Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 34

Hours, sometimes whole days mom spent like that. And I'd try to engineer an accident to get her attention. But she always seemed to know when it wasn't real. Then I did really hurt myself, and she'd be there in a second.

And I think maybe you have to believe that... it just doesn't matter, that time doesn't matter at all, only the next stitch, the next line of code, the next sentence in your research paper. Only the work matters. In the work we are immortal, connected. Cells live and die. The Weaver lives on.

My whole focus changes, time stretches out in all directions, the cold stones, the wood smoke, the itchy mediaeval dress I'm wearing, the discomfort of the stool, the noises of the uncomfortable bodies around me, they all become a part of my focus.

And I realise that here in the Gap, it is not impossible to stitch 16, 777, 216 stitches in one microscopic patch of linen with three balls of red, green and blue wool yarn.

All you have to do, all you ever have to do, is the next thing.

And this pixel needs 222 red stitches, so I thread the needle, and begin. And as I finish, I begin the next stitch, and as I finish, I begin the next stitch and I blink and a century has passed and there is enough finished tapestry in my hand to see the face of my mother emerging.

Then a voice comes to me, dripping with spite. "Look up glitch witch!"

And it's Alice Nutter again. I'm furious to say, that my heart starts beating faster. She's snuck into the lesson. She's hijacked it somehow. I hate her. Close your mouth, Ursula.

And I look up and the room is many times the size it was before, and the circular walls of this castle tower are adorned with a massive tapestry. It's a series of vignettes, scenes from a horror story all about the people I love, and I know that Alice is showing me this, to throw me off. She wants me to fail this lesson, to force me to Glitch, to get me banned from the secret school.

And I can see the twins, their heads are being shaved. They are pale and terrified.

And I see them being placed in strait jackets.

And I see them being questioned by Marketta, and by her side an angel. A Golden Boy. A teenaged boy with the face of a Botticelli cherub and the dead eyes of a psychopath. He holds a sacrificial knife behind his back.

But the work is still in my hands. And I am a cyberWitch of Clan Weaver. And the work comes before all. And I force myself to look down. And see that I need 167 green stitches. So, I thread the needle. And I begin.

And I almost do not hear Alice's voice, that voice.

"Well done, Arachnid. But you'll never be a real Weaver. Listen to the hissing sands. Your time is running out."

Alice opens a door in the simulation. A way out. And she leaves it open. And suddenly my skin is crawling with the desire to get out of that room. I can feel the opportunity to go with Mel slipping away, to raid my school in the real world and end Marketta's reign of terror, and I'm wasting that chance sitting here learning handicrafts. No wonder witches always lose.

Then I realise that the teacher is looking at me. She's looking at me as if I were an unexploded bomb. Like she's desperate to say something she won't allow herself to say.

And I look down at the place where all our work is starting to meet, and the bigger picture is starting to emerge. I can see that there are three women. And it's the Weaver Queen, Sadie. Then the Witch Finder, Marketta and finally Amanda my mother.

And Amanda has a baby held up, like an offering and offering to some kind of God, and the God is there, the woman with the disfigured face, and all of this is too much, but I have stopped trying to understand and then I see it.

I see the web stretch out across all of time. The work. The warp. The weft. The weave.

The creatures come into a world that wants them to die, and the weave catches them, the work catches them and wraps them in fabric, keeps them warm, and brings them together. And the weave is worked on silently, by all of them, forever, and things rip open holes in the fabric, and dazzling lights slip through and then the work continues and the fabric is woven again, different but whole again, on and on forever.

And the voices that come, the voices of chaos that come to me when I glitch, I can hear them now sounding more like a song, and I know that I can weave them into something, a melody from cacophony.

And when I see the image of my mother fall, the arrow in her eye, the demon that gets in, the thing that she becomes. The glitch clamours for me, and I tame it. I invite it into the inner rooms. I feed it. And the words come out like this...

Eenah Meenah Minah Mo

Catch a witch by her toe

If she drowns, let her go

Eenah Meenah Minah Mo

And it's something I'm half humming, half singing.

And the others in the room are singing along.

And the teacher is beaming with pride.

Here the lesson ends girls. You have done well.

And I'm not exactly happy, but I know as I drift back to the real world that I've finally done something right.

I have a tool, a spell, for trying to control the Glitch.

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