Threadneedle

by Cari Thomas

  Aunt untied the first knot. Anna looked back at the moth and found with surprise there were now two. Aunt untied the second knot and Anna watched as the second moth became two. It happened as quickly as a single beat of their wings, like an origami trick where the paper seems to grow as it’s folded. Aunt’s hands traced down the remaining knots, untying and producing further moths above the table until there was a shivering, shadowy cloud of wings above them. Anna felt the strong urge to scratch her head all over.

  Aunt tied a Choke Knot in her cord and one of the moths fell to the table.

  ‘How do you do it so quickly?’

  ‘It looks like chaos, doesn’t it?’ Aunt watched the thrumming cluster of moths. ‘It is chaos, but contained, under my control. Everything is connected by threads, Anna, and if you know the true nature of a thing you may pull the strings of its life – forwards, backwards, up and down. The moth may feel itself free – but it is not. I own it.’

  ‘You believe—’

  ‘I believe nothing. I know, I know with a certainty beyond all else. My Hira is twine and thorn.’

  ‘My Hira is twine and thorn,’ Anna repeated. It was the way of the Binders.

  ‘Now make one fall,’ Aunt commanded.

  If she’d failed with only one moth, Anna couldn’t see how contending with multiple would make her task any easier. It wasn’t meant to. Aunt worked in illogical ways like that – if Anna had found it difficult the first time then it would be all the more so the second, by way of punishment. Anna focused on one of the moths, following its movements. She drummed up the same intention as before, adding force to it. Twine and thorn. Twine and thorn. I own you, little thing! She pulled the knot tight.

  Nothing happened. She groaned loudly and in frustration tied another before Aunt could stop her. Still nothing.

  ‘Bloody stupid moths!’ Anna cried, throwing the cord onto the table.

  ‘Anna.’ Aunt did not raise her voice, but it had tightened like a screw. ‘How dare you speak like that.’ She made a small movement with her cord.

  Anna felt a flickering inside her mouth. With a deep and nauseous revulsion she knew what Aunt had done. She opened her mouth, releasing a silent scream – a moth flew out, its thick, furry body rising into the air. Anna retched, wiping frantically at her tongue, trying to rid herself of the feel of its legs twitching against the side of her mouth.

  ‘That will teach you to watch your tongue.’ Aunt smiled at her own joke.

  Anna felt for a moment angry enough to bring a whole cloud of moths down on Aunt’s head but she reached for the Knotted Cord in her pocket and lowered her eyes, afraid to say or do anything again.

  ‘At least we don’t have to worry about binding your magic.’ Aunt turned to her and smiled faintly. ‘There’s hardly any there at all.’

  Anna knew Aunt was right, but still, her words stung. Aunt picked up the black cord and tied Choke Knots across it with rhythmic purpose. The moths fell one by one from the air, until the dark wood was covered with a sad pool of spasming legs and broken wings. As unnatural as they were, Anna felt sorry for them – brought into existence only to be cut down.

  ‘Clean them up,’ said Aunt, pushing her chair away from the table and heading for the door.

  ‘But they’re still alive.’

  ‘That’s your fault.’

  Anna tried – different cords, different knots; tying and untying – trying to set their wings free so she could open the window and let them out, but she could not. The moths lay on the table twitching desperately. I’m sorry. I can’t save myself and I can’t save you.

  Aunt sharply pulled the brush through her hair while Anna sipped on the glass of milk Aunt had brought for her (calcium for growing bones). It was how all their evenings ended. Their little ritual. The knot that tied the threads of their days together.

  Anna had little left in her but weariness and she submitted to the hard brush. Aunt pulled out the waves of her hair into a soft, unflattering fuzz. When she’d been young, people had made a fuss of its colour, caught somewhere between red and blonde, like the sunset on a field of straw, a woman in a shop had once exclaimed admiringly. As she’d grown older the comments had dried up along with her hair. It was no longer ablaze. Its spark had turned to ash.

  ‘Did you enjoy your little spell practice earlier?’ said Aunt with a yank of the brush.

  Anna sensed the question was a trap. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’

  ‘No. You shouldn’t have. I decide when and how you are allowed to practise magic. You should not be craving it.’

  ‘I’m not, I promise.’

  ‘You think I don’t know where this is coming from? Selene’s arrival.’ The lines of Aunt’s neck pulled taut, like a ship’s sail under harsh winds.

  ‘No, it’s not that—’

  ‘What have I always told you? Magic is a terrible curse, Anna. It makes us weak. It makes us vulnerable. It makes us prey. It is a threat to us, to all witches. And people like them, her, are everything that is wrong with the magical world: casting flagrantly, openly, attracting attention, endangering us all. You must be in control. You must be ready for your Knotting.’

  Anna was unnerved by the new urgency in Aunt’s eyes; she could not escape from it. A thread of blood ran silently from Anna’s nose. She got nosebleeds all the time. Dr Webber had said they were a result of her anxiety. Aunt handed her a tissue with irritation.

  Anna dabbed at it and tried to find the right words. ‘I just thought that … I still need to learn, don’t I? That, maybe someday, when I’ve proved myself a responsible Binder, when my bindings are released—’

  ‘If your bindings are released.’

  ‘If my bindings are released, there may come a time when I will need to carry out magic in the name of duty, like you, to serve the Binders. That is why we train and practise—’

  Aunt laughed silently. ‘You think that’s why we let you practise magic? No. We let you taste it so that you know exactly what it is you’re giving up, so that you understand the true meaning of sacrifice.’

  Sacrifice. Yes. Anna knew that much about her Knotting initiation ceremony. The Book of the Binders explained that her magic would be bound inside of her, but how? The details were fearfully sparse: ‘With control you will be ready to make the sacrifice required.’ Anna had never liked the sharp, slicing sounds of the word. What sacrifice? Her magic? Or something more? She’d tried to extricate further detail from Aunt on many occasions before, to no avail. The ceremony was a tightly kept secret and she knew she’d have no true idea of what she’d be facing until she was facing it. Anna looked up at herself in the mirror – through herself. Will I be ready? Does it really matter? She had so little magic in her, she might as well give it up.

  ‘You think now I am a Senior Binder that magic is easy for me?’ Aunt’s long fingers fluttered to her neck. ‘No one understands sacrifice more than I do, Anna.’

  Anna’s stomach tightened. ‘I know.’ She wished she did not know.

  ‘If only your mother had been bound, she would still be with us now.’

  ‘No.’ Anna shook her head weakly. ‘My father killed her.’

  ‘Your father’s hands might have done the killing but it was magic that made your mother weak to it. Magic and love. Love and magic. They destroy everything in the end.’

  Aunt did not believe in love. They had never had a man in their lives; Aunt insisted they did not need one, that she was quite capable of doing everything a man could. Anna did not believe in love either.

  Aunt sighed, putting the brush back in its set place within the antique silver-plated vanity set: brush, comb and mirror. ‘I know you think me hard on you, but I’m just trying to protect you. You’ve only got one year left until your Knotting. School will be busy, boys will be joining your classes now you’re in sixth form, emotions will be running high. You have to keep them in check. You know where they belong. Weakness in feeling; strength in control.’

  ‘Weakness in feeling;
strength in control.’ Anna nodded, touching her Knotted Cord, doing her best not to think about the year ahead at St Olave’s School for Girls. It was no escape.

  ‘If we don’t have trust …’

  ‘We don’t have anything,’ Anna replied.

  Aunt lowered her face until it was beside Anna’s in the mirror, their eyes side by side in a unison of green. ‘How alike we are, my child.’ She smiled, resting a hand on Anna’s shoulder. It always pleased her to compare them. Their features seemed as if they should match, but did not. Aunt’s were cut from marble, arguing with their own beauty: high brow, angular cheekbones, glassy skin, deep eyes set in a bony scaffolding. Anna’s followed the same outlines but were softer, more easily lost. She wished she was less peculiar looking, so pale and strange and haunting. Aunt continued to watch her, an uncomfortable silence growing between them.

  Of all her silences, the silence of her love was the hardest to bear.

  ‘Sixteen tomorrow. I can’t keep you a child forever.’

  Anna noticed a little of the defences that held Aunt’s face together crack. Anna lightly placed her hand on top of Aunt’s and breathed in the familiar magnolia scent of her perfume. Aunt was many things, none of them easy, but she was also the only mother Anna had ever known. The person to whom she owed everything. Aunt gripped her hand back and then let it go. She made a gesture and Anna’s hair responded, knotting itself gently into a plait. Aunt was so adept at knot magic she didn’t need a cord at all; she could make knots of the air.

  She picked up the empty glass and made for the door. ‘They’ll be here at three. I want you up early. That silver isn’t going to polish itself.’

  Anna smiled. ‘It’ll be polished before dawn!’

  Aunt allowed her a small smile in return. ‘Goodnight, Anna.’

  ‘Goodnight, Aunt.’

  Anna never slept well, but tonight, she knew it would be impossible. Her emotions flapped about her like moths: agitation, fear, excitement. She looked at her Knotted Cord, knowing she could use it to bring them back under control. She resented every knot along its length: the years of training, the cruel tests, the parts of herself she could no longer feel.

  She threw off her covers, crept to her bookshelf and selected the Book of the Binders. She remembered Aunt presenting it to her matter of factly after she’d turned seven as if it were a perfectly normal birthday present and not a large and heavy book full of the Binders’ tangled, suffocating words. Its black cover was engraved with the image of a circle studded with nine knots; in the centre of the circle was a rose, its petals closed. The Nine-Knotted Cord and the Closed Rose: the symbol of the Binders.

  Anna knew it off by heart: the rules, the blessings, the knots, the spells, the correspondences – every damn, dull word, but one chapter she returned to in secret over and over …

  She sat down in the light which poured through the balcony windows – moonlight and street light and the general, incessant light of London; the only sound the rustle of pages as she opened it to ‘Banned Magical Languages’. She lay on her front, white nightie pooling, and began to read them quietly, so that she alone could hear the words: Planetary. Botanical. Runic. Ogham. Imagic. Divination. Necromancy. Elemental. Symbolic. She would never get to practise them, but still, she could taste them, couldn’t she? Each one a droplet of syrup on her tongue. Potions. Wands. Words. Mirrors. Image Magic. Hexes. Sex Magic. Blood. Emotional.

  She tasted each word and found herself desperately, feverishly hungry.

  SHARDS

  Magic is the first sin; we must bear it silently.

  Tenet One, The Book of the Binders.

  The light was already beginning to fade when the doorbell finally rang.

  The day had unfolded as always, preparations and chores and tense silence, but this time it had been edged with something, as if the strict contours of their routine had been pulled out of shape in anticipation – frenzied – drawing towards whatever was coming. Aunt had been intolerable. Anna was halfway down the stairs when she appeared below. ‘Six hours late! We’ll come for a Sunday lunch, darling! We’ll see you at three!’ She performed a whining mockery of Selene’s voice. Selene always had a way of disturbing her careful silence. ‘I might cancel the whole thing. Dinner is ruined. Your birthday is ruined!’

  The doorbell rang impatiently.

  Aunt made a get-down-here-now-or-else gesture at Anna. ‘Have you even bothered to brush your hair?’ It was the fourth time she’d snapped at Anna about her hair. If I’d shaved it off this morning it would have saved everyone a lot of grief. Aunt pulled her hands through it roughly, pinning it back with two slides, while Anna tried not to scream OPEN THE DOOR! before her heart burst.

  Knock! Knock! Knock!

  Aunt started towards the door again but stopped abruptly and turned back to Anna with sudden intensity, digging fingers into her shoulders. ‘What is the Binders’ first tenet?’

  ‘Magic is the first sin; we must bear it silently,’ Anna replied.

  ‘Do not forget that tonight.’

  Aunt finally turned and clicked open the latch.

  Golden hair, blazing yellow coat, red lips: Selene arriving like a comet to their house, radiant against the darkness around her. Her face serene and breaking into a wide smile that hadn’t changed since the very first moment Anna had seen her. Anna dropped her Knotted Cord and let Selene’s light wash over her.

  ‘Look at you! My little matchstick! Aren’t you a beauty!’ Selene exclaimed, but Anna noticed the momentary concern that clouded her bright eyes. She smiled and it was gone. She ran her hands through Anna’s hair and enclosed her into a hug. She was wearing an expensive perfume. Anna breathed deeper and found the familiar scents she knew beneath. Summer flowers and rich, warm smells: honey and cloves and the amber candles Selene loved to burn. She buried herself in them and was surprised to feel tears threaten. She forced them back. She did not cry.

  Selene turned to Aunt. There were a few seconds of silence where it seemed neither woman quite knew what to say, then Selene moved forward and gave Aunt a kiss on each cheek. ‘Vivienne! So good to see you too, darling. You look fantastic. A little tired though – hope we haven’t kept you up. We only flew in from New York yesterday, it’s been chaos.’

  Aunt shuddered just a little. ‘You’re six hours later than you said you would be, but I expected nothing less.’ Her face stiffened into something that might, from a distance, resemble a smile.

  ‘I’ve brought gifts!’ Selene clapped her hands together. ‘Anna, be a doll and take my coat. It’s new and fabulous, don’t you think?’ She shrugged it off. Underneath she was wearing a grey, figure-hugging dress that fell just below her knee. Her shoes were black stilettos with criss-crossed straps and a heel that made a pleasing dent in Aunt’s carpet. She didn’t take them off.

  ‘Going to bother to introduce me?’ A girl’s voice drifted in from the doorway, even colder than Aunt’s. Anna hadn’t yet noticed her behind. She was a direct contrast to Selene: pale skin, long black hair, a face full of shadows where the other seemed to dispel them. Her expression was impassive, and yet somehow – although Anna couldn’t work out how – she seemed to be frowning. She was wearing an oversized grey jumper, black jeans and leather boots. Aunt’s gaze lingered on the dirt encrusting their soles. Silver hoops crept their way up her earlobes. Anna felt absurdly dull in her skirt and baby-blue cardigan.

  ‘Effie, you’re not a child, you can introduce yourself. Come in and stop being dramatic.’ Selene rolled her eyes at Anna.

  ‘It’s nice to meet you,’ said Aunt stiffly.

  ‘A pleasure, I’m sure,’ Effie responded flatly, stepping inside without wiping her shoes. Aunt’s eyes widened.

  Anna moved forward, extending a hand. ‘I’m Anna, nice to meet you.’ Effie looked at her outstretched hand as if Anna were offering her cyanide and then dropped her hat into it and brushed past.

  ‘Ignore her, she’s in an awful mood, got in a fight with the taxi driver.�
� Selene threw her hands up in exasperation. Anna laughed quietly, unsure if this was the right thing to do. Silence followed, as everyone stared at everyone else with disapproval.

  ‘So … it feels awkward in here,’ a deep voice boomed. ‘Everyone making friends?’

  A young man appeared in the doorway, two bags at his feet. He had dark, unruly brown hair and a smile that promised many things, none of them good. Is he the taxi driver? Or one of Selene’s lovers again? He was her type: tall, tanned, roguish, but he didn’t look old enough. It was hard to tell, his face had an ageless quality to it, as if he’d always have a boyish countenance, even when old and grey-haired.

  ‘OK. I’m going to hug it out,’ he announced, pulling Aunt into an overpowering embrace. She disappeared somewhere into the jacket he was wearing. She looked in shock when he let her go. He put out his hand formally as if the previous exchange had not occurred. ‘I’m Attis. You must be Vivienne. I’ve heard so much about you.’ His accent was strangely nomadic as if it had collected the interesting parts of other accents on its travels: English, hints of American and something lilting and Celtic.

  He turned to Anna and crossed the corridor in one stride. She backed away into the banister, concerned he was going to do the same to her. The teeth beneath his knowing smile were a little uneven; his eyes were grey and yet somehow startling. ‘You must be Anna.’ He held out a hand, obviously sensing her disinclination to be held. She shook his, finding it hot around her cold fingers. She found herself looking anywhere but directly at him.

  ‘I am Anna,’ she replied idiotically. Effie snorted behind her.

  ‘There’s just one last bag in the boot, Attis, if you would be a gentleman, which you always are,’ said Selene with a sardonic, dismissive edge. Probably not a lover then.

  ‘Ever at your service.’ He bowed with equal sarcasm, heading back out into the evening.

  Aunt released a forceful breath and snapped her head round to Selene. ‘Who is he and why is he here? I planned lunch for four! I can’t feed a boy, especially not a large oaf like that one.’