Emmi Itäranta - The City of Woven Streets

Stirring and rustling begins in the square. I hear Askari’s voice from behind me, but I have no strength to turn to look.

‘These people are here,’ Askari says, ‘because they need help now. How many of you have lost your homes?’

There are mumbles of agreement from the crowd. Next to me I see a man say something to a woman who nods.

The law-reader stares into the square. He wipes his brow and takes a short step backwards. He raises his speaking trumpet again.

‘This gathering is illegal,’ he says. ‘The Council did not call it.’

‘Maybe they should have,’ Askari’s voice carries from the auditorium.

A woman detaches herself from the crowd then. Alone she steps to the empty zone surrounding the guards arranged at the root of the Tower. She is not young or old, and she has wide hips and curly black hair gathered under a scarf; the light of the torches clings to its silvery stripes. She limps with one leg. Slowly, with difficulty she crosses the space separating the guards from the crowd. She stops in front of one of them. Her voice is deep and far-carrying, like a song.

‘If the Council has any interest in what is happening to our city,’ she says, ‘why would they not show themselves? Ask them to step forward.’

The guard’s face is in shadow under his helmet. He does not lower his spear, does not turn his head.

‘The Council takes no orders from the people,’ the guard says.

The woman stares at the guard in silence for a moment. Then she speaks again.

‘No,’ she says. ‘The Council claims to protect us: from the attacks of foreigners, from floods and disease.’ She pauses. ‘From dreaming.’

The crowd has grown quiet. The law-reader follows the events from the balcony. His hand raises the speaking trumpet, but lets it drop again. Air weighs on me, and my own blood weighs on me. My legs feel weak and hollow. I hold tight onto the tangle inside me. I hold onto Valeria’s arm in order to remain standing.

The woman turns her dark face towards the crowd.

‘Therefore I’d like to ask the Council,’ the woman continues, ‘why this flood has left my home in ruins.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘And why dreams have begun to bother my night-rest lately.’

Everyone knows Dreamers must be imprisoned so they cannot spread their disease. Yet no one takes a step. Even the City Guard is still waiting. My limbs pull me towards the ground. My skin is heavy, made of stone. The knot has tightened to a breaking point. Valeria is holding me upright.

A second woman moves through the crowd. No one stops her. She walks across the empty space and stops next to the first woman. She places her hand on the woman’s arm.

‘I have started dreaming too,’ she says.

The crowd stirs. Several other women and a few men walk to the Tower, next to the first two. Each one of them places a hand on the arm of the person standing next to them, until they form a chain.

‘Who wants to see the Council?’ the woman who first left the crowd shouts.

‘Show us the Council!’ Askari shouts back.

‘Show us the Council!’ a sole cry sounds from the square.

A second voice joins the cry, a third, a whole cluster of voices. They find a common rhythm, like waves of the sea, and grow into a chorus repeating the same demand. The Dreamers are repeating it too.

‘Show us the Council! Show us the Council!’

On the balcony the law-reader stares at the crowd below. He backs towards the door, stops. He strides back to the rail and raises the speaking trumpet to his mouth.

The words are drawn in my mind even before I hear them, and I think,

Janos.

His face turns towards me and his gaze meets mine,

Janos, run now and take everyone with you,

for the island around us will wither into ashes, I will wither into ashes and be gone soon,

board the ships, for they will seize their fires and blades and

‘Guards!’ the law-reader shouts. ‘Kill all the Dreamers!’

the fires will be slow to die and

I have no strength to stop it, the order has been given, I can only look how

the screams of pain will last long and

the guards turn their spears to a lunge and take a step forward, towards the soft, unsheltered bodies of people, and their brief hours and brittle days and

your people have drowned the world over and over, and forgotten, and then done it again.

My legs give in and my knees crash painfully into the stones of the square. I feel the water absorb through the fabric of my trousers. A short distance away a City Guard thrusts his spear into a young man’s back. Valeria’s eyes darken and her breath runs ragged. The square around us has turned into a sizzling witch’s cauldron, all movement and noise and blood.

I want the knot inside me to hold, but it pulls and tugs and slips, and my grip of the threads loosens, because each new wanting is without strength. The knot begins to unravel. Deep in the sea and ground and dust, the heart of the earth awakens.

‘It has begun,’ I say.

The ground shakes beneath us.

It is like stones being yanked in one direction with a swift drag. Valeria stumbles against me. I catch her and pull her down next to me. I wrap my arms around her. The ground continues to quake. A man and a woman next to us crouch to shelter three small children. I notice the gazes of people have turned towards the Tower and I look the same way. The law-reader has vanished from the balcony. The Tower begins to sway like a tree in wind. The stone sun at its pinnacle trembles and breaks off. It rolls out of place, hangs suspended in the air for a few moments before spinning down, and shatters onto the stones. The guards barely have time to move away.

Cracks appear on the trunk of the Tower, like in glass that gives in under too great a pressure. They rupture into black, hollow rifts, and the Tower spits stones onto the square like dead teeth. Boulders fall down and throw arcs of water into air as they hit the ground. People are running away from them, darting every which way. I hear a loud bang behind me. When I look, I see the arched gate has split in two. I glance towards the hill of the House of Webs. It glows as a smouldering ember at the core of the wrap of mist, and flame-threads run in all directions from it, seeking more to seize. Not many gusts of wind will be needed to carry the sparks to the straw of the roofs and wooden structures of houses, into the tanks of the Ink Quarters and to the House of Words, where paper waits, ready to burn with a tall flame.

I fumble for the Web of Worlds again, try to grasp what moves under the island, but the threads escape my reach and I am only able to catch a few that slip my hold.

The Tower swings, what remains of it. Large boulders sway above emptiness, peel open the hollow insides, and the black water of Halfway Canal bursts through, encloses the stones crumbling into it. The building collapses before our eyes, until only a hollow-carved stub remains, a piece of curved wall and a pile of structures. The crowd churns, is crushed into swirls and frays on the edges. I hear Dreamers shouting – harbours! Go to the harbours – but every thread-end I still hold cuts me inside like a thin and bright blade.

Someone comes running. I hear Janos’s voice, but his words are swallowed by the surrounding rumble. Hands pull me up. I see City Guards scattered around the square. Some of them are trying to get orders through to the crowd, but others have dropped their spears and are withdrawing, looking for orders to follow. When they do not find them, they are caught in the flow looking for a way out.

We move, although I can barely see any more, and around us the island is coming to an end.

The ship creaks and tilts, although the sea below is not raging, not yet. The city is already half-ashes, the seam of sea and sky covered in darkness. An ember-coloured glow still shines from the island, a dimming eye. That which remains. Somewhere ahead, across a distance opens a shore, strange and difficult and necessary.