Emmi Itäranta - The City of Woven Streets

Screeching, roaring sounds arise from below.

‘Run,’ she says. She seems ready to push me, if I do not go. ‘Don’t look back.’

I run.

The sounds grow into crashing, rumbling, bone-splitting tremors that haunt my footsteps. They follow me, so heavy that I am afraid I will be buried. It feels like the earth under the sea is going to smash the island to splinters and drown all who walk on it. The floor tilts and flees and ruptures, and once a great boulder falls from the ceiling behind me, so close I feel shards from it hit my skin. But not once do I look back.

I run, until my thighs ache and my lungs sting. Three times I need to stop to open doors or gates, but eventually the last one of them throws me onto a high landing on top of the wall. I barely have time to see how a new and greater wave carrying trees, people, furniture and entire houses on its edge approaches from the sea. I cling to the iron gate I have just walked through, take shelter at the mouth of the corridor and hope that the stone arc above me will hold.

Then the world turns into churning sea and hard-hitting pain and all-devouring darkness.

I stand amidst a landscape of water and sky and light. The houses are gone, and people. I feel the dream on my skin and know I could bring them back with my will, but I do not. This space and silence are all I need.

Before me falls a tapestry I recognize. Fine strands run from the edges towards the centre, shimmering like brightness bursting forth from the sun. In the middle there is a hole that is all blackness, shadow-painted, night sealed in the core of the earth. If I pushed my hand into it, it would claim me whole, and no trace of me would be left behind.

A figure stands on the other side of the tapestry, only visible as a shadow through the web of threads.

‘Valeria,’ I say.

The shadow turns around, but the tapestry is still between us and I cannot discern the features. The shadow walks further. I reach out my hand, but it nearly brushes the dark centre of the tapestry, and I pull it away quickly. I decide to rearrange the dream: I tell the tapestry to disappear, the figure to return.

The figure stops. Around it, behind the tapestry, the island looms as if I am looking at it from far above, its canals and streets and buildings blending with the patterns. I try to see the island more clearly, but the shadow approaches me now, it grows taller and wider and encloses the darkness. It steps through the hole in the tapestry, and the spell is on me once again. I am no longer standing. I am lying on the hard ground, and my body is held by invisible chains.

The night-maere rises over me. Its outline against the light could be my own. It lowers its weight on me. The touch radiates into my whole body and with it, an unexpected power that tingles in my palms and glows in my veins. It fills me and quivers under my skin. The burn begins low in my belly, soft and sharp at once. I hear my own breathing as it turns ragged, and I feel every hair on my skin stand on end.

The power wells in me, making tall waves and seeking a way out, but the harder I struggle against the night-maere’s grip, the more closely it binds me in place. The only movement I can make is with my eyes. I am water and waves inside, and yet air and light, bound to the rock I am lying on but floating where nothing holds me. I can feel the night-maere’s mouth a mere finger-width away from mine, although I cannot see it. Its breath scorches my skin.

It whispers in words I can almost understand, sounds so close to sentences I can taste them on my tongue, and for the first time in my life I know the night-maere is trying to tell me something.

Something that is no longer just terror is pulled tight around me. I cannot move my body, so I focus my mind to tear myself free from it. I attempt to make words, but the inside of my mouth is unmoving stone and my face is still as glass.

The night-maere whispers again. The sounds swim and swirl, and are pulled away.

A raindrop falls on my forehead. The night-maere flees. My grasp of its words slips, and they are lost. My muscles twitch. Breath flows through me.

I have never been this surprised to be alive.

The wave has washed me onto a rocky landing. Rain fizzles into the silent landscape. I listen to the ache swelling and receding in my body. The pain throbs behind my eyes as I force myself to sit up. I run my hands along my limbs, feel my torso all over, and roll up my sleeves and trouser legs. My skin is covered in bruises and contusions, but nothing feels broken. Water drips to the ground and runs away in vein-like rivulets as I wring it from my clothes. I clamber to a low squat first, then to my feet. The ground does not tilt and my bones do not crumble. I take a few cautious steps.

I am alone on the landing.

Flood-borne jetsam is scattered around me: roof tiles, shards of glass, pieces of wood, a battered pewter cup. A shoe, no larger than a child’s foot. I remember Mirea and grief pulls at my guts. I push it away, somewhere it can wait until I can let it come. I pick up the cup and put it into my pocket. I will need to find water.

The return route to the House of the Tainted is cut off. The doorway and the upper part of the staircase have survived, but only slightly further down the roof has caved in. The edge of the sea has pushed straight over and through the tall wall, and in many places the structures have suffered damage. The other end of the house, which lies further from the sea and where the male prisoners live, remains standing. Silence hangs over everything. The heaps of stone rest still.

The sea is a landscape of grey and green, rolling closer and drawing away again. I walk along the wall enclosing the landing and see narrow slices of the city. Most houses are where they used to be, but some look like the island has tried to shake them off its back. At first glance the House of Webs looks undamaged in the distance, but then I see something has shifted. The change is small, nearly imperceptible. The wall meets the ground at an angle that is almost the same as before; the new shape of the hill could be only a whim of light and shadow. Yet every time I look again I am more certain that it is not.

The Tower stands tall as ever. The air gondola routes running to it and the House of Webs have collapsed, and at least three others too: the sky is devoid of the lattice of cables. I cannot see the streets from here, but I imagine the scenes taking place on them. People collecting the remnants of their possessions amid the devastation. Others crying, screaming or staring into the distance. Some lying still, perhaps, and even next to them you might not know if they are dead or alive.

I hold back a shiver and a sob. There is time for those later. I cannot stay here, and I can only think of one place to go.

Eventually I find a rusty iron ladder where the wall ends. Underneath is a vertical drop where the cliff runs into the sea. The ladder does not reach all the way down, but leads to another, narrower landing jutting out from the rock. It is clearly intended to be used only in extreme emergency or not at all. The rungs are far apart, covered by thick rust and the second one from top hangs loose.

I grab the wall, climb over it and drop myself onto the top rung.

I need to stop on each rung to draw deep breaths, but eventually I am on the landing below. My muscles tremble all over. I lie down on the cold rock, until I feel able to stand again. A steep, barely passable path leads away from the landing. I follow it. It winds down the side of the cliff and towards the small houses scattered along the slope. Some of them seem beaten by the flood, but here the water has receded.

Further down in the city the streets will have turned into tendrils of the sea. The water will have swallowed the pavements and ground floors, and buildings will stick out like teeth. Every opening between houses is a canal now. I consider my options. To get where I want to go I must cross a distance of twenty blocks at least, maybe more. I might be able to wade some of the journey, but the place itself lies on lower ground, closer to the sea.