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Writer's pictureFairy Tale Magazine

The Weavers Speak by Deborah Sage


When she asked for the dresses, the king’s

Order came to us, the maidens of

The kingdom. Commanded on pain of death,

To weave dresses as golden as the sun,

As silver as the moon, as dazzling as

The stars.

 

Weaving a dress from sunlight merely

Burns the hands,

Threads of fire ignite fingertips,

Leaving heat-radiating scars, reminders

Of gold’s price.

 

Moonlight is cooler, less punishing. Silver

Water streaming through the needle.

Moonlight forgives distraction and

Missed stitches.

 

But only a witch can weave

A dress from starlight. Interlacing

Diamond-keen beams risks

Blood and blindness,

Fair forfeit for the thief of constellations.

 

And so, for our sister we wove

The golden gown and

The one of silver, fashioning her freedom

With flame and luminescence, but

For the one of stars


We gave ourselves.

Deborah Sage is a native of Kentucky, USA. She has most recently been published in Eternal Haunted Summer, Literary LEO, Fairy Tale Magazine, From the Farther Trees, the 2022 Dwarf Stars Anthology , Amethyst Press’s All Shall Be Well anthology for Julian of Norwich and Eye to the Telescope.


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