Chapter 10

SLEEPING IS dreaming, and dreaming sleep, and he can tell the difference now, but what does it matter? It's all the same--grazing thought and fantasy, reaching out to touch secrets he doesn't want to know because he can't make himself stop. It's his design, his purpose, and he can't go against his own pattern. Except he doesn't know what his pattern is, so he keeps butting up against its limits, bloodying himself, because it's all he knows of who he is.

The dark shape at his shoulder hovers as it has always done, silent and watching. It used to unnerve him, but he's learned to accept the weight of the invisible stare, has learned to pretend it's a nightmare phantasm made of smoke and mist, but now he knows its true shape. He tries to ignore it now, concentrates on his work.

Weave this strand into that one, truss reverie into truth, truth into reverie, then step back and guide the threads into a tapestry to please Father. Tiny strands of brilliant color blossom, and he weaves them into the like threads, binding them; others go to darkness between his fingers, and he carefully plucks them loose from the weave. A coil here, a wispy whorl there, then delicately pick away at the snarls, tame the strands, and slip them into their true design. Wend nightmare into fancy, guide fancy into hope, then watch as the waking world shreds the tapestry, rending warp from carefully woven weft, and unwinds the threads to be mended again.

He tries not to hate them for it, but he does a little bit anyway.

He tries not to hate Father too, but he's usually just as unsuccessful.

Blood entwines the threads of delusion, his blood, and still he keeps lacingplaitingweaving, still they call to him, wanting more, always more, and oh, he's so tired.

"I can't," he whispers, tears falling into the plaits and binding with the blood from his shaking fingers. "I can't, I can't, I'm too tired, leave me alone!"

They never do, and he never stops, begs Father to take it all away, but Father smiles from dreams, tells him, "Mother has given you a gift, for She loves you so."

The dark shape at his shoulder curls itself into focus and for the first time gives itself a face: wide and tall, handsome and dark-eyed, hair like gold curling about the ears and nape. The face gives nothing away, the countenance calm beneath his anxious regard, dark eyes assessing, asking silent questions he can't answer.

"One cannot be reborn without returning to the Womb." Father yawns. "All patterns must have a warp to their weft." Then He turns His face away, unites His song to the night, and sleeps deeper.

"I want no gift," he whispers, daring to peer over his shoulder as his fingers fly among the threads. "It frightens me." He pauses with a frown. "Who is Mother?"

Father doesn't answer him, and then Father isn't there anymore. He is alone, always alone, friendless and defenseless, heart as raw as his abraded fingertips, with only the silent, brooding Watcher at his back.

"I have no mother," he whispers to no one.

Stranded in stillness, abandoned, he bows his head, takes threads in his bleeding fingers, cools them with his tears. Keeps weaving.