Chapter One

"They look dead, are they really going to take root?"

Tilting the yellow rod across her palm as she asked, Lysta eyed its counterparts. They spiralled from the mud covered grass, reaching upwards and then across to form a gold and red woven arch which she would have felt pride in if she could point to a single contribution of hers. Working alongside Reoulf was going to be difficult in that regard, she realised while cautiously wondering how long it would be before she wasn't a burden to the weavery. If she even stuck this workgroup out.

"Willow cuttings could go in upside-down and take hold, that's not what we need to worry about."

He was terse in his response but Lysta didn't hold it against him, having been silent herself almost to the point of impoliteness all afternoon. Spring flowers dotted the garden but the evening wind held a winter chill and had her chin tucked into a handwoven scarf. 

As Reoulf knelt, his muddy knee painted yet another patch of grass brown and she wondered how to describe her first day in the weavery to her family. The dinnertime questions would be inevitable.  His torso twisted as he pierced the cold ground with a final sharpened willow rod. As its tip lodged, Reoulf used both hands and years of knowledge to flex the rod and find its place within the woven archway.

Stepping back to examine the afternoons work, his breath clouded as it left his mouth in slow and long hum. Lysta sensed he also wasn't content and was unsurprised. To paint Reoulf was to point to his work. Whether his fastidious craftwork or careful construction of the community, acting as a human bridge between families and a firm guiding hand for newcomers, he was a figure difficult to picture outside of Irea. She found he was as much a part of Irea as the hall or church, his identity woven into this place with time and an absolute embrace of the vision. Embodying the ethos, he left no room for half-measures in both craft and community building.

"We'll come back in April and weave the new shoots into the arch. Also to take off the string, it's keeping the shape now but too long and they'll strangle. It's a balance. I'll make a note in the diary. Can't afford to mess up commissions."

Choosing to just nod in agreement to the statement, not feeling in a place to even comment, she reflected on the other workshops she had trialed in the past year. At least cooking was something accommodating of intuition, of all workshops, she had felt most useful there. Although that may be just because of Mattias, she acknowledged.

Rotating workgroup yet again had seemed like a way to shake up her days and break the rut she could feel arriving, which she blamed on Ared, her sister, despite being a year younger, engaging Ivan and preparing to move into her own community house. It wasn't exactly that she wanted that for herself, but she felt a deep envy for the path laced with purpose laid before Ared now. She was as full a member of the community as one could be, her and Ivan would make that house a home and fill it with life and hold the next generation in their hands. She pictured herself in her sisters' place and couldn't tell if envy or disgust was coursing through her. Envious of the meaning granted to Ared now but repelled by the constraints she was now submitted to. What did she even want, Lysta wondered.

Another few minutes of silence had passed with them both stood in the garden. She hadn't expected this level of awkwardness. Perhaps she should have read the weaving book still unopened on her nightstand, thumbing it briefly could have loaded her with some talking points at least. She would lie at dinner, she decided, today would be set out as a success and she would live briefly in their vicarious happiness for her until she re-entered the weavery tomorrow. Planning the future conversation further, she saw an opportunity to focus the conversation on  life outside the community, as although leaving for a day to make a commissioned piece for an outsider wasn't altogether uncommon, it was still a novelty and something which could hold the conversation away from her. 

Lysta carried their tools in a leather backpack and Reould shouldered two bundles of excess willow while they walked together across the yard to the Ward's Porch. It opened as they approached, and Mrs Ward showered adulations. Lysta accepted them awkwardly, under no delusions as to her role in the arch. Ever modest, particularly when representing the community to outsiders, Reoulf pressed she should contact him if pieces came loose.

"I'm sure it won't, it's perfect, wonderful. You're such the craftsman, the log basket you made has been going on strong since, what, before the kids flew, five years?"

An invite was made to stay for dinner but leaving seats empty in their community houses was not an option. So polite excuses were made before Mrs Ward drew some notes from her pocket. It was an alien combination to Lysta and she stared hard at the money now in Reoulfs hands.

As if spotting her focus Mrs Ward joked. "I hope Lysta gets her cut of that!".

Looking bruised, Reoulf bluntly clarified. "This is going straight to the community, it's for everyone there as they need it."

"Don't worry, I know, I know." Not expecting such a flat response she back peddled, "It's so inspiring what you do. I say to Mark that if we were four decades younger we'd consider joining. We're chained to modern comforts though and a bit old for that now". She trailed off and glanced at Lysta.

Deciding to rescue Reoulf from the resulting silence, she spoke up. "We'll say hello to everyone in our houses, I know Mary will be happy to hear piglets grew so well, I could hear the squeals all afternoon!"

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Mrs. Ward smiled warmly, clearly relieved for a tangent. Glancing at the sinking sun across the hedgerow Reoulf shifted the willows onto his left shoulder and pocketed the notes.

***

The walk home was fastest along the beach and the desire to arrive punctually for dinner saw it taken, despite the fading light and narrow strip of rocks left by the tide. Although they walked in silence, the rustle of the willows, the crashing tide and crunch of rocks pleasantly filled the absence of conversation. Despite exhaustion, used to the relatively sedentary kitchen life, Lysta fought to keep up with Reoulf, weighed down with the willow as he was. A trail through a small strip of forest would lead to the rear of our community. In the dim light the trail was near invisible, but having taken the route thousands of times neither struggled to follow and passed through the pine trunks with ease.

The plot of land on which Ireas sat had been chosen for sentimental reasons, with the lake gently lapping just a breath away being a further, compelling, factor. Although year-round hub for community events, Lysta enjoyed the lake more in the summer months when she could sometimes find outsiders, tantalisingly unknown people, wandering the strand often with a dog widely circling them.

In recent years the surrounding landscape had begun to act as a silent mocking reminder of the pressure they faced on seemingly all sides.

Irea squeezed itself between a hillside clung to by aching pines and a lakefront arching out to the horizon in each direction, leaving only a narrow strip of land for the residents to occupy. As the community had grown, quadrupling in its fifty years, space had become of premium and was to be made useful; pastel houses, an oblong community hall, foul pens and tethered animals all slotted together and stood as a tangible reflection of human presence and thought spanning decades. The hills had been immovable and the lake eternal, so they had made do and made home.

How other things had grown in fifty years proved less manageable. Hart, a town across the lake had become a popular commuter hub for the capital, being just an hour north by car, and had developed rapidly to accommodate this. Not a great problem itself, it was rather a manifestation of a changing world with which each year had become less accommodating to the Irea community's quirks. The squeezing hills and lake, the clutter, the legal letters from various agencies and blunt tax inquiries seemed to be in unison as they nudged the community, 'there isn't much space left for you here anymore'.

These pressures had reshaped the community in ways only the very oldest members could track. When the Irea was just a concept, and on into its early years, firmly incorporated into the vision of the community had been a larger goal of transforming the world. They were putting down roots for a renewed social order with each new family and each yearly cycle. As the strictures of outside society grew tighter on their way of life, the vision also narrowed, and the community looked inwards, fighting to sustain itself. Never addressed aloud, outside of Dias gatherings, the atmosphere was thick with precarity.

Despite active seclusion, some voices began inviting themselves in. A money-less, hierarchy-less community is all well and good, they were told, but the children needed minimum standards of education, vaccinations, and support workers. With these meetings starting when she was twelve, Lysta had become familiar with the routine, every few months she would be introduced to a formally dressed figure, typically a woman, and they would sit together alone in kitchen. While some way conscious that these meetings caused stress for her family and the community leaders, the Dias, she had enjoyed these moments, fascinated by her interviewers mannerisms and the broad range of questions. The questions afterwards from her parents and the Dias were more intense than anything the social workers ever asked.

They had stopped two years ago, as she turned eighteen. Since then she had sometimes run into the social workers as they visited her younger siblings but in recent months the visiting faces were all new to her. On a day like today, where she was feeling particularly incapable of contributing to the community, she realised she would give a lot to have a cup of tea in the kitchen and talk with someone who barely knew her. Outside of rare visits to the Wards and assorted neighbours dotted along the lakefront, strangers, or at least people who didn't know your life story and what you ate for breakfast last week, were hard to come by

"You know her sister joined briefly?"

"I didn't even know she had a sister." Lysta responded, her engagement with the Wards being just enough to make this news confusing in its absence to this point.

"It was ten years ago, over, very brief stay but she's the source of a lot of the criticism we get in Hart"

Reflecting on and filing this information, Lysta remained silent, altering her mental map of the community.

He continued, "I think anyone can live like us, that's the dream at least, that we all do eventually. But she moved here after growing up in the town. I don't think she could overcome some of the patterns of life she had crystalised by that point.

As they approached the perimeter fence, Reoulf reached out and unlatched a gate, gesturing her forwards.

"It's why we don't integrate local families in anymore, there's too much risk of them generating bad blood if they leave." Rorik dropped into silence again, as they walked through the outskirts of Irea, the sharp mountains on their left and the lake to their right.

"Goodnight Reoulf"

"Goodnight Lysta, say hello to your house".

Reoulf headed to the weavery to place the willows back into storage. Lysta briefly considered running to her house and perhaps catching the end of dinner, instead she walked in a different direction, towards Mattias' hut. She couldn't stomach any questions about her first day without screaming, she decided, and needed to rant to Mattias. She could easily convince her house that she was caught late at the Ward's project but still felt a pit in her stomach as she broke a general rule; mealtimes are for the community and family.

Mattias, atypically and just for the purposes of his community job, lived alone in a hut below a twisted hawthorn tree at the rear of the community, set against the edge of the mountain slope. As she approached, she saw no flickering gas lamp inside and almost swore with disappointment. Getting closer, she could make out two small eyes staring at her through the window though, coupled with a rapidly wagging tail but no sign of Mattias.

"Good boy, Jake" she whispered and waved, the dogs' tail doubling in speed as he pawed at the windowpane.

The sight raised her spirits marginally but she was still disappointed, confused to a degree, by Mattias' absence and wondered if he was eating a very late dinner with another house. Which he did, although only very intermittently she recalled. Desperately needing someone to unfurl her discontent, she frowned into the darkness as she walked home and resolved to sit with him at breakfast.