Skulduggery Pleasant: Raising Cain

Chapter 22 - Valkyrie makes a dress

Skulduggery – Crow

Anton – Bear

Ghastly – Panda

Dexter – Wolf

Saracen – Weasel

Erskine – Snake

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Chapter 22

After the embarrassment of The Tanith Talk, Valkyrie had not thought about anything for a while, content to simply flirt and, admittedly, she did 'mess around,' as she called it in her head, more over time, becoming more comfortable with the idea.

Eventually, though, she did think about it, late one night weeks later, and decided she would wait a while longer before stepping forward with her relationship. With Valkyrie's fourteenth birthday coming up in a few months and Nadia's fifteenth not long after, she didn't expect it to be a long wait necessarily, but certainly not until after those events. She hadn't spoken to Nadia about it yet and didn't intend to. She just didn't feel exactly ready for that.

She pushed that from her mind as she took the roll of tulle material from the stack Panda had sent her to retrieve. They were making a dress for one of his client's children, and if she learnt enough, he was going to let her help him make a new protective coat for work.

Holding the surprisingly heavy roll, she brought it over to Panda. "Is this right?"

He glanced at her. "Yes, roll it out on the table. I need you to measure six metres, cut it straight, then cut that lengthways from the middle. Okay?"

"I can do that."

Valkyrie lay the material down on the large table. The material was maybe three metres tall but there must have been hundreds of yards tightly rolled up around the tubing. Carefully, she rolled it out and cut it to Panda's specifications, moved the roll so it was out her way, and carefully used the middle guide on the table to slice the material. She had helped him design this dress for the eight-year-old. It was going to be blue in a ball-gown style but have a support skirt under it to help with the weight. The tulle was going to be layered on top of the hoop skirt to give it a big, blue princess effect.

Folding the pieces, she took them to Panda who was just finishing with the shoes, a pair of silver flats the mother had specifically ordered. They were not the prettiest, but the mother had been very insistent. At least Panda had convinced her against the orange feathers.

He moved them aside and she very carefully helped him fold the top layer of material while he quickly folded the layer that would sit under hers. It was difficult with all the pins and knowing it was going to a real person. She didn't want to mess it up and she wasn't exactly the best with delicate things. When Panda was done, he cut another two pieces like she just had, and did two more under sections and finished the bottom one just as Valkyrie did the top one. He inspected it.

"That's good. You left the right amount of space with the pins this time."

She nodded. "Yeah, it was easier to pin like this too."

"You can help me feed it through the machine," he said. "Here, check the thread – and gently feed it through."

Slowly, Valkyrie stitched the tulle with the machine, her tongue pocking through her lips, and soon the top layer was in its neat, permanent folds ready for the dress. She took it over to the dress and with Panda's help, they pinned it to what they had already made. Within minutes, Panda had stitched the rest of the layers and they had pinned and sewn it to the rest of the blue material, sewn it together as a skirt, pulled it over the feather-light hoop skirt and they carefully began hand sewing tiny silver sequins to the layers of skirts, including underneath so when she spun around it would still sparkle.