Spindle(35)

“Aren’t you coming?” asked Annie.

Briar shook her head. “In a minute. I’m having some trouble with my frame, as usual.” She stood in front of it, hands behind her back and blocking Annie’s view.

Annie frowned in sympathy. “That frame never has worked right. Don’t be too long or you’ll miss out.”

Briar waved and then turned back to analyze the metal spindle to see if she could take the whorl off.

Maribelle stood at her elbow. “Can I help you with something, miss?”

Briar nearly jumped out of her skin. “Go have your dinner. I’ll adjust this spindle and be off myself.”

Maribelle nodded, her eyes darting to the metal spindle in Briar’s hand before skipping away.

Panic welled up inside. What was she going to do? She didn’t want to give up so easily. She kept her eyes on the operatives headed out to dinner while she felt the wooden spindle through her apron until the whorl separated from the shaft and dropped to the bottom of her pocket.

Before doing anything else, she would measure the spindle to see if it even fit. Keeping the wooden spindle hidden in the handkerchief, she lowered the shaft into the gap-toothed sneer of the frame. Perfect match. So if she could figure out a way to make a smaller whorl for the spindle, it just might work.

She pulled the wooden spindle away, but all that came loose was handkerchief and silk cloth. The spindle had caught in the frame.

Briar glanced over her shoulder. No one but the shadowy machines watching her. She reached back in with the cloth, trying to keep the spindle hidden.

She wiggled the shaft, but it held fast.

She bent down to see what the spindle had caught on. Nothing. She peered closer. The wood had grown a new whorl in the exact shape and size it needed. She gasped and pulled her hand away. Then she took a step back. What was this thing the peddler had given her?

Fairy wood.

Impossible. Fairy tales were stories her mother made up to help them live through the hunger. They were tales. Not real.

With trembling fingers, Briar tested the strength of the bond again. It was even more solid than before. Hardly daring to breathe, she replaced the bobbin then stuffed the royal blue cloth back in her pocket. She hid the metal spindle in a little hollow at the base of the frame, hoping that it wouldn’t roll out with the vibrations when the machine started up again. She didn’t want to take it back to the boardinghouse in case she needed it again or in case someone saw it in her pocket and asked questions.

Letting her feet carry her back to the boardinghouse in a daze, she left the building to join her mill sisters for dinner. So befuddled, she barely noticed she was going against the tide as everyone was jostling their way back to the mill.

“Briar!” called Ethel. “You’re late. Here, I slipped out some food for you.” Ethel handed her a sausage wrapped in a flapjack, then turned Briar around to go back to the mill. “Don’t tell Miss Olive. You okay? You’ve been acting strange ever since the meeting last night. I didn’t scare you off, did I? I don’t expect you to plunge right into a campaign. I just want you to realize your potential. We can get tied up in our work, becoming machines ourselves if we’re not careful.”

Ethel preached on and on until they climbed the stairs and had to part ways. Briar had mindlessly nodded to keep Ethel going while she tried to understand what had happened to her frame and the spindle. She put her hand in her pocket and felt the whorl with its carved roses. It was buzzing, the way the floor in the spinning room felt when all the machines were on and the vibrations worked their way up her body. She yanked her hand out.

What had she done? Had she fought further upstream like Elizabeth Cady Stanton encouraged, or was this an example of giving in to temptation? This was no normal spindle. By placing it in the frame it was as if she had turned it on the way the overseer turned on the power each morning.

When she stepped into the room, she was afraid to even look at the spinning frame. What if it had started to grow like Jack’s beanstalk and taken over the room? She glanced down her row. Her frame looked as it always had. An inanimate object waiting for Briar to turn it on and set its spindles to spinning. She laughed nervously. Her anxiety over getting caught had given her an imagination as wild as the twins’.

There had to be some rational explanation for how the spindle stuck in the frame. The wood swelling from the high humidity in the room, for example. And the whorl didn’t start its buzzing until she crossed the threshold. It might have been reacting to the looms above, which were turned on and off in shifts and could be felt below.

The bell sounded and the machines around her roared to life as the girls threw their shipper handles. Maribelle, who had come to finish the doffing she’d started before the bell, pointed to Briar’s silent machines. “Aren’t you gonna start?” the girl yelled over the din.

Briar shook herself out of her musings and rushed to get all four machines up and going. When she turned on the power for number four and the spindles began to whirl, she sucked in a breath and waited for something bad to happen.

Little Maribelle, after finishing her doffing, wandered off to find someone to play with. Briar paced up and down her frames, fixing the odd broken thread on numbers one, two, and three, but keeping her distance from number four. She didn’t want to get too close, and she didn’t have to.

For the first time ever, the threads never broke. Just as the peddler said.