Page 2 of Wizards & Weavers
Braiden sat up, the slouch in his shoulders and the bend in his back banished. This was it, at last, Braiden’s shot at something more exciting than keeping his grandmother’s shop forever. He must have looked like an overeager puppy, staring at the armored man with eyes as big as saucers, with his mouth hanging open.
Why a warrior was strutting around town not only fully armored, but fully helmeted as well was something Braiden didn’t think to question. Weathervale had seen a steady swell of visitors from all across Aidun since the dungeon appeared outside town. Adventurers and armor were now too common a sight to cause any real concern. It felt impolite to ask.
Besides, the warrior looked incredibly imposing wearing all his armor. There was something so dangerous and alluringabout the adventurer’s life, these people who plumbed deadly dungeons in search of wealth, glory, ancient artifacts.
What if this was Braiden’s call to adventure, this mysterious faceless warrior who somehow knew his name? The rickety sign above the shop was named for Braiden’s family, of course, but for the warrior to know who he was? This was it. This was the day.
“Yes. I’m Braiden. Friends call me Braid.” Not that Braiden had many of those, but the mysterious horned man didn’t need to know that. “Sorry, I’m rambling. How did you know my name?”
Bits of armor squeaked as the man held up a sheet of parchment. “This was stuck to the window outside. It appears to be some sort of bill. I thought you might want to take a look.”
Sometimes Braiden took his lunches out on the Weathervale docks, watching the ships as they went by. When the wind was high, the sails billowed full and fat, like great big sacks of air, the bellies of wealthy, well-fed merchant men.
For the first time in his life, Braiden truly understood how it felt to have the wind taken out of his sails.
“Oh,” Braiden said, completely failing to keep the disappointment out of his voice. “Here. Thank you for bringing that in for me.”
He kept his eyes away from the parchment, already knowing from the shape of the wax seal where it had come from. Weathervale town council wanted to collect on rent, and soon, too.
But Braiden couldn’t look the warrior in the eye, either, too embarrassed to engage. Hidden under his great helmet, he couldn’t really tell where the warrior’s eyes were, anyway. Braiden flung his hand out at the merchandise instead.
“Don’t suppose I could interest you in some craft supplies? It’s a fine thing, starting a new hobby. Soothes the mind andsoul. Something to do between hacking at monsters and, er, whatever it is that fine warriors like yourself get up to these days.”
Braiden held his strained grin, gesturing at the rows of yarn and thread. Tools to indulge in so many of the textile crafts — crochet hooks, knitting needles, sewing needles — but he could clearly sense the warrior’s disinterest. Braiden never was very good at closing the sale.
The warrior pinched a handful of something soft, as if testing its squishiness. There was something so comical about the sight of a heavily armored warrior playing with colorful skeins of yarn, and yet Braiden was in no mood to laugh.
“Oh, I’m good. Not much for crafting myself. Unless it’s the craft of war. Warcraft, I suppose you’d say. Hah.”
“Yes, of course,” Braiden said, visions of adventure and dark dungeons fading as he remembered who and where he was. “Thank you for bringing my bill in for me.”
The warrior’s gauntlet clanked against his helmet as he gave Braiden a metallic, faceless salute. “Only doing my duty. It’s a fine town, Weathervale, and I like to help where I can. Have a nice day, citizen.”
And the bell over the door jingled as the anonymous warrior went on his way. How odd. “Citizen,” he’d called Braiden. He’d meant it kindly, but somehow it only made Braiden feel like just another stitch in the tapestry, and a boring one at that. A bit of beige thread in the background, or the faded blue of a ho-hum sky, out on the edges, closer to the corners.
At least the metal-clad warrior had been kinder than most. Every day since the dungeon appeared, the more uncouth sort of adventurer would drop in, running their grubby mitts over the merchandise, disrupting the carefully arranged rainbow Braiden had made of the yarns up front. He couldn’t bear the idea ofexplaining, once again, that a ball of yarn was not meant to be tossed like, well, a ball.
And no one, naturally, not a single one of them would buy a single blessed thing. Nor could Braiden blame them. This new rush of adventurers coming to Weathervale had come for the dungeon. These people wanted to buy weapons, sharpening stones, sturdy pieces of armor. What use were the fine supplies at Beadle’s Needles on an expedition down a dungeon, of all places?
Not one of them would sit and listen to Braiden praising the awesome insulating qualities of othergoat wool, spun from the fleece of a rare and difficult breed of caprine that were supposedly majestic and beautiful to behold. Not one of them would deign to hear Braiden’s dreams of roaming the countryside to find one of these elusive goats, or to brave dank caverns in search of spider silk worthy of spinning into gorgeous garments.
It was the new thing in town — or on the outskirts, to be specific. The dungeon had made itself known out of a split in the earth no more than a month ago. There had been, as the townsfolk described it, a kaboom. This wasn’t the sort of thing anyone expected around a peaceful seaside town like Weathervale. Even the local alchemists knew that too much kabooming was bad for business.
Braiden had been in the shop that day, arranging the yarns by color, sorting the beads by material. Clay in this container, glass beads in that one, wood in another. Perfect and all in place. Not that it ultimately mattered. The explosion had sent a powerful wind through Weathervale, ripping up shingles, rattling the windows, shaking the floorboards.
And down onto the floorboards they all went: the hanging displays, the skeins of yarn, and all of Braiden’s carefully sorted beads. He’d spent the rest of the afternoon prying beads outof the floorboards with a knife. It wasn’t until he’d visited the tavern after work that he thought to wonder where the noise had actually come from.
Granny Bethilda had once joked that Braiden wouldn’t notice a dragon flying overhead once he had his fingers running through some yarn — a case of actual entanglement. She smiled at him out of the little framed portrait on the counter. He smiled back. She was right, after all.
It didn’t take much for Braiden to be enraptured by his work, even when that work wasn’t very profitable. He tended to neglect more mundane tasks. Like making sure a pot didn’t boil over, or making sure prospective customers didn’t have to bring in embarrassing bills for him. Just random, unrelated examples, of course.
But how often he’d wondered how different his life would be if he didn’t feel the need — no, the responsibility of carrying the family business forward. He might have more friends, and far fewer finished sweaters. So many of them piled up in the back room, not a single one sold since winter ended.
Something had to change. But what?
He opened the door to the backroom, already dreading the sight that awaited him. Years and years of Granny Bethilda endlessly stitching her piles of scarves and sweaters, and years more of Braiden learning how to make them as her apprentice.
How much yarn had they spent? How many miles of rainbow had gone into building this garish graveyard? Braiden raised his head, following the mismatched mountain of sweaters with his eyes. It went so high that the topmost layer of sweaters brushed against the ceiling.
