Quilting a Nation

I cried as I sewed the latest patch into the quilt. My tears stained the delicate fabric, and neither I nor the others gathered around the frame made a move to wipe them clean. I heard, much later, that one of the little embroidery girls stitched gossamer threads around each splash.

Clotho and Atropos and whats-her-name get all the attention, and that's fine with the rest of us. We're the ones who actually get the work done, anyway. Their special skills are what attract a certain type of… well, shall we say, obsessive adoration? So they get to deal with the press, and we get to do the work, and Atropos can scare the hell out of whoever they like, and whats-her-name can screw the hell out of whatever godlet she's messing with and pop out another minor deity that she foists off on some poor nymph-

Oh, sorry. You don't care about the politics we deal with behind the scenes.

Besides, three is such a potent number. Three is powerful, three is important.

Seventeen is clunky, and tricky to memorize all the names, and too much for the human mind. Three is easy.

I was given this task when one of the muses watched me make a daisy chain with exacting precision. It was very much out of her line of duties, but all the muses keep an eye out for talents in all the crafts, and tend to spin us off to the higher deities when our skills match. Yes, Arachne was one of ours for a small time; such an arrogant little thing to challenge for a higher position. Oh, yes, we can advance! But beware those who sit enthroned in glory, for if they suspect a rebellion, they will put it down swiftly and ruthlessly. Many a tragic story is birthed from those failed attempts.

So, behind the names you know and are forced to memorize by fossilized teachers who wax poetic about the classic old days, are others who do the real work: the felters, the fullers, the weavers, those who set up and maintain the loom of the Tapestry of Life, and how pieces of that Tapestry are carefully trimmed and hemmed and set delicately into commemorative patterns, laid out as carefully as a freshly made parquet floor.

Or, as you colloquially call them, quilts.

My quilting skills are the best. Not a boast, really; at my age, if there were one ever born better, they'd already have my job! My stitches are even, and fine, and march in regular rows on each side of a flat-felled join. No "stitch in the ditch" for me! As a nation adds to its collective experience, pieces come off the loom and are added to the fabric compendium as a tactile memorial to its past and present. And its future, if done properly.

The weavers do their work in trance. It helps to keep their personal emotions out of the threads they weave, otherwise they actually have to care what threads are blended, and ripped, and finally snipped. If they try to influence it, you can see the fraying at the ends of the tapestry where Chaos waits to eat all of reality. Usually we keep her bloated and sated on the various snippets of threads that pop up over time - the unborn babes, the misshapen that really have no solid form to manifest, organs and limbs from maimings and surgeries. There are enough leftover orts to help her slumber, as long as we're careful to keep our own fingers intact when we feed her.

She remembers her life as Ammit, down in Egypt, and will no doubt waken again as Kali at the end of all. I shudder to think of all my good work shredded by those horrid teeth, so I pray to all the gods of order and make sure my stitches stay strong and even and perfect.

When did it go wrong? I truly don't know. Sometimes the world warps itself into such a knotted snarl that the threads begin to eat one another. You've seen it before, though your analogies are worded differently. Rapes, murders, wars, eugenics, pogroms, semantics. It is annihilation; it is obliteration. Those threads, that weave, the tapestry will never be the same, no matter how we try to gather the shreds back to some semblance of sameness.

You know some of those names from those history books. The ones that go rogue, and eat their brethren. And when the Tapestry thins to warp alone, everything suffers.

I cannot describe the horror of a section of the Tapestry becoming self aware. It breathes differently, a harsh counterpoint to what should be the universal melodies. It takes on another form, and by turning predator on those it lays next to in the pattern, it begins to feed. You can feel it, under your fingers, if you brush the threads to wake the nap. Imagine a sumptuous velvet, with all its glory in the cutwork and glittering goldwork and silky sheen of the pile. Now imagine, when just looking at it, of worms writhing across the surface, eating as they wriggle along, fouling everything in their path. Imagine cleaning up the casts left behind when they're finally excised.

So when the latest section of weave became apparent, it took all of our beings to prevent our collectively going mad. The sulk, the arrogance, the famous hair, it was like an overlay imprinted on the fibers below. This Zeus-wannabe, this upstart with pudding for brains! What were they thinking, to elect this petty bully to be their leader?

Atropos visited us personally when we protested. "Even puerile clowns need their time," they whispered. "It is only a time. At worst, those little Caligulas with their even smaller egos do not live long. But be ready to bind the selvage when his time is done, for it must be memorialized as a warning to the rest. If they survive. We will see."

Chaos rolled over in her sleep and chuckled at some dreamy nightmare only she could see. We shuddered, and obeyed, but we're still trembling.

And I cried as I stitched it in place. And even my tears were memorialized, just like all the ones on Hitler's patch, and Genghis Khan’s, and Mussolini's, and Pol Pot's. And the others. They shimmer darkly on the quilt, like horrid oil spots, staining the surrounding fabric, just as others glimmer softly like stars about to take flight.

"Hope," whispered Clotho, as she took up her basket and spindle. "Hold to it..."