At five in the morning I heard a scream so loud I thought it came from deep within me. I felt my throat dry as it always did upon waking, so it couldn’t have been me. The glass of water on the night table was half empty. That meant I had spent the night in a relatively calm mental space; no dreams to analyze or alert me to anything apocalyptic, except that I had been stuck at home for a while now—not sure for how long, but gauging by the length and color of my hair, years. Suddenly, a disturbing thought crossed my mind. So I shot out of bed, half-expecting to see someone sprawled there. But my bed was desolate, only the long strands of silvery hair woven by the moon itself to keep them from cocooning me into even more solitude. My bedroom was silent. The air carried that same dull persistent hum I’d grown used to, like the steady ticking of a grandfather clock, but with nothing on the walls, only the relentless pull of time itself. And then I remembered what my grandmother said to me one day as she spun a golden spindle, her hands working the threads with a rhythm that felt like it held the world together. “Watch out for clocks, they’re tricky things, honey,” she murmured, not looking up. “If you stare at them too long, they can trick you into thinking time is all there is.” “What do you mean, grandma?” I asked, scooping up the stray thread she’d set aside for me, their softness tickling my fingers. She paused, her eyes crinkling as she looked at me. “You’ll see someday, Katherine. You’re too little to understand it all now. But remember this: you are not like everyone else.” “Not like everyone else?” I echoed, my brow furrowing. “No, you’re special,” she said, leaning closer as if sharing a great secret. “You’re a life weaver. Which means, honey, that you can take the dull, empty threads of time and weave them into something beautiful and alive. My eyes grew wide and my heart filled with her words as if she breathed them into me and I felt whole. “Everything you see breathes and moves, and because you’re a life weaver, you can step outside the boundaries of time.” “But grandma, daddy, says I’m weak, and daddy says I’m just a girl.” A deep hearty laugh rumbled through the earth. Her voice coming through like a trumpet, “You are a life weaver little Katherine!” I sank back into the sheets tasting my grandma’s testament, feeling her words inside of me, touching, caressing the deep wounds that had lodged in me like leeches. My pulse began to settle as the lull of sleep began to overtake me again until I heard a soft knock at the window. Once again, I jolted out of bed, heart pounding, knees buckling. Pulling on my robe, I rushed to the living room and threw back the curtains. There, past my reflection, through the frost, and beyond the years etched along my face, the oak tree reached out, its branches tapping ever so lightly on the glass. And then I saw it: far off in the distance, a white wicker basquet laying on a mound of leaves, snow slowly falling and piling over the heads of three little kittens. I looked beyond the oak, beyond the basket, and onto the street where my neighbors lived. To my surprise there hadn’t been any of the usual commotion—no children playing, no arguments, no laughter, no cries. The steady hum of life had vanished. Even the colors had drained away; not a hint of red, blue or green remained, only shades of gray, white and black. And the shadows seemed sharper, harsher, creeping and spreading. With courage, I stepped outside, and an icy sting shot through my bare feet. Glancing down, I realized that I hadn’t put on shoes so I shuffled back onto the porch. The boards creaked beneath me as I slipped on my sneakers, stiff and weathered. The cracked soles barely bent as I pushed my feet in. The wind hissed with a brittle stillness, carrying the hollow scent of withered leaves and parched earth. The wicker basket was still there, waiting like a fragile offering beneath the oak’s bare, knotted branches. I ran into the yard, the snow crunching beneath my steps, and scooped up the basket. I turned quickly, hurrying back into the house. I was safe. They were safe. I think. “Remember you are a life weaver,” my grandma’s voice echoed through me as I thought of her last hours; a majestic woman she was, wise and grand, so much so that upon dying she grew so large that it only took a single reach for her to get to Heaven. Even from there, she managed to say, “weave those threads, Katherine, weave them.” But by then, I was already entangled elsewhere, caught in another kind of web, a world thick with fog and confusion, deception and heartbreak. Her voice became just a distant whisper. And I was lost somewhere in the haze of my adult life. Yet, as I looked at the three little kittens enmeshed in the whiteness of their blanket, I felt a stirring of hope, a very faint call to awaken. They sported a set of stripes, each one with their own patterns and tonalities, resembling more wild feline cubs, maybe the offspring of lynxs or bobcats. I thought of ocelots, too, and their enchanting gait as they readied themselves to pounce. I always admired how elegance and fierceness can coexist in one entity, in one element, in one moment in time. Not the cowardly force that seemed to want to keep me down, in bed, afraid to step out and be seen. Afraid that the world would notice the length of my nails, the white that insisted to invade the black mane. And afraid that someone, anyone, would look at me and see right through me. But they stared at me with a kind of love, the wild felines, their large round eyes shone with a light that seemed vaguely familar, a sort of reminder that there was still something for me to do. Carefully, I unwrapped the white blanket that encased all three of them. Their soft downy fur felt like the threads of an old tapestry. Trembling, I pulled the blanket away, revealing not only the kittens but a small spindle made of polished wood and gold filigree. I swallowed hard catching my breath: it was my grandmother’s lost spindle, the very one I thought she’d taken with her on her journey to the otherworld. The kittens nestled closer to the spindle, their tiny bodies emitting a warmth that seemed to thaw the ice in my veins. Their eyes, unblinking, bore into mine. Quickly, I sat on the floor, the spindle in my hand, and closed my eyes. With a deep breath, I began to spin as the felines purred, their sound harmonizing with the hum of light threads emerging from the spindle. They shimmered and danced, connecting the fractured pieces of my past; the vibrant child, the weary adult lost in the fog, and the life weaver who still lived somewhere deep within me. Suddenly, the room began to glow, colors seeping back into the walls, the air and into me. The kittens leapt playfully into the strands of light and as dawn broke outside, the hum softened, replaced by the faint sounds of life returning to the street. I stood holding the spindle tightly, the kittens circling my feet until I sat back on my rocking chair and continued to weave.