The Spinner and the Weaver

97

What if Fate determines our lives?

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The youngest of the Sisters looked up as the eldest came into the room.

Eldest Sister walked over to her and said, “I want to weave a love story. Spin me two threads.”

The others Sisters snickered. “Her? Surely you want one of us.”

But Eldest Sister just stared at them and then smiled at Youngest Sister. She patted her hand, placed a spindle in it, and nodded.

She sat staring at the spindle a long time while the others laughed and spoke of her lack of skill. Finally she stood up, gathered her skirts and took off running into the mountains.

And there, in the solace of the seasons, she began to spin. For her first thread she spun sunbeams and blue summer skies. She spun ferns and winter snows. Sometimes the thread broke—she was the unskilled one after all. But she would repair it and keep spinning even though a bump appeared on the thread. She finished the spindle and took out another.

On the nights she could not sleep, she walked in the moon and starlight and gathered up midnight skies and the deep water of lakes. She overspun and the thread kinked up and twisted in little curls. The thread broke under the tension and she wept over the work she feared lost. But she persevered and added the gray of chimney smoke and fog and the red of apples.

She began to run back home, to Eldest Sister and she tripped on the stone step. The blood from her scraped hand stained the dark thread and the others chastised her.

But Elder Sister bade her come into the weaving room, kissed her hand, and gave her bread and wine.

She sat quietly while Elder Sister began to weave—shuttle flying as two little boys took shape. She saw the flaws in her thread appear, tears from the dark threaded boy as one he loved was lost and he was sent away.

Elder Sister broke off both threads and handed them back to her. “Ply.”

She took up her spindle and twisted the two threads together, dark and light, midnight and noon, shadow and sun. And Elder Sister took the yarn from her and started her weaving again.

This time the two boys, now men, appeared together with splashes of the apple colored red. Once in awhile, where the bumps appeared, the men’s lives would seem to fall apart but still Elder Sister kept at her love story and the men would come back together.

“Oh,” she said when she saw one of her own hairs spun into the yarn—it must have caught while she plied. It kept the two men apart—she saw them drifting away from one another, but Elder Sister only smiled.

And then—the blood. The blood that had stained the dark thread. She held her breath as Elder Sister wove tragedy and fear. It was going to be a love story—how could it happen now?

But it did—Elder Sister’s skill made it so. The men lay in a bed together, and one kissed the other. The other smiled and kissed him back.

“Now we are finished,” Elder Sister said.

Youngest Sister looked at the yarn remaining, trailing on the floor for a long distance. “But there is still more to weave.”

Elder Sister kissed her cheek. “Of course there is. They are the ones who will weave it now. True love stories never end.”