PodCastle 567: The Weaver Retires (Artemis Rising) - a podcast by Escape Artists, Inc

* Author : Kai Hudson

* Narrator : Jen R. Albert

* Host : Summer Fletcher

* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh

* Artist : Yuumei

*

Discuss on Forums







PodCastle 567: The Weaver Retires (Artemis Rising) is a PodCastle original.





Content warnings for domestic abuse and fatphobia.





PG-13, for needles and blackest thread.

The Weaver Retires

by Kai Hudson

They come from all over: exotic, far-off places with names Weisa can barely pronounce. Australia. Japan. Venezuela. Last week, some alien-sounding place called Pen-sil-vay-ni-yah.

Her grandson Ashti says they come because she’s famous. She’s on the Internet, he tells her, this great big place like a temple in the air, full of books and magazines anyone can read at any time. Apparently someone wrote about her a few months ago, and that’s why people come.

She doesn’t mind it so much. They break up the monotony of the day, when she comes back from feeding the pigs or killing cockroaches with her sandals to find yet another foreigner sitting awkwardly with Ashti inside the hut. Today it is one of the ones with skin like someone dusted him with bread flour, with a balding head and damp patches decorating his brightly-colored shirt. A fat woman presumably his wife slumps in Ashti’s usual chair, fanning herself with her hat. Ashti has politely moved to the floor.

“Ah, Ima,” her grandson says, rising upon her entrance. The foreigners don’t move. “We have visitors.”

She’s always amused when he uses that word. When Weisa was little, visitors meant aunts and cousins from the next village over, or perhaps traders from afar, their donkeys laden with bright plastic toys and exotic candies that burst like bubbles of honey on her tongue. If they were really lucky, visitors meant a small group of slightly bedraggled people, lean and dusty from travel, who smiled with gaps in their teeth and offered, in exchange for food and lodging, her absolute favorite thing: stories.

The weavers, as they were called, were a spectacle throughout the village. A visit from them meant hot food and laughter shared late into the night, music and dancing around roaring bonfires. And, of course, the stories. Flashes of light and threads of darkness twisting through the air like errant snakes, setting their hearts afire with tales of brave warriors and faraway battles, great floods and seasons of bountiful harvest. If Weisa had been very good, her mother would let her have a story, and many a time she would fall asleep in an adult’s lap as dawn broke over the horizon, dizzy with the magic in her skin.

Weisa nods at her grandson and starts across the hut, intending to fetch the small cookie tin sitting next to her sleeping mat. The white man, however, heaves himself up with much effort and stands in her way to jam his hand forward. He smiles and says, “Hah-lo-ai-muh-but,” which she assumes is a greeting in his language.

She smiles back and shakes his hand. It’s greasy with sweat and he squeezes too hard, making her knuckles ache, but she makes sure not to show it on her face. They’ve journeyed very far to see her; she doesn’t want to make them uncomfortable. The man’s wife stops fanning long enough to bark something at her husband, but doesn’t seem able to summon energy for much more than that. The man nods and lifts the heavy camera hanging from around his neck,

Further episodes of PodCastle

Further podcasts by Escape Artists, Inc

Website of Escape Artists, Inc