The Marked Coat
She always knew where he was, and had not seen his face in a year.
In a village above the river lived a weaver named Isolde, who had one son and a great fear of the water.
When the boy was five, she sewed a little copper bell into the hem of his coat. Wherever he wandered, she could hear him from the loom. The bell by the well meant he was drawing water. The bell by the fence meant he was with the goats. She worked easily, and she counted herself a careful mother.
The boy grew. She added a second bell, then a thread of red wool so he could be found in a crowd, then a knot at the cuff that she touched each morning for luck. She knew when he reached the mill and when he left it. She knew the hour he went to sleep in the loft, for the bell went quiet.
She was proud that she never lost him.
One evening a traveling potter stopped at her door and asked for water. While he drank, he looked across the yard and said, "Your boy has been sitting by the wall since I came down the road. The other children went to the river. He stayed. Is he well?"
Isolde laughed. "He is by the wall," she said. "I can hear him."
And she could. The bell sounded softly, the way it did when he sat still.
The potter shrugged and went on his way. But Isolde stood in the doorway a long while with the shuttle in her hand. She could not remember the last time she had looked up from the loom and seen the boy himself.
She walked to the wall.
He did not turn. His shoulders were drawn up as they had never been when he was small. The bell sat in the dust beside him, and she saw that he had unpicked it from the coat and set it down.
"I put it there so you would not worry," he said.
She had not known he could do that.