Weaveworld

5

Outside the window of Gluck’s home it was the same story: there were few signs of life. This was the hardest winter since the beginning of the century. Snow fell on snow; ice glazed ice.

As January crept to its dismal end people began not to ask after Cal as frequently. They had problems of their own in such a grim season, and it was relatively easy for them to put him out of their minds because he wasn’t in pain; or at least in no pain he could express. Even Gluck tactfully suggested that she was giving too much of her time over to nursing him. She had her own healing to do; a life to be put in some sort of order; plans to be laid for the future. She’d done all that could be expected from a devoted friend, and more, he argued, and she should start to share the burden with others.

I can’t, she told him.

Why not?, he asked.

I love him, she said, and I want to be with him.

That was only half the answer of course. The other half was the book.

There it lay in his room, where she’d put it the day they’d returned from Rayment’s Hill. Though it had been Mimi’s gift to Suzanna, the magic that it now contained meant she could no longer open it alone. Just as she’d needed Cal at the Temple, in order to use the Loom’s power, and charge the book with their memories, so she needed him again if they were to reverse the process. The magic hung in the space between them. She could not reclaim on her own what they’d imagined together.

Until he woke the Stories of the Secret Places would remain untold. And if he didn’t wake they’d remain that way forever.