Myfanwy[1]
insisted on sitting outside and so all of Owen’s[2]
paraphernalia had to be set up on an old rickety table in the ramshackle
garden. She seemed to think it was warm, but to him it still seemed like a cold
spring day. However, she always liked to be outside whenever possible.
Owen struggled with
his frame while Myfanwy watched him from her favourite chair. He had thought he
was doing her a favour, but that clearly wasn’t the way she saw things. The table
was too unstable and so he spent another ten minutes propping it up with books
and bits of wood. He was used to all of this, though – since she had made the
unexplained and totally unexpected decision to adopt him as a nephew he had
been expected to do all sorts of unreasonable things. He had never really
minded; she was completely exasperating but he loved her despite her many
foibles.
‘Are you going to
help me with this?’ he asked
She shook her head.
‘No. You know that I
have no talent for weaving’
This was true but
unhelpful. She had the wrong sort of patience for tailory.
‘Perhaps I could have
a cup of tea then?’
She frowned.
‘You can make us one
when you’ve finished’
He grunted but said
no more. He put all of his effort into setting up the loom. Then he opened his
large wooden box and showed her the threads. There were many of them. They were
laid out neatly in spectrum order, multiple hues; each neatly wound around its
own bobbin. The threads shimmered, as if they had some internal source of lighting.
‘What is it that you
want?’ he asked, gently. Working always made him calm.
‘I want a coat…a big coat for all weathers’
He looked at her
quizzically.
‘Isn’t that more a
job for a good conventional coat maker?’
She smiled, very
pleased with herself. Her hand reached under the table and pulled out an
ancient book, bound with leather but with its pages spilling out. She handed it
over to him. He held it cautiously – it was written in Bardic; allegedly the
ancient runic alphabet of the Rhylic language[3].
He opened the book and struggled with the title page; he could read it but he
wasn’t exactly fluent.
‘The tome of thaums
and textiles…? He ventured.
She laughed, deep and
broad.
‘The book of magical
weaving… It’s a compendium’
He looked up from the
book.
‘Right… Why haven’t I
seen this before?’
‘Stephen turned it up
in a junk shop in Murvale. He’s always nosing around for this sort of thing’
‘Yes, I’d heard that.
I was just wondering why he gave it to you’ Rather
than me, was his unspoken addition.
‘Because he couldn’t
read it, the silly old fool, and so he wanted me to check that it was safe’
Owen placed the book
carefully on the table. He let go of it.
‘And is it safe?’
Myfanwy shrugged.
‘I have no idea. But
since when has that stopped us?’
He frowned.
‘Stopped you, you mean’
She batted his
comment back at him with a flick of her hand.
‘However you want to
interpret it, nephew, that’s up to you. Anyway, it’s a book on craft. It’s
unlikely to be excessively perilous. And it’s yours now…’
He waited. He was
happy to have the book but she clearly wanted something more than the pleasure
of giving a gift.
‘There’s a book mark
in the page I’d like you to have a look at’
He picked up the book
again and opened it to the marked page. This was a double spread in Enchanter’s
Rhylic, in normal Visneorian letters. There was a sketchy, but clear enough,
diagram showing a coat made up of textile squares, the sort of squares that
were the common currency of the witch-weaver.
He stared at the sketch for a moment and then he was hooked. It looked
so wonderful – he had to make one.
So, she didn’t just
mean a coat; she meant a special kind of coat that only he could weave. He
pointed to the coat in the book.
‘It’s a patchwork’ he
murmured, ‘a magical patchwork coat – is that what you wanted?’
She nodded.
He looked across at
her.
‘What colour would
you like?’
‘Greens’ she said,
‘make it all the greens of a spring woodland’
He smiled.
‘Easily done… It’s
just like a fancy quilt’
He pulled out some
bright pea-green threads and loaded them on to the loom. In just a few minutes a
long cloth of green ran out of the contraption. He stopped the loom and picked
up the cloth. He dipped his hand into the sewing box and pulled out some
something that looked like dressmaker’s scissors, except that these seemed to
be made entirely of light. He snipped round the edges of the cloth and there
was a perfect square, about six inches wide. He whispered ‘caethiwa’. A thread of yellow light traversed the edge of the cut
square, binding it, and then winked out.
‘Magic sealed into
the fabric’ said Myfanwy, ‘very impressive’
‘One down’ he
murmured, ‘quite a few to go, though…’
She watched him as he
laboriously assembled the coat, a combined witch and tailor. It soon became
apparent to both of them that this would take a long time to complete. After a
while she nodded at him.
‘I will make that cup of tea, after all’ she
said, ‘you deserve it’
She got up and
disappeared into the higgledy-piggledy house. He carried on. He had no idea if
he could finish this in one day but he didn’t particularly relish having to
stay at Myfanwy’s house for the night: she often had strange nocturnal visitors
and kept odd hours. He’d have to work speedily.
She was gone for much longer than seemed
reasonable when making a cup of tea, but he carried on, unconcerned. As he
worked, however, his eyes kept being drawn to a movement behind a row of
raspberry canes at the end of the garden. For a moment he thought he saw a face
between the canes.
‘Is there someone
there?’ he asked, peering out across the garden
There was a definite
movement and the half-observed-face disappeared. There was someone there. He stood up, pointed at the bottom of the
raspberries and shouted ’Ddolen’. A
white lasso of force leapt from his hand and looped over the hidden figure.
Owen pulled it tight and there was a shriek in the undergrowth. It was followed
by an angry cry.
‘Let go of me’
Owen got up and
hurried over. The spell had caught someone – a small terrified young man in a
brown coat. The noose had half caught his shoulder and it looked more
uncomfortable than painful. The intruder was crouched, struggling to get free.
‘Why were you
snooping about?’ Owen asked, trying to find a way through the tangled shrubs to
get to him.
‘I wasn’t – I’m lost
– I was coming to ask for directions...’
Owen wondered for a
second if that were true but doubted that hiding behind a cluster of
raspberries could help a man who had mislaid his way. He looked down at the
man’s hands. In his left hand he had a pencil and in his right a piece of
paper. Owen stopped for a second.
‘Are you taking
notes?’ he asked, bemused.
‘None of your
business,’ sneered the young man.
Owen forced his way
through a patch of Azaleas so that he could reach him. The intruder took one
look at Owen and forced himself free of the noose. He dropped what he was
carrying, put his hands up to a stone hanging round his neck and shouted ‘Amranta’. A millisecond later he was
gone – teleported away.
Owen struggled to where the young man had
been standing. He picked up the dropped objects from the ground. He looked up
and Myfanwy was there, standing next to the canes, smiling at him.
‘Well done’ she said,
‘shame you didn’t catch him, though…’
‘A spy?’ he asked,
daunted by the prospect.
She nodded, as if she
were confirming that, sadly, they were aphids
on her rose bush.
‘I get them round
here occasionally’ she said, ‘they’re just testing me out’
‘Are they CRS
spies?’
‘Give me the paper
and we may find out’
Owen looked down at the
scribbles on the shiny white sheet in his left hand.
‘Mail paper’ he
hissed, handing it over to her. She only needed to glance at it.
‘There’s your answer
– lost travellers rarely make frantic notes on magical paper’
‘Or use Ddwysewch stones to allow them to blink
away’
‘Exactly…’
‘How often does this
happen?’ he asked
‘Not that often – but
there’s been more of them recently…’
Owen frowned
‘Really? Why do you
think that is?’
‘Because our Enemies
are planning and scheming’
‘Aren’t they always?’
‘Yes – but I can feel
something is happening – something different…’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I fear that new
alliances are forming against us – alliances of east and west… ’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I won’t say here –
just in case. Sometimes spies work in pairs…’
Owen looked at his aunt
dumbfounded. If there were regular agents of the Enemies spying on him then he’d
be a lot less calm than she appeared. Of course, maybe there were. He swallowed
back his fear; perhaps this got less terrifying with age. And what did she mean
by new alliances – the CRS and Tlaxaca, perhaps? He shivered, and scanned round the garden as
if he expected a vagabond behind every fruit tree. Myfanwy stepped forward and
held on to his arm.
‘Your brew’s inside’
she said gently, ‘perhaps you’d rather shift everything into the house?’
He forced himself to
look directly at her.
‘Yes… I think I
would’
There was an edge in
her voice, but it was not unkind.
‘You are a foolish,
timorous, soul, Owen bach, but if it’ll make you happier, it’s good’
He began to pack the
loom away for transport. Myfanwy stood staring at him with her hands on her
hips. It struck him that she might be rather pleased that this had happened. It
was another chance to teach him a lesson. And as usual, it mostly made him
think thathe would never do anything in her way. She was the opposite of a role
model.
She turned and walked
off back towards the house.
‘Your tea’ll be
getting cold’ she shouted back. He ignored her.
It took him three
journeys but eventually he was safely back in the house. Then he had to set
everything up again. The weaving took a very long time.
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