Sorrel’s Borrowed Button — Under the loom loft’s rafters, Sorrel kept a dull pewter button tucked beneath the warmest coil of his tail. Read the full story →
Under the loom loft’s rafters, Sorrel kept a dull pewter button tucked beneath the warmest coil of his tail. It had belonged to the shawl that first carried him here, and on cold nights he pressed it to his chest until the metal took his heartbeat. When the west window rattled and the shuttle baskets whispered, he meant only to fetch a dropped thread before the weaver noticed. You did not hear this from me, but Sorrel hated leaving his cushion after the lamps went blue.
Across the floorboards, the wool smelled of rain and lanolin, and every step set a tiny creak loose. Near the treadles, he found the apprentice’s mittens, stiff with frost, their cuff loop snapped clean away. Sorrel held the button in his teeth. A button was a small thing, unless it was the only door back to being held. He nosed it through the torn loop, tugged the thread tight, and lost one whisker to the needle’s silver bite.
By dawn, the apprentice slid warm hands into mended mittens and never knew whom to thank. Sorrel returned to his cushion lighter by one button and richer by the secret weight of giving. Beneath his tail, there was only a round mark in the wool, warm as the place where the pewter button used to keep his heartbeat.
