Jenny the Sew and the Elf Prince

There was a young woman named Jenny the Sew who made dresses for gentlewomen. She could stitch a frock in a day and a ball gown in a week, with her steel needle humming merrily through the fabric. Her hair shone like spun gold in the sun, and her smile wove itself into young men's dreams. She knit her eyebrows when she was angry, embroidered the truth when it suited her, and never let herself be hemmed in by what people expected of her. She kept her steel needle by her night and day, since you never can tell when trouble will come to take your measure.

One day an elf prince came into the house of Jenny the Sew. He was swift as a shadow and pale as the crescent moon. He was as quiet as a pool at midnight, and stars twinkled in his eyes. He swallowed up Jenny the Sew's heart the way darkness swallows the sun.

"I've come for swaddling clothes for my baby, Jenny," said the elf prince. "Make them soft as a woman's love and light as a woman's faith. Sew a sunbeam in for texture and give them a fringe of moonlight. Take the fire out of your fireplace, and braid it in for a tassel."

"I have woman's love in my ball of yarn and woman's faith on my loom. Bring me a sunbeam," said Jenny, and the elf prince caught one bouncing off a mirror. "Bring me moonlight," said Jenny, and the elf prince found some hiding under her bed. "Bring me fire," said Jenny, and the elf prince kissed her. Jenny didn't care to be hemmed in by what people expected of her, so she closed all the windows and doors in her house and embraced the elf prince in the darkness. Later, while the elf prince slept, she pierced his heart with her needle and tied a line of silk to it. The elf prince's heart-blood stained the silk bright red. Jenny tied the other end of the silk to her bed post and snipped off the loose ends with her teeth. She did it all so delicately that the elf prince didn't notice what she'd done till the line was hooked tight in him.

"What will you pay me for your baby's swaddling clothes?" asked Jenny the Sew when the elf prince woke.

"A wedding gown," said the elf prince, and he jumped out of bed with all the hard cruelty of a man's love.

"When do you want your work done?" asked Jenny the Sew.

"In nine months," said the elf prince, slipping into his shadowy clothes with the speed of a man's desire.

"When will you come back to me?" asked Jenny.

"Tomorrow," swore the elf prince, and crept outdoors. He had a man's faith, though, and Jenny the Sew never saw him for month on month while her belly swelled with what they'd done in the darkness. All nine months she made her baby's swaddling clothes, art in the warp and heart in the woof. There was never an edge or a corner in the swaddling clothes, but she left one thread loose, since you never can tell when trouble will come to take your measure.

At the end of nine months Jenny the Sew went looking for the elf prince. She took the line of red silk in her fingers, put her steel needle in her other hand, and followed it out the door. The silk was warm as heart's blood in her hand.

The silk twisted and turned, out the city walls and into the country. It curled up hill and down valley. It twined the legs of a milkmaid's stool and leapt over a shepherdess' crook. It knotted itself in a peddling woman's pack, and pooled in the bed of a farmer's daughter. The red silk basked in the ruddy sun's dying light and jauntily stretched itself from hill to hill.

A bandit came up to Jenny where the forest meets the farm, where rowan and rye contest for a borderland between the shadows and the light. "Who are you, sweet lady?" he asked. "What's in your purse? Who guards your coins and who guards your flesh?" He lounged close to Jenny with one hand on his dagger and the other trailing through her sunsilk hair.

Jenny the Sew shook her hair free, and prudently embroidered on the truth. "I'm daughter to the dragon-king and the basilisk's new bride." She held up her steel needle, so that it gleamed in the sun's last rays. "My child will be born when I let this needle fall. Leave me be, bandit."

"I don't believe you," said the bandit. Jenny smiled, and let her needle roll loosely in her palm. The bandit blanched, and let her pass.

The red silk glittered in the forest night, and Jenny followed it easily along the winding boulevard of trees. She followed the silk through bramble and across brook. It ringed a dryad's nest and dove by a naiad's watery lair. It flew to a pixie's eyrie and lingered in an elf lady's chamber. The red silk pulsed in the darkness, its radiance renewed with every distant heartbeat, and Jenny the Sew came to the inn on the crossroads to fairyland.

The elf prince waited for her by the fireplace, so handsome that Jenny lost her heart to him all over again. He picked at the red silk thread with his fingernails, tried to pluck it from his chest, but he only bloodied his fingers and gasped from the pull on his heart. He cast the line from him when he saw Jenny the Sew enter the inn, and looked angrily at her.

"I brought you your swaddling clothes," said Jenny.

"You owe me no less," said the elf prince, and stole them out of her hands.

"I brought you your child," said Jenny.

"I thank you for the gift," said the elf prince, and stole the child out of her belly and wrapped him in the swaddling clothes, with the loose thread dangling.

"Where is my wedding dress?" asked Jenny the Sew, her arms cradled in shock around her hollow waist.

"Waiting at my castle," said the elf prince, and he stole out the back door of the inn at the crossroads to fairyland, laughing as their child cried in hunger and in loss. The red silk trailed behind him.

Jenny followed him out the back door, widdershins round the twelve tall stones at the crossroads, under the left shoulder of the hanged man at the gibbet, and through the ivory gate to the land where the sun is forbidden and the moon's horns, chopped from his body, shine perpetually bone-white in the sky. The red silk ran straight as an arrow through the silver forest till it came to a rust red-sea that stretched right and left to the far horizons. There the thread dipped under the water, glimmering in the waves. Jenny the Sew lay down on the beach, planted her steel needle in the iron sands, and went to sleep curled round her line of red silk.

Jenny woke to find her needle grown into an iron boat with a thorn tree made of steel needles for a mainmast and strips of scarlet cloth for leaves. She broke off a needle from the thorn tree, pulled down a pile of leaves, and sewed them into sails for her journey. She hoisted her sails when the breeze blew, and floated out to sea following her red silk thread.

On a rocky island so far from shore that the iron beach was no more than a red line behind her, a circle of satyrs danced gaily in the surf. They capered naked, leaping like mountain goats from rock to rock, piping an impudent rhythm that boiled in Jenny's blood, quivered down her legs and trembled in her hips. "Stay with us, Jenny!" they cried out. "Sport with us, and wear a dancing gown forever under the sweet horn moon." They offered her a scrap of scarlet, a bare gauze to heighten nakedness, not to hide it.

The satyrs pleaded so prettily and beckoned so longingly, that Jenny looked back at the island almost until she had run into the line of shoals ahead of her. Then she had her hands full as she wove between the rocks out to thesea. When she turned her head again the satyrs still pleaded for her to return.

"I'll dance in my wedding gown," said Jenny the Sew, her eyebrows angrily knit. "I'll dance till the moon sets and the sun rises. I'll dance till your island trembles, and falls beneath the sea." Then the satyrs shivered, because the Fates are weaving women too, who cut the lengths of lives and trim them short when it suits their fancy. Jenny the Sew faced forward, and sailed across the sea to a distant shore of sparkling green.

Jenny landed on a beach of emerald sand. A sapphire stream ran down to the sea, past ruby-fruited trees and gardens filled with amethystine flowers. Beyond was the elf prince's castle, shining of diamonds in the pale moonlight.

A young elf knight stood to bar the way. His hair shone like spun gold and the stars twinkled in his eyes. His smile could weave itself into a young girl's heart, and he was swift as shadows. He had a long needle of a scimitar by his side. His clothes were sheerly made, except for one thread that dangled loosely from his trousers.

"I've come with your death clothes, Jenny," he said. His voice was a dirging music that sang of peace and warbled rest. "They'll never wrinkle and they'll always fit. Take them now," he said, and the elf knight lifted his scimitar.

"Nonsense!" said Jenny the Sew. "I gave you life, but you won't give me death. You're a naughty little boy, and you'll have to be punished." She hooked the loose thread that dangled from the elf knight's clothes into her needle, and began to pull. The elf knight squalled his protest, but Jenny had no mercy for her son. She pulled the clothes tighter and tighter, smaller and smaller, the scimitar fell to the ground, and soon enough Jenny the Sew was looking at a swaddling-clothed infant gurgling in her arms. She smiled at him tenderly. "You wouldn't raise a sword to your mother. I'll teach you better than that when you grow up." She chucked her baby on the chin.

Jenny the Sew and her baby walked into the elf prince's great hall. The elf prince waited for her there with a wedding gown in his arms. "This is for you, Jenny," he said, scowling furiously. He tugged angrily at the red silk leading from his chest, which entered his chest so smoothly that you could barely tell where the silk ended and the flesh began.

Jenny looked at the elf prince, and she lost her heart to him a third time, for he was handsome as the night and always would be. But Jenny the Sew was sharp as a needle, so she asked, "Can I make alterations in it, my love? I don't believe it fits me yet."

"Yes," said the elf prince, and he tossed her the dress.

"I'll just be a second," said Jenny the Sew. She took up the line of red silk and began to weave it into the white wedding dress. She wove and she sewed, she embroidered and she cut, and pretty soon she had all the red silk and the elf prince's heart tied up in her wedding dress. Then and only then did she put on her wedding dress and marry the elf prince, when he looked at her with eyes as full of love as hers were when she looked at him.

Jenny the Sew danced with the elf prince all the night long. Her shoes clicked on the palace floor like the rise and fall of distant needles, and scraped like great scissors. Weaving women cut a thread, and the satyrs' island trembled and fell beneath the sea.

Ever afterward, when the elf prince went wandering (which couldn't be prevented, for men of shadow and moonlight like to wander), Jenny went with him, and their baby too. Perhaps the elf prince waited for the threads that bound his heart to her wedding dress to come loose, but Jenny took her steel needle with her, and happily mended the fabric whenever it began to fray.

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