Above the blood coral I see a figure floating in the water-space whose limbs are only moved by the sea. I swim closer, and the current turns the figure’s head towards me. It is a young woman who wears my face. Her eyes are closed, like she is only sleeping. Seaweed has tangled around her body to protect and to bind. There may be a trace of life left in her, a last brief flicker that pierces her mind as it slides away. In that flicker she sees a future for herself and believes it to be true. Then there is but sea and silence, and an empty space where dreams lived.
Light unfolds, or darkness. The threads of reality are ready to move under my touch. I dream for those who cannot dream. I am awake for those who can never be awake again. I cannot do more, or anything less.
For our hours are brief and our days are brittle, and the marks our hands leave on the world belong to us and yet are beyond our own limits.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
They say second novels are difficult, and The Weaver certainly lived up to that reputation. Throughout the writing process, I found myself thinking that there should be a support group for people working on their second book – and that I would start one myself if I wasn’t so desperately busy trying to deliver mine.
In the hindsight, and at the risk of sounding slightly melodramatic, I can only describe the experience as feeling like I spent three years in a fictional dark cave of my own making, looking for a way out. Emerging back to daylight was greatly helped by some people offering kind guidance along the way. For this assistance, I would like to thank:
My lately-on-hiatus writing group in the UK – Howard Bowman, Sarah Davies, Patricia Debney, Denny Flowers, Nancy Wilson Fulton, Nancy Gaffield, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Scott; my agent Elina Ahlbäck; my writing group in Finland – Päivi Haanpää and Marika Riikonen; everyone at my Finnish publishing house Teos, with a special gold star to Jussi Tiihonen; the editorial team at HarperVoyager – especially Natasha Bardon, Emma Coode, Emily Krump and Eleanor Ashfield; my family in Finland; Mari Paavola for the image of creatures enclosed in amber, among other things; and José Casal for teamwork, always.
The Shell Grotto in Margate, United Kingdom, served as an inspiration for the underground sanctuary Eliana discovers on the island, so I would also like to send my thanks back in time to the mystery artists who built its extraordinary seashell mosaics.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
EMMI ITÄRANTA writes fiction in Finnish and English. Her professional background is an eclectic mix of writing-related activities, including stints as a columnist, theatre critic, scriptwriter and press officer. She is the author of Memory of Water and lives in Canterbury, England.
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ALSO BY EMMI ITÄRANTA
Memory of Water
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CREDITS
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Cover photograph © Katerina Lomonosov / Trevillion Images
COPYRIGHT
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE WEAVER. Copyright © 2016 by Emmi Itäranta. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Harper Voyager and design are trademarks of HCP LLC.
A version of The Weaver was published as The City of Woven Streets in June 2016 by Harper Voyager UK.
FIRST US EDITION
EPub Edition November 2016 ISBN 9780062326195
ISBN 978-0-06-2326171
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