Nine Threads

In a very distant time, I no longer remember when it was, although I have a good memory, there stood a marble castle on the top of a mountain range. It was said that it gently touched the sky, that at night it absorbed the secrets of the stars, and that the wind that blew during the day spoke unknown names. The palace was called the Castle of the Golden Needle, and in its vast and cold halls lived a tailor.

His name was Dustin, and his skilful hands sewed for the most important people of that time, even for wizards. The materials he used were quite diverse, and his favourite was to use ice that fell in storms for buttons or spider webs for threads. The designs used to come to his mind at dawn, while the fantasy dust dissolves with the first rays of the sun.

One of his specialities was to observe well with his heart the needs of others and create suits with constantly changing measurements, depending on the mood of his customers. When someone would breathe with their whole lungs, growing their chests with joy and laughter, the suits would be bigger. When dark clouds would cover the thoughts of the same people, the suits would adapt to a smaller size, wrapping gently the sorrowful souls and bringing them the needed warmth to heal. Tailor Dustin was charging only golden wishes, sapphire views and diamond smiles.

His art was known throughout the mountains and fertile lands of the valleys, but it so happened that nomads travelling through the desert brought the word to three monarchs of the faraway kingdoms over the dunes. They managed to come to his palace to make an order, but they sought an unimaginable garment.

"You will make us a suit that will glow in the dark, and water will not be able to extinguish its fire. You will line it with the silk of all our enemies' broken desires and sew it with threads of misfortune and lies. And we don't want to see any foldings; it must be perfect and look like one piece. You have to finish it and present it to us in nine threads."

Tailor Dustin captured the intentions of the monarchs who wanted to conquer the whole world in a very dishonest and dark way. Although he knew the suit wasn't impossible for him to make, he didn't want to fulfil this horrendous order. Even then, he was threatened and had to work on this piece, as every night a voice would ask through the closed doors of his hall whether it was finished.

Locked in the palace, he wove day and night, slightly changing the design on his own. He wove into the suit his long, grey hair and whispered his most beautiful thoughts into the silk. The suit was shining, yes, with a celestial glow and fire of passion, and then the piece perfectly adhered to his body. He was ready to leave and escape from the monarchs, keeping the suit for himself.

He closed his eyes, and there he was, skipping between the seams of the worlds, sliding on the rainbows of all the colourful suits ever made, and bringing the black nights full of stars on the horizon. In this way, he continued weaving hope into the suits of people and seeing from a distance the diamond smiles which make the days luminous and clear even today.