The Dragon's Tapestry

Martine Bates-Leavitt The Dragon's Tapestry

To Larry, who was the first to believe

Faerie contains many things ... besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and our­selves, mortal men, when we are enchanted.”

-J.R.R. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf

Prologue

Grondil, the Oldwife, felt Srill’s eyes upon her, felt the young woman listening intently to every word she said. Sometimes a movement, a breath, the slightest change, and Grondil would stop and, with her hand on Srill’s belly, would measure her pain, share it. The magic felt strong.

“The child’s life thread is a long one,” Grondil said, measur­ing out the first of the threads to be laid beside the inkle loom in the order that she would need them. She did not see Srill smile. The warp had already been wound around the pegs in readiness, but her hands would need to be quick in order to finish the tapestry before the child was born.

For years, since the death of her mother, Grondil had been alone, but during a birthing there would often be many hands to help and her house would be full. For Srill who had no husband, however, there would be no help and no hands but Grondil’s own to deliver the child and work the tapestry. It was dangerous having no witness to the tapestry. If it were lost or destroyed, it could not be remade. But Srill had seemed almost glad when she had come to Grondil, full of pain and joy, alone.

Grondil’s fingers felt heavy and clumsy as she passed the shut­tle through the sheds of the loom. Her head felt light, her neck muscles tense. She had known Srill a little, though the girl was younger. She was a quiet thoughtful lass, slow to speak like her father, dutiful and dogged like her mother, and lacking Grondil thought, the ability to laugh. But Grondil admired her, for when she spoke in her soft voice, never in gossip, everyone listened and often agreed. Srill was devout, always attending to the magic, and was kind to Grondil. One day a black-haired traveler had come through the village—what had his name been?—a lithe and lively poet with a voice like summer wind, and before he went away, he had left a child in Srill. Never mind what the villagers said, Grondil would do her best for Srill in the tapestry making. Every child received a tapestry at birth. Without it one had no soul. But for Srill’s child Grondil would do her best work.

The tapestry was everyone’s most treasured possession. Some said the symbols woven into it predicted one’s destiny, others said they guided agency. But all believed that each symbol and design was to be carefully understood and followed. The tapestry was a sacred thing, each one a poem of prophecy not to be displayed, shown perhaps only to loved ones or to the Oldwife. At one’s death the Oldwife would fold the tapestry and place it under the head of the corpse so that the spirit could carry it and with it find safe passage to the lands of the dead. Only two had Grondil seen unfulfilled. Remembering those two times made her shudder.

Grondil uttered a brief spell on her hands and searched her mind for a Song. At first the words came to her lips clumsily, whispered and toneless:

from thy deep wellsprings
oh, one Mother, grant me thy chalice
full with thy bounty of blood
that cleanses
and brings forth life
and life
and the leaving of life

The walls seemed to fall away, and Grondil was in an abyss of magic. She felt safe here, having been here many times and knowing that in the mind of the magic her will was not her own. The abyss was deep, but this time she went deeper than she had ever been before, deep into the ancient voids where the oldest magic boiled. Grondil went white-blind with tears in the joy of it. She stopped to let the tears dry in her eyes and to look at Srill. The young woman was still, her brow knit in concentra­tion, her breath coming in soft pants, her lips oddly twisted. Grondil gave herself up to the tapestry making, allowing the magic to use her. No sooner had she done this than a picture began to fill her mind: the seven moons of Ve, symbolizing womanliness and beauty. The child would be a girl. She thought of the verse she had learned as a child to remember them by:

Clewdroin, Opo, Epsilon, Non;
Globa, Septa, Orbica yon.