The Old Woman Who Was Cold

(This an odd story. Not much in itself, though I do get some echoes of indigenous creation stories. But the origin of the story is interesting. I had been reading two brilliant books of articles about writing children’s fantasy by two great writers, Reflections by Diana Wynne Jones and Dreams and Wishes by Susan Cooper (both fairly old and out of print, but easy to find on Amazon at a reasonable price). I dreamt that I was having dinner with a group of people (it may have been a conference). I was asked to tell a story, and I think they expected me to tell one of the stories I had written. But I didn’t have my book of stories with me, so I had to tell something else. I felt they wanted to know something about the creation and structure of stories, so I didn’t want to tell a traditional tale. So I began “There was an old woman once” and let the story develop from there without knowing where it was going. And when I woke up I remembered the dream with all the detail of the story, which is very unusual for me.)

(Here’s the story)

There was an old woman, once. She wasn’t just old, she was lonely and cold as well.

“I can do something about the cold, at least” she thought.

So she went to her cupboard, and pulled out some brown wool and some white wool. Then she collected some leaves and roots and dyed some of the white wool in different colours. Finally she knitted the wool into a beautiful brown and white shawl, with a design of a boy in red clothes and a girl in green clothes, and a dog, and a cat, a black-and-white cow with a calf. When it was finished, she put the shawl around her shoulders.

“Now I’m warm” she said. “But I’m still lonely.”

Next day she woke and heard laughter outside her cottage. She got up, put on her clothes, and then her beautiful shawl, all brown and white, and went to her window. Outside she saw a boy wearing red and a girl wearing green playing with a cat and a dog, and on the nearby common a black-and-white cow grazing.

“Now I’m warm” she said. “And I’m not lonely.”

“But I’m still old.”

But there’s only one cure for that. And in its due time that was given her.