Chapter 25
“It’s time to decide, Mira. Are you going to take the water oath and uphold this tradition, or do I return the knowledge of thousands of years to the water?
” Zaneta fixed Mira with an unflinching gaze.
Despite the pressure, Mira felt powerful; it all rested with her, and Zaneta knew it.
All the years of initiation and apprenticing, the hours of memorizing, diving, and developing in her hands the muscle memory of weaving patterns were meant to converge here.
“Tell me again what I must give up.” She was stalling.
Zaneta took a deep breath. Mira was trying her mother’s patience, but she couldn’t afford to show it.
“It’s not so much about the sacrifice as what will be gained.
You are the thread that connects over thirty generations of women.
All the names we recite and give thanks for at each dawn and evening prayer—you’re the continuation of that.
Someday, your name will be added to those names as your granddaughters and great-granddaughters honor you and your place in the line of water women. ”
“Yes, but—”
“Don’t be so quick to dismiss that. You don’t see it now because you’re young, but someday that legacy will mean everything.”
“I understand.”
Zaneta tried again. “What will you give up? You’ll give up traveling the world to remain close to the Pinna nobilis, to stay on this beautiful island that’s been a good home to you.
You’ll give up material things because the byssus is the heritage of all people and can’t be sold or bartered.
Time, I suppose.” Zaneta shrugged. “You know how long it takes to harvest, process, and weave. That takes time, but what would you do with it otherwise? Waste it with entertainment and leisure?”
“I think I’m ready.” Zaneta visibly relaxed. Mira continued. “But there’s one other thing I need to consider.” Her mother’s dark brows arched high on her forehead: a question. “I’m going to marry Dante, so he must be part of this.”
It had been a long summer. Absent from the bookshop, Mira had to find other ways to see Dante, and the two arranged stolen spare hours whenever they could, meeting for gelato or a walk along the shore whenever she was in town and he could get away.
He knew she was kept busy at home, that her mother needed her help.
That wasn’t uncommon. Many families still worked in traditional ways, the next generations learning from and helping the previous one.
More than once, her mother had scolded her for being drowsy during lessons, but Mira had been careful to complete all her tasks with extra care.
She was devoted to the work of the byssus, even if her heart was distracted.
It was hard to stay focused when all she could think about was Dante’s gentle voice, the persistent way he pried and poked until he got her to divulge her dreams and hopes, something no one but Carmina had ever been the least bit curious about.
Mira had let a few details slip—she and her mother worked on a loom, the materials they used were available seasonally, which explained her busyness in the summer months.
She wanted to tell him more, wanted to share everything, and several times almost started to, but she worried it would seem strange to him.
What if he expected a more traditional life?
What if one day he changed his mind and wanted to go teach on the mainland?
She and her mother were the only two women doing this work, and it was important she continue it.
It was so much to explain, and she realized how odd it seemed when compared to everyone else.
Sometimes she just wanted to be like any other girl.
She loved how he made her laugh when his beard tickled her face, how he genuinely listened when she talked about the sea or wondered about the stars.
Captivating, he called her, bewitching. Mira, a girl used to the scorch of the sun above the water, had never felt such a heat as when Dante sat close to her on the rocky shore, their thighs touching and her head resting on his shoulder.
When he brushed her hair off her neck with his fingers and his lips found hers, the world spun, and Mira didn’t want it to stop.
Toward the end of June, when Dante had a break from teaching full time, they walked together on some of the shepherds’ paths in the fields a mile or so from town.
“Don’t you think it’s about time I meet your parents?” he asked.
Mira stiffened. This wasn’t the first time he’d asked.
“They’re very busy.” A weak excuse, but what else could she say?
It had been a miracle that Dante hadn’t ferreted out her father at the quay to introduce himself, but as luck would have it, her father had been docking at a small town down the road from theirs to help another pescatore who’d been injured.
“It’s not right, Mira. Why should I be a big secret?”
“I told you,” she said, “that my mother can be difficult, demanding.”
He stood tall and straight. “I can take it if it means we’re together. Are you ashamed of me?”
Mira couldn’t put it off any longer. The salt sting of tears burned her eyes, but when he lifted her chin and brushed them from her cheeks, the love and concern on his face firmed her resolve.
“I have something to tell you,” she began, and from there, the spool unraveled.
She spilled the story of the water women, the words coming in waves like the tide, and he listened, holding her hand, his eyes never wavering.
When she told it like that, all at once, it sounded strange and wonderful, full of mystery, beauty, and reverence, and it came to her that she really was one of them, her life part of a priceless golden tapestry.
“My whole life has been dedicated to learning this and preparing to take the water oath, which will mean that it’s my lifelong vow to continue the service.” Mira finally stopped and took a breath, waiting for the part when Dante decided he’d fallen into some sort of quicksand he wanted out of.
Instead, he said, “Why in the world didn’t you tell me before?
” In the alluring way he had of framing ideas, he elaborated.
“Think of it this way. I work with the language of numbers; you make a language from fabric and thread. Text, meaning ‘words,’ and textile, meaning ‘fabric,’ come from the same origin, meaning ‘to weave.’ Words create a language; threads create fabric. Both of us are linguists, creating beautiful things with our languages. We make perfect partners!”
Mira stood there with her mouth agape like a beached fish, bewildered to find itself in a world of sun and sand.
“I can’t leave the island. My first loyalty would be here, to the sea.”
He nodded as it sunk in. “Of course. That first day we met, I told you I liked it here. My home doesn’t have to be a particular place, Mira. I could live on the polar icecaps if it was with you.”
“I don’t think they have amaretti at the North Pole.”
“A serious drawback. I’d love to see what you do. Will you show me?”
She brought him home for dinner soon afterward.
Mira’s father peppered Dante with questions.
He was so different from Luccio, his head full of numbers and his clean hands a clear indication of the chasm spread between them.
Zaneta’s eyes squinted with suspicion as she doled out heaping plates of seafood linguini.
“What about your family?” she probed. “What ties lie back in Sicily?” Johann and Isaac elbowed each other at the table and cast smirking glances at Mira and her “friend.” They knew him from school and, before he arrived, complained about having the math teacher join them at their home.
They shouldn’t have to socialize with their teacher.
Mira glared at them to hush and threatened to pour honey in their hair while they slept if they didn’t behave.
After their meal, Mira took Dante to the small studio and showed him the loom and its great birdlike arms. She told him to close his eyes and hold out his hand.
“Now you can touch a piece of cloth. Feel it?” she asked, placing a square of woven byssus in his palm.
“No. You haven’t given me anything yet.”
“I have.” She laughed. “That’s how light it is.”
“It’s like holding a cloud.” He marveled. “Or trying to grasp breath.”
She held threads of it up to the shafts of sunlight streaming through the windows and showed him how the stuff seemed to drink up the light, absorbing it like a parched sponge until it shone golden and impossibly clear all at once, a sunbeam in his hand.
He walked slowly between the framed pieces on the walls, examining the detail and symmetry of the weave that formed pictures of lions, menorahs, lyres, and lambs.
“Incredible. You wove these?”
“Some. My mother is much more skilled, but I’m getting better. I don’t know if I’ll ever be as good as she is.”
“Why do you do that?”
“What?”
“Sell yourself short. Talk that way. This work, these are masterpieces. They belong in a museum.”
Mira ducked her head, unaccustomed to such praise. “You don’t see all the flaws like I do.”
“Fine. Strive for improvement, but give yourself some credit for what you’ve already done. It’s stunning. That’s what I see. You’re an inspiration.”
With Dante’s full support, Mira fulfilled her promise and took the water oath.
One day that July, just as the sun pinked the horizon, Mira waded into the water at the byssus cove.
She wore a loose, flowing robe of pure byssus, one she’d never seen before, that Zaneta had had locked away for the occasion.
It had been worn by generations of water women on their Morning of Vowing.
As was their custom, she and her mother recited and thanked in unison the generations of women before them.
Then, her mother led her in a solemn affirmation.
“I swear upon the life given to me by our Father and the gifts offered up by the sea that I will never profit from weaving the byssus; that I will, each morning and evening, offer my song to the waves to spread my words of peace and love all over the world; that I will keep sacred and secret the art of weaving and working the byssus, keeping it in memory only until it’s passed to my daughters or her daughters.
If this thread cannot be woven, I vow to return my knowledge to the water from where it originated.
I vow, as a woman of the water, to dedicate my life to this work and this service as I have been called. ”
Her mother waded into the sea and held out a hand to Mira, who placed her right hand in her mother’s.
“Upon this oath, I give you this ring, its likeness worn only by true water women.” Her mother slid a thin gold band on Mira’s ring finger.
It had been forged of gold but incorporated a strand of byssus inside, gold within gold, sea within earth.
The oath was complete. Together, they sang an ancient weaver’s song, one mixing Aramaic and Hebrew, Italian and Nuragic, a language as old as the island’s beginnings, one that reached back to Queen Berenice herself.
When the last strains ended, she and Zaneta waded out farther, where the shore ended at a sudden rocky drop-off.
Here, with an unspoken signal, they dove deep, spinning and twirling underwater like porpoises.
Mira brimmed with happiness, buoyed by her joy and the salt of the sea.
Her golden robe swirled around her white legs as she kicked, sending schools of silver fish zigzagging around her.
How was it possible to feel such pride and such deep humility at the same time?
Dante’s words returned to her, and for once, Mira allowed herself a sense of accomplishment and confidence, knowing how hard she’d worked and how much she’d learned.
She turned toward her mother as they swam, and Zaneta reached out and grasped Mira’s wrist. Reflexively, Mira grasped back, and they remained that way, mother and daughter, bound and breathless, before rising to the surface for air.