And a ferocious Minnesota winter might be interesting, another adventure. After all, Betsy had grown up in Milwaukee, where the winters could also be hard.

Betsy pushed the accelerator down a little, and the car responded. Good little car, acting as if it didn’t already have a hundred and fifty thousand miles on it. Ahead was the road sign saying WELCOME TO MINNESOTA. She hoped it didn’t smell of pig, like Iowa.

Sometime later the freeway forked. Thirty-five-E went to St. Paul, 35W came into Minneapolis. Margot hadn’t mentioned this; her directions said to take I-35 into the Cities, and Highway 7 to Excelsior. Betsy chose Minneapolis; she had a notion that Excelsior was west of the Twin Cities and Minneapolis was the western twin. Right? She was pretty sure she hadn’t already missed an exit onto Highway 7; certainly she hadn’t missed an exit sign saying EXCELSIOR. A pity she had left the road atlas behind in an Omaha motel. She would stop at the next exit and buy a map.

She saw a little strip mall just this side of an exit, featuring a store whose sign advertised GUNS LIQUOR PAWN. Despite this warning that the owner liked to live dangerously, she got off and made her way back to it on a frontage road. She didn’t go in; a store next door to it added to the explosive mixture by selling used snowmobiles and those noisy adult tricycles with puffy tires. But people who bought vehicles might also want maps.

They did, and the store sold them. The man behind the counter helped her plan a route to Highway 7. “Thirty-five don’t cross 7,” he said. “So what you do, you stay on 35W till you get to 494, take 494 west to 100, which only goes north from there, and it’ll give you an exit onto 7. Go west and look for a sign.” He moved a grubby finger along the map as she watched. It seemed clear enough.

“Thanks,” she said, taking the map and folding it on the first try—Betsy was a traveler.

“You bet.”

Amazing, they really did say “you bet” in Minnesota, just like in that book on how to speak Minnesotan Margot had sent her one Christmas.

Back on the highway, Betsy drove ten miles over the speed limit—she had to, if she didn’t want to be rear ended—and was so excited at the approach of the end of her journey that she didn’t really notice that though it was not yet September, the ivy climbing the wooden sound barriers on 35W was turning an autumnal red.

2

Margot was selecting colored silks for the T‘ang horse. She had her original needlepoint of it on the table, still in the frame, which had no glass in it. “I remember it was ten-oh-seven,” she murmured to herself.

“What?” asked Shelly.

“The blue color of the horse, I remember it was ten-oh-seven, ten-oh-five, and ten-oh-three.” She tried a skein of 1007 Madeira silk, which was a midnight-blue shade, against the neck and shoulder of the horse. “Still is, it seems.”