NaNoWriMo Update: WIP Wednesday #2

A Writer's Tale #3: The Sheriff's Showdown

Two ladies, wearing ample hoop skirts and billowing blouses, stood at the front of a square white building, waving and greeting passersby. When they saw us, the smiles disappeared, and they dared to approach us.

"Oh, Sheriff Coldwell!" said the lady on the right. "How are you feeling today?"

"Not too bad, Prudence," Jerry responded jovially. "How about yourself?"

The women gave me pointed looks.

"Trudy," Prudence leaned over and gave a loud whisper. "I do believe the Sheriff is under some kind of terrible threat of duress. I greatly fear for his safety and his sanity."

"Aye, sister," Trudy murmured back. "Either that or the poor man must be going blind, for surely no one with his authority and stature would dare to--"

Jerry whirled around so fast that I nearly collided with him. "All right!" he barked at the nosy ladies. "Let's have it out, ladies. What seems to be the problem?"

Trudy and Prudence stared at him with wide, owlish eyes--which they subtly shifted in my direction.

Jerry snorted. "Her? This is your problem?" He placed a hand on my shoulder. I noticed his grip wasn't rough or heavy. "This is why you question my competence? Because of a girl?"

The owl eyes blinked.

"Oh!" said Prudence.

"It's a girl, is it?" said Trudy.

Jerry wagged his head. "Of course she is! What else could she be?"

He meant it as a rhetorical question, but from the deep pink flush on both faces in front of me, I guessed that I probably wouldn't like the answer they had to that question.

I was right.

"Well, to be sure," Prudence stammered, "if I would have seen this... girl... walking down the street, I might have mistaken her for a rather unkempt man, with the strange trousers she wears."

"Or an escaped convict," Trudy added quickly.

Jerry threw back his head and roared with laughter. "You worried that I'd somehow gotten friendly with a convict?"

They returned to blinking owl eyes.

Jerry finished laughing and mopped his face with the bandana. "Oh, that is wonderful," he sighed. "Tell me, ladies--if this girl is an escaped convict... How far away is the nearest prison?"

"There's the State Penitentiary just outside of Junction," Trudy volunteered.

I had a sneaking suspicion that these would be exactly the type of ladies to keep themselves and others appraised of such matters.

"Junction is well-nigh fifty miles away," Jerry stated, "and there are other towns much closer to it, in pretty much any other direction except toward Phantom Gulch--so why, if she escaped the prison at Junction, would she bother walking fifty miles into the middle of nowhere, just to be here in Phantom Gulch?"

In perfect unison, the sisters' mouths dropped open. They gaped like fish for several silent moments, then turned about-face and flounced back into town to harry some other unsuspecting individual.

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The Last Inkweaver

*At this point in the story, Callista and the others have been captured by a female bounty hunter named Ronni and tossed into a deep pit with a bunch of other captives, all of which had suspected or true dealings with Wordspinners, and thus are deemed "dangerous" and thus "expendable" by the Crown. The leader is a young man named Benton, and he seems very interested in knowing more about Callista's Tapestry.

We entered the low cavern he called the Map Room, and saw another short piecemeal table, strewn with parchment fragments and weathered sheets covered with diagrams.

"With so many of us from different areas of the kingdom, I thought it best if we could have a cohesive map sharing details of the areas around us, marking those spots where Ronni raided, or where a Wordspinner had been picked up by Crown soldiers." He pointed to a large map with all the various villages added to it. "Each person provides information about where their town is located, and any surrounding cities, villages, or towns, to act as a cross reference to someone else who might know of the same locations. Places where Ronni has been are marked with an X." He pointed to a trail of several such marks, all surrounding an area of trees marked with a skull and crossbones and labeled "Lestar Forest."

Rowinna pointed to it. "That's where we are?"

Benton smiled. "You guessed it. The reasoning is, if we know places she has been, then we'll know places to either avoid, because she might come looking again, or to return to, once we know she won't find us there." He wagged his head and rubbed the back of his neck. "It's been rough going, interviewing the older folks. The memory is more spotty, and there isn't much they can say, even about their own village, at first. It comes in spurts and pieces, and so those who are skilled at drawing will meet with them at regular intervals, or they are encouraged to come here if they remember anything else. Over here," he pointed to a stack of parchments, "we have anything to do with royal proclamations or soldier activity, daily lives--things that don't necessarily have to do with a map, but it might be useful to know when a thing happened, or what sort of people we might expect in those villages." He continued on, leading us past a makeshift bookshelf piled with an assortment of leather covers and loose pages and scrolls. The low hum of activity from the front of the Map Room was more muffled back here, by the profusion of cloth and paper to absorb the sound.

"And here," said Benton, "is where we might talk about this Told thing that Ronni doesn't know about."

I took a deep breath and laid the satchel out on the table. My chest tightened and my heartbeat raced. I realized in that moment that I had not bothered to check for the Tapestry after Ronni had thrown it down. What if it really wasn't in there, and I would look like a fool in front of Benton? I reached my hand in and felt the familiar, whisper-thin fabric. I pulled it out and spread it flat over the table. The Tapestry had grown and changed, encompassing everything from departing on the royal omnicarriage from Mirrorvale, to getting left behind at Brabant, meeting Naten and helping Matthias out of the blackrope, to our ordeal in Aberon, meeting Dimea in Criansa, and finally, Ronni herself making an appearance in fine purple silk thread. There was a miniture house like the facade surrounding us, and perched on one of the turrets, a coal-black raven.

Benton blinked wide eyes. "Where did you get this?" he gasped.

"I found it," I said. "In the house of the Inkweaver who was driven away from our village when we were small."

Benton's fingers stroked his beard as he thought. "The one your friend mentioned," he referred back to Matthias' assessment of the situation. "So what he said was true, then? Even though he obviously doesn't believe in the existence of the Wordspinners?"

I nodded. "He and Terra are the only ones who haven't received a Gift from a Wordspinner, at least not on this journey--but Terra had met the Inkweaver once, a long time ago, so she at least knew about her."

He reached out toward the section depicting Naten's forge and ran his fingertips over the rough, sharp shards of the ash piles. "Brabant..." he mused absently, "I feel like I've heard that before..." He gave himself a small shake and pulled back to view the vast swath of empty canvas. "But why would the Inkweaver leave it behind if it wasn't finished?"

"That's what we intend to find out," I answered. "We've carried it with us the whole time, and it's shown the things we encounter--"

"So," he pointed to the depiction of Ronni and her mansion, "you knew you would cross Ronni's path before you even left your village?"

I shook my head. "Not exactly. It's only after we've gone through an experience, or met the person we need to meet, that it shows up on the Tapestry. We didn't take it out after meeting the Earth-Teller in Criansa, so..." I shrugged my shoulders.

"So you might have known ahead of time, but now the information would do you no good," Benton supplied. He continued staring at the swirl of colors and the exquisite artistry. "A Tapestry that fills in itself, that continues to spin long after the artist has abandoned it... I never thought such a thing would be possible." He looked at each of us. "So you were the one to find it, Callista," he mused, "and you can still hear its Tale, even if it's not finished, and it wasn't given directly to you?"

I nodded. "We tried asking the Talesmith about it, but he couldn't say. The Earth-Teller seemed to think that if a person hears the Tale, then it was obviously meant for them, whether the gift is intentional or not." I couldn't help frowning as I thought about all that we didn't know about the Wordspinners. It did feel good to be able to discuss it with someone who at least believed they existed--something I didn't see ever happening with Matthias, unless by some miracle he began to take me seriously.

"So," Benton said slowly, drawing his interest from the Tapestry and back to us. I wondered what he saw when he looked at it, if it shifted and changed for him as it did for me. "You left your little village behind and went through all of these," he traced our path over the tapestry with his finger, "all to find the Inkweaver who made the Tapestry, and to discover why she had left it unfinished, and yet still had a Tale woven into it for you?"

"More like several Tales," I said with a nod. "Every time we encounter something significant that ties into the Tale I am hearing, we move on and the Tale begins something different. It's all the same voice, so I know it is from the Tapestry--but it hasn't been the same Tale all the time." I shrugged, and my eyes traveled to the omnicarriage. "Besides that, we didn't leave Mirrorvale to seek after the Inkweaver. We left in the company of Crown chaperones, headed for a new Finishing School in Gramble City. It is designed to give us the necessary training to become the next generation of Scholars, Teachers, and Professors." Bringing it up again still stung, as everything about the Tapestry seemed diametrically opposed to not only the existence of the Academy, but taking us further and further away from ever rejoining that part of society--to what end?

"Ah yes, the Academies," Benton mused dryly, running his hands through his hair. "Did you know, the Academies were established right before the campaign against Wordspinners began? Some of the people you will talk to down here seem to think that the two have to be related somehow, as if the Academies grew out of a dispute between the Wordspinners and the Crown, or that the Crown established the Academies to remove society's perceived dependence on Wordspinners, giving them an excuse to get rid of them all."

"But why?" I asked again, as everything seemed to be pointing toward some sort of explanation, but nothing I had yet learned adequately explained a solid, rational reasoning behind it, only conspiracies and rumors. "If the Wordspinners are indeed so wholesome and beneficial, then what happened between the Crown and the Wordspinners that caused such a widespread falling-out?" I couldn't think with the hissing, persistent whisper running through my head, so I stood up and gathered the Tapestry. "More than that, if the Wordspinners are indeed so awful that they must be eliminated, why does King's Court endorse people like Ronni, to pick up even those who profess to bear witness of these Wordspinners? It's not like believing in them would call them back into existence, would it?" I held my satchel with both hands and stared at Benton with a pleading gaze.

He turned and met my gaze. Matthias might have been in my face long before I had gotten out half of what I had just said, but Benton didn't display any sort of reaction.

"Callista," he said calmly, "I want you to know that, even if I don't have all these answers for you, I am on your side in this matter. I want as much as you do to find out what really happened to the Wordspinners, and how to bring them all back. But without our freedom, there is not much we can do."

"Haven't you tried at all?" Rowinna asked.

Benton nodded. "A few times. Each time, Ronni seems to know what we are about to do, and she has her people--deaf as they are--in strategic places to stop our attempts. We've tried tunneling off the property, and she's filled those in. We've tried overtaking the controls for the platform, but those are rigged to the old dumbwaiter system in the house, up on the surface, so without an actual means of getting to the top of the Pit, there isn't much of a way to access it." His face set in grim determination. "Now you show me a miraculous Told gift that could be the key to getting us out of here."

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