The Hair obligingly extended a strand of itself, hovering in front of Baldbeak’s beady eye.
This tiny?
“Yes, as thin as possible. To make more things like this, but better.”
For why?he asked again.
“I don’t know. Because it’s pretty. Because I like it.”
Ah!
That he understood. He sent me a quick succession of flashing images—coins, jewelry, bits of silver paper, horseshoe nails, and more that I couldn’t identify. Ravens knew all aboutpretty. He took little shining things from us here and there, nothing important, and I knew that they presented an almost irresistible draw. I got a general sense of agreement from him now, just in time for me to hear Mother’s tread on the ladder and slam the window.
Baldbeak was gone for longer than usual that time, and so it was a surprise when he returned a week or two later with a packet of needles, some metal and some bone—much slimmer than the thick bronze one, or even my old bone needle.
“Where did you get these?” I asked him, but he simply cocked his head to the side.
Shiny, he said wistfully. I admired his restraint in giving them up.
“Thank you,” I said. He closed his eyes blissfully as I scratched the graying feathers on his beak, his favorite spot.
I quickly found that I still had more of a knack for the needles of bone than of metal, and I barely felt any resistance from the cloth as they swam through it, neat and playful as minnows. Delighted with my new speed and nimbleness, I took to remaking my own clothes, turning the cuffs of undershirts to add stitched bracelets of vines and flowers, or sewing a pastoral scene along the hem of an apron. My favorite blue dress had a tear in the elbow where I had caught it on the doorknob, and I sewed a little bumblebee over the hole. You could almost fancy its little wings were moving.
Whenever Baldbeak disappeared for a day or two, he brought me back thread, or little squares of fabric. The way we saw color and texture was different, but with some trial and error, I was usually able to indicate to him any particular thread I had in mind for a piece.
One day, Baldbeak sent me an image of one of my pieces of cloth. In his eyes, it was a mess of odd colors, glowing a little.
Take one, he said.
“You want one of these?” I flapped one at him.
The quick dip of his beak that meantyes.
“Why? What are you going to do with it?”
He stared at me blankly, but I got the sense that the blankness was a front, this time, rather than real confusion. What did it matter, though? He had done more than enough for me, certainly enough to warrant giving him a piece of my stitching.
“Is this one all right?”
A sharp jerk of his head meantyes.
I supposed he might be going to use it in his nest—or perhaps give it as a gift to his raven sweetheart, if he had one. Ihad never asked what he did with that first one—the one that had apparently called him to me.
After that, he often asked for pieces of embroidery. I had no idea what he did with them, and he didn’t tell me, but I never saw them again.
“Where did you learn to do this?” the young Follower asked me now.
“I just taught myself,” I said, flushing a little. “I don’t know the proper stitches, or their names.”
They raised their eyebrows. “That’s astonishing.”
“I’m probably doing it all wrong,” I said. “I just do whatever I feel like, really, and hope it turns out.”
“May I?” They reached out a hand, and I passed them the piece. They smoothed their hand over the design on the front, then turned it over to look at the bird’s nest of thread in the back.
“Here,” they said, pointing. “This stitch is called the Widow’s Heart. And this one is the Rose, and this the Hands Raised in Prayer.”
“Do you sew?”
