Wool from the Brambles

Once upon a time, at the edge of the Star Forest, Ruut and her friend Ava went out gathering wool. The pines there grew so tall that the first stars of evening seemed to rest in their tops. The shepherd had driven his flock along the forest path that morning, and every bramble was hung with little white tufts.

Ruut pulled them free with quick fingers, while Ava held the basket and counted. Ruut's old scarf flapped at her neck as she worked. It was so short that it would not go round twice, and the wind found the gap every time.

"Eleven," said Ava. "Twelve. That one is mostly thistle."

"It counts," said Ruut.

By the stream they found Nog the Frog sitting on a flat stone with a heap of tufts beside him. He had dipped his in the dark water under the alder roots, and they had turned the colour of moss. He kept one foot on top of them as the girls came near.

"Mine," said Nog. "For a cap. My head gets cold in the mornings."

"I want a longer scarf," said Ruut.

"I want mittens," said Ava.

A rustle in the ferns made them all turn. The hedgehog came out with grey tufts caught all over his spines, for he had not gathered the wool so much as walked into it. He meant to line his winter nest with every scrap, and he said so before anyone could ask.

Ava tipped the basket out on the stone beside the frog's green heap, and the hedgehog's grey wool went next to it. Then she counted the whole lot twice, frowning, because the numbers came out the same both times.

"It is not enough for one, and too much to throw away," said Ava.

Ruut looked at the three small piles for a long moment. Then she swept them together with both hands into one soft mound, white and green and grey.

"We put it all in one basket," said Ruut. "Nobody takes any back."

"Then whose cap is it?" said Nog.

"We decide that afterwards," said Ruut.

"That is how you lose a cap," said Nog.

The hedgehog said nothing for so long that Ava thought he had gone to sleep standing up. At last he shook himself, and the grey tufts drifted down onto the pile. He watched every one of them land, as if he might change his mind about each.

They carried the basket to the old weaver's cottage, which stood where the forest path met the village lane. The old weaver was tying on her bonnet for market, and her shawl hung on its hook by the door. It was so thin and so often mended that the evening light came through it in little stars of its own.

"You may use my wheel and my loom," said the old weaver. "Mind the fire, and mind the cat. I shall be back when the stars are out."

Spinning took the whole afternoon. Ruut worked the wheel, and Ava drew out the wool and kept it from tangling. Nog sat on the windowsill giving advice that nobody had asked for.

"Thinner," said Nog. "No, thicker. No, that was right before."

The hedgehog sorted the tufts by colour and would not let the white touch the grey until its turn came. When the last of it was spun, Ava lined up the skeins on the table and counted them. They looked very small against the wide, scrubbed wood.

"It is not enough for one, and too much to throw away," said Ava.

"Then it is my cap," said Nog. "A cap is small."

"Mittens are smaller," said Ava.

"A nest lining is smallest of all," said the hedgehog, which was the most he had said all day.

Ruut was not listening. She was looking at the shawl on its hook, and at the cold patch of floor where the old weaver sat every evening with her back to the door. She walked over, lifted the shawl down, and held it up to the window so that the others could see the holes.

"She gives her wool away every year," said Ruut. "Every child in the lane has mittens from this loom. Nobody ever makes her anything."

Ava looked at the shawl, and then at her own bare hands, and put them in her pockets.

"A shawl, then," said Ava.

The hedgehog nodded once, slowly, as though agreeing to something heavy.

"Three colours," said Nog. "White and green and grey all in one shawl. It will look like a puddle after a muddy cart has gone through it."

"Then it will be a warm puddle," said Ruut.

They set up the loom. The hedgehog insisted that the stripes be exactly even, and he measured each one with a twig he would let nobody else hold. Nog wanted to throw the shuttle himself, and his first row went across the loom like a path across a ploughed field.

"That is the frog row," said Ava. "We will know which end is which."

"It gives it character," said Nog.

They wove through the last of the daylight and on by the glow of the fire. The cat sat on the white skein, and Ruut lifted her off three times without a word. Row by row the shawl grew, white, then green, then grey, then white again.

But when the last of the yarn had gone through, the shawl was short. It would cover the old weaver's shoulders but not her back, and the wind from the door would find the gap. Ava held up the end and counted the rows under her breath.

"It is not enough for one, and too much to throw away," said Ava.

Nog sat down hard on the windowsill. The hedgehog looked at his twig as if the twig had failed him. Ava said nothing at all, which was not like her.

Ruut put her hand to her neck. Her scarf was too short to keep out the wind, but it was made of good white wool, and wool can be unravelled. She untied it, found the loose end, and began to pull.

"That is your scarf," said Ava.

"It never reached round anyway," said Ruut.

The yarn came away crinkled, and Ruut wound it round her fingers into a ball. There was just enough for six more rows and a fringe along the bottom. Ruut wove the rows herself, and the hedgehog measured them, and every one was even.

The stars were out above the pines when the old weaver came up the lane with her basket. She stopped in the doorway. The shawl lay folded on her chair by the fire, white and green and grey, with one crooked row near the top.

She put it round her shoulders, and it reached all the way down her back. She stood quite still for a while, holding the edges together. Then she turned to the window, where the stream showed silver through the trees.

"Green like the alder water," said the old weaver. "Grey like the stones. White like the foam where it runs fast. Who thought of that?"

Nog opened his mouth and shut it again. Then he began to laugh, a deep, croaking laugh that made the cat leave the room.

"I said it would look like a puddle," said Nog. "It looks like my stream. I have been looking at my stream all my life and never noticed it was pretty."

"You also made the crooked row," said Ava.

"That row is the best part," said Nog. "Ask anyone."

The old weaver touched the crooked row and smiled at it as if it were an old friend. Then she took down a basket from the top shelf, full of wool she had been keeping for the lane's mittens. She set it in front of Ruut and Ava without a word.

Nog hopped onto the table between them and looked from one girl to the other.

"Get well soon, Ruut," said Nog. "And you too, Ava. A warm neck and warm hands, both of you, by the time the frost comes."

And that is the end of that.