"Why do you roll it that way? Why not just leave it flat?"

Lucia shrugged. "It is the way I was taught. I've never tried it any other way. Besides it would take up too much room in my basket and might tangle again."

At Agustin's urging, Lucia sat at one of the treadle wheels he and the others had built from a drawing and began to spin the flat mass of fiber. After a false start or two, it only took a few minutes to spin. Of course, it only took her minutes to spin one of the sausage shapes, as she pointed out.

"But was this faster? At all?" he asked.

"Perhaps. But it would only make a real difference if the mass of wool was larger, I think. No. Not larger. Longer. And, maybe, thinner." Lucia used her hands to try and describe what she meant. "With these, I must stop the wheel, pick up another, attach it, then start the wheel again. With a longer, thinner, ah… I don't have the words. But if the wool was like a rope, long and thin, instead of a flat square…" She looked at him. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"I think so. And I think I read something about that, in all the papers. Let me think for a while."

It was often easier to understand Lucia's gestures than the stuff they received from Don Carlos. Rumor had it that the papers and notes they got from Don Carlos were sent to the de Aguilera family from Germany. Judging from the shape the papers were sometimes in, Agustin thought they might have been sent from even farther away. By now they were sending questions back along the route, wherever it lead. Agustin wasn't involved in that part. The questions went from him to Miguel to Master Munos. Agustin was increasingly concerned that the important questions weren't making it all the way to wherever the source of the information was.

The words were often unfamiliar, which frustrated everyone, as they would then have to ask for explanations. Still, every packet from Don Carlos gave them more information. The big breakthrough, though, finally came. The man in Germany-if that was where he was-had started tracking down the various names of the inventors, and come across more detailed information and drawings. Still not enough, but it helped.