Fix by Ferrett Steinmetz Page A

told.”
    â€œIs this some Kiss of the Spider-Woman bullshit?” Valentine asked. “You know I’m not good with spiders. The best part of any dungeon crawl is reducing those chitinous fuckers to stains.”
    Robert rubbed her shoulders affectionately, like a ringman readying a boxer. “Mawmaw wouldn’t hurt a fly. Come on, you’ll love her sweet tea.”
    Mawmaw, as it turned out, was a sweet sun-wrinkled grandmother who apologized for not having more ice for her sweet tea, the electricity kept going out here, but all the boys and girls were absolutely lovely. She was far too old to walk around, these fine people had taken her from the nursing home, but they’d put her up in this lovely well-kept cabin and have you seen my doilies? Goodness, I couldn’t get by without my lace. The boys, they put them up on the walls for me.
    Mawmaw sat in her rocking chair, surrounded by wafting lace circles, a ball of thread sitting by her gnarled feet, her knitting needles never ceasing as she leaned forward to ask Aliyah how old she was.
    Aliyah tried her best to answer, but the elaborate lace patterns on the doilies distracted her. They spiraled into tight Mandelbrot loops, impossibly complex patterns that kept revealing more patterns. Following their corkscrew arches with her eyes had the pleasure of chasing a man down a busy street – she trailed a thin thread through a complex intersection, then navigated her way to the anchor-point of the next knot.
    Mawmaw had been talking for minutes. Aliyah couldn’t tell you what she’d said.
    She reached up to take off these damned glasses to get a better look…
    â€œHang on, kid,” Robert warned her, grabbing Aliyah’s shoulder. “She’s almost asleep…”
    Sure enough, Mawmaw slid into slumber. Yet even though she snored like a frail spinster, her knitting needles clicked on in her sleep.
    Aliyah felt light-headed, despite the monstrous headache shooting through her temples from the glasses. She needed to follow the patterns to the center…
    Valentine rapped her knuckles on Aliyah’s scalp. “Not the time to see the sailboat in the Magic Eye, kid,” she whispered.
    Aliyah had long determined she’d never get all of Aunt Valentine’s references.
    â€œThey are pretty,” Mom sighed, looking around. “It’s not the worst thing to lose your mind in, I suppose. She doesn’t even know she’s a ’mancer, does she?”
    Robert shook his head. “No. But she almost took out her nursing home. The nurses went into her room to look at her craftsmanship. They stayed for days…”
    Aliyah felt a tremendous sympathy welling up for this old, frail woman. Like Aliyah, she’d set off a process she hadn’t fully understood – Mawmaw had meant to make pretty doilies.
    She wished she could still see things the way she had back at the Institute, back when she’d been intoxicated with masqueromancers and plushiemancers. That old Aliyah would have admired the cunning knotwork, gushed to her daddy how Mawmaw had made patterns so artful that they were, literally, mesmerizing.
    Yet all Aliyah could think of was that roomful of starving, hypnotized nurses.
    Now Mawmaw had nodded off, the only sound in the cabin was the click-click-click of her needles.
    Dad flipped nervously through the folder he’d brought, frowning down at it.
    Mom sat between them, wearing too much makeup – never a good sign. Mom was usually super-stylish, but when she got stressed she scrubbed her face clean, then repainted it with sharp edges that made her look catlike. She sat stiffly, looking haggardly at Dad like she was committing his face to memory.
    Aunt Valentine and Uncle Robert, well… They held hands lovingly, thirsty for each other’s skin contact as always, except Aunt Valentine was squinting at the doilies as though they were a puzzle to be solved and Uncle Robert