The Mystery of the Red Yarn – Read and Print

By Rachel Dunstan Muller, copyright 2021

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When Bailey woke up and looked out her bedroom window one November morning, she saw something very curious. There was something lying on the snow; it looked like a long piece of red string. One end of the string started under her apple tree. After that, it stretched across her yard, and under a wooden gate. From there – she couldn’t see where it went.

Bailey ate her porridge quickly that morning. Then she put on her coat, and her hat, and her boots and her mittens – and went outside.

The end of the red string was still lying on the snow under the apple tree. As Bailey got closer she saw that it was actually woolen yarn, the kind that her own grandmother used to knit warm socks and mittens – just like the ones Bailey was wearing that very morning. But what the red yarn was doing stretched across the snow – that was a mystery. A mystery that Bailey was determined to solve. So, she picked up the end of the yarn and started following it, across the snow-covered garden all the way to the wooden gate. And as she went, she wound the yarn around one of her mittens, so it wouldn’t get tangled.

When she opened the gate, she saw that the red yarn continued, right up the narrow road that led through her village. Well, Bailey kept following the yarn, of course. Wouldn’t you? And as she followed it, other children began to notice what she was doing, and they began to follow her in turn. Bailey’s own grandmother was just coming out of the butcher’s shop when she saw Bailey and the other children.

“What’s this?” said Bailey’s grandmother.

Bailey pointed at the red yarn still stretched ahead of her in the snow. “I don’t know where it goes yet,” she said. “But I’m going to find out.”

Well, it was a very small village, and it wasn’t long before everyone knew about the red yarn. “Wait. We want to come too!” the grownups called, just as Bailey and the others were about to follow the yarn into the forest that rose above the village.

So the children waited while the grownups put on their own coats and boots and scarves and mittens. Then, when everyone was ready, they all started off again.

It wasn’t easy going uphill through the snow. But that’s where the red yarn led them. Up and up the mountainside, higher and higher through the forest. Every now and then they had to stop and catch their breath. But as soon as everyone was rested, off they went again.

Well, by now the ball of yarn around Bailey’s mitten was the size of a watermelon. It was too big to keep winding around her hand, so instead she slipped her mitten free, and then all the grownups and the oldest children took turns carrying the ball of yarn, which grew bigger and bigger and bigger the higher they climbed.

Just as some of the villagers were complaining they couldn’t go a single step further, they reached a cave at the very top of the mountain. And do you know where the red yarn led? Mm hm. Right into the mouth of that very dark cave.

Bailey and the other villagers gathered at the edge of the cave – and peered inside. They couldn’t see very far, but as everyone held their breath, they heard something. Something or someone was snoring deep inside the cave.

“I’m not going in there,” said a little boy.

“Me neither,” said the oldest man in the village.  

Bailey looked at her grandmother. “I’ll go. If you’ll come with me.”

Bailey’s grandmother nodded. “We’ve come this far. It would be a shame to turn back now.”

One of the villagers gave them a lantern, so they could see their way in the dark. Then, while everyone else waited, Bailey and her grandmother tiptoed into the cave.

Slowly, slowly they went, carefully following the red yarn. As they went deeper, the snoring got louder – until at last they reached the source of that snoring – and the end of the red yarn.

And do you know what Bailey and her grandmother found? By the flickering light of their lantern, they saw a very old bear, with patchy grey fur, fast asleep with a pair of knitting needles in his front paws. The bear had started to knit a red wool blanket, but he hadn’t gotten very far.

“Oh, the poor dear,” Bailey’s grandmother whispered. “He was too tired to finish. The ball of red yarn must have slipped from his paws when he fell asleep. It must have rolled right down the mountain, unwinding as it went, until the very end of it came to rest under our apple tree.”

Bailey smiled at her grandmother. The mystery was solved! But then her smile disappeared. “What are we going to do?” she whispered. “It’s so cold in this cave, and the poor bear’s fur looks so patchy and thin. How is he going to keep warm through the winter?”

“Don’t you worry,” said Bailey’s grandmother. “I know just what to do.”

Very, very carefully, Bailey’s grandmother removed the knitting needles from the bear’s paws. Then slowly, quietly, she and Bailey tiptoed out of the cave.

Well, I bet you can guess what happened next. Bailey’s grandmother and all the other knitters of the village took turns finishing the bear’s blanket. They knit and they knit and they knit, until that red wool blanket was just big enough to tuck around a very old bear. 

And the funny thing was – there was enough red wool left over to knit everyone in the village a warm pair of slippers as well.

No one in the village ever saw that old bear again. Like other wild animals, bears like their privacy. But Bailey still likes to think about him from time – especially on cold winter nights, when she’s wearing her cozy red slippers.

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