She struggles to sit up on the mattress. Her eyes are grey and full of shadows in the glow-glass light, and her skin is very pale. Her lips are squeezed together so tightly it makes her face look older, shrivelled upon itself. I realize Alva has made her drink a calming herbal brew. Yet behind its artificial languor the girl is tense and all edge, like a dagger drowned in murky water, ready to cut the first skin that will brush it.
‘In order to help you,’ Weaver says, ‘we need to know who you are.’
The girl nods slowly.
‘She is not island-born,’ Alva says.
The lines on Weaver’s face seem to sharpen. She looks at Alva.
‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier?’
‘I wanted to show you,’ Alva says. ‘May I?’
The girl’s eyes close and open again. The question seems to sink in letter by letter. Eventually, she moves her head slowly up and down. I do not know if this is because nodding hurts, or because she is too dazed to make faster movements.
Alva directs the girl to rotate her upper body slightly, face turned away from us. She gathers the girl’s hair gently in her hand and lifts it. The skin of the neck is bare: there is no trace of ink where the sun-shaped tattoo marking everyone born on the island should be. I glance at Weaver, catch a glimpse of the shadows on her brow. There are not many people on the island who were born elsewhere. Seamen and merchants come and go, but most islanders avoid mingling with them.
‘May I see your arms?’ Weaver asks.
Alva lets go of the girl’s hair and the girl turns her face back towards us, her movements still underwater-slow. She nods again.
‘I already checked,’ Alva said. ‘She must have moved to the island when she was very young.’
Weaver pulls up the sleeves of the girl’s garment. One of the arms is bare. Not from the Houses of Crafts, then. The other has a row of short, black lines on it, like wounds on the pale skin. Weaver counts them.
‘Twenty-one,’ she says. That is two less than I have.
Weaver lets go of the girl’s arms. The girl leans back into her pillows in a half-sitting posture.
‘Were you born on the continent?’ Weaver asks her.
The girl nods.
‘Are your parents from the island?’
Now she hesitates. Weaver sighs. A mixed marriage, perhaps. They are rare, but not impossible. Or perhaps she does not know her parents. But foundlings have their own mark in place of the birth tattoo, and she does not have one.
‘Never mind,’ Weaver says. ‘We can talk about that later. I brought pen and paper.’ She pulls a slim notebook from her pocket. The covers are well-worn, stained leather, and the pages are yellowed on the edges. She places the book on the girl’s lap and a pen on top of it. ‘If you know how to read,’ Weaver says, ‘please, write down your name.’
The girl stares at the blank page. We wait. After a long moment, she shakes her head, slowly and painfully.
None of us is surprised. Word-skill is only taught in the House of Words, and women are not allowed there. Most women on the island are illiterate.
‘Whereabouts in the city are you from?’ Weaver tries. ‘Can you draw that for us?’
The girl’s face changes slowly like shadows on a wall. Eventually she draws an elongated lump that bears a vague resemblance to a fish.
‘The island?’ Weaver asks.
The girl nods. Her hand shakes a little, as if the pen is too heavy between her fingers. She marks a cross in the northwest corner of the lump.
‘The Ink Quarters?’ Weaver says. I have only been there a couple of times. I remember narrow streets thick with pungent smells, canals where water ran strange-coloured, and tall, vast buildings with darkened windows you could not see through. Gondolas carrying blood coral in large cages to be ground in the ink factories, and red-dye transported from the factories to the harbours in big glass bottles.
The girl nods again.
‘Are you able to tell us anything about the person who attacked you?’ Weaver asks.
The girl lifts two fingers.
‘Do you mean there were two of them?’
The girl begins to nod, but pain cuts across her face and stops the movement short.
Weaver looks like she is about to say something else, but a few red drops fall onto the page from between the girl’s lips. A narrow trickle of blood follows. Alva’s face is taut. She pushes Weaver and me to the side. The glass jar in her hand is still holding the medusa, which lies motionless, like a plucked petal.
‘Open,’ Alva orders.
I only realize now why the girl cannot talk. I only catch a brief glance at her mouth, but that is enough. Where the tongue should be, there is only a dark, marred mass of muscle, still a bleeding, open wound. I have to turn away for a moment. Alva holds a towel under the girl’s chin, fishes the medusa out from the glass jar and slides it into the girl’s mouth. Relief spreads on the girl’s face.
‘She is in a lot of pain,’ Alva says. ‘She must rest. But there is one more thing.’
She places the jar on the night table and picks up the glow-glass. She turns to look at me.
‘Are you certain you don’t know her?’
The question makes no sense. I look at the girl again, just to be certain, although I do not need to. She has closed her eyes and her breathing is turning even. Her muscles twitch slightly. She does not open her eyes.
‘Of course I’m certain,’ I say.
Weaver stares at Alva, then at me, then at Alva again.
‘Why do you ask such a thing?’ she says.
Alva steps right next to the girl. She does not react when Alva takes her hand and gently coaxes open the fingers closed in a loose fist.
‘Because of this,’ Alva says and turns the palm upwards. The light from the glow-glass falls on it. Bright marks begin to glow on the skin, the letters forming a word I recognize immediately.
Eliana.
My name.
CHAPTER TWO
The girl’s hand is narrow in the grip of Alva’s fingers, the angles of her bones sharp around the dent of her palm. I am aware of Alva’s and Weaver’s attention, a tense net around me. But I have done this countless times before. I turn the perception inside out, as if I am focusing my eyes on something close by and letting the background soften into a haze where all boundaries are unclear. I look at the letters as if they are mere contours and colours in a landscape, akin to cracks in the walls of houses, or the black and green algae growing in the canals.
I turn to look at Weaver, taking care not to let my face reveal a thing.
‘What does it say?’ I ask.
Weaver does not answer immediately. Her gaze perseveres in the dusk, but I do not shiver under it.
‘Has your brother not taught you anything?’ she asks.
‘He never thought it necessary,’ I respond.
Weaver is still looking at me when Alva says, ‘Eliana, someone tattooed your name on this girl’s palm in invisible ink.’
I let my face and body react as they should. They adjust to the situation. I know what Weaver reads on them: surprise, confusion, just the right amount of alarm.
‘I don’t know her,’ I say. ‘I’ve never seen her before.’
‘Eliana is not a common name,’ Weaver says.
It is true. I am the only one in the House of Webs, although there must be others on the island.
‘Maybe it’s her name,’ I suggest. ‘Have you asked?’
Alva sighs.
‘Of course I did. And no, it’s not her name. Or so she claims, at least.’
‘Quite a coincidence,’ Weaver says. She turns to Alva. ‘This is no ordinary tattoo.’
‘No,’ Alva says.
She covers the glow-glass with a towel, reaches for the window and parts the curtain slightly. The early-morning light floats into the room, settles on the girl’s skin. The letters turn invisible. Her palm looks no different than mine; only a few lines and callouses are discernible on it.