Somewhere in the hundreds of hours Jesse Herald spent restitching the golden thread of her hair, he had fallen in love. That she was a stranger who lived thousands of years ago was irrelevant to his heart.
Jesse had seen many beautiful renderings of humanity in his study of art. But this tapestry was singular. Faydite of Occitan stood on a lonely hilltop above a crowd of villagers, tiny against the vast green hills and faded sky. Her dark gown was patchy with age, and there were too many stains to make out the details of her dress, yet her flaxen hair shone against her dark eyes which Jesse always imagined to be the color of the earth. Above Faydite, there was a lonely crane, as if showing her the way to the ship which would carry her into exile.
When he began his restoration of a newly recovered Catalonian tapestry, Jesse’s eyes had examined Faydite’s golden hair and tiny body like she was any job. Only he heard something ancient calling to him from the threads late at night, a voice, bird-like in its purity. Despite the lack of words, Jesse heard a melancholy that echoed his own.
He didn’t fall in love then, but the soft voice from the tapestry, real or not, made the time pass much easier. He often had the impression that the voice’s owner was waiting for him to say something. He didn’t have a clue what it was, so he simply shared things about himself: his hopes, fears, memories, and songs. She really liked French folk songs and jazz standards; her song turned less blue on those days.
Love came when he realized he was more at home in that workshop with her than anywhere else.
One rainy Tuesday, Jesse finished the last touch of woolen thread on the train of Faydite’s dress. It felt anticlimactic, finishing this project with no fanfare or great shift in the world. She looked so lifelike now that the scene around her was complete, and her patchy gown had no holes. Her song blazed, content like a sunbathing cat.
“Well, Faydite,” he said, “you’re free now.”
Suddenly, the melody exploded, amplified like plugging in an electric guitar to his mind. Jesse dropped his needle before he could stab himself with it.
When the noise quieted down, Jesse looked back at the image and was shocked to discover that the image had changed.
What Jesse didn’t know was that the woman had only just stepped out of the tapestry. When he saw her shadow over his shoulder, he yelped. Her lean body swayed like a young fawn standing for the first time. As in the tapestry, her golden hair shone, and she wore a sensible brown tunic and slippers. The only sounds were their breathing and the gentle rain outside, soft music more precious to him because it was real.
Faydite studied him with intelligent amber eyes, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that they had actually been speaking all those hours when he was re-stitching her form. The room hummed with the type of awareness that comes from meeting a stranger in person for the first time.
Still, she said nothing, just remained there like she’d not learned the next line in a play. Then as if she’d seen something Jesse didn’t know about himself, she frowned.
In a soft but sharp voice, low from disuse, she asked, “Where am I?”
Jesse realized he understood her, though she spoke her own dialect and he was no linguist. He was fairly certain she spoke neither Middle French nor provençal, though. He must have hit his head and not remembered, right? Pinching his forearm, he confirmed that this was no hallucination. Jesse slid from his stool, whether to approach her or to prepare to flee, he was no longer certain.
When Jesse didn’t answer, Faydite lunged. His body froze in light of her sudden ferocity, and she easily knocked him onto his back. Though his head did hit the ground, he didn’t pass out. Jesse twitched under her piercing gaze. The tapestry didn’t do justice to her tawny eyes. Also, she had freckles and a scar on her chin, and even at this angle he could see shadows under her lids like she hadn’t slept. She probably felt a hundred times more afraid than he did right now, and he was just then realizing that his shock had been masking a keen notion that this vision of a woman could kill him if she wanted. And no one would know what happened to him.
She pressed her leather slipper onto his sternum. “What have you done to me?”
Jesse swallowed, adrenaline high in his chest. “I, um, I’m Jesse Herald?” A terrible start, he thought. His voice hadn’t cracked that much since puberty. He felt giddy with her so near, closer than he’d been to anyone apart from the old boulanger who sold him his bread.
“Herald,” she said, as if it was his title not his name. “Your king. Tell me his name.”
“King? Um, this is France. There hasn’t been a monarchy in centuries?” Why did all of his sentences come out questions, that is what he really wanted to know. “I only worked on your tapestry just there…” He nodded his head toward the table.
She didn’t even twitch in response, then she pressed her foot harder into Jesse’s sternum. “What do you know of the witch’s curse?”
Oh. A curse.
“I’ve read everything the history books say about you, but there’s nothing about a curse.” He didn’t add that until today he’d never believed in them. Had he freed her, he wondered? He really shouldn’t feel so excited, but as a former friend once said, he had an obsessive drive to solve puzzles which often led emotions to pass through him unnoticed. A Hallmark mystery Sherlock Holmes, they called him; he was just autistic.
Faydite lifted her foot from him and backed toward the workstation. She hadn’t ceased seeming like a fawn, but her silence belied a horde of thoughts Jesse could only imagine. Perhaps she believed him about the curse, but she showed no recognition of him, so those conversations he’d had with that voice were just his own treasures. The song which had kept him company had flattened to a dull buzzing now.
Jesse didn’t move from the floor until her focus was on the tapestry. He let his breathing relax before joining her there.
The young woman in the tapestry had no face now—or perhaps her face was turned further to the side. The crowd of onlookers appeared normal, and despite the missing crane, the young woman still looked wistfully toward the ocean.
“There was a crane,” she said so quietly he almost missed it.
“Yes.”
Her wide eyes swam across the scene on the tapestry, her fingers tapping against her sides.
Suddenly, his phone alarm blared to life, striking through the quiet work room with a catchy Top 40 song that meant it was time for lunch.
Faydite launched at the sound. Her hand clamped on the device, and with a flick of her wrist she threw it against the wall.
He could laugh at the suddenness of her action; his laughter from distress always caught others off-guard. But then Faydite was curling herself into the corner of the room between a cabinet and the exterior wall. Her eyes pressed together, and she jammed her hands against her ears. The humor died in his chest, as he understood her overwhelm better than most.
He shut off all but one light, covered the tapestry with the glass lid from its storage box, and opened the small window a crack to let in some fresh air.
Then he sat on the floor against the wall opposite her.
Neither said a word for a time. The large clock on the wall had no battery, as Jesse had despised its ticking while he worked, so there was no way to pass the time apart from the light shifting out the window. Eventually, Faydite lowered her hands.
“Herald,” she said. Her tone was less commanding than earlier but no less melodic to him.
“Call me Jesse.”
She examined him before obliging. “Jesse.” After a beat she asked, “What are you humming?”
He realized then that he had been singing one of the jazz songs she liked most. Chet Baker.
“Like Someone in Love,” he said, chagrined that he hadn’t even noticed he was humming.
She made eye-contact again, this time without casting her eyes back down. “I know it.” She paused. “You sang it before…” She cast her eyes back at the tapestry on the table.
He nodded, fearing he might break this moment.
She sang the first line of the song.
“You heard me,” he said when she finished.
“You called.”
They spent the rest of the day on the roof, watching the sky change colors over Avignon.