After I placed my appeasement in the box, the Keeper of the Mines took me to meet my home host. Lissa was a shy young girl, who smiled and said nothing when we were introduced.
“Don’t let her fool you. She may be young, and she may be shy, but Lissa here knows as much about the mines as anybody around here. She was following her daddy down those shafts as soon as she could toddle. Last year when she moved out on her own, she decided to be a home host. And she’s a good one!” The Keeper of the Mine beamed at Lissa, who still didn’t say anything, but smiled back.
“Got your stuff? Good. You just follow Lissa now and she’ll take care of you. Lissa floated out the door, as if she had wings instead of feet, and I clumped along behind her. We walked for a short way to the edge of town, and a neat little cottage with a picket fence and flowers growing everywhere. I could see vegetables growing in amongst the flowers and spied more growing around the sides of the house. The windows were open, and I could hear a canary singing his heart out inside.
“Come on in.” Lissa had a sweet, quiet voice. She opened the front door to a busy front room full of quilts and embroidered pieces. Watercolors of botanicals hung on the walls, and there were skeins of yarn in brilliant hues hanging near the fireplace, where a spinning wheel sat like a cat on the hearth rug. We walked through to the kitchen, where more yarn hung and a dye pot simmered on the stove. The table was painted in bright colors and traditional stencil patterns, with hand-woven place mats and napkins on each side. There was a clear vase with flowers in the middle of the table.
“I’ll get us some tea and scones, if you like. Dinner will be later.” She spoke so softly that I had to listen carefully.
“Sure. Tea and scones would be fine,” I replied, and looked around the room some more.
The floor was slate with braided rugs scattered across it, and copper saucepans hug from the beams near the stove. The kettle that Lissa put on was shiny copper, too. The canary who was singing so industriously was in the window looking out over the back garden (again full of flowers and veggies as far as I could see) and to my surprise, I saw Someone, the cat, walking into the room. She walked over to me and wound around my ankles. “Well, I see you landed on your feet, too,” she said. “Lissa is wonderful. As long as I leave her little canary bird alone we will be fine. And the other birds, too,” she added, with a glance at Lissa, who nodded at her. She padded out of the kitchen and into the living room.
When the tea and scones and several sorts of cookies were in front of us, she sat down.
I was curious. “I understand the mines can be quite dangerous. That’s why we do so much preparation before we go down. How is it that you went down when you were so small?” I asked.
“My dad always took care that I was safe. I didn’t do any actual mining until I was old enough to understand what I was doing, but you know, to little ones, it’s instinctive, it’s play. They just know how to do these things. It’s only as we get older that we loose the ability to mine the alluvial mine. Dad just made sure that I never lost my ability from childhood to adulthood.” She shrugged and smiled.
“I think I see,” I answered.
“It’s not something that a lot of parents are willing to do, but as I said, Dad always kept me safe. And he’s pleased and proud of the miner I’ve become. When we’re done, I’ll show you some of the things I do.”
I found out that most of the plants in Lissa’s garden were good to use as dye stuffs, and she had a small flock of sheep on the edge of town, which was where she got her wool.
“I sell the wool I spin and dye, and the quilts I make. I also weave a little bit, and sell some of that, too.” She became bolder when talking about the things she loved to create.
The botanical sketches on the wall were hers, too, and there were several large, hand bound volumes with her records for dye mixes and results.
She showed me around the rest of the house. The other two rooms on the first floor were her bedroom, in the front, and her workroom in the back, which had French doors opening onto the garden and the same slate floors as the kitchen. It was full of fabrics and yarns and a huge loom, another spinning wheel, and plants hanging from the ceiling beams in bunches, drying. There was a cabinet full of embroidery fibers. There were two sewing machines, and a wall full of cloth in all sorts of colors. A table held more fabric and patterns. Near the doors at the back of the room were an easel and paints. I ooh and ahhed over all of it, and she blushed with pleasure.
When we went back out, I saw a fiddle on a table in the front room. “And is this yours, too?”
“No, much as I love it, music isn’t one of my abilities. I play a little on a recorder, but not too often. That belongs to my young man, Theo. He has just learned the mines, and is up there today. He should be back soon, and will join us for dinner.”
It was getting late, near sunset, and Lissa went back into the kitchen to finish up dinner. I sat in the pleasant front room and took out my knitting. It seemed right here.
A few minutes later, a tired looking young man came in the front door. He smiled, and said, “You must be She Wolf. The Keeper of the Mine told me you would be here. I’m Theo. It’s nice to meet you.” He smiled and shook my hand and reached for the fiddle. Tuning it quickly, he was soon lost in his music, and I was too. I was surprised when Lissa called us for dinner. Time had gone somewhere else, with the music.
Dinner was tasty and filling- a beef stew that had simmered all day on the back of the stove, bread fresh that morning, and a salad fresh from the garden. Beer brewed locally went with it, and there was apple pie for dessert. While we talked, Theo told us about his day at the mine. “It’s getting easier; I’ve found a good rich vein,” he said. He turned to me. “Tomorrow I will go up with you, to the mine. It’s exhilarating- you’ll see.”
I offered to help with the dishes, but Theo shooed me away, saying this was his job.
We retired to the front room where Lissa lit a fire, and sat down to spin. I picked my knitting back up, and Theo soon joined us again. He picked up his fiddle and created his magic once more. Later we talked, with Someone the cat purring in one lap after another, and Lissa pressed some of her exquisite yarn on me- I offered to pay her for it, but she refused. “There’s not much; it was an experiment. But I know you like the colors, and it will make a nice pair of socks. If you keep knitting at this rate, you’ll finish that pair and have nothing to knit for the rest of your journey.”
I looked at the sock in my hands- it was half done, in the course of this one evening. “It must be the magic effect of your fiddle!” I teased.
Theo looked serious. “That’s what I hope for,” he replied.
Lissa showed me my room soon after. It was up a tiny winding set of stairs in the kitchen. “When I decided to be a home host, I converted part of my attic to a little set of rooms for my guests,” she said. “There is a bedroom and a bathroom just for you to use.”
True to her word, there was a cheerful bedroom under the eaves, with a window seat over looking the back garden, and a small bathroom with an enormous tub. The other half of the attic was left for storage, she explained.
Handing me towels smelling of fresh air and lavender, and telling me to let her know if I need anything, Lissa left me to myself. I took a long, soaky bath in the huge tub, and then curled up under the bright quilt on the bed. Theo was playing his music again, and I fell asleep to dreams of sheep with thick warm fleeces chasing after brightly colored musical notes dancing beside a river.
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