Free The Execution by Sharon Cramer Page B

eyes flew
wide.
    Ravan had tried them on himself before
wrapping them. It had been like plunging his hands into softened
butter.
    She smiled despite herself—and he
beamed.
    Ravan noticed how she went to market
without mittens. When the late autumn chill became bitter with the
first snows, he watched as she held her hands between the folds of
her heavy skirts to keep them warm. He also noticed how the
wealthier townswomen sported lovely, warm, fur-lined jackets and
mittens. This was something he knew the Fat Wife would never allow,
for vanity to require such a thing for her.
    Society demanded such fine fur be worn
only by royalty, nobility, or wealthy aristocracy. Ravan knew
nothing of this, and cared even less, but he noticed how she held
her chin high and poked through the produce, her roughened,
scalded, red hands instinctively picking the best when she filled
her basket.
    He had worked meticulously on the
gift, trapping eight fox alive and releasing them before two of
just the right animals found their way to his snares. They were a
matched pair with perfect coats. After carefully pelting the
animals out, he roasted the fox on a spit and spent the whole day
in the forest, eating fox and meticulously scraping the
hides.
    Using fire-ash and fox brain to tan
the pelts, he stirred them gently, finally weighting the pelts down
into the water with stones. No one missed the barn bucket he tanned
them in, and it was some days later when he pulled the hides from
the buckets and staked them into the creek to rinse for a full
day.
    Later, back at the Inn, he
painstakingly rolled the hides gently back and forth across the
foot rail of his bed, softening and pulling the skins to and fro
until they were an immaculate suede on one side, with the fur on
the other—the loveliest fawn color with black tips.
    After carefully preparing the hides,
he laid them neatly on his bed, comparing their color and size.
They were a perfect match. All the while, he paid particular
attention to her hands, measuring in his mind the dimensions before
cutting the leather. When she was baking and pushed the dough down,
shoving the balls towards him to form and lay onto the oven peels,
he held his hand next to the imprints, gauging widths and
lengths.
    Quietly, he sat up at night, guiding
the needle, each stitch perfect as he fashioned the gift. He turned
the cuffs out so the roll of fur acted as a windbreak at the
wrists. Truly, there were no finer mittens in all of France.
Finally, he wrapped them in the leaf wrapping, with the ties
arranged perfectly, the little horsetail tufts positioned like a
bow.
    This woman had been kind to Ravan and
he would remember her kindness always. He'd grown quite fond of
her, comfortable and happy whenever her great form plodded into a
room. It gave him such great pleasure to present the gift to her,
his mouth widening into one of his rare and glorious smiles, his
chest puffed out with pride.
    Her eyes became instantly damp as she
turned her hands over, admiring the beautiful gift, her rosy face
reddening. Suddenly, and without warning, she pulled the mittens
from her hands and stuffed them carelessly into her apron pockets.
She turned, averting her eyes from Ravan, perhaps to disguise her
feelings, and hastily took up a cleaver. She turned her attention
to a mutton roast on the nearby butcher block.
    Confused, Ravan stood up, reaching out
to touch her elbow.
    She pulled abruptly away. “Be gone
now—enough of this nonsense. I’ve work to do and you’ll be needing
to chop the wood.” She stabbed with the clever towards the back
door of the Inn, where the firewood already threatened to consume
them.
     
    * * *
     
    While the usual commotion from the
patrons took place downstairs, Ravan moved to the third room to
change the candlesticks. He pried the stubby nubs from their
holders and replaced them with the long, hand-dipped tapers he'd
helped the Fat Wife make the week before. The spent candle nubs
went into his pockets