David Brin - The Loom of Thessaly

The next time Pavlos blinked he saw an overview. The small section of tapestry he looked upon was colored a sanguinary red. He felt almost overcome by the lust of one half of a city to kill the other half. Taken at a distance, the scene was almost beautiful, in a dreadful fashion.

A small shift of his eyes told a sad irony: that this civil war would lead, within a year, to the fall of the city to barbarians from the north. A centimeter downward, the color red overwhelmed all other shades.

There was, in fact, a lot of red everywhere he looked. Bright, sudden patches flashed at him as battles and burnings. Pink tintings leapt out as oppression and grief.

There were other shades. In fact, Pavlos thought he saw a perpetual effort, in greens and browns of health and chaste blues of thought and art… and especially in the shades of humor and courage, to force the weave in another direction altogether.

The conflict created a blend of terrible, tragic beauty. The tapestry, as a whole, made him ache inside. The stories leapt at him, individually and in groups, comprising a sum of melancholy that finally made him close his eyes.

“Moira,” he whispered.

The pronunciation had fooled him. It was not a borrowed, foreign name. It was an honorific. A title.

“Yes,” she said, beside him. “I am She Who Walks, who travels… or used to. Come now, hero. You must meet the Three. The Three Who Weave wish to look upon you.”

Once upon a time the three crones might have stood at a crude, warp-weighted loom, much as did Arachne… or Penelope, weaving as she waited for Ulysses. Now they sat on padded stools. Their broad, vertical floor loom looked no more than a few centuries old. Perhaps some visiting hero had been a skilled carpenter, and knocked it together for them before he…

Before he what? None of the possible scenarios Pavlos could imagine coming out of this meeting included his being allowed to leave. They had some use for him, to be sure, these ancient meddlers. And they’d had long practice dealing with “heroes” who wanted to take home souvenirs and a story.

Moira beckoned him forward to be presented, but Pavlos interrupted before she began the introductions, partly to keep from falling into another awestruck trance.

“I know their names.” He gestured to the old “woman” who sat a bit apart from the loom, with a basket full of woolly skeins at her feet and bottles of dye at her side. She rhythmically drew threads from the basket, winding each on a wooden frame, then painting on various colors with a blur of brevity. On finishing each, she wound the thread quickly onto a bobbin.

Something about her activity shuck Pavlos as—strange. It was as if he watched a stroboscopic image—like that of a top spinning or an engine turning —and for every “thread” he saw painted and wound, ten thousand were actually handled.

“Your name is Clotho,” he said. She smiled at him crookedly, apparently giving him her entire attention, yet never stopping her work.

“You have also been called Urda, and U-dzu. You prepare the thread.”

He turned to the weaver. She was the oldest hag. She looked as frail as a springtime icicle… as thin and friable as late summer grass.

“This is Lachesis,” he went on, pointing to the weaver, who didn’t even glance at Pavlos. Her hands dipped, with the same stroboscopic effect, into a bag on her lap, constantly bringing forth fresh bobbins of thread, tying the free ends into place upon the tapestry, then flying through the innumerable bobbins, weaving them among each other and the straight strands of warp.

“Her name means She Who Knows Sorrow. She has also been called Verdani. The Norsemen knew her, as well.”

The third crone actually paused in her work, and grinned at Pavlos. She seemed the youngest of the three, though not as fresh as Moira. She was the first to speak.

“Well educated, aren’t you, hero? Then you know, of course, what these are?”

She held a pair of bronze cloth shears up to the filtered afternoon sunlight. The sight of them made Pavlos want to quail, but he forced himself to stand erect instead.

“I know what they are, Atropos. You seem to be a bit lazy in their use, right now.”

The third hag frowned for a moment. But Clotho immediately exploded in mirth. She put down her dyes and cackled dryly, slapping her thighs. Slowly, Atropos resumed her cruel smile.

“Very brave and humorous, hero. When Moira told us of you, we thought you were one of the weak ones. Perhaps not.

Her Greek was even more archaic than Moira’s. Pavlos had to concentrate to understand the heavily inflected speech.

“You are right,” Atropos went on. “I am lazy because Lachesis, my dear sister”—she motioned to the weaver, who never once looked up—“has this last century insisted that I give her more length in the average thread… even though they are more numerous than ever. Clotho and I have been humoring her, though it is we who will decide when this silly phase comes soon to end.”

With that she grimaced and leaned over to snip with the shears. With each “click” a rain of tiny bobbins fell to the floor. Pavlos winced as the clacking speeded up to a high-pitched burr.

“Well!” Clotho cried out. “Now comes the part I like second best! Now that introductions are over, hero, what is your first remark?”

She sat expectantly, like an artist awaiting worship, but equally willing to accept vehement detestation as a form of praise.

Pavlos forced himself to answer, feeling a desperate need to maintain momentum until he had a chance to think.

“Your job was to prepare the thread that makes up the length and tone of a man’s life. I’d like to know how you accomplish that.”

The hag was startled for a moment. The expression looked so unaccustomed on her toothless, satisfied face, that Pavlos felt an instant’s triumph. Any uncertainty he caused these furies was a momentary victory for his sanity.

“The first!” she cried in sudden delight. “The first hero to ask me that!

“Always they ask the stupid questions, like ‘Who gave you the right’… or ‘ Why ’…” Her voice became mockingly querulous.

Pavlos remained silent. Those were the questions he had wanted to ask next.

“At last a practical hero!” Clotho went on. “No prayers to the dead little gods, or futile attempts to exorcise us by calling on One who is too big, and has forgotten we exist… no, this hero has gained my favor! Come, hero! I will show you how it is done!”

She reached for his hand. When she touched it Pavlos felt a brief thrill of power, as if her aura were something palpable and electric.

But her skin felt rough and dry. Her grip was very strong as she pulled him out the broad portico and down the marble steps of the front face of the temple, into the late afternoon shadows.

He was almost dragged through an overgrown carpet of grass and native flax, across an open area toward a forest-shrouded building on the other side.

A small tholos, a roofed circle of marble columns, faced the temple across the open meadow. It stood beneath a great cedar, the largest Pavlos had ever seen. The fluted pillars of the ancient structure were laced with almost microscopic filigree that had a sort of metallic sheen. But in between, the openings were blocked by massive slabs of undressed stone, which clashed with the original design.

With surprising agility, the ancient fury pulled him along up the short stairs to the narrow portico. There she stopped Pavlos and motioned him to be still as she dragged aside a granite stone blocking the doorway.

Clotho looked quickly about the rim of the opening, as if watching for something trying to escape. When finally satisfied she grinned at him and crooked a finger in sly invitation.