Another short fiction writing exercise written for Neil Gaiman’s Masterclass on Storytelling.

The park was peaceful in the afternoon and the sun glimmered through the leaves of a mature tree, which offered its shade to a secluded park bench near the edge of a pond. On the bench sat a lone figure wearing a blue coat and a kerchief tied carefully over her short silver curls. While she was hunched with age and looked quite frail, her hands were moving at an incredible speed as her knitting needles danced en point in front of her.

It was obvious that she had mastered her craft long ago, as she had no need to look at her hands while she worked. The needles gracefully clicked and skated, creating woven perfection from her gnarled yet capable hands.

Nearly every day Marta would come to the park, to this bench in particular, to meet her friend, Gertrud, and they would work on their knitting projects together. Hats, Sweaters, Mittens, Scarves. They liked to joke that the finest factories were no match for their needles.

Marta stopped knitting for a moment to check her small, silver pocket watch. It was a quarter past two in the afternoon. Gertrud was late.

The old woman frowned and her crinkled mouth folded like an accordion as she pursed her lips. It wasn’t like Gertrud to be late and this worried her. She sighed and returned to her knitting, wondering if Gertrud was dead. There was a time when she would have dismissed this morbid thought as unrealistic, but at her age, many of her friends had already passed away. To comfort herself, Marta closed her eyes and focused on the soft rhythmic sound of her knitting needles as they gilded themselves with the carefully chosen yarn sitting by her side.

“Guten Tag, Marta.” A gravelly voice said, suddenly.

Marta was surprised but she did not jump. She had learned to maintain her composure in even the most stunning of circumstances. She opened her eyes and was pleased to see that Gertrud was now sitting next to her in her sensible lightweight tweed coat and her favorite green felted hat.

“English, Gertrud.” Marta said.

“Ach. I keep forgettink,” Gertrude replied as she began to unpack her knitting supplies from her handbag. Her natural dialect was heavy despite her choice of words. “I have been do-ink my lessens.”

Marta nodded but said nothing. She had chosen another color for the exquisite scarf that she was knitting. Gertrud eyed the scarf and the many different colors that it was made up of. She counted the sections silently. One, two, three…there were twelve sections in all.

An awkward silence formed between the two matronly women as they worked, the birdsong and rippling water from the pond filling the void. The park had always been their favorite place to meet, but they had noticed that fewer and fewer others were still visiting the pleasant landscape. A mother duck quacked contentedly as she paddled across the pond with a line of ducklings following obediently in her wake. The ducklings made Gertrud miss the sound of children playing in the park.

“Marta,” Gertrud started, glancing again at the scarf, “I see you haf chossen twelf colorz for zis scarf.”

Marta nodded solemnly.

Getrude frowned. “Ist this not too many?”

The rapidly clicking needles in Marta’s hands slowed to a stop, and she lowered the scarf to her lap, as she turned to her friend and replied, “Zer ist no choice, Gertrud.” Then the old woman paused for a moment, looking at the many balls of yarn waiting in her knitting basket, “I am afraid zat I am not nearly done adding to zis vun.”

Silence returned between the two women, as they returned to their work, feverishly knitting in the serenity of the park.

The sun continued its journey to the West, and was now reflecting its last golden rays of afternoon sun on the pond in front of the women. At last, Marta completed the final loop of the of her scarf and held it up in front of her. The craftsmanship was impeccable and in the end it had nineteen colors altogether.

Gertrud counted the colors and sharply sucked in air between her teeth. She exhaled slowly, then quietly said, “I see zat you have finished the scarf vith red.”

Marta’s eyes were downcast as she nodded slowly, then she looked at her friend and smiled sadly.

Gertrud closed her hands over her own knitting, wetting her lips with her tongue. Then she stood slowly and said, “I must be goink, now.” And she began to pack up her knitting supplies.

As she turned to leave, Marta said, “Vill I be seeink you tomorrow?”

Gertrud let out a long sigh. “I hope zo, Marta.”

Then Gertrud began to amble away from the bench leaving Marta alone once more. With her knitting done, Marta seemed small and delicate. Just an old woman watching the ducks on the pond. She watched Gertrud walk away out of the corner of her eye and a single tear slid down her cheek.

Gertrud walked slowly through the empty park, away from Marta, and toward the city which surrounded them. With each step she counted from one to nineteen. Nineteen steps. Nineteen sections of the scarf.

As she approached the archway which separated the park from the city, she noted the soldiers in their brown uniforms standing on either side. The hair on her neck raised as her eyes glanced over their red arm bands with the twisted Hakenkreuz – Swastika – prominently displayed in the center of a white circle.

Without incident she passed by the soldiers, who did not even acknowledge her. She was just a little old woman, who posed no threat to them. Little did they know that there was much more to Gertrud than met the eye. That each day, when she visited her friend Marta in the park, they swapped secrets, hidden in their knitting. Today’s message was urgent, as illustrated by the red yarn on the end of Marta’s scarf.

Before the sun rose the next morning, Gertrud would help smuggle 19 Jewish refugees out of the city. She would join Marta in the park the following day and begin the process all over again. They were prepared to stick to their knitting, even if it killed them.

A note about the assignment:

Due to the nature of the writing exercise, I didn’t want to reveal what it was before sharing the story itself. For assignment, I was given several settings to choose from (in this case “two old women sitting on a bench with knitting needles and yarn”) and the goal was to undermine the reader’s expectations. Did it work?

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