A Blue the Mountain Rarely Gives
Blue, in a country of purples.
Blue like the snow at the end of the afternoon.
She must have traded for the indigo
and spent it all at once.
Blue is not a Beni M'Guild colour. Their wool goes purple, aubergine, red, the warm end of the dye pot, and when a blue rug comes down from the plateau it means someone made a journey, or a bargain, or both. Indigo had to be bought, carried up from the market towns in cakes, and it was dear. She did not ration it. She dyed the whole ground blue, the blue the snow turns in the last hour before dark when the sun has left the valley and the sky has not yet gone, and knotted it two fingers deep.
The blue has held. It has softened at the surface and taken on the slight unevenness that hand-dyed wool always has, lighter here, deeper there, like water. In a white room it is the only colour you need: a bedroom with a low bed and linen the colour of chalk, or a study with one good chair.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.