Lysander Brightwind's Arc

Chapter 7 of 11

By afternoon the wheel had filled a third spool. Thistle sorted stems on the step. Lysander stripped a fresh bundle at the bench. Then he heard it. A thin whistle above the rafters. Not wind through the door. Higher. Sharper. He looked up. A gap had opened where the roof plank met the crossbeam. The seal there was old moth-silk, no daisy in it. Blight-wind slid through in a pale thread of vapor. It curled down toward the shelf where the fresh spools sat. "Celestia," Lysander said. She looked up. She saw it too. "The thread will spoil before dusk." Lyra's foot stopped on the treadle. "I can't spin faster." "Keep spinning," Celestia said. "Lysander. Seal it." He climbed the bench. He could reach the gap with one hand. He had no composite thread to close it. The spools on the shelf were promised to the seams of the great cocoon. Take one and the shelter opened somewhere else. "I need thread that isn't ours," he said. Celestia's wrapped hands tightened in her lap. "Aria." "She turned down bigger work than this." "Ask anyway." Lysander dropped from the bench. He told Thistle to stay on the step and not move. He ran. He found the master spinner at her own wheel under a low awning. Rainbow hair. Yellow eyes that did not lift when he came near. Her thread ran off the bobbin in a line so fine he almost couldn't see it. "A gap in the shed roof," Lysander said. "Blight-wind. The fresh spools spoil by dusk." "Composite?" "I have no daisy left. Only moth-silk scraps." "Moth-silk won't hold blight." "I know." She stopped the wheel. She looked at him for the first time. "My thread holds what it's tied to. It won't block seep. It will hold a patch in place while you make a real one." "That buys hours." "That's what I have." She cut a length off her bobbin and coiled it in his palm. "Go." He turned and almost ran into Aldric Silverweave. The old scholar stood in the path with his gossamer robe pulled close. He had a scrap of daisy pulp in one hand, dry and grey. Not enough to spin. Enough to smear. "Chew it," Aldric said. "Press it in the gap. Then tie it with her line. It will hold six hours. No more." "Where did you get that?" "From what Lyra didn't use." Aldric closed Lysander's fingers around the pulp. "Six hours. Find another way by dark." Lysander ran back. He climbed the bench. He chewed the pulp until it was soft, pressed it into the gap, and lashed Aria's thread across it in a tight cross. The whistle stopped. The vapor thinned and died. The spools were safe. The shelf was quiet. Celestia looked at the patch. "Six hours." "Six hours," Lysander said. Outside, Thistle had stopped sorting. He was watching the sky.