Page 47 of Acedia
“Yarn, not string,” I corrected gently, letting him tug me down to sit on the floor with him. A little circle immediately formed around us, with Eadlin leaning against my side and Yara directing the children so they didn’t get unwieldy.
While knitting wasn’t a Shade hobby, it had apparently been easy enough to have needles made up here that matched mine, and the children were surprisingly patient when it came to learning, despite how small they were. The littlest, like Eadlin, were just here to watch.
“I’ve been practicing,” Jonan bragged. “My mother says I shouldn’t because it’s a peasant hobby, but I told her that Iris does it, so why can’t I?”
“Jonan,” Yara gasped, though I quietly wondered if it was mostly for my benefit. From what I’d learned, only Shades who weren’t strong enough to form clothes out of shadows bothered with physical garments. It was almost a mark of shame to wear clothing—a knitted scarf was hardly going to be a prized object here.
It wasn’t my place to make any kind of judgment on that—I was new here and I didn’t know the rules and traditions of the realm. I was just teaching them as a fun skill, and something to keep the children busy for a while and give the nursery staff a break. I’d taught them to loop the yarn in a basic knit stitch, but a few of the older children had gotten good enough to try purl stitches.
There was a commotion by the door, and I wanted to know what was going on but Jonan elbowed me the moment I paused.
“Who’s at the door?” I asked him, because I was learning that I needed to workwithhis mischievous nature instead of against it.
“What? Oh, it’s the king’s mother. I wonder what she wants.”
“Orabelle?”
“Are you allowed to call her that?” he asked, his voice dropping to a whisper.
“I think so. We’re friends.”
“Are you?” It was the most impressed Jonan had ever sounded since I’d met him. “My mother says the king’s mother isveryscary.”
“Oh no, that isn’t true at all—”
Orabelle’s distinctive cackle cut me off. “Not where you’re concerned, Iris. You’re one of my favorites, you know. His mother, on the other hand…”
“Orabelle,” I scolded, worried she was going to traumatize poor Jonan.
“If you’d met her, you’d agree,” Orabelle replied unapologetically. There was the sound of a chair scraping across the floor, and she huffed and complained as she got situated close by, apparently making herself comfortable.
Would it be terribly rude of me to ask what she was doing here? If there was one room in the entire palace I couldn’t imagine Orabelle wanting to spend time in, it was the nursery.
“Do you want to learn to knit?” Jonan asked her boldly, apparently not put off by the disparaging remarks about his mother.
“Go on then. You teach me. Don’t bother Iris, she’s helping the other children now.”
For all of her rather abrupt ways, she knew exactly how to keep Jonan engaged. He was more than happy to pass on the skillshe’d learned, and I got a few minutes to speak with the children who weren’t quite as vocal about asking for attention.
“The queen is here!” someone shouted, making me startle as the door opened again.
“What an unrelaxing environment this is for children,” Orabelle remarked, as though she hadn’t caused a stir herself.
“Oh, I didn’t expect you two to be here,” Ophelia said, moving over to where we were. “Hi, Iris. Orabelle, what are you doing here?”
“I’m visiting Iris, of course,” she replied irritably. “And helping her wrangle these uncontrollable youths.”
“The nursery staff do a wonderful job of that and the children are very well-behaved,” I added hurriedly.
“Are you teaching them to knit? Can I join?”
There were squeals of excitement at that as Ophelia came to sit next to me and was immediately handed her own set of supplies. I gave up on my scarf entirely as Eadlin crawled onto my lap, probably overwhelmed by the noise. I understood the feeling.
“This is so great,” Ophelia murmured. “Do you visit a lot? I haven’t been in a while. I’ve been so busy with other things…”
“Understandably so. I imagine a queen has a lot of duties to attend to.”
“Some more pleasant than others,” she muttered, her needles clicking together slowly. “You know, it never occurred to me to bring any human realm activities here for the kids to try? I don’t know why.”