Brightly Woven

exactly how I felt upon waking to the sun shining in my eyes and the sound of shuffling against the floor. The noise wasn’t very loud at all, but it worsened the pounding between my ears.
    I blinked. My limbs were as heavy as stones; I strained my neck, trying to see what was making the noise.
    A bald old man was rummaging through North’s leather bag. The sun outlined his profile, but I could still make out the deep wrinkles on his forehead and the tight line of his lips ashe dug through the empty bottles. When his hand reappeared, he was clutching North’s stained purple handkerchief.
    Whoever he was, he didn’t belong in North’s bag.
    My voice came out a rough whisper. “Hey.”
    The scrap of fabric fell from his fingertips. From beneath my layers of bedding, I glared.
    “So you’re awake,” he said. He stood slowly. “Aphra!”
    The old woman appeared instantly in the doorway. I felt the soft, worn material of her skirt as she knelt beside me and placed a hand on my forehead.
    “How do you feel?” Her voice was the softest I had ever heard it.
    “Hurts,” I confessed, closing my eyes. I heard the floorboards strain and creak beneath the man’s boots as he walked past me. There was the sound of bedding being pulled away, and a grunt from the corner of the room.
    “Up, you bag of bones,” the man growled. “I let you go back to sleep earlier, but now you have no excuse.”
    “Magister?” North groaned. “Gods, I was hoping that was a nightmare.”
    “Nightmare?” he scoffed. “You’re lucky I came. It’s not an easy trip.”
    “I didn’t ask you to come, old man,” North said. “In fact, I seem to remember telling you I wasn’t coming to see you, either.”
    “And yet here I am to knock some sense back into that thick skull of yours,” he said. “How very lucky you are.”
    “Wayland,” Aphra said. “You’re disturbing Miss Mirabil—may I suggest you do what your magister says?”
    “She’s awake?” North asked, kicking off the rest of his blankets. He squatted down beside me, a bright smile on his face.
    “Hullo, my beautiful, beautiful darling,” he said. “Feeling better this morning?”
    I smiled back weakly. “Not really.”
    He chuckled. “It might take a few days. The poison has to leave your body.”
    “Poison?”
    “Pascal, give them a moment,” Aphra said, nodding her head toward the door. “I’ll need your help to clear the snow off the path.”
    The old man clucked his tongue in disapproval, but he went.
    “Snow?” I whispered.
    “It was quite the storm last night,” North said, brushing a stray curl off my face.
    I swallowed hard, catching sight of the loom out of the corner of my eye. “Was it me?”
    North brought over the pitcher of water and helped me sit up long enough to drink.
    “Was it me?” I asked again, my voice stronger. “Did I cause the storm?”
    North’s brow furrowed. “What gave you that absurd idea?”
    “The threads,” I explained, but it was useless. North shook his head.
    “When you’re feeling up to it, I’ll take you outside,” he said. “I’ll try to get a letter off to Owain to tell him we may be a day late.”
    “No,” I said in horror, trying to sit up again. My head throbbed. “I can go now…we can’t get farther behind.”
    North shook his head. “It’ll be a day or two before you’re strong enough to travel. I promised you that we’d get there in time, and I have no intention of going back on it.”
    “I’ll hold you to that,” I said, trying for a smile. North only looked away.
    “I need to tell you something,” he began, his voice tight. “That poison—that was the same poison that killed the king.”
    “But how did he…?” My head spun. “You saved me. Why did he have to die if there were wizards there?”
    “Because only I know who made the poison,” he said. “And because I’m the only person to have seen him make the antidote. It’s a hedge poison.”
    “Dorwan? Are you sure?” North gave a curt nod, but his eyes betrayed his feelings. Had he known this entire time? Was that the real message we were taking to the capital?
    “I was with him for a little while, when we were both boys. The only reason I met him was because I was snooping around, looking for information around one of the hedge camps. He showed me…He showed me a lot of these poisons and tricks that he thought I would like,” North said. “He thought we were alike, and that I would appreciate knowing