Tales of Wonder (15 page)

At once time began to move normally again. In a moment Pieter and the princess heard the loud, rattling footsteps of the giant as he searched through Castle Gloam for the king's daughter.

“Quickly,” said Pieter, taking the princess by the hand. “We must run.”

But run as fast as they could, they could not run faster than the giant. With loud, earth-shattering footsteps, he gained at every stride.

“Save yourself!” cried the king's daughter. “It is foolish to stay with me.”

But Pieter merely held out his hand, and the bird of time flew down and nestled in it.

“Lie down,” said Pieter to the king's daughter. And he lay down by her side in the tall meadow grass.

“
Bird of time, make time go fast,”
commanded Pieter.

The little brown bird began to sing a light, quick song. And time sped up for everyone but Pieter and the lovely princess.

The giant fairly flew over to the two bodies lying side by side on the ground. He twirled around and about them. To his speeded-up eyes they seemed dead, so measured and slow was their breathing. The giant gnashed his teeth in rage at having lost his beautiful captive. Hastily he pounded his fists on the ground. Then he noticed the bird of time in Pieter's hand singing a light, quick song. Forgetting the princess, he tore the bird out of Pieter's hand with a swift, sharp, angry movement.

Gloating, the giant ran back to Castle Gloam with the bird. Pieter and the princess watched him go.

Now the giant had heard what Pieter had said to the bird, and he realized that there was magic about. He thought that if the bird could make time speed up or make time slow down, it could help him conquer the world. And because he was evil and exceptionally greedy, the giant thought what a great fortune he could gather and how many beautiful princesses he could steal, if time could be stopped altogether and no one but he could move at all.

He put out his hand as he had seen Pieter do, and the bird nestled into it, almost disappearing in his vast palm.

“
Bird of time
,” he commanded, “
make time stop!
”

And the bird of time stopped singing.

The giant did not know that this was a calamitous thing to say. He had not heard the dying bird's warning that no one can make time stop altogether. And he was too wicked to worry about it on his own.

Suddenly there was a great quaking. And a great shaking. The rocks that Castle Gloam stood upon began to crack. Fissures appeared in the walls. The roof began to tremble. Then, very slowly, Castle Gloam slid over the edge of the world and disappeared.

And inside the lost castle the giant and the silent bird of time were caught forever in a timeless scream.

Pieter and the king's daughter watched as the castle sank out of sight. As soon as the castle disappeared over the edge of the world, the world returned to normal again. Once more time flowed onward like a river.

Then Pieter and the princess looked at one another and smiled. And hand in hand they walked back for seven days and seven nights until they reached the palace of the king.

There Pieter and the princess were married amidst great singing and dancing. In due time, Pieter himself became king, and lived a long and full life with his beautiful wife always at his side.

And though Pieter had found another egg veined with red and gold nestled in his cap right after the bird and the giant had disappeared, he was never fool enough to tell. Instead he gave the egg into the keeping of his father, Honest Hans. And the old miller buried it under the mill in a wooden box, where it has remained safe and unbroken to this very day.

The Weaver of Tomorrow

Once, on the far side of yesterday, there lived a girl who wanted to know the future. She was not satisfied with knowing that the grass would come up each spring and that the sun would go down each night. The true knowledge she desired was each tick of tomorrow, each fall and each failure, each heartache and each pain, that would be the portion of every man. And because of this wish of hers, she was known as Vera, which is to say,
True
.

At first it was easy enough. She lived simply in a simple town, where little happened to change a day but a birth or a death that was always expected. And Vera awaited each event at the appointed bedside and, in this way, was always the first to know.

But as with many wishes of the heart, hers grew from a wish to a desire, from a desire to an obsession. And soon, knowing the simple futures of the simple people in that simple town was not enough for her.

“I wish to know what tomorrow holds for everyone,” said Vera. “For every man and woman in our country. For every man and woman in our world.”

“It is not good, this thing you wish,” said her father.

But Vera did not listen. Instead she said, “I wish to know which king will fall and what the battle, which queen will die and what the cause. I want to know how many mothers will cry for babies lost and how many wives will weep for husbands slain.”

And when she heard this, Vera's mother made the sign against the Evil One, for it was said in their simple town that the future was the Devil's dream.

But Vera only laughed and said loudly, “And for that, I want to know what the Evil One himself is doing with
his
tomorrow.”

Since the Evil One himself could not have missed her speech, the people of the town visited the mayor and asked him to send Vera away.

The mayor took Vera and her mother and father, and they sought out the old man who lived in the mountain, who would answer one question a year. And they asked him what to do about Vera.

The old man who lived in the mountain, who ate the seeds that flowers dropped and the berries that God wrought, and who knew all about yesterdays and cared little about tomorrow, said, “She must be apprenticed to the Weaver.”

“A weaver!” said the mayor and Vera's father and her mother all at once. They thought surely that the old man who lived in the mountain had at last gone mad.

But the old man shook his head. “Not
a
weaver, but
the
Weaver, the Weaver of Tomorrow. She weaves with a golden thread and finishes each piece with a needle so fine that each minute of the unfolding day is woven into her work. They say that once every hundred years there is need for an apprentice, and it is just that many years since one has been found.”

“Where does one find this Weaver?” asked the mayor.

“Ah, that I cannot say,” said the old man who lived in the mountain, “for I have answered one question already.” And he went back to his cave and rolled a stone across the entrance, a stone small enough to let the animals in but large enough to keep the townspeople out.

“Never mind,” said Vera. “I would be apprenticed to this Weaver. And not even the Devil himself can keep me from finding her.”

And so saying, she left the simple town with nothing but the clothes upon her back. She wandered until the hills got no higher but the valleys got deeper. She searched from one cold moon until the next. And at last, without warning, she came upon a cave where an old woman in black stood waiting.

“You took the Devil's own time coming,” said the old woman.

“It was not his time at all,” declared Vera.

“Oh, but it was,” said the old woman, as she led the girl into the cave.

And what a wondrous place the cave was. On one wall hung skeins of yarn of rainbow colors. On the other walls were tapestries of delicate design. In the center of the cave, where a single shaft of sunlight fell, was the loom of polished ebony, higher than a man and three times as broad, with a shuttle that flew like a captive blackbird through the golden threads of the warp.

For a year and a day, Vera stayed in the cave apprenticed to the Weaver. She learned which threads wove the future of kings and princes, and which of peasants and slaves. She was first to know in which kingdoms the sun would set and which kingdoms would be gone before the sun rose again. And though she was not yet allowed to weave, she watched the black loom where each minute of the day took shape, and learned how, once it had been woven, no power could change its course. Not an emperor, not a slave, not the Weaver herself. And she was taught to finish the work with a golden thread and a needle so fine that no one could tell where one day ended and the next began. And for a year she was happy.

But finally the day dawned when Vera was to start her second year with the Weaver. It began as usual. Vera rose and set the fire. Then she removed the tapestry of yesterday from the loom and brushed it outside until the golden threads mirrored the morning sun. She hung it on a silver hook that was by the entrance to the cave. Finally she returned to the loom which waited mutely for the golden warp to be strung. And each thread that Vera pulled tight sang like the string of a harp. When she was through, Vera set the pot on the fire and woke the old woman to begin the weaving.

The old woman creaked and muttered as she stretched herself up. But Vera paid her no heed. Instead, she went to the Wall of Skeins and picked at random the colors to be woven. And each thread was a life.

“Slowly, slowly,” the old Weaver had cautioned when Vera first learned to choose the threads. “At the end of each thread is the end of a heartbeat; the last of each color is the last of a world.” But Vera could not learn to choose slowly, carefully. Instead she plucked and picked like a gay bird in the seed.

“And so it was with me,” said the old Weaver with a sigh. “And so it was at first with me.”

Now a year had passed, and the old woman kept her counsel to herself as Vera's fingers danced through the threads. Now she went creaking and muttering to the loom and began to weave. And now Vera turned her back to the growing cloth that told the future and took the pot from the fire to make their meal. But as soon as that was done, she would hurry back to watch the growing work, for she never wearied of watching the minutes take shape on the ebony loom.

Only this day, as her back was turned, the old woman uttered a cry. It was like a sudden sharp pain. And the silence after it was like the release from pain altogether.

Vera was so startled she dropped the pot, and it spilled over and sizzled the fire out. She ran to the old woman who sat staring at the growing work. There, in the gold and shimmering tapestry, the Weaver had woven her own coming death.

There was the cave and there the dropped pot; and last the bed where, with the sun shining full on her face, the old woman would breathe no more.

“It has come,” the old woman said to Vera, smoothing her black skirts over her knees. “The loom is yours.” She stood up fresher and younger than Vera had ever seen her, and moved with a springy joy to the bed. Then she straightened the covers and lay down, her faced turned toward the entrance of the cave. A shaft of light fell on her feet and began to move, as the sun moved, slowly toward her head.

“No,” cried Vera at the smiling woman. “I want the loom. But not this way.”

Gently, with folded hands, the old Weaver said, “Dear child, there is no other way.”

“Then,” said Vera slowly, knowing she lied, but lying nonetheless, “I do not want it.”

“The time for choosing is past,” said the old Weaver. “You chose and your hands have been chosen. It is woven. It is so.”

“And in a hundred years?” asked Vera.

“You will be the Weaver, and some young girl will come, bright and eager, and you will know your time is near.”

“No,” said Vera.

“It is birth,” said the old Weaver.

“No,” said Vera.

“It is death,” said the old Weaver.

A single golden thread snapped suddenly on the loom.

Then the sun moved onto the Weaver's face and she died.

Vera sat staring at the old woman but did not stir. And though she sat for hour upon hour, and the day grew cold, the sun did not go down. Battles raged on and on, but no one won and no one lost, for nothing more had been woven.

At last, shivering with the cold, though the sun was still high, Vera went to the loom. She saw the old woman buried and herself at work, and so she hastened to the tasks.

And when the old woman lay under an unmarked stone in a forest full of unmarked stones, with only Vera to weep for her, Vera returned to the cave.

Inside, the loom gleamed black, like a giant ebony cage with golden bars as thin and fine as thread. And as Vera sat down to finish the weaving, her bones felt old and she welcomed the shaft of sun as it crept across her back. She welcomed each trip of the shuttle through the warp as it ticked off the hundred years to come. And at last Vera knew all she wanted to know about the future.

The Boy Who Sang for Death

In a village that lay like a smudge on the cheek of a quiet valley, there lived an old woman and the last of her seven sons. The oldest six had joined the army as they came of age, and her husband was long in his grave. The only one left at home was a lad named Karl.

Even if he had not been her last, his mother would have loved him best, for he had a sweet disposition and a sweeter voice. It was because of that voice, pure and clear, that caroled like spring birds, that she had called him Karel. But his father and brothers, fearing the song name would unman him, had changed it to Karl. So Karl he had remained.

Karl was a sturdy boy, a farmboy in face and hands. But his voice set him apart from the rest. Untutored and untrained, Karl's voice could call home sheep from the pasture, birds from the trees. In the village, it was even said that the sound of Karl's voice made graybeards dance, the lame to walk, and milk spring from a maiden's breast. Yet Karl used his voice for no such magic, but to please his mother and gentle his flock.

One day when Karl was out singing to the sheep and goats to bring them safely in from the field, his voice broke; like a piece of cloth caught on a nail, it tore. Fearing something wrong at home, he hurried the beasts. They scattered before him, and he came to the house to find that his mother had died.