Skein

The wool came off the sheep in summer and waited all autumn in a basket by the door. The girl lifted a loop of it now and asked how a thing so tangled could ever be made straight. “You do not make it straight,” Nyra said. “You make it into a skein, which is only tangle taught to keep its own order.”

They set the yarn between two chairs and began to wind. The girl held the loop wide while Nyra drew the thread, and the basket grew lighter as the ball at her hand grew round. “Count the turns if you like,” Nyra said, “but the count will not tell you when the wool is willing.”

The girl counted anyway, out loud, and lost the number somewhere near a hundred. She laughed and started again, and did not mind the loss. A book gathers what can be set down in a line and counted, and leaves the rest to the one who was there. The turning of the wool was such a rest, and the girl felt it in her wrists before she had a name for it.

When the skein was wound, Nyra tied it loose in three places so it would not fall to tangle again. “There,” she said. “Now it will keep until the knitting, and keep its shape besides.” The girl turned the soft coil in both hands and said it looked like a loaf, or a sleeping thing.

Nyra set the skein in the basket with the others and wrote the number she trusted in the book, which was the number of skeins and not of turns. The turns had gone into the girl’s own hands and would not come out again as figures. The book keeps the count, and you keep the winding of it.