Crewel

Chapter Three

When I was eight, the girl next door, Beth, found a bird's nest that had fallen on the line marking her yard from ours. I was not allowed to enter her yard, and she never came into mine. She applied that line to all of our interactions, keeping a firm boundary between us at home, at academy, and at the commons where we played with the rest of the neighborhood girls. Beth made sure the other girls didn't talk to me either, so I kept to myself. Her bullying made me timid in her presence— always drawing back instead of coming forward— so I watched as she batted the nest along the property marker with a stick. I didn't say anything until I saw the speckle of blue as it tumbled over.

"Stop." My command was so low she shouldn't have heard it, but our street was as quiet as usual, and her head perked up to stare at me, the stick frozen in place.

 "What did you say?" she asked in a voice that wanted me to remember my place, not answer her.

 What ever that glimpse of blue had stirred in my chest, I grabbed on to it and pushed the demand out louder.

Beth edged closer to the line, but didn't cross it. Instead, she hoisted the nest on her stick and tossed it over to my yard. "There," she mocked. "Take your precious nest. It doesn't matter, the mama bird isn't coming back for it now. They don't want their eggs after someone else has touched them."

 Hatred seethed inside me, but I stood on my side and watched her walk into her house without saying another word. She glanced at me just once as she opened her front door, and her eyes were full of scorn. I stared at the nest for a long time: two eggs peeked out of the grass next to it. I thought of myself and my sister when I looked at them: two sister sparrows. Gathering up some fallen leaves from our yard, I covered my bare hands before placing the eggs into their spots in the nest, and then lifted it back to the tree in our yard. But the small gesture did nothing to soothe the aching rage building in my chest.

 As I watched the nest, growing increasingly frustrated with my inability to protect the tiny lives inside, the strands of the weave glimmered to life around me. The tree and the nest blurred like a delicate tapestry before my eyes, strands that called out to be touched, and I reached and slipped my fingers around them. Although I'd been aware of the fabric of life woven around us before, for the first time I noticed how bands of gold stretched across it horizontally, and how colored threads wove up through them to create the objects around me. As I watched, the golden strands of light flickered slightly, and I realized they were slowly moving forward, away from the moment in front of me. They weren't simply fibers in Arras's tapestry—they were lines of time. Tentatively, I reached for one of the golden fibers. Encouraged by its silky texture, I took it and yanked it hard, trying to force the time bands back to a moment when the mama bird was guarding her precious babies. But the strands resisted. No matter what I did, they kept on creeping forward. There was no going back.

 The mama bird never returned. I checked on the little blue eggs every morning until one day my dad relieved me from my vigilance and the whole nest vanished. I didn't touch those eggs, but I guess the mama bird didn't know where to look; that's why she didn't come back.

 ---

 There is only darkness. It is damp, and with the palms of my hands I can feel that the floor of my cell alternates between smooth and jagged, but one thing is constant: it is always cold. My parents' suspicions about the Guild were well-founded. I wonder if my mother knows where I am. I picture her circling our house, searching for me in her own empty nest.

 If she's still alive. My heart flutters in response to some new emotion. It sits like a big lump in my throat as I remember the body bag leaking onto the floor. And now they have Amie. The idea that she's at their mercy claws at my stomach. Never in the years my parents were training me did I understand why they were doing it. They told me that they didn't want to lose me. My father spoke of the dangers of too much power, but in vague, noncommittal terms, and my mother always shushed him when he became too impassioned. The Guild gave us food and perfectly controlled weather and health patches. I have to believe those people— the humane government of my memory—have Amie now. What ever my crimes, those officials wouldn't hold her accountable. But I can't ignore how wrong I was about the Guild or my parents. And it's my fault she was taken. It was my hands that gave me away at testing. I run them along the rough cracks in the patches of stone until my fingertips are torn and bloody.