The weaverwoman clips bat wings in the forest every night. I’ve heard but never seen
myself until now, how she breaks their bones. Bat skins twirl like kites in the moon’s glow.
“Leave the poor thing alone, dear.” I say.
The weaverwoman’s unblemished skin looks younger than mine, but her hands cut the
animal’s wing with knowing.
“Your words belong to someone else,” she says, mouth working even when she doesn’t
speak. I cannot tell stillness from spoken voice, lost in how smoothly the night air breathes, and
how daftly the woman’s lips curl.
I know that sometimes when I open my lips, an eighty-nine-year-old woman speaks out.
One particular eighty-nine-year-old woman. Pain is in the particulars.
The weaverwoman splinters the flexible skin of the wing, tearing the patagium. I hear the
animal whine. Realize it is still alive.
The weaverwoman has a needle in hand. She holds slivery thread that gleams in the
night. “This was once a bat too. Tendons. So fine when separate—little more than a hair. Strong
when you weave them through.”
Across my splintered memories, my grandmother sits with her sewing, threads pink and
blue. Patches on the bench beside her. We play in the park down Grantham Street not far from
the woods. By “we” I mean me. She watches through scarred lenses, her glasses lined by
sidewalk falls and nightstand tumbles. She does not care to replace them. Says they already
replaced her eyes, and a person cannot hope for third chances. Says some things age and are
gone.
“Grandma, I’m making a castle. Watch me.”
“Grandma’s watching, dear.”
I pile stones on top of each other, trying to stack them up to my knees. But rough stones
won’t stick no matter how you stack them. They crash down just as soon as I pick them up.
On the ground, in the forest, by the weaverwoman, the bat is silent now. I cannot hear her
breathe.
“Grandma?” The stones have crashed. They sit in silence, and I wonder if Grandma has
seen.
“Breathe.” The weaverwoman says, her words the whisper of bat skin, her breath a
sailing night air.
“Poor thing,” my grandmother says, her face blue, her eyes watching but not seeing me. I
do not know who is poor now. The dead, or those they leave behind.
The weaverwoman shuts the bat’s eyes. “They see too keenly in the dark. You must close
their eyes so they can sleep.”
“She’s not asleep,” I say, and I know there are rocks all around my feet, crumbled castles,
scattered memories.
The weaverwoman hums as she sews, a song my grandmother might have sung. About
oaks and winter and frost.
My grandmother lies on the ground, still as stone. My house is only four doors down, but
I am young, and my mind is parapets and walls and at least seven worlds away. I do not know
where, or how, to begin.
“Aren’t you going to ask what I’m making?” The weaverwoman says, between punctured
melodies. “See how we make things new?”
She’s woven the bat-skin threads together, cut patches, resewn from the wings. In the
dark of the midnight hour, the body almost disappears. I see a coat or a blanket or the night sky,
patched together in the weaverwoman’s arms.
“We’re making things new,” my grandmother said, when she took me to the park, sat
down with her sewing, and set me building rocks. “See how we thread or weave. Grow.
Something beautiful.”
“Something beautiful,” the weaverwoman says. Her eyes reflect moonlight. They glow a
cat-like gleam.
Lost, I reach for the quilt in her arms. Then the wingless body beside it, spiked fur coarse
on my hands. My skin will harden, I know.
“Crack a bone,” the weaverwoman orders. But the words might be a song, a melody. A
memory.
The bone cracks, and I begin to sew.
Rachel Barber is a graduate of Rutgers-Camden, where she received her MFA in Creative Writing. She currently works in supportive housing for formerly homeless individuals in Philadelphia. Her scifi has appeared in Daily Science Fiction and her nonfiction has appeared in Brink.
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