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I sat fidgeting at the table, wishing that I was anywhere but inside. It was a bright spring day and sunlight filtered golden in through Patience’s window.
I longed to stretch my legs, to go bathe myself in that warmth after so long stuck inside through the cold, damp winter. The first spring day of the year should belong to boys, to exploration and romping. And I was stuck here like a bug caught beneath a drinking glass.
To add insult, Patience hadn’t met me at the intended time, so I was left sitting in awkward silence with Lacey, waiting for her return. I suspected she’d distracted herself with some new experiment or self-appointed task and forgotten all about me. It left me in a dark black mood, grey thunderheads to contrast how lovely the day was otherwise.
After some time of picking at my cuticles until I drew blood, a prickle of awareness came over me and I looked up quickly. Lacey was standing right in front of me. I folded my hands, somewhat embarrassed.
“I’m a bit sick of having to watch you mope around.” She raised an eyebrow.
I thought that she meant to excuse me, and I started to rise, relieved. If Lacey told me that I could go, I could hardly be blamed if Patience came back to find me missing.
“I suppose you haven’t brought your pipes to practice? Or anything else useful to occupy yourself with?”
I was a bit taken aback to be scolded so. “No, I didn’t expect-“
“Didn’t expect, didn’t expect,” she groused, but her tone was affectionate, at least a little. “Sometimes my Lady takes a mind of her own, and we learn to accept it. There’s no moving a boulder when it takes up momentum to roll down a hill.”
I laughed a little, to hear Lady Patience described so. It was exactly how I felt about my lessons with her, but in a way I hadn’t thought to describe it. Being taught all of the things she thought I should know was much like being swept up in a great mudslide, toppled and thrown by the careening earth and rocks in whichever direction nature deemed they would go.
Lacey quirked her lip and watched me for a moment longer. “Here.” Some terrible amalgamation of strangely shaped knitting needles and yarn was thrust into my hands. “Make yourself useful instead of trying to flay your own fingers. Don’t let Lady Patience come back to you staring out the window as dead-eyed as a trout pulled from the lake.”
I was sufficiently cowed. I looked at the object in my hands and straightened my posture. “What is it?”
“A sock,” she said, and I didn’t miss the hint of amusement in her voice. “This is the cuff. I won’t try and hope that you can learn to turn a heel. I’ve no desire to tear the whole thing out and start anew. But maybe I can show you some.”
“A sock.” It didn’t look like a sock to me. There were four needles, each pointed at both ends, and what felt like a hopeless tangle of yarn. I stared at it warily like it might jump from my hands and nip me.
Lacey sighed and moved over to my side of the table so that our elbows were almost touching. “Here. Start from the set that the yarn is closest to. These.” She pointed to a small line of stitches. “There’s a rhyme I’ve heard said, to remind children the steps to creating a stitch. It’s not…. Terribly couth, I must admit.”
I looked up at her, trying to imagine what could possibly be at all uncouth about knitting. It seemed the work of ladies sat ‘round the fire of an evening, in my mind. Lacey moved closer again and then lay her small hands over my own.
“Here, like this.” She moved one of the needles behind the top stitch. “Stab it.” She took the trail of yarn and wrapped it around. “Strangle it.” She pulled the needle through, guiding my hand still, and somehow caught a stitch as she did. My brow furrowed as I tried to focus. “Scoop its insides out.” She pulled the stitch off of the needle. “Throw it over the ledge.”
I sat for a moment in shocked silence, and then properly laughed for a good, long while. She returned a wry smile. “That’s certainly a way to remember the steps, is it not?” She moved to guide my hands through a second stitch. “Though, maybe we don’t tell Lady Patience that I taught you in that way.”
It was apt in a way that she could not possibly have understood and I couldn’t have explained. It was a good mnemonic, though. Repeating it to myself, I muddled through an entire row of stitches. Lacey watched me, pleased, and then turned the work for me. “I’ll teach you something yet, won’t I?”
We delved back into silence, but not uncomfortable and bleak as it had been before. I forgot my longing stares at the courtyard as I worked.
She let me go for a while, and then nudged my shoulders. “Relax. You’ll break the yarn if you keep yanking so hard. You’re not meant to knit so tight that it can hold water.”
I stopped for a moment and shook out some of my tenseness. My hands were starting to ache from how tightly I’d been gripping the small needles.
“She really cares about you, you know?” Lacey said, after another long moment of companionable silence.
“I know.”
“Sometimes I don’t think you do.” She tilted her head, watching me. “You take so grudgingly to her tasks and you don’t realize that she’s just trying to pour a little bit of herself into you.”
I dropped a stitch and she sighed and took the sock from my hands to fix my mistake. “She could’ve been hurt just by your existence. You shook up her world quite a lot, don’t you know?” She passed it back to me. “Not that you had any doing in it. But it is the truth. She didn’t have to acknowledge you at all. She turned everything she felt into love for you instead.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I feigned concentration. I was pulling so tightly again that I had to wiggle the needle to force it into the back of the next stitch.
“You’re young. It’s easy not to consider. But when she gets to be,” she paused, carefully considering. “When she gets to be a lot, think about that and be gentle with her. Yes?”
“I’ve been trying.” I dropped another stitch and considered throwing the work down. Gingerly, Lacey took it from me and this time showed me how to ladder back up the loose line of yarn where my stitch had fallen through the cuff of the sock. It wasn’t so unlike tying knots, I realized, and after that got a little more into the rhythm of it. My constant swirl of thoughts eased some. It was meditative in a way that I wouldn’t have expected.
“I know you have. I see it. Just… please. For all three of our sakes. Think about what I said.”
The door swung open and we must have looked like two children caught stealing candy, with the way we both froze and looked up. Lady Patience walked in, skin red from the sun, hair mussed and wind blown, dirt smudged on her dress and across the bridge of her nose. She held a small potted bird’s-foot violet in her hands, and she swept aside a large collections of rocks and gemstones that rested on her windowsill to make a space for it.
“Tom!” She said, cheerily. “If I’d have known that you knew how to knit, I’d have put you to it a long time ago! I have a half-finished sweater somewhere around here, I know.” She ducked down to look under the bed a moment, rifling through a large box that I couldn’t even guess the contents of. “Well. No matter right now. Lacey! How long has Tom been here, and you haven’t fed him? Or put on tea? Find us some pastries! Or some cheese. The kitchen was making some meat rolls earlier that smelled lovely.” She fluttered over to her mirror to dab at the dirt on her face.
“Yes, Lady. I’ll figure something out for us.”
Lacey and I glanced at each other and shared a quiet smile.