Crewel

‘Of course,’ I agree. ‘But that won’t really help me lie low now, will it?’

‘Yep, it’s a no-win situation,’ he says. ‘I’m actually only here today because Erik had lapdog duties.’

‘Erik sent you?’

‘The pretty blond that just threw you in here.’

‘I know who he is, and he is pretty, but why send you now?’

‘It’s my job to keep the Spinsters happy and fed, so pretty boy sent me. Sorry to disappoint you, but please tell me you have better taste than him.’

‘I’m not marrying him. He’s just well-groomed,’ I assure Jost. ‘But lapdogs usually are.’

‘Case in point.’ Jost fingers the hem of my tailored skirt.

‘I think I’m failing at being a lapdog.’

‘Yes, you are,’ he says. ‘So I’ll remind you of my earlier advice: play dumb.’

‘That’s easier said than done.’

‘Ob-vi-ous-ly.’ He stretches out the word. ‘But it’s important if you want to live. Maela may have a use for you, but she’s not sentimental enough to keep you around indefinitely.’

‘Why?’

‘You’re going to have to trust me for a bit on that.’

‘Just so long as your reasons are as vague and menacing as theirs are,’ I mutter.

‘Ouch.’ Jost frowns. ‘I may not tell you everything, but my interests are in line with your own.’

He straightens back up, and I shrug the jacket off and hand it to him. ‘Thank you.’

‘It was nothing.’ He waves my thanks away as he puts his jacket on.

‘Not for the jacket.’ I struggle to put into words how I feel. ‘For the company.’

‘Also nothing. Take my advice, Ad.’ This time the cockiness is gone and the nickname wraps around me like his jacket – soft and comfortable. I feel warmer. ‘They’ll let you go soon. Try to stay out of trouble.’

Jost leaves me in the darkness, and I continue to wait, turning over his words in my mind. He’s being too honest with me. Either he knows something that makes him trust me more than he should, or . . . I stop myself there. I don’t want to consider his other possible motive.

Knowing they aren’t watching me here relaxes me. I fiddle with the time around me. If only there was a spot of heat in this room, I could weave warmth, or maybe even light.

The food at my feet is stale and cold. A tough bit of bread and thin soup. It’s food to keep me alive and not much more. I could weave and stretch it, but I have to work with the materials I have, and more of this food wouldn’t be much of an upgrade. Then I remember promising my parents that I would never stretch food again, and I falter.

It wasn’t like I did anything wrong. I was only nine years old, and I didn’t know what I was doing. I guess I thought I was helping. Each month my mother allotted a small portion of our rations to sweets. It never went very far, and then one month, the co-op had no sweets available. Mom explained that there was a shortage of sugar supplies and put the few bits of chocolate from the previous month in the highest cabinet, with the admonishment that we’d save them for my father’s birthday. It’s not that I didn’t want to save the chocolate for Dad. It was that I couldn’t let Amie get in trouble.

Ever since I’d discovered I could touch the weave in our yard, I’d studied it, although I’d rarely touched it. But when Amie came home from academy crying because she’d taken some of the chocolate to class and been caught with it, I decided I had to do something.

Most days Amie and I walked home from academy together, but that day I had been kept behind after class was dismissed. I’d been daydreaming, which my teacher said was pointless.

‘What will your boss think if he catches you staring at the sky instead of doing your work?’ she had asked in a cold voice.

I kept my eyes trained on the floor as she berated me, and by the time it was over, anger and humiliation burned in my chest. And then to make it even worse, Amie hadn’t waited for me to walk home.

By the time I got to our house, I’d focused my rage on Amie for leaving me behind. I was so mad that I didn’t notice how her lower lip trembled at first. But when she saw me she burst into tears, and my anger dissipated.

‘What happened?’ I asked her quietly.

Amie shook her head.

‘You can tell me anything,’ I pushed.

Amie hesitated for a moment, but then began telling me about her day. Between her sobs, I pieced together what had happened. One of her friends had demanded that they each bring a piece of chocolate to academy that day. It was a game to see who would have the biggest piece, and poor Amie knew Mom wouldn’t give her any. So she took it instead.

‘I wasn’t going to eat it,’ Amie told me. ‘I was going to show it to them, and bring it home. I didn’t want to be left out.’

‘It’s okay, Ames,’ I said, giving her a hug. ‘Go wash your face, and I’ll see if I can find some.’

She turned the full force of her pale green eyes on me then, and I saw the tears glistening.

‘But I looked. There’s only a tiny piece left,’ she whispered.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ I said with a shrug. ‘I know a secret. Go wash up.’

Amie looked at me doubtfully, but she did as she was told.

When I was sure she was in the bathroom, I climbed onto the slick wooden counter in our kitchen and pulled down the last bit of chocolate. I didn’t want her to see me trying to touch the chocolate’s weave. I was still stretching out the strands of the chocolate to make more of it when my mom walked in from work.