Threadneedle

by Cari Thomas

  Effie made a bored noise. ‘Fiiiiine.’

  They made their way towards the high street, feasting on the croissants.

  ‘So,’ Effie said, swallowing a mouthful. ‘What’s the deal with your parents then? Do you ever think about them?’

  Anna was not expecting the question – most people tiptoed around the subject – but Effie spoke with startling directness. Anna looked away, wondering what she could possibly say – how much she should give to this girl she hardly knew. ‘I wonder about my mother sometimes. Selene probably told you, she was murdered by my father.’ She said it matter-of-factly, as if it was nothing, taking a quick sip of tea to clear her throat.

  ‘I know. So messed up that he killed her. Selene said they had a fight – must have been one hell of an argument.’

  Anna nodded.

  ‘You don’t wonder about him? Why he freaked out?’

  Anna shrugged, glad she was outside. The subject was so claustrophobic, like a room that grew smaller the more you thought about it. She pulled at her Knotted Cord. ‘I guess love can be messed up sometimes,’ she said, knowing it sounded like a vast understatement. In what world does love end up in strangling someone and then stabbing yourself in the heart? In Aunt’s world, where love was deranged and destructive.

  ‘I’m guessing they weren’t arguing over who’d taken out the rubbish last. You must want to know more.’

  Anna stiffened. It was easy for Effie to say; she hadn’t had to grow up under the dark gloom of it, the buried pain of it. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘I would.’

  ‘Well, your parents aren’t the dead ones,’ Anna replied curtly. ‘You grew up with a mum.’

  Effie laughed scathingly. ‘Did I? Where is she then? Russia supposedly, but who knows with my darling mother.’ The word mother was tinged with contempt. ‘Claims she’s on magical business but she’s probably off with some man.’

  Selene had regaled Anna with tales of various lovers, making her laugh with the salacious details, but it had never occurred to her to ask who was responsible for the creation of Effie or if there’d ever been someone special. ‘Did you – do you – er – know your father?’

  ‘No,’ said Effie, as if it was of no consequence. ‘So I guess he could be dead too.’ Anna turned to her but Effie’s look was teasing. ‘Unlikely. Probably just a fling who doesn’t even know I exist. Who knows, maybe that’s him.’ Effie pointed at a man hurrying up the street opposite. ‘Or him.’ She nodded towards an elderly man bent over a Zimmer frame, making Anna laugh. ‘Anyway. We’re here!’

  It was a street Anna had walked down before but she’d never noticed the small shop with the green front and wooden door and the sign in the window advertising ‘Vintage Finds and Memories’. From the outside it didn’t look particularly magical at all. Inside it was tiny and very full – a jumble of paraphernalia lining the shelves, covering the tables, hanging from the ceiling, spilling out of chests and onto the floor; the clothing rails were stuffed to bursting. Anna searched for anything strange, but could only see the typical objects you’d expect to find in a vintage shop: clothes, hats, boots, bags, pottery, old cameras, mirrors, clocks, odds and ends.

  The only thing that jarred was the smell – it didn’t have the usual antique-shop scent of mildew and old perfumes and wood polish, of human memories collected and piled up. Instead, it smelt … delightful, wonderful. What’s that smell? Anna tried to place it. She knew it so well, right at the centre of her heart …

  It was the garden.

  Cressey Square garden at the start of spring when the gardener has just been and the grass is freshly cut, the jasmine bush has opened and it’s recently rained – the soil and trees waxy with new life.

  Anna breathed deeper and could even make out the earthy tang of moss on the stone fountain and the warm complexity of the bark of the oak tree she leant against. It was those exact scents, as if she was there – right there – breathing it in as she had so many times before.

  ‘Can you smell that?’ she whispered to Effie.

  ‘I can smell New York at night.’ Effie grinned. ‘Hot-dog fat and pretzels, sweat and smoke, marijuana, exhaust fumes and exhaustion and the cloying whiff of garbage. Heaven.’

  ‘You’ll find it’s this candle,’ a voice said. Anna spun around. A woman appeared from a back room wearing an outfit that was impossible to take in all at once: what appeared to be a vintage army uniform covered by an Aztec print shawl, delicate lace gloves, several layers of necklaces and auburn hair tucked under an orange top hat. She looked to be in her sixties with a face that reminded Anna of a bird – a beaky nose and small, perceptive lips; an outfit like a nest she’d constructed from the parts of other outfits. She pointed to a white candle burning on the counter. ‘The aromas in here can be rather overwhelming, so many old things, clashing memories, so I tend to keep this burning – it turns the scents of the room into the scents of your favourite memory.’

  ‘I see,’ said Anna, unable to hide the marvel from her face.

  ‘It only works if you’re witches, of course.’

  Witches. They were witches and she was a witch – and it seemed perfectly natural that they might be talking in a magical emporium. In Dulwich. Anna resisted the strong urge to run from the shop and hide.

  We shall not cast unless it is our duty.

  ‘That’s what you’ll find here,’ the woman continued, waving a shawled arm. ‘Antiques and memories. You like vintage clothes?’ Anna nodded and the woman ran her hand along a rail of clothing of all different shapes, colours and sizes. ‘Wear any of these items and you’ll experience the memory of the one who owned it before – the most powerful memory they had while wearing it.’ She pointed to a row of clocks on the wall. ‘All of them are frozen at the moment something life changing happened to their owners. I love the mystery of that, don’t you? Never knowing what it was that made them stop in their tracks. Those telephones’ – she pointed to a table of brightly coloured vintage phones – ‘have old conversations trapped in them. That typewriter only writes the ideas of the person who used to own it – I’ve created some very existential poetry on it. Do you see how it works now?’ She nodded, her exposition appearing complete. ‘Please, explore.’

  Anna and Effie exchanged smiles and wandered around the shop. Anna picked up some photographs from a suitcase. She stared at one of what looked like a family standing in a higgledy line on a beach. The longer she looked at it the more she could feel the excitement of their day out, the silly laughter passing between them, the mischief of the youngest of the tribe who was kicking sand into the air, the mother’s love as she looked on her children fondly.

  ‘Can you feel it? They’re charged with the emotions at the moment they were taken,’ the woman elucidated again. ‘Fifty pence a picture or three for a pound.’

  Anna nodded, feeling strangely wistful. She put the photograph down and moved to a row of hats. She tried on a rather ostentatious pink one and remembered exactly how beautiful a woman named Joanne had looked on her wedding day as she came through the doors of the church. She had no idea who Joanne was but at the moment she could have described her in intricate detail. She walked past several magic mirrors and saw not her own face but other faces staring back at her. In a daze of wonder, she wandered over to Effie, who was peering at a stuffed taxidermy of a cat. Anna briefly wondered what memories that could possibly hold when she spotted the snow globe next to it.

  She picked it out from the pile. It was beautiful. All of London seemed to be inside it, an impossible complexity of dark stone streets and buildings: Big Ben rising above, alongside the London Eye, a miniature of St Paul’s, the Thames snaking through its centre – she could have studied it forever and still found more. She hadn’t shaken it but the snow was flurrying around inside. She looked more closely; it was hard to make out, but the snow did not look like the white glittery flecks of an ordinary snow globe, each one was of incomprehensible intricacy – a minuscule snowflake – a world
in itself. The memory of a real snow storm?

  ‘Wow,’ said Effie. Anna had never heard her voice sound so soft. ‘I think they’re real. Actual snowflakes. I love snow.’

  ‘It’s amazing.’

  ‘I want it,’ said Effie, taking the snow globe from Anna’s hands and moving over to the counter.

  The owner looked down at it. ‘Expensive tastes, I see. This is a rare object.’

  ‘You know my mother, no? Selene?’

  ‘I know Selene Fawkes, yes, and you, Effie Fawkes. I never forget a face or a name.’

  ‘She’ll sort out the payment, whatever it is.’

  ‘Will she now?’ The woman looked at Effie knowingly from beneath her hat. ‘All right, seeing as you were both drawn to it, I shall give it to both of you. Tell Selene I’ll be in touch.’ She began to wrap up the snow globe.

  Anna looked again at the row of frozen clocks on the wall, feeling as if she was lost in time herself. The time! She looked at her watch – which was very much unfrozen and ticking – and saw she had eight minutes until her class started. She didn’t want to go. She had to go. ‘Er – Effie, we better get back.’

  Effie took the bag from the shop owner. ‘Sorry, my friend here thrives on stress.’

  ‘And what’s your name?’ said the woman.

  ‘Anna, but I’ve got to go, sorry, but thank you, thanks, your shop is lovely,’ Anna called, heading towards the door.

  The woman nodded, disappearing again into the back room. As soon as Anna was outside on the street, among normal smells and normal people, she was barely sure the woman had even existed. She looked back – the shop was still there, definitely still there.

  ‘I thought you were late?’ said Effie.

  Anna shook her head. ‘I am! Come on!’

  ‘Come on? I give you a taste of the magical world and that’s all you have to say?’

  ‘Well.’ Anna smiled, slowing her pace a little. ‘It was sort of incredible. So small and yet …’ She thought how if you put all the memories held within the shop’s walls together, you’d have entire centuries, whole worlds to play with. To her, memories had always been something best left be, sewn shut and forgotten.

  ‘You see, didn’t I promise you fun?’

  Anna laughed and Effie kicked at a patch of leaves beneath them. They scattered up into the air, swirling around them – around and around like the snow in the snow globe. Effie was doing it. Anna could feel the tendrils of it – magic. It tugged at her like nostalgia; made her whole body ache.

  ‘You can feel it, can’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You know why I like you?’

  ‘Honestly, no.’

  ‘Other than the fact I find your constant self-castigation hilarious, I like you because I can see the desire in your eyes, your lust for magic. I can see you want it more than anything in the world.’

  Anna considered her words, watching the leaves blow higher. A crow had settled in the tree above. It cried, the sound high and grating, like a violin being played backwards.

  ‘Selene always said your mother was exceptional at magic. What are you so afraid of?’

  Where could she begin? Her whole life was built on a foundation of fear. Anna reached for the Knotted Cord, trying to control her fears, to put them in order. Aunt. The Binders. Sacrifice. The Ones Who Know Our Secrets. ‘It’s complicated. My aunt is on edge at the moment—’

  ‘Forget your aunt! She’s filling your head with fairy tales! Wolves in the woods! I didn’t ask what she’s afraid of, I asked what are you afraid of?’

  Anna let go of the Knotted Cord. She felt as if she feared everything and nothing all at once. ‘I don’t know.’ She watched the crow fly away, shrieking trouble into the air. Her fears were not her own and neither were her memories.

  That night, Anna took out the photograph of her parents. She hadn’t looked at it since Selene had given it to her. Something about it troubled her. She glanced at her father’s face for only a moment and then returned her gaze to her mother. Her eyes traced her features and she felt nothing. She had been trained to feel nothing, to tie the sadness up in knots – blunt knots could not bruise. She wanted to tuck the photograph away and forget it existed, but Effie’s words came back to her – You must want to know more – like loose threads waiting to be pulled at.

  Anna had always liked the fact that she had no memories of them at all. It had kept them at a safe distance. Kept the horror of it all at bay. But for just a moment, she longed for a connection.

  ‘Were you lonely?’ she asked her mother quietly, but her mother did not look lonely with Anna’s father wrapped around her and a baby in her arms. Aunt had always told her that friendship and love were just an illusion to help you sleep at night. You and I, we have each other, we don’t need anybody else. Anna had never thought she had, until now.

  She put the picture back and imagined her mother holding her, feeling the heavy emptiness that came at night. Perhaps it was loneliness, after all.

  ELEMENTS

  We shall not cast unless it is our duty.

  Tenet Three, The Book of the Binders

  The Binders did not approve of Halloween. It was a holiday that encouraged irresponsible superstitions and spread dangerous beliefs. People spoke of witches and devils and spirits and they were far too close to the truth for the Binders’ liking. Anna had somehow managed to keep up her study-session cover story with Aunt, buying herself an extra hour after school, just in case. ‘Home before seven,’ Aunt had instructed as she left. ‘I don’t want you out and about on such a night.’

  If Aunt had seen the apple in Anna’s locker that morning, she’d have had far more to worry about than Halloween. Tonight. Just as Effie had promised. Anna had been waiting all week for Effie to come again and find her, to whisk her off on some adventure, but she hadn’t appeared. Anna took the apple out – trick or treat? She wasn’t sure.

  After lunch, Anna went to the music room. For years it had been her sanctuary, somewhere she could go where no one would find her, where she could play the way she wanted to, without Aunt breathing over her shoulder. She loved its dark quiet, the soft light that filtered over instruments waiting to be played, the rich, warm scent of aged wood that drew her to the piano. She sat down at it and placed the apple on top, watching it as it watched her. Then she let go.

  A new song unravelled from her fingertips.

  When the end of the day finally came, Anna waited for the corridors to empty and then she made her way down the stairs to the murky depths of the old school. What if Aunt finds out? What if I can’t do magic? What if I can? She silenced the fears in her head. Fear wasn’t going anywhere. In a year’s time she’d be Knotted and even if one day she became a Senior Binder and was given her magic back she’d still have to wear her own necklace, her own bruises. Just for a year, I can imagine, can’t I? Imagine what it would be like to really live.

  She stopped outside room 13B. She could hear voices from within. She took a deep breath and went in.

  ‘Besom, besom, sweep out ill,

  Birch twigs, birch twigs, do your will.’

  Rowan was sweeping the room with a broomstick, singing a song. Miranda was watching her in bewilderment, sitting at one of the desks as if class were about to start.

  ‘Maiden, mother and bony crone, it’s Anna!’ Rowan bounded over. ‘You came! Happy All Hallows’ Eve! Samhain blessings! What you doing later? I’m taking my sisters trick or treating. I don’t care if I’m too old. Society be damned! Then my family and I are going to do a ritual to honour our dead family members and pets; it’ll be nice. You should join us. If my mum spoke to your aunt I’m sure—’

  ‘My aunt thinks trick or treating is akin to breaking into people’s houses and attacking them with an axe.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘She sounds like a sensible woman,’ said Miranda.

  The door banged open.

  ‘Thirteen moons!’ Rowan put a hand on her heart.


  Effie stepped through with Attis. Her eyes landed on Anna.

  ‘Excellent, you’re all here. What’s that for?’ Effie pointed at Rowan’s broomstick.

  ‘Cleansing our new covenstead. Great workout too.’ Rowan began brushing outwards from the centre of the room in wide circles.

  ‘Good. I want us to make this room our own.’

  Miranda looked around at the gloom and the row of beheaded sewing mannequins with distaste. ‘And how do you propose we do that?’

  ‘We make an altar for starters.’ Effie walked over to the blackboard. She clicked a hand at Attis, who sprang into action, carrying a long table from the side of the room over to her, his movements free of the awkwardness and self-doubt of those their age, instilled with a kind of leonine energy, flowing with purpose. His body was lean and his shoulders broad, the muscles in his arms flexed – Rowan had stopped sweeping and was staring at him, the broom continuing to move in small circles of its own volition.

  ‘The altar is to be our sacred space: an expression of who we are; the theatre of our power.’ Effie tipped up her handbag and a pile of objects, far too big for the bag that they had come from, fell out: misshapen candles, hanging crystals, strange figurines, a pine cone, stones with hollows in them, a diamond skull. Effie picked up an animal skull from the pile and began to mount it on the wall, throwing the clock that had been up there on the floor with a clatter.

  ‘What’s that?’ Miranda cried.

  ‘A goat’s skull. See these?’ Effie pointed to some protrusions coming from the top. ‘They’re the beginnings of its horns. The cool part is they grow as our magic grows.’

  ‘But it’s dead.’

  ‘That’s why I said it was the cool part. Now put this over the table.’ She handed a black lace cloth to Miranda. ‘We need a goddess and a god.’ Effie perused the pile and selected a gold statue of a bird-headed Egyptian god, placing it on the right. She selected a Russian doll figurine for the left. ‘Attis, put the sewing machine here. In homage to our first spell.’

  The snow globe was among the pile. Anna picked it up and, again, she didn’t need to shake it; the snowflakes were already whirling.