the village was not feared but loved and respected. You, Marwen—were the children kind to you, honoring you for your gift?”

For a moment Marwen feared that every taunt and cruel trick she had endured was revealed in some way to the others in the room, and that they, too, seeing her weakness and vulnerability, would despise her. She glanced at Maug. He looked steadily down at the floor. She felt the walls expand, and Camlach seemed far away.

“I thought not,” Politha said gently. “In the cities, here in Kebblewok and in other places, only the devoted use the services of the Oldwives for anything other than the making of the tapestry for their children, and even the tapestry has become less sacred, a thing to speak of lightly, even to ignore. They do not teach their children to believe in the magic. The Oldwives have become midwives. True, the people do still make sacrifice to the One Mother, but it is holiday, not worship. Perhaps, perhaps the dragon will instruct us, will send us running to our tapestries....” Quietly, tunelessly, into the silence, she began to sing, her old voice quavering and haunting:

Here let me sing a story of Drude
who stepped over lava hills
and swam the white water
to come to a land of dragon bones
half-earth death diagrams
in the red sands
that filled the empty canyons.
all the summersun days he dwelt
in the purple caves
and wandered the soft yellow rock
eating the roots of stickstem
drinking the white water
and worshipping the dragon bones
that peopled the empty canyons.
finally his wanderings ended
at the base of a black mountain
and there he saw a living serpent
blowing billows of steam into the air
and stretching its wings like vast scarlet sails
to fly exalted, solitary
over the empty canyons.
then Drude returned home
to draw dragons all his days
and when people shook their heads
he sang, "My heart is an empty canyon."

When she was done, Crob arose from his cobbler’s bench and fed the fire with more rushweed braids, as if he were cold.

Cudgham-ip crawled from some damp corner of the cottage into Politha’s lap. Everyone in the room became still. He lay there double-blinking in slow motion, first one eye, then the other, again and again hypnotically. Hesitantly the old woman touched the creature’s leathery skin.

Crob jumped to grab her hand away, his accent heavy when he spoke. “Is good, is fine, Politha. Is pet, see, Marwen’s pet, but—uh—don’t touch.”

“So there you are,” Marwen said. She picked the lizard up by the tail where he dangled undignified. “I thought I had lost you,” she said. Angered at the relief in her voice, she added in a half-whisper, “No loss.”

“Now there is magic!” Camlach said, amazed.

Marwen shrugged one shoulder and dropped the ip into her apron pocket. She opened her mouth to tell them all about the remarkable spell she had done to transform a man into a lizard, but she closed her mouth again. She had not been able to reverse the spell. She looked about the room for some object with which to display her magic but could see nothing for the gathering smoke. She smiled.