The window had gone dark and blue, and the fire was making its soft popping sounds. Grandma's knitting basket sat by the hearth, and in it slumped the wool: a great soft grey cloud of a thing, tangled every which way, with loops sprouting out like the fluff on a dandelion clock.
"Can I wind it?" Mia asked. "Into one tidy ball. All by myself."
"You can try," said Grandma, settling into her chair. "Wool likes going slowly. Do you know that?"
"I know it now," said Mia, who did not really know it yet.
She sat cross-legged on the rug and began. Round and round went her hands, and for a moment it was easy. Then Mia pulled a bit faster, because faster is nicer, and the wool tightened and squeaked and stopped.
"Is it stuck?" called Grandma.
"It's stuck," said Mia.
"What does stuck wool want?"
"Slow," said Mia, and eased it loose, and carried on.
Next she tried spinning the ball like a top, thinking the wool might wind itself. It did not. It hopped off across the rug and gathered a great grey loop round the leg of the coffee table. Mia unhooked it and pressed her lips together and started again.
Then came the knot. A real one, hard and small and mean, right in the middle of everything. Mia picked at it. Mia blew on it, which does nothing whatsoever to wool, and Mia knew that, but blew anyway. The knot sat there like a pebble.
Her hands closed tight around the wool. She went very quiet, and the quiet lasted a long time — long enough for the fire to pop twice.
"How's it going, love?" said Grandma.
Mia looked at the tangle. She looked at Grandma. Saying it out loud felt like stepping off a low wall in the dark.
"This is too much for me," she said, in a small voice. "Will you help?"
"Gladly," said Grandma, and she came down onto the rug with a creak and a sigh, as if the floor were the nicest place she'd been all day.
"Shall I hold, or shall I wind?" she asked.
"You hold," said Mia. "I'll wind."
So Grandma spread the tangle over her open hands, and her old fingers went into the knot and coaxed it — not pulling, only asking — until it opened up like a fist becoming a hand.
"Ready?" said Grandma.
"Ready," said Mia.
And then it went beautifully. Loop over loop over loop, the grey wool travelling from Grandma's hands to Mia's ball, and the ball growing rounder and heavier and warmer.
"More?" said Mia.
"More," said Grandma.
"More?"
"Nearly."
"More?"
"That's the end," said Grandma, and there it was — the very last inch of grey, tucked neatly under.
One ball. One round, tidy, proper ball, sitting in the basket like an egg in a nest.
Mia leaned against Grandma's chair while she took up her needles. Click. Click. Click. Somewhere in the fire a log settled itself. The window was blue, then bluer, and Mia's eyes grew heavy, and the clicking went on, soft and steady, all the way into sleep.