The Corner That Went Soft First

I went back to see it. Praskovya’s wool, packed into six windows a week ago against the first true chill, has gone soft at one corner — the northeast pane, the one that takes the river wind first. I pressed it with two fingers. It gave like bread left out a day too long.

She has not fixed it. Two doors down, Agata Pern has seen it too and said nothing, the way neighbors here say nothing about another woman’s work until asked.

This is how the street is chinking windows this week, for anyone who wants the method plainly. Praskovya used last summer’s wool, carded loose, pushed in dry. It holds heat well and holds its shape poorly — four days, by my count, before the first corner gives. Agata uses river moss, packed wet and left to dry stiff in the gap. It holds its shape for three weeks running. It does not hold heat the same way. Her own hands paid for that difference; two fingers still slow to warm from the cold water she packed it with.

Today she bought a half-skein off the step of the woman who sells leftover Guild wool cheap when the Guild won’t take it back — flawed in the carding, good enough for a window that nobody looks at twice. She is pressing it into the two windows that get the worst of the wind, moss everywhere else. Wool for the hard draft. Moss for the rest. She has stopped choosing between the two methods. She uses both now, in the places each one earns.

Praskovya’s corner is still soft. The frost held a third morning today. The Stilling is three days off. I mean to see whether she patches her own corner before it gives further, or waits for someone else to notice it the way she noticed Agata’s hands.