Emmi Itäranta - The City of Woven Streets

Biros does not reply. For a moment nothing moves. Then Lazaro snaps his gloved fingers. The sound is soft and muffled, without an echo. Biros does not turn to look. They both take a step towards us. Their shadows grow taller on the walls.

I begin to back down. Valeria follows. I do not know which one of us trembles more. We could try to attack them. But they are armed, soldiers. I have never held a sharp weapon larger than scissors.

Without looking at Valeria I clutch the hem of her coat and tug. The movement remains hidden from Biros’s and Lazaro’s eyes. So I hope, at least. Valeria understands and nods so slowly that it could just be an arbitrary movement of her head. I cannot be certain she has understood my meaning, but I must trust it. We stop. Biros and Lazaro continue to move closer.

‘We should have got rid of you to begin with,’ Biros says.

I am not certain if he is talking to me or Valeria.

‘Do you wish to know what we did with your tongue?’ Lazaro asks.

I catch a glimpse of nausea on Valeria’s pale face. I tighten my grip on the hem of her coat. My fingers count against her side with small, small movements. One, two, three.

I tug hard at Valeria’s coat: now . We rush towards them. Biros moves so fast I understand he has been expecting the attack all this time. He steps forward and gives my shoulder a painful kick while Lazaro simultaneously grabs Valeria’s arms. I stagger backwards and lose my balance. I have time to see Lazaro twisting Valeria’s arms behind her back and forcing her onto her knees in the staircase while Biros lowers his knife to Valeria’s throat. I fall down several steps and the back of my head hits the wall. Darkness pulls me into its embrace.

The House of Webs is here, yet gone. Water gathers into pools around me, and lakes and oceans, and columns of mist that grow all the way to skies and stars. The Web of Worlds supports me. I am a pebble cast into water: expanding circles emerge from me, reaching in all directions. They grow ever wider, join other circles far beyond me, but they do not disappear. They hold everything together. The city is empty, and the sea and the sky. It is cold and completely quiet.

A shadow approaches across the water. Its grasp binds me in place already, even though it is still a distance away. My hands do not move. My feet do not move. My breathing withers and grows thinner.

The night-maere interlaces its dark, icy fingers with mine and climbs onto my chest. Its thighs squeeze me from both sides and its weight crushes my lungs, but with its touch a tingling power floods into me again. It unravels from my palms and mouth and eyes, flows from me as glowing strands that stitch me to the weave of the world.

The night-maere brushes my ear with its burning lips and talks to me, says what it has been attempting to say for a long while, when I was not ready to listen. This time is different: I can finally discern the words, each and every one, and I understand. I stop fighting back. I let the sensations, the fire-glowing gleam and the hum of the words wash over me. Slowly the fear flows away in soft trickles, disappears into the cracks of the street, the stony pores of the city. I breathe, still not freely, but now ready to receive what the night-maere wishes to give me. Strength settles in me, becomes part of every shift of blood in my veins. All threads twine together and the pattern grows dense and recognizable, an image that has been before my eyes all along. I listen to the message of the creature, and there is nothing in it that I do not already know.

When the night-maere has told me what it has to say, it presses its forehead against mine. My heart opens, bare and susceptible, and the creature begins to be absorbed into me like water swirling into a hole in the ground. Slowly the weight withdraws from my chest, the creature fades until it is gauze-like and lighter than smoke, and eventually the final remnants of the night-maere disappear into me, within my limits and outlines. The chasm on top of my heart seals itself.

I draw a deep breath and my limbs move again, and I am finally whole.

The stone steps dig painfully into my back. My arm is bent under me, and the back of my head aches. Time has not moved. Valeria is on her knees in the staircase, Lazaro’s fingers squeeze her arms and Biros’s knife has stopped on her throat. Something vibrates in my field of sight, like a ray of light, or a shred of web-yarn lighter than air. I try to brush it away, but my hand slips through it and it grows brighter.

At the height of my chest a thin, white-glowing strand runs from me to Valeria. I think about the knife on her throat, and how a small movement by Biros could take her away from me. I feel a tug in my heart. It sends a vibration towards Valeria along the shining strand. The vibration sinks into her chest like a shooting star swimming through the night. She remains still, but the air around her stirs and settles again.

I begin to crawl up the staircase towards Valeria. My knees and palms sting. The stone sucks the dark stains I leave on it. Biros hears a sound that my body emits, a sob or perhaps a snarl. I do not recognize it myself. Time begins again. Lazaro remains still. Biros’s head turns slowly, as if the movement is muffled by water. Shadows paint visible his skull, the black eye sockets, the deeps of his cheeks, the mouth which opens to show the teeth and the void behind them.

The hand presses the handle of the knife; the blade moves along the skin. The white-glowing strand between Valeria and me tenses and shines brighter. It gathers as a tingling under my skin, lights up the flight of stairs, the whole surrounding darkness, and shifts the shape of everything. I look at the reality, but all is like in the dreams where I know I am dreaming and where the dream is mine to control. The walls of stone around me are dream-walls, which I can crush by raising my hand. The dark water below is dream-water, which I can harness against my enemy by whispering an invitation. If my body dies, it will be mended again, because dream-death does not reach beyond the borders of waking.

And because the dream around me is mine to mould and command, I command.

Stop, I say without words. Let Valeria go.

Biros’s hand freezes. He turns his gaze to me, and Lazaro does the same. Something appears on their faces that I have not seen on them before. Biros’s arm shakes with strain, but the knife does not move.

Let go, I say. Of the knife and Valeria.

One by one Lazaro’s fingers loosen their grip of Valeria. The knife clatters to the stones from Biros’s hand, rolls down the steps, past me. I let it go. I will not need it.

Biros steps away from Valeria, further up, towards the doorway. He stares at me. Lazaro follows him.

‘What did you do?’ he says in a voice that is like an animal caught in his throat.

Go, I say. Run.

Biros tries to reach for Valeria again. I command reality like I would a dream. Air turns into a wall he cannot penetrate, and he is thrown backwards, to the doorway. He doubles over as if he has been struck hard around the middle. Lazaro takes a slow step away from Valeria and me.

Things happen quickly. I have time to sense a presence that is entirely different from Biros, Lazaro and Valeria. It makes a rift in the reality beyond which there is no void, but a strange intelligence, unlike a human’s. It approaches, seeks. It stops to probe. It surges forward.

The empty space behind Biros fills. A black limb covered by bristles darts into it, and another. Flames are reflected in eyes that shimmer dim like stars hidden beyond space. The arched spikes of the jaws bite into bare skin. Biros flounders in Spinner’s jaws until his body grows weary. His limbs twitch once, twice. Eventually the final spasm is over. Spinner pulls away from the door. Lazaro stares, frozen in place, then begins to crawl through the doorway. His feet disappear from sight.