Emmi Itäranta - The City of Woven Streets

‘She’d been in the water for a long time,’ Alva says. ‘But I saw her tattoos. She had your name tattooed on her palm. Eliana, Valeria is dead.’

The world stands still around me. The tattoo-eyes stare, unblinking. Somewhere outside and above there are canals and houses, but no one moves in them. The clouds in the sky have stopped, the waves stalled as if their crests are carved in ice. Sand in hourglasses has ceased to flow. I seek within me the certainty that this is a dream, fumble for it with desperate hands, and clutch only the understanding that I am awake.

I stand up. The chair scratches the floor behind me: a long, rending sound, sharp as a scream.

Alva gets up, walks around the table and pulls me into a hug. I stand straight. Perhaps my arms move to wrap around her. Perhaps they do not. She is saying something, soft words that fall into a repetitive rhythm, sorry, so sorry, so sorry. Like a bird’s wings brushing against a confined space.

No one should be able to move or speak in this moment that has fallen outside of time, but Janos and Alva do, and Tirra and Askari. I watch them as if they are behind a thick crust of glass that suffocates all sound and warps every gesture. They belong in some other world where the language is strange and the shape of living things unknown to me. I turn and walk away, along corridors where glow-glasses pick up white-shining eyes floating past me. Fingers grasp my arm, but I yank it away. Finally I find my hammock and climb into it and close my eyes.

Someone stands next to me for a long while. I hear her breathing. I imagine that when I turn and see her face, it will be Valeria. I think of this as a dream-room, where I can make her Valeria. I do not open my eyes because as long as I keep them closed, Valeria is standing next to me.

Eventually I hear her sigh and walk away.

I think about the last time I saw Valeria. I think about the first time, and every time. The way her mouth turned to a smile and dropped it again, the way light fell across her face, and shadow. I speak to her, because there is no one else I want to speak to.

Valeria, I say. Somewhere is another island where we walk, with sand shifting under our footsteps, and a rock we climb up together, still warm to touch with the day’s glow. There, on the blazing late-summer shore, we sit side by side, our shoulders brushing each other. Light-coloured leaves float in the water-space, and when wind folds it, they move away from us, towards winter. There is nothing between us but peace, and we rest in this moment, a premonition of the coming autumn on our skin. It is not harsh, but translucent instead, and bright as the wing of a dragonfly spreading to take flight. On tree-branches years will curl into buds and shrivel up only to grow again, and beyond them the sky is calm and unbroken. If I place my hand on your arm, you will let it stay there, and if I do not, the moment will not be any less full for it. The water is quiet, and moves, and is still again.

I listen, but Valeria is silent. I am silent too.

Tears come and go.

Footsteps come and go.

The smell of food wafts into the room.

It may be night or day.

It may be full moon or new.

Eventually I get up with limbs as stiff as if their flesh has been parted from the bones, buried, turned to dust and put together again. My throat is just as dry. I find a bowl of cold herbal brew on the floor next to the hammock. I sit cross-legged and drink in big gulps.

A noise like long and hollow metal wands being beaten together pierces the room. I stare at the air, expecting to see the source of the sound appear before my eyes until I realize it will not. There is no one else in the dormitory, but I hear running and talking outside.

The noise stops.

After a while, the door opens and Alva peers in.

‘Are you awake?’ she asks.

I nod.

‘The alarm went off because one of ours sent a forewarning that she was bringing visitors,’ Alva says. She looks at me, up and down. There is concern on her face. ‘They wish to speak to you. They say it’s urgent. Do you think you are well enough?’

I do not. I nod. Alva extends a hand to me, and I take it. She gives my fingers a light squeeze.

We step into the round room with chairs around the edges. There is more light this time: live fires enclosed in lanterns blend with the blue spheres of glow-glasses. Tirra sits on a chair with Askari standing by her side. Janos is there too, and three other people. I recognize two of them immediately. Irena turns her head as we walk in, and grief is raw on her face. Next to her I see Moth, the short-haired guard who helped me escape the House of the Tainted. The third person stands in silence, head covered by a hood. Alva points at a chair, and I sit down.

The third person turns around and pulls back her hood, revealing a dark face I know.

I stand up.

‘I won’t listen to anything she has to say,’ I say.

Tirra watches me. Her voice is calm when she speaks, without a rift.

‘That is your choice,’ she says. ‘But before you take your leave, you may wish to know your house-elder has offered herself as a hostage in exchange for the opportunity to speak to you.’

Weaver’s gaze holds mine, black and steady.

‘I am glad to see you are alive, Eliana,’ she says quietly.

I search for any shift, a blotched outline that would reveal unease, and do not see it.

‘You sent me to the House of the Tainted,’ I say.

And there it is: Weaver’s eyes drift, stop on Moth for a brief while, and turn back.

‘I had no choice,’ she says.

The others are watching us. I could easily have gone to the kitchen and taken a knife from there. Now I wish I had. If I used my nails and teeth, bit Weaver and clawed bloody scratches on her, how much damage could I do before they pulled me away?

‘I don’t believe you,’ I say.

Moth does something strange: she steps closer to Weaver and takes her hand.

‘I believe you met someone in the House of the Tainted,’ Weaver says. ‘Your brother might not have found you, had it not been for his message.’

I stare at them, standing side by side. The world around me is still the glass-enclosed world I do not recognize, its creatures still strangers speaking a strange language.

‘I apologize for my mother,’ Moth says. ‘She acted without my approval.’

I only see it then. The similar face shape, the bearing that is the same despite the different build. The same arc of the head under the short, curly hair. I look from Weaver to Moth and back.

‘Is she your daughter?’ I ask Weaver.

Weaver’s expression shifts, but Moth speaks first.

‘Not her daughter,’ she says. ‘Her son.’ She pauses for a moment. ‘My name is Ila.’

And I understand, or believe I do. Her low voice and angular shape that is not without softness. His shape, I correct in my mind. Not hers. But simultaneously, as the image finds its form, a feeling bothers me that it is not whole. There is something I cannot place.

It is entirely quiet in the room. Tirra shifts in her chair. The rustling fills the space.

‘But you lived with the female prisoners and guards,’ I say.

Weaver and Ila look at each other, a slow look that has been exchanged before. Weaver’s mouth opens. Ila moves his head very slightly. Weaver closes her mouth again.

‘When you look at me,’ Ila says, ‘what do you see?’

The mark on his forehead is clear, but my eyes slide down, trying to understand the meaning of his words. I feel strange and rude about looking, as if I am intruding on something private. His hips are narrow, his shoulders wide, and there is a nearly invisible swell of breasts under the jacket. His face has no sign of a stubble, and his upper lip has no more hair than my own.