As Camille prepared to go to sleep, of a sudden she remembered the stave; she lit her small lantern and examined the hairline crack. I don’t remember it reaching this far, and I surely did nought to cause it to lengthen, for it has been affixed to my rucksack all day, but for the gentle trip down from the ridge above.
Sighing, Camille started to lay the staff aside, but then, though she knew what she would find, she counted the blossoms remaining, starting with the one awither and progressing to the one atop. One hundred yet linger, though the bottom flower is nigh perished. Two hundred sixty-six days agone, a scant one hundred left. A year and a day and the whole of a moon beyond, that’s all she said I would have. And I have squandered-No, Camille, not squandered. Used. I have used two hundred sixty-six days in all to reach this place. Even so, am I any closer whatsoever to finding my beloved Alain?
Camille blew out the lantern and capped the wick to keep the oil within the reservoir no matter the lamp’s orientation, then placed it near at hand.
Silently, the stars wheeled in the sky as Camille was lulled asleep by the shssh ing fall, for here at the linn and perhaps nowhere else could the passage of time be heard.
28
In the nascent light of the very next dawn, Camille was awakened by the sound of weeping, and she sat up to see a silver-haired maiden sitting at an apparently empty loom in the hovering mist at the precipice of the falls. “Woe betide the world,” the demoiselle wailed. “Oh, woe betide the world.”
And Camille saw squatting under the loom a shaggy little man, or creature, covered in long, unruly hair- Much like the being I saw in Les Iles, but this one is much uglier and certainly hairier. And he gibbered and ran his hands along the cloth beam, then scuttled to the linn and made motions of throwing, as if somehow dragging unseen fabric from the bar to hurl it over the edge of the falls.
At the maiden’s side a golden spinning wheel stood silent on the flat stone of the dry streambed along which water should have coursed to supply the cascade, yet nought flowed at all, though the cataract itself sprang from nowhere to thunder down into the river below.
Casting aside her blanket, Camille sprang to her feet and cried out, “Ma’amselle, Ma’amselle, what is amiss?”
The maiden turned, anguish in her gaze, and- Oh, my! — her eyes were like unto silver. “I have lost the end of my thread, and if I do not find it quickly, what is to be will not transpire, and time itself will be broken.”
What? How can that be?
With tears brimming, the maiden mutely appealed for help, and even though Camille could see nought whatsoever on either the loom or the spinning wheel, she rushed down to aid. As she reached the demoiselle’s side, Camille said, “Where did you last have it? — The thread, I mean.”
“On the tapestry,” cried the maiden, gesturing at the loom.
Camille frowned-“What tapestry?”-but reached out and gasped in startlement, for her touch told her that indeed there was fabric on the loom, yet it could not be seen.
In the dim light of the new morn, carefully, slowly, Camille ran her fingers lightly over the nonvisible cloth, searching by feel for the end of a misplaced thread, her un-aiding gaze lost in the moment, alighting on runes carved in the breastbeam, runes which spelled out the name Skuld.
“I cannot find it here,” said Camille.
“Oh, but it must be there,” wailed the maiden. “I had it not a moment ago.”
“There is another place to search,” said Camille, and she scrambled ’neath the rig and ran her fingers along the underside of the fabric, and the ugly little man gibbered at her, his breath foul, his eyes glaring as he motioned for her to move aside so that he could continue with his arcane rite.
Yet Camille did not yield as she felt all along the bottom, and, in spite of the hairy man’s angry jabber, she thought she could hear the sound of one or mayhap two other looms weaving nearby-the clack of shuttle and the slap and thud of treadle and batten-and though Camille glanced this way and that, she saw them not.
Of a sudden-“I have it!” cried Camille, grasping the dangling, unseen thread ’tween forefinger and thumb.
“Clever girl,” said the maiden, smiling, a bit sly it seemed. “Do not let go of it, please.” She took up a very-fine-toothed, golden carding comb hanging from the distaff of the golden wheel. “I need to start spinning a new thread from the Mists of Time.”
Camille’s eyes widened in amaze as the demoiselle reached up with the comb and teased a wisp out from the shimmering vapor. Somehow she managed to grasp the tenuous strand itself, and she fed the hazy filament through the eye in the golden spindle tip and over a hook on the flyer arm, and then down and ’round the spool. Then she gave the wheel a sharp whirl, and lo! it continued to spin, though no one pressed the treadle. And gleaming vapor was pulled down from the mist and twisted into a glassy thread that vanished even as it was spun. Long moments it turned, yet of a sudden the spinning wheel stopped, and the maiden plucked the bobbin loose and mounted it to the shuttle. Even as she did so, another bobbin abruptly appeared on the spinning wheel, no hand setting it there, and again the wheel began to whirl, as if that new spool were right then being wound with invisible thread. The maiden paid it no heed, as she fetched the end of the new-spun, unseen thread from the bobbin on the shuttle in hand, and she took from Camille’s fingers the end of the invisible thread of the cloth on the loom.
As Camille scrambled out from under the rig to sit on the dry stone just back from the linn and watch, the maiden tied the new thread to the old-or so did it seem she was doing from the movement of her fingers-and she placed the shuttle in the loom shuttle race and then sat down; and the moment she did, the loom of itself began furiously weaving.
The hairy creature under the loom gnashed his teeth, and cursed in a tongue Camille did not know, and vanished.
“Who was that, and what was he doing?” asked Camille.
“That was Uncertainty, enemy of the future, an agent of Chaos who would have all things return to the formless, disorderly state whence both Faery and the mortal world came.”
“Why was he-?”
“Hush, child,” said the demoiselle, her argent eyes staring into the silvery vapor, her gaze intent. “Let me weave that which I see in the Mists of Time; when I catch up, we will talk. Break your fast while you wait.”
Suddenly, before Camille appeared utensils and a fine porcelain plate laden with food, but food not quite like any she had ever seen, familiar and yet not, as if it had come from a different time. Yet though the meal was cold, the aroma was appealing, and so she ate: the bread the whitest and lightest she could imagine, the meat well spiced and tender, the strange red and orange fruit tangy and tart, the greens crisp, and the deep, deep brown confection so sweet, so marvelous, it brought tears to her eyes.
Even as Camille ate, she watched the wheel and loom in amazement, as many new-wound bobbins flew from the spinning wheel to the warp beam, to somehow keep the warp threads replenished, while other bobbins mounted themselves on shuttles to wait their turn at the weft.
Just as Camille finished her breakfast-the utensils and plate to vanish-the silver-haired maiden smiled, for the loom had slowed to a moderate pace, the spinning wheel turning in synchronization, twisting time’s thread out from the hovering mist, full-wound bobbins and shuttles replacing empty ones.
“Ma’amselle, I am Camille.”
“And I am Skuld,” replied the maiden, not taking her gaze from the mist.
“A strange name, that,” said Camille.
“Perhaps no stranger than Camille,” replied Skuld, smiling. “Mine is a very ancient name.”
“Is your loom ancient as well? I ask, because I saw the word Skuld carved thereon.”
The maiden smiled again. “The loom and I are both quite antiquated, primeval in fact.”