Brightly Woven (3 page)

“She’s the best in the village, I assure you,” he said. “Sydelle!”

I stood quickly, brushing the dust from my dress and
hands. He called my name again, impatient as always.

Only the wizard looked up at me when I entered our sitting room. Jugs of water and plates of our precious bread were scattered on the table’s surface.

“Sydelle, you’ll mend Mr. North’s cloaks and show him to your room,” Father said. “You can stay with your mother and me for the night.”

I nodded and said nothing, though it killed me not to ask the questions that were running through my mind. If I embarrassed my father now by opening my mouth, I wouldn’t hear the end of it for months—probably years, knowing his legendary temper.

North stood and stretched. I waited until he came toward me, close enough to smell the mix of sweat and rain clinging to his clothing and skin, and to see the dark circles under his eyes.

“You don’t have to mend them,” North said as we entered my small room. “Honestly, they’ve been far worse.”

I watched him out of the corner of my eye, studying him as I would a book or drawing. How could I not? He was the only wizard I’d ever met—in all likelihood, the only wizard I ever would meet. It seemed so strange to have him look so ordinary. After all the stories I’d read about their adventures and magic, I never expected them to look like any man or woman. There was only one difference, slight enough that I almost missed it, and that was the warmth that surrounded him, a warmth that was so much softer than the heat of our sun.

“Are you afraid I’ll ruin them?” I asked, assessing my small supply of thread and needles. He lifted the cloaks one by one, and I was startled to see how many there actually were—black, red, green, blue, yellow. Why did he need so many?

“I’m sure you’re very good,” he said. “But these cloaks are special. Do you know anything about how magic works?”

I shook my head. “Not in the least.”

“Well…,” North began. “These cloaks are what I use for magic. If they’re not mended carefully, I won’t be able to use them.”

I held out my hand, still unable to look him fully in the eye.

“I’ll be careful,” I said.

North sighed. “One to begin with, all right?”

He tried untying them from around his neck, but the strings had become badly knotted, and his gloved hands were shaking so badly that I had to do it myself. The moment my hands touched him, he stilled.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Fine. A bit tired.”

“Are you sure?” I said, watching him more carefully now.

He nodded, holding perfectly still as I worked on the stubborn knots.

“Thank you for bringing me back to the village,” I said. “I don’t know that I’ve ever fainted before. I guess I was more overwhelmed than I thought.”

“And here I thought you swooned at the sight of me.” He gave me a crooked smile.

“Do you do this a lot?” he asked, when I had finally pulled the cloaks free and placed them in his arms. I didn’t answer, but accepted the yellow cloak as he handed it to me. They were made from a thin wool: rough but sturdy. I set to work immediately, sinking down next to him on my small pile of bedding. He glanced around the room, at my half-finished blankets and rugs and the small scenes of Cliffton I had created with yellow, brown, and red thread. His eyes fell on the silver circle on my wall, a larger version of my necklace. I would have to pray beneath the one in my parents’ room that night.

“It’s not much,” I said. “I’m sorry I don’t have a bed for you.”

“No, no,” North said quickly. “It’s not that. I’m just surprised that you’re a weaver.”

“Why is that?” I asked, pulling together a jagged tear in the stained yellow cloak.

“I just meant that you’re very young to be so good. At weaving, I mean.”

“I’ll have you know that I just turned sixteen,” I said, knotting the thread and cutting the excess. “Aren’t
you
a little young to be a wizard?”

“I’ll have you know that I just turned eighteen,” he said, mimicking my tone almost perfectly. “That’s four years out of apprenticeship and two years your elder.”

So much for wizards and their legendary kindness and courtesy. He was no different than any of the boys I had grown up with.

“Very funny,” I said. “A wizard
and
a joker.”

North shrugged, still looking around. “I see red…yellow…brown…ah, a little green, and of course our own Palmarta purple—no gray?”

“Why would I have gray?” I asked, giving him a sidelong glance. “We haven’t seen a rain cloud in years.”

He glanced up, toward the old blanket I had strung over my bed. What had once been an expertly woven image of Provincia’s castle and its surrounding lake was now faded and stained.

“Ah, but there’s the castle!” he said, craning his neck for a better look. “That’s a decent likeness. Have you been to the capital?”

“Of course not,” I said. “That was given to me by a woman who was traveling across the country selling her work. She gave me the blanket and told me to meet her in Andover when I was old enough.”

“And when will you be old enough?”

“When I’m born in a different village in another lifetime,” I said.

“But you want to go,” North said. He bit the side of his thumb, his expression troubled. It was not long before his eyes found the old map of Palmarta tacked up in the soft plaster of my wall. Each circle of string marked a city where Henry had traveled, making deliveries of our yellow dust. With Auster looming to the east and Saldorra to the west and south, our country looked ready to be swallowed whole.

“What I want will always be different from what everyone else wants for me,” I said, knotting the thread.

“You’re talented enough, if you really do want it,” North said. “You could support yourself if you settled in a city.”

I shook my head, surprised at the prick of anger inside me. He could flit in and out of towns and cities at will. I should never have brought the old woman up in the first place, but every time I looked at the blanket, I could feel her soft, wrinkled palms as she had brushed the dirt from my cheeks.

“Would you leave,” he asked, “if you could?”

“It’s not my choice,” I said. “It must be nice to go wherever you want. Have you decided how you’re getting to Provincia?”

He shrugged. “I’m taking the most direct route possible, cutting straight through the center of the country. There are a few cities like Dellark and Fairwell along the way, but I’ll be spending most of my time outdoors. You could start over, buy yourself a new, bigger loom—”

“Never,” I said. “That’s my loom, and it’s the only one I want to use.”

The loom had been with me since I was a little girl, watching my grandmother weave her own blankets and stories into it. It was an extension of me, as familiar as the face of my father. It had always been an escape—from drought and from every painful emotion.

I handed him the yellow cloak, watching as he turned it over in his hands, inspecting my work.

“Your father wasn’t lying,” he said. “But now comes the real test.”

He threw the yellow cloak into the air, and it disappeared from sight. Impossibly, a strong breeze blew past us. It shook the hanging blankets and sent my mass of red curls up around my face. A moment later, the yellow cloak reappeared in front of the wizard, floating gently back into his hands.

The wizard turned his face toward me, his dark eyes studying me with a mixture of shock and fascination. His pale face was drained of what little color it had possessed before, and he twisted the yellow fabric so roughly between his fists that I thought it might tear. He didn’t move—he looked to be barely breathing.

“You…,” he began, his voice low with disbelief. “You’re really…”

I waited for him to continue, but the words never came and his eyes never left mine.

“Sleep well,” I said, standing. “Let me know if you need something. There’s a basin in the corner if you’d like to wash up before praying.”

“I don’t,” he said.

“Don’t what?” I said incredulously. “Don’t pray?”

He lowered his eyes.

“Sydelle?” he said, just as I was about to step through the doorway. He was still holding the yellow cloak in his hands. “I know you were listening to what I told your father. If you
can find the courage to leave, then you need to go soon…before things are set in motion.”

“Then the war…” I almost couldn’t get the words out. “Then it’ll really happen?”

“It’s happening now,” he said. “Your village must prepare for the worst. Saldorra is Auster’s western ally. It’s only a matter of time before they reach you.”

“Astraea will protect us,” I said. “We trade with Saldorra. They’d never—”

“It would be better if you could protect yourself,” he said, and blew out the candle.

Hours later, as I turned restlessly on a blanket on my parents’ floor, his words returned, until I was sure that they would be burned there forever, that they would follow me into sleep every night.
It would be better if you could protect yourself
.

I listened to the rain and wondered.

CHAPTER TWO

I
was still awake when the temple’s bells began to ring out in an unfamiliar pattern, and my mother began to cry loudly, brokenly, from somewhere deep inside her chest.

“Now?” she moaned.
“Now?”

“Up, Sydelle!” my father said, dragging me from the tangled bedding. “Put on your dress and your boots.”

“What’s happening?” I choked out. The wizard was waiting in the main room, far more alert than he had been the night before. He was holding my disassembled loom.

My mother took me, wild-eyed and frantic, into my room and began to pack dresses and yarn into a small leather bag.

“What’s happening?” I cried. “Tell me what’s going on!”

My mother placed the bag over my shoulder, and I was sure I felt her warm tears drip onto my neck.

“Be a brave girl,” she said. “I know you have it in you.”

My father reappeared in the doorway, his face flushed. “Hurry—move quickly!”

“Tell me what’s going on!” I said.
“Tell me!”

“Those soldiers you saw before in the canyon are here now,” North said from the other room. “You’re coming with me.”

“I offered Mr. North a reward for breaking the drought,” my father explained, “and he’s chosen you. Do you understand?”

I was the one crying now, and I couldn’t tell my anger from my fear.

“Sydelle, tell me you understand,” Father begged, and Mother only cried harder. “You’ll help him get to the capital, you’ll do whatever he asks, you won’t look back.”

“Do I have no choice in this?” I cried, as the wizard appeared behind my father. The smile on his face was small, but it was still there.

He thought he was helping me, did he? He thought that he was doing me some sort of favor. A prisoner of my village or a prisoner of a wizard. What was the difference when you could not decide your own path?

The sound of bells died out, only to be replaced by the sound of a hundred villagers emerging into the early-morning sky.

“They’re here.” North was suddenly right beside me, taking my arm. I turned toward him wildly, hearing the sound of rolling thunder, of hooves.

“What’s happening?” I asked. “What—?”

“Sooner than expected,” my father said. He patted my shoulder twice, as he would a complete stranger. “Go before they find you here.”

“No!” I said. “I don’t want to leave, not now!”

North held my things as my father pulled me outside. He had a bag of his own, one I hadn’t noticed before. A fine mist of rain and fog cooled the flushed skin of my cheeks. I watched my mother, still expecting her to speak. She only looked away.

Henry had come to find me. He was standing a short distance away from our door, his lip pulled back in anger, maybe disgust. I had never seen him wear such a hostile face—ready for battle. I tried to picture the boys I had grown up with in the dark militia uniforms, but the best my mind could conjure up was the image of Henry’s brothers playing in the mud, hitting their sticks against each other as if they were swords.

The dirt and rocks trembled beneath our feet as the sound of galloping horses and hollering men reached our ears.

“Go now!” My father pushed me toward the wizard.
“Go!”

“Saldorra!” a woman screamed, and it was all the encouragement North needed. He surged forward, shoving Henry to the side and taking me by the arm.

“Delle!” I heard Henry shout, and then nothing more. A shroud of darkness wrapped around the wizard and me, and we were falling.