At that year’s Gathering, Kira remembered, both she and her mother had peered from their seats at the stage, trying to find the repaired place as the Singer moved his arms in gestures during the Song. But they were too far away, and the repaired spot was too small.
Each year that followed, they had brought the ancient robe again to her mother for small repairs.
“One day my daughter will be able to do this,” Katrina had said one year to the guardian. “Look what she has done!” she said and showed him the scrap that Kira had just completed, the one that had composed itself so magically in her fingers. “She has a skill far greater than mine.”
Kira had stood silently, embarrassed but proud, as the guardian examined the threading she had done. He made no comment, simply nodded and returned the small piece to her. But his eyes had been bright with interest, she could see. Each year following, he had asked to see her work.
Kira always stood at her mother’s side, never touching the fragile ancient cloth, marveling each time at the rich hues that told the history of the world. Golds and reds and browns. And here and there, faded pale, almost reduced to white, there had once been blue. Her mother showed her the faded places that remained of it.
Her mother did not know how to make blue. Sometimes they talked of it, Kira and Katrina, looking at the huge upturned bowl of sky above their world. “If only I could make blue,” her mother said. “I’ve heard that somewhere there is a special plant.” She looked out at her own garden, thick with the flowers and shoots from which she could create the golds and greens and pinks, and shook her head in yearning for the one color she could not create.
Now her mother was dead.
Now her mother is dead.
Kira startled herself out of the daydreamed memory. Someone was saying those words. She made herself listen.
“‘—and now her mother is dead. There is even reason to think that her mother may have carried an illness that will endanger others—
“‘—and the women need the space where their cott was. There is no room for this useless girl. She can’t marry. No one wants a cripple. She takes up space, and food, and she causes problems with the discipline of the tykes, telling them stories, teaching them games so that they make noise and disrupt the work.’”
It dragged on. The repetitions of Vandara’s accusations were recited, and the defender again and again reiterated the amendment that said exceptions could be made.
But Kira noted a change of tone. It was subtle, but she perceived a difference. Something had taken place among the Council of Guardians when the members had withdrawn during lunch. She saw Vandara shift uneasily in her seat and knew that her accuser noticed the difference too.
Kira, clutching the cloth talisman in her pocket, became aware suddenly that its warmth and comfort had returned.
During her infrequent leisure times, Kira often experimented with colored bits of threadings, feeling the excitement in her fingers as her surprising skill grew. She used bits of discarded woven cloth from the weaving shed. It was not a violation. She had asked permission to take the scraps to her cott.
Sometimes, pleased with what she had done, she showed her work to her mother and received a proud, quick smile of approval. But more often her efforts were disappointments, the uneven products of a girl still learning; usually she threw her experiments away.
This one, the one she held now in the nervous fingers of her right hand, she had done as her mother lay ill. Seated helplessly by the side of the dying woman, Kira leaned forward again and again to hold a container of water to her mother’s lips. She smoothed her mother’s hair, rubbed her cold feet, and held the trembling hands, knowing there was nothing more she could do. While her mother slept restlessly, Kira sorted the dyed threads in her basket and began to weave them into the cloth scrap with a bone needle. It soothed her to do so, and passed the time.
The threads began to sing to her. Not a song of words or tones, but a pulsing, a quivering in her hands as if they had life. For the first time, her fingers did not direct the threads, but followed where they led. She was able to close her eyes and simply feel the needle move through the fabric, pulled by the urgent, vibrating threads.
When her mother murmured, Kira leaned forward with the water container and moistened the dry lips. Only then did she look down at the small strip of material in her lap. It was radiant. Despite the dim light in the cott—it was night-start by then—the golds and reds pulsated as if the morning sun itself had slid and twisted its rays into the cloth. The brilliant threads crisscrossed in an intricate pattern of loops and knots that Kira had never seen before, that she could not have created, that she had never known or heard described.
When her mother’s eyes opened for a final time, Kira had held the vibrant piece of fabric so that the dying woman could see. Words were beyond Katrina by then. But she smiled.
Now, secret in her hand, the cloth seemed to speak a silent, pulsing message to Kira. It told her there was danger still. But it told her also that she was to be saved.
Five
Kira noticed for the first time that a large box had been placed on the floor behind the seats of the Council of Guardians.
It had not been there before the lunchtime break.
As she and Vandara watched, one of the guards, responding to a nod from the chief guardian, lifted the box to the table and raised its lid. Her defender, Jamison, removed and unfolded something that she recognized immediately.
“The Singer’s robe!” Kira spoke aloud in delight.
“This has no relevance,” Vandara muttered. But she too was leaning forward to see.
The magnificent robe was laid out on the table in display. Ordinarily it was seen only once a year, at the time when the village gathered to hear the Ruin Song, the lengthy history of their people. Most citizens, crowded into the auditorium for the occasion, saw the Singer’s robe only from a distance; they shoved and pushed, trying to nudge closer for a look.
But Kira knew the robe well from watching her mother’s meticulous work on it each year. A guardian had always stood nearby, attentive. Warned not to touch, Kira had watched, marveling at her mother’s skill, at her ability to choose just the right shade.
There, on the left shoulder! Kira remembered that spot, where just last year some threads had pulled and torn and her mother had carefully coaxed the broken threads free. Then she had selected pale pinks, slightly darker roses, and other colors darkening to crimson, each hue only a hint deeper than the one before; and she had stitched them into place, blending them flawlessly into the edges of the elaborate design.
Jamison watched Kira as she remembered. Then he said, “Your mother had been teaching you the art.”
Kira nodded. “Since I was small,” she acknowledged aloud.
“Your mother was a skilled worker. Her dyes were steadfast. They have not faded.”
“She was careful,” Kira said, “and thorough.”
“We are told that your skill is greater than hers.”
So they knew. “I still have much to learn,” Kira said.
“And she taught you the coloring, as well as the stitches?”
Kira nodded because she knew he expected her to. But it was not exactly true. Her mother had planned to teach her the art of the dyes, but the time had not yet come before the illness struck. She tried to be honest in her answer. “She was beginning to teach me,” Kira said. “She told me that she had been taught by a woman named Annabel.”