Free The Ghost Rebellion by Tee Morris Pip Ballantine

degrading to a grating rattle that came from deep within the machine. The showman glanced nervously around, but Beth already knew that his demonstration was not long for this audience. Joints that had once bent slowly and with the skill of an artist were now snapping and whipping out and around, as if the machine thought it had fallen behind the crone. Attention began turning to the shiny creation and its demise. Its legs jerked and seized, curling into themselves like a dying man’s hand, while the body from where its legs sprouted now shuddered and smoked. As the showman ducked and dodged the Weaver’s spasms to find out why his machine was suddenly failing him, the old woman worked on calmly as if nothing was happening.
    The sand finished in the hourglass, and a hush fell over the audience as the Weaver’s Web gave one final bang before listing to one side, sparks and super-heated pieces of metal falling on its rug and catching it on fire. Its creator was now earning a fair share of chuckles as he stomped out the small flames dotting its half-completed rug.
    Then the silence returned as the old weaver stood and walked to one side of the loom. Carefully, she removed the rug from her device and held it up for the audience to see. At first, there appeared to be nothing there, apart from white and grey smudges. The old woman then stepped into the light that had been turned on the Weaver’s Web, and that was when the details of the rug came to life.
    Vétheuil in the Fog , painted in 1879 by artist Claude Monet.
    With the swelling adulation of the crowd, the show and the competition was over. Moments later, the crowd evaporated, chattering around the rest of the market. Some small clusters remained to watch the showman scramble about the remains of his failure, others had returned to their tourist maps for ideas on where to venture next.
    The old weaver tidied up her belongings into her bag and shambled down the stairs, not even acknowledging the showman. She’d made her point. As she made her way across the market towards the tangle of streets, Beth noted how the crone kept her head down. She now appeared exhausted, and in desperate need of rest.
    Beth helped herself up on to the stage and walked around the remains of the machine. She knelt, placing one hand on the Weaver’s Web and the other on the showman’s shoulder.
    “ An impressive display, to be sure,” she said.
    Her other hand searched for what she believed had been the old woman’s secret weapon. Her fingers then brushed across the edge of a disc. She trapped the circle of metal between her fingers and wiggled it. The magnet popped off the housing and into her palm.
    “ Perhaps next time, monsieur ,” she said, clutching the device in her fist so as not to reveal it.
    Spotting the bent, frail form now far from the attention of tourists or locals, Beth followed the weaver deeper into Bruges. Rain started to fall, the additional darkness reducing her target to a formless shape against shadow. Beth’s heart began to race as she increased her pace, her eyes taking in any possible doorways or alleys that could mask her pursuit as a foolish English tourist lost in the city.
    A pair of boys barrelled out from a corner, sending her to her knees. They raced past her, calling out rude words in French, having no earthly clue how lucky they had been that she had not slit their throats. With a few choice curses of her own, Beth pulled herself back on her feet and pushed onward, her eyes peering ahead for her quarry.
    Turning a corner, Beth caught sight of a bent old woman with a dark blue shawl over her head bustling away. The canal was on her right, dark and slowly flowing past just beyond a low stone wall. This corner of the canal city presently belonged to herself, and her prey.
    “ Mistress!” she called out.
    The old woman stopped.
    Beth slipped the knife back into her sleeve as she approached the old weaver. The woman oddly seemed to be shrinking the closer