by Cari Thomas
Without thinking, she dashed back into the house, discarded the broom and grabbed one of the keys off the key rack. She ran across the road to the garden in the centre of the square: ‘Private Garden – Residents Only’. She unlocked the iron gate and swung it open with a shriek of metal. Aunt would be home soon. She wouldn’t have long.
The garden was empty, but it was always empty; after all, it was not meant to be enjoyed but merely admired from lounge windows. She ran down the path, past overgrown flower beds and the drying-out water fountain, to where the trees gathered and shadowed her from the eyes of nosy neighbours. Anna sat down, her back against the familiar curve of the old oak tree, breathing in her moment of freedom. She’d dreamt of escape often when she’d been young. It had become a kind of hobby: imagining herself in the books she read, making up stories in her head, playing songs on the piano that made her feel somewhere else, like someone else. She’d given up on most of that by now. But the garden still felt like a kind of escape. Only metres from the dark shadow of the house, but its own world, nothing but the wind and the clean slice of sky above her. No one to see her, judge her, punish her …
Anna placed the leaf on her lap and selected two fresh cords from the bundle in her pocket. She quickly tied them together with a loop in the middle, like a heart, three pieces of cord falling away from it like veins: the Ankh Knot, Life Knot. She focused on the leaf and let the energy build beneath her fingers. She envisioned it bursting back to life, uncurling, growing strong, the green reclaiming its brightness. The knot in her hand quivered with energy. She pulled it free, feeling a release. The leaf twitched, a pulse of green appearing by the stem, and then … nothing.
Lifeless, still.
The cords dangled limply in her hands, the veins drained. Anna picked up the leaf and crushed it, trying to ignore the familiar feelings of frustration and shame. It was the hope that hurt the most, thin and fine as a needle into her heart. A witch who can’t cast spells. Am I the world’s biggest joke? The garden might be her last escape but it couldn’t help her. She was a failure and – at the end of the year – any last hopes of magic would be extinguished. Escape would no longer be possible. She’d become a Binder herself.
A dog barked in the distance, startling her. She shoved the cords into her pockets and looked around, fear quickly replacing her burst of eagerness. If Aunt caught her casting … Anna didn’t want to contemplate what she’d do.
Magic is the first sin; we must bear it silently.
She hurried back towards the house, glancing nervously at the surrounding windows but the neighbours’ houses were still. No one was around. Anna stared up at their house. The top floor was built into the gable roof – a window at the front. It was dark, the curtains drawn as always. The third-floor room. Anna had never been inside it. Aunt claimed it was used for storage and Binders’ documents and that she didn’t want her poking through it all and Anna had been forced to accept the explanation, accept – as always – what she was told.
She let herself back in and stopped at the key rack hung on the wall. It was heavy with the keys of their life. House keys. Car keys. Work keys … Anna put the key for Cressey Square garden back among the others, but her hand hovered in the air – moved towards the key on the final ninth hook. It did not look particularly out of place – a little smaller, a knotted iron head – but it was different from the others. Quieter, stiller. It gave nothing away. Aunt’s key. The key to the room on the third floor.
She’d tried to steal it once, when she was little. Aunt had been in the bath and Anna had sneaked downstairs and removed it from the hook. The moment it was in her hands its blade had begun to move, the pattern of it altering continuously, folding and unfolding, shifting and reshaping, as if it was changing gears. Anna had studied it with hypnotic wonder when she’d felt the shadow loom over her. She’d spun round to find Aunt, every line in her face snapped in anger, but when she’d spoken it had been with cold authority: Only in my hands will the key find its true form.
Aunt had made a knotting motion in the air with her hands. Anna remembered with a shudder the feeling of the bone in her finger breaking. The key had dropped to the floor. She’d learnt the hard way never to try to take it again.
Anna dropped her hand and reached into her pocket, finding her Knotted Cord. She tightened one of its knots, tying away her curiosity. It was not welcome in this house. She turned from the hook and went upstairs to wash her hands and comb the wind out of her hair.
‘Red cord?’
‘Strength.’
‘Orange cord, two knots?’
‘Bind two opposites.’
The last of the day’s light receded from the living-room window. The room was cold. The TV off. The piano closed – the buds of the rose bush upon it small and shivery as goose pimples. Aunt was typing up hospital reports from her armchair, testing Anna on her correspondences without looking up, Anna reeling off her answers dutifully while her fingers worked on an embroidery. The whisper sound of thread did not break the silence of the room between Aunt’s questions; instead it pulled it tighter.
Stitch in. Stitch back. Stitch in. Stitch back.
‘Yellow cord, Knit Knot, Monday?’
‘To heal an injury.’
‘Brown cord, six Mute Knots?’
‘To banish unwanted thoughts.’
Aunt had picked out a verse from her Bible for the centre of Anna’s embroidery: ‘Keep me safe, Lord, from the hands of the wicked; protect me from the violent, who devise ways to trip my feet.’ The Bible verses were a good stand-in; Aunt could hardly have verses from the Book of the Binders up on the wall. That’s where her embroidery would go once it was finished. The wall behind them was covered with them, devouring every inch of space, encasing colourful images and fearful verses in dark frames. Spells of silence and protection, as Aunt referred to them, for out there and in here, touching her heart.
‘Black cord, seven Shackle Knots, Wednesday.’
‘To restrain another from speaking.’
‘Wrong.’
Aunt made a small movement with her hand; the needle slipped into Anna’s finger. She didn’t cry out. She was careful not to let the small well of blood drop onto her embroidery. It had ruined many before that way.
‘To restrain another from spreading secrets,’ Anna corrected quickly.
‘White cord, Servant Knot?’
The questions continued relentlessly. Anna had never been a gifted seamstress but she’d been forced to sew for so many years the stitches came to her easily. She responded without thinking, longing to go over to the piano and play. Let the confusion of her thoughts free. Instead, she’d become accustomed to making up songs in her head as she sewed – stitch in, stitch back – fusing together the notes of the thread, the rhythm of the stitches, the melody of their patterns. To her the embroideries were not spells of protection, they were songs of longing.
But this evening, even her music would not come. She could not stop thinking of the leaf in the garden, berating herself for her magical ineptitude. Why must her Binders’ training be so mind-numbing, so torturous? Reeling off correspondences, reciting the Book of the Binders, tying knots, unrelenting emotional tests, stitches, stitches, stitches … She rarely got to do any actual magic.
‘Grey cord, Lover’s Knot, Friday?’
‘To protect – protect yourself from sexual desire—’
‘Wrong again!’
The needle slipped into Anna’s flesh a second time, a drop of blood dissolving into the canvas. Perhaps I can cover it with a rose …
‘Sorry, to suppress sexual desire.’
‘Focus, Anna! What has got into you?’
Nothing! Nothing is inside me, that’s the whole problem. Would Selene be able to tell she was a failure now? A witch without magic? But the leaf had pulsed – hadn’t it? Perhaps there was hope, somewhere a little hope that had not yet been stifled.
When Aunt finally announced they had finished, Anna put her embroidery do
wn. ‘Aunt,’ she said tentatively.
‘Yes, Anna.’ Anna could hear the impatience in her voice already. Aunt always seemed to sense what she was going to say before she had said it.
‘We – er – haven’t tried casting all summer. I wondered if it was time we did some practice?’ Anna said the words quickly, desperately, wanting to get them out before the more sensible part of her brain could hold them back.
Aunt closed her laptop and fell silent. Anna knew her silences well. There was silence of her questions: narrow and pointed, full of dead ends and sheer falls. The silence of her disapproval, tight and unforgiving as pursed lips. The silence of her anger, which was like lightning without thunder – you know it is there but the rumble is too distant, too deep to hear, and hearing it would somehow make it better, less frightening—
‘What is the Binders’ third tenet, Anna?’
‘We shall not cast unless it is our duty.’
‘And yet you suddenly believe it is your duty to do so?’
‘No, I—’
‘What does it mean to become a Binder?’
Anna knew all too well what it meant. One year left until her Knotting. ‘My magic will be bound.’
Stitch in, stitch back, snip the thread and tie the knot.
Anna gripped the Knotted Cord in her pocket. ‘I just thought that—’
Aunt made a knot in the air and Anna’s mouth snapped shut. Aunt had been bound once too, but now she was a Senior Binder her magic had been released for her to carry out her duties.
‘You don’t think, Anna. You just feel. That’s your problem. Do you feel magic’s pull?’
‘No.’ Anna’s fingers twisted around her Knotted Cord.
Aunt came and sat on the sofa next to her. ‘Your mother felt its pull, did she not?’ She spoke gently.
‘Yes.’
‘And where did that lead her?’
‘To her death.’
‘Magic killed her.’ Aunt’s voice was hollow with despair. ‘You’re not a Binder yet, you do not carry the true weight of magic around your neck. It is still all fun and games to you.’
‘No.’ Anna shook her head, regretting ever having spoken at all.
‘No?’ Aunt flicked her laptop back open. ‘You have requested casting practice and tomorrow we shall do so. I think we shall continue with the correspondences after all.’
Anna nodded and returned to her embroidery.
‘Choke Knot?’
Stitch in, stitch back.
MOTHS
Choke Knot: To bind another’s will.
Knot Spells, The Book of the Binders
The next day Aunt heaped extra chores on her. Anna settled into their dull monotony, only slowing in her dusting to pick up a picture from the mantelpiece. She wiped the dust gently from it. It was the only photograph in the house that contained her mother: Aunt and her mother together in their early twenties, her mother at the forefront, eyes playful beneath her black fringe; Aunt standing behind. Anna stared at her mother’s face and tried to feel something. She had nothing to give.
She put it down and began to dust the other photographs – she and Aunt at various ages in various staged poses. People said they looked alike, with their green eyes and red hair. Aunt had always told her they were alike too, that they were cut from the same cloth; her mother coming from a different type of fabric altogether: Weak. Soiled. Corrupted with magic.
Anna didn’t know why Aunt had brought magic into their lives at all if she loathed it so much. After all, they had lived for six normal, magic-free years together – or as close to normality as they had ever come. It was when she turned seven that everything had changed. A few days after her birthday, without warning, Aunt had taken her to the doctor.
Anna remembered her childlike fear. She hadn’t felt unwell, which surely meant that an injection, some routine vaccination, was waiting for her, but when Aunt took her into the room, old Dr Webber had leant forwards, eyes bulging, and asked her how she was feeling. Anna had said she was feeling fine, that nothing was hurting, and he’d smiled dispassionately, revealing sharp yellow teeth. ‘I’m talking about your feelings inside, little miss. Have you felt particularly happy or sad the last few days?’ That had thrown her. She’d been excited about her birthday but she wasn’t sure if she was meant to have been excited so she told him no. ‘Excellent,’ he’d said, wheeling his chair over to an unassuming cabinet at the far side of the room which she’d never noticed before. He’d taken a key from his pocket and opened it, extracting several implements, while she was made to lie down on the bed.
He’d put a stethoscope, which didn’t look quite like any stethoscope she’d ever seen, to her chest and she’d felt a strange sensation inside, as if her heart were drawing towards it. He made various concerned noises as he listened and had then produced the dreaded needle. Anna remembered the sharp pain of it in her arm and wishing Aunt would take her hand, but Aunt had not moved as the blood flowed into the glass bottle. He’d poured a few drops of it onto a thin metal disc, and the moment her blood had touched the metal it had begun to sizzle and spit.
‘A vigorous iron test – the magic is pure; however, heart readings show considerable emotional charge. Considering everything, we ought to take precautions.’
Anna had been ushered out of the room before she could hear anything more. When Aunt eventually appeared she’d had a small packet in her hand and a frown furrowed into her brow. Anna had felt as if she’d done something wrong but she wasn’t sure what. The doctor had spoken of magic …
Anna smiled as she recalled her childish reaction. She’d hoped if she was somehow magical that it would be like the magic of fairy tales, that she’d be able to call a fairy godmother to her, or speak to birds, or send whole kingdoms to sleep. She’d soon learnt their magic was not the stuff of fairy tales, it was not to be enjoyed but endured—
‘Anna!’
The duster fell from her hand.
‘Casting practice. Dining room. Now.’ Aunt’s voice sharp as a cut lemon.
Why did I have to open my mouth? Anna knew why, but even so, her momentary yearning for magic, diminished against the growing dread she felt as she entered the dining room.
It was gloomy and unwelcoming as always, set aside for rare special occasions and dinner parties that never happened. A small window filtered light onto the long table in the centre; a mahogany dresser displayed their best china plates begrudgingly. Another rose bush grew from its pot placed at the far end, dotted with rose heads, tightly sealed. My Hira is twine and thorn.
Aunt sat at the table, a moth dancing in the air above her. Her heart began to beat as fast as its movements. She twisted one of the knots in her Knotted Cord.
‘If I wanted to tie this moth’s wings together, what colour cord would I use?’ Aunt’s eyes landed on her.
Anna tried to focus. ‘Er – black for restriction.’
Aunt nodded, picking up a black cord from the selection on the table.
‘Which knot should I use?’
‘The Servant Knot could work, or the Shackle Knot perhaps?’
Aunt tied a knot in the cord with such quick precision Anna was barely aware of it happening. She pulled it tight and the knot snapped shut. With that, the moth fell to the table, wings locked together, legs squirming madly. Aunt held up the cord for Anna to see – a single knot in its centre.
‘That is all you need if your Hira is focused and strong.’
It was an easy knot but absolute in its power: the Choke Knot.
When she was young, Anna had quickly learnt that there was nothing fairy tale about the Binders’ magic. No magic lamps. No wands or capes. Knots were the only magical language tolerated by the Binders. A knot is concise. It is secure. Above all, it is discreet, Aunt had explained. It can be done out of sight without anyone seeing. It keeps our secrets safe.
As if that wasn’t dull enough the correspondences made it endlessly worse. You couldn’t simply tie a knot, you had to consider the m
aterial of the cord, its colour, how many cords, the type of knot, the number of knots, the month you cast, the day, the time: they all had certain magical associations or correspondences: Imagine each spell is a sentence, each cord a word, and each correspondence a letter that helps to form it.
That was manageable perhaps, but there were innumerable combinations which could alter the meaning of a spell by degrees. Nearly half of the Book of the Binders was dedicated to detailing them, a vast vocabulary with little room for error and no room for joy.
‘Your turn.’ Aunt untied the knot in the black cord. The moth’s wings fluttered back to life and it flew up into the air.
Anna took the cord and prepared the knot. She studied the silent motions of the moth and allowed the intention of the spell to form in her mind: As I tighten this knot so may the moth’s wings be locked. She could feel Aunt watching her. She let the intention harden. My Hira is twine and thorn. Focusing on the strength of the cord beneath her fingers, she pulled the knot tight. The moth fell to the table, but before Anna could celebrate her small moment of magic, its wings flickered and it flew back into the air. No.
Aunt closed her eyes, but a small, satisfied smile escaped from her lips. ‘Your Hira is weak. This is simple magic. Simple.’
Anna was used to Aunt’s disappointment, but when it was about her magic it still stung. The moth landed on a candlestick, its feelers twitching and assessing her. It flew off, as if it had found nothing of interest. Anna glowered at it and then felt stupid for glowering at a moth.
‘When you decide to pay attention, we shall continue.’
Anna turned to Aunt, her expression one of solemn dedication. Aunt’s hands were a flurry of activity as she tied two cords into a series of Twin Knots, little figures-of-eight looping up and down its length. There must have been ten in total before she finished. Anna looked at the moth in the air but nothing had happened.