The Jackdaw and the Hare

At the autumn fair in a valley town, the last thing sold was always a quilt.

This year’s quilt had been sewn by half the valley for the old schoolmistress, who had gone to live by the sea with her sister and had no room to take it. Every square had been stitched by somebody different. It was lumpy in places, and bright, and nobody could have made another like it.

Hester wanted it. So did a farmer called Idris. Neither knew the other wanted it, because both were busy. Hester was judging the jam. Idris had a ewe in the ring.

So each sent a helper to the auction.

Hester’s was a copper jackdaw that bid by tapping its beak on the auctioneer’s bell. “Get me that quilt,” she told it. “If anyone bids, bid a little more.”

Idris’s was a clockwork hare that bid by thumping its foot on the boards. “Get me that quilt,” he told it. “If anyone bids, bid a little more.”

Two sensible people. Two sensible instructions. Off they went to their jam and their ewe.

The auctioneer began at one coin.

Tap, went the jackdaw. Thump, went the hare.

Tap. Thump. Tap. Thump.

Machines do not need to breathe between bids. By the time the auctioneer had called “two coins,” the price was ten. By the time he had called “ten,” it was a hundred. He gave up calling numbers and began calling things. “A cart! A cow and the cart! The mill! The mill and the river under it!” His voice gave out. He sat on his stool and chalked the numbers on a slate, and when the slate was full, he turned it over.

Tap. Thump. Tap. Thump.

The crowd drifted over from the jam tent and the sheep pens to watch. The auctioneer’s small daughter, Elin, crawled under the rope and sat down in front of the two machines.

“Who is the quilt for?” she asked.

“For Hester,” said the jackdaw, and tapped.

“For Idris,” said the hare, and thumped.

“Has Hester got a mill?” asked Elin.

The jackdaw’s beak stopped a hair above the bell. It knew what Hester had. She had eleven coins in a blue purse, a cottage with a draughty back room, and a square in that quilt with a bee on it that she had stitched all spring. None of that was on the slate.

“This is not her price,” said the jackdaw slowly. “It is not his either.”

The hare’s foot hung in the air. “Then whose is it?”

The jackdaw looked at the hare, and the hare looked at the jackdaw. Something passed between them, embarrassment perhaps, or only two sets of gears slowing down.

“Ours,” said the hare. “We made it between us, and nobody asked for it.”

So the jackdaw flew to the jam tent and the hare ran to the ring, and each brought back its person.

Hester and Idris stood in front of the slate for a long moment.

“I told it a little more,” said Idris. “I never said how much more.”

“Nor did I,” said Hester.

Then Idris pointed at a square near the corner, a grey sheep with a black face. “My mother sewed that one,” he said. Hester pointed at the bee.

The jackdaw had known about the bee all along, and the hare about the sheep. But they had been sent to bid, not to talk, and until Elin asked, they had said nothing all afternoon but tap and thump.

Hester and Idris talked for a while. In the end they bought the quilt together, for a fair price that neither purse would miss, and hung it in the schoolroom. There Hester could see her bee, and Idris his mother’s sheep, and the children could see all of it on cold mornings.

At the next fair, they gave their helpers longer instructions. “No more than the blue purse holds,” said Hester, “and if the other bidder is a helper too, come and find me.” Idris said much the same, with a different purse.