Spindle by E. K. Johnston

Author:E. K. Johnston [Johnston, E. K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Disney Book Group
Published: 2016-12-06T08:00:00+00:00

THE NEXT DAY, I woke early and took a stick from the woodpile. It was the length of my forearm, narrower at one end than the other. It had been meant for kindling, but I would put it to another use. I went down to the pool and scooped up a bit of mud off the bottom. It was mealy stuff, and would make no vessels fit for even the lowest of tables, but it would do for my purpose now. I rolled the mud between my fingers, squeezing out most of the water, and then fastened it to the wider end of the stick. It wasn’t a lot of weight, but it would do.

I had kept up the practice of checking the Little Rose’s blanket for loose threads. I even checked her dresses and veils when she wasn’t wearing them, and had by now accumulated a collection of scraps. This morning, I would spin them all together. I sat cross-legged by the pool and missed my mother as I set the whorl spinning experimentally. The wet mud held, barely, and I set out the scraps on my knee so that they were in easy reach.

Sitting on the ground to spin is not the easiest way to do it, but there was no other seat, and I had no distaff to hold the pieces if I stood. After only a few minutes, my shoulders ached from holding the spindle up so high, but I had a short length of ugly thread. I was almost ashamed of it, except I knew that it was all that I could give, and I hoped that the recipient would see its worth.

“Good morning,” said the Little Rose, sitting in the wet grass beside me.

“Good morning, princess,” I said. “I haven’t started breakfast yet. I wanted to do this first.”

“You don’t need to hide spinning from me, Yashaa,” she said. “I can’t do it, but I still like to watch good work done.”

“This is hardly good work,” I said, examining the thread as I wound it around the spindle.

It was varicolored, but not in an attractive way, and though it did not have lumps in it, there were definitely places where it looked stretched. I picked off the mud-whorl, and did my best to remove any flecks of dirt from the thread itself, but it was still far from the sort of thing that would make my mother proud of me.

“It’s not very good,” I told her. “But I hope it will suit.”

“Is it for the gnome?” she asked. Her bare feet moved back and forth through the grass. Even after all the days she had spent out of the tower, the ground was yet a wonder to her.

“It is,” I said. “Though I am nearly ashamed of it, the thread will be stronger than the reeds we used yesterday. This will make the fence stronger. Or,” I amended, “at least parts of the fence. There isn’t enough for the whole thing.”

“It’s a wonderful gift, Yashaa,” she said.

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