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THE
DRESSMAKER’S TALE,
CONTINUED
&nbs
p; THE MOUSE LICKED HIS CHOPS AND WRUNG HIS gray paws. “What will she taste like? Will she taste like mouse?”
I trembled under his hungry stare. “I have seen the sun, and the streets, and the world outside the Church-door. Why do you not go into it? I will wedge the door open for you, and you may go in all your numbers into the light, and see for yourself what the universe is made of, how many other things than Yellow and Green and Purple and Red. Do you know what Blue is?”
“No! Would it be difficult to chew?” The mouse grinned, his dusty teeth showing.
“Yes, very.” I tapped my hind legs desperately, my belly pained and anxious. “But come, friend mouse!” I said with as much joviality as I could manage. “Xide is hardly worth your effort! She is all wrung out, an old cloth! Come with me, into the world outside the Church-door, and all your brethren, too, and I will show you the very brightest things there are! I will weave whatever you like into beauty and color and light! And you will find that you can be brighter than lamps without eating anything untoward. There are so many roads to brightness.”
The mouse looked doubtful. “I have heard that in the world outside, it is easy to become Stepped Upon, or Swatted with a Broom. We wish to be bright! We wish to be bright and great, so that no one may Step Upon us, or do anything to us with Brooms!”
I considered this for a long time, tears forming in my manifold eyes. “I think I know how you may have all you like, and still leave the Weaver in her place, uneaten and unknown.”
I went to Xide and rested in the hollow of her elbow, as full of sorrows as a web of flies—for now I knew, being a proper spider, what flies were for, and webs, and I understood why the flies had not wanted to speak to me. I told her all I had heard, and all I intended. She smiled sadly, her white eyes gleaming, and let her lips fall—ever so gently!—onto my back. It felt like moonlight, and I was at peace.
I began to weave many things in preparation for my leaving, for the exodus of the mice kingdom. First I wove green stockings, and soled green boots in pew-wood. I wove a long black wig of glossy curls. I sent to the Mask-makers’ Slums for a mask of gold and peacock feathers. And because they begged for it, I wove, over days and weeks and months and years, for a spider is still small, and no Star, a long jacket all of yellow, with gold thread at every seam.
THE TALE OF THE
CLOAK OF FEATHERS,
CONTINUED
“THEY PRACTICED WHILE I WOVE, PRACTICED piling one mouse onto another in extraordinary shapes: first a cat, because they are perverse, and then a dog, then a wolf, then a lion, and then, when they could open a mouth of mice and roar in such a way that it terrified the rafter doves and sent a rain of white feathers to the floor, they carefully built themselves into the form of a man, and on their squirming shoulders I helped them arrange their yellow coat, and around their crawling head I strapped their mask of gold, and onto their wriggling legs I pulled stocking and boot. They elected the mouse who had struck the deal with me to be the voice of their golem. He asked me to give them a good name which had nothing to do with whiskers or tails or paws. I suggested Kostya, the name of the undertaker. Perhaps this was wishful on my part.
“‘But you will leave Xide be?’ I asked desperately.
“‘If you keep us supplied with diverting brightnesses, we will surely let her live,’ Kostya allowed magnanimously.
“And so I keep them in colors, and they leave the heart of Ajanabh unmolested. I give them a cloak of your feathers, and beg your forgiveness, but I cannot let the smallest tooth nibble at her hand.”
Sleeve sniffled a bit and pulled one of her needle legs upward sharply, tightening a golden thread. “As for my legs, you must have guessed by now. Folio did it, who authors all the wonders of Ajanabh, of which I am but a small and secret member. I asked her to, I begged her to, to be worthy of Xide—and in this you will find a common tale in every quarter and Parish of the city. I paid her with more of my silk than I have ever spun out of my body—I was near dead with the effort, but she needed so much, to improve her daughter’s joints, you see.” Sleeve clacked her forelegs together merrily. “It is strange to think how much of her child is made from the beloved possessions of Ajans! She grants wishes like a Djinn, but oh, she takes and takes in return. Which is, I suppose, also like a Djinn. I wanted to weave more than webs—she obliged me. I was such delicate work, she said.”
“What will he do with me when my tail is gone?”
The spider said nothing, clicking her needles together wretchedly. “Perhaps you should remember my poisoner,” she ventured hesitantly.
“Where do you find this loyalty?” I cried. “I cannot remember your poisoner! My cage is fast, and the feathers he owns bind me; not so your little glass of days gone by, not so your needles! Do something, if you hate him so, unlock my cage, bite him, do not serve him pitifully, as though you can do nothing else!” I rattled the blackened bars in frustration, but Sleeve simply regarded me coolly, her threads waving.
“Do all large creatures think this way, as though their travails are the tragedies of the world, and the suffering of the small is nothing compared to their own? Certainly Kostya thinks so, now that he casts a long shadow. He does not mark me any longer—I am an eight-legged machine with no other purpose than to manufacture brightness in his sight. From where he towers, he cannot even see me. But he told you there are corners here, and where there are corners there are mice, and all mice live in awe of what he has accomplished, he who walks among men in such beautiful clothes. He does not need to watch me; they watch. They hear. A bell is a cage as sure as your own.” She shook her head. “I am not so bright as you, but still I bleed and bear up under him, for her sake.”
Abashed, I lay back on my cushions. The cage rocked and the rafter groaned under its weight. The night pooled black on the thin floor-boards. Sleeve’s voice echoed again from the bell, thoughtful and rasping.
“The thread I use in your cloak is not from your feathers, you know. It is the reddest of red-golden silk, and I helped Xide to spin it out from the worms in their boxes. And she told me—she always tells me—where the thread will end. Would you like to know?”
“Yes,” I said weakly.
“‘Little Sleeve,’ she whispered—she is so considerate, not to hurt me with loudness, as so many others do—‘you would not believe where this thread will wend! All the way through your little body, through to a cradle in the night, into swaddling clothes and a child’s only comfort. But it will not end even there—it is a gift from sister to sister, and there is so much fire to come, so much fire, and light!’
“And so I think again you should remember my poisoner, and take heart.”
There was no more from the bell, though I waited and waited and strained to hear the smallest thing. But there was nothing. The bell tower was hushed and still. In due time, the mouse-man returned to snatch another fistful of feathers from my tail. He sang and pranced in glee. I did not scream, but whimpered, and wept, and the circle beneath the cage grew. And so my days and nights went, with a spider at my ear and mice at my cage door. Once or twice I thought I saw the flash of gray fur or tiny black eyes behind the gaping eye holes of his mask.
