The Tower at Stony Wood by Patricia A McKillip

Author:Patricia A McKillip
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-09-01T16:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN

In the tower at Stony Wood, Sel drew brown threads back and forth across a patch of linen. She barely thought about what she was making. Her hands made it, she told herself, and anyway, it was nothing at all but a pile of bits and pieces of muted colors, all jumbled together, nothing fitting anything. Melanthos had brought up pockets stuffed full of thread Anyon had given her, the grays and creams and browns of his father’s sheep. She had asked more than once what Sel was making. Nothing, Sel said, in particular, or: I don’t know yet. Her hands seemed to know; Sel did not question them.

Melanthos brought her food, too, when Sel forgot to come down from the tower. She had become engrossed, watching the woman in the tower, waiting for her tale to end, to see how the woman would finally become free. Melanthos warned her now and then that the old mirror might not remember, that the tale might not have an end. But Sel, watching the woman become little by little more restless, more desperate, thought that even if the mirror forgot, the woman herself might give some hint of how the tale began and ended.

So she sewed and waited for the brief, random moments when the mirror turned its memory toward the tower beside the river. The mirror showed her the harbor seals as often as not, which was as close as it ever got to looking at the village. She loved seeing them peering curiously above the waves, diving sleekly after fish without leaving a ripple behind. She wished, occasionally, that the mirror would find the bakery and open an eye into that. But it never did. So Sel, remembering Gentian and the baby, would heave herself stiffly off the pallet and circle down the stairs into the light of day. Gentian, her placid Gentian, had burst into tears in the middle of the bakery the last time Sel appeared.

The baby, starting out of sleep, wailed in sympathy. Sel picked her up and patted Gentian’s shoulder awkwardly, amazed.

“What is it?” she asked anxiously. “Don’t tell me it’s Rawl. I’ll put holes in his boat.”

“It’s you!” Gentian cried. She even wept tidily, Sel saw: one tear out of each eye, traveling to mid-cheekbone and hanging on the fine, flushed skin like pearls. “Rawl goes out in the mornings to fish and comes back to me at night and never complains when I leave him before it’s light to bake. But you—you don’t even know where your home is now. You’ve taken to living in that tower. I see Melanthos in here far more often than I see you!”

Sel was silent, shifting her patting hand to the baby now, while two pearls dissolved on Gentian’s cheeks, and two more fell. “I’m sorry,” she said vaguely, distressed and mystified at having made Gentian cry. The baby was more easily placated. “I’m just—”

“You’re what? Just what?”

“Just—if you’ll just be patient.”

“Patient!” Gentian stared at her, bewildered. “Patient

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