Stitch-Lings

Overview

Stitch-Lings make up the Patchwork Choir of the Flesh Weaver, the Cast-Out that was once the Loom-Master of Aqua and whose compassion curdled into a compulsion to fix bodies without asking. They are bodies it has altered, animated as mismatched marionettes on strings of sinew. A few still know, in fragments, what has been done to them; the rest are moved by the thread alone. Those who accept the Weaver's healing become them.

Appearance

A Stitch-Ling is a person assembled. The parts do not match: a broad labourer's arm on a narrow shoulder, a woman's hand on a man's wrist, skin of two colours meeting at a seam, a second face stitched where a scar was. The seams are neat, too neat, sewn with silvery thread that is faintly pink and alive and pulses where it crosses a vein. Every wound the body ever had has been closed without a trace; every flaw has been "improved".

From the joints and the backs of the hands run strings of grey-red sinew, slack or taut, rising into nothing, as if a puppeteer stood above. Stitch-Lings move like marionettes: jerked, then smooth, the head lolling a beat behind the shoulders, the feet barely touching. The ones that keep fragments of self sometimes weep or whisper; the empty ones make only the creak of tightening sinew. They smell of clean linen and of the sweetish odour of a healer's room, with something raw beneath it.

Habitat and Range

Wherever the Weaver has worked, some remain: a village it "healed" of its deformities, a battlefield infirmary, a sickroom where the family let it in. A place long under its hand may be wholly a Patchwork Choir, its people moving too much in step and their skin too smooth. Its silvery thread, sinking into the ground behind it like roots, marks the paths they walk.

Behaviour and Temperament

Stitch-Lings bring the Weaver's mending to others. They seek out the wounded, the sick, the scarred, and the lame, and they come to them gently, holding out hands that are not quite their own. They do not ask. They carry the hurt to the Weaver, or open the way for its thread, and the one they carry becomes one of them.

Those with fragments of self are the hardest to meet. A Stitch-Ling may know its own mother and apologize to her as its new hand closes on her arm; it may beg to be cut free while it works. The grafted parts can keep their first owners' memories and urges, so a Stitch-Ling may want things it never wanted before.

Abilities

A Stitch-Ling's touch carries the Mending Stitch: a wound closes at once, without a scar, and the mended flesh is not quite its owner's. Thread from its seams burrows into bare skin, hunting for wounds. Its sinew strings make it hard to stop: a Stitch-Ling with a leg cut through is still held up and moved on by the thread.

It cannot touch someone who refuses aloud and declares their body their own, wounds and all. A scar worn with pride, or a limp that tells a story, makes it hesitate; cutting its strings drops it.

Life Cycle

Stitch-Lings are made from those who accept the Weaver's healing, and from those it heals without asking. Some are fused from two or more people into one body. They do not age normally; the thread keeps mending them. When the strings are cut and the Weaver's hold breaks, a Stitch-Ling may live on as a patchwork person, or it may die, depending on how much of it was ever its own.

Uses and Dangers

The Weaver's work tempts most where suffering is worst, so the sick and the maimed are most at risk. Families lose a member to "healing" and get back a stranger in a familiar face. Healers who have met the Weaver teach the hard lesson of their craft: no mending without permission.

Lore and Belief

In many places the Stitch-Lings are thought to be the work of a mad surgeon or a witch, and travelling healers have been driven out of villages on that suspicion. Others believe a Stitch-Ling's grafted parts belong to the dead and will go home to them; the parts were often taken from the living. Soldiers whisper that a Stitch-Ling's arm is the best arm in any army, and some have gone looking for the Weaver for that reason.

Villages that have lost their wounded to Stitch-Lings set guards on the sickroom door, and they tell of the old soldier who sat up three nights with an axe across his knees and took the arm off the thing that came on the fourth.

Where It Appears

• The Flesh Weaver
• Overview: The Cast-Outs