She pulled the ridiculously long cream scarf off her bed. I couldn’t tell if she was listening to me.
“Here you are,” she said. “All the spare seconds I could find.” She draped the scarf around my neck three times and it still dragged the floor.
“Grandma.”
“Let’s loosen this a bit and get another round in.” She tugged and wrapped, and I let her.
This might be the last time I saw her for a long time.
“This is your special scarf,” I said.
“Yes, and that is why I am giving it to you.” She stopped fussing with the scarf and placed her palms against my cheeks.
“You are so unexpected,” she said. “A miracle and hope. Your parents loved you dearly. Do you know that?”
I nodded, surprised. She never spoke of Mom and Dad.
“This will not be easy to do. But I think you are the key, Matilda. You can change our future. Don’t be afraid to do what you know is right, no matter what that stubborn brother of yours says.”
“What do you mean, I’m a key?” I was totally lost. I had no idea what she was talking about.
“Do you understand what this scarf holds? What the wool can give it?”
“Time?”
“Time,” she agreed.
When I was younger, she told me that the little sheep had a way of attracting wasted moments sort of like dry air attracts static electricity. She believed those fragments of time were caught in the thread that made the scarf.
And while it all sounded like a load of hooey to me, I did have a dragon that could distill the healing properties of nano in its scales. There might be some truth to what she said.
“I’ve given you as much time as I can. If you need it, when you need it,” she corrected, patting the scarf again, “pull the stitches out.”
“All right,” I said, humoring her. “Thank you, Grandma.” I gave her a big hug, and she squeezed me back.
“Good luck, my dear.” She turned and stooped a bit to shoo the sheep back toward her rocking chair by the window. Then she picked up her needles, and with the sheep at her feet, cast on new stitches, as if I wasn’t even in the room with her.
“Good-bye,” I said softly. I left. Picked up my rifle in the kitchen and threw two large jars of jelly, a couple of good needles, and the spools of life thread into my duffel, then I was out the door.
Neds were already at the barn with the truck. The engine was running, and he leaned on the open passenger’s door.
Abraham stood a slight distance away from him and the truck, staring at the night sky.
“Problem?” I asked.
“A sky dark enough for stars,” he said. “I miss that.”
“Where did you leave your car?” I asked as I got in the truck.
Neds hadn’t gotten in yet. He was giving Abraham a double-barreled glare.
There probably wasn’t room enough in the cab of the truck for all of us.
Abraham must have figured that out. He stepped up into the truck bed, the springs dipping under his weight. He leaned toward my open window. “Just down the north road. I’ll let you know where to turn off.”
I nodded at him in my side-view mirror, and he settled himself, scanning the sky. I hoped he really was looking for stars and not satellites or drones or some other thing up there that could blast my land apart.
I drove along the pasture to where the rutted trail met up with a slightly less rutted lane.
