By Mia Rumi

“Ask her,” the boy with the newsboy cap whispered.

“You ask her,” said his friend, nudging him with the elbow of his tweed coat.

Barrett placed her elbows on the counter and leaned down to the boys’ eye level. “Ask me what?” she said. “Boys like you shouldn’t be afraid of ordering a pastry, you know.”

The boys looked at each other in slight alarm as if they couldn’t believe that Barrett had heard their whispered argument from behind the counter. Barrett chuckled to herself, but she kept her face serious.

After a couple more moments of silence, the boy with the cap, appearing to be the spokesperson, said, “We need your help.”

“Help? Oh! Did you want a croissant?”

“Not pastries. Help!”

“Well, I can go get my manager…”

“No, we want you.”

Barrett’s lips parted with a bit of surprise. Help was the last thing she would expect someone to ask of her. Coffee and pastries and comforting talks, yes, but help?

“What could I possibly help you with?” she asked.

“We want you to become part of a piece of artwork,” said the second boy.

Barrett laughed. “Don’t you want someone prettier for that?”

“What Perran meant to say,” said the first boy, “is that we have a little situation. Perran here”—he jabbed a finger at his friend—“got a wish for his birthday. And he chose to blow it on a tapestry.”

“I told you, Roscoe, it was an accident,” insisted Perran.

“Perran wished for a tapestry to come alive,” said Roscoe.

“I just said I wished the scene was real,” said Perran. “I forgot that the next wish I wished would actually come true.”

“Anyway,” said Roscoe, “of course the tapestry did come alive, and, you see, the tapestry is of a village in a forest, and there’s a huge brown bear in the corner. Well, the people in the tapestry came alive, and so did the bear.”

“And what can I do about that?” asked Barrett.

“The tapestry doesn’t let just anyone into it, you see,” said Perran.

“That’s right,” said Roscoe. “It didn’t let us in. But we think you might be able to.”

“Why?” asked Barrett.

“You’ll see when we get there,” said Roscoe. He bounced on his feet. “Please, we’d really like your help. We weren’t even supposed to see the tapestry. Only my father let us take a peek, since he’s the one who curated it, and if he sees what’s happened to it when the exhibit opens soon, we’ll be in such trouble.”

“I think you’ve got the wrong person.”

“Please,” said Perran, brown eyes pleading.

Barrett glanced around the near-empty café. She couldn’t just leave her position! The lunch crowd would be pouring in any second now. She wasn’t the kind of person that just closed up shop at a child’s request. And yet… There was something about the urgency and surety of the boys’ words she couldn’t ignore.

“Better make it quick,” said Barrett. She untied her apron and brushed crumbs from her brown skirt. “Where is it?”

***

After asking Finn to cover for her at the counter, Barrett followed the boys to the grandest museum in the city. In the central exhibit hung a large tapestry: a magnificent work woven with threads the colors of strong tea and cinnamon.

Yet, something was missing. It was too bare—empty spaces amidst the groves of umber-and-coffee-hued trees where the tapestry’s subjects should have been. And then she saw it. A group of woven figures cowering in the bottom right corner, a bear the colors of black coffee and charred wood prowling the ground before them.

Without her permission Barrett’s hand reached out to the tapestry.

As soon as flesh touched fiber, something tugged at her body. At once, her vision was obstructed by what seemed to be a screen of threads, and she felt a strange knitting sensation as if she were being woven into the artwork.

Then it stopped.

She looked around.

She had entered the tapestry’s woven landscape—no, she had become part of it.

Everything was strangely soft and fiber-like. She now understood why the boys had sought her out. It was the same earthy shades as her hair and eyes and dress. And besides that, it looked like she belonged there.

She sensed Roscoe and Perran on the outskirts of the tapestry, like vague shadows in her periphery that disappeared when she looked at them head-on.

She crept around a copse of wooly trees and headed toward what she thought was the lower righthand corner of the tapestry.

A woody growl thrummed through the sepia trees.

Then she saw its coffee-colored back. Before it, a group of the tapestry’s subjects huddled close, clutching each other. The bear whirled around as Barrett approached.

She shivered. I can’t be hurt if I’m made of threads, can I?

“Easy now,” said Barrett. She held out her hands slowly.

The bear whined, its teeth bared, its shining beetle-like eyes a surprisingly soft color of toffee. “It’s okay,” she said. “I know it’s strange and unfamiliar, but you’re okay.”

Another low growl escaped its throat, vibrating through the forest.

Without moving her eyes from the bear’s, Barrett inched toward a berry vine sprawled at the feet of a tree. She plucked a few dark red berries and held them out to the bear.

The bear’s muscles relaxed.

“That’s it. C’mon, let’s get you home.” She gestured towards the trees. With a snuffle, the bear traipsed after her, its great paws falling on the fibrous, sparrow-brown earth with the delicacy of falling feathers. The huddled group cried in relief.

Barrett found the bear a home in a cave surrounded by more berry vines, a comfortable distance from the villagers.

When she stepped out of the tapestry, Roscoe and Perran whooped with delight.

“I knew she could do it,” said Roscoe.

Barrett couldn’t help but smile, the little boy’s surety weaving itself into her.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mia Rumi loves stories and their power to comfort, inspire, and reveal truth. She enjoys writing fiction, particularly fantasy. One of her first memories as a writer involves sitting on the floor and writing a story about two pandas with her older sister. She loves tea, Irish moss, and the smell of old books.

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