Hello Friends!
Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas season! For this month’s Beginnings short story, I give you Knot, a wintry-themed tale. Is it a Christmas story or is it not (let me know your thoughts)? Read to the end to find my own thoughts in the Story Behind the Story. If you like this mini Quest please like, comment, and share! If you’d like to propose a title for a future Beginnings story, hit reply and let me know!
Happy adventuring
Lindsey
KNOT
In the icy wastelands of the north, there is a small village where the stories of the world are told. For half the year, the village stands in the shadow of one long night. The houses are sunken into the ground, each tucked under a blanket of snow like children asleep. Yet in each, a fire burns, a secret torch bringing light and warmth and stories against the darkness.
In this village, all stories are told, from the epic legends of old to the tiny choices of a single life. In one house, a hunter solemnly tells of the deer he stalked. In another, the fisher regales of the three foot shark he caught. In a third, children babble to each other of the secret berry patch they found.
And in a small house near the edge of the village, three women sit by their looms and weave. Although they sit in silence, the three women are no less storytellers than the rest of their village. In fact, they are more than storytellers: they are storymakers. For although they sit in silence, each thread they weave is the life of a person, an animal, a plant, an object. As they weave the threads, in and out, over and under, they tie together all things living and all things inanimate into the Great Story.
The Great Story is one that no one on earth knows and that no one ever will. Not even the three women know all that they weave. But there is a greater power that guides their hands, and the threads never falter or break. Always the story continues.
One of the three women is new to the job, only recently having become a weaver of stories. Of the three, she is the one who finds the silence the hardest. She hums while she works, and earns sympathetic glances across the room. But the humming brings her peace and joy, and she hums peace and joy into the lives of those she weaves.
Yet on this night, she stops mid-song, her breath fading away into silence. Something has snagged on her thread. She tugs on the shuttle, not understanding how her fingers have failed. After the third tug, the string pulls through.
She gasps, and the other two women look over.
There is a knot in the thread.
Before, the silence of the weavers’ house had always been soft and warm. A comforting silence of people sitting in companionship. Now, the silence falls dead and cold.
None of the women have ever found a knot before.
What does it mean? Who are the people or animals so inextricably bound that fate and destiny have knotted them together?
The young woman lifts the knot for all to see, displaying the dangling threads. There is one thread purple, for power and royalty. There is one thread white, for holy and mystical. There is one thread blue, for a son and for peace.
The fourth thread is one that the three women have never seen before. Or maybe they have simply never noticed it before because it is so plain and commonplace. It is a brown thread, the colour of the earth.
The young woman begins to pick at the knot, trying to unwind the tangle. It seems wrong that the pure colours of purple and blue and white should be tied to that muddy, brown strand. But each time she pries, the knot binds itself tighter. As if it is alive and doesn’t want the connection to be broken.
At last, the two older woman still the hands of the younger. One of them picks up the brown thread and holds it up in the light of the fire. On closer inspection, the thread glints and flickers with the flecks of untold thousands of colours. This thread is the people. All people.
A smile spreads from one woman to another. Could it be that the time has finally come for this fate to be woven?
The oldest of the women gestures to the younger. The threads never lie. Weave the knot into the tapestry of time.
And so she does, knowing that this knot was not of her doing. Something, someone, had decided the fate of the world and tied it into a knot for all time. Unbreakable. Woven into the story of the world for now and for ever.
Behind the Story
For the mythologists out there, you may recognise the three women weaving the fates of the world as characters from several world mythologies (for example, the Norns of Norse mythology or the Moirai/Fates of Greek mythology). When I was at university, I did a lot of study on Pictish-Norse textile production and I was always fascinated by the concept of history and destiny being woven as a giant tapestry. So with this story I took my chance to weave them into a story.
But how is this a Christmas story, you ask? Well, I didn’t set out to write a Christmas story - it just kinda happened! That’s discovery writing for you! When we think of the Christmas story, we often zone in on a tiny stable in Bethlehem, but I believe the events that happened there had a life-changing, world-changing, impact on everyone and everything. When I tried to imagine what event might have made a knot in the Norns’ tapestry, this was what came to mind. God tied himself to all people in an unbreakable knot when Jesus was born. I think that’s a fate even the Fates couldn’t ignore!
P.S. Did anyone spot the C.S. Lewis reference?
I've only just got to this, but what a beautiful story! I was instantly lost in it, smiling at the Norns image and then the Lewis reference (assuming I'm correct it's what he says about the Great Story that no one has ever read and that goes on forever, at the end of The Last Battle).
But the knot in the thread caught me by surprise and I had a lump in my throat as I made the connection just before the characters did. The coloured threads hinting at the aspects of the mystery of Emmanuel was so beautiful.
Bravo Lindsey!
I loved your story Lyndsey. Thank you