| The Spindle |
[23 April, 2007] |
Well, I am posting early for Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, because tomorrow (today?) is going to be extremely pressured.
This story was published many years ago in a magazine. There is a translation of the poem that inspired it on my website.
The Spindle
From here to Hades an echo swims vainly across;
silence among the dead; the darkness flows over my eyes.
Erinna of Telos, The Spindle
The spindle I like best to use is one that belonged to my mother. The whorl is a disc of carved and polished malachite; and as I spin, hour after hour, it catches the light, whirling and flashing like a small green sun; it catches my thoughts and draws them inwards and down, till the world around me is misty and remote, no more distracting than the buzzing of a gnat, and I thread my path among living dreams. I don't remember the first time that this happened. Once, though, I remember coming back to myself suddenly, dragged back by a nudge or a word, and feeling a wild terror as everything beat in on me, the brilliant, sharp-edged light of the sun flooding in through the windows, the strong colours of the tapestry on the great loom, the nearness of my aunt's women, moving steadily about their tasks, even the pressure of the ground beneath my feet. No one noticed particularly, not even Baucis, my cousin; I was always the odd one, the dreamer. The terror faded fast, but I was still uneasy; as soon as I could, I went to talk to Myrtis, the oldest of my aunt's hired workers, whom I loved and trusted as if she were my own grandmother. To my delight, I saw she understood, but she said that it was a women's mystery, and not to be talked of freely. She feared, I think, the curse of Athene the Artificer. These days, I don't fear any god's curse, but it was different then. So I never spoke again to anyone of the pathway I found in the twisting thread, except once, to Baucis, who did not understand. Baucis only liked to spin if there was something going on to distract her: a song, or a good gossip session among her mother's women. But she was a fine weaver, with a special feeling for what we call 'barbarian weaving', which is the stuff with the very elaborate pictures, of figures out of legends and monstrous beasts. A curtain of hers is hanging on the wall of my aunt's bedroom, but most of her weaving, like the best of all our work, was sent away in trade. The cloth from my aunt's weaving-rooms is sold all over the world, from Sicily to Egypt, and she has twenty women, slave and free, all employed full time in making cloth.
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Gillian Spraggs
© Gillian Spraggs, 1991, 2007
All rights reserved. There is no intention to waive copyright.
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