When we unrolled it, the silk was seven yards in length. It was beautiful, too. When we set our hooded lamp on the floor and lit it, the cloth showed a rippling sheen like water flowing down the threads. It looked green in the lamplight, some medium shade though I could not say what in that moment.

"It is most beautiful," I said quietly.

"There is so little I can ever give back to you. I thought at the least you should have a fine silk."

He showed me the bells, too. There was a great mixture of kinds. "I could not buy so many silver bells in any one place," Federo said by way of apology. "So some are brass, or iron, and some are larger than I might have liked."

Still they were bells. Real bells. The most usual bells of home had been tiny little brass cones on a pin. They tinkled, but the did not ring. Some of these were fit for a choir to sing the hymns of heaven. "I shall have music like a tulpa when I walk in this," I told him. Their multitude of tiny jingles banished both my recent fear and my towering anger in favor of a sense of peace.