The City of Woven Streets. Emmi Itaranta

paper Weaver gave me, because I recognized the symbols when she wrote them down. Fetch a Dreamer from the House of Webs. I turn the wheel on the side of the machine until the index points at the first symbol. The surface of the water rises in the tank as the index moves along the scale. In the tank of the watergraph in the House of the Tainted, the water level will change accordingly, showing the same engraved symbol.

      When I have inserted all three symbols, I wait until a small bell chimes to signal that the message has been received at the other end of the pipe. Then I turn to go. I am nearly out of the door, when I stop. I listen. The corridors are night-silent and all I hear are the movements of my own body. There is no one else in the building.

      I move behind Weaver’s table. Slowly I coax the drawer open and stop to listen again. No light flickers to life and no footsteps brush the floors. The message-book is pushed to the back of the drawer, but like the door, the drawer is never locked. I pull the thick book out and place it in my lap. The pages are yellowed and brittle on the edges, and full of water message code, which no one in the house knows apart from Weaver – as far as she is aware.

      She is not in the habit of writing down the dates, but she records moon phases with precision: how Our Lady of Weaving hides a silver coin in her palm behind the sky, reveals it little by little and hides it again. The last full moon was two days ago. I only need to find the circle marking it and count from there backwards towards the day the girl arrived at the house.

      There are no entries for that day. Then I remember: the flood. The watergraph could not be used. I find three entries from two days later. The first one is a request to the trading harbours to buy more yarn. The second seems equally casual. Herbs, it reads. The third and final one is in the column for incoming messages. To be certain, I check the symbol against the translation sheet Weaver keeps placed between the final pages of the book.

      Intrusion at the museum, the message says. The sender is the City Guard.

      I remember the scar-handed man I saw at the Museum of Pure Sleep.

      A stone-cold draught blows across my skin, too sudden and sharp to ignore. It is possible that I hear a soft creak of weary metal. I turn to look, and take a moment to see what I am looking at. In the corner of the room, a tapestry billows like a sail in wind. Behind it a dense and deep darkness cuts the wall.

      There is a modest wooden door in the wall. I have always imagined it to be some kind of storage room, if I have ever even taken notice of it. Now I do.

      The door was closed when I came to the room. I am certain of it.

      I push Weaver’s watergraph logbook back into the drawer.

      This time I hear the creak of the hinges clearly. The door is swinging slowly in the draught. I walk closer. I listen closely, and for a moment I think I hear a rustling sound, as if someone is breathing in the darkness. But when I try to catch the sound again, it is gone.

      Another breeze blows through the chink and across my skin, making every hair stand on end. The door slams shut, as if pushed by an invisible hand from the other side. I take a step back, then another, and as I walk towards the tall door of Weaver’s study, I hear the quick beating of my heart against the bones of my chest, like an animal struggling to break free.

      I do not slow down until the long, shadow-soaked corridor is halfway behind me

       and another landscape opens ahead, a world that is ready to crumble or change.

       She dreams dark dreams of a place where longing settles in limbs and thickens into fog on window panes, where a hunger to run free and feel the salt of the sea on one’s face makes the air bitter to breathe and fear crawls dense along the floors. The walls fall quiet into deep water, every door is held by a lock and branch-stiff lattices cover the windows. If you go close enough, you may hear words swishing, and behind the walls you may sense many solitudes interlaced with one another. Even closer you may sometimes catch screams, but perhaps they are of seagulls.

       Those who carry marks on their faces and are confined within walls scratch the doors until their claws break, and under the weight of their dreams the city subsides and cracks, poles and foundation stones under houses shift out of joint and crumble, the edges of shores and canals corrode into the sea. But ink chains others also, flows under skins and in the veins of the island. It grows slow wounds at the core of all life, hiding from sight what is meant to be seen.

       Hands reach for the threads of sleep and fall towards them, and they do not thwart the touch. Their stirring started long ago, elusive, adaptive, impossible to stop. The door into darkness is closed, the door into darkness is open, air flows and through it

       CHAPTER FOUR

      A gondola arrives for Mirea at dawn. We all hear the squeaking of the metal cables as the vessel approaches, hovers above the drop and climbs slowly to the port on top of the hill. I am not outside to see it, but the walls of the Halls of Weaving make every sound swell in my ears: the heavy footsteps, rarely heard in the house; the indistinct words of Weaver’s voice; and, eventually, Mirea’s weeping. I imagine two silent and dark figures taking her into the black gondola bearing the emblems of the City Guard, which will return down to the city across the void. Once its bottom touches water, the large hooks holding it to the airway will be detached. The vessel will float down the canal, turn to a waterway running towards the House of the Tainted and finally stop before the locked iron gate. I imagine Mirea: struggling and fighting, her body wriggling like a slippery fish at the bottom of the boat. Or quiet, submissive, her face closed.

      None of us flinches, or slows down the work, or stops it.

      Later, when the weather turns warmer, the folding doors of the Halls of Weaving are opened towards the square. Many weavers carry their looms outside, under the canopy woven of web-yarn. If interior and exterior spaces can be separated from each other in the House of Webs, that is: here, rooms move often. The dormitories and cells remain. They are built in stone, because sleep must be confined within solid walls, it cannot be released to wander free. But around the stone buildings the rooms, walls and streets wax and vanish, nor are they supposed to stay. That is the will of Our Lady of Weaving.

      Days are seldom warm this late in autumn. The sun draws soft shadows on the walls and casts them across the floors, falls through the half-woven wall-webs. Clouds break the edge of the light. The long rows of weavers reach from the room all the way to the square. Their hands pass the weft through the warps, building within the frames fabrics that are all alike. No exceptions are allowed. The only sounds in the hall are the rustling of clothes, the swishing of yarn and the breathing of dozens of women. The coarse sea-wool stings my fingers until their skin cracks, and my weave is not as smooth as I would like.

      I pat the weft with a wooden weaving fork to make it a tighter fit with the rest of the web. The warp rises tall and bare ahead of me. On my left side Silvi, who came to the house three years after me, has already woven twice as much as I this morning. My weft twists into a tangle and leaves a large, protruding loop in the wall-web. I am so focused on tugging the knot free that it takes me a while to notice the low chatter that has grown in the hall, and the stopped movements. Silvi stares away from the square and folding doors, towards the arched stone doorway between the hall and the corridor.

      The girl tattooed with invisible ink stands at the door of the hall. She has changed her white patient gown for a long, grey wool dress and tied her hair low in the nape of her neck. The skin around her mouth still looks slightly swollen and bruised, but she stands straight and without hesitation. Her gaze circles the hall and stops on me.

      I place the shuttle down. The girl begins to walk towards me. I catch uncertain looks and tense postures from the corner of my eye. Outsiders are not allowed in the Halls of Weaving. Yet no one rises to stop her; neither do I. Outside clouds part, and the sky casts sudden light across the hall. A shining forest of halfway webs reaches in all directions. She walks to me, tilts her head and the corners of her mouth lift, just a little. I do not know what moves on my face,