Ash & Bramble Read online

  In the middle of the courtyard is the stout wooden post, but this time someone is chained to it. A young man, a boy really, about the same age that I seem to be, with sandy hair. I can’t see any more of him because he has his forehead pressed against the post and his eyes closed. He is shirtless and shivering in the icy wind.

  We Seamstresses are lined up to watch, joined by other workers, all dressed in gray. The Overseer stands beside me; a row of guards in light-blue, lace-trimmed uniforms faces us.

  “What is happening?” I dare to whisper to the Overseer.

  Her slitted eyes gaze straight ahead, at the boy chained to the post. “A chastisement is necessitated.”

  A punishment, she means. “Who is he?” I ask.

  “Shoemaker,” she answers.

  “What did he do?”

  “Asked too many quessstions,” the Overseer hisses, with a meaningful glare at me. “Stay silent, Seamstress.”

  We wait. My bare feet are frozen and I am shaking with a combination of cold and fright. I open my mouth to ask another question.

  “Hush,” the Overseer breathes, and strangely, she sounds frightened, too. “She comes.”

  A subtle change washes over the courtyard. The guards straighten, the air grows more chill. At the post, I see the Shoemaker stiffen; his manacled hands clench into fists.

  The Godmother enters. I know at once that it is her; she is exactly as I imagined. She wears a swansdown cape and muff, white as snow. She glides past the other workers, then past us, the Seamstresses. As she passes, to keep from trembling, I grip the thimble in my apron pocket; as always, the silver warms under my fingers. At the same moment that I peek up at her, the Godmother glances aside at me, hesitating ever so slightly. Her eyes are silver-blue and as beautiful and cold as ice. Her glance hits me like a wash of freezing water, and for a moment I am Nothing, not even a Seamstress, and I look quickly down again. I am lost, adrift, and then the thimble in my hand flares with heat. I cling to it and the Nothing recedes.

  When I look up again, the Godmother has seated herself in a carved chair on a dais raised above the cold cobblestones. She makes no speech; she simply waves a languid hand, and a pig-snouted guard steps forward, takes one or two practice swings, and proceeds to whip the Shoemaker bloody. The courtyard echoes with the sound of braided leather meeting flesh. I can’t help but keep count. Ten lashes is enough. At twenty I am sure the guard will stop. At twenty-five I find myself flinching with every blow. At last, at thirty, the guard stops. All is silent. On the dais, the Godmother gets to her feet, smooths her gown, and steps onto the cobblestones.

  My face feels stiff as I watch her leave. A group of workers follows.

  “Hatters,” says the Overseer, unexpectedly. She points out the other workers as they depart. Lacemakers, Bakers of gingerbread, Candlemakers, Glovers, Spinsters of gold into straw, and the Jacks of all trades, who can make anything, she says, from a sharpened spindle to a glass coffin.

  “Why are we here?” I ask desperately. “What are we for?”

  The Overseer blinks, a slow flick of a lid sideways across her slitted eye. “We serve her. That is all.”

  That is all. And now I know that drawing the Godmother’s attention is the last thing I’d ever want to do.

  FOR ANOTHER LONG stretch of time I sew. My stitch-soldiers line up at ragged attention and then wander off on missions of their own instead of marching in perfectly straight hemlines. At the striking of the fortress clock, I go with the other Seamstresses to the courtyard for exercise; I eat unsalted lentils and oats twice a day; I sleep on a cot under a scratchy woolen blanket.

  And I stitch.

  Then one afternoon, the door at one end of the sewing room flies open and someone bursts inside. The candle flames waver in the wind of his arrival. The Shoemaker from the courtyard.

  I sit up and take notice. He has clean features, and I can’t quite see what color his eyes are. He carries himself stiffly, his shoulders slightly hunched, and he is thin—too thin, as we all are.

  “A glass slipper?” the Shoemaker protests, holding up a scrap of light-blue paper. “A shoe made of glass? I’m a Shoemaker, not a Glassblower!”

  At the Shoemaker’s unexpected fierceness, a few heads bob up, surfacing from the placid stitch-stitch-stitch for a moment, bleary eyes taking in the scene, hearts beating with the pitter-patter of curiosity and fear. Then the heads jerk down again.

  The Overseer glides up to him. The shoes he makes must be matched to the dresses we stitch, so she’s not surprised to see him. “Certainly some mistake,” she hisses. “Show me the requisition.” She peers at the blue square of paper. “Sahhhh. A simple misspelling. The slippers are supposed to be fur. Fur slippers.”

  The Shoemaker frowns and runs a hand through his ragged hair. “I don’t know. It says verre, that’s glass.”

  “Yesss, but it’s supposed to be fur. Vaire. See?” The Overseer taps the requisition form with her switch.

  “I don’t think so.” The Shoemaker shakes his head, decisive. “No. Last time I tried doing it my way I was sorry after.”

  He’s talking about the thirty lashes at the post. Through careful questioning, I’d found out his crime. He’d made dogskin slippers instead of the doeskin ones that had been ordered. The Overseer told me he claimed he’d misread the requisition, but I have my doubts about that. The Shoemaker is like me, someone who asks questions when he shouldn’t. I wouldn’t put it past him to design subtle mockery into a pair of slippers, even though he must have known how dangerous even such a small rebellion would be. But lashes with a whip are far worse than welts from a switch, and apparently he’s learned his lesson.

  “Could you do it with a pattern?” the Overseer asks. “Using mirrors, perhapsss?”

  The Shoemaker gives a stiff shrug, suddenly resigned. The blue requisition form flutters to the floor. “I’ll work something out.” As he turns to leave, he catches me looking at him. I slide my hand into my pocket and grip the silver thimble. It gives me strength. I don’t dare offer up a smile, but he must understand the suggestion in my eyes, for he frowns and then gives the slightest nod in return.

  Green. His eyes are green. How could I have failed to notice it before? His eyes promise that there really is something outside the grim gray of the Godmother’s fortress. The green of a forest. Escape.

  I feel a strange, faint flame kindle in my heart.

  After the Shoemaker goes, the Seamstresses are unsettled. Whispers are heard; the Overseer’s watchful gaze darts here, there, trying to catch us out.

  The Seamstress next to me, the one who gave me the cloth for my welts, leans over and speaks without taking her eyes from her work. “Do you think the Shoemaker is good-looking?”

  I sit up straighter. Sneaking a quick sideways glance, I realize that she is not much older than I am. Her short hair is chestnut brown and her fading blue eyes might once have been merry.

  At the far end of the room, the Overseer’s head comes up, alert, her mouth open to sense the air. I bend over my work. Without looking at my neighbor, I breathe, “Do you?”

  Her only reply is a faint snort. A short time later she whispers, “We had much better-looking young men in our village. I had one myself.”

  The Overseer’s head swivels toward the sound. The switch twitches.

  We sew furiously at our seams until her slit-eyed gaze slides away.

  I sneak another glance at the Seamstress beside me. She bites off a thread and casts me a wink.

  “Do you remember your village?” I whisper.

  She gives an almost-imperceptible nod. “Some things. I remember my name, too. It’s Marya.”

  I think about that for a while. None of us is supposed to remember anything. How could she sit here stitching her life away if she had any memories of a Before? I decide that she’s lying.

  “Well, do you think he’s handsome?” Marya whispers, when the Overseer is busy inspecting another Seamstress’s work.

  She’s back t
o the Shoemaker again. She must not remember the time when he was flogged for the dogskin slippers.

  I will never forget it. He was hanging in his chains by the time the whipping was over, but he never cried out.

  Yes, he is very good-looking.

  But handsome is not the word I would use to describe the Shoemaker.

  What would I call him? Resilient, maybe? Or stubborn? Or perhaps stupid, to take the risks that he has. Yet the little candle flame of hope that burns in me leans toward him, as if it senses that he bears the same flame within himself.

  Marya makes her impatience for an answer known in the abrupt way she ties and bites off a thread.

  Finally, I shrug.

  “My young man was a farmer’s son,” Marya whispers, “and I was the best seamstress in the village, well known for my fine needlework. We were to be married, and I was sewing my wedding gown. I chose the softest pink wool, and embroidered the sweetest roses around the collar, and sewed tiny mother-of-pearl buttons up the back.”

  This is too real a memory she’s describing—she can’t be lying. She really is from outside, and she was torn away from that life because of her skills, I guess, brought here to labor for the Godmother.

  Unlike Marya, I do not sew well. Why, then, was I brought here? Did the Godmother make a mistake? What am I? What life did I have before this?

  My Before is a blank emptiness. For just a moment the Nothing looms like a darkness at the edge of my vision. I take a shaking breath and push it back. I stare down at the white cloth in my hands. It is smooth under my fingers. The needle is a sliver of silver. The flame burns warm in my heart. I take another, steadier breath. The Nothing recedes.

  Marya gives me a nudge and a sly wink. “I couldn’t wait until my wedding night.” She opens her mouth to whisper something else. But in her enthusiasm she’s lost vigilance.

  “Sssso, something to say?” The Overseer peers over Marya’s shoulder, her tongue flicking eagerly in and out of her mouth. A scaly hand raises the switch and thwack, a red welt slashes across the back of Marya’s neck. Then another and another.

  Marya cringes under the blows. “N-no, Overseer,” she whimpers, all trace of daring gone.

  The Overseer draws back her head and narrows her eyes. “Sahhh. Possibly a chastisement is necessitated. Yes?” It is the post in the courtyard she means, and the whip.

  Marya bites her lip; her hands are trembling and her face has gone petticoat-white.

  “A Seamstress’s purpose is to stitch,” the Overseer says, pushing her face up to Marya’s. “Stitch and stitch. Not to gossssip, not to speculate. Stitch.”

  Marya sits frozen.

  “Seamstress has nothing Before,” the Overseer continues. “Nothing to come. Understand?”

  Tears drop from Marya’s eyes, watering the silk that has gusted onto her lap. She nods and takes a trembling stitch.

  The Overseer opens her mouth to continue her harangue.

  I poke my needle into a pincushion and turn to face the Overseer. “I asked if she can see well enough.” My voice seems to echo in the silent room. No one has ever dared to speak up before. The rows of Seamstresses pause for a moment in their work, then commence stitching again. But ears are pricked.

  The Overseer jerks around to face me. “Sahhh?”

  “I said that we haven’t enough light to sew by.” I point to the guttering tallow candle at my elbow. “We could do finer work if we had better light.”

  The Overseer blinks. She closes her mouth and straightens, gazing at me as if hypnotized. The switch twitches.

  I hold my breath.

  “So,” she says at last. “I see.”

  To my relief, she lowers the switch and glides away to resume her watchful duties.

  I stitch, and I think about the Shoemaker. That single brief glance that we shared—in this place where hardly anyone dares to speak, a glance like that is like an entire conversation. It asks, how long have you been here? and do you wonder? and what if . . . ? I think about the smell of pine that wafts over the courtyard wall. About my thimble. About my certainty that there was something before the Nothing, before the Seamstress.

  And if there was something before, there must be something after, for stitched seams have beginnings, and they have tied-off ends, too.

  After a time, two horned, goat-footed guards bring in boxes of fresh waxen candles, which are lit and placed at our elbows. The other Seamstresses cast me wondering glances. Marya sits like a stone beside me, and stitches.

  “Are you all right?” I whisper.

  She stares at her work and does not answer.

  For a time I sew my straggling stitches, which aren’t anything like grains of sand, and think. My history is a blank. Marya remembers a village, a handsome boy, her name. I don’t know what I would do if I had all that in my Before and nothing ahead.

  The candles burn down and are replaced with new ones. A silver needle breaks and I reach for another, threading it with white silk to match the nightgown I am hemming.

  An odd stillness interrupts my thoughts. Marya has stopped working. She sits beside me on the bench staring at her unmoving hands. The Overseer’s back is turned, but when she looks around she will see.

  “Are you all right?” I ask again.

  Marya does not answer. Slowly she sets down her needle and pushes a pile of scarlet velvet off her lap. Her movements fluid with remembered grace, she gets to her feet.

  The Overseer, distracted by another’s stitches, does not see.

  Marya turns and walks to the sewing-room door.

  Don’t! I want to scream. Stop! I grope for the thimble in my pocket.

  The Seamstresses pause in their work, following her with their squinting eyes. This cessation of motion the Overseer notices. She snaps around.

  At the same moment, Marya throws open the door and flings herself into the passageway. A spate of activity follows: the shouting of guards, a scuffle, the sound of blows, Marya’s high-pitched screams. Followed by stillness and silence.

  We Seamstresses are on our feet, our faces to the door, our eyes straining to see. The Overseer re-enters, smoothing her dress; there is no sound but the susurration of her footsteps. She looks up, sees us staring.

  “Sssssew.”

  We bow our heads, resume our seats, and sew. We are all wondering what will become of Marya. Most of us imagine the flogging post. Some of us might even look forward to witnessing such a punishment, as it breaks up the monotony of our work.

  We stitch. A day passes.

  Late in the afternoon the guards come again. Between them walks Marya, her eyes blank, moving awkwardly, like a collection of sticks pulled by strings. The guards push her onto her seat beside me on the bench; the Overseer places a threaded needle into her hand and sets her to hemming an apron.

  The guards depart. Marya stitches. I watch her out of the corners of my eyes. Her stitches, I notice, are wide and sloppy, far worse than mine. A thread of drool escapes from her mouth and stains the cloth, but she sews on, unnoticing.

  I have thought of doing what Marya has done, but no one has ever tried to escape the fortress. I can see why the Godmother has sent Marya back again, even though she has been made useless. Just like the Shoemaker, I suppose, she has learned her lesson, and now she serves as a lesson for the rest of us.

  I wonder what I will learn from it.

  We stitch on. My fingers cramp around the needle. The Overseer gives me a few more thwacks with her switch. My shoulders hunch, and I stretch to get the ache out of my back, rub my burning eyes, and then stitch some more.

  I am unpicking yet another crooked seam when the door opens. Three guards bustle in and whisper to the Overseer. We Seamstresses are made to stand in rows before our table, heads bowed, hands folded neatly before us. The thimble burns in my apron pocket. Just an inspection, the Overseer says, as if trying to reassure us.

  For a moment there is silence. Then the Godmother enters. I don’t dare look at her, but her presence is
obvious in the way the room feels suddenly smaller and colder, and taut with held breaths.

  The Godmother stands in the doorway, surveying us.

  “Good girls,” she says, even though some of the so-called girls are old enough to be grandmothers. The Godmother sweeps into the room, trailed by the Overseer and the nervous guards. She pauses to inspect a bit of Hump’s fine embroidery, then proceeds down the row. She passes Marya without even a glance, and comes to me.

  I keep my gaze on the stone floor. The welts that stripe the back of my neck burn.

  “Show me your hands,” the Godmother says.

  The sound of her voice makes me jerk in surprise; my body tingles as if I’ve been dropped into an icy river. For a second I grip the thimble. Then I let it go and pull my shaking hands out of my apron pockets, holding them palms up for inspection.

  The Godmother takes one of my hands in hers. It is like being touched by a marble statue; her skin is that cold and smooth, white veined with palest blue. Her fingers stroke the callus on my thumb.

  “The Overseer says you speak for the others, Seamstress,” the Godmother says, still holding my hand.

  I suppose she’s right. I do speak for the others. Even though admitting it is dangerous, I nod.

  “Well then,” the Godmother says. She turns my hand, inspecting each finger. Her delicate nose wrinkles slightly, as if she smells something she doesn’t like. “Is there anything you want? Or need?”

  Ah. They don’t want us thinking about escape, as Marya did. They want us to be happy, or at least compliant. Good little workers.

  But I will not ask the Godmother for anything. What could she give us that she hasn’t already taken away?

  I can sense the other Seamstresses’ anticipation, their unspoken requests. “Nothing,” I say, and risk an upward glance.

  The Godmother regards me with her silver-blue eyes. Her expression says that she is wondering if my refusal to ask her for anything is a veiled rebellion. Her dress is the same frozen color as her eyes; I remember Marya sewing the tiny crystals onto the overskirt. She leans closer.