I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m dead but I’m not … I’m still awake. Somehow.
“You! Get over here!” A piercing, raspy voice cuts through my ears. I obey, because I don’t know where I am and I don’t know what is at stake. I go towards the source of the sound.
All around me is this strange fog, simmering with the slightest tints of pale, shifting colours. The fog stings my skin as it washes over me, as I walk through the near-gray mass. The fog moves and shifts slowly, sluggishly, and its colours shift with the same lethargy. It hurts to breathe in the poisonous air, and it sends waves of stinging through my lungs with each breathe.
My bare feet wade through this cold, chilling liquid underneath me, a liquid which is almost caustic, which stings with a deep burning, every step that I take. It is a dead sort of fluid, all of its coldness creating death rather than creating life. It stings, but as it stings it also numbs in a strange way, sending tingles all up my legs.
I can’t take more than a moment to process all this though as the same strange voice with familiar roughness breaks out across the lands, demanding that I come closer. There is a deep sort of malice in the voice. A malice that I am all too familiar with. And a hatred that I am all too familiar with as well. There is a sort of jagged superiority, a smugness to the words, one that I know too well. But still. Still. The voice that is barking at me seems so much deeper, so much more ancient than any of the voices I have heard before.
The Emperor likes to believe that he is ancient, but he is nothing compared to this. And it sends chills up my spine, throughout my whole body, thinking of something even older than the Emperor, being confronted with something even older than the Emperor. Though of course the Empire itself is so much older. And there are people in the Empire who are older as well.
I walk through the fog, trying to think of a plan, when suddenly I am confronted by three terrifying ladies. On the surface they look normal, or as far as normal goes for Imperial women. They have dyed hair and long, elegant dresses with the hems studded in gemstones. Which would be enough to make me not trust them. But there is something deeply malevolent etched into their faces, dancing in their eyes. And I don’t know how exactly I will win against them.
Not that I try to win of course. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. First, you have to wait, watch, understand. First you have to play the part of the unthreatening servant. And then, then when you have enough information, when you know the enemies’ weaknesses, when they do not suspect you, when the time is right, that is when you strike. So if I am to win, in this strange new place, with these strange new people, I have to be exactly what they want me to be first.
“Yes, ma’am?” I ask meekly, keeping my head slightly lowered and my face a mask of submission.
“Why are you here?” one of the ladies half-shouts in my direction, voice like cold gravel.
“I don’t know, ma’am,” I reply truthfully, keeping my voice soft and emotionless.
“Why aren’t you asleep?” another lady interrogates, “you should be asleep!”
“I … I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t understand.” And this is the truth. I don’t understand.
“The dead! Boy! You are one of the dead! You should be asleep!” The third lady’s voice is frustrated. But it is also tinged with fear. Actually all their voices have been tinged with fear. It’s hard to deny the fear in her voice though. But I keep my observations to myself, filing them away meticulously for later.
“Am I dead, ma’am?” I ask her, though I already know.
“You are, you young swain, and you should be asleep! Why are you awake here?” The lady who is talking to me has an emerald and gold dress that reaches to her feet and has long sleeves.
“I don’t know, I’m sorry, ma’am,” I tell her. “I’m just a slave. I don’t know why I failed to die. Either way, I’m here to serve, that’s what I do best.” I try to keep the implication as subtle as I can. I need to get close to these women if I want a chance of bringing them down somehow.
“Perhaps this is why you’re awake,” the lady in red and bronze suggests, “to be our servant. We all know we need one.”
“Well, I’m happy to do whatever you need me to do,” I reply, keeping my identity a secret. These women do not seem to know who I am. And good for them. Because I do not know how much they do or don’t know about the living world.
“Come hither, boy,” the lady in the deep purple and bright silver dress tells me.
I stay behind them, and follow them, watching them closely, watching them, closely watching my surroundings. They look middle-aged, and they all have very long, curly hair. They look like princesses but they speak and hold themselves like empresses. They look like people from the Empire’s Home Planet, with light brown skin and faintly muscular figures. I can tell that they have a lot of power, and that they know that they have a lot of power. People who know they have power are usually easy to manipulate. But people who have power can be formidable enemies.
I wonder, briefly, if they can be beaten. But I push that thought down. Of course they can be taken down. Anyone can be taken down. I have to fight injustice wherever I find it. It’s become the bedrock of who I am. Not to mention, what’s the point of fighting for a good life for the people if in their afterlives they will be ruled over by malicious forces?
Eventually I can see three large spinning wheels softly shining in the dim light, softly shrouded in the fog. They are old-fashioned, manual spinning wheels, which I have only heard about in books. They’re made of platinum and are very beautiful. On the spinning wheel there are threads of many colours. There is something deeply wrong about the threads. Something deeply, deeply wrong. They’re pretty. They really are very pretty. But they really are very disturbing as well. I don’t know why.
Behind each spinning wheel is a chair. They are very elaborate chairs, more like thrones really, and they have ornately carved metallic details, high backs, plush seats made of the finest velvet. One is red and bronze. One is green and gold. One is purple and silver. From that I figure out that the chairs must belong to the women, and the spinning wheels too must belong to them.
At the base of one of the spinning wheels there is a large bucket, as long as my arm. It is made of a shoddy, rusted metal. Something about this bucket brings me fear. Something about this bucket brings me hope. Though I do not know why. I do not know what it’s for and I do not know why it’s here.
“Boy!” the emerald lady shouts at me, “we need water to dip our threads in! You take the bucket and go west! There you will find a lake!”
“Yes ma’am,” I reply courteously, rushing over to take the bucket in my arms. It’s already so large, already bulky and awkward to carry. It has no handle for carrying it like a normal bucket. I wonder how I’ll be able to lug it once it’s full of water.
But still, there’s nothing I can do as I take it and go in the direction I have been pointed towards. Each breath still hurts and each step still stings, my legs still tingle and my body still feels dead. Which is strange. I know I am dead but still. Still. I know that I’m meant to feel alive.
Soon I leave the three women and their spinning wheels behind. I am grateful for being out of their view. Even if they had special eyes that could see far into the distance, the fog would block me from them. I keep my pace fast as I look around all around me.
Without warning, I trip on something sprawled across the ground, under the poisonous liquid. I am sent crashing down into the liquid all around, and it sears into my skin. I cry out in pain, but I quickly compose myself and get up, shaking the liquid off me. I bend down to see what it was that I tripped over. The liquid is really murky and I can’t see through it, so I have to bring the object up out of the water.
To my mild surprise, it is a person. They have dark blue skin and they look about maybe forty years old. And they look, not quite like a corpse but not quite like a living person either. Their eyes are closed. Their breath is nonexistent. Their skin is cold and they are wholly unresponsive, heavy like a stone. There is something deeply horrific about what I am gazing at, and I cannot help but feel pity for this poor person, doused in poison and left lying here in the ground.
But I have to keep walking. I have my orders, and I cannot disobey them yet.
A few steps away from the first of the sleeping dead, I find another person, lying on the ground, not quite dead and not quite alive. They are gray and perhaps in their late teens. So young. This person I also bring up into my arms so that I can get a good look at them. They look deeply sad, and I can’t help but to have sympathy for them. Is this what the afterlife is like? Is this the fate that awaits all the dead?
I come across body after body after body after body after body. And I don’t bring them up out of the poison. I don’t hold them in my arms. I don’t look at their faces. I do not have the time to. Instead I simply step carefully, I step gently, I step over them. There are so many dead people packed together here. So, so many. Every yard has a person in it. Every person deserves more, deserves so much more than what I’m giving them. But I can’t give them anything more. Not yet at least.
After maybe a few hours of lugging the clunky bucket around, I take a step and my foot sinks down into this different liquid, that is heavier than the poison I’ve been trudging through. It’s still a deeply disturbing fluid though, whatever it is. It’s not water. It makes my entire leg go completely numb, and I fall from the shock. Thankfully I am able to fall backwards and not into the lake. If I fell into the lake I don’t know what would have happened. I might have never gotten out.
I wait until I can stand again and carefully fill up my bucket with this strange stuff. Sure, I know it’s not water but I also know that the three ladies would not know water if it came up to them and bit them. So I carry my now filled bucket, heavy and straining my arms, and I make my way back to where I came from, careful of the dead all around me, smothered in their slumber and drenched in poison.
The bucket is heavy. So very heavy. It strains my arms, strains my back, strains my whole body. What I want more than anything is to put it down and take a rest. But I cannot. I have to keep going through the pain, through the exhaustion, like I have had to do for most of my life, because I have a task in front of me and I can’t not finish it. I very literally can’t. I don’t have that option. Not if I want any mercy. And not if I want information.
“Boy! You’re back!” the purple one shouts.
“Yes ma’am, I am.” I try to keep the strain and the weariness out of my voice as I put the bucket down at their feet.
After trudging for many long, exhausting hours, I finally get to the three spinning wheels, where the three women sit idly spinning their threads. They haven’t made a lot of progress, and there is no more thread than there was before. But whatever though, it’s not my place to judge them. I just watch them out of the corner of my eyes, forcing myself to breathe in the noxious air.
They dip their threads in the ”water” and they just leave them there, to soak up all the fluid in the bucket. It’s strange, the threads are so small and the bucket is so big. I don’t know what exactly is supposed to happen so I just keep watch as the threads float on the liquid. But slowly, slowly, as the women continue their spinning, the threads all soak up the fluid.
And what the threads become is even more horrifying than what they were before.
I didn’t think they could become more disturbing. But they have. I cannot look at them without shuddering. They send a deep wave of horror flowing through me, crashing over my insides, leaving me soaked and drowning and choking. This is wrong. This is wrong. This is so very wrong. But I cannot place why exactly it is wrong. I want to turn away. With my whole being I want to turn away. But I cannot. I have to understand this process.
The three women are still sitting at their spinning wheels, spinning. They pay me no attention, chatting with each other instead. This is a dynamic that I am all too familiar with. The dynamic of most of my life. I pretend that it doesn’t sting as I listen in on their conversation, trying to piece together any information that might be valuable.
They are talking about me. Wondering why I’m not catatonic like all the very many other dead people in this realm. They are very worried. They try to not let it show, but I can hear it in their voices.
“Do you think there’s something special about him?” the red one asks, “something that makes him not fall asleep like the rest of them?”
“I wouldn’t say so,” the emerald one replies, “he looks and acts like any ordinary slave. Except maybe for the fact that he’s less rebellious.”
“That’s the thing,” the purple one begins, “maybe he is awake here, working for us, because he’s less rebellious. Maybe he was sent to help us.”
“We have been wishing for someone to help us for a while,” the red one commences, “perhaps our wishing has made him manifest as a helper for us.”
“That would make sense,” the emerald one agrees, “but we should be wary of any strange behaviour. Who knows, maybe he’s a manifestation of, you know, THEM.”
“Do not speak their names!” the purple one scolds, “do not even bring them up! We have gotten rid of them centuries ago! There is no way they can possibly be back!”
“Still,” the emerald one presses, “it is a possibility. We should watch him carefully.”
Who are they talking about? Who is THEM? I know that the answer to this question will open up so many possibilities for me. I hope they expand on this more, but I doubt that they will.
“The times when we are spinning thread rather than working on the tapestry are the times when we are the most powerless,” the purple one comments, unaware that I am listening, “it might not be a surprise that he came now.”
“But still,” the red one counters, “maybe we manifested him to make our spinning go quicker, so that we may start weaving as soon as possible. We all know we don’t want to get the water. That task is too annoying.”
“Well whatever happens,” the purple one states, “we should keep an eye on him.”
“We should.”
“We absolutely should.”
So what I have to do now is win their trust. Get them to think of me as their loyal slave. Exactly as I have been doing with my family. Well, not my family. Well, they’re kind of my family but it’s really complicated there. I don’t know how long I will have to do this for but all good things are worth the wait. When I have trust, I will have a lot more freedom. Except, freedom is not quite the right word. I will have a lot more leeway.
I have to figure out what this tapestry is that they’re talking about. Why is it so important. But I can’t go out into the fog right now looking for a tapestry. What if they call for me and I’m not there? What if they find me snooping around? What will they do to me then? Nothing good, I am sure. I have to find an opportune time when it would be safe to go looking around.
“Boy!” the red one’s voice breaks through my thoughts.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Come here! Massage my head!”
“Yes ma’am.”
I go over to her and stand behind her throne. I have to stand on my tiptoes a little to reach her head. She is just so very tall. I run my fingers through her hair, massaging her in a fairly pleasant way. I have practice in this. I have had to do this for the Emperor and the Empress and even the Prince many times. But I do not use all my skill here. I can’t have these ladies even suspecting who I truly am.
“I worry what the world is becoming, now that we are taking time off to spin,” the emerald one comments.
“Yes. There is always a rebellion against the Empire whenever we are not around controlling things through our weaving.” The red one’s voice shows disdain.
“Well, whatever,” the purple one begins, “we can and always go weave things back into their proper order.”
So that is why we were able to rebel, I think to myself. That is why we were able to steal the World Stones. And all the progress that we have made could be undone so easily if these powerful beings simply got back to their loom. That’s not good. That’s not good. I suddenly have a deadline now. I have a deadline and I don’t even have any ideas about what’s going on.
That’s okay. I can work with this. I’m sure I can get us all out of whatever situation this is, before the ladies start controlling the world and favouring the Empire with the tapestry that they are weaving.
“Oh this feels so good,” the red one declares lavishly, “you all should try it.”
“Sure,” the purple one agrees, “boy, come over here and do my head now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I reply. And I go over to her and give her the same clunky but pleasant treatment I had given the previous lady.
Around me the conversation drifts. I find that these women are the worst kind of imperialists. They are imperialists even more so than the Emperor and Empress are. Though I suppose that makes sense. This might all be their doing. Though of course the Imperials themselves are also much to blame. They are the boots on the ground soldiers of whatever horrid plan the ladies have.
Still. I have to be quiet and obedient.
———
I fetch and carry “water” for the ladies for what feels like years, though I actually have no idea since night and day does not happen in this strange world. It’s a daunting, grinding, thankless task. It leaves my muscles screaming in pain and my soul soaked with exhaustion. But I don’t complain, I never complain, as I do exactly what they say in the most efficient way possible.
Besides carrying the foul fluid, I massage the heads and the feet of the three women as they work and talk idly amongst themselves. It’s a degrading, humiliating task but I am used to being degraded, I am used to being humiliated, and I am used to all this stuff. That doesn’t make it any less hard to take. It’s not a comfort. But at least I can keep my thoughts to myself.
And keep them to myself I do. I stay meek and humble and obedient and subservient. And I do whatever they say, keeping my emotions hidden down deep, deep at the core of myself, where they will never be able to see. It’s hard and it hurts. It’s so hard and it hurts so much. But I get a dark sense of joy at knowing that these women will not win.
At first the women do not let me out of their sight, unless I’m fetching water. For such a long time, maybe years, they do not let me out of their sight. They sleep in turns, one of them always idly watching over me. But I pretend to not complain. I pretend to not be seething with schemes. Schemes that I don’t even understand fully myself.
Eventually they let me have a little bit more rein to do what I want. By that I mean they let me disappear into the fog when they don’t want me for anything, as long as I stay within shouting distance. They even sleep all together now, on their downfeathered mattresses on their canopy beds. They mostly ignore me, and let me sleep on the ground. Which is incredibly difficult because of the poison everywhere.
Except, I’ve been going without sleep for most of my life. I can take it. And I can take the time to go exploring and see what is going on with this strange world.
The colours move and shift around me as I trudge my way through the poison. This place hurts. It’s a constant, droning hurt that gets into your bones and leaves you aching, leaves you ground down. It doesn’t just hurt physically. There is a devastating quality to it, to the gloom all around. But what is much more devastating is the role they have me fill.
I find a loom, platinum and shining in the fog. It is enormous. Old-timey. This must be the weaving instrument that the ladies were talking about. Which means that their tapestry is not far behind.
I follow the loom back, and what I see horrifies me beyond description.
On a finite piece of fabric about twice as wide as I am tall, there is an infinite amount of detail. There are images of the Empire, rolling out over the galaxy. Images of the Emperor and his family in their luxurious palace. Images of the other Imperials in their own luxurious homes. And of course, images of the slaves toiling away, on all the habitable planets of the galaxy, living their lives with the constant torture of work plaguing all their days.
There are so, so many small, infinitely grave injustices woven into the fabric. Children being taken from their families. People dying before their time. Which most slaves do. People being executed. Being tortured. Uprooted slaves missing their homes. Jagged ends of prayers half remembered, ancient stories lost to centuries of colonialism.
The threads are softly shining in bright colours, like a massacre, showing each and every person’s unjust fate, showing each and every devastation and disturbance that each person has felt. I follow the tapestry backwards, along its platinum frame, going backwards in time through history. I pass by the depiction of baby me getting picked up by the Emperor, amidst screaming and blood and the carnage of war crimes.
I eventually get to a spot in the tapestry where there is a large break. There are decades worth of historical events that are just … missing. I guess that this was another time when they had to stop their weaving in order to spin. That makes sense, since from what I remember, the events of the missing decades were glorious events. There was resistance membership and resistance action to such a great extent that it was unlike any other decade. There was literally an open rebellion, until that rebellion got quashed. The dismantling of the rebellion, the people being tortured in scores, that is on the tapestry. The glory before the horror, though, is not.
This means that the almost-won rebellion happened without the interference of the weavers. It happened when the weavers were not able to weave. When they were not able to control the way destiny worked, control it towards the Empire’s favour. However, what happened afterwards, the bloody capture of majority of the resistance members, that was absolutely the doing of the weavers, it was absolutely painted into their web.
If the rebellion I planted the seeds of is to take root, if it is to grow, if it is to bloom, then I will have to get rid of these ladies. I have spent years and years of my life planning for the victory of my people. Not just me but so, so many people have spent years and years of their lives planning for it, preparing for it. All the slaves in the whole galaxy over have been hoping and praying for it for all their lives.
I have to make this plan succeed. I don’t know how. But I have to make it succeed. I do not only carry my own hopes and dreams with me. I carry the hopes and dreams, the needs and wants, the joys and love of all the slaves. I carry their sorrows and their torments. Their hopelessness and their yearning. I carry all my people with me, just as they all carry me with them. We all carry each other. And it is my duty to make all of this worth something.
I go back before the ladies wake up in their plush beds. I pretend that I have been sleeping all along, on the soggy, cold, poisoned ground. And I greet them in my standard meek, subservient greeting. They give me the bucket and once again I am off on my chore, like I have been so, so many times. My lungs ache, my back aches, my muscles cramp up. But I have to keep going because I have to keep going and I don’t really have any other choice.
But once again, when the ladies are sleeping, I sneak back to the tapestry. I keep myself very cognizant of the time as I look through all the different scenes twisting before my eyes. The entire history of the Empire, in all the hundreds of years that it has been alive, with chunks of about forty years missing here and there. It is depraved. It is twisted. The Imperials are woven in the colours of glory. It reminds me of the twisted history books I have watched in my childhood.
Eventually I get to the end of the tapestry. And, strangely enough, it is not the beginning of history that the cloth stops at but rather the time when the seeds of conquest were first planted into the hearts of the Empire’s Home Planet. So that is apparently when these beings came into power. Their power and the Empire’s power are directly correlated, to the point where I don’t quite know which started the other. Another reason to bring these women down, however I can.
But how will I do it? I have no idea. But no matter. I have to find a way. I have to find a way and I know that I can find a way.
I go back to the ladies and pretend to be asleep. The purple one screams at me to wake me up, and I do not show any aggression towards her in return. I keep all my aggression carefully hidden under lock and key in the most secret parts of my mind, just as I have had to do for most of my life. And I do their work. Like during all of these very many never ending days, I do their work. And I keep all of my complaints carefully, secretly hidden away inside of myself.
The next time that the women are asleep, I go exploring.
Once again, I keep close track of time, making sure that I have enough time to get back, before they wake up. They always wake up at the same time, though I guess time doesn’t really exist in this place with no sun, and I always get back before they even stir. It is good for me that they are on such a well-kept schedule. It gives me the opportunity to learn things. I know that I might lose my luck one day, that they might find out that I’ve been going off one day, but I have an explanation prepared for in case that happens.
Right now, I need to learn more about this world. I need to learn what is where, what tools I could possibly have at my disposal, what weapons are available for me to use, what starting materials I could potentially create things out of. And I need to figure out what dangers and obstacles lurk around in this world, what other horrors could be helping the ladies, what other dangers I need to make myself aware of.
And so I walk through the poison. And like always, it stings with each step. All around me, there are the sleeping dead. Body after body after body after body. Strewn about like corpses on a battlefield. I try my best to avoid them, to give them at least some modicum of the respect they deserve. They look almost dead. And I guess they are dead. I guess we’re all dead. But they don’t look quite dead. They look like seeds waiting to be planted, a small part of me thinks.
I go north. And all around me there are wastelands of poison and fog. All around me there are armies of corpses. All around me there is nothing but death and decay. I go back to the women. The next day I go north again, except faster this time, passing by the places I have already been to with great speed and only slowing down when I get to a new place I haven’t explored before. But no matter how far north I go, there is nothing but for poisonous liquid and poisonous fog.
And so I go south. One “night” I journey south. And another “night.” And another “night.” And many nights after that. Just as I spent many nights going north. There is nothing there to the south as well. Nothing except for all the hopelessness that was in the north. Part of me wants to give up hope. Part of me thinks that this is all that there is in this world, that there is nothing that can help me. But I argue against that part. I tell myself that no matter what, even if all I have are my own two hands, I can and will destroy what these ladies are setting out to create. Whatever it takes.
I go back and I do my work. And it’s both harder and easier to keep your emotions in check when you know, when you know that you are on the verge of something vengeful, on the verge of something beautiful. This is a feeling that I have felt before. A feeling that I know too well. Happiness is so much easier to hide than sorrow.
I wait until the ladies are sleeping, and I rouse myself from my own slumber, silently and secretly. And I start going east. The one direction I haven’t gone in yet. The one direction that holds promise within it still. I am jittery with excitement and I am besides myself with worry. I have to tell myself to slow down and pay attention to everything that is all around me, everything that is hidden by the tinted fog.
There is nothing there. At least nothing that I find during the first venture. I tell myself to not give up. There is still so much that I haven’t explored yet. There are still such far distances that I haven’t covered. So much that I haven’t seen. I can’t let the jittery nervousness get the best of me. I can’t let the implications my mind is dwelling on overcome me.
It is my fourth time seeking off out east when my foot submerges itself into something. I cry out in surprise, as all I can see is the fog that I’ve always seen before and the poison underneath it. But this time underneath the poison. My foot sinks into something sweet. Something beautiful. Something calm and cool and flowing with life and healing, flowing with energy and serenity and a motherliness that was once foreign to me.
It’s water. It’s water! It’s actually real water! Something that is more than the destruction and the desecration and the wastes all around me. Something that can cleanse and purify even the worst of contamination. Something that can bring life to the most wilted, drooping plants. Something that can submerge even the driest, most cracked grounds.
I bend down, and sink both of my hands into the water. It is so sweet. So sweet. Flowing with life force and holiness and divinity. I know, right there and then, in my heart of hearts, that this is the thing that can bring the weaver ladies down. This is the being that can cleanse their corruption from this world. All I need to do is to find out how to get the water to them.
I rush back, my steps carrying me as quickly as I can. And I do my work for the day. But the next day, I go west. I go in the direction that I always have to go in order to get water. But I do not go far. I simply go farther than the ladies ever go, out into the fog where they cannot find me. And I kneel down into the stinging poison. Trying to ignore the pain, I think about all the people who I owe so much to, who I want to do so much for. And I claw my fingers into the ground and dig.
I keep digging and I keep digging. And over the course of several sleep cycles, the hole that I created is big enough to hold a bucket of water. I look at my work. Work made of terror and sacrifice, but work made of love and rebellion all the same. I look at my work. At the hope I have created here, away from all malevolent eyes. And I smile.
The next time when the ladies are sleeping, I go north, just out of the possible viewing range of the ladies. And I start digging again. Over the course of the next several sleep cycles, I dig another large hole, which quickly fills with poison just like the hole before it. But no matter, that does not matter. What does matter is that the water sinks down deeper than the poison. And it will sink down deeper than the poison and into the hole.
When this hole is done, I go east. And I keep going east again and again for months, digging hole after hole after hole after hole. It is painful. It is so painful. But I am used to work that is painful. I am used to painful work that is far more emotionally desecrating than this. At least this work is only physically painful, it is emotionally empowering. Which I much prefer over work that is not physically painful but is emotionally degrading. But still, I deserve neither. Everyone deserves neither. Especially when the physically painful is always emotionally degrading as well. Except not this time.
“Massage my feet,” the emerald one demanded after she wakes up. Without complaint I do as she asks. And I bite my tongue. After I am done I massage the red one’s feet. And the purple one. I fetch false water for them. And I watch the threads soaking up the false water. They have a decent amount of thread now. A few more years and they will be ready to once again begin weaving. This would be horrifying. I need to act on my plan soon.
I wait until they are sleeping, and I get up from under the poison that I am submerged in. I take a heaving breath, and wince as it burns in my lungs. I softly pad away from the women, making sure not to splash the liquid around me. I am always careful. I always have to be careful. This time I take the bucket with me, and I go off east.
I rush as fast as I can once I am away from the women. I have to get all the way to the water. And I have to get all the way back. I almost trip over a few of the sleeping dead, and I whisper apologies to them under my breath. The bucket, as always, is cumbersome in my arms but I carry it with as much finesse I can manage, which to be honest is not much.
I finally get to the water, to the real water, and I submerge my bucket into it. It fills up with clear, cool, good water. And, strangely enough, instead of becoming heavier it feels lighter in my arms. I smile. Everything is coming into place. I just have to wait for a few more days. Just a few more days. And then. Then everything will fall into place.
I empty the bucket into the most eastern of the holes I made, and then I rush back. The next “night” I take the water out from the hole. I dip my finger in it to make sure that it’s still pure. And it is. It is! It’s just as pure as the first glorious day when I dipped my hands in the water. This is good. This is so good.
My mind is almost singing as I bite down my ire and do the tasks that the three ladies tell me to do. I bring them what they call water and kneel at their feet and my joy becomes tainted, becomes tainted with powerlessness and degradation. But still, it doesn’t matter how much the women degrade me. I’m not powerless. I’m not. And they will see. They’ll see.
Over the next few days I bring the true, pure water closer and closer to the women. After I have transferred it through all the holes in the east, I transfer it to the hole in the north. And then the west. And then finally, finally it is time to carry out the moment of truth.
“Boy!” the red one tells at me, “fetch the water!”
“Of course, ma’am,” I tell her meekly. I take up the bucket and walk toward the west, my whole being buzzing with excitement, to the point where it almost lessens the pain. Almost. Not quite.
When I reach the lake with the false, corrupted water, I do not dip my bucket in. I simply smirk and turn back around. I take the bucket and clamber back, at the same pace that I always go at.
I’m afraid. So very afraid that it sits like a stone in my gut and squeezes my throat, making it hard to breathe. My excitement also makes it hard to breathe. I feel like I am full of electricity, in the best way and in the worst way. I know that whatever happens next will either make or break me, or will either make of break every single person that I care about.
And there are so, so many people that I care about.
I finally reach the western hole where I placed the good, clean water a day earlier. It is still there, thank the universe, and I can dip my bucket in and fill it with the sweet, cool liquid. I walk back to the ladies, as if nothing is amiss.
“I have the water,” I speak to them, submissively.
“Well then, give it to us,” the emerald one demands.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say.
But instead of handing them the bucket, I wind up and throw the water onto all of them. First, they are so shocked that they can’t move, they can’t react. But as the water hits them, they start screaming in agony as they melt away. Their skin melts away as if corroded in acid. Their blood flows down, horrible and red, as their flesh melts away into a sickening slurry. Their bones melt. And all that is left of them are three brightly coloured puddles.
I feel sick. But I know what I must do next.
I take my bucket and set out east, now that there is no one to stop me. I take another bucketful of water, of real water, and I go to the tapestry. I rip the tapestry off of its frame and I soak it, bunch by bunch, into my bucket of water until it all dissolves away into nothingness.
Finally all that is left is the loom, and the spinning wheels, and the beds and thrones. I take up buckets of water and I dissolve these things too.
I am left all alone in the fog. And I’m free. I’m free. I’m finally free. Not only that, but the whole galaxy is free. Our destiny now belongs to better forces than these three ladies. Our destiny now belongs to love. I start to cry.
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