Anna Smith Spark - The Tower of Living and Dying

‘Did the young one bother you?’ Ru asked.

‘Yes. But I hit it on the nose as you suggested.’

‘He’s the next to be slaughtered. When needs be. Difficult, that one.’

Lan served the food. They sat quietly to eat.

Ru said when they had finished eating, ‘I’ll teach you to spin, if you want. If you’re staying here.’

‘I can’t stay,’ Lan said.

‘My husband died,’ Ru said. Lan looked up at her, confused. ‘A long time ago. Years. Years and years. Still young, he was. I was young. He died in a brawl in a tavern, the innkeep said he was attacked by thugs, but … He died and I stayed here, learnt all the things I needed to learn, did what needed doing, worked hard. It’s not much of a life. But he had locked my skin away somewhere, you see, and I never found it. So I have to stay. I’ll teach you to spin and cook and work if you want. If you’re staying.’

This thin tired old woman bent double from her work. A selkie. A sea maiden. A god thing. She swam in the sea as a seal, shed her sealskin and danced on the shore as a woman, until a man came and stole away her skin. And while the man had her skin she must stay with him. Marry him.

Ru said, ‘Always, for someone, the world is being broken, Lan, girl. I’m not so resigned to it. Still long to go back to the sea. Dream it. But it was a long time ago. So many years.’

They stared down at their empty plates. Lan said, ‘My brother was murdered and I couldn’t bear the grief of it. So I went far away to try to forget. And while I was far away I walked out of a shop doorway and saw my brother’s murderer’s face. And I dragged my brother’s murderer all the way back here with me to punish him. And everyone I ever cared for died as a result. If I hadn’t walked out of the doorway. If I hadn’t seen his face.’

‘If,’ said Ru. ‘If.’

‘I could search the house for you. For your skin.’

‘I’ve searched. You think I haven’t? It’s not here. Wherever he put it, it’s hidden somewhere fast. Under a stone on the shore. Buried in a box in the cold earth.’

‘Let me search. Please.’

Ru said, ‘And what would I do, if you found it? Go back to the sea?’

This thin tired old woman bent double from her work, her hands gnarled and shaking, her eyes half blind. Seals swimming, lithe and glossy and beautiful, twisting and diving in the water, wild and nameless and free.

Ru said, ‘Don’t search for it.’

Ru said, ‘There are a thousand cruelties in the world, Lan. Cruel dead things. Monsters. Chance. Tidy the plates away. Then I’ll teach you to spin.’

The woman Lan nodded, took the plates away to the slops bucket and the bowl of water for washing she had been heating on the fire. Hot water, lye soap that made her hands dry and sore. The soap was a new thing, like the bread, got from the village where she had taken the wool Ru spun. Great massed coils of it, fine for weaving, thick for knitting blankets and mittens and caps for the winter cold. Ru had spun it and saved it, unable now to reach the village on the other side of Pelen Brook to trade. So some tiny good comes from my ruin, Lan thought. Someone’s world kept alive. The cottage was filthy where Ru could not see the dirt. The goats were wild with uncombed coats where Ru could no longer walk to them. If I leave she will die, Lan thought.

They sat in the half-dark by the fire, and Ru taught her to spin.

‘I will show you a special thing,’ Ru said a few days later when Lan had returned from milking the goats. She went to a cupboard at the back of the house by her bed, brought out a bundle wrapped in leather. Unfolded it carefully and there on the leather was a piece of yellow cloth. Fragile as cobwebs, with a sheen like a child’s hair. Ru held it up. It shone and glowed and blazed. Not just lit from the sun but lit from itself. Like mage glass. Like magic fires. Like laughing eyes.

‘Oh!’ Lan cried. One beautiful thing. Such a beautiful thing. ‘Is it … Is it magic?’ Mage cloth, worked from dreams. A princess shining in the light of her own gown. Eltheia herself must have worn such things.

‘Smell it,’ said Ru.

Lan bent towards it, carefully, fearful she might damage it by breathing, so delicate it seemed. It should smell of spices and honey and the petals of new flowers. It should smell, she thought with a pang of rage, like Thalia’s hair. She breathed in the scent of leather, the worn skin smell of Ru’s hands. And under it … Salt. Seaweed. Fish. She looked up, shocked.

‘Sea silk,’ said Ru. ‘The threads of tiny sea creatures. In the sunlight it glows. If left in the sun it will glow at night. Touch it.’ Soft as thistle down. So soft Lan could barely feel it. Glowing. But the smell of the sea. A dress for a mer princess, perhaps, a selkie to dance on the sands in the moon. No human woman would wear it, smelling like that.

‘Is it yours?’ Lan asked. She imagined Ru as a young beautiful sea maid, silvery haired and slender ankled. This the last precious fragment of her gown.

‘I wove it,’ said Ru. ‘I gathered the silk. Wove it with my own hands.’

‘But I’ve never heard of such a thing.’ There would be a way to take the stink out, and all the lords and kings and queens of Irlast would want such a fabric. Eltheia and Amrath, shining like the sun. Landra Relast should have had wardrobes full of it.

‘I made it,’ Ru said again. ‘The most beautiful fabric in the world. No one else knows how to make it. It took me forty years to make.’ Held it to the sun again and again it glowed. ‘If you stay, I can teach you.’

An image for a moment, the two of them, the sea witch and the burned woman, bent at their work, weaving dreams and light into cloth that would never be enough to use and that smelled of salt and sea and fish so that no one would wear it even if they ever made enough to wear. Bolts of shimmering, stinking gold falling through their hands. All the lords of Irlast could not conceive of such a treasure.

‘I can’t stay,’ Lan said. Still mesmerized by the silk, but the silk made her think of other things. Silk gowns, gold bracelets, the glitter of drinking cups in her father’s hall.

‘No.’ Ru wrapped up the leather again, placed the bundle back in the cupboard by her bed. I have just told her she will die this winter, Lan thought. Without me here she will die. ‘I didn’t think you would. You want to go. You want and you don’t want. But you will.’

‘I could stay here the winter. Find someone to take care of you. I could look for your skin.’

‘I don’t want my skin, Lan, girl. Not now. If you found my skin I’d ask you to burn it, and then I’d die. But you wouldn’t burn it and you won’t find it. And I won’t die.’

‘I’ll stay a few weeks more. Get you supplies in. Make things easier for you. Find someone to help you, maybe.’

‘I managed before you came without that. Daresay I can manage again. Though it’s kind of you to think of it.’ Ru’s rheumy eyes flickered. ‘Don’t go looking for revenge, Lan.’

‘Revenge?’

‘The sea and the sky have blood in them. A great wrong was done to you. But don’t go looking for revenge.’

Why not? Lan thought, and Ru looked at her hearing it in her face.

Ru picked up her spinning. ‘Come and sit and we’ll try the thick thread for knitting again.’

But what else have I got left, Lan thought, except revenge? That’s why I left the rest of them to die, isn’t it? So I could avenge them? She said in a rush, like water pouring out, ‘I watched my sister dying. I watched my mother dying. I ran down into the dark and hid. Ran away. Left them dying. To be revenged.’ In her mind the crash of breaking stonework, the roar of fire rushing in waves, the screams. More than men screaming. Claws in the sky. When she thought of it now she saw bloody eyes.