Chapter 25: Backstitch and Loop

The gown lay across the cutting bench in Ironwood Hall, white and plain, with a lamp at each end.

It was the same gown I had worn out of the circle.

Nobody had washed the salt line off the hem, and I had asked them not to.

Jasper set the velvet pouch beside it and tipped out eleven stones.

They rolled across the wood, pale and cold, each one a snowflake the size of my thumbnail.

"These were on Margot," he said. "These I know by heart."

The door opened, and Cecily came in with her blue gown over one arm and a sewing kit in the other hand.

She had walked across the ice in the dark to bring it.

"Eleven more," she said, and she laid the blue gown down beside mine. "I'll unpick them myself. I need to."

"You don't have to do it tonight," I said.

"I do."

She sat on the stool by the bench and slid a seam ripper under the first thread.

Jasper took the other stool and began to sort the stones by year, turning each one under the lamp to find the little star cut inside its arm.

I threaded my own needle.

My hands were not steady, so I did it twice, and I did not let anyone help.

"Year one goes at the collar," Jasper said. "My mother did that for the first girl in her family, and I thought it was right."

He held out the smallest stone.

I took it and set it against the white silk, and I pushed the needle through.

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