Bone Pattern

What Has the Weaver Done?- September 21, 2014

I spent some time with Ellis today.  Cooler temperatures have returned, to my relief.  I am so looking forward to winter.  I want sweaters and leggings and blankets.  Ellis's apartment, with its eternal subterranean cool, is like a preview of that.  I sat across from her, in a threadbare gray armchair, wrapped in an afghan.  She watched me with those deep set eyes, sunken and shadowed with fatigue.  But there was a sheet of paper in her typewriter again.  There were even words on it, although I didn't read them.

What follows is a story that she told me, after I told her what happened with the Weaver.  The man who attacked her, and how I saw him later downtown.  His face was the same, but where he had been disheveled and dirty, he had turned neatly pressed and immaculate.

"The Weaver is not entirely what she seems.  An old woman, surrounded by yarn and cloth in that old farmhouse.  You see her and you think of grandmothers, perhaps.  Old women making socks for local charities.  You think of her as someone who puts things right.  And to a certain extent she is.  She does a lot of good for the deep people in Denver.  But that is not who she is.

She is older than she looks, for one thing.  I know she seems and old woman already, but she is older than that, even.  That house, even, is older than it seems.  And she came here from somewhere else, already old. 

And did you know she has a collection of hair?  I saw it once, in a cabinet in her bedroom.  Coils of it, and tufts.  In as many colors as I have seen.  All races of hair.  Each lock tied with a black ribbon and set in a basket lined with cloth woven in glossy black and red.  She was looking for something she had made years ago, digging though the cabinet.  She set the basket at my feet like it was nothing.

But that isn't the point.  Those are just sinister hints.  There is a rumor that the Weaver has done dark and terrible things once.  Drew fragments of the deep out, like wool into yarn, and spun them into the shape she wants.  We, all of us, are walking in the consequences of what she has done and we don't even know what it is.  Maybe she has condemned us to the shadows, edged out by all the plastic.  Or maybe she opened the doors to stranger, distant things that we cannot even see.  Or perhaps she wove the guts of infants into a spiraling fount of misery that sends tainted fingers into every part of our world.

I don't know what she has done, and neither do you.  But someone does, I would bet.  There are other strangely ancient people in the deep.  People she knows from centuries ago."

After this long speech, Ellis fell silent, staring at her hands.  I thought she had finished but after a bit she spoke up again.

"The Weaver shaped the landscape we walk.  She did it alone, and didn't ask for anyone's help or opinion.  That is going to make people angry.  I'm not surprised to hear she was attacked, but I am sorry to hear it.  I hope she heals quickly.  But I'm not that worried.  The Weaver can look after herself, if anyone can."

I didn't really think she was an innocent.  I have never expected cookies and juice from her.  She always seemed distant from me.  Stepping above me like a human working around a housecat.  I want to know what is going on.  I want to know what she has done.  I am sure she won't tell me if I ask, but, I want to know.  

There are few histories written in the deep.  There are journals, and travelogues and narratives of events.  But people rarely put them together into something easily readable.  I suppose that is part of what I am doing here.  In bits and pieces.

I am seeing a lot more reading to do in the future.  More reading and more questions.  I fell like I always end these posts on a question, but what choice do I have?  I haven't found many answers.