The Dragon's Tapestry

“The magic is my friend,” Marwen said softly to herself as she watched the three women through the east window. She smiled and spoke more loudly to Grondil. “With my magic I am this much bigger than Sneda and her old cronies.” She made a huge gesture with her arm above her head.

“Bigger, perhaps,” Grondil said, “but misshapen and ugly.”

Marwen’s mouth opened to speak and then slowly closed. Misshapen and ugly is better than invisible, she thought, but she couldn’t say it aloud. Grondil was gathering herself, probably reciting all sorts of old tenets on containing one’s anger, and she would expect Marwen, as her apprentice, to be doing the same.

For a long time after that, Grondil was silent, not because of any wish to punish her, Marwen knew, but because an Oldwife could not speak until she was in complete control of her emo­tions. They went about their duties, sweeping, cutting vegeta­bles, mending, but Marwen worked distractedly and Grondil with obsessive concentration.

Finally Marwen could bear the quiet no longer, and as they sorted a tray of Cudgham’s seeds, she said, “Why didn’t you tell her you’ve hated using your magic for sharpening her nasty knives all these years. I should have turned her into an ip.”

“I have loved you too much,” Grondil said, her voice serene and hushed. She threw a bad seed into the fire. “The gods sent you to me. I was grateful for their gift and promised them that you would be theirs, and so I was lenient with you, protected you, indulged you.” She looked at Marwen, but Marwen’s eyes did not relent.

“The women are right. You are willful, and you speak of the magic with carelessness, as though it belonged to you and not you to it.” She shook her head. “That is because you do not know the power you have.”

Marwen was surly. “They don’t respect you. They don’t respect the magic.”

“What need is there of respect?” asked Grondil, her palms to Marwen. “I trade my power for a living—is it to be held in more esteem than Sneda’s shoemaking? Is the Spellsmith greater than the Blacksmith if there is a need for magic and metals? Those skills may be worthy of more honor, for the gift is given but the skill is acquired.”

Marwen stared at her. Grondil had never sided with the oth­ers before. Since she was a child, Grondil had shielded her from the disdain of the villagers who called her a soulless one because she had no tapestry. And never before had Grondil told her of limitations or restricted her magic in any way.

She saw Grondil’s forehead crease, worry darkening her skin like wingshadow. Marwen said, “I will not trade my art for shoes and pots. I will be a great and powerful Oldwife, and do great deeds of magic, and everyone will fear me.”

Even in her own ears, the words sounded childish and hollow, but she narrowed her eyes and silently dared Grondil to laugh.

Grondil did not laugh. She folded her hands secretly like a wingwand folding her wings over her egg.

Marwen filled the embarrassing silence. “I shall do as Farrell in the Songs of the One Mother. I shall seek the Staffmaker, and he shall make me a staff, and I shall make wondrous magic. Per­haps I will find the wizard, and he will give me a soul.”

Grondil’s eyes filled briefly with light and then looked away. She sighed and seemed old to Marwen. “They say there is no wizard, Marwen, that the Songs are mere rhymes and fables.” She was quiet for a time, her hands still.

Marwen knew what the people said and believed, but the Songs were more real to her than the people, and she remained steadfast. Grondil held her doubt in her heart like a stillborn child, a sadness ever to mourn and wonder. But with every word people spoke about the wizard being gone from Ve, Marwen felt that when she found him, he would be more entirely hers.

Grondil knelt before her and with her finger drew in the hard-packed dirt floor the shape of an hourglass.

“When you were a child,” she said, “you thought, as I did when I was young, that as you grew in knowledge and magic, you would be able to do anything at all with your power. But see here—it is like the hourglass: the higher your powers, the narrower become your options to use it, for you come to know that every slight breath of magic moves the winds and the world. If you are gifted, Marwen, you will go through this narrow open­ing. You will be frightened in that time to use your power at all. And then one day, the Mother grant it, everything will open up before you, and you will be free because you will not want to use your magic for anything but good.”

Marwen heard her voice but not her words. She watched the thick-veined fine-boned hands that had woven many tapestries before Marwen’s awed eyes, the quick and clever fingers that had patiently taught, over and over, the knots of the loom, that had taught her to make sophisticated patterns by transferring threads from one shed to another.

“Why?” she whispered. “Why, Grondil, was there no tapestry for me?”