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but it took a long time and what she produced in her half inch of fabric was noticeably unlike that of the beginning.
    Her hands shaking, the girl sat back on her heels, frustrated. All her pride in her past work was wiped out. Before these, she was a child beginning a first halting attempt to create cloth.
    Yet when she had relaxed from concentrating on her task find was aware once more of those about her, she did not meet the contempt she had expected. Rather, a sensation of surprise.
    “You are one perhaps who can be taught, female,” came that mind voice of authority. “If you wish.”
    Dairine turned her face eagerly in the direction from which she believed that message had come. “I do wish, Great One!”
    “So be it But you will begin even as our hatchlings, for you are not yet a weaver.”
    “That I agree.” The girl ran her fingers ruefully across the fabric before her.
    If Vidruth expected her return into his power now—she shrugged. And let Rothar concentrate upon the captain and his own plight. What seemed of greatest importance to her was that she must be able to satisfy these weavers.
    They seemed to have no real dwelling except this area about their looms. Nor were there any furnishings save the looms themselves. And those stood in no regular pattern. Dairine moved cautiously about, memorizing her surroundings by touch.
    Though she sensed a number of beings around her, none touched her, mind or body. And she made no advances in turn, somehow knowing such would be useless.
    Food they did bring her, fresh fruit. And there were some finger lengths of what she deemed dried meat. Perhaps it was better she did not know the origin of that.
    She slept when she tired on a pile of woven stuff, not quite as silky as that on the looms, yet so tightly fashioned she thought it might pass the legendary test of carrying water within its folds. Her sleep was dreamless. When she awoke, she found it harder to remember the men or the ship, even Rothar or the captain. Rather, they were like some persons she had known once in distant childhood, for the place of the weavers was more and more hers. And she must learn. To do that was a fever burning in her.
    There was a scuttling sound and then a single order: “Eat!”
    Dairine groped before her, found more of the fruit. Even before she was quite finished, there came a twitch on her skirt.
    “This ugly thing covering your body, you cannot wear it for thread gathering.”
    Thread gathering? She did not know the meaning of that. But it was true that her skirt, if she moved out of the open space about the looms, caught on branches. She arose and unfastened her girdle, the lacing of her bodice, allowed the dress to slip away into a puddle about her feet. Wearing only her brief chemise, Dairine felt oddly free. But she sought out her girdle again, wrapped it around her slim waist, putting there within the knife.
    There came one of those light touches, and she faced about.
    “Thread hangs between the trees"—her guide gave a small tug—"touch it with care. Shaken, it will become a trap. Prove that you have the lightness of fingers to be able to learn from us.
    No more instructions came. Dairine realized they must be again testing her. She must prove she was able to gather this thread. Gather it how? Just as she questioned that, something was pushed into her hand. She discovered she held a smooth rod, the length of her lower arm. This must be a winder for the thread.
    Now there was a grasp again on her wrist, drawing her away from the looms, on under the trees. Even as her left hand brushed a tree trunk came the order: “Thread!”
    There would be no profit in blind rushing. She must concentrate her well-trained perceptive sense to aid her to find thread here.
    Into her mind slid a very dim picture. Perhaps that came from the very far past which she never tried to remember. A green field lay open under the morning sun and on it were webs pearled with dew. Was what she sought