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The golden spinning wheel turns round and round. A gnarled mess of spiderwebs are spun into thread, stark silver as they pass his hand. He drops one hand, carding fingers through his hair. The night has grown late, the moon long hidden behind grey clouds. But the weaver keeps on. When his hand comes away, a thread of walnut follows. He does not see when it slips between the fibres of the gnarled webs, streaking a stain in the silver threads.
Far away in a bed of down with his head pillowed upon goose quills, a prince startles in his sleep. He stirs, a gasp slipping from rose petal lips. There are eyes upon him, as deep and dark as the sky at midnight, speckled with stars. Their yearning pulls at his heart, at the rose thorn walls he has built around it. All too quickly, the eyes vanish, replaced by a face that ripped holes in his lungs, snatched the breath from his lips. He is begging again, on his knees, hand stained scarlet by rose thorns. The white roses have turned pink from his blood, but the face turns away, contemptuous and sneering. It is everything he has seen before.
But something is different. He hears a voice, interwoven amongst his own cries, singing a song he has never heard, the creaking of a spinning wheel being turned. When he opens his eyes, it is to the song ringing in his ears.
The prince saddles his horse, the clear morning air crisp in his throat. The leaves are on fire around him, crunching underfoot as his horse treads carefully through the forest. He ventures farther than he has ever had before, losing sight of his envoy. When the clamour of his guards has fallen away, the prince hears it, the silvery notes of a song on the wing of a breeze.
Enamoured, the prince follows. His horse protests when the forest darkens around them, crimson leaves falling like rain around them, but he pushes on, the song drawing him like a moth to a flame.
Grey stone breaks the monotony of red, and the prince’s horse pulls to a stop. The prince swings off the horse. Three times he circles the base of the tower, hand pressed to sun warmed stones, but he finds no door. All the while, his horse paces, tugging and prancing.
A flock of ravens pass overhead and the horse spooks, shrieking as it rears. The branch it was tied to snaps with a cracking sound, and the singing stops abruptly. The prince mourns its loss even as he lunges for his horse. The undergrowth rustles, and the air stills. A heavy cape of unease drapes around the prince and he gathers his reins. A flash of scarlet in the undergrowth catches his eye, and the prince kneels, fingers brushing the silk soft petal of a rose. A single rose growing close to the ground, its petals redder than blood.
The prince stares, for there were no red roses to be found in his kingdom. He has never seen a real one.
Deep in his tower, the weaver hears the crack of a branch. It is the smallest shift of sound, so high up amongst the clouds, but having grown so used to silence, the weaver hears it like a crash of thunder. He drops his spinning; the silver thread catching little dust bunnies and runs to the window. The stones of the windowsill are warm when he grips them, only to see the tail end of a horse vanish into the undergrowth, and a man, crouched by his tower.
The weaver’s breath catches, and he falls back into his chair. With trembling hands, he picks up his spinning and returns with such fervour that he pricks his finger upon the spindle. A spot of bright red dots the thread but he does not notice.
That night, the prince dreams once more. This time, he sees the red of someone else’s blood, hears the snap of a whip cracking over flesh. He screams with the unnamed man when his skin breaks, flayed open, spilling scarlet over stone floors. The prince awakens horror-struck, his sheets soaked with sweat and tears. He saddles his horse once more.
The forest burns, leaves crackling like flames underfoot as he rides. Trees thicken around him, until he comes upon the tower, grey stone breaking through red. This time, the rose had borne a second one, sprouting from the ground in a particular fashion. The scent is almost dizzying when he touches the crimson petals, and he steps back.
He calls out, and a murder of crows startle from their perch. They circle the sky, and for a moment, the prince swears he saw a head lean out from the window. He calls again, but there is no answer, and he is forced to retreat when his horse tears from its crossties and flee.
Deep in his tower, the weaver trembles. He rubs at his eyes, and a silver tear falls upon his threads. He does not see the way it darkens the silver, turning it dull and grey. The webs are particularly dusty that day, and he rubs more tears from his eyes as he spins. An eyelash catches upon the gossamer hairs, so fine that no one can see.
When night falls over the tower, the weaver lays aside his work, his heart pounding in his chest. Like a shadow without a body, he drifts to the bed. The weaver has no need for sleep; cursed as he is, but he sleeps that night. He dreams of a prince in a land where no red roses bloom, with pearl white skin and rose petal lips. The prince’s eyes are the colour of oak bark, and his smile is starlight over frost. His blood stains white rose petals red, and his weeping tears at the silk of the weaver’s heart.
The weaver walks in the prince’s garden, trailing fingers over leaves and rose thorns. He has long forgotten what it felt like to stand bare foot upon the earth, with the smell of roses and petrichor.
“Who are you?” The words startle the weaver, who has long grown used to silence. He raises his head from the rose petals he had been examining, stares wide eyed at the crying prince who has risen from his knees.
The weaver clears his throat; he has forgotten how to speak.
“You’re in my dream,” the prince continues before the weaver can relearn how to form words. “This dream never changes. How?”
The weaver stares back, his words lodged in his throat. He makes an aborted gesture with his hands, and the prince’s eyes drop to them.
“Have we met?” the prince presses, stepping closer. “I feel as if I know you.”
The weaver trembles where he stands. He knows this prince now. He had stood above him in his window and watched him caress a rose.
“No,” he manages.
“I’m Kim Junmyeon,” the prince says, and the weaver flinches. Putting a name to a face just made everything too real. This was a dream. But not one of his own. “Do you have a name?”
The weaver has not been asked his name in so long that he has nearly forgotten it. He dredges the dusty corners of his mind, pulling aside cobwebs spun over memories that he would rather not remember.
“Yixing,” he croaks. Already, the fabric of the dream is trembling. He must wake soon, before-. The prince, Junmyeon, is reaching out, his face eager and clear, so clear. The weaver, Yixing, his name was Yixing, shakes when Junmyeon’s blood drenched rose touches him. The petals flare, and they both watch, one in shock, and the other in awe as the rust-stained flower blooms anew. The white drains out, replaced by a deep, rich crimson.
Yixing looks at the prince, Junmyeon, stricken, before he reaches for the weave of the dream and pulls.
He awakes shaking, sweat soaking through his clothes, the echo of his name ringing in his ears. Sunlight pours in through the window, staining his spindle of thread the colour of bees. He picks out the dust bunnies and installs himself upon his chair again. When he reaches for the webs, his own cobwebs shiver, as if a breeze had blown through and lifted some of the dust.
The prince comes again, except this time he has a name. A name that the weaver turns over and over in his head, tasting the shape of it with his tongue. His spinning wheel stops spinning, and he cannot resist the urge to lean his head outside to see the prince. His fingers grip sun warmed stones, golden light staining the prince’s face when he turns his face skyward. Even so far away, with the height of the tower between them, their eyes meet, and Yixing’s breath catches. He draws back into the tower, but the prince, Junmyeon, calls out to him.
“Who are you, Yixing? Why do you sit in a tower with no door?”
Yixing drops into his chair, clumsy, his heart hammering in his chest. His fingers work at the dusty cobwebs, trembling as he starts up his spinning once more, trying to drown out the prince’s cries. He fumbles when he reaches for the spindle, and the spindle pierces his finger. A bright red bead of blood wells up on his skin, spilling down the spindle’s silver bright edge. It stains the length of web he had been spinning, soaking a dark patch into the thread.
Beneath the tower, a spiral of roses unfurls. Junmyeon watches in awe, backing away when his horse whinnies in fright. The vines carry thorns, sharp as daggers as they climb around the tower, rooting between grey stones, the central spine thickening as it grew. Soon it is twice as thick as Junmyeon’s waist, and sturdy as a tree.
Grasping the nearest branch, Junmyeon swings himself onto the spine, carefully avoiding the thorns. He forces his eyes skyward, clambering towards the single window where the briars have stopped. When he climbs into the room, the man sitting by the spinning wheel starts.
“You-!” The weaver bites out, his spindle falling out of his hands. It clatters to the floor, and Junmyeon picks it up, setting it back in his hands almost reverently. Electricity jolts through their skin when their fingers brush.
“It is you,” Junmyeon says in wonder. “The man from my dream.”
The weaver, Yixing, stares back, horror struck. He tastes blood in his mouth as memories of another man being flung from the tower fills his mind.
“You cannot be here,” he whispers, clutching the spindle to his chest. “Please.”
The ravens outside crow, and Yixing shudders, fingers digging into the spool of thread wound around his spindle. More blood soaks into the silver, and the stain grows bigger.
“Tell me how to free you,” Junmyeon insists, leaning forward. “I will only leave then.”
Yixing chances a look over his shoulder, as if afraid that the shadows themselves would leap out.
“Why do you want to free me?” he hisses. “You barely know me.”
Junmyeon dips his head, his eyes flickering to the spool of thread clutching in Yixing’s hand. His blood has soaked into the silver, every thread turned crimson. Yixing follows his gaze, his breaths hitching in his throat. He freezes when Junmyeon steps towards him, a red rose cupped in his palms. This rose is fresh, as if he had pulled it out from the briars that line his window. But instinctively, Yixing knows.
It is the same rose from the dream, the one that turned from funeral white to scarlet at his touch.
“Tell me,” he implores, and something in Yixing’s chest gives, unwinds and he reaches out. His fingers have barely brushed the silky petals when the ravens take to the sky, shrieking like a banshee.
“Go away and return another day,” Yixing said, a chill running down his spine. “I will tell you then. Go before he comes.”
He shoves the prince away. Junmyeon sees the terror in his eyes, and listens, climbing out of the window. When his feet touch the damp earth, the briars retract, slinking down the tower like a snake into a burrow, the ground sealing over.
Junmyeon dreams that night, of a young boy he does not recognize, of a man that he does. He dreams of a red thread twined around his pinky, watches another red thread snap, a man fall from the stone tower and a voice whispers to him.
Do you still want him? Broken as he is?
He awakes in cold sweat to the sensation of falling. When he climbs the tower that day, with a white rose tucked into his belt, he is gripped by a sense of foreboding. He swings a leg over the window ledge but does not see the weaver. The golden wheel sits idle, the spindleful of thread tucked into a little golden basket.
Junmyeon reaches for his sword when a muffled moan echoes through the still air, his hackles rising. He calls out when he clambers down from the window, but there is no answer.
He senses the presence before he hears the whisper of a knife withdrawing from its scabbard. Junmyeon turns, but he is too slow. The blade buries itself into his side, and blood bursts on his tongue. He falls in slow motion, sword clattering to the floor, his eyes catching the ripple of black fabric. Chains rattle viciously when he struggles to sit up, crimson dripping down his chin.
Yixing is sat against the bed frame, his wrists shackled, fabric balled up in his mouth. Junmyeon blinks, and there are suddenly multiple Yixings, all curled against the bed.
“You think he is your intended?” The voice is sneering, grating like metal scraping over stone. “Can he even tell you apart?”
The multiple Yixings protest as one, straining against their chains. Junmyeon grips his bleeding side, trembling as he struggles upright. He does not see the man leaning against the wall, cloaked in darkness and shadow as he goes.
The Yixing closest to him looks up when he staggers close, his doe eyes filled with grief. Junmyeon casts a glance towards the rose set in his belt and moves on. He sinks to his knees before the last one at the head of the bed, the one when his head bowed, choking around his gag. He draws out the now scarlet rose, laying it upon Yixing’s lap. Yixing looks up at him and Junmyeon manages a smile.
He coughs out blood and Yixing lurches towards him, chains rattling.
“That- that’s not possible,” the man sputters as Junmyeon collapses into Yixing’s lap. He grasps Junmyeon’s collar and Junmyeon grunts in pain when he is heaved upright, much to Yixing’s distress. The rag is yanked out of Yixing’s mouth, and he gasps for air, clawing at his bonds.
“Stop! Has he not proven himself?”
“With what? A flower that will rot and die?” Junmyeon does not care who the man is, but he cares very much when he snatches the red rose out of Yixing’s lap and crushes it beneath his boot. “Just like his regard for you.”
He screams, just as Yixing does, but the rose takes root. Briars flare across the wood floor, trailing over Yixing’s chains, up the man’s legs, over the golden wheel.
The man’s grip loosens when the thorns find his flesh and Junmyeon strikes the floor so hard all the air is snatched out of his lungs. But then Yixing is there. He kneels next to his head with his eyes brimming with silver tears. His chains lie shattered on the floor beside him.
“You came back,” he whispers, words only for Junmyeon’s ears, and even with his life blood soaking into the wood beneath him, Junmyeon feels only a sense of relief.
“The dreams,” Junmyeon croaks. “They were you.”
Yixing nods, a tear splattering onto Junmyeon’s face.
“I have woven dreams for the better part of my life,” he confesses, with a little shudder. “And my father-.”
“It’s okay,” Junmyeon rasps, finding Yixing’s hand. The jade pale skin is streaked with red. Yixing gazes back at him, and the lost expression on his face tears at Junmyeon’s heart.
“Junmyeon.” It is the first time he has heard his name spoken by the weaver, by the man Junmyeon is sure now was Fate’s intended for him. He likes it, likes the way Yixing sounds the syllables of his name. It is a gift that he could hear him speak it before death claims him. “Junmyeon, I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Junmyeon whispers, squeezing Yixing’s hand. “If we truly are intended.” His eyes drift to the spool of red thread sitting in the golden basket. The spinning wheel is in splinters, shattered by the briars that coiled all around them. The air is thick with the scent of roses, and the floor at Junmyeon’s back suddenly feels like a cloud. He smiles up at Yixing, his eyelids heavy. “You’re free.”
“But you-.”
“I will see you again,” Junmyeon cuts him off, wary of his time. His body feels weightless, and he can no longer feel the slippery warmth of Yixing’s fingers curled around his own. “In the next life of the life after.”
Yixing’s weeping dulls as his ears roar with white noise, and Junmyeon does not remember falling asleep.
When he wakes, he wakes to sunlight streaming past shutters. The rays of light cast funky shadows on his bedspread when he sits up. The world is blanketed with white when he draws up the shutters, snowflakes swirling gently down to melt into the snowballs that line the earth. A car honks its horn as he slips out into the morning air.
Junmyeon has a routine he follows. Stop into the coffee shop at the corner of the street, grab his usual coffee and bagel, pass by the blind musician who plays the piano and leave a ten-dollar bill in her cup before continuing on his way to the office.
But the girl is not in her usual spot. Instead, a harp sits on the side of the path, its strings plucked by elegant hands. Junmyeon slows when he takes into the man attached to the hand. He has a sweet face, and an easy charm that draws him in. He winks at passerby’s with a red rose between his teeth as he strokes the melody of a crooning love song over the harp strings.
Junmyeon’s heart jolts when their eyes connect, and for a moment, every string on the harp turns scarlet. When he blinks, the strings are silver again, but the harpist has not taken his eyes off him. Junmyeon clears his throat as the last notes of the song drifts off on the wing of a winter breeze. There are snowflakes dusted in the harpist’s dark hair, his cheeks flushed a delightful rose from the cold, and Junmyeon is struck by a sudden pang of yearning.
“Have we met?” the harpist asks, pulling the rose from between his teeth. “I feel as if I know you.”
Junmyeon inhales, the lungful of wintry air chasing away old dusty cobwebs. He takes the proffered rose, and his heart lurches when the harpist grins, cheeks indenting.
“Maybe,” he answers. “I’m Junmyeon.”
“Junmyeon.” The name rolls pleasantly in the harpist’s mouth and Junmyeon blinks. He likes the way the harpist says his name, he decides. “I’m Yixing.”
“Hello, Yixing,” Junmyeon says, tasting familiarity on his tongue. He hesitates, before he is gripped by a new wave of courage. “Can I have your number?”
Yixing beams, his smile as radiant as the sun rising and nods almost frantically.
“Of course.” He fumbles for his phone and comes up with the device and a red corded earpiece. When he hands the phone over, their fingers brush for the briefest moment. Junmyeon swears he smells the scent of roses, almost choking in their intensity, feels a stabbing pain in his side and lips on his before the moment passes. He looks down, and finds that somehow, the earphone cord has entangled around his pinky and Yixing’s in the process of handing over the phone.
“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Yixing stutters, blushing.
And in that moment, Junmyeon knows, that some way or another, Yixing was meant for him. Shadowy visages remain in the corners of his mind, of a dream weaver sat in a tower alone, until he wove a dream all his own, of a prince who dreamt of a rose and a silvery song, but Junmyeon has never been one to dwell in memories past too long.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for.” Yixing’s smile is like roses blooming in frost, and Junmyeon feels his world shift and move.
The golden sheen of the harp gleams in the morning sunshine, and Yixing awakes to gentle fingers playing over the ridges of his spine.