The Wreath Old Ren Ties Before It Goes Grey

Old Ren sells wreaths at the third stall past the well on Ulev Street, same spot nine years now. Ingathering wreaths, thistle-bloom, cut from the scrub above the New Quarter before the dew burns off. He ties them the same morning he cuts them. Has to.

The bloom goes from purple to grey within a day of cutting. Everyone on the street knows this and buys anyway — the wreath is for the granary step, not the mantel, and a granary step does not care what color the flower is by Restday. What it cares about is that the stalk was tied right, so the wind off the harbor doesn’t take it before the Ingathering does.

He cuts eleven or twelve stalks a wreath. Binds them in threes, root end in, working the twine tight at the neck first, then loose toward the crown so the heads can still nod. A wreath tied tight all the way through breaks its own stalks by evening. He showed me this without being asked — held up a stiff, wrong one a boy had tried and failed at, snapped clean at the fourth turn.

He sells forty a day this week, sixty by Firstday. Buys nothing back if the color goes before it’s hung — that’s not a fault in the wreath, he says, that’s the wreath doing its only job faster than you’d like.

The city is talking about a ship today, whether it’s late or lost, what a fortnight of not-knowing is worth in marks. Old Ren tied nine wreaths while I stood there and did not once look toward the harbor. His hands had work that does not wait on news.