Emmi Itäranta - The City of Woven Streets

‘Offer accepted,’ I say, more out of temptation to stay away from weaving a little longer than anything else. Or so I tell myself.

Alva leaves the glass jars with dead medusas on the table and we head into the other room.

There is more light today, and sound, the kind created when you put many people in a small space and tell them to rest but they are in too much discomfort to do so. Two spare mattresses have been wedged in the narrow gaps between the beds. There are three younger weavers and four older than myself in the sick bay. Two seem asleep, but the rest are tossing and turning restlessly. Their breathing is distorted and ragged, heavy with cough. Their skin is covered in a rash that looks like they have been dipped in red or purple ink. I smell the heavy scent of burning herbs, and under it sweat and sickness.

The girl is awake. She is sitting at the back of the room, propped up with pillows, and is putting together a puzzle. Alva must have given it to her. She turns to look at us. Alva puts a jar under the girl’s chin and she opens her mouth. A dead singing medusa drops into the jar.

‘I’m afraid I cannot give you another one,’ Alva says. ‘I don’t know when I will be able to get more, and I need to keep a few in reserve.’

The girl nods.

‘But I have good news,’ Alva continues. ‘We can finally arrange your transfer. It wasn’t possible earlier, because there was an accident in the north.’ I remember the flood night: the empty sky, the missing cable. ‘An important air route crashed the night you came. Cleaning up has caused so much work that the route has only just started operating again.’

The girl looks like something is troubling her, but nods again slowly. Her face begins to darken in a way I do not understand.

‘A gondola is coming to take you to the Hospital Quarters tomorrow,’ Alva continues. ‘They have more singing medusas. And if not, they’ll have something else to ease the pain.’

The girl’s face continues to darken. She takes a deep breath and stares at Alva.

‘What is it?’ I ask.

She grasps my wrist. I start, but do not pull my hand away. Her fingers are warm and narrow, and their grip seems to reach deeper than the skin. I glance at Alva.

‘Everything is fine,’ I say to the girl. ‘There will be more space in the Hospital Quarters. They will be able to take better care of you there and find your family.’

The girl holds my gaze with hers: grey as rain, or floodwaters in the light of dawn. A slow shiver travels through me, as if she is pulling an invisible string somewhere inside. The corners of her mouth tremble once, she draws breath again, and then lets go of me, turning her face towards the floor. She is very still, as if holding a deep tremor within.

‘I just came to say goodbye,’ I say.

The girl raises her gaze. She nods slowly.

‘I hope you feel better soon.’

They are worn and hollow words, but I cannot find any others.

Before I turn to go, something moves in her eyes. A knot tightens inside me, but I choose to treat it as just another shadow. One more will make little difference.

I step into the hall where the others have already settled to work. I kneel in front of the statue of Our Lady of Weaving and the image of the Council. I touch my forehead to the floor. I get up, walk to my seat and pick up the shuttle. My fingers know the paths and cannot err, for they never change. Wall-webs must be strong enough to survive even heavy rainfalls and storm winds carrying across the sea. Yet they must also be easy enough to unravel, so the yarn can be used again. The hours slip through my fingers uneven, in slow knots.

This evening, after I have placed down my shuttle, taken my supper and returned to my chamber, sleep is deceptively easy to come. It puts me behind a door in a place that is the web-maze, and yet is not: the walls are gauze and yarn, but the door is a robust wooden door. It is ajar, and behind it opens a deep and dense darkness. On the other side there is a rustling sound, like someone breathing. I turn around. The web walls close to form a dead end before me. As I approach them I think I hear words swishing, and behind the walls I sense many solitudes interlaced with one another. But I know it is a dream, and my dream is mine to command. I will my body to be lighter than air. Wind blows through the crack in the door and over my skin, picks me up from the maze with lithe fingers and floats me towards the skies. The starry night sky pulls me up until I am wind and light, rips apart to reveal a universe where nothing withholds me.

Then I am back in my bed, the mattress hard under my back, breath struggling in my throat. My body is tired, as if I have spent all my strength on hard work. The walls of my cell are close.

I am not certain what has woken me.

There is no light yet around the edges of the curtains. The glow-glass draws a faint blue ring around itself. The house is frozen around the mutest heart of the night. If there are weavers walking and guarding the corridors, they are far away from my cell.

I realize I have forgotten my night-watch.

The glow-glass almost shatters to the floor when I reach out to shake it brighter. I catch it just before it slides over the edge of the table. I throw my blanket aside and pull a cloak from the foot of the bed to cover my nightgown. The sand sits still in the hourglass next to the door. I forgot to turn it before I went to bed. I push my feet into leather-soled shoes.

The door closes behind me more loudly than I intend.

Half-running, I pass a long row of quiet cell doors. When I turn the corner at the end of the corridor, I hear the sound.

It is a hardly discernible rift in the wall of silence, thinner than a line drawn with a needlepoint. A narrow moan is rising and falling along the ceiling vaults, in the chambers of stone that throw it back from their walls. I recognize it. My steps turn faster.

Past the washrooms I reach the first dormitory doorway. The sound fades. I peek in. All is quiet. A drowsy third-year weaver lifts her head and lets it fall back on the pillow. I do not see anything unusual in the next dormitory, either. But when I close the door, the sound begins again. This time I know where it is coming from.

In the first-year apprentices’ dormitory everyone is awake by now. A flood of whispers and half-spoken words washes over me. At the far end of the room, where the youngest apprentices sleep, a group of girls is gathered around a bed, but not too close. Their ring leaves an empty space full of fear around the source of the sound, and they are all fiddling coral amulets between their fingers. A faint, anxious moan carries from the bed, circling the room like a starved ghost seeking a way out.

I hope to be wrong. I walk across the dormitory towards the bed.

When I see the girl from whose mouth the moan is rising, I know there is nothing I can do for her.

She is lying on her back, her body completely still and her lips slightly parted. I remember her name: Mirea. She cannot be older than ten. Her breathing is strained, as if her throat is trying to close around it. But it is her eyes that really give her away. They are open, black holes. Her pupils have widened like dark water, washed away all colour, and there is nothing between their edges and the frightened whites. Because frightened she is, her whole face brimming with terror as she stares into the space above her that seems empty to everyone else. Yet I know what she sees. And I know the strange song of her low, bare moan: the kind people always sing when a night-maere is riding them. The sound marks the sleeper as soon as someone else hears it.

I seize my own coral amulet and speak her name softly.

‘Mirea.’

A violent shudder runs through her, and then she grasps my arm. The grip is tight enough to bruise.