Ash & Bramble (2 page)

Y
OUR WORLD IS DARK.

You fear the dark. You fear pain and sickness and loss and sorrow; you fear that your life is meaningless. You fear death, that most terrible of endings.

You huddle around the brightly burning fire in the hearth, and you tell stories. Your stories are about good people finding happiness, about bad people getting what they deserve, and most of all, you tell about true love. Your stories make the fire burn brighter; your stories push back the darkness.

I am the Godmother. I know your greatest fears; I know your deepest desires. I have taken your stories and added magic and wonder and, oh, perhaps a dancing slipper made of glass. A poisoned apple. A sharpened spindle. A glittering ball gown.

An ever after.

I give them all to you. Tell them around your meager fires. Tell them again, for they are light in the darkness. Tell and retell them, for they have power.

Live them, and their power grows.

I am the Godmother. I give you Story.

I
KNOW THIS PART OF MY STORY, THE BEGINNING, MAYBE.

I am Nothing.

All is darkness and pain, radiating from an icy touch in the middle of my forehead, the frozen, dazzling ache of it flashing through me.

When I open my eyes, I look through tears at strands of dark hair looped around my bare feet. My own hair, I realize slowly, dimly, as if I am waking after a long sleep. It has been cut off. I am naked, shivering. A furred hand grips my arm, keeping me on my feet.

Then a bucket of ice-cold water comes down over my head, and I gasp. Somebody behind me gives a harsh bark of laughter, and a bundle of cloth is shoved into my arms. I have something in my hand, a little metal knob about the size of
an acorn. It has warmed to my touch, and I somehow know they must not find it. Whoever
they
are.

Keeping the metal acorn clenched in my fist, I put on the shift they've given me and pull the shapeless dress over my head, followed by the apron, which I tie at my waist. My movements are stiff, jerky, as if my body isn't really mine. The shift scratches against my skin—it is made of undyed wool. My neck feels cold and defenseless. The stone floor is icy under my bare feet. My hand finds the pocket of my apron and hides the metal acorn away. And then the paw grips my arm, and I am dragged, blinking, dazed, down a long passageway and into a dank, dim room.

As I stand there, I hear voices, but I can make no sense of the words. My feet go numb and I can't feel the floor beneath me. The walls recede. Darkness gathers around me. I am Nothing, and the horror of it makes my skin shrink with cold, makes shadows echo through my head. Trembling, I close my eyes, and to keep myself from flying off into the Nothing I wrap my arms around myself. It is some comfort, but not enough.

Rough hands grasp my arms and shove me onto a bench.

“You are Seamstress,” a sharp voice says. “Underssstand? Seamstress.”

The room returns, and the feel of the floor against the soles of my feet, the coarse shift on the skin of my body, the smell of tallow candles. I cling to the words. Seamstress. I am Seamstress.

Cloth is put into my hands, and a threaded needle.
“Stitch,” the voice orders.

I am Seamstress. I must stitch.

The cloth is light and fine, the purest virgin white. A hem has been started along one edge. With trembling fingers, I add a stitch. Then another.

“The stitchesss,” the voice adds, “must be no bigger than a grain of sand.”

Squinting at the delicate white cloth, the thread as fine as spider silk, I take another stitch. My fingers do not know this work; my stitch is awkward, uneven.

“Sahhhh,” hisses the voice.

I look up, and see a woman dressed in a simple gown like mine. She wears a cap that covers a perfectly bald skull. She has no eyebrows; her eyelids are lashless; her pupils are slitted. With a forked tongue she licks her lips. “I am the Overseer,” she says. “You are Seamstress. Stitch.”

For a long time I work. My stitches march on, inevitable, a straggling, wandering line of foot soldiers, with here and there a casualty where I accidentally prick my finger on the needle and the tiny bead of blood is blotted by the cloth. My fingertips ache; my hands grow stiff. My bottom is sore from sitting for so long on this hard bench. A spool of spider-silk thread appears at my elbow when I need it. A tallow candle burns lower, gutters, and is replaced. Slowly, so slowly, pushed back by my attention to my work, the Nothing recedes, the room becomes real around me, and I become real in the room.

I am Seamstress, and I am not alone as I labor. Next to me on the bench is another Seamstress, one who bends her head to her work and does not glance aside. The room is long and low-ceilinged, with cracked plaster walls. A table runs the length of the room; a row of Seamstresses sits along each side. Using silken thread and silver needles, the Seamstresses sew seed pearls onto damask that glows like sapphires in the golden candlelight. They stitch cobwebs of lace onto petticoats. They sew stays of whalebone into wasp-waisted ball gowns.

The Overseer slithers up behind me. “Eyes on your work, Seamstresss,” she hisses. There's a rustle and a swish, and a burning line of pain slashes across the back of my neck. A quick glance over my shoulder, and I see the Overseer blink her slitted eyes and fold her arms. She holds a long switch, which twitches as if she's eager to hit me again.

I bow my head and try to make my stitches tinier, neater, more like grains of sand than disobedient soldiers. My neck burns, a line of fire left by her switch.

Oceans of silk and satin ebb and flow from one end of the table to the other, washing up here for an embroidery at the hem, there for a fall of ruffles, and back to the Seamstress next to me for another spangling of seed pearls. Our own dresses are made of gray wool with a plain white apron over the top. Most of the other Seamstresses are old women, bent, gray, their eyesight failing in the dim light. I am the newest, and the youngest, and I am still slim and straight, but soon
I will grow, like the others, humpbacked from bending over my work and crook-fingered from gripping the needle.

We stitch. I find myself drifting with the tidal flow of flounces and furbelows. The Overseer's breath is cold on my neck; her forked tongue flickers at my ear.
Swifter! Smaller stitches! Straighter seams!

I sew. My stitches are not smaller; my seams are not straighter.

Thwack
comes the burn of the switch on the back of my neck.

A
CLOCK STRIKES,
a hollow, echoing boom that makes the walls of the sewing room shake.

“Up,” the Overseer orders. “Exercise.”

With weary sighs, the Seamstresses around me set down their work. Following their lead, I do the same, rubbing fingers that feel stiffly clenched like claws. Slowly we get to our feet, stretching our backs, blinking tired eyes. Without speaking, we shuffle from the sewing room down a long hallway, and out to a walled courtyard.

As we stumble into the gray light, I pull the knobby acorn-thing from my apron pocket to see what it is. A thimble. It warms at my touch. Silver, dimpled, as a thimble should be, with tiny roses amid brambles engraved along the base. A thimble would be useful, but somehow I know that I must keep it hidden, so I quickly tuck it back into my pocket.

Under the eyes of the Overseer and a few guards, we
Seamstresses are ordered to stand and bend and stretch. As I move, reaching high toward the gray sky and then twisting at the waist, I feel my sluggish blood begin to pulse in my hands and feet. I blink away the dim monotony of the sewing room and notice my surroundings.

Looming over us is a fortress dark as a storm cloud; a clock set in its tallest square tower watches grimly over all. Around the courtyard is a high, bramble-covered wall. In the middle is a wooden post with chains and manacles hanging from it. A place of punishment.

I glance down the row of Seamstresses. They all have an inward look. They stare blankly ahead as they stretch. We are a line of gray-faced, gray-dressed, bony clockwork females. It's as if the individual part of each of the others has been stripped out, leaving behind only their skills. I was Nothing, and then I was Seamstress, like them, but . . . I have a secret, a silver thimble hidden in my apron pocket.

I reach for the sky again, feeling the ache of the work leach from my bones. My thimble came from somewhere. I take a deep breath of cold air scented faintly with pine. My thimble came from somewhere outside this place, and so did I. There was something before this. Just as I know I must hide the thimble, I know instinctively that I must keep this knowledge hidden as well.

Perhaps the other Seamstresses have hidden themselves away, too. Maybe it is safer in this gray fortress to hide your essential self deep within, where no one else can see it.

I wonder if I can tell one Seamstress from another. Glancing down the bending, twisting line, I see beside me the oldest and frailest of the Seamstresses, the one who was sitting next to me in our room. She had to bring her sewing right up to her watery blue eyes in order to see her own stitches. Next to her is a Seamstress who has age spots covering her gnarled hands. Then comes one who hunches under the burden of her humped back.

I wonder if inside their minds where they keep their own thoughts hidden, they wonder why they are here. Or perhaps they just do their work. I have to wonder, because my straggling stitchwork makes me guess that I am something else and not a true Seamstress, as they are.

The clock strikes the half hour. Beside me, the Oldest gasps for breath as we finish our exercises, and Spots, beside her, holds her side as if she's got a stitch.

A stitch. I smile at my little joke. The Overseer, catching my eye, frowns, and I make my face blank again.

In silence we leave the courtyard, still in a neatly hemmed line, and file into another room. A kind of dining hall with a low ceiling and long wooden tables. Like the other Seamstresses, I take a spoon and a dented tin bowl from a stack on the table by the door. We hold the bowls in front of us. The guards and the Overseer are always watching. The Seamstress with the hump is sneaky—she's cut into line behind me, and when one of the guards looks away, she reaches out and rakes a cruel fingernail down the welts on the back of my neck.

I gasp and take a quick glance over my shoulder. Maybe she can tell that I am not like the others. Her face goes blank except for a hint of satisfaction around her mouth. I wouldn't mind if she hid her essential self a bit more deeply inside.

The Seamstress ahead of me, Oldest, takes an unsteady step toward the food hatch and holds out her bowl. A ladle half filled with lentils and oats emerges from the hatch; Oldest catches her dinner in her bowl and wavers as if she's about to stumble.

As I reach out to steady her, Hump takes the opportunity to knock the empty bowl out of my hands; it tumbles to the stone floor, landing with a harsh clatter. I glance over my shoulder, but Hump is staring straight ahead.

Of
course
the guards didn't see her. Gritting my teeth, I retrieve my bowl. As Oldest hobbles away from the food hatch I step forward.

Before I can get my dinner, the Overseer slithers up. “This Seamstress has none,” she hisses, laying her switch across my bowl. “Seek to mend yourself,” she tells me.

For the merest half second I think about protesting, but I can see that the Overseer is waiting for it, hoping for it, perhaps. I must keep myself hidden, so I bow my head meekly. My stomach gives a hollow, hopeless grumble, and with my empty bowl I follow the other Seamstresses to the long table, where we sit. The room is silent except for the scrape of spoons scouring every drop of dinner from the tin bowls. Next to me sits a Seamstress with saggy skin, as if she'd
once been plump; she edges her bowl closer to mine. A silent invitation to share. Then Hump sits across from us, banging down her bowl. She glares at Once-Plump, who edges her bowl back in front of herself and starts spooning up lentils. Hump kicks me hard under the table. I glare at her, but I don't kick back.

F
ROM THE EATING
room we go to a laundry. We are made to strip naked, leaving our shifts, dresses, and aprons in a pile. I keep my silver thimble hidden in my hand. Shivering under the eyes of the guards, we go down the hallway to a cleaning room, where we are doused with icy water. The soap they make us use has some sort of fleabane in it; it scours the skin, leaving us scraped raw and red. Then we are doused again. Still dripping and naked, we are inspected, rough hands checking our shorn heads for lice. After that we file into a room for sleeping. We each take a rough woolen blanket from a pile by the door and go to one of the cots.

As one of the Seamstresses passes me, she pauses, and I brace myself in case she enjoys petty cruelty as much as Hump does. After a quick glance to check for the Overseer, she slips something cold and wet into my hand—a strip of ragged cloth.

“For your neck,” the Seamstress breathes, looking straight ahead.

I don't dare thank her, for the Overseer is gliding toward me.

Under her slit-eyed gaze, I lie stiffly down on a cot. One by one, the lights in the sleep room are put out, until just one lantern remains lit by the door, where a guard with furred ears stands at attention. In the near-darkness, I carefully unfold the cloth and lay it against the welts on my neck, and it isn't really soothing, as chilled as I am, but the unexpected kindness of it warms me.

We are supposed to sleep, but I steal a little time for myself. I put the silver thimble onto my finger. It glows warm; with it I trace my bones—ribs, collarbone, a jutting hip. I reach up to rub my short hair, then run the thimbled fingertip over my eyebrow. I don't know what I look like. Just like the others, I suppose, only younger.

If I could, I would savor this time alone with my thoughts, but the weight of the work presses down on me. Warmed by the touch of the thimble, I fall asleep.

It is still dark when we are wakened by the tolling of the fortress clock and a guard's barked orders.

Wearily I pull myself from the narrow cot, joining the other Seamstresses as we file out, leaving the blankets in a pile by the door so they can be laundered for the next shift of sleepers.

Again we go to the cleaning room for the cold shower and caustic soap.

Whoever runs this place has a horror of dirt and bugs, I imagine, as the icy water pours over my head.

In our line, we are given clothes, and after we have put
them on we shuffle silently down the passageways to the sewing room, where we go immediately to work.

The muslin night-dresses that I have been hemming need to be redone. The Overseer gives me another stinging welt on my neck and orders me to unpick all of my stitches. “The Godmother sees,” she hisses. “Straighter thisss time.”

The Godmother
.

Words rattle around in my head like pebbles in a cup. I open my mouth and speak for the first time. “The Godmother?” I whisper.