Throwback Thursday: ‘The Green Thread and the Blue’ by Carolyn Oliver

Pulling at Threads 

In the Winter 2017 issue of Pulp Literature Carolyn Oliver offered this mythic glimpse behind a familiar tale. Enjoy the excerpt below, and read the whole story in Pulp Literature Issue 13, on sale till June 15th!

Here’s the first page for your enjoyment. You can find the full story in Pulp Literature Issue 9, Winter 2016, on sale for the throwback price of $8 till June 15th.

The Green Thread and the Blue

Carolyn Oliver

That’s it, dear.  You’re the first one to learn the way of it in less than a month.  My compliments to your mother — how is she?  Well, I hope?  I heard there’s a touch of the summer fever in town.  Give me that plait when you’ve finished.  I have some strong thread here to tie it off.  One of your predecessors spun it for me — doesn’t it sparkle?  Like ale in the sunlight, as I recall.  She was a canny one.  I wish I could remember her name; you could look her up, then.

         I can tell you’re looking at my hands.  That’s all right.  I believe the word is gnarled, like tree roots, the pesky things.  Always tripping visitors or trying to roust the foundations of the house.  But my hands are not really gnarled.  They’re snarled.

         And that’s what I want to talk to you about, dear.  No, no, the yarn is fine, and you’ve done a lovely job with my hair — I can feel how smooth it is.  No, that is not what I meant at all.  Sit beside me on the bench, just there.  You’ll feel the indent.  I’ve learned you girls take things easier when you’re not looking at me in the eyes.  Or where my eyes used to be, I should say.

         Now then.  You have plaited my hair seventeen times, and for seventeen days, as you’ve learned my scalp and my wisps of white, I’ve learned you.  I can smell — my sense of smell is very strong — that your dress is dyed with woad, but faintly; you’ve worn it nine times to visit me, more than any other dress:  your favourite, no doubt, because it sets off your raven-black hair and hazel eyes.  Yes, your beauty is discussed at the well — did you know?  The dress is threadbare at the elbows — second-hand, it would seem.  Though it’s not from one of your sisters or cousins, since you have none, so it must be a friend’s dress.  You have friends, then, friends who are no more put off by your beauty than I am, an old eyeless crone.  Which means you have personality.  And I know you have sense, since you have not spoken a word more than necessary in all your hours here.  A wise woman in these days knows not to reveal her thoughts to a stranger.  Or her family, for that matter.

         And you have courage.  I heard about the rescue of the boy in the well, just like everyone else in the village.  But I also know what you did for the miller’s daughter, getting her to the midwife before it was too late.  The miller’s daughter has plaited my hair too, and she does not have quite your sense.

         You are shifting in your seat, and perhaps you are right to be uncomfortable, to be restless.  A girl like you should be going places, seeing things, meeting people, the good and the wicked, yes?

         Ah, and there we have it.  You are looking now at the mirror on the wall, wondering not at your own beauty but at the mirror’s opulence.  It doesn’t belong in a house like this, you’re thinking, and besides, why hasn’t some village lad stolen it, sold it off to the goldsmith — who, between us, is not as honest as his face suggests — or spied it through the window, telling his friend, who tells another, and so on until bandits come down from the hills to take it in the night from an old blind woman?

Find out what happens next in Issue 13, Winter 2017 …

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