“Oh, please help me, please help me, I have lost the end of my thread, and if I do not quickly find it, woe betide the world, for that which is now will then not be.”
Past turning gears went Camille, to come upon a motherly woman, middle-aged she seemed, with pale yellow hair, and she was crawling on the floor before a loom, feeling about for her lost thread.
Once again a shaggy little man seemed to be ripping fabric away from the cloth beam and bearing it to the opening at the waterwheel and casting it into the flow.
As she had done with Skuld, Camille rushed forward to aid, even though here, too, the thread was invisible to her eyes. Camille dropped to her hands and knees beside the woman, Scruff scrambling to retain a perch. And as the wee sparrow chattered angrily at the hairy little man, Camille asked the woman, “Is it not lost in the tapestry?”
“Nay, the thread upon the weaving is well marked, but the feeding thread broke and fell.”
Feeling the way before her, Camille crawled toward the loom, and above Scruff’s irate chatter and the grinding of the axles and gears and stones, Camille thought she could hear the sound of one or two other looms, but they were nowhere to be seen.
Of a sudden-“I know!” cried Camille, and she sprang to her feet and stepped to the loom, and by feel she found where the thread left the golden shuttle, and she followed it to its end. “Here it is,” said Camille, and she handed it to the woman, who looked with golden eyes at Camille and smiled slyly and said, “Clever girl.”
In but an instant the woman had tied the thread on, and sat down at the loom, and it began frantically weaving, the spinning wheel at her side turning in synchronization, apparently spinning invisible thread out from the sunlight streaming in through a skylight above.
In that moment, the hairy little man growled and vanished.
“It is good to see Uncertainty gone,” said Camille.
“ ’Twas not Uncertainty, but his brother Turmoil, enemy of the present, and, just as is his brother, Turmoil, too, is an agent of Chaos.”
Camille looked at the loom, and to her surprise she could see a single, visible thread running across, various shimmering colors along its length, colors which changed with each clack of shuttle and slap of batten.
Camille also noted that carven in runes on the breastbeam was the name Verdandi.
“You, I take it, are Lady Verdandi?”
“Aye, and you are Lady Camille,” replied the woman, staring out the broad opening, as if viewing events beyond. “Now, hush, child, and let me weave. When I catch up, we can talk. In the meanwhile, break your noonfast.”
On the floor appeared utensils and a wooden trencher laden with steaming food: well-done beef slices and a stewed turnip along with a cup of rugged red wine and a great slab of coarse bread. Thereon as well was a small amount of oat grains. Smiling, Camille sat down and placed Scruff beside her and scattered the grain before him. And then she dug into the hot food, savoring every bite, for it had been many days since her last warm meal-rabbit over a campfire, eaten with Rondalo some thirty-four days ago, or mayhap but five days past, depending on how one counted the candlemarks along the River of Time. Unlike the meal provided by Skuld, this was food Camille was used to, for it was food of her time.
Even as Camille finished the last of the provender-the utensils and trencher to vanish-the frantic pace of weaving slowed.
“What do you weave, Lady Verdandi?”
“I fix on the tapestry that which is now: folks working in fields, folks shearing sheep, and other such. Would you like to see?”
Camille shook her head, and watched as Scruff pecked at something in the cracks of the floor, a beetle most likely. And she said, “I think that such sights are perhaps not meant for mortals, the viewing of events all the world over at the very moment they occur.”
Verdandi laughed, but she did not take her eyes from the opening. “My sister Skuld says that one day to come, folks will be able to see distant events even as they happen. How that can be, I know not, yet Skuld is seldom in error. I know, for I amend the tapestry of time for those things she did foresee but were changed by extraordinary effort.”
“Oh,” said Camille, “but I do hope I do not have to do so to find my Alain.”
“Child, you are already making such an effort, and I do hope you succeed, else the world will be the worse off.”
At this pronouncement Camille’s heart hammered wildly, for if the fate of the world were added to her quest for Alain, it would seem too much for a simple farm girl to bear.
To still her racing heart, Camille concentrated on the clack and slap and thud of the loom, its rhythm somehow soothing, the loom where, but for a single weft thread, an invisible tapestry grew. Finally, Camille said, “Would that I could see my love at this moment, even if he is the Bear. Do you weave such?”
“Mayhap, child. Mayhap.”
“Then let me ask what I came to ask: where lies a place east of the sun and west of the moon? Lady Skuld said you would know.”
“I believe, Camille, she sent you to me to ask, but she did not say I would know.”
“Well, Lady Verdandi, do you know where such a place is?”
Her golden gaze yet focused on the opening, Verdandi said, “You will have to ask my sister.”
Camille groaned. “The third sister?”
“Aye.”
“Downstream, I assume.”
“Indeed.”
Again, Camille groaned. “And here I was hoping to leave this flow. Just where downstream?”
“Let me ask you this,” said Verdandi, “what is the color of time?”
Camille sighed in exasperation, yet, just as she had humored Lady Skuld, so would she humor Verdandi. She took two breaths and exhaled slowly, then said, “Well, the Mists of Time whence the future comes were silvery, though the future itself seems to be an invisible color, at least to most of mankind, for most of us see it not. I suspect, though, that to you three who weave the tapestry of time, the color of the future must be quite plain to all your eyes.”
Verdandi smiled. “And what of the past? Has it a color?”
Camille turned up a hand. “If it does have a color, then to mankind it is perhaps the hue of shadows and moonlight, or mayhap the color of death, for it is buried beyond recall.”
Verdandi laughed and kept weaving and asked, “What of the present, then?”
Camille looked at the golden sunlight twisting down onto the spindle and being spun into invisible thread by the golden spinning wheel. Then she glanced at the thread on the tapestry aweave. Finally she said, “In spite of the golden sunlight and the many hues I can see on that single bit of weft, I would think that the color of the present must be the same as the color of a flash, since both exist for but this moment.”
Again Verdandi laughed and then said, “Urd will enjoy your company.”
“Urd?”
“My sister, and as you have rightly surmised, she lives downstream. To you she will seem much older than I, though to me she seems much younger.”
Camille nodded and said, “And where might I find this sister? — Other than just downstream?”
“Answer me this riddle,” said Verdandi. “Caught on the cusp of ago and to be and trapped forever in the eternal now, what am I?”
Camille glanced out at the waterwheel turning in the River of Time. “You are the Present.”
“And a present you shall have,” said Verdandi, tilting her head toward the loom. “My finest golden shuttle; take good care of it, and do not yield it to anyone except perhaps near the end, for then it may do you some good.”
“But, my lady, what if you need it?”
“I have others, my child, though not fashioned of gold; hence, you must take this one, else Faery itself might fall.”
Sighing, Camille stepped to the loom and when the thread came to an end, the shuttle flew into her hand, while another did take its place.
