Free Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

was just around the next curve.
    "A wee cott it is!" he called. "And there's the crone outside in the garden, with her crookedy hands full of rainbow!"
    Kira hurried along, rounded the curve, and understood what he meant. In front of the tiny hut, a bent and white-haired old woman was working near a lush flower garden. She leaned toward a basket on the ground, lifted handfuls of bright-colored yarns — yellow of various shades, from the palest lemon to a deep tawny gold — and hung them across a rope that was strung from one tree to another. Deeper shades of rust and red were already hanging there.
    The woman's hands were gnarled and stained. She lifted one in greeting. She had few teeth and her skin was folded into wrinkles, but her eyes were unclouded. She walked nearer to them, gripping a cane made of wood and seeming unsurprised by the sudden visitors. She peered intently at Kira's face. "You liken your mum," she said.
    "You know who I am?" Kira asked, puzzled. The old woman nodded.
    "My mother has died."
    "Aye. I knowed it."
    How? How did you know?
But Kira didn't ask.
    "I'm called Kira. This is my friend. His name is Matt."
    Matt stepped forward, suddenly a little shy. "I brung my own crustie," he said. "Me and my doggie, we be no trouble to you."
    "Sit," the woman named Annabella said to Kira, ignoring Matt and Branch, who was busily sniffing the garden, looking for the right place to lift his stubby leg. "Doubtless you be weary and pained." She gestured toward a low flattened tree stump, and Kira sank down gratefully, rubbing her aching leg. She unlaced her sandals and emptied them of pebbles.
    "You must learn the dyes," the old woman said. "You come for that, aye? Your mum did, and she was to teach you."
    "There wasn't time." Kira sighed. "And now they want me to know it all, and do the work — the repairing of the Singer's Robe? You know about that?"
    Annabella nodded. She returned to the drying-rope and finished hanging the yellow strands. "I can give you some threads," she said, "to start the repair. But you must learn the dyes. There are other things they'll want of you."
    Kira thought again of the untouched expanse across the back and shoulders of the robe. It was what they would want of her, to fill that space with future.
    "You must come here each day. You must learn all the plants. Look —" The woman gestured at the garden plot, thick with thriving plants, many in summer-start bloom.
    "Bedstraw," she said, pointing to a tall plant massed with golden blossoms. "The roots give good red. Madder's better for reds, though. There's my madder over behind." She pointed again, and Kira saw a sprawling, weedy plant in a raised bed. "Tis the wrong time to take the madder roots now. Fallstart's better, when it lies dormant."
    Bedstraw. Madder. I must remember these. I must know these.
    "Dyer's greenweed," the woman announced, poking with her cane at a shrub with small flowers. "Use the shoots for a fine yellow. Don't move it, though, lessen you must. Greenweed don't want to transplant."
    Greenweed. For yellow.
    Kira followed the woman as she rounded a corner of the garden. Annabella stopped and poked at a clumped plant with stiff stems and small oval leaves. "Here's a tough fellow," she said, almost affectionately. "Saint Johnswort, he's called. No blooms yet; it's too early for him. But when he blooms, you can get a lovely brown from his blossoms. Stain your hands though." She held her own up and cackled with laughter.
    Then: "You'll be needing greens. Chamomile can give you that. Water it good. But take just the leaves for your green color. Save the blossoms for tea."
    Kira's head was already spinning with the effort to remember the names of the plants and the colors they would create, and only a small corner of the lavish garden had been described. Now at the sound of the word water and also tea she realized that she was thirsty.
    "Please, do you have a well? Might I have a drink?" she asked.
    "And Branchie too? He