On my first attempt, my daughters didn’t take to the weave. They fumbled with fate as newborn babes struggling to walk. Humanity never quite flourished, fertility stunted, love dry, passionless, and free of pleasure and pain. Without want, there was no desire to meet need, and death became an absentee parent, the knife as dull as butter in her hands. Millia Gnu Aye succeeded the throne.
Nona held fate in her hands. A long flowing tapestry that felt like moss, delicate and cool against her fingers. There was a pulse within the fabric, a racing heartbeat that caused the seams to bulge. She pressed her face against the tapestry, feeling someone’s breath against her cheek, candle smoke burning her nose.
“I hear you, little one,” she said, smiling
Nona leaned back, looking at the arching ceilings and daunting cathedral pillars. The pews were fashioned from metal pipes and the ceilings from ballast tanks, nineteen-millimeter-thick rib vaults, watertight welded steel panels, and the leaded glass of old portholes and lanterns.
There was no altar in the sisters’ chapel, but a gaping depthless hole. The Origin Well sweat oil and glowed with a sinister red light like the kind used to develop film in shady backrooms, a serial killer’s closet. From the ceiling hung the innumerable strands of human fate bundled into connected nodes of yarn, the dormant mechanical fingers of the Isomerase pointing toward a faded Roman numeral like the face of a clock.
Height, width, and time
Nona hummed, leaning against the lip of the Origin Well, her long chestnut hair covering the back of her neck and shoulders to hide her exposed endoskeleton, spinning gears, and pulsing wires. Her hands were as soft as silk handling fate’s weave as one would a newborn babe, her eyes gray and lifeless, but her cheeks and lips pinkish red, the beginning signs of an attractive young woman.
“Death isn’t a game, Morta,” Nona said, holding fate steady as she watched her elder sister fumble with the weave.
“I never said it was a game, only that it was fun.” Morta ran the sharp end of her blade across the tapestry, giving Nona a long look from over her shoulder.
She stood a foot taller than Nona and padded her chest with steel wool, wearing a short black dress with pearly white stockings. She sat with her legs crossed, her raven black hair tied into an intricate braid, keeping her nape exposed. The site of an iron scar: metal plates, tiny rotating pistons, gears, and the ivory hilt of a terrible knife.
Nona frowned, reaching for another thread, careful not to disturb her sister Decima, the white-haired princess asleep on her lap.
The little girl yawned, her claw-like fingers pressing against Nona’s thigh, her legs corkscrewing into a long serpentine appendage. She was hauntingly beautiful, the spider-like digits along her calves making a buzzing noise as they scratched the tymbal muscle beneath her kneecaps.
It made Nona’s skin crawl.
Morta smirked at Nona, callously stretching the outer layer of a ribbon of fate, pulling her knife hard across the inner weave. The fabric coiled like a snake, frayed and bent.
“Sister! Stop it now!” Nona cried, yanking the tapestry away from Morta.
She tried to pull the strands straight with shaking hands, but it was too late. There was a kink in the fabric, and when she pinched the line to tease out the spindle fibers, she found an ovarian cyst and uterine cancer.
“Look what you’ve done to her! She’s suffering!”
Morta snorted. “So, what? If mortals are so weak, then they deserve to suffer.”
“How can you say that?! We were made in her image, given a woman’s heart!” Nona’s lips quivered as she spoke.
Morta laughed, twirling her black hair and poking the tip of her finger with the end of her blade. She didn’t even wince as blood, ruby red, ran down her elbow and dripped onto the floor.
“So? Made in her image or not, our father wasn’t some pink-skinned pig, but the god of fate, fire, and metal,” she said, licking the wound, slowly, as if savoring the taste.
“And what about our mother!?”
“Our mother? You mean your mother? That old crone clings to life because you’ve hidden her tapestry, but you can’t hide it forever.” Morta leaned in close, whispering in Nona’s ear. “Half-blood.”
Nona slapped her with an open palm, the force splitting her sister’s lip. “Shut up! Just shut up!” she shouted.
Morta gasped, dabbing her mouth with her fingers.
“What is it, sister? What’s wrong?” Decima asked, wiping the sleep from her face.
She touched Nona’s cheek, her gentle eyes a reddish-brown color.
“Don’t mind her, she’s on the rag again,” Morta said, rubbing her lip.
“Is that true?” Decima asked, rolling on her back and looking up at Nona. “Do you bleed without cuts because your mother was mortal?”
“I—” Nona fumbled, her face scarlet red, a volcano ready to burst.
“What else could it be, Decima? She’s a half-blood which makes it easier to spill. You and I only bleed when we will it, but she? Whenever nature calls,” Morta said, sticking out her tongue and making a rude gesture.
Nona’s arms went tense and there was a clicking noise from behind her ears where a gear stuck in place, steam rising from the back of her neck. She chewed on her lip, eyes glistening.
“Please, I—Just, please shut up,” she said, holding back her tears.
Decima rose from Nona’s lap, embracing her tightly and whispering. “Don’t worry, sister. I still love you even if you’re a half-blood. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”
Nona wiped her eyes and sniffed. “Thank you, Decima,” she said.
“Are you two finished necking like a pair of lovers?” Morta scowled, crossing her arms.
Decimagiggled, kissing Nona on the cheek before lying back against her lap.
“I’m glad you all arrived on time,” said a voice from behind them.
The sisters spun around, their faces lighting up with joy.
Bastion, an aging sentinel program from the old war, entered the cathedral, stumbling on the pews with hooks and spokes, wheels, and washers. He was much taller than any machine had a right to be with many spider-like limbs and his neck the long leathery bellows of an antique pre-war camera. His skin was iron, his tendons copper, and his spine rotating gears and a stiff piston—a mechanical raptor with a tail made from rotating iron disks. Bastion wore the tattered remains of a ceremonial cassock, and the outfit did little to hide the circular saws in his hands, tweezers in his pinkies, and the hollow chambers in his clavicle that smelled of burnt powder, an ominous series of chalk marks scored across his back.
“Bastion!” the sisters shouted in unison, clamoring to their feet and leaping into his arms.
He dropped to his knees, locking in place as his arms interconnected into a metal crib, a jungle gym of spinning blades, hypodermic needles, and diamond hooks.
Bastion swept Decima off the floor, wrapping her many toes in a heavy blanket and tickling her belly with blunt needles until she giggled and laughed, tears in her eyes playfully crying for him to stop.
Morta clamored up onto his knee, playing with the rib cutter in his ankle as he cupped his hands so Nona could sit, his palms like soft cushions where the blades quit spinning and needles retracted.
It was subtle, but Nona noticed. She could bleed, after all.
“Look how much you girls have grown.” Bastion’s voice box spun beneath his rusted throat.
“How long are you staying this time? Will you help me finish my trebuchet? Will you tell me of the wars you’ve seen?” Morta asked, her eyes sparkling.
“Or about the bouquets you’ve caught?” Nona joined in, clasping her hands in front of her chest, her heart fluttering like a rabbit.
“Or about the sweets you’ve eaten?” Decima added, drooling from her lips to her chin.
“Decima! Improper!” Morta and Nona shouted together.
Nona glared at Morta, watching as she wiped her mouth with her sleeve.
“What?” Morta glared back.
“Where do you think she gets it from?” Nona said, puffing her cheeks and looking the other way.
“Now, ladies, no fighting,” Bastion said, huddling the girls close, their shoulders rubbing together as if gathering before a bonfire.
A light near the center of Bastion’s forehead blinked, and a switch clicked under his chin, his voice now like booming thunder beneath rusted chains.
“I will tell you,” he said, smoke pouring from his lips. “Of the iron maiden. A metal contraption with more nickel than copper with a solid hinge and spikes two feetlong for trapping victims in a lethal embrace.”
Morta gasped, holding her hands in front of her mouth.
“Or perhaps you’d rather hear about the flower girl?” The smoke from Bastion’s mouth turned to incense, smelling of a bundle of roses freshly cut with pollen and honey. “Who caught her first bouquet but was rejected by the man she loved, heavy with child.”
“What happened to her?!” the words slipped out of Nona’s mouth. “Did she find happiness? Did she have the baby?”
“Then, there is the gold leaf cassata,” Bastion said, pinching his fingers before his radial lens, a chief sampling his finest dish. “A yellow soft cake floating in a boat of cream with mango slices taken from the vineyards of Lotsberg and served with madame rose, a sweet wine from the ivory isles.”
Decima went quiet, her lips quivering and her feet still, her other half listening as attentively as her.
“Ladies, I promise to tell you these stories, but first we must discuss an important matter.” Bastion held a finger in front of his face. “You must promise to pay close attention to your lessons today.”
“I promise,” Nona said, bobbing her head up and down.
Decima, too, nodded in agreement, but Morta sighed, pushing herself off the floor and turning back towards the Origin Well.
“What are we doing here, Bastion? We know how to read the thread of fate, the knife, and the needle. What more can be gained by doing the same things over and over?” she asked.
Bastion’s eye shifted from Nona to Morta and then back to Nona.
“And what about you, Nona? Do you have the same confidence as your sister when using the tools your father gave you?”
“I can use them, but I won’t boast about it.”
“You can use them and yet why don’t I see them? My lady, it is customary to handle fate with your tools and not your hands.”
Nona sighed, pulling her chestnut hair over her shoulder to expose her nape. She squeezed her eyes shut and thought hard about the instruments that lay dormant in her breast. The needle came out, slender and sharp, bound to a small metal appendage coiled next to her mediastinal lymph node.
The distaff was next, an ivory spindle that rolled out from behind the gears in her neck and dangled across the middle of her back, growing until it fit neatly in the crook of her arm.
Nona winced, a single drop of blood running down her neck. “Sorry.” She blushed.
Bastion wiped her cheek. “Very good, Nona. Now, can you tell me what the needle is used for?”
She closed her eyes again and the metal appendage dangling from her neck moved, wrapping around her left forearm and resting the needle, white like snow, in her palm.
“The needle rules over intimacy and conception.” She smiled.
“And the distaff?”
Nona nudged the instrument leaning against her shoulder. “The distaff commands birth.”
“That isn’t quite right, little one. These are tools and may neither rule nor command. Remember, you are the duchess of fertility. Pain and pleasure are your domain, and you must remember to weave both in equal measure.”
Signaled by Bastion’s words, the Isomerase came to life, gathering up the thread of fate with two sharp fingers, combining hundreds of millions of human lives into two strands wrapped around each other, forming a double helix, the instrument regulating the number of twists, and balancing the strain. A new superstructure of fate coiled into left and right-handed helices with multiple loops forming advanced toroid and plectonemic shapes. An entire era of humanity packaged into beaded strings no larger than a thimble.
The instrument shifted along the central dogma of fate, a thick chord made up of hundreds of thousands of superstructures, each containing billions of human lives. The needle-like fingers of the Isomerase stopped in a different era more than a thousand years past. Then it plucked free a new cell, unpacked with unmatched efficiency, undoing the coils one by one until individual tapestries were visible, dangling from the cathedral’s ceiling and brushing against the many pews.
“I want you to demonstrate for me, Nona,” Bastion said, pushing her from behind.
Nona looked over her shoulder, walking up to the newly unfolded laundry and seating herself on a nearby pew. She reached for a tapestry, running her fingers along the purple folds of a feminine pattern. “This is a woman,” she said, letting goof the silky fabric and reaching for a darker color, a rough spun tapestry with a regal pattern like the mane of a lion. “And this one is a man.”
“Excellent, Nona. You have been practicing.”
She giggled, and Morta humphed, crossing her arms and looking the other way.
“Now, show me the art of conception.”
Nona pursed her lips, narrowing her eyes, holding the masculine tapestry in her lefthand and the feminine in her right. “I need a man and a woman,” she said as she licked her lips.
The needle moved from her nape, around her arm, positioning close to the tiniest stitches of the purple fabric. Beads of sweat dripped from Nona’s forehead; her hands unsteady as she plucked at the seam. Slivers of thread appeared, pleasure and pain, an interwoven knot hiding a small silver strand, a woman’s gamete.
Nona moved to the masculine tapestry, plucking the seams, the strands for pleasure more numerous and coiled around a small gold thread. She looped the man’s seed through the end of her needle and pulled until the golden strand was long and loose, spreading from her left to her right arm.
She turned towards the woman’s tapestry, bringing her needle close, but stopped. Her instrument shook, the stitching for pain pulsing red, the woman’s silver strand hugging the knot. She heard screams, an intense push and pull, and saw asea of blood. Nona’s head spun, the needle zipping back to her nape like a doll string as she covered her mouth, resisting the urge to retch.
“I’m sorry, Bastion,” she said with a sniff. “I’m not ready to handle mortal fate. My hands aren’t steady enough. What if I hurt her? What if I kill the baby?”
“You have nothing to be ashamed of, Nona.” Bastion ruffled her hair. “You did very well, but you need to work on keeping your left hand still.”
“Tell her to use the other one,” Morta said, rubbing her cheek. “She’s got a mean right hook.”
“Sister, shut up.” Decima looked up from where she was admiring her nails, surprisingly firm in tone.
“That brings us to you, child.” Bastion turned his lens, focusing on Decima. “Can you demonstrate for us?”
“I need the beginning strands from Nona’s distaff, but I’ll take you through the steps.” She raised her chin, regal and self-assured, pulling on the hem of her red dress.
Near the far end of the cathedral, where Nona sat, was Decima’s loom—a strange instrument with high, arched, rib-like structures, the vertebrae of an unspeakable horror.
Decima crawled across the floor, pulling her legs along, which dragged behind her, limp and uncooperative. She grunted, lifting herself until her knees were suspended by her calves, an overly feminine pale-skinned cobra, her claws positioned along her loom as if she were about to pluck the strings of a macabre harp.
“I think I shape Nona’s lacy knit into a larger tapestry,” she said, chewing on her lips, her cheeks turning bright red. “I’m responsible for love.”
“No, Decima, that’s not right.” Bastion gently touched her hair. “Passion is only one aspect of your domain. You are not a duchess of love but life, and you must learn to weave the good with the bad. Remember, every mortal should have a dozen seams, but he or she can only walk one. For better or worse, in sickness and health, you must always respect their choice, even should they walk the reverse side of their tapestry where your stitching is loose and the seams visible.”
“But, but.” Decima’s lower lip quivered. “If I write a dozen fates in one tapestry, how will they know which to choose? They may not find happiness.” She poked her claw-like fingers together, looking down at her toes. “They may not find love.”
“Yes, they may not. No matter how talented a seamstress you become, there will always be flaws in your work. Such is the nature of fate and the deal Iapyx made with the first men.”
“Father bargained with men?”
“He did. Many ages ago, when the first mortals walked the peninsula, the twin brothers Castor and Pollux slayed a great and terrible dragon. As a reward for their efforts, your father granted them one boon. The brothers asked to be free to choose their destiny, and henceforth, mortal tapestries are woven with twelve seams. Happy or sad, they may walk only one and the choice is forever theirs.”
“That’s amazing,” Decima said, her legs thumping against the ground like a dog’s tail.
“Iapyx entrusts that duty to you, child. Can you promise to uphold his oath?”
“Oh, I can. I surely can.”
Morta snorted, spreading her fingers against the bricks of the Origin Well and jabbing the space in between them with her knife.
“Don’t worry, Morta, it’s your turn now.”
She jumped from her seat, grabbing one of the nearby tapestries and pulling it towards her with a sharp, crude motion, her knife positioned along the weave. “I’m the duchess of the death,” she said with a smile. “I get to choose when they bite it!”
“By all means, then. Please, demonstrate.”
Morta frowned, her knife catching on the corners of the thick woven fabric, her face turning red, a nerve bulging above her forehead as she moved her arms in quick jerking motions. The blade faltered, unable to nick, let alone cut through the tapestry.
“Son of a bitch!” She dropped her knife, the hilt tapping against the middle of her back as it dangled from her nape.
“Morta, you are the duchess of death, but you don’t have nearly the authority you think you do. Death is your mantle, but you cannot choose the time and place. Their end is predetermined.”
“Well, how the fuck am I supposed to know when that is?”
“Morta! Language!” Nona and Decima shouted together.
Bastion pulled the girls close. “Your father didn’t leave you without an inheritance,” he said, reaching into the hollow chamber of his clavicle and pulling free two snake-like wires with three small disks at the end. “These sentinel programs will help guide you in your duty.”
“Bastion?” Nona asked, looking closely at the tools in his palm. “What are those?”
“These are called diodes, optical tools, and a repository of knowledge.” He lifted Nona’s chin. “I need you to be brave for me.” His arm came close and his fingers blossomed into hooks and tweezers like the folds of a pocketknife.
“What are you doing?” Nona stepped back but Morta grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms. “What is this?!”
“Don’t be a baby,” Morta whispered. “It won’t hurt.” She looked up at Bastion. “Better be quick with this one. She’s a bleeder.”
Bastion held Nona’s chin steady, speaking softly as his fingers caressed her right eye. “Your sister is right. I would never hurt you.”
Nona bit her lower lip, drawing blood, an unsettling scratching feeling on the edges of her cornea. Something hooked into place and pulled, and her eye plopped out, part of her vision going blank.
She whimpered, Morta wiping her face with the edges of her sleeve, bloodying her gown. “Baby,” she said.
Bastion rolled the glass eye around the palm of his hand, inserting the disks of a diode into the cavity of the pearl. He then snaked the wiring into Nona’s eye socket. She felt something click; her sight restored as Bastion gracefully fit her optic nerve back into place with nary a pinch.
Hello Nona. said a voice in her head. I am genesis construct 01000011 01101100 0110111101110100 01101000 01101111.
“Oh!” Nona shouted. “There’s a voice, Bastion! I hear a voice!”
The old machine chuckled. “Take good care of her, Nona. She’s as dear to me as you are.”
Nona hopped up and down. “Hello, Clotho. My name is Nona,” she said, her eyes glowing, the circular disks of her diode turning bright green.
Gawds, sissy. I already know that and look at the state of your mind. Good lord, do you ever clean up or is your bedroom as messy as these synaptic nerves?
Nona’s enthusiasm sank, a frown spreading across her lips as her new guest complained about her accommodation.
Pink bloomers, seriously? What are we, five?
Morta handed Bastion her eye, watching with amusement, Nona’s face turning bright red as she gripped her dress, balling the fabric in her fists.
Bastion threaded the diode into Morta’s head, her eyes glowing bright blue as she clicked her tongue, barely acknowledging her discomfort.
“Atropos,”Morta said. “How’s it hanging?”
Decima sniffed loudly, playing with her fingers. She looked up at Bastion. “What about me?” she asked.
Bastion lifted Decima into his arms, her feet dangling like a rope of chitin and claw. He tickled her belly with a brush until she giggled. “Of course, I haven’t forgotten about you,” he said. “But, Decima, you take too strongly after your mother and your eyes are born of flesh and not glass.” One of his fingers twisted, along thin needle expanding from his knuckle. “A diode wouldn’t fit you, but fret not, child. I have a gift for you too.”
Decima lifted her chin, her arms resting in her lap as Bastion held the back of her neck and brought the needle close. She smiled as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and then he jammed the needle through the center of her right eye.
Decima convulsed, her claws digging into the slats along his forearm as her serpentine calves slapped against his knee. She went still, the needle slowly removed, her eyes glowing a scarlet red color.
“I hear her,” Decima said. She cried, tears dripping down her chin. “She’s beautiful.”
Bastion sat Decima upright and placed her in the pew closest to her loom, but she seemed so enraptured by whatever was going on in her head that she barely noticed having left his lap.
“Now, girls, I want you to demonstrate once more for me, this time tapping into the knowledge and experience of your gifted sentinel programs. Starting with you, Nona.”
Stop slouching, sit up straight. Gawds, are you a woman or a slug?
Nona yipped, keeping her posture steady as she reached for the male tapestry, her needle wrapping around her forearm. She pulled the golden strand, striking the cords for pleasure as she balanced the feminine tapestry in her right hand. She came to the same spot as before; her needle shaking, unable to breach that knot of terrible pain.
Now hold on to your bloomers and watch this.
She gasped, her hands moving independently, the needle deftly slipping through the knot, brief flashes of pain as she wrapped the gold strand with the silver. She pulled that beautiful union of man and woman loose and wrapped the new whitish gold thread around the head of her distaff, covering it completely. The needle retreated to her nape, and she began working with her hands.
With a vertical warp and a horizontal weft, she kept the strands steady in her lefthand and worked them with her right, creating a spiral around pairs of soft beams. A tapestry took shape as soft as a silky undergarment. Nona’s diode flickered, and she saw a newborn baby girl in her arms. Her heart swelled, tears in her eyes as she reached for the loose gold and silver strands now slick and soft like the drippings of an umbilical cord.
“She’s so beautiful,” Nona said, cradling the baby in her arms and holding her close to her breast. “I love her.”
Sissy, you have to learn to control yourself better than this.
Nona blinked, her trance broken, hugging a soft tapestry against her chest. “But it was so real.” She pursed her lips, running her fingers along the unfinished half of her silky knit.
“My turn!” Decima bounced up and down, her legs coiling against the base of her loom as she reached for the tapestry.
Nona passed it on, watching in awe as her sister hooked the unfinished ends of her needlework to the jutting horns of her loom’s vertebrae. Decima worked in a trance, her eyes piercing red as she transitioned from a linen stitch to a basketweave, melding multiple styles into a unique series of patterns and twists. As she plucked the strands like a harp’s strings, they grew longer, giving her more material that she spun into intricate patterns that blossomed around the seams.
Decima licked her lips, the many toes along her thighs extending like spider feet, tugging at her knots, slipping her stitches, and rotating the thread in a purlwise fashion, gracefully weaving her stockinette work with her herringbone lace rib stitches.
No one mortal would ever be the same, twelve seams as promised.
Look, Sissy. Isn’t that gorgeous?
All at once the patterns took shape into a regal gown, Decima’s cast-ons becoming an imperious coat of arms, her buttonhole stitches the warmth and safety of a summer residence, and her blind hem rows the sadness at the loss of a dear sister, the frustrations of an arrogant tutor, and the soft melody of a lovely singing voice.
She was an archduchess of a distant peninsula.
Nona’s hands quivered, tears in her eyes, her heart pounding as she made fists against the floor with her feet. These new feelings overwhelmed her, a tightness in her chest, a warmth in her belly, a fulfilled mother, her hands clasped in front of her chest. Nona smiled, so proud of her daughter.
“Give it here,” Morta said. She took the tapestry from Decima who was blushing red, her freckles swelling, so obviously pleased the young woman had chosen the seam that led to love, so delicately woven and beautiful in color.
Morta grabbed handfuls of the fabric, which shimmered purple with a glittering gold trim. She moved her hands along the weave, admiring her sisters’ work, a balanced warp and weft forming a chimeric hodgepodge of stitches, buttonholes, and loops—weft over warp, aligned at right angles. The tapestry glowed.
Morta’s hands stopped, pinching a portion of the fabric near the end. “It feels grainy here, like sand beneath my fingers.” She summoned her knife, which spilled from her nape, out from under her clavicle. The mechanical appendage moved like a snake along her forearm, resting the blade’s hilt in her hands, an inscription carved along the haft.
Quoth the raven.
“What are you doing, Morta?” Nona asked, standing from her pew, droplets of sweat beading along her forehead. “Let go of her!”
Bastion leaned over, his many hands wrapping around Nona’s waist and pulling her into a tight embrace. “Don’t interfere, girl. Let the child pass.”
“No, please, anything but that!” Nona clawed at his hands, kicking wildly. “Please don’t kill her! Morta, please, she doesn’t need to die!”
Decima slithered across the floor to Nona’s side, embracing her and kissing her forehead. “Close your eyes, sis,” she said. “It’ll be over quick.”
Morta licked her lips, her blue diode sparking like a cut wire. “Pulmonary embolism, cardiac arrhythmia, and an abdominal aortic aneurysm,” she said. “Atropos, I don’t actually get to choose, do I?” Morta looked up, closing her eyes, listening closely. “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche,” she said, a sinister smile spreading across her lips.
“No, she didn’t say that!” Nona sobbed, her mascara running, little black rivers staining her cheeks. “Please, Decima, make her stop! She didn’t say that!”
“Fuck, Nona,” Morta said as she cut the fabric clean through with a single stroke. “You’re so gawds damn beautiful when you cry.”