blue ribbon from Kyra's straw hat

The blue ribbon from Kyra's straw hat is the small, material proof that Mike has crossed from his own time into the past at the Fryeburg Fair and returned with something from the encounter. First seen on Kyra’s hat, it later hangs from Mike’s overalls and remains tied around his wrist as he wakes at home, giving the time-slip a physical trace that his own attempt to call it a dream cannot explain away.

Appearance and first context

Kyra wears the ribbon around a straw hat when she runs toward Mike at the fair. She clutches her stuffed dog, Stricken, and throws herself forward with the confidence that Mike will catch her; he does, and pushes the slipping hat back onto her head. The ribbon belongs to this intimate, ordinary gesture of care, set amid the fair’s strollers, games, and gawkers.

The scene’s historical dislocation is visible in the people and clothing around them. Mike has arrived among the fairgoers in work clothes, and Sara Tidwell is alive and performing at the Ferris wheel. Kyra’s homemade-looking socks and hat, which Mike imagines could have been made locally, distinguish her from the manufactured present. Against that setting, the ribbon is not introduced as a supernatural token. It is simply part of the child’s dress, made significant by what follows.

The ribbon crosses the boundary

After the fair sequence, Kyra thanks Mike for taking her away from the frightening men, says good night, and passes through a door marked with a tricycle. As the door shuts, Mike notices that the ribbon from her hat is hanging out of the bib pocket of the overalls he is wearing. The door will not open again; the space beyond it has become inaccessible. The ribbon, however, has crossed out with him.

Mike then enters another corridor and follows the faint ringing of Bunter’s bell through its turns and changing surroundings. As he proceeds, the clothes he wears shift, and the route eventually brings him back to his living room. Those transformations make the ribbon’s continuity especially striking: while his setting and clothing alter, the object remains linked to the fair and to Kyra.

Return to ordinary life

At home, Mike sees the ribbon still around his wrist. He unwraps it and leaves it on the kitchen counter between the coffee-maker and the television. The placement is matter-of-fact, but it gives the ribbon a new role: it is no longer just a detail of Kyra’s hat, but an object physically present in Mike’s everyday house after his return.

The next morning, Mike considers describing the experience as an extraordinarily vivid dream. He rejects that explanation as false, pointing to the ribbon as evidence. His senses reinforce the point: he smells pine and sees a small smear of sap on his finger, details that accompany the corridor and its wooden walls. The ribbon is therefore part of a cluster of physical traces, not merely a vivid image carried back in memory.

Narrative significance

The ribbon condenses the time-slip into something small enough to hold and impossible for Mike to explain away as ordinary dream residue. Its path—from Kyra’s hat, to the pocket of Mike’s overalls, to his wrist, and finally to the kitchen counter—makes the passage between times legible through a change in possession and location. The fair encounter ends, but its material remainder stays in the present.

That remainder also preserves the personal meaning of the crossing. Mike has not returned with an abstract token from the past; he has returned with part of what Kyra wore when she ran to him and trusted him to catch her. The ribbon thus binds the impossible event to a specific act of care, while its quiet place on the counter contrasts with the extraordinary route by which it arrived there.