But I’ll not be rushed, no I will not, and pull the package from her impatient fingers. Something soft and puffy is inside the wax paper. I remember Kitta’s promise to knit me a scarlet gansey, but it canna be that, no. This is smaller, and lighter, and I can tell, without even seeing it, that it is something I will love more than any old scarlet gansey, even one knitted by Kitta. Finally, it’s too much for me and I slip the string off and peel back the paper.

Oh!

Kitta jumps up and pulls me up with her, and she is laughing, laughing at the breathy wonder on my face as I try to take in what I am holding in my hands, the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

It’s yours, Ginger Meggie. Truly it’s yours!

I pinch a corner between my fingers and shake it free of the paper and a long streak of purple silk flies out of the sheddie, up into the icy white of the sky, curling and falling, whipping like a sail unloosed. Such a wild riot of colour as never before seen on the braes of Roanhaven.

I canna speak.

Well? Kitta demands, reining in the renegade silk and winding it round and round my throat.

But … I stare at her, dumbfounded. Again that unease. But …?

This is not a thing for a kitchen quine to buy with her earnings. A kitchen quine sends home her wages like a dutiful daughter, keeping only a tiny fraction for the things she needs. A kitchen quine has but a few pence to call her own, just enough to buy wool to knit her drawers. So how …?

Never ye mind, Ginger Meggie, Kitta says, so pleased with herself, so mysterious and sly. Just never ye mind!

~