novelnext Chapter 156 156: OMAKE — THE SCARF
Chapter 156 156: OMAKE — THE SCARF
(Night Kingdom. Karnstein Castle. Some point after Liliana left for England.)...
The scarf had started as a scarf.
Alicia had been clear about this when she began it. A scarf. Normal length. Normal width. Something to do with her hands when she needed something to do with her hands and the alternative was thinking too hard about where Valerian was and what was happening and whether the information reaching the Night Kingdom was accurate or four hours old.
That had been three weeks ago.
The scarf was now longer than the hallway outside Alicia's workroom.
She knew this because she had measured it against the hallway. Not on purpose. She had run out of room on the workroom floor and opened the door without thinking and kept going.
The hallway measurement had been...informative.
She closed the door and went back to knitting.
...
Iris found her there.
This was not unusual. Iris had developed a habit of checking on Alicia at odd hours ever since Liliana left, because Alicia went very quiet when she was worried and Iris had learned that very quiet and fine were not the same thing.
She opened the workroom door.
She looked at Alicia.
She looked at the scarf.
She looked at the door she had just come through, and the portion of scarf that extended past it into the hallway, and then back at Alicia.
"That's," Iris said.
"Yes," Alicia said, without looking up from her needles.
"Is that...."
"I know."
"How long is it now?"
A pause in the clicking of needles.
"I stopped measuring," Alicia said.
Iris looked at the scarf again. She walked over and picked up the end nearest to her and held it up with both hands. She estimated. She put it back down.
"That's not a scarf," she said.
"It's still a scarf."
"Alicia."
"The category has not changed."
"The category has absolutely changed. That is a different category entirely." Iris sat on the floor beside her, pulling her knees up, resting her chin on them. "You're going to run out of yarn eventually."
"I ordered more."
"How much more."
"...Enough."
Iris looked at the side of her face. The steady click of the needles. The particular focus Alicia had when she was doing something she had decided was going to be done regardless of what anyone said about it.
"He's fine," Iris said. Quiet. The tone she used when she was being certain on purpose. "Pack instinct doesn't lie. I'd know if something was wrong."
"I know," Alicia said.
"Then—"
"I know that," Alicia said again. Still not looking up. "I know he's fine. I just need to do something with my hands while I know it."
Iris said nothing for a moment.
Then she held out her hand.
Alicia looked at it.
"I'll hold the yarn," Iris said.
Alicia stared at her for a second. Then something in her face did the thing it did when something had gotten through the careful composure she maintained about everything.
She passed the yarn ball over without a word.
They sat there. The needles clicked. Iris held the yarn with the serious attention of a person who had been given a job and intended to do it correctly.
...
Eleanor found them twenty minutes later.
She stood in the doorway. She looked at Alicia. She looked at Iris. She looked at the scarf coiled across the floor between them and extending out the door behind her and probably halfway down the hallway.
"What," she said.
"Scarf," Alicia said.
"That is not a scarf."
"That's what I said," Iris said.
"It was a scarf," Alicia said. "It has remained a scarf in spirit."
Eleanor walked in, stepping over a section of it, and lowered herself onto the floor with the elaborate caution of someone who was pregnant and had accepted that getting to floor level now required a whole process. She arranged herself. Took a moment. Then she looked at both of them.
"Move over," she said to Iris.
Iris moved over.
Eleanor settled into the new space. She reached out and picked up a loose section of the scarf and examined it with the focus she normally gave to political documents and enemy intelligence.
"The tension is uneven here," she said.
"I know," Alicia said. "That was a difficult week."
Eleanor looked at the scarf. Then at Alicia. Something moved across her face that she didn't name.
She put the section back down carefully.
"Is there another set of needles?" she said.
Alicia blinked.
"You don't know how to knit," Iris said.
"I can learn. How hard is it."
A pause.
"It's..." Alicia started.
"If you say 'harder than it looks' I'll drain your blood pressure," Eleanor said pleasantly.
"It requires patience," Alicia said carefully.
Eleanor gave her a look.
"I have patience."
"You have intensity. Those are different."
"They are the same in practice."
"Eleanor."
"Give me the needles, Alicia."
...
Half an hour later.
Eleanor had a section of something in her hands that was not, technically, knitting. It was also not not-knitting. It existed in a category between the two that had no proper name.
Iris was watching it with the expression of someone watching a natural disaster from a safe distance. Interested. Not intervening.
"You've twisted it again," Alicia said.
"I haven't."
"The yarn is going in two directions."
"That's intentional."
"It's really not."
"Alicia."
"Eleanor."
Eleanor looked at the yarn going in two directions. She looked at Alicia. She looked at Iris, who immediately found the ceiling very interesting.
"The tension is fine," Eleanor said.
"The tension is doing something I've never seen yarn do before," Alicia said, in the patient tone of a woman who had decided she was going to get through this without any of them going home with hurt feelings.
"It has character," Eleanor said.
"It has a structural integrity problem."
"Those are the same thing."
Iris made a noise. Not a laugh. Not as obvious as a laugh.
Eleanor pointed at her without looking.
"Don't."
"I'm not doing anything," Iris said.
"You're thinking loudly."
"I'm always thinking loudly. Ask anyone."
"I'm asking you."
"My face is completely neutral," Iris said, with a face that was absolutely not completely neutral.
Eleanor huffed. She looked at her yarn situation. She looked at Alicia's.
Alicia's was even. Consistent. The rhythm of someone who had been doing this for weeks and had gotten very good at it without meaning to.
Eleanor held her own up next to it.
The comparison was not generous to Eleanor's.
"Teach me properly," Eleanor said.
"I've been trying," Alicia said.
"Teach me better then."
A pause.
"Come here," Alicia said, with a sigh that was mostly fond. "Hold it like this."
She reached over and adjusted Eleanor's grip. Eleanor let her, which was itself notable, because Eleanor did not normally let people move her hands.
Iris watched this.
She added nothing.
She was holding the yarn ball and doing her job.
...
Someone knocked on the workroom door an hour later.
It was Claire.
Claire was Eleanor's Maid and as Alicia being Eleanor's Contracted witch for a long time..She had survived decades in Alicia's workroom and had long ago developed the expression of a person who could not be surprised by anything that happened in or near it.
She looked at the three of them on the floor. The scarf spanning the room and most of the hallway. Alicia knitting steadily. Iris holding yarn with the seriousness of official duty. Eleanor holding something that was becoming, very slowly, against all odds, a functional row of stitches.
"Lady Eleanor," Claire said. "You have a meeting with the intelligence council in twenty minutes."
"Reschedule it," Eleanor said, without looking up.
"It's the third time this week, my Lady."
"Then they're used to it. Reschedule it."
A pause.
"Also," Claire said, "this section of scarf in the hallway is a tripping hazard. Two of the night staff have already—"
"Move the staff," Eleanor said.
"I...I'm sorry?"
"Route them around it. Hallway three is right there."
Claire looked at Alicia.
Alicia looked at her needles.
"Route them around it, Claire," Alicia said.
Claire stood in the doorway for another moment with the expression of a woman who had been doing this job for a very long time and had made her peace with it.
'I am used it' her inner voice said to herself.
"Of course," she said. "Would anyone like tea?"
"Yes please," Iris said.
"Please," Alicia said.
"Something warm," Eleanor said. Then, after a small pause, in a tone that was distinctly quieter: "Thank you, Claire."
Claire looked at her. The very small thing that happened to her expression then was not something she named or drew attention to.
"Of course, my Lady," she said, and went to get the tea.
...
The room was quiet after that.
Just the clicking. The yarn. The particular warmth of three people who had not chosen each other for company and had ended up here anyway, on the floor, in Alicia's workroom, waiting the same wait in the same direction.
Eleanor looked at her row of stitches.
It was not elegant. It was not even. But it was there.
"Is it getting better?" she said.
Alicia examined it honestly.
"....Yes," she said.
Eleanor looked at it for another moment.
"Good," she said.
She kept going.
...
Iris measured herself against the scarf before they finished for the night.
This had become a habit. Not an announced one. She just stood up at some point, pulled a section of it to height, marked the length against herself in a way that didn't require a comment.
Eleanor watched her do it.
"It's going to wrap around you twice by the time he's back," Eleanor said.
"I know," Iris said. She let go of the scarf. "I'm keeping track."
A pause.
"For when he asks what we did while he was gone," Iris added.
Eleanor said nothing for a moment.
Then she looked at the scarf. At the section Alicia had been working on since the beginning, even and careful and longer than any scarf had a reason to be.
"He's going to be bewildered," she said.
"Obviously," Alicia said.
"And then he's going to feel terrible about it."
"Also obviously."
"Good," Eleanor said. With feeling.
"Hehe…I can't wait to see his reaction ".
Iris laughed. A real one. The one she produced when something landed exactly right and she didn't think to manage it.
Alicia looked at both of them.
Then she looked at her needles.
Then the corner of her mouth moved.
"He'd better come home soon," she said quietly. "I'm running out of yarn again."
Nobody said anything.
But the room was warm.