Visited the Weaver again today. Took the bus out on a warm day, cut with chill wind. Returned in rain. Truly, autumn is coming and I couldn't be more pleased. Everything is easier when the full gaze of the sun is turned away.
The Weaver was much as she always is. Still sharp eyes focused on the weft of her loom. She had a basket full of forked sticks. Oak and aspen and pine. All neatly trimmed and wound around with twine to make a warp. She will make them into charms, and perhaps sell some of them to me to sell on to you.
Anyway, I told her about that secret room, and about the notebook. Actually, I intended to show her both the notebook and the map, but as we sat there on her porch, I could not bring myself to pull it from my bag. A knotted thread to toss into a weaver's lap. Although no doubt she could handle it. I asked her if she knew of anyone who could have collected all those artifacts and then abandoned them.
She listened and frowned and shook her her head. Before she spoke, she set down the forked stick charm she was working on.
"You should go visit Lydia and Fisher," she told me.
I replied that I didn't know who they were. I know a lot of people in the deep, but not everyone. Not even close.
"Oh. Not surprising, really. They don't get out much anymore. But Lydia can tell you a story that you will find interesting. Years ago, something happened to Fisher. I can't tell you the details, but after that, we stopped seeing them. These days, Lydia writes to me and I send her things for Fisher. But that is all."
"Do you really think they would let me visit them, then? I mean, I've never met them. It sounds like they wouldn't want me around."
"Not if you went alone. But there is a messenger will be coming in the next day or so. Lydia knows him already. I can send him to visit you, and he will make introductions."
"Someone else I don't know?" I made myself pause. No point being obnoxious to the Weaver, even if all of these sudden new people are daunting. "I would appreciate that, actually. There's something weird about that cache. No one seems to have been there for years, but I can't guess why. And there is this other door that I haven't even opened yet..."
The Weaver looked at me for a moment, then, her eyes rising over the top of the charm she was finishing. Her hands stopped moving.
"I will send Wayland to you tomorrow. Go with him to meet Lydia and Fisher."
She would not tell me anything more. Shortly after that, I walked out into gathering rain, to find the bus headed for home.
Lydia and Fisher. The more I think about it, their names do sound familiar. Names passed around in stories. But never about why they are not around anymore.
On impulse, I knocked on Ellis's door on my way home. She let me into her tea-scented concrete cave in the unquiet earth. There, well below the spattering rain and wind that had pursued me away from the Weaver, I asked her what she knew of Lydia and Fisher.
"I met Lydia once," she said. "I was reading in Strange Grounds one night. They were about to close when she came in and asked for hot water in two paper cups. She is short, plump in a plush and lovely way. She made tea herself, there at a table. It smelled of bitter licorice and when I asked her about it, she said she blended it herself. I asked her if I could buy some, or preferably trade for it. But she just smiled and refused. She said she would make me something else, though. I still have her card around here somewhere. She withdrew before I could take her up on her offer."
"Do you know what happened?"
"I don't. I heard it was something to do with her brother. I only met her that once."
Ellis's typewriter was still empty. She did not look at me when I rose to go, but only smiled vaguely into her hands.
Something happened with that room, I know it. With that trapdoor, probably. I didn't sleep well last night.
Tomorrow I am supposed to meet Wayland and go to see if Lydia and Fisher will speak to me.
I am definitely out of the shallows now.
YOU ARE READING
Bone Pattern
FantasyCalix Bishop has become comfortable treading the border between her daylight world of Walmart, banks, and rent payments and the darker world she has found of woven magic, artists and hidden knowledge. But when she stumbles upon a particular cache o...
