Messenger - Lois Lowry [36]
There was no arguing with her, none at all. After a while Matty gave up the attempt.
Finally he moved his chair again so that he could sit in front of the fire. It was chilly in the evenings now, with summer ending. Forest had been downright cold at night, and he had woken in the mornings during his journey aching and chilled. It was comforting to sit here by the warm fire now.
Kira picked up a small wooden frame with a half-finished piece of embroidery stretched taut across it. She brought it to her chair, and moved a basket filled with bright threads to the floor beside her. Then she leaned her stick against the fireplace wall, sat down, and picked up the needle that was waiting, threaded with green, attached to the fabric.
"I will go with you," she said quite suddenly in her soft voice. "But I will go as I am. With my leg. With my stick."
Matty, puzzled, stared at her. How had she known, before he asked it, what he was planning to ask of her?
"I was going to explain," he said after a long moment. "I was going to persuade you. How...?"
"I started to tell you earlier," she said, "about my gift. What my hands do. Move your chair closer and I'll show you now."
He did so, pulling the crude wooden chair near to where she was. She tilted the embroidery frame so that he could see. Like the colorful tapestry on the wall of the blind man's house, this was a landscape. The stitches were tiny and complicated, and each section a subtle variation in color, so that deep green moved gradually into a slightly lighter shade, and then again lighter, until at the edges it was a pale yellow. The colors combined to form an exquisite pattern of trees, with the tiniest of individual leaves outlined in countless numbers.
"It's Forest," Matty said, recognizing it.
Kira nodded. "Look beyond it," she said, and extended her finger to point to a section in the upper right, where Forest opened and tiny houses were patterned around curved paths.
He thought he could almost make out the house he shared with the blind man, though it was infinitely small on the fabric.
"Village," he said, examining with awe the meticulousness of her craft.
"I embroider this scene again and again," Kira said, "and sometimes—not always—my hands begin to move in ways I don't understand. The threads seem to take on a power of their own."
He leaned closer to look more carefully at the embroidery. It was astounding, the detail of it, how tiny it was.
"Matty?" she said. "I've never done this with anyone watching. But I can feel it in my hands right now. Watch."
He peered intently as her right hand picked up the needle threaded with green. She inserted it into the fabric at an unfinished place near the edge of Forest. Suddenly both of her hands began to vibrate slightly. They shimmered. He had seen this once before, on the day that Leader stood at the window, gathered himself, and saw beyond.
He looked up at her face and saw that her eyes were closed. But her hands were moving very quickly now. They reached into the basket again and again, changed threads in a motion so fast he could barely follow it, and the needle entered the cloth, and entered the cloth, and entered the cloth.
Time seemed to stop. The fire continued to crackle and sputter. Frolic sighed in his sleep at the edge of the hearth. Matty sat speechless, watching the shimmering hands dart; hours and days and weeks seemed to go by, yet oddly, only a blink, an instant, of time passed. Today and tomorrow and yesterday were all spun together and held in those hands that moved and moved and moved, yet her eyes were closed, and the fire still flickered and the dog still slept.
Then it ended.
Kira opened her eyes, sat up straighter, and stretched her shoulders. "It tires me," she explained, though he already knew it.
"Look now," she said. "Quickly, because it will fade."
He leaned forward and saw that now, in the embroidered scene, at the bottom, two tiny people were entering Forest. He recognized one as himself, backpack on his back; he could even see, amazingly, the torn