Weaveworld

by Clive Barker

The Incantatrix Immacolata had come here to fulfill a promise she’d made before the Fugue had been hidden: that, if she could not rule the Seerkind, she’d destroy them. She was Lilith’s descendant, she’d always claimed: the last pure line from the first state of magic. Her authority over them was therefore unquestionable. They’d laughed at her for her presumption. It wasn’t their nature to be ruled, nor to count much on genealogy. Immacolata had been humiliated; a fact a woman like her — possessed, it had to be admitted, of powers that were purer than most — would not easily forget. Now she’d found the carpet’s last Custodian, and she’d have blood if she could get it.

but as each trace drew color to itself, and another stroke was laid upon it, and another upon that, it became apparent that forms were steadily emerging from the chaos. Where, dream-moments ago, there’d been only warp and weft, there were now five distinct human forms appearing from the flux, the invisible artist adding detail to the portraits with insolent facility. And now the voices of the bees rose, singing in the sleeper’s heads, gave names to these strangers. The first of the quintet to be called was a young woman in a long, dark dress, her small face pale, her closed eyes fringed with ginger lashes. This, the bees said, is Lilia Pellicia. As if waking to her name, Lilia opened her eyes. As she did so, a rotund, bearded individual in his fifties, a coat draped over his shoulders and a brimmed hat on his head, stepped forward. Frederick Cammell, the bees said, and the eyes behind the coin-sized lenses of his spectacles snapped open. His hand went to his hat immediately, and took it off, to reveal a head of immaculately coiffured hair, oiled to his scalp. “So …” he said, and smiled. Two more now. One, impatient to be free from this world of dyes, was also dressed as if for a wake. (What happened, the dreamers wondered, to the brilliance that the strands had first bled? Were those colors hidden somewhere beneath this funereal garb: in parrot-bright petticoats? ) The dour face of this third visitor did not suggest a taste for such indulgence. Apolline Dubois, the bees an...

“And where are the Custodians?” said Frederick, addressing the entire room. “Does anyone know that?” “My grandmother …” said Suzanna. “… Mimi …” “Yes?” said Frederick, homing in, “where’s she?” “Dead, I’m afraid.” “There were other Custodians,” said Lilia, infected by Frederick’s urgency. “Where are they?” “I don’t know.”

Breath. Dancing. Music. Carpets. Cal tried to keep track of these skills and the Families who possessed them, but it was like trying to remember the Kellaway clan.

“The point is,” said Lilia, “all the Families had skills that Humankind don’t possess. Powers you’d call miraculous. To us they’re no more remarkable than the fact that bread rises. They’re just ways to delve and summon.” “Raptures?” said Cal. “Is that what you called them?”

“The laws of the Kingdom are the Cuckoo’s laws,” said Lilia. “That’s one of Capra’s Tenets.” “Then Capra was wrong,” came Freddy’s reply. “Seldom,” said Lilia. “And not about this. The world behaves the way the Cuckoos choose to describe it. Out of courtesy. That’s been proved. Until somebody comes up with a better idea —”

Through her watery vision she saw that the tears she’d shed on the back of her hand no longer resembled tears at all. They were almost silvery, and bursting, as she watched, into tiny spheres of luminescence. It might have come from a story in Mimi’s book: a woman who wept living tears. Except that this was no faery tale. The vision was somehow more real than the concrete walls that imprisoned her; more real even than the pain that had brought these tears to her eyes. It was the menstruum she was weeping.

hadn’t Apolline said that it was Aia blood that had given her a good singing voice?

“One part of love is innocence, One part of love is guilt, One part the milk, that in a sense Is soured as soon as spilt, One part of love is sentiment, One part of love is lust, One part is the presentiment Of our return to dust.”

“No,” said Cal. “He was dead before I was born.” “Who can call a man dead whose words still hush us and whose sentiments move?” Mr. Lo replied. “That’s true,” said Cal.

That route took them in no particular direction; they simply drove where their instincts suggested. Intentionality, Jerichau had said, was the easiest way to get caught. I never intend to steal, he explained to Suzanna one day as they drove, not until I’ve done it; so nobody ever knows what I’m up to, because I don’t either. She liked this philosophy; it appealed to her sense of humor. If she ever got back to London — to her clay and her kiln — she would see if the notion made aesthetic as well as criminal sense. Maybe letting go was the only true control. What kind of pots would she make if she didn’t try to think about it?

He was increasingly detached from himself, viewing his absence of emotion with a disbelieving eye. It seemed suddenly there were two Cals. One, the public mourner, dealing with the business of death as propriety demanded, the other a coruscating critic of the first, calling the bluff of every cliché and empty gesture. It was Mad Mooney’s voice, this second: the scourge of liars and hypocrites. “You’re not real at all,” the poet would whisper. “Look at you! Sham that you are!”

He knew he’d call himself a louse for this tomorrow (what was tomorrow? another dream), but he had to be away from the house again quickly, in case the police came looking for him.

“You’re not in love with this woman are you? Only I’d prefer you to tell me if you are.” He opened the door. The rain slapped the doorstep. “I can’t remember,” he said, and made a dash to the car.

Whether it was that collective act of will that began the unweaving, or whether the Prophet had previously plotted the mechanism, Suzanna could not know. Sufficient that it began. Not at the center of the carpet, as at Shearman’s house, but from the borders.

“After all that digging,” said the eldest of the girls, “I just hope he grows.”

The warmth went with him as he about-turned. I’ll get a new guide, he vaguely thought; get a guide and find the Firmament. He had an appointment to keep with somebody. Who was it? His thoughts were going the way of de Bono’s voice. Oh yes: Suzanna.

everything becomes. Me? I was lost. Look at me now. How I am!” Hearing his boast, her mind went back to the adventures she’d had in the book; how, in that no-man’s-land between words and the world, everything had been transforming and becoming, and her mind, married in hatred with Hobart’s, had been the energy of that condition. She the warp to his weft. Thoughts from different skulls, crossing, and making a material place from their conflict.

Now here was the paradox again, at death’s door. Had he awoken to die? or was dying true wakefulness?

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.

As long as they could still be moved by a minor chord, or brought to a crisis of tears by scenes of lovers reunited; as long as there was room in their cautious hearts for games of chance, and laughter in the face of God, that must surely be enough to save them, at the last. If not, there was no hope for any living thing.

Suzanna had a further problem with the idea. Though her fellow humans might be persuaded to believe the Kind’s tale, and sympathize, how long would their compassion last? Months? a year, at most. Then they’d turn their attention to some new tragedy. The Seerkind would be yesterday’s victims, tainted by celebrity but scarcely saved by it.

After that, surely everything else was bathos.

Much like the story now...

That which is imagined need never be lost.

“He thinks magic has tainted him,” the dust said. “Corrupted his innocent salesman’s soul. Now he won’t be content until every rapture maker’s dead.”

In the final arithmetic his life was a wasteland: of fire, of snow, of sand. All of it, a wasteland, and he would wander there ’til he could wander no more.

Cal had conspired with Immacolata’s jacket to give Uriel its vision, but what had the lunatic spirit given him in return?

Until he woke, the Stories of the Secret Places would remain untold. And if he didn’t wake, they’d remain that way forever.

Even at that moment, in sleeping cities across the Isle, the refugees were waking and rising from their pillows, and throwing open the doors and windows, despite the cold, to meet the news the night was bringing them: that what could be imagined need never be lost. That even here, in the Kingdom, rapture might find a home.