Rayon: The First Silk From Trees
Rayon: The First Silk From Trees — an invention story. 10 illustrated pages, narrated, free to read on Wonder Inventions.
Page 1
The old man's boots skidded on loose scree as he hauled the flat woven basket up onto the dry stone wall, his crooked back bent double under its weight. Inside, hundreds of silkworms lay blackened and still, struck down by the pebrine blight that had crept through every terrace this season. 'Tip them,' he growled, 'before it spreads to the magnanerie,' and he wrenched the basket sideways, spilling the ruined cocoons down the slope toward the gorge below. A dead mulberry branch cracked beneath his planted foot and he lurched, staff clattering away, one arm flailing for the wall. The young Chardonnet lunged, snatching his own tall black hat from his head and scooping it under the cascade of tumbling cocoons before they vanished over the scree into empty air. He staggered under the sudden weight, boots sliding, catching his balance against the wall with his free scarred hand. Behind them Mont Aigoual loomed grey and indifferent above the terraces, while the stone magnanerie stood empty-doored, its racks bare of healthy worms for the first time in memory.
Page 2
The flask went over before anyone could catch it, a clear flood of nitrocellulose collodion sheeting across the photographic plate and dripping off the bench edge. Jeannot lunged with a rag, meaning only to mop the mess, but as he pulled his hand back a glittering thread clung to the cloth and rose, impossibly long, stretching up past his startled face to loop itself round a ceiling beam ten feet above. He froze, rag still in his fist, watching the filament tremble and shine in the lamplight. At the same moment Anselme came stumping through the doorway hauling a crate of dead, pebrine-blackened cocoons, and let it drop onto the crowded bench with a thud that sent bottles rattling. The spirit lamp toppled, flame guttering sideways, and Chardonnet threw himself across the table to right it before the spilled collodion could catch. For a long moment all three stood frozen, staring up at the thread shining in the rafters like a strand of captured lightning.
Page 3
The ramp up to the ramparts was steep as a ladder, and the vat of syrup between them sloshed with every step, heavy as a barrel of wine, waist-high and slopping over Jeannot's wrists. 'Haul, boy, haul!' barked Anselme, leaning his crooked back into the rope. At the top, Chardonnet fixed one end of the glassy filament to the near watchtower, no thicker than a thread of gut, and they paid it out sixty metres across the open gulf to the far tower above the hairpin loop of the river. A bucket of stones was hung mid-span to test its strength. Then the wind came off the Doubs in a gust, caught the slack skein, and tore it whistling off its mooring toward the parapet. 'It's going over!' Jeannot shouted, and ran, clogs clattering on stone, flinging himself onto the gun embrasure — a stone slot wide as his own chest — to snatch the flying thread back from the drop before it vanished into the gorge below.
Page 4
The banner tore free with a crack like a whip, twenty metres of pale woven silk ripping loose from its iron mast and billowing out over the heads of the crowd beneath the great raw tower of girders. People screamed and ducked, hats flying. Chardonnet lunged for the rope and missed, stumbling against a pavilion post. Anselme planted his staff and bellowed for room, swinging his crooked body round to block a panicking woman from the flapping cloth. Isadora Blunt was already running, her boxy camera bouncing on its strap, and she wrenched her tripod from its case and slammed its three legs down hard onto the trailing hem, pinning the banner to the gravel with her whole weight braced against it. The loose end, though, had caught high on the exhibition scaffold, snapping and cracking twenty feet up. Jeannot flung off his clogs and swarmed up the timber bracing hand over hand, scrambling onto a crossbeam to grab the flailing corner before the wind could tear it worse.
Page 5
The stepped alley of the Croix-Rousse rang with wooden clogs as the weavers came pouring down from the Montée de la Grande-Côte, fists full of shuttle-sticks. Chardonnet hauled Jeannot by the collar of his smock and shoved him toward the covered traboule, the stone passage barely wider than two men abreast. Behind them a bale of the artificial silk, knocked from its cart, burst its cords over the iron railing above — a sudden snowstorm of glittering white filament spilling down three storeys into the stairwell, blinding and tangling the men below. Isadora, bellows swinging wild against her chest, dragged her camera case clear of grasping hands and bolted after the others. At the traboule's low door, head-height to a grown man, Anselme wrenched a loaded handcart sideways and rammed it across the opening, wheels screeching on cobbles. "Go, go — don't stop for an old fool!" he roared, bracing his crooked back against the cart as fists began hammering the wood. Chardonnet hesitated at the far end, but Jeannot pulled his sleeve, and they ran.
Page 6
The chimney stood half-raised against the grey sky, its scaffold poles creaking as a crane swung a cast-iron spinning pot across the mud. The sling slipped with a crack of frayed rope. Léonie, crossing the planks with an armful of skeins, dropped the bundle and threw herself forward, jamming her shoulder under the swinging pot to slow its fall. She pressed her whistle to her lips and blasted three sharp notes across the yard. Workmen scattered from the barges, boots slapping through mud. Chardonnet seized the loose chain with his scarred hand, bracing his boot against a timber stake, while Jeannot scrambled up the crane's wooden leg and looped the slack chain twice round the hook, hauling until his arms shook. Isadora, camera banging against her hip, grabbed a fallen plank and shoved it under the pot's lip to stop it grinding into the mud. Together they eased the iron weight down inch by inch, the chain groaning, until it settled with a dull, final thud into the wet earth.
Page 7
The gas jet hissed blue above the winding frame, and a dry reel brushed too close caught in an instant, flaring white-hot along the filament before anyone could shout. Fire ran down the aisle faster than a man could sprint, leaping from reel to reel as though the very air were oiled. Léonie, crossing the planks with an armful of skeins, froze a half-second too long — and Isadora, dropping her camera strap, seized her round the waist and flung her bodily into the quench trough at the aisle's end, water slopping over the stone lip. Jeannot snatched the long hooked pole from the wall bracket, taller than himself, and ran into the smoke, dragging burning bobbins one after another across the floor and out the open door into the yard. Chardonnet bellowed for the water valves, wrestling the stiff brass wheel with his scarred hand until it screamed open, dousing the nearest racks. The whole hall rang with hissing steam, shouted names, and the clatter of falling reels.
Page 8
The barrels came down the plank slip one after another, each waist-high and iron-hooped, reeking of rotten eggs before they even reached the water. Jeannot and Léonie hauled on ropes to slow their roll, but the third barrel struck a knot in the planks and staved in with a crack, spilling its foul yellow liquor across the towpath. Everyone scrambled backward, but the flood came fast, knee-deep and stinking, pushing Isadora and Jeannot off the path and into the shallows of the Doubs with a shout. Léonie, soaked to the thighs, plunged her arm into the mess and dragged out a skein of filament that had been dunked whole in the barrel before it burst. She wrung it out, grinning despite the stench, and held it up like a trophy. Chardonnet, wading over with his coat-tails floating, struck a match with his good hand and touched it to the wet skein. It only smoked, curled, and went dark — no flame at all.
Page 9
The jeers had started before the candle was even lit. Léonie stood under the great colonnade arches, waist-high footlights throwing her shadow up the painted backdrop, the gown of denitrated silk hanging from shoulder to floor. Chardonnet, pince-nez swinging, bent low with the taper and dragged the flame along her hem in one slow pass. The crowd leaned forward hungry for fire. Instead the fabric only blackened and curled at the edge, refusing to catch. A gasp, then a boo, then — disaster — a dropped candle from the wings rolled into the stage curtain, a sheet of fabric three times a man's height, and flame leapt up it roaring. Jeannot sprinted across the boards, grabbed a spare bolt of the same treated silk from a prop trunk, and Isadora hauled the other end, both slamming the great cloth against the burning curtain, smothering it in a hiss of smoke. The jeers died into stunned silence as the fire went out beneath their own hands.
Page 10
The crane swung the crate high over the quay, chains groaning, and then the netting slipped. The crate, taller than a man, struck the stone with a crack like a gunshot and burst its slats apart. Hundreds of white skeins poured out across the cobbles, unspooling in long glittering ribbons that caught the Channel wind and rose among the bollards and the shrieking gulls. Jeannot dropped the rope he was coiling and ran flat out after the loose ends, clogs skidding on wet stone, grabbing fistfuls of silk before they could blow into the basin. Léonie threw herself over a rolling skein with both arms, pinning it before it reached the water, while Chardonnet waved his cane and shouted orders nobody could hear over the ship's horn. Above them, the gangway of the great liner was already being hauled up, and Isadora, halfway up the ramp, spun round and flung her camera strap over a cleat to anchor herself, reaching down one gloved hand to catch a drifting thread before it vanished over the rail into the sea.
About this story
- Audience: general readers
- Format: 10 illustrated pages, narrated, free to read on Wonder Inventions
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