Knots and Intent

She twined the ribbons together around her fingers, weaving more knots that she intended. She scowled, then sighed, and set the knots down in her lap.
She was curled up in a white armchair with its back to the lightless window. Her father stood at the other end of the room, hunched over a desk, reading over the string of symbols in black ink that had been her morning work. There were pages of them that, to the untrained eye, looked like scribbles and pictures made out of boredom, but made up black waves on the ivory rice paper, shapes that crested here with the curve of an ankh, there with the line of a choku rei.
"Don't stop," he muttered to her, flipping the page where the symbols became neater, the ink blots fewer.
"Why? It isn't doing anything," she said, pulling one knot out and trailing the smoky grey ribbon of the arm of the chair.
"It is simple, not ineffective. Knots and intent. It is the most basic of charms." He glanced up at her, eyes large and dark in the dim light. "Why do we learn the basic charms first?"
She touched her thumb to a loose black thread that wove itself back into the ribbon. "Because to improve we must build upon what we know. Complexity comes from simplicity," she recited.
"Good," he returned to the book in front of him and flipped to the last page of symbols. "There will do." She thought for a moment he might bestow a smile on her but closed the book abruptly and strode to the door. "Keep practicing," he called without looking back. The door closed heavily behind him.
She sat still in the chair, eyes on the door. The light slowly bled from the room until it was a nest of shadows. She turned her attention to the black leather bound volume on the desk. The cover sprang open, pages flying past until they tore front the bindind, uneven edges became feathers, corners became talons and dozens of white rice and ink black birds flew to the cieling in a rustle of crinkled paper. They nested on the beams as she took up her ribbons and began to knot.

Art by Helen Musselwhite


Text by Lucie MacAulay