Selene’s Best Mistakes
Pell the Envelope-Patcher kept the tidiest bench on the quays of Cloudbreak Harbor, and around it the untidiest room. On the bench, the needles lay in order of length and the threads hung on their pegs in order of colour, white at one end and black at the other. Everywhere else there was silk. Silk lay over the chairs and over the stove-guard. A bolt of tangerine taffeta leaned in the corner like a guest who had come too early. Across most of the floor, spread out flat, lay the envelope of an old sky-ship called the Patience. Pell could find the right needle with both eyes shut, and most mornings could not find the door.
A deckhand called Tam found it from the other side and put a head round it.
“Is the Merry Hen done?”
“Tomorrow,” said Pell, cheerfully.
Everybody on the quays knew what that meant. A tomorrow from Pell was always a real day, with weather in it. It just wasn’t always the next one.
Tam went away, and Captain Ashdown came in, stepped over the taffeta and stood on the Patience.
“Off the envelope, please,” said Pell.
“It’s my envelope.”
“It’s my floor.”
Captain Ashdown stepped off slowly, being old and having been old for some time, and looked down at the great grey skin of the ship. It had been patched so often that it was more patch than ship, and every patch was grey.
“Grey again,” said Captain Ashdown. “Nothing fancy. She does one more season, and then she goes to the yard for timber. No sense making her pretty for the yard.”
“The lining’s worn through on the north side,” said Pell. “I’ll put a new panel in.”
“Grey.”
“It’s the inside. Nobody sees the inside.”
“Then grey,” said Captain Ashdown. “When?”
“Tomorrow,” said Pell, cheerfully.
“We go up at dusk tomorrow.”
“Then that’s when.”
Captain Ashdown looked as though that was the least comforting thing anyone had said all week, and went.
Pell sat on the edge of the bench and looked at the roll of grey cloth the captain had paid for. It was perfectly good cloth. It would hold. That was all anybody had ever asked of it.
Now, here is a thing about Pell. Every envelope Pell had ever patched, but one, had something lovely hidden inside it. The fish barges were lined with plum satin. The harbor-master’s launch had a panel of sunflower yellow up in the top, where only the wind went. Nobody knew, and that was the whole pleasure of it. The inside of an envelope is the most private place in the sky.
The one was the Patience. For forty years Captain Ashdown had stood on Pell’s floor and said grey.
And Pell knew exactly what should go there. Eleven times Pell had climbed to the top of the harbor with a bill. Eleven times Pell had watched Selene’s spoiled diagrams go into the little iron stove by the door. It was the best paper in Cloudbreak, drawn on and corrected and corrected again, in black and blue and red and green. Every time, Pell had thought, That would line a ship. Pell had never once said so.
Pell rolled up a square of the Patience’s old grey silk, tucked it under one arm, and went to say so.
The stair to Selene’s Court was an ordinary stair, which surprised people. It had a rail and a turn and one step higher than the rest, and everybody who went up it practised something on the way.
Pell practised a speech. It was a good speech, and on the way up Pell took one word out of it. The word was “can’t”. Everyone in the harbor knew that Selene would listen to almost anything, so long as it was not the reason a thing could not be done. By the high step the speech was much shorter, and Pell was much more nervous.
Selene was at the work table with four pens in one hand, one for each colour. Selene changed between them without looking, the way a fiddler crosses from string to string, and did not look up.
“You’re not a bill,” said Selene. “I’d remember a bill. You’re carrying cloth, and cloth means you want something.”
“Your spoiled diagrams,” said Pell. “The ones that go in the stove. I’d like them for the lining of the Patience.”
“No,” said Selene, and drew a red line through something. “Those burn. A diagram that is half right is a card that half works, and I do not keep half-working cards loose on the quays. Someone traces one with a wet thumb to see what it does, and next thing anyone knows, a dock lamp is forty feet up a mast holding a crate of oranges. I have fetched the oranges down myself. Once was instructive.”
A reasonable person would have gone back down the stair. Pell went to the card table by the window instead and unrolled the grey silk on it.
“May I borrow one?” said Pell, and nodded at the basket by the stove.
Selene looked up then. “As far as that table.”
Pell took the top sheet from the basket and laid it on the grey. It was a rope-lift, drawn in black, mended in blue, argued with in red, and finished at last in a small green hand down the margin. The window light fell across all four colours at once.
“That’s the inside of the Patience,” said Pell. “Forty years, all grey. Look at your red on it. Nobody on the quays has a red like that. I’ve asked every bolt-seller from here to the Bell Gate. And that blue, under the red, where you changed your mind.”
“I did not change my mind. I corrected it.”
“It’s the best blue in the harbor either way. Nobody will ever see it. That’s what linings are for.” Pell put both hands flat on the table. “The Patience ca—”
Pell stopped.
“The Patience goes up at dusk tomorrow,” said Pell. “Last season. Then it’s timber.”
Selene put down all four pens and looked at the grey silk, and at the sheet, and at Pell, and was plainly enjoying this.
“You have come all the way up my stair,” said Selene, “and you have not once told me why a thing can’t be done. You very nearly did, just then. I want you to know I noticed.”
“Yes,” said Pell.
“Good. Then I’ll tell you how it can.” Selene opened the long drawer under the table and took out a pair of scissors as long as a forearm. “You may have the sheets after I have cut out every working stroke myself. Now. You’ll wait.”
Out came the third drawer down, which was full to the back with old rope-lift and dock-lamp diagrams, and the cutting began.
Pell had seen people cut fast. This was faster, and tidier, and done while talking. Selene did not hunt for the strokes, but knew where every one of them was, the way anyone knows the stairs at home. The scissors went in, round and out, snip, turn, snip. A curl of black ink dropped onto the table, then a curl of green, and then it was the next sheet.
“Holdfast. Holdfast. This one was right on the fourth try, which is three too many. Lift.” A little curl of Lift rose a finger’s width off the table all by itself, and Selene put a thumb on it without looking. “That loop was beautiful and did nothing whatever. You may keep the loop. Dock lamp, east berth. Dock lamp, east berth, again. Dock lamp, east berth, in a high wind, with my elbow in the ink.”
The sheets came away in Selene’s hands as lace. Where the working strokes had been there were holes, and around the holes stayed everything else: the crossings-out, the arrows, the little notes in red that said no and closer and absolutely not, and the blue under the red. Pell held one up to the window. The light came through in the clean, exact shape of a rope-lift, and all around it the paper was a muddle of the loveliest colours in Cloudbreak.
The holes were the only part that had ever worked. Everything left was a mistake, and it was the prettiest thing Pell had ever seen.
When the drawer was empty, the snipped strokes lay in a heap on the table like coloured shavings. Pell looked at them.
“Don’t,” said Selene.
The heap went into one palm and then into the iron stove. There was one small green flare, and the stove lid hopped once.
“Those burn,” said Selene, and handed over the lace in a neat stack. “And Pell. If anyone in this harbor ever reads a working card off the inside of a balloon, I will know exactly which bench to visit.”
“Mine,” said Pell.
“Yours. And I’ll bring the scissors, and the Patience will come down with a very plain lining.” Selene picked up the four pens and went back to work, and that was the end of the audience.
Pell got as far as the high step before remembering that nobody had said thank you. Selene would not want it said. Pell went back up and said it anyway, from the door.
“Noted,” said Selene, and did not look up.
Pell sewed all night.
The quays went blue and then deep blue. The dock wards came on under the ships like lamps on a lake. Pell lit the lamp over the bench and did not look up from it. Sheet by sheet the lace went in along the inside of the Patience, every stitch small and even, because the bench was the tidy part of the room and always had been. Now and then Pell held a sheet up to the lamp before stitching it, just to see a dock lamp at the east berth come through in light.
Under the bench sat the stack of novels waiting for Ilex. The top one had a note pinned to it: Ilex. Last page stitched shut, as you asked.
By the time Wren of the Bell rang the morning hours at the Bell Gate, the last panel was in. Pell tied the last knot, put the needle back in its place between the shorter one and the longer one, and sat back, astonished. It was tomorrow, and the job was done. This had never happened before, and Pell was not at all sure it would happen again.
Pell slept the afternoon away on the tangerine taffeta, and at dusk went down to the mooring.
The Patience stood at its mooring with its grey envelope full and round. Captain Ashdown walked all the way round it, twice, patting the seams.
“Tight,” said Captain Ashdown.
“Tight,” said Pell.
“And grey, like I said.”
“On the outside,” said Pell, but only to the nearest rope.
The lines came off one by one, and the old ship rose into the blue evening, slow and steady, the way it had gone up every spring for forty years. Inside the envelope, where nobody would ever look, hung a whole drawer of Selene’s best mistakes, black and blue and red and green, with the last of the daylight coming through the holes.
Pell waved at it.
Captain Ashdown, at the rail, took the wave personally and waved back, which was also perfectly all right.
When Pell got home, Tam was at the door again.
“Is the Merry Hen done?”
“Tomorrow,” said Pell, cheerfully, and went in to find the needles. The Merry Hen was done three days later, which on the quays counted as prompt.
And all that last season, wherever the Patience went, it carried the loveliest lining in the harbor folded up inside it, where nobody would ever see. Captain Ashdown never knew. Selene never asked. Pell knew, and was glad of it every time the old grey ship came in over the quays, and waved at it every time, and every time the captain waved back.