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fibres in Arras’s tapestry – they were lines of time. Tentatively, I reached for one of the golden fibres. Encouraged by its silky texture, I took it and yanked it hard, trying to force the time bands back to a moment when the mama bird was guarding her precious babies. But the strands resisted. No matter what I did, they kept on creeping forward. There was no going back.
    The mama bird never returned. I checked on the little blue eggs every morning until one day my dad relieved me from my vigilance and the whole nest vanished. I didn’t touch those eggs, but I guess the mama bird didn’t know where to look; that’s why she didn’t come back.
     
     
    There is only darkness. It is damp, and with the palms of my hands I can feel that the floor of my cell alternates between smooth and jagged, but one thing is constant: it is always cold. My parents’ suspicions about the Guild were well-founded. I wonder if my mother knows where I am. I picture her circling our house, searching for me in her own empty nest.
    If she’s still alive. My heart flutters in response to some new emotion. It sits like a big lump in my throat as I remember the body bag leaking onto the floor. And now they have Amie. The idea that she’s at their mercy claws at my stomach. Never in the years my parents were training me did I understand why they were doing it. They told me that they didn’t want to lose me. My father spoke of the dangers of too much power, but in vague, noncommittal terms, and my mother always shushed him when he became too impassioned. The Guild gave us food and perfectly controlled weather and health patches. I have to believe those people – the humane government of my memory – have Amie now. Whatever my crimes, those officials wouldn’t hold her accountable. But I can’t ignore how wrong I was about the Guild or my parents. And it’s my fault she was taken. It was my hands that gave me away at testing. I run them along the rough cracks in the patches of stone until my fingertips are torn and bloody.
    The facts are inescapable. I’d been taught to hide my gift by my parents. All I had to do was pretend for a month while I performed the Guild’s testing and I would have been released from service. And if I hadn’t been so selfish, so scared of disappointing my mom and dad on the night of my retrieval, none of this would have happened. But I’m not sure I know how things might be different now. Even if I had told them I’d slipped during testing, would we have escaped? Sifting through flashes of my childhood for clues, I remember my parents being strong, but isolated from the rest of our community. They genuinely loved each other. Dad would leave Mom little love notes around the house, which I found both revolting and oddly reassuring when I stumbled across one. He treated her with a respect that few of the other grown men I encountered in Romen showed women or girls. I’d believed this was why they didn’t want me to become a Spinster, because it would tear our family apart – and our family was all we had. But beneath the happy veneer of our home, there were always secrets, particularly my training, which was kept from Amie. They told me she wouldn’t understand, and the tone they used when they explained this was the same one they used when discussing my ‘condition’ with each other.
    In the dark, I can’t hide from the only thing I can finally see. I didn’t want to see the treason in their actions. I ignored the implication of their words and heard what I needed to hear to feel safe, not what they were actually telling me. And now I’ve lost my chance to know my parents. All I can do is fit together the pieces they left behind in my memory.
    No one comes to visit me. There’s no food and no water. And no light. This can’t be how they treat the Spinsters. I must be being punished for my family’s treason. I was taught about the coventries in academy and shown pictures of the formidable towered