The Loom and the Lathe

She'd ducked under the loom at the beginning of the weaving lesson, when Master Cricket was trying to free three small children who were caught up in their yarns like fish in a net, flopping and giggling. She was beginning to regret it.

She couldn't hear Cricket's lesson above rattle and hiss of the loom, but it didn't matter. She was almost old enough to be prenticed, but it wouldn't be as a weaver. No one was going to trust Willow's daughter with yarns. But while missing the lesson was no trouble, getting caught missing the lesson would be.

To one side, she could see Master Cricket's robe dragging in the packed dirt of the tent floor. One of his soft boots was torn a little, a toe poked out. He shifted from foot to foot as he taught. On the other side a thicket of spindles wound with coloured yarns were stuck into the earth. In front of her were the weaver's feet in their beaded moccasins. Behind her cold damp seeped under the tent edge and down her neck. Fenced in like a sheep. She tucked her skinny arms and legs up like a grasshopper and shifted her head on a rolled up hanging, considering.

She was bored with the slow growth of the pattern shifting above her. And Fawn would surely miss her soon -- Fawn was always on the alert for a chance to turn her in.

A small knife flashed through the pattern and a bit of yarn snaked down into Otter's face. The yarn was miss-dyed, a blotchy red and pink, trimmed as scrap. And no wonder: there wasn't a trace of power in it. Otter twisted it around her fingers thought: distraction.

     Red for will
     Yellow for skill
     Silver's a barrier
     Wisdom is green
     Grey for the power of going unseen

But before she got further cold slap of air and light hit her. The tent behind had come loose from its pins -- no, it was being lifted. She craned her neck backward and got an upside-down glimpse of the ribbon ward, its white birches like streaks of light.

Then the tent wall dropped. She turned her head. Three pairs of feet were almost at her nose, mud-splashed heavy boots, smelling of moss and pine needles, green and grey leggings, a long knife sheathed on a hip, the bottom of a long bow held loosely: Rangers.

The tent filled with hush.

A voice she didn't know -- an old woman's voice, she thought -- murmured: "Master Cricket, it's time."

"Is it," Cricket rasped, "is it?" It was so quiet she could hear him rub his hands together. "Children, I need you to -- " he stopped. "Where's Otter?"

Otter tensed. The Rangers were only inches away, and the spindles still had her fenced in. But behind her the tent was unpinned. The bottom of it moved like a sidewinder in the cold April wind. Otter gathered herself, and rolled.

Put even as she pulled away, fingers pinched her ear. Otter yelped. One of the Rangers was stooping; suddenly they were nose to nose. The old woman smiled. "Here, I think. Come out, now, child." She tugged the ear and Otter came scrambling out and puffing to her feet. The woman plucked another bit of scrap yarn from her dusty, tangled curls. "Otter," she said, and nodded as if to an equal.

Otter saw Fawn thin her lips in outrage.

Fawn was a graceful fourteen year old with a chickadee cap of black hair, cut short because her mother had recently died. She was the oldest of the unprenticed children. That, and the glamour of having a dead mother, made the others look to her. Only Otter could rival her: only a little younger, a lot taller, and a lot more trouble, which meant more fun.

And Otter had more dead.

Twin brothers had toddled and tumbled at her feet like wolf cubs. And one day they had vanished as if her mother had swallowed them whole. And then her mother had swung around from the empty bed and caught Otter in her eyes. Those eyes shone like the northern lights: strange green shifting across darkness. Otter ran.

Otter dashed into the carpenter's shop almost by chance. Her aunt Alder was kicking the lathe up to speed. Alder looked up at Otter, and came around the table without pausing to break the flywheel. She was at the door in time to block Willow. Otter kept backing up.

Otter found herself crouching in the curls of pale wood under the lathe table.. Alder crouched to her. "Come out, now, Otter� Otter, don't --"

"Otter." Another pinch to her ear brought her out of the memory. "Don't think of that just now," the old woman said. Her voice was soft. Her long fingers had made a quick knot of the yarn she'd plucked from Otter's hair, a knot Otter hadn't seen before. The thread was white.

     White for memory
     Orange against dread
     Blue for the power of binding the dead

"Children," Master Cricket nodded to the old woman -- almost bowed to her. "This is Mother Thistle. She's going to take us into the forest. We will go now. We will be silent."