The Pinches Make Perfect
by S. A. Ferguson
Her spools had been unraveled, pinch by pinch. Her master had assured that. And so she lay upon the dark gray cobblestone floor, a heap of useless threads. From these rubbery threads, there seeped gentle streams of light pink fluid. Some of the streams were starting to drip, some insistent, some lethargic. All of them began to drain over the textured cement mortar toward a sink in the floor that she could not see.
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Pfiffer wondered as she lay there what her mother would have said. Her mother, whom she had only known for a year, would have scoffed with delicate scorn that only Pfiffer would have noticed as searing.
“Surely, truly, a mistake has been made,” she would have said. “The Spindle Masters can see when a Bitter has been negligent.”
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Her mother had performed her work as mentor, one of the best in the village, but it had done little. When Pfiffer had met with her mother for the first time, she had known that her mother’s mentorship would not be enough. She knew her mother had known, too. Pfiffer had entered her mother’s cottage on that first day and her mother had stared at her, scoffed, then didn’t speak to her until the following day.
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The Bitters, regardless of quality, were called such because their flesh in the form of threads of flexible carbon and polymer composites were acidic to the taste. Each time a group of threads were tied off by a master, he would take the ends in his mouth. His saliva mixed with the threads produced an adhesive that sealed the ends and made the spooling easier.
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Pfiffer remembered the scrunching of her master’s face as he had licked the ends of each of her fingers where knots were made. His head, patched with thick hair the color of the stone floor, had drawn back as his mouth oppositely pulled his lips forward into a tight clamp.
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Her goal had been to become one of the Elongated Bitters, who were favored by the masters and men for their full spectrum flesh tones and stark white bone spools. They took the perfect female form with their tight knots in all the right places of nose, belly button, finger tips, toe tips, knees, and nipples. The majority of the nerves were concentrated at these knots. The full seven colors in every shade crisscrossed at the spine and back of the head. The bone spools upon their heads allowed reeling for fine, expert adjustments. They were the woven masterpieces of a new species, which drew inspiration from the extinct other half of the men’s species.
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Near the beginning of recorded time, it had been decided that reproduction would be more efficient and less bothersome if half of the species duplicated itself. Through the use of specialized tinctures that activated and enhanced reproductive chemistries, the men could draw from their side bodies the image of themselves. The process involved two major pain events: the initial reforming and moving of the person’s insides and the stretching, dislodging birth itself about a month later. It was a temporary pain that produced fast, lasting results.
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Breeding with another body stopped. The other half of the species became obsolete. This half was not given the tinctures, and the few who stole them and took them did not survive. This half subsequently died off, conflict surrounding the selection of reproductive partners dying along with them. The village saw peace for a few years.
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Then the infighting began. Neighbors began to steal from neighbors and sons began to kill their fathers, images killing their own images. The duplicates and their duplications became fit with rage, with each other and with themselves. They did not know why.
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Some of the wiser men recognized that a balance had been disturbed and a gentler species was needed to resume that balance. These men, the first masters, developed the first of the Bitters. From the ground, they extracted coal and oils to create and spin threads. They dyed the threads with plant matter. From the bones of the women who had died, they shaped and fortified the spools. The former lives of these elements gave the Bitters their graceful movements and voices.
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As the process was perfected, each man would be given many Bitters, for their delicate feel and movements swayed the men toward peace. Their colors among the men’s gray bodies delighted. Their perfect threads seemed to orchestrate a perfect balance among the men.
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Pfiffer was not one of Elongated Bitters, the supreme pacifiers, who displayed every color. Pfiffer’s threads were each a different shade in a stunted spectrum of dark red to dark green. She lacked the shorter wavelengths of blue, indigo, and violet. The spools of bone atop her head, instead of stark white, were off-white or pinkish-brown and brittle at the ends.
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The other differences had been subtle at first, as she and her mother had watched a thread fade or had picked free a loose spool or two or pinched off a few pills. They had guessed, without sharing a word on it, that Pfiffer was a Stunted Bitter. Stunted Bitters were not highly ranked, but they were passible and could remain in the village. With luck, that’s what she would be named on her Blooming Day.
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Blooming Days were mandatory celebrations. Leading up to the event, every Bitter remained indoors by her own choice. The sun could bleach. The rain could smear. Color was not the entire focus of Bitter maintenance, but it was a priority. The cottages in which the pre-bloomed Bitter lived were regularly inspected. Edges were rounded and softened, as wooden furniture and household tools would grow on their own from the trees that were removed from the forest. These things were alive with ready growth, but to the Bitters, they were natural threats. An accidental trip or sway of the hip could cut or fray the master’s precious work.
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Pfiffer had remained in bed for the month before. There would be no more maintenance from her master, and the Blooming Day was the final test. The frays and blemishes she noticed might be the unraveling of her as it was. It made no difference if the men and masters noticed.
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During the ceremony, the bone spools atop the Bitter’s head would be tightened to demonstrate the strength and finesse of the master’s work. With the final adjustments, the colors and the textures would fall into perfect alignment like well-tempered instrument strings. The newly matured Bitter would shine like the First Bitter of Perpetual Suspension, and the other Bitters and the men would rejoice.
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On her Blooming Day, all the Bitters had whispered and all the men had stared. Pfiffer mounted the platform with a meticulous but delicate step to where the Spindle Masters stood, swathed in white robes. Pfiffer puffed out air as her spools were tightened. Her porcelain eyes stared directly ahead, unseeing the mountains beyond, as three of the masters bobbed their heads austerely in a full, touchless scan, intoning the scriptures. There were the verses that only the masters spoke, and then the refrains that the men spoke and the other Bitters repeated.
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The final liturgy resounded:
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The light is too harsh alone. We stand in need of balance.
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Love is the highest goal. (Love is the highest goal.)
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The colors divide the light and give us the space to grow.
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Love is the highest goal. (Love is the highest goal.)
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The shade is not enough. The colors make us whole.
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Love is the highest goal. (Love is the highest goal.)
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In the echoes of the village’s supplication, Pfiffer was declared a dull sight. A Bitter of unsatisfactory status that must be recycled immediately.
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The declaration from the Grand Spindle Master activated a slow precipitation of murmurs, which dissipated as the crowd returned to their homes. Her mother, an Elongated Bitter Exemplary, elegantly rolled her head to the side as she shrugged, and continued in the direction of her immaculate head, following the others. The men returned to their bulbous dwellings with their Bitters in the valley. The pre-bloomed Bitters went to their tree-based cottages pressed into the hillside, whispering so that Pfiffer could hear that they would never be so negligent and that their Blooming Days would be celebrated.
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Pfiffer walked with the men down the valley for a final stop at her master’s dwelling. By tradition, her master had not been present at her Blooming Day. She reached up to the stone clapper shaped like an upside-down triangle with a ring drooping from two sides. Pfiffer paused, knotted hand clasping nothing and then the clapper ring. With a single thwack, she brought the clapper down.
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The master sighed through the door. “I supposed so,” he said, and thrust the door open. “I’m sick of failure,” he hissed, pressing her across the threshold by her bony head, as her chin creased into her chest.
“It’s good to recycle. You know that, dear,” he said as he took her by the arms. Grunting, he lifted her onto the table. “Although, your threads have seen too many cycles, and the next Bitter won’t be any better.” He sighed. “Can’t afford new thread, though. The fate of a mediocre master.”
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She shivered, her seasoned nerves forgetting the usual temperature. As he bit the first knot free on her index finger, she said, “You’re not sorry?”
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He spit the knot to the floor over his shoulder and turned back with a flared nose and pinched eyes. “Sorry?”
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She cast down her eyes. “It’s just—you worked hard. But so did I.”
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He bit the next knot free. Every knot freed stunted her feeling.
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He lifted his head again, and she felt the heat from his face radiating in her direction. “I—I didn’t do much, I suppose,” she admitted.
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“You didn’t do anything. You only followed the customs. That takes no skill.”
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Pfiffer slouched as the knots on her chest were freed, her head coming down against his shoulder with soft malleability. He pushed her with a flutter of his lanky fingers to the side and her upper body caved into itself. The knots had resisted this natural compression of the material. Her hips, legs, and feet held firm.
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The spools that had topped her head, now loosened, were removed. She heard them clatter into a basket at the head of the table. Clack. Clack-clack. Clack.
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The rhythm was a revised heartbeat. She had heard one once. The master had leaned her head against his chest as he had adjusted the crossing threads down her back and had adjusted her spools. When he’d finished, his hands had dropped to the sides, knocking onto the table. He had stood, and she had leaned, like that for a long time.
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As he removed the spools, she felt the budding impact of separation, passing through her with every clack.
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Soon after the master released the last knot of her last pinky toe, the sounding cone cackled and cracked in the far wall. He had begun untwisting and pulling her legs into parallel strands between his fingers. Flicking her from those thin knuckles, he went to the sounding cone and leaned partway to the inset megaphone shape that stretched narrow into the ground.
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“Yes?” he inquired. A pause. “Indeed. Indeed, a loss—but…Oh—oh, no—I—I see…Yes, Master. I will be there by noon.” Another pause. “Please, sir, that’s—yes, you’re correct—the—the soonest I can. Yes, sir.”
The request had seemed important enough for him to warn her not to move. She hadn’t planned to anyway. Perhaps the Spindle Masters had changed their minds.
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As her fluids had continued to drip onto the table from her thinly spread threads, Pfiffer had resisted the few thoughts that had neared her. A thought of her mother, perfect and carrying on with her life. A thought of Bitter school, and the instruction to always turn your spools clockwise every morning and night, not too far, just until you felt the upward pull in your toes. A thought of the giant, ancient tree on the hillside. She had always wanted to visit that tree, but couldn’t because she had been occupied with thread-keeping.
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Pfiffer had drawn her flatness, the vague shape of what she was, into a loose ball. Rotating her threads in a wheel of tangles and frays, she had moved herself to the table’s edge.
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Among her pinching and unpinching threads, she hit the floor. The fall seemed further than expected, but she suffered no bruise or break. With a puff, she sank into the stone with little resistance. The light pink fluid began to run.
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No longer a near perfect form, she splayed out rotation by rotation. If the master had seen her turn like that, he might have seen nebulous remnants of a nose or a leg, imagining them in jumbled patterns. Some parts pointed forward and other parts pointed backward as she rotated toward the door. In his rush, the master had left it cracked, creating a monolith containing every color: the dull white illumination of the overcast sky.
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The cool, seasonless air chilled her without her feeling it and the bright sky with nondirectional light was a great blur in her sightless vision.
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Fluids streaking across the stone in skids, she would soon be hard to trace. Most of them had emptied inside the master’s shop. Lingering feeling evaporated with the lost fluid, trace nerves in her threads upholding her. The world was pressure and shapeless light.
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The tree was on the hill west of the master’s cottage. Pfiffer lolloped left from the door.
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The wind stirred the branches of white bark into a rolling effort, leaves spinning like a wrist turning a key that fits but doesn’t tumble the lock. A bird whistled low and long. Another responded with two high-pitched chirps. The first bird did not respond. Then it did. These movements of air came to her in waves of pressure. The waves produced no concept and meant everything. Pressure must mean movement.
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Movement did not happen in this way in the village. It was methodical and meticulous, even among the men. The movement here was chaos, the waves of pressure darting toward her and away, enveloping her. Pfiffer could rotate and shake, and these were the only ways she manifested her anxiety, which she clung to the harder she lolloped up and down.
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Pfiffer realized that she might need to hide until dusk. Were they to search for her, the first signs of dusk would abruptly cancel the search until morning. Kempters roamed the forest at night. Kempters were demons.
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Pfiffer decided not to waste time waiting for either the Kempters or the men. Hopefully she wouldn’t be spotted, and she’d be able to reach the tree if only for a few moments. She fell into a tumble, taking the curves of the shallow hills as her momentum.
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The final crest to the tree’s hill was steep. She slowed. She rolled back into the trough, pooling tighter together. With clenching, muscular-like power, she wound from loose pool into tight ball. The night dampened her circumference and cloaked her like the world when it was shadowed by the massive gaseous planet that it revolved around.
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This giant yellowish orb in the sky was said to watch the Bitters with indifference. Pfiffer had been told to ignore it. Don’t even look up, for it might become irritated at your seeking attention.
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She didn’t think of the gas giant as she lie there, balled in the small valley. What she had not been allowed to see could not be seen by her anyway. Pfiffer balled tighter against the cold, which she knew by the way her threads stiffened.
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Morning arrived and Pfiffer splattered the frost out in portioned flicks in a circle. She relaxed into a pool again; her threads sighed, allowing air to puff in and out. A breathing without lungs, a life without breath.
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With jerking rotations, her threads reached for the slope. She climbed past a few bending trees before a clump of those threads stretched and failed to grasp the next root. The other clumps of her, stiff and empty of liquid, grappled for other roots and failed. She skidded to a stop near the bottom of the slope.
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Pfiffer no longer thought about being found. What alone continued to drive her was the tree, the tree she could not, but had to, reach. Had she been motivated by fear, she might have tried climbing faster. She might think about how she’d be returned to the master and he would sneer with leathery cheeks and say, “No Bitter runs from me. All the Bitters know their place. So will you.” But this thought did not occur.
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She could not distinguish the approaching scraping of leathery feet from the other pressure waves that surrounded her. Pfiffer thought that a wind might be taking her as she was lifted, clump by clump, and placed into a cloth sack with pockets lining the inside. Within the pockets were solid, narrow bars that rubbed against her and irritated her threads into a deeper tangle. She wondered briefly if she had landed in a trap of roots, but the supposed roots were moving, their bob somewhat irregular, stopping for a few minutes every so often.
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Her bindings, roots or not, were warm and close. Reasoning was forgotten. Pfiffer relaxed, pooling.
She awoke to a new series of pressure waves. Another lifting. Another setting down, this time with more room to sprawl. New, undefined light.
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An intense pressure, like a series of thin iron branches, inserted into her threads. From that intense pressure, which wasn’t painful but was invasive, there sparked a sound.
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“You are a brave one, running away like that after being loosened,” said a man’s voice. The voice came to her through the iron-like branches; vibrations from his chest passed through his fingers and into her.
Pfiffer could hear. No, she could understand these words. As they registered, her fear returned. She had failed to reach the tree. How foolish she’d been to think that the roots of other trees had cared when she had cared only for the one. How foolish to think that any part of nature would look down on her with anything but annoyance. Loosened Bitters were useless, burdensome things.
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“I leave you to the Kempters. Of the Tri-Weavers,” the man said.
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The sound dissolved as the iron-like branches were removed and she was lifted again, this time placed into a bin that allowed her to sprawl perhaps a foot in any direction.
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Pfiffer rolled about violently in the bin. The Kempters were the underground spirits known to steal threads and plant tumorous rocks inside the Bitters. The rocks would stretch slowly until threads began breaking, and one too many broken inner threads and you would bend in half, your nerves hopelessly dangling from your hips. Your legs were the only things that functioned after that. The master might as well unspool you and start over.
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Pfiffer had no legs left to care about, but the Kempters would break apart the remaining mass of her and sell her back to the masters at a steep price. She would be recycled after all, but at a greater inconvenience. The village’s disappointment in her would deepen, should they recognize the recycled remains as hers.
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Pfiffer vibrated with dry, spluttering force, her threads grasping at the smooth inner walls. Another multi-pronged branch of pressure entered her and she heard a female voice say, “I know you’re scared. I’m giving you something to relax.”
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The bin filled with the pressure of liquid, sloshing gently around Pfiffer’s threads. She loosened. The vague light darkened into blackness.
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Pfiffer opened her eyes. Sight like sand that smoothed between granules wrapped the front of her head. Her old vision had been derived from two small porcelain balls placed closely together that had given her faded sets of pixelated images. Colors and shadows were now vibrant, the wall to her left greener than the lake next to the village had looked before. She wondered how such color could be extracted, replicated, and made richer.
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Pfiffer inhaled sharply and sat up at the emergence of sound, assaulting her head like the color. Someone was singing. Faint noises were heard among the resonant tones of what she recognized as the Kempter’s voice. Others were singing, too. The harmonies were dissonant but smoothly strung together.
Pfiffer looked down and blinked once, uncomprehending. She felt warm as she lie in a softly padded bed. She flung the worn blanket aside. Bending at the waist, she stretched for a pair of bare feet. She pinched each of the toes, and they responded with dull pain through the rest of her body. Her body. But not her body.
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Pfiffer bunched the bottom of the woolen sweater she wore and jerked it up her chest. Her hand roamed with light patting, then aggressive rubbing. Instead of finely broken lines of rainbow colors, she was a solid shade of gray.
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Pfiffer was thread no more.
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She cried out with a long, shaking shriek as she tumbled to the floor. On her knees, she drew her hands to her face. The tips of her fingers were smooth, no knots to be found. Her skin, sleek where it had been faintly ridged, was a kaleidoscope of tiny fragments.
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A fire was rushing through every curve and knotless tip of her. Heat such as this and subtle shifts in it could not be replicated for any Bitter. Fluids remained cold or lukewarm, efficiently fueling the movement of the Bitter’s body. With a shaking hand, Pfiffer wiped the sweat from her forehead. She wiped again. The fluid coming from her was clear. She gasped and stumbled into a stand, still staring at her wet hand.
Pfiffer ran from the room and found herself in a wide, half-circular room fit with patchwork cushions and wooden chairs. Directly ahead, a fire crackled on the long hearth.
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“Fire!” she cried, “Fire!” She began to run back and forth to the doors at the ends of the room.
As she passed the center of the room for the fifth time, she stopped. Her throat and ears hurt, both unaccustomed to the volume of her voice. She finally noticed a person sitting to the left side of the hearth, someone whose skin was a little darker than hers now was.
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This person smiled. “Welcome, Pfiffer.”
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“You know my name.”
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“Every Kempter knows the names of those she helps.”
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The Kempter stood and stretched her tight, gray arms upward. Pfiffer stood solidly still, the undercurrent of heat within her rising and thickening at the sight of what she had been told was a demon, who was relaxed and soft-looking and who regarded her without the hunger of malintent that Pfiffer had been told was characteristic of them.
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“The fire…” Pfiffer whispered, pointing weakly at the hearth.
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“Keeps us warm,” the Kempter said, placing a hand on Pfiffer’s shoulder. “Come. Dinner has been waiting for you, and I’m guessing you’re hungry?”
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Pfiffer released the tension that had built in her upper body and blinked. “The pain in my stomach. Is that hunger?” In a gasp, she pulled at her abdomen, stretching the skin out horizontally to both sides, then twisting it vertically as far as it would go. She pinched the skin below that, and down to the crease between her thighs. “Where does the fluid go?”
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Smiling widely, the Kempter wrapped her arm around her and led her into the room to the right. As they sat across from one another at the table, Pfiffer was picking at the skin around her eyes and mouth. “Where does it go?” She stuck a finger in her mouth and gagged on it.
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The Kempter laughed. “All the fluids inside of you change themselves. Anything left over and your body gets rid of it on its own. You drink water, you eat food, and your new body takes care of it. You’ll see.”
“Water? But that’s poison!”
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“Not anymore.”
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“But I’ll fade, I’ll break—”
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“You’ll thrive.”
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Pfiffer wasn’t sure what this meant, but she decided to try the fuel sources on the plate before her. She pointed at the plate and asked, “This goes—inside?”
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“Yes,” the Kempter replied as she demonstrated, taking bread between her fingers, placing it in her mouth, and chewing. “You will have to eat now, every day. As well as drink. This will require that you learn how to hunt and scavenge.”
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“That’s impossible for me. I’ve never been to men’s school.”
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“Try the fruit.”
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Pfiffer plucked up a bulbous blue piece of fruit that filled her palm and stared at it from below and above. She paused with the fruit outside of her mouth, then widened her lips around it. Gingerly, she bit into it and began to chew, some of the juice escaping out one corner of her mouth. She wiped the juice hurriedly and licked her fingers.
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A sigh released itself from her. Pfiffer closed her eyes. The tartness and sweetness she couldn’t name was what taste was like. She finished the piece of fruit, its streams like rapids down her arm.
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“I’m like the men, now,” Pfiffer said, frowning at her arm as she wiped it with her leafy napkin. “They have skin like this.”
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“They do. The colors were a distraction. As were the other parts of you. It could be said that your entire body in that state held the purpose of a distraction. A distraction from your interior, what saved you from being recycled, Pfiffer.”
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“But the colors were beautiful. I was beautiful,” she said, not knowing why there was a burst of fluids coming from her eyes or why it both hurt and relieved her. “I wasn’t perfect, but I was beautiful.”
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“You are beautiful.”
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“You say that because you made me,” Pfiffer whispered, her lip trembling as she dared to look into the Kempter’s broad gray face.
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“The master’s work was not what saved you, Pfiffer. It was not I who saved you, either.”
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“I don’t understand.”
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“You remade yourself, with a little help. You made the escape with what was left of that prison of threads. But you are, and always have been, more than those threads. Never again will you need to be touched by the hands of a master. In a sense, I am the last master you’ll need, but I don’t own you. No one owns you.”
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Pfiffer slouched and picked at her matte gray skin. “You have to make me thread again.”
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“I will not.”
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Pfiffer dropped her elbows to the table and sobbed into her hands. “You are a demon! You’re cruel! You made me as ugly as you!”
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“Which is more hideous: your new appearance or the abuse of the masters?”
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“I don’t know what that word means,” Pfiffer replied, sniffling as she picked up another bulbous blue fruit and nibbled on it.
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“It is the only way you have ever been treated, before you came here.”
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Pfiffer blinked rapidly as she considered this. “I was—”
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“Loved? Adored? That’s what they told you, yes?”
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Pfiffer nodded.
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“And then they de-threaded you.”
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“They de-threaded me because they loved me.”
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“They deemed you worthless,” she said, narrowing her nearly black eyes.
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“Someone who loves you has the right to say that. And do that. It’s the way of compassion. ‘The worthless will be made whole again through the master’s fine hands of compassion’,” she quoted from the Principles of the World, which the masters had recited by rote at her Blooming Day. It had been an honor to hear the masters hum this doctrine, then individually kiss her on the nose.
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The Kempter shook her head.
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“That’s what it says, though,” Pfiffer said assuredly with a nod. “It is the way of things. The mother I had was a Bitter Exemplary, and she was a good teacher.”
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“I must ask something of you, Pfiffer. I must ask you to stay with us for the remainder of the year. Will you do that?”
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Pfiffer stared down at her hands as tears rimmed her eyes. Her hands still looked fractured, though they were whole. Nothing about her looked uniform. A demon had weaved her into imperfection. A demon owned her. Pfiffer nodded.
The village buildings were the same bulbous valley dwellings made from concrete or hillside cottages made from cut and transplanted trees. Although the existing buildings had not changed, more of them had been added. From the edge of the village where Pfiffer stood, she could see the far hillside cluttered with more Bitters’ cottages, and could smell distantly the fresh cuts in the trees that had been moved.
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Pfiffer pressed back her slick hair, which cascaded from a wide spread at the crown to a narrow hump at the nape. Draped in black woolen robes, Pfiffer approached the door of one of the concrete dwellings. As the familiar clapper drew back with the door, there appeared a man she didn’t recognize.
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She frowned. “Where is the master?” she asked as she eyed the man at full length.
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“Who are you?” he replied with a grating edge to his quiet voice. “What are you?”
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“I am Pfiffer.”
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The man widened his eyes, pierced nose flaring. “How dare you shame him further by coming back here?” he whispered. “And like that?”
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“I want to speak with the last master who lived here.”
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“The man who lived here is no longer a master,” he retorted.
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“Where does he live now?”
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The man shook his head rapidly. “Get away. Get away from here.” The door sent a thrust of air against her face, making her blink, then latched.
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Pfiffer turned and looked about. Then she set off at a quick, wide pace for the lake at the bottom of the valley.
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Up from the water, on the grassy slope, was the recycling plant. Pfiffer had never seen it before. There had been the fear of tumbling into the water, a fear that was announced by speakers at the top of the slope. Pfiffer ignored the warnings.
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Her descent was interspersed with halts that allowed her to examine. There gradually appeared pools of black, brown, and pink liquids. The pools drained into the ones layered below by passing through filters, forming a wide waterfall that gradually went clear. As the pools sloshed, threads and bone spools became increasingly pale as they were moved down the tiered waterfall.
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From the bottom pools, the threads were being detangled and transferred into the concrete buildings. As she reached the bottom, some of the men stopped and stared with threads slick and shiny around their fingers.
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Pfiffer continued past the largest building. From the thick, astringent smell, she guessed that this was where the threads were dyed. Dyers were the most respected of recycling plant workers, their work specialized, their accuracy critical to a master’s success.
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A netter was in the lake. From a distance, she recognized his long, narrow fingers stringing sections of a net out to the side. His back moved in shaking knots as he moved his fine mesh net through the water. The job of the netter was to skim the water and lake bottom for stray bits of thread. It was the least respected of jobs.
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She stopped at the water’s edge. As he brought the net around, his eyes caught and lifted to her. He froze, the net sinking between his legs.
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“You don’t know who I am?” she asked with a lift in her single brow. Part of her wished he would recognize her. Part of her wanted to leave then.
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With a scowl, he returned to swinging his net in slow motion. “You’re one of those monsters from the Tri-Weavers’ region, I know that.”
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“A woman.”
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“Yes. So they used to be called.”
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“No longer a Bitter.”
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He stopped. They stared at each other. He burst through the water, the net flying to the side as he tread over to her. She jogged backward, legs of fire ready to run, stopping only when he did on the rocks as he dripped lake and discontent.
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He was smaller than she remembered. Perhaps her new body was larger than the old.
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“You’re not happy here,” she said, straightening.
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He blinked into a scowl and wiped his forehead. “I suppose that pleases you.”
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“No.”
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His face relaxed in its confusion, then returned to a scowl as she stepped forward again, leaving little space between them. She was definitely larger than before, as their eyes met level.
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“What do you want?” he spat. “You’ve already robbed me of everything.”
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With a flick of his arm, his fingers flew to her ear and pinched in a twisting, wet burn. She smacked his hand down as she jumped back. As she shot him her wide eyes, defiant and challenging, his face loosened like a wide, long piece of fabric.
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Pfiffer knew that she was no longer thread, but realized another truth of her new form. She could not be unraveled.
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“Do you know what you are?” he asked. “You’re unnatural. None of the Bitters will take you. None of the masters either.”
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She swallowed hard. “What of the men?”
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“You are a waste polluting the world.”
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“Why would I be a waste?”
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“Because—Bec—you’re useless!” he sputtered. “A Kempter who builds for her own pleasure and helps no one.”
​
Pfiffer met his hard eyes, which were duller and grayer than before. “The Kempters have done more for me than your guild has done for you. Perhaps you should find a new one,” she said, turning parallel to the shoreline.
​
“You should be ashamed,” he hissed, his face fluctuating between shades. “You hurt everyone who loved you.”
​
She turned back. “No one loved me, then,” she croaked.
​
“The only love you ever had was that of your village. Without their love, you are useless. The scriptures say—”
​
“No,” Pfiffer said, voice catching. “I think—I think you’re wrong.”
​
“Well,” he huffed. “Don’t come looking for me again when you find I’m right.”
​
“Wait,” she said as he began to turn back to the water. She hovered her hand over her pocket, then pulled from it a necklace woven in a thick tri-braid, the red, orange, and yellow hues so faint that, in the coming dusk, they looked white.
​
“That’s what’s left of the Bitter you knew,” she said, offering it with her open hand.
​
He scoffed and shook his head. She hovered her hand to the right of him and tossed the necklace into the water. As if he realized himself a hungry beggar, he tumbled in after it.
​
“Its greatest value will be to help you remember,” she called. He turned back to her, the tri-braid sinched around his fingers as he held his fist out in either question or supplication. “I doubt you’ll get much else for it,” she added.
​
Pfiffer turned parallel to the shoreline again and followed it to the far side of the lake. After trotting down the other side of the ridge, she climbed the tallest hill nearest to the village. The tree she had sought on her first journey from the master’s cottage was no longer there.
​
She kneeled beside the stump almost as wide as she was tall. Her fist hovered, then spread its fingers along the dusty, moist surface. It had been cut recently, its knotless shape a sturdy foundation for some Bitter’s cottage. It would grow again, branches jutting toward her, a growth that would threaten to snap her bitter-tasting, freshly knotted threads. Pfiffer hoped that a single snap would lead the Bitter to her. If it could start with a snap instead of an unraveling, it might be easier. Or it might not.
​
The night painted the wood around her fingers with a hazy wetness, moisture absorbing into the veins. Pfiffer turned her head to the sky and spun in place until she found the gas giant. She measured it as four fingers wide. The giant’s yellow gasses twisted into loose knots, the color giving way to small pinches of black at the centers. Somewhere at those centers was the highest goal.