The Shape of Fear [27]
a stepmother crossed the thres- hold. She looked at Jon and Loa, and made complaint to their father that they were still very small and not likely to be of much use. After that they had to rise earlier than ever, and to work as only those who have their growth should work, till their hearts cracked for weariness and shame. They had not much to eat, for their stepmother said she would trust to the gratitude of no other woman's child, and that she believed in lay- ing up against old age. So she put the few coins that came to the house in a strong box, and bought little food. Neither did she buy the children clothes, though those which their dear mother had made for them were so worn that the warp stood apart from the woof, and there were holes at the elbows and little warmth to be found in them anywhere. "Moreover, the quilts on their beds were too short for their growing length, so that at night either their purple feet or their thin shoulders were uncovered, and they wept for the cold, and in the morning, when they crept into the larger room to build the fire, they were so stiff they could not stand straight, and there was pain at their joints. "The wife scolded all the time, and her brow was like a storm sweeping down from the Northwest. There was no peace to be had in the house. The children might not repeat to each other the sagas their mother had taught them, nor try their part singing, nor make little doll cradles of rushes. Always they had to work, always they were scolded, always their clothes grew thinner. "'Stepmother,' cried Loa one day, -- she whom her mother had called the little bird, -- 'we are a-cold because of our rags. Our mother would have woven blue cloth for us and made it into garments.' "'Your mother is where she will weave no cloth!' said the stepmother, and she laughed many times. "All in the cold and still of that night, the stepmother wakened, and she knew not why. She sat up in her bed, and knew not why. She knew not why, and she looked into the room, and there, by the light of a burning fish's tail -- 'twas such a light the folk used in those days -- was a woman, weaving. She had no loom, and shuttle she had none. All with her hands she wove a wondrous cloth. Stoop- ing and bending, rising and swaying with motions beautiful as those the Northern Lights make in a midwinter sky, she wove a cloth. The warp was blue and mystical to see, the woof was white, and shone with its whiteness, so that of all the webs the step- mother had ever seen, she had seen none like to this. "Yet the sight delighted her not, for beyond the drifting web, and beyond the weaver she saw the room and furniture -- aye, saw them through the body of the weaver and the drift- ing of the cloth. Then she knew -- as the haunted are made to know -- that 'twas the mother of the children come to show her she could still weave cloth. The heart of the stepmother was cold as ice, yet she could not move to waken her husband at her side, for her hands were as fixed as if they were crossed on her dead breast. The voice in her was silent, and her tongue stood to the roof of her mouth. "After a time the wraith of the dead mother moved toward her -- the wraith of the weaver moved her way -- and round and about her body was wound the shining cloth. Wherever it touched the body of the step- mother, it was as hateful to her as the touch of a monster out of sea-slime, so that her flesh crept away from it, and her senses swooned. "In the early morning she awoke to the voices of the children, whispering in the inner room as they dressed with half-frozen fingers. Still about her was the hateful, beau- tiful web, filling her soul with loathing and with fear. She thought she saw the task set for her, and when the children crept in to light the fire -- very purple and thin were their little bodies, and the rags hung from them -- she arose and held out the shining cloth, and cried: "'Here is the web your mother wove for you. I will make it into garments!' But even as she spoke the cloth faded and fell into nothingness, and the children cried: "'Stepmother,