Crewel

years, enough to know that what I’d done would be noticed by the proctors administering the test. But I’d never considered how I could use this skill until now.
    ‘What does that mean?’ he asks, reaching out toward the golden web, but pulling back before his hands touch it.
    ‘I don’t know,’ I admit.
    ‘Can they hear us?’
    ‘I don’t think so.’ Biting my lip, I gesture for him to be silent and then carefully pull the strands separating us from the nearby fire. It roars back to life. I quickly reweave them, and it stops again.
    ‘It’s frozen,’ he murmurs in disbelief. ‘But how?’
    ‘This moment exists outside of that reality. I can’t really explain it.’ But he’s staring at me like I’m a freak. I don’t blame him. It’s not supposed to work this way. ‘I know you are supposed to need a loom to weave, but I can see the weave without one.’
    From the way he falls back in surprise, I can guess he’s decided that I’m definitely a freak.
    ‘Have you always been able to do this?’ he asks.
    ‘Not exactly like this, but I’ve been able to weave since I was a child.’
    ‘Without a loom?’ he asks in awe.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘So you messed up the room?’ I can tell he’s having a hard time with this. I barely understand it myself.
    ‘These,’ I say, fingering the strands of light, ‘are time. They always move across the weave. I guess it’s because time flows forward.’
    ‘Can it be moved backward?’ he asks quietly, and I know what he’s thinking.
    I shake my head no. As much as I wish I could turn back the weave and save my parents, for the first time part of me is glad I can’t. If I could take Jost back to save his family, would I? It’s not a decision I want to face.
    ‘But how do you do it without the loom?’ he asks, trying to hide his disappointment. ‘How can you even see it?’
    ‘I wish I knew,’ I say with a hollow chuckle. ‘Maybe then I wouldn’t be in this mess.’
    ‘Do they know this?’
    I pause, because I’m not sure. Cormac says they saw me do it at testing, but I’ve been careful not to manipulate without a loom here. I don’t share all this with Jost though. ‘Enora told me not to tell them.’
    Jost lets out a low whistle as he paces the small dome, inspecting it as closely as he can without touching it. ‘Enora is smart. What would happen if someone came into the room right now?’
    ‘That’s just it,’ I explain. ‘They couldn’t. That moment’ – I point to the room outside my woven moment – ‘is frozen.’
    ‘So we could stay here,’ he says slowly, ‘and no matter how much time passes here, no time would pass out there.’
    ‘Exactly.’ I pause, realising I don’t know this for sure. ‘I think. Actually, I have no idea.’
    ‘Then it’s true.’
    I look at him, trying to understand what he’s telling me.
    ‘There are whisperings that Loricel’s successor has come. Everyone has been trying to figure out which of you it is,’ he explains. ‘If it’s you or the other one.’
    ‘Pryana?’ I ask, mildly offended.
    Jost nods, too busy gawking to notice. ‘I’ve known it was you since they threw you in the cell.’
    ‘But how did they know?’ Was one slip enough to mark me as a Creweler?
    ‘I don’t know,’ he admits, ‘but the way they treat you – afraid of you, but still deferential. They know it’s you.’
    I think of the threats made but never carried out.
    ‘Crewelers don’t come along often. They can’t afford to lose you,’ Jost tells me.
    ‘But how is this Crewel work?’ I finger the time woven around us. ‘Loricel has only ever used a loom in my presence.’
    ‘Crewelers don’t merely embroider.’ Jost sits down on the rug, and I join him, safely cocooned in my moment. ‘Once a year Loricel visits the mining sites and separates the elements from time, so the machines can purify and distribute the material to the coventries to maintain Arras’s weave. I serve at the meetings when the officials come to schedule the trips. Without her talent, the looms would be useless. That’s why she gives them so much grief.’ There’s a note of appreciation in his voice.
    ‘In academy, they told us machines discovered the elements.’
    ‘You don’t feel like a machine?’ he asks. ‘Oiled and maintained and made to do the will of those who control you?’
    I don’t answer. I have no response except to warn him, but even that sounds mechanical and automatic. ‘You can’t tell