Arachnodactyl (8 page)

N
o signs
of life made themselves evident when Ikey entered the house. Often, before his mum and sister died, Ikey would work alone in the barn in the evening, tending to a trifle that needed or held his attention. As the hours slipped past and the sun settled into the ground, he found it easy to believe a great, horrendous occurrence had left him alone now—the last person in the world, and from that point on, he would be safe. But a cold filled him after such a thought. It was one hard life traded for another. After he put aside his tools, extinguished his lantern, and left the barn, the soft glow from the house’s windows trickled hope into him as he followed the trail of light. When he opened the door, and his sister and mum saw it was only him, they resumed their chatter as Ikey took a seat between his uncle and the fire, and he shut his eyes and listened to their voices, the clicking of knitting needles, the turning of pages in Uncle Michael’s lap, and the pops of stove wood. Underneath it all, however, lay the silence in which they waited for the
thunk-shhwip
,
thunk-shhwip
of his dad’s boots scraped clean on the edge of the porch.

Inside Cross’s house, no chatter peppered the air. No light shone beyond the small shell cast by his lantern. He picked up his satchel from beside the sink and slung it over his shoulder. In the cupboard beside the sink, he found a box of matches as promised. He slipped a few of them into the pocket of his trousers before he resumed his course through the house.

The double doors at the back of the dining parlor sat open to more darkness. Ikey circled the table. With each step, the shadows in the room shifted around, studying him for weakness before pouncing. Only the lightest steps on the hardwood floor kept the music boxes silent, but the floor itself let out a plaintive creak every time he shifted his weight. Stealth inside the house was impossible. And what sounds did stalk through the dark rooms came back echoed and magnified, grown large off the meat of something fed upon in the dark.

A clicking and scraping noise trickled through the room. Ikey stopped. It was a small noise, light, but it scurried through the room at a steady rate. A click followed by a slight, metallic scrape. Familiar. But off. Like a favorite song played on a different instrument, a different pace.

Knitting. It was the sound of knitting needles rubbing together. As Ikey approached the open door, the lantern’s light fell inside and illuminated a small, oval-shaped table sitting low to the floor. Music boxes covered its surface. Behind it sat a sofa with threadbare patches reflecting more light.

At the doorway, Ikey leaned forward and peered into the room. Rose sat to his left in a high-backed chair. Each hand clutched a silvery knitting needle. A mass of dark wool spilled from her needles and into a pool in her lap. Ikey watched her work. Her right hand held its needle stiffly while the left hand wrapped the yarn around the needle and pulled the new stitch onto the left needle. It was different than how his mum and sister had knitted.

Rose asked, “Are you and Cross done for the night?”

Ikey looked to the floor, then glanced around the room quickly. A sparse gathering of furniture sat under another shelf that brimmed with music boxes and circled the room. A pair of windows swaddled tightly in heavy curtains interrupted the shelf along the far wall.

“I don’t know where Cross is,” Ikey said. “He wasn’t in the workshop when I went out there.”

“So what have you been doing out there all this time?”

Ikey shifted his weight. The floor creaked. It felt like the house tsked at him. He wanted to take a seat on the sofa and watch Rose’s fingers work the wool.

“If you’re done working, are you ready for bed, then?” Rose asked.

At the mention of bed, weariness settled on him. Ikey nodded, then grinned at his own foolishness. “Yes. I suppose I am.”

Rose grasped her needles in one hand and pushed the stitches down the shafts, then scooped the project up and dropped it into a basket at her side. She placed her hands on the arms of the chair and pushed herself to her height and folded her hands behind her back. Lord, was she tall.

“What are you making?” Ikey asked.

“A sweater.”

Ikey glanced at the windows as if to confirm the season. But there was nothing to see at the windows except heavy drapes. For a brief moment, no spring waited outside. No season or world at all. Just this house. And Rose. And the countless satellites of silent music boxes.

The urge to ask how she could possibly knit swirled around Ikey’s innards, but to ask might risk offending her again.

“Can you teach me?” Ikey asked. “Please.”

“Teach you what? To make a sweater?”

Ikey nodded. “To knit.”

Rose remained still and quiet. Ikey closed his eyes and opened his ears for the subtle machination of gears and springs and whatever transpired as Rose thought her thoughts.

“I guess I could. I don’t see why not,” Rose said. “But why? It’s not exactly a task men concern themselves with. They’re always glad to have the warmth when they need it, but they never give a thought to the process or those who made it.”

“I do,” Ikey said. “I mean, I think about the process. I used to listen to my sister and my mum knit in the evenings. I miss it.”

“Perhaps you’d be better off asking someone else to teach you.”

“No,” Ikey said. His posture straightened. “I’ve got nothing else to do. And I’d like to learn. Please.”

“Oh dear,” Rose said. “A man who would lower himself to women’s work? Aren’t you a treat. Very well, then. I’ll teach you to knit, and I’ll even keep your secret from Cross.”

“What secret?” The lantern’s flame trembled in Ikey’s grasp.

“That you’ve decided to try knitting.”

“Oh.” Ikey’s shoulders relaxed.

“Would you care to begin tomorrow evening?” Rose asked.

“How about now?” Ikey asked. “I’m not that tired.”

“Very well.” Rose sat back in her chair and pointed at an ottoman beside the sofa. “Pull the ottoman up here.” She waved her hand at the floor before herself. “And be sure to return it to the exact position in which you found it once we are finished. Also, you’ll find a couple of sconces along the wall. You may light them if you need better light. Elsewise, I don’t know where you’ll place your lantern. Finally, fetch a ball of yarn and a pair of needles from my basket. Preferably a set not currently in use.”

The sconces along either side of the room were simple affairs with flues to turn and regulate the flow of gas. Small lamps milky with dust perched atop them. Ikey set the lantern on the coffee table, moved the ottoman to the position Rose had indicated, and placed an unused ball of yarn and a pair of needles upon its surface. Finally, Ikey stepped back over to the lantern, studied the layout of the room a few seconds, then blew the lantern out with a puff.

Rose’s voice lifted out of the dark. “What are you doing?”

“Show me how to knit,” Ikey said. He stepped over to the ottoman. With a groping hand, he found the needles and yarn. He picked them up and sat. The ottoman’s cushion wheezed with his weight.

“Did you blow out the lantern?” Rose asked.

“I did.” Ikey clutched the needles in one hand, the ball in the other. Behind him, the idea of Rose loomed. He wanted to lean back, settle his weight into her, feel the solidness of her.

“But you didn’t light the sconces. Can you see?”

“Show me.”

Ikey waited. The coolness in the metal needles dissipated. The ball of yarn grew warm and scratchy in his palm. The dark swayed. For a moment, it seemed that the needles and ball were the only things holding Ikey to the world.

Rose asked, “What is this?”

“What do you mean?”

“What are you trying to accomplish here? What are you trying to prove?”

Ikey took a deep breath, then exhaled through his nose. If it weren’t for the floor beneath his boots, he’d swear his breath propelled him back along through the dark.

“I’m not trying to prove anything,” Ikey said. His thumb ran along the shaft of a needle. “Show me how it is for you. I want to learn.”

The dark hummed. Ikey swore that the music boxes surrounding them had grown large, dish-like eyes, and they peered down with their opaque irises and copper pupils and through the blackness they saw Ikey’s skin prickle in anticipation. And in silence, they recorded all on tiny cylinders of wax and waited to tell Cross in their odd and lilted songs.

Rose’s hands settled on the sides of his shoulders. Ikey shivered.

“Is this okay?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Her fingertips brushed along his arms until she reached his hands. Coolness radiated from the tips of her fingers. “I’ll take these,” she said, her voice behind him.

A sweet scent drifted over him like summer clouds; a flowery scent that reminded him of a fresh shirt pulled dry from the clothes line. After she plucked the yarn and needles from his grasp, his hands drifted to his lap.

The needles clicked off to his left, then again behind him. Fabric whispered and Rose’s chair let out a sound that was neither a creak nor a groan, but almost a purr. She pressed briefly against the sides of both his arms, right beneath the shoulders.

Close to his ear, Rose said, “Find my hands before you.”

Ikey raised his hand until it bumped against Rose’s forearm. He traced the satin of her sleeve with a knuckle until it scraped against the lace at her wrist. Rose took his hand in hers and guided it towards them until their hands hovered close to the bottom of his chest. She pressed a strand of yarn against the tips of his fingers. Reflexively, he pinched the yarn between thumb and forefinger.

She let go. “This is called casting on,” Rose said as she took his left hand and maneuvered it close to his right hand. “You want to take up the yarn in the left hand as well. Let it lay over your hand. We’re going to make a knot.”

Ikey fished in the dark with his left hand. He didn’t realize he had captured the strand until tension tugged at his right thumb and forefinger. He pulled his left hand away an inch. A tickle of wool slid over the crooks of his curled left fingers. The moment he ceased moving, the yarn disappeared from his senses.

“Now twist the yarn around like this,” Rose said as she guided his hands and wrists and fingers through a series of motions.

Ikey attempted to picture the motions in his mind, imagining his hands and the yarn before him and pretended he could see it all plain as day. But the yarn eluded him. As he rolled his wrist over, the tension of the yarn tugged at his fingers, but then it disappeared from his imagination the instant he stopped moving. He could picture his posture, his hands before him, and he felt the cool pressure of Rose’s hands on his, but the yarn had transformed itself into something exotic; a material that existed only when moved.

“There,” Rose said. “Once finished, you should have this.” She traced a pretzel shape over the flat fingers of his left hand, the heart of it pinned underneath the pad of his thumb. Her touch tickled. “Take a moment to study it for yourself.”

Ikey reached up and mimicked the path drawn by Rose’s finger. He barely felt the yarn at all.

“Are you following?” Rose asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. I’m going to hand you the needle, and with your right hand, you will want to dip the tip of the needle here.” She dabbed her finger below his thumb. “Then bring it under this thread and out through here,” she continued as she traced her fingertip along his fingers. “Understand?”

“Yes,” he said. He had no clue. It was like clutching water.

Rose pressed the needle against the back of his right hand. He took it. It felt a million miles long. The tip of it might as well be in America for all he could tell. And which way was it even pointing?

Ikey took a deep breath.

“Are you all right?” Rose asked.

“I’m fine.” Ikey pictured Mum and his sister knitting, pictured them handing needles to each other. They always passed them with the points in the air. Rose would do the same, right? But why hold their needles with the points up? To keep their stitches on the needle. Ikey nodded to himself. That made sense. They kept the points up out of habit. It was the proper position for a needle, and so she had likely passed it to Ikey in the upright position as well.

Ikey grinned at his cleverness. He pointed the tip of the needle at his left hand.

His grin evaporated as he realized he still didn’t know where the point was. Where along the shaft did he have a hold of it?

“Do you need help?” Rose asked. “If you want to light the lantern—”

“No,” Ikey said. “I got it. I can do it.”

Ikey stretched his thumb up the shaft and felt more of the same. He held the needle upright and loosened his grip to encourage the needle to slide down until he found the tip with his thumb. Sweat coated his palms, and the needle stuck fast. Once he opened his grip enough to free the needle, it slid straight through his hand and clattered to the floor.

“Piss,” Ikey said.

Rose chuckled.

Ikey reached down and patted the hardwood floor in sloppy, growing circles.

“Why don’t you light the lantern?” Rose asked.

“I’ll find it,” Ikey wheezed, doubled over with his ass still on the ottoman.

Her hand brushed across his back. Ikey stopped groping. He realized his eyes were shut. He opened them wide. It made no difference, so he blinked into the dark as Rose’s palm rested below his shoulder blade.

“Why are you doing this?”

He didn’t want to budge or do anything to cause her to remove her touch, but while doubled over, his breath came in short, shallow pulls that lit a fuzziness in his chest. He sat up. Her fingertips grazed his back, then slid over the ridge of his shoulder. The tips of her fingers rested below his collarbone.

His breath came in short, shallow pulls. “Doing what?”

“Sitting with me in the dark.”

“I haven’t been away from home before,” Ikey said. It was flavored with the truth.

“But why put out the lantern? You don’t need to sit in the dark if you want to visit.”

Ikey shrugged. Rose’s grip on his shoulder tightened.