Where the Path Leads-Chapter 6
Finding Your Way
Bees and flies hummed in the afternoon sun that slanted in the open doorway. Emily thought it would have been the perfect time to take a nap, but she was counting threads and had to pay attention. Sophia had finally set her to work on her first weaving project, although as of yet, she hadn’t gotten anywhere near the loom. Instead, she was kneeling in front of a warping board that had wooden pegs on it and looping yarn around the pegs to measure the number and length of threads that would go onto the loom. Like so many tasks Sophia gave her, it was tedious and boring, her knees ached, and the wool she measured was nothing like the silk Sophia had used for the green cloth, which had been packaged up and delivered as soon as it was finished. This stuff was a dull grey and she knew that whatever she made from it would not be lovely.
“Sophia,” she stopped, mentally noting where she had counted, “why did you say I was your niece?”
Her companion was laying twigs on the fire then added some kind of root vegetable from the garden to the continuous cauldron. That’s what Emily had started calling it, since it was always in use. Was it rutabaga or turnip? No matter. She wouldn’t know the difference anyway. She had never eaten that kind of stuff before, but there were no tater tots here.
Sophia sighed. “We have lived here all our lives, Emilia. So have our parents, and our parent’s parents, and their parents before them.”
That came as a shock. This community of backward people was no chance oddity.
“We all know one another, and people are suspicious of outsiders,” Sophia went on.
“There are laws against vagabonds and wanderers. I thought people would ask fewer questions if I said we were related.” “If I really was your niece, would you want me to learn weaving, like Will’s father wants him to become a cobbler?” Emily slipped down onto the floor to sit and let the ball of yarn rest in her lap.
“It’s not the same for girls.” Sophia dipped a finger into the stew to taste it, then sprinkled in some herb.
“Did you always know what you wanted to do?”
Sophia shook her head, stirring the pottage absently as if thinking of something else, then she came to sit down on the floor beside Emily.
“At one time, I thought I did. When I was young, I wanted to be a scholar, but we didn’t have any school back then, just our old rector, Tado Gregory, who taught a few boys–reading, public speaking, numbers. Sometimes on Sundays, he would let one of them read the Palabra in high Anglais from the huge book always open on the lectern near the worship table. I longed to read from that book, or from any book. Once, after adorando, I stole into the worship space to look at it, touching the intricate lines and curves of the letters; the writing was like a magical code. I wished I could understand it with my fingertips because I knew the book contained worlds and experiences beyond my village. I begged Mama and Papa to learn to read, but Tado Gregory said no. He told papa I had no need for reading. I was just a laborer and a girl at that. Teaching me to read would ruin me for my life’s purpose, which he said was to work.
“My life’s purpose,” she repeated softly, a faraway look of remembering in her eyes. “My parents felt my keen disappointment, and Papa vowed I should not become a common laborer in the field if he could help it. One feast day, he was drinking with a master weaver who was passing through on his way to the Great City, and he persuaded him to take me as an apprentice. Before I knew it, I was headed there too. So, you see, I didn’t choose my future, it chose me.” She paused, fingering some of the plain grey yarn for Emily’s project, twisting it over and over again around her slender but calloused finger, then unwinding it.
“The master showed me what to do, then left me alone. I was miserable at first, bored with the work and lonely in the Great City since I knew no one. But one day I saw the master weaving a fabric that was so lovely it seemed magical, the different ways it caught the light and reflected it, like moving water. As if hypnotized, I watched it emerge on the loom and knew that whoever wore it would be as glowing as the fabric. What I didn’t know until later was that my master made the fabric for his daughter’s wedding dress and he wove into it all his wishes for her happiness, good fortune, and many children. She was a radiant bride and her husband, a successful potter; they went on to have a whole brood of children. My master said that if I worked diligently, I could make something like it one day and put my own feelings into it. After that, I applied myself, accepting the discipline of the loom. I learned to read the threads, both what they said and what I wove into them to say. It wasn’t the life I had wanted, but it offered unimagined possibilities.”
Sophia stood up, brushing dirt off the back of her shift. “Finding what you want to do may take a while. In the meantime,” she said archly, her blue eyes glinting, “just recall how you felt in those shoes and let those feelings help you to weave,” then she pointed back to the warping board.
