The girl who cried flowers, and other tales by Jane Yolen

Author:Jane Yolen [Jane Yolen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Fantasy, Fairy Tales
ISBN: 0690002165
Published: 2017-12-13T19:15:09+00:00

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 he 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.

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