Unravelling Ruth

What it looks like, and what it does

A woman in a wool dress standing in a kitchen. From her hem a single thread of impossible length runs out of the door, across the lawn and over the horizon, taut. Her left sleeve shorter than her right. A basket of wound yarn she keeps winding.

Rises early. Winds. Answers the pull with a small step toward the door. Walks to the end of the garden each evening and stands with her hand on the thread.

What is known

Ruth Dallow found the thread in March, hanging from the hem of her dress. When she pulled it, it came away, and kept coming. It is not wool, though it looks like it, and it is warm.

She has measured nineteen kilometres so far, and is eleven centimetres shorter. She winds what comes into a basket. Someone, somewhere, is pulling. A second thread has appeared at the other cuff.

What it can do

• Gives out a continuous thread from her own body
• Feels the pull of whoever holds the other end

Where it stops

• Cannot cut the thread without losing the length it carries
• The thread cannot be wound back by anyone else

An encounter

Dallow followed the thread for sixty kilometres to a house where it went in through a window. The householder did not let him inside. He sat on the step for an hour, and the thread, running through his hands, grew warm and then cool. When he got home Ruth was in bed and the thread had been wound up. “It stopped,” she said. “For a little. Thank you.”

Walter Dallow, husband, The Dallow house, Pinfold Lane, Six months

What is established, and what is only said

• established: Ruth's height has been measured weekly. The loss is steady at about 0.4 cm per week.
• incomplete: The thread has been followed for sixty kilometres and photographed entering a window. Entry to the house was refused.
• interpretation: She may not be coming apart. She may be being let out, to a length at which she can be found.

Still unresolved

The householder at the far end has never been named. The house has been sold twice since. The thread still goes in.

Where it has been recorded

• Pinfold Lane (confirmed) — Recorded by Walter Dallow, husband.

Connected entities

• The Hands of Mara Dix — Both are bodies at work with thread or seam. Neither controls it. Both are looked after at home.