Emmi Itäranta - The City of Woven Streets

‘Fascinating,’ Biros says.

‘Interesting,’ Lazaro says. He closes his notebook and slips it into his pocket together with the pen.

‘We will look into it,’ Biros says.

‘And we will let you know,’ Lazaro says.

They get up. I get up too. They both take a quick bow at me. I bow my head slightly in return. Then they bow at Weaver, and in a few fast strides they are gone, the echoes of their footsteps vanished into the fabrics covering the walls. Twelve of Our Ladies of Weaving look from the tapestries far beyond this room and hour, and speechlessly their limbs spin new meshes for the Web of Worlds.

I turn to go, but Weaver’s voice stops me.

‘I wish to have a word with you as well,’ she says. She closes the door. We stand in the shadows and watch each other across the distance of the room.

‘If there is something you are not telling me, now would be a good moment to mend the situation,’ she says. ‘That way I might be able to help you.’

‘There isn’t.’

She regards me.

‘You know I’m not unfair,’ she remarks. ‘I have trusted you with more than I have many others. It would make me sad to know that trust is not returned.’

It is true. She often lets me send water messages, showing me the symbol to insert in the watergraph without telling me what it means. She does not know that I have learned most symbols over the years. The skill is not much use, however, because she only ever asks me to send unimportant routine messages, such as vegetable or seafood orders to the market, or notes to let the merchants know how many antique silkweed tapestries the House of Webs will be auctioning off this year.

Weaver has also let me keep my cell to myself for a long time without questioning it. Most younger weavers have to share their cells with someone else, and the only reason I am on my own is because my cellmate left the house without warning a year ago. I suspect she was pregnant.

‘I would tell you if there was anything,’ I say.

Weaver smiles almost unnoticeably.

‘Of course you would,’ she says. ‘Before you go back to work, could you take a message to Alva for me? Tell her I will send for a gondola to take our patient to the Hospital Quarters tomorrow. I know the sick bay is running out of space.’

I bow my head slightly. As I walk to the door, I half-expect Weaver to stop me again, but she does not. When I glance back, she is standing by the watergraph, waiting for me to go, so I do.

I find Alva placing a sample under the microscope. It is an expensive device. She has told me there are only three of them on the island. She glances up when I walk in. Two bright lanterns are burning on the table. The curtains between the sick room and the front room are closed. I hear coughing from the other side. I imagine the girl in her bed, her long limbs, the dampened pain on her face. The tattoo that is like an invitation written on her, one I cannot understand.

‘The ointment is between the scale and the opened bag of camomile,’ Alva says and turns a small, round mirror in her hand. ‘It’s been waiting for you for days.’

I pick up the glass jar from the table and push it into the pocket of my jacket.

‘How did you know I needed it?’

‘You come to ask for it every year after the Ink-marking,’ Alva replies. ‘Do these seem the same to you?’ She points at two grey strips on top of the mirror. A scent of mud and seaweed rises from them. I look at them more closely and notice that they appear to be slices of medusa flesh.

‘Exactly the same,’ I say. ‘Why?’

Alva places the mirror under the microscope lens and pulls one of the lanterns closer. She looks into the microscope and adjusts it by the wheel on the side.

‘What about now?’ she asks.

I walk around the table next to her and peer into the microscope. The view makes me think of trunks of strange trees, a pile of maggots or budding branches of unfamiliar sea plants.

‘You’re looking at the part of medusa skin that helps them feel and sense light. It also contains their medicinal properties, the cells that produce a pain-relieving chemical,’ Alva says. ‘There are samples from two medusas under the lens, not just one.’

The difference is clear. The tree-trunk and budding-branch patterns on the left look translucent, but on the right dark streaks show on them, as if they have been dipped in ink that is slowly dripping off.

‘What is that?’ I ask.

‘I asked someone to bring me a dead medusa from the shore, the freshest they could find,’ Alva says. ‘That’s the one on the right. The other one is from my tank.’

‘I thought they all died of polyp fever.’

It has been a week since the flood. A few days after the first wave of dead medusas washed to the shores, the Council sent a water message around the city. The word spread quickly: polyp fever, a rare disease that was not harmful to humans but could become an epidemic. Unfortunate, because it would take years for the medusa population to recover. Ships had already been sent to collect healthy singing medusas from the open sea to be planted in the waters close to the island.

‘That’s what I thought,’ Alva says. ‘But then I began to wonder. Polyp fever doesn’t usually strike during the cool season. According to lore, there have only been three epidemics on the island before, and they all took place in late summer.’

I remember the mute and still blooms of jellyfish that people are still collecting from the streets and shores, their stench that floats around the midden ships. I think of the humming of the medusas in denser-growing evenings, the silence spread across the shores, and the air feels heavier to breathe.

‘What is it, then?’

‘I don’t know, but it is not polyp fever. Could be a different kind of disease.’ She reaches for the side table and picks up two glass jars with water and a dead medusa in each. The animals are missing a slice of their bells. ‘There’s something else, too,’ she says.

Alva walks across the room to the tank and pushes one of the jars against the glass wall. Inside the tank, a bloom of medusas begins to gather near the dead one, and a faint humming grows in the water. The medusas settle into the shape of a circle and the slow gauzes of their swimming-bells ripple behind the glass. Alva waits, pulls the first jar away and presses the other one against the tank. The singing medusas keep their formation for a moment, some of them even swimming closer in curiosity. Then the humming is cut short, and all goes quiet. A few seconds later the whole bloom bursts like a large soap bubble. The medusas scurry in all directions, far away to the other side of the tank.

‘Have you ever seen them do that?’ Alva asks.

‘No.’

‘Neither have I.’ Alva turns and walks back to the table. Only after some time do the medusas return to their languid paths in the water-space.

‘What are you going to do?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know yet,’ Alva says. ‘I need to look into this further.’

I will soon be missed in the Halls of Weaving. You can stretch a temporary absence from work for a while, but you have to do it carefully.

‘Weaver asked me to tell you that she wants to move the patient to the Hospital Quarters tomorrow,’ I say. ‘The… visitor.’ My hand has moved to gesture at my mouth before I realize, and Alva needs no further specification. She nods.

‘Good. I’ve already had to put spare mattresses to use. A severe cough is spreading in the house, and it seems to come with a dreadful rash.’

‘Is it contagious?’

‘Presumably,’ she says. ‘Do you want to come and say goodbye?’

I glance in the direction of the Halls of Weaving.

‘I will take full responsibility if Weaver comes after you,’ Alva says. ‘Medical emergency.’