The following afternoon, she presented herself at Maggie’s front door, and was handed the spindle. “Best get this out of the way before the horde arrive. You can do your carding while you’re weaving tales.”

She’d lost the knack in the short time she’d been away. It took several false starts before she managed to draw out a decent length of yarn, and had barely half a skein on the spindle when the children came knocking, Martha on their tail, scowling fit to break glass.

Any comments were lost in the clamour for stories about this place, or that strange creature, and Eleanor tucked her drop spindle next to her stool and began carding.

“I’ve told you about the mountains above us, and the land we live in, and about Rushmouth, at the end of the River. I think it’s time we started on a proper journey. Travelling from Gandry, down the Snowrush past Rushmouth, and out, onto the Shifting Sea.”

She ignored Martha’s snort. Her memories of the time her father took her all the way to the Sun Empire were precious and she wanted to relive them.

The afternoon was taken up with boarding the barge and the journey south, fields and villages on one side of the river and old forest on the other. The children gasped in delighted horror at the cruel antics of the kelpies and asked question after question about life aboard a trade barge.

At the end of the afternoon – and only halfway to Rushmouth – they trailed out, dreamy-eyed and whispering, and Daren handed her the spindle. Only now it was full, and the yarn as smooth and even as anything Martha had produced. She blinked at him and he grinned, front tooth missing. “Ma taught me ages ago. I like it, helps me think.”

She grinned back. “That’s what I like about carding. Maybe one day I’ll manage it with spinning too.”

He scampered out the door, yelling to his friends. Eleanor handed the spindle to Maggie. “When you get to the lumpy section, that’s me.”

Martha just had to comment. “How lowering, to have a child better at spinning than you.”

Eleanor breathed deeply and forced a smile. “Spinning wool, yes, but he spins wool so he can hear me spin words. What stories can you tell?”

Martha’s eyes narrowed; Eleanor continued. “Surely you have some the children haven’t heard? Ones from your mother, or grandfather, about the country they came from, and the language you don’t speak?”

Martha threw down her carding combs. “Nasty, foreign jibber jabber, why would I want to speak it?”

Eleanor’s jaw dropped. “Are you serious? Sundarian is amazing. The words have layers and layers of meaning, every sentence is like poetry, and the writing looks like ancient art.”

The other girl glared and stomped out. Maggie tutted. “You really shouldn’t answer her back like that, it only makes her cross.”

“And forest spirits forbid Martha should get cross. She just insulted her own mother!”

Maggie sighed. “The girl just wants to fit in. She looks in the mirror and sees different, so she tries to prove in every other way that she’s the same.”

Eleanor wanted to scream. “And that’s acceptable? It’s alright for someone born and raised here to feel like the people around her don’t see her as one of them?”

Maggie looked stern. “Now don’t you go off on some crusade, lassie, there are none here who’d thank you for it, least of all her. She does alright and will be better once she gets herself a decent life partner and settles down.”

“And I suppose that’s my fault as well.”

That earned her an eye roll. “She and your lad would be a poor match on all points. At least with him tied up now, she’ll take more notice of the young men and women at the Castle festivals.”

Eleanor left, somehow managing to earn a ball of wool, it was probably more of a bribe. She’d finally be able to put her new knitting needles to use.

It took an evening or two before she got the feel for needles, wool, and stitches, but it felt like something she could grow to find comfortable, in the same way Sarah did.

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