Weaveworld

point of collision threw up new beams at every angle. The whispering that filled the chamber suddenly found a fresh rhythm; the words, though still alien to her, ran like a melodious poem. Somehow, they and the light were part of one system; the raptures of the four Families – Aia, Lo, Ye-me and Babu – working together: word music accompanying a woven dance of light.

This was the Loom; of course. This was the Loom.

No wonder Immacolata had poured scorn on Shadwell’s literalism. Magic might be bestowed upon the physical, but it didn’t reside there. It resided in the word, which was mind spoken, and in motion, which was mind made manifest; in the system of the Weave and the evocations of the melody: all mind.

Yet damn it, this recognition was not enough. Finally she was still only a Cuckoo, and all the puzzle-solving in the world wouldn’t help her mellow the rage of this desecrated place. All she could do was watch the Loom’s wrath shake the Fugue and all it contained apart.

In her frustration her thoughts went to Mimi, who had brought her into this adventure, but had died too soon to entirely prepare her for it. Surely even she would not have predicted this: the Fugue’s failing, and Suzanna at its heart, unable to keep it beating.

The lights were still colliding and multiplying, the beams growing so solid now she might have walked upon them. Their performances transfixed her. She felt she could watch them forever, and never tire of their complexities. And still they grew more elaborate, more solid, until she was certain they would not be bound within the walls of the sanctum, but would burst out –

– into the Fugue, where she had to go. Out to where Cal was lying, to comfort him as best she could in the imminent maelstrom.

With this thought came another. That perhaps Mimi had known, or feared, that in the end it would simply be Suzanna and the magic – and that maybe the old woman had after all left a signpost.

She reached into her pocket, and brought out the book. Secrets of the Hidden Peoples. She didn’t need to open the book to remember the epigraph on the dedication page:

‘What can be imagined need never be lost.’

She’d tussled with its meaning repeatedly, but her intellect had failed to make much sense of it. Now she forsook her analytical thinking and let subtler sensibilities take over.

The light of the Loom was so bright it hurt her eyes, and as she stepped out of the sanctum she discovered that the beams were exploiting chinks in the brick – either that or eating at the wall – and breaking through. Needle-thin lines of light stratified the passageway.

Her thoughts as much on the book in her hand as on her safety, she made her way back via the route she’d come: door and passageway, door and passageway. Even the outer layers of corridor were not immune to the Loom’s glamour. The beams had broken through three solid walls and were growing wider with every moment. As she walked through them, she felt the menstruum stir in her for the first time since she’d entered the Gyre. It rose not to her face, however, but through her arms and into her hands, which clasped the book, as though charging it.

What can be imagined –

The chanting rose; the light-beams multiplied.

– need never be lost.

The book grew heavier; warmer; like a living thing in her arms. And yet, so full of dreams. A thing of ink and paper in which another world awaited release. Not one world perhaps, but many; for as she and Hobart’s time in the pages had proved, each adventurer reimagined the stories for themselves. There were as many Wild Woods as there were readers to wander there.

She was out into the third corridor now, and the whole Temple had become a hive of light and sound. There was so much energy here, waiting to be channelled. If she could only be the catalyst that turned its strength to better ends than destruction.

Her head was full of images, or fragments thereof:

she and Hobart in the forest of their story, exchanging skins and fictions;

she and Cal in the Auction Room, their glance the engine that turned the knife above the Weave.

And finally, the sentinels sitting in the Loom chamber. Eight eyes that had, even in death, the power to unmake the Weave. And … make it again?

Suddenly, she wasn’t walking any longer. She was running, not for fear that the roof would come down on her head but because the final pieces of the puzzle were coming clear, and she had so little time.

Redeeming the Fugue could not be done alone. Of course not. No rapture could be performed alone. Their essence was in exchange. That was why the Families sang and danced and wove: their magic blossomed between people: between performer and spectator, maker and admirer.

And wasn’t there rapture at work between her mind and the mind in the book she held?; her eyes scanning the page and soaking up another soul’s dreams? It was like love. Or rather love was its highest form: mind shaping mind, visions pirouetting on the threads between lovers.

‘Cal!’

She was at the last door, and flinging herself into the turmoil beyond.

The light in the earth had turned to the colour of bruises, blue-black and purple. The sky above writhed, ripe to discharge its innards. From the music and the exquisite geometry of light inside the Temple, she was suddenly in bedlam.

Cal was propped against the wall of the Temple. His face was white, but he was alive.

She went to him and knelt by his side.

‘What’s happening?’ he said, his voice lazy with exhaustion.

‘I’ve no time to explain,’ she said, her hand stroking his face. The menstruum played against his cheek. ‘You have to trust me.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Good. You have to think for me, Cal. Think of everything you remember.’

‘Remember …?’

As he puzzled at her a crack, fully a foot wide, opened in the earth, running from the threshold of the Temple like a messenger. The news it carried was all grim. Seeing it, doubts filled Suzanna. How could anything be claimed from this chaos? The sky shed thunder; dust and dirt were flung up from the crevasses that gaped on every side.

She endeavoured to hold onto the comprehension she’d found in the corridors behind her. Tried to keep the images of the Loom in her head. The beams intersecting. Thought over and under thought. Minds filling the void with shared memories and shared dreams.

Think of everything you remember about the Fugue,’ she said.

‘Everything?’

‘Everything. All the places you’ve seen.’

‘Why?’

Trust met’ she said. ‘Please God, Cal, trust me. What do you remember?’

‘Just bits and pieces.’

‘Whatever you can find. Every little piece.’

She pressed her palm to his face. He was feverish, but the book in her other hand was hotter.

In recent times she’d shared intimacies with her greatest enemy, Hobart. Surely she could share knowledge with this man, whose sweetness she’d come to love.

‘Please …’ she said.

‘For you …’ he replied, seeming to know at last all she felt for him, ‘… anything.’

And the thoughts came. She felt them flow into her, and through her; she was a conduit, the menstruum the stream on which his memories were carried. Her mind’s eye saw glimpses only of what he’d seen and felt here in the Fugue, but they were things fine and beautiful.

An orchard; firelight; fruit; people dancing; singing. A road; a field; de Bono and the rope-dancers. The Firmament (rooms full of miracles); a rickshaw; a house, with a man standing on the step. A mountain, and