Roxanne DeMarco's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

Roxanne could not untie the knot without the person who tied it. She knew this now. The dress lay folded on her counter, cold as ever. Lady Moon knew her own name was trapped in the thread, but not the hand that had sewn it shut. Without that maker, Roxanne had no way to loose the names safely. So she waited for the gray woman to return, and asked the only question that mattered. Who made this dress? The lamps dimmed. Lady Moon stood by the window, pale from hair to bare feet, her long white hair drifting though no window was open. She had taken things from the dead before, and not always given them back. Roxanne did not trust her. But she was the only one who might lead her to the maker. "You don't know who sewed the knots," Roxanne said. "But you know where the pin came from." "The keep on the hill." Lady Moon's voice was flat. "Broken now. She worked there." "She." "The one who took my name." Lady Moon looked at the brooch. "Her tools are still there. Bring me. I will show you." Roxanne wrapped the dress in its sheet and followed her into the dark. The keep rose broken against the sky, towers cracked, stone spilled down the slope. Vines climbed the walls. Roxanne climbed over fallen blocks, the cold bundle against her chest, and Lady Moon walked ahead without touching the ground. Inside, a workroom survived under a leaning arch. A table held rusted needles, spools of black thread, and a wooden box. Lady Moon stopped at the doorway. She could not cross it. "Salt," she said. "She kept me out. Open the box." Roxanne lifted the lid. Inside lay folded papers covered in the same symbols as the dress. A diagram. Each knot drawn twice, tied one way and untied the other. At the top, a name signed in faded ink. The maker's name. Roxanne read the untying steps. They were exact. Loosen each knot in order, from hem to collar, and the names slipped free one at a time, not all at once. The pin stayed shut until the last. No living body had to take them. "You found her," Lady Moon said from the doorway. "You found the way." Roxanne held the papers to the dress. The first symbol on the hem matched the first knot on the diagram. She could do this. She had priced silk by touch for twenty years. Now she could read the thread. But the last line of the diagram stopped her. The final knot required the maker's own hand, or her voice, spoken aloud. The dead names would come free. Lady Moon's would not. "Your name is the last knot," Roxanne said. "I can free the others. Yours needs her." Lady Moon went still. "Then find her," she said. "Living or dead."