The Willow Weaver

The Willow Weaver by Michael Wood

Ralph Campion, a young clerk and the only son of a poor widow, is confronted by his superior after betraying a position of trust. The older man, who once obtained Campion’s employment out of kindness to his late father, has also drawn the young man into knowledge of his own hidden conduct and fears what a public prosecution might reveal. Though he claims friendship and sympathy, he gives Campion twenty-four hours to “vanish” before Mr. Warrener, his employer and father-in-law, returns and demands action. Campion, ashamed and terrified of prison, public disgrace, and the pain his mother would suffer, understands the unspoken suggestion that he should kill himself. After leaving his superior’s house, he walks through rain-soaked fields toward the grim outskirts of the town and stops beside a polluted canal, intending to drown himself. He throws away his watch, chain, and purse to make his death appear to be robbery or murder, and considers binding his wrists so that his body cannot resist death. Before he can act, he encounters an aged, impoverished woman carrying willow withies to a hut. He helps her with her burden, and she calls herself the Willow-weaver. As she works, she explains that she uses every twig, crooked as well as straight, though crooked ones may make the basket awry. Campion asks her to tie his wrists, but she refuses his money and, while agreeing to tie any knot men ask her to fasten, speaks of his mother and reveals knowledge of his despair. The Willow-weaver rebukes his wish to die, telling him that suicide cannot mend his mother’s heart or cleanse the shame he feels. For his mother’s sake, she promises to be a mother to him that night and bids him rest on the willow withies. Under her power, Campion sees another country: an immeasurable silver lake, a many-petalled pink flower wreathed in coloured flame, and music at its heart. He receives an inexpressible knowledge and hears a song that portrays earthly struggles, sins, virtues, griefs, and deaths as shifting shadows and gleams upon the changeless Lake of Peace. When the twenty-four hours expire, Campion returns drenched, hatless, and altered. He tries to tell his superior and Mr. Warrener what has happened, but they conclude that he has lost his reason. Mr. Warrener, moved by charity, decides that Campion is not responsible for his wrongdoing and orders that his family and a doctor be summoned. Others claim Campion has been taken by the “good people,” but the account presents him as haunted by fragments of the Child’s Song: unable to recover or express it completely, he wanders in bewilderment, striving to interpret its music with a labouring mind and a longing, breaking heart.

By Michael Wood · First published 2013 · Genre: Fantasy, Supernatural Fiction, Fairy Tale · 6,220 words

First lines

"I shall give you twenty-four hours to vanish in, Campion," said the elder and superior to the younger and inferior. "I can't do more for you than that. Let me tell you very few men in my position would do as much."

He held his finger up impressively.

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Tags

supernatural fiction · Celtic folklore · fairy lore · moral crisis · suicide prevention · redemption · guilt and remorse · betrayal of trust · corruption and hypocrisy · class and respectability · mother-son relationship · mercy and compassion

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The Willow Weaver is listed on Textopian as a short story by Michael Wood, dated 2013 CE.

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