Matt stepped forward, suddenly a little shy. "I brung my own crustie," he said. "Me and my doggie, we be no trouble to you."
"Sit," the woman named Annabella said to Kira, ignoring Matt and Branch, who was busily sniffing the garden, looking for the right place to lift his stubby leg. "Doubtless you be weary and pained." She gestured toward a low flattened tree stump, and Kira sank down gratefully, rubbing her aching leg. She unlaced her sandals and emptied them of pebbles.
"You must learn the dyes," the old woman said. "You come for that, aye? Your mum did, and she was to teach you."
"There wasn’t time." Kira sighed. "And now they want me to know it all, and do the work — the repairing of the Singer’s Robe? You know about that?"
Annabella nodded. She returned to the drying-rope and finished hanging the yellow strands. "I can give you some threads," she said, "to start the repair. But you must learn the dyes. There are other things they’ll want of you."
Kira thought again of the untouched expanse across the back and shoulders of the robe. It was what they would want of her, to fill that space with future.
"You must come here each day. You must learn all the plants. Look —" The woman gestured at the garden plot, thick with thriving plants, many in summer-start bloom.
"Bedstraw," she said, pointing to a tall plant massed with golden blossoms. "The roots give good red. Madder’s better for reds, though. There’s my madder over behind." She pointed again, and Kira saw a sprawling, weedy plant in a raised bed. "Tis the wrong time to take the madder roots now. Fallstart’s better, when it lies dormant."
Bedstraw. Madder. I must remember these. I must know these.
"Dyer’s greenweed," the woman announced, poking with her cane at a shrub with small flowers. "Use the shoots for a fine yellow. Don’t move it, though, lessen you must. Greenweed don’t want to transplant."
Greenweed. For yellow.
Kira followed the woman as she rounded a corner of the garden. Annabella stopped and poked at a clumped plant with stiff stems and small oval leaves. "Here’s a tough fellow," she said, almost affectionately. "Saint Johnswort, he’s called. No blooms yet; it’s too early for him. But when he blooms, you can get a lovely brown from his blossoms. Stain your hands though." She held her own up and cackled with laughter.
Then: "You’ll be needing greens. Chamomile can give you that. Water it good. But take just the leaves for your green color. Save the blossoms for tea."
Kira’s head was already spinning with the effort to remember the names of the plants and the colors they would create, and only a small corner of the lavish garden had been described. Now at the sound of the word water and also tea she realized that she was thirsty.
"Please, do you have a well? Might I have a drink?" she asked.
"And Branchie too? He been looking for a stream but found nought." Matt’s voice piped beside Kira; she had almost forgotten that he was there.
Annabella led them to her well behind the cott, and they drank gratefully. Matt poured water into the crevice of a curved rock for his dog, who lapped eagerly and waited for more.
Finally they sat together in the shade, Kira and the old woman, Annabella. Matt, gnawing his bread, wandered off with Branch at his heels.
"You must come each day," Annabella repeated. "You must learn all the plants, all the colors. As your mum did when she was a girl."
"I will. I promise."
"She said you had the knowledge in your fingers. More than she did."
Kira looked at her hands, folded in her lap. "Something happens when I work with the threads. They seem to know things on their own, and my fingers simply follow."
Annabella nodded. "That be the knowledge. I got it for the colors but never for the threads. My hands was always too coarse." She held them up, stained and misshapen. "But to use the knowledge of the threading, you must learn the making of the shades. When to sadden with the iron pot. How to bloom the colors. How to bleed."
To sadden. To bloom. To bleed. What a strange set of words.
"And the mordants too. You must learn those. Sometimes sumac. Tree galls are good. Some lichens.
"Best is — here, come; let me show you. See you make a guess to its birthplace, this mordant." With surprising agility for a woman of four-syllable age, Annabella rose and led Kira to a covered container near the place where a large kettle of dark water, too huge for cooking food, hung above the smoldering remains of an outdoor fire.
Kira leaned forward to see, but when Annabella lifted the lid, she jerked her head back in unpleasant surprise. The smell of the liquid was terrible. Annabella laughed, a delighted cackle.
"Got you a guess?"
Kira shook her head. She couldn’t imagine what was in the foul-smelling container or what its origin might be.
Annabella replaced the lid, still laughing. "You save it and age it good," she said. "Then it brings the hue to life and sets it firm.
"It’s old piss!" she explained with a satisfied chuckle.
Late in the day, Kira set out for home with Matt and Branch. The bag she carried over her shoulder was filled with colored threads and yarns that Annabella had given to her.
"These’ll do for you now," the old dyer had said. "But you must learn to make your own. Say back to me now, those you keep in mind."
Kira closed her eyes, thought, and said them aloud. "Madder for red. Bedstraw for red too, just the roots. Tops of tansy for yellow, and greenwood for yellow too. And yarrow: yellow and gold. Dark hollyhocks, just the petals, for mauve."
"Snotweed," Matt said loudly with a grin and wiped his own runny nose on his dirty sleeve.
"Hush, you," Kira said to him, laughing. "Don’t play foolish now. It’s important I remember.
"Broom sedge," she added, still remembering. "Goldy yellows and browns. And Saint Johnswort for browns too, but it’ll stain my hands.
"And bronze fennel — leaves and flowers; use them fresh — and you can eat it too. Chamomile for tea and for green hues.
"That’s all I remember now," Kira said apologetically. There had been so many others.
Annabella nodded in approval. "It’s a starting," she said.
"Matt and I must go or it will become dark before we’re back," Kira said, turning. Looking at the sky to assess the time, she suddenly remembered something.
"Can you make blue?" she asked.
But Annabella frowned. "You need the woad," she said. "Gather fresh leaves from first year’s growth of woad. And soft rainwater; that makes the blue." She shook her head. "I have nought. Others do, but they be far away."
"Who be others?" Matt asked.
The old woman didn’t answer the boy. She pointed toward the far edge of her garden, where the woods began and there seemed to be a narrow overgrown path. Then she turned toward her hut. Kira heard her speak in a low voice. "I ne’er could make it," she was saying. "But some have blue yonder."
9
The Singer’s robe contained only a few tiny spots of ancient blue, faded almost to white. After her supper, after the oil lamps had been lit, Kira examined it carefully. She lay her threads — the ones from her own small collection and the many others that Annabella had given to her — on the large table, knowing she would have to match the hues carefully in daylight before she began the repairs. It was then that she noticed — with relief because she would not know how to repair it; and with disappointment because the color of sky would have been such a beautiful addition to the pattern — that there was no real blue any more, only a hint that there once had been.