Bone Pattern

The Weaver Threatened- September 12, 2014

Still slowly going through the papers and books in Fisher's room.  A strange assortment.  I wonder how he found all of this stuff.  I'm trying to track down hints, ideas of what he may have been trying to do.  Is that configuration of bone something he figured out for himself?  Or did he find it in a book somewhere. So far, I have found references to empty circles, to spaces enclosed.  But nothing of bone.

I was sitting with the Weaver today.  Inside, since the weather has turned unexpectedly cold.  There was a fire in her hearth, and candles lit against the gloom although it was only afternoon.  Her home is a subdued patchwork in earth tones and greys.  Hints of blue and black in places.  With rain coming down outside, it is the softest, warmest place I can think of. We were sitting there in silence together.  She was working on a huge frame loom, as tall as I am, and I was watching the rain and the fire.  

There was a knock on the door.

The Weaver went to open it, and I stayed in my armchair, She spoke in a low voice, but I couldn't make out what she said.  I heard no reply at all.  

I didn't realize something was wrong until she stumbled backward from the door.

I was up from my chair and heading for her as soon as I heard her feet slide on the floorboards.  She gasped as she spun away from the door.  Drops of blood spattered onto the floor.  I was watching her.  The door opened toward me and I lunged for it, pushed hard to try to close it.  Brief impression of loose, puppetlike movement.  Waving head.  But he was strong.  Got the door almost shut before whoever was behind it pushed back. I slid across the floor a few inches before I shoved my boot into the space at the bottom of the door and we were at an impasse.

The Weaver reached over my head and shoved the door.  It nearly closed, with the two of us.  Not quite but apparently it was enough for her.  Her left hand fluttered at the doorframe above my head.  Then her right did the same.  She grasped my shoulders, dragged me away.  I fell back, sat down with a thud on the floor of the hallway.  And the tapestry unfurled from above the door.  Fell like water into the room.  Black lines and red that seemed to meander at first, but vibrated with purpose the more I looked.  Tiny mouse skulls were stitched to certain lines.

The tapesty bowed inward once, as the door pressed upon it.  The door did not open and after a moment, the fabric pressed itself flat again.

I looked up at the Weaver.  She stood above me, her narrow face furrowed, her mouth a grim line.  Her dress was cut in a line angling up across her chest, and blood seeped into the wool.  Another wound crossed her cheek.  She stared at the door with a look on her face like she had bitten unexpectedly into a rotten apple.  Then, she took a breath and looked down at me.

"You had better stay here tonight," she said.

We both looked at the door, covered by the tapestry.  I nodded.

"Who was at the door?" I asked

"Just a puppet."

I got up off the floor then.  Followed her into her kitchen to watch her peel her dress from her wounds.  She flung the torn thing to the floor and stood there in her underskirts and boots.  Her kitchen still has a pump to bring water into the sink, and I worked to fill a ceramic bowl as she pulled threads and bits of wool fluff from her wound.

"His knife was dull," she said.

"Who is he?" I asked again.  

"No one I know.  Some unfortunate picked up to do the bidding of someone else."

"Explains the knife, then."

A pause.

"But it doesn't explain who sent him."

"No.  And I won't explain that.  Not now.  Not without being sure."

I knew better than to press her.  She has snapped at me before, and I don't like it.  So I handed her clothes that she poured clear alcohol onto and pressed to her wounds.  The Weaver made no indication that it hurt.  

We had bread and soup for dinner.  Thick brown bread with sea salt on the crust, and soup rich with potatoes and squash.

After a time she put me into a spare bedroom.  A narrow bed with feather mattresses and layers of woven blankets.  I could see the moon through my window.  It took me a long 

time to fall asleep as I thought about the way she had reeled back from the door and her blood fell to the floor.  Of how she looked standing stripped to the waist next to her crumpled dress beside her.  She was not diminished by it. Rather, she seemed to shed a harness or halter, for that moment. A veneer of civilization stripped away.  I wonder how old she really is. There were old scars on her body, crossing her back and arms.  I don't know where they came from.  Most of all I thought of how she had unfurled the tapestry she kept above the door.  She knew people would come who must be kept at bay.  I am at home now, and I have nothing more than a deadbolt and window latches set in rotting wood.

But after a time I slept, and eventually she sent me home.  I walked home in this new cold, thinking.  I have felt comfortable moving back and forth from the deep to the shallow like I do, but more and more this is not true.  This thing with Fisher, and now seeing the Weaver attacked, has just reminded me there is so much more out there.

There are worse things than people wielding knives.  

Things like not knowing.