Ella Millar The Weaver
The basket of woven straw lay on the front step . I had barely enough energy to stoop and wrap my fingers around the arching handle . The air was laced with the piercing cold familiar only to our early winter months . How the basket had not been taken by a beggar was a slight miracle , and one I clung to , carrying it to the empty kitchen table . I had begged Mother to let me sell it , given its lack of use . To take it to the market and exchange it for food or an extra cloak to help us through winter . At length , she refused , but she still made the effort to routinely polish the oak table with old scraps of cloth , the rococo curves gleaming in the dim , sparse room .
I pitied my mother . Her need to cling to the life we had , when noses turned up at bread – the ‘ boring ’ option – and the sun reared gleaming buds . When rainfall was light , an inconvenience at best . Before the floods and droughts had taken our land and ravished it .
A scrap of thick scarlet fabric had been thrown over the baskets contents and I wept as I peeled it back , my tears salting the loaf of bread that lay within . My fingers shook as I lifted it – as careful as if I held a newborn – and tore it into four pieces . Soft as cotton , rich with yeast that melted into nectar on the tongue . My family – Mother and two younger sisters – sat at the table , smiling through relieved tears as I passed around the chunks . Our cups had been refilled , if only by a drop . I craved a deluge . The scrap of fabric , too small to sell , I refashioned into a necktie . It had been months since I had last felt pretty ; my golden hair could shine in its contrast , the vividity of the shade offsetting the steep vales of my cheeks and sunken eyes . The red gave the impression of a gloriously slit throat – if my blood had not dried up with the rest of the earth .
At the very bottom of the basket , tucked into the tight folds of straw , a square of thick paper had been stowed . The corners were sharp against the tips of my fingers , the paper rigid . Expensive . On it , written in black ink , the words , ‘ come to the cottage in the woods .’
I knew of the cottage , the only residence within the woods , in which lived an old weaver . The townspeople rarely ventured out to it , the journey too long . On occasion , I glimpsed the weaver hobbling through the small market in the town square , selling thick bundles of threads and swaths of fabric , all palatial hues of browns and golden yellows . Exchanging her wares for local crops , however sparse , and whatever had been imported that season . Exposing her comparative wealth . And she was inviting me into her home .
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