Hugo Nominees 2017 Wikia
Register
Advertisement
Feb

Title: Touch Me All Over

Author: Betsy James

Published: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Jan/Feb 2016

---

A folk-tale-ish story of a weaver come under a curse causing anything she touches to fall apart. 

As the blanket raveled and the shawl frayed, the elders replaced them with common rugs, then mill-made linen, then rags. Nothing made would stay whole. In the end I lay between an old bearskin and a wild dog's hide. (...)

I heard my mother and father weeping in the anteroom. I was afraid to touch anyone, or be touched; after a while I was afraid even to move, lest the whole knit-knotted world fall apart, along with everybody I loved.

Advertisement