Threadneedle

by Cari Thomas

  ‘Come in.’

  Anna peeked her head into the room. It smelt sublime, like the lair of an Egyptian queen: warm spices, sylvan resins and sultry incense. Through the steam she could make out Selene reclining in a freestanding bath surrounded by candles and steeped in a liquid that definitely wasn’t water. It was a bright, shimmering liquid gold. A small yellow duck bobbed along it.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t realize you were in the—’ Anna backed out of the door.

  ‘Don’t be such a pickled old prude and get in here. I love nothing more than a good conversation while I’m in the bath.’

  Anna walked back into the room, eyes transfixed by the liquid. It moved slowly, creating dizzying reflections on the marble walls. Selene picked up a handful and it ran in compact globules down her arms. Anna took a seat on the toilet lid. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Liquid amber. My secret beauty elixir.’ She pulled her wet hair over one shoulder, twisting it round and wringing it out, the liquid threading through it and running off in pearls of gold.

  ‘Does it stop ageing?’

  Selene let out a tinkling laugh. ‘It washes away a few wrinkles but no, unfortunately I don’t have that kind of power.’ She looked at her slender hand while she spoke, waggling her fingers and watching the bones and veins underneath – a little more prominent than Anna’s perhaps, the skin a little looser. She put it back in the water. ‘I intend to be defiantly beautiful in my old age.’

  Anna giggled. ‘I can imagine you at eighty, long, golden-white hair, dressed to kill, winking a wrinkled eye.’

  ‘I shall have eight toy boys, one to celebrate every decade of my life! Anyway, enough about me, how is your roster of young men? Is this Peter after you yet? Or perhaps another has caught your eye?’ She searched Anna’s face.

  ‘I think Peter’s running in the opposite direction.’ She leant her head against the wall, finding it painful to think about him. ‘I think we’re not meant to be.’

  ‘Meant to be, my wet arse.’ Selene thumped the water, her fist sending golden sparks flying. ‘There’s no such thing. There’s just a woman who knows what she wants and goes out and gets it. Until she gets bored.’

  Anna laughed and then asked something she’d always wondered. ‘Did you ever love anybody, Selene?’

  ‘Love?’ Selene raised a bubble to her lips. ‘Ah, such a romantic notion. I’ve loved people, but in terms of men, there was just one, once. I was determined not to, mind you. I intended to keep my heart all locked up, but it found me out … love, who laughs at locksmiths.’ She blew the bubble away until it popped.

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘I barely recall.’

  ‘Did my mother love my father?’

  Selene sat up again, breasts bouncing in the molten water. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘They loved each other very much.’

  Anna shook her head, the questions tumbling out. ‘Why did he kill her then?’

  Selene seemed taken aback. ‘My little matchstick, you can ask me anything about your mother but how she died – there’s nothing there to ask.’

  ‘Was he having an affair? Was there more to it? Did my mother tell you anything? I know about the house too, our house – they died there, Selene, in the room on the third floor. Aunt won’t let me in—’

  ‘Anna, Anna,’ Selene said, her voice soft as the lapping water. ‘My darling, I don’t know what to tell you. I heard something about a supposed affair after their death but Marie had never mentioned anything. All I know is your father killed her in a moment of anger that we will never understand. It is best not to try. Love is the world’s most powerful emotion and its mysteries hold depths that we can never know, both light and dark. What matters is Marie chose love anyway. Your mother chose to open her heart to the world, while Vivienne closed hers forever.’

  ‘But she goes there. Aunt goes to the room on the third floor.’

  Selene sighed. ‘I never wanted you to know that was the house they died in. I didn’t want you to have to suffer that. I told Vivenne to bloody well move – I don’t know why she chose to stay after she inherited it.’

  ‘She inherited it, then?’

  ‘Well, actually, you did, I think, but as your legal guardian Vivienne has control until you turn eighteen. Anyway, I would have locked the whole place up and never looked back and what your aunt does in that room I can’t say.’ Selene’s voice soured. ‘Probably just punishing herself.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I know what she’s like but I’m sure on some deeply buried level she feels guilty for your mother’s death, for not being there for her, not finding some way to stop it.’

  ‘But she hates my mother.’

  ‘Hate is merely one of the depths of love.’

  ‘Is that why she became a Binder?’

  Selene stilled, turning slow circles in the bathwater with her finger. They did not speak of the Binders, of her future among them – they spoke of things light and delightful as bubbles.

  ‘You don’t think Aunt had any reason for giving me the bindweed, do you? That something might be wrong with my magic?’ Anna asked quietly, watching the ripples, thinking of the curse mark.

  Selene looked up, distraught. ‘No, my darling. There is nothing wrong with you! The only wrong thing is what Vivienne did to you. She doesn’t know how to cope with the hate and the fear inside of her. Sometimes it’s easier to take it out on you than herself. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you or that she doesn’t love you. She does. In her own way, she does.’

  ‘But what’s she so afraid of? The Hunters?’

  Selene laughed bitterly. ‘That’s their excuse, yes. It was how the Binders began, you see, during the Dark Times, when there was something real to fear. Women who misguidedly believed that witches had brought the hunts on themselves, as if we were somehow to blame for the magic inside of us. But now? They’re afraid of nothing but themselves. It’s no way to live.’

  ‘PIZZA!’ Effie shouted.

  ‘Ah. Our feast has arrived! Go on, let’s not ruin your first visit with all this talk of Binders.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Come on, there’s fun to be had.’ Selene nodded to the doorway, planting a fresh smile on her face. ‘I’ll be with you in a minute.’

  Anna left the steam of the bathroom more confused than when she’d gone in. Selene was just as evasive as Aunt when it came to her parents’ death. Why would neither of them give her anything? Perhaps because there’s nothing really there, just shapes in mist, patterns that don’t exist.

  Effie and Attis passed her on the stairs with pizza boxes. ‘To the roof!’ Effie declared, leading them to the top of the house and out onto a small patch of roof furnished with mismatched chairs and sun loungers. It was January and freezing. Anna walked to the edge, the jagged skyscraper horizon of London close and glinting, the sky cloudless, faint with stars.

  She felt a blast of warmth behind her and spun round to find a roaring fire suddenly burning from the metal drum. Attis smiled. They laid out the pizzas and ripped open the garlic bread, dripping with oil. It was the sort of food Anna was never allowed to eat. Selene joined them and they talked about their Christmas antics in New York. Anna sat back and listened and laughed, her troubles feeling as distant as the sky. She was barely able to believe her newfound freedom.

  ‘So how do you like your first night in our world?’ Effie asked, taking the final slice of pizza.

  ‘I love it. It’s amazing up here. You can see all of London, the whole sky, so many stars, more than I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘More than you’ve ever seen,’ Selene scoffed. ‘Honey, I think most of those are planes.’ Her smile dropped. ‘Anna, have you seen the night’s sky outside of London, away from the lights and pollution?’

  ‘Remember in Wales, Attis used to take us on moonlit walks using only the stars for guidance?’ said Effie.

  He laughed. ‘And you’d run off and get lost anywa
y.’

  Anna remained quiet but Selene prompted again. ‘You have, haven’t you?’

  ‘We went to St Albans once, that’s outside London, but it was in the day.’

  ‘You’ve never been on holiday? Never travelled?’ said Attis, spinning round to look at her, the fire reflected in his eyes. Anna shrugged and looked away.

  ‘I could kill Vivienne,’ Selene growled, taking a large gulp of wine.

  Attis jumped up. ‘I know!’

  ‘What?’ Selene snapped, turning her annoyance to him. Anna hadn’t noticed much warmth between them.

  ‘What about those candles? You’ve got those candles, haven’t you?’

  ‘Oh. Oh yes! The inside-out candles.’ Selene clapped her hands delightedly, leaving the wine glass floating in mid-air. She waved a hand at him. ‘Go and get them then!’

  Attis hopped between his left and right foot. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘I don’t know, somewhere. Just look. Maybe in the basement, with the boxes I brought back from New York, by the thingamajigs.’

  ‘Helpful,’ he said, disappearing back into the house.

  ‘Is this really necessary?’ said Effie. ‘It’s just some stars.’

  ‘Ignore my as ever enthusiastic daughter.’

  ‘What’s happening?’ Anna asked.

  ‘These candles, incredible things. Hugely popular in New York, as you can imagine.’ Anna could not, for she hadn’t the faintest idea what they were. ‘When you light them, instead of emitting light, they absorb it. I discovered them when I was dating Jack Torres. He laid out a blanket in his back garden and lit these candles and POOF.’ Selene snapped her fingers. ‘Like that, all the lights of New York disappeared and it was just him and me and total darkness.’

  ‘What does that have to do with the stars?’

  ‘Well, very distant light can still get through, so once you’ve removed all the light pollution, you can see the night’s sky in all its pinpoint glory. We made wild love under the stars for hours.’

  Effie groaned.

  Attis appeared in the doorway, childlike excitement on his face. ‘Close your eyes, Anna! No peeking.’ She heard them moving around her. Then his voice close to her. ‘Ready.’

  Anna looked up and let out a gasp.

  The night’s sky had always been a hazy, grey thing: overworked stars and a dominant moon. Not this one. Here, the moon was part of a greater network, a vast, incalculable network. For the first time, she had some vague notion of infinity. She tried to focus on one area of sky – to count the stars within it – but the closer she looked the more there were, and more behind, smaller again, like mirrors of infinite reflections. It wasn’t still either. There was somehow movement – passing planes, ceaseless twinkling, the faint shifting colours of galaxies. Anna felt as if she should hear something from all the life and commotion above them – the sound of stars burning – but there was nothing. Their power existed in their absolute silence.

  ‘There’s just – there’s so many …’ She looked back at them and Attis was beaming at her.

  ‘You’ve got a little drool there.’ Effie pointed at her chin.

  Anna shut her mouth. They’d lit the candles around the perimeter of the roof. She walked to the edge and looked closely at one. The flame was merely the outline of a flame. Inside there appeared to be nothing at all – a hollow centre. London was a vast darkness. She stuck her head out beyond the candle and the city she knew reappeared, electric and agitated. She pulled her head back in and it disappeared again, as if someone had simply flicked a switch. ‘The moon is so much brighter than I’ve ever seen it.’

  ‘The Goddess wove the language of the seven old planets but the moon rules them.’ said Selene, her voice a lullaby. ‘It shows us the truth that can’t be handled in the light of day.’

  Anna watched the sky change overhead as they talked and ate thick slabs of cheesecake. She was more relaxed than she’d been since she could remember, the warmth of the fire, fanned every now and then by Attis, constant and comforting. And then they got onto the topic of magic.

  She tensed. She’d forgotten about their circle practice earlier – the pattern of the salt. The curse mark.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ said Effie. They were talking about something called a chimera.

  ‘It’ll come,’ said Attis, chasing her spider tattoo up her arm.

  ‘What’s a chimera?’ Anna asked.

  ‘It’s an illusion, like …’ Attis looked around and settled on the fire. He focused on it. After several moments it wasn’t a fire any more: the flames had turned to water, shivering and smoking like flames but blue and transparent and rippling.

  ‘Do you see that?’ said Attis. Anna nodded, hypnotized. ‘It’s not real. It’s a chimera, an illusion I’ve created with magic. If you were to put your hand into those watery flames, they’d still burn you.’

  ‘Like a hologram?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘It’s bloody hard is what it is,’ Effie huffed.

  ‘It’s hard because it’s not really a spell, you’re not really changing anything in the physical world. A chimera belongs to some strange half-world between reality and a spell.’

  ‘How do you cast one?’

  ‘There’s no one way, no exact method …’ Attis grappled with his own vagueness.

  ‘I don’t understand this new world of magic! There are no rules, no formulae, no tables of bloody correspondences. Aunt would have several small fits.’

  ‘Oh, you will have to unlearn everything Vivienne’s taught you,’ said Selene, as if it was nothing. ‘Her methodology is limiting.’

  ‘Limiting,’ Anna repeated, thinking of the days of her life spent learning every correspondence, practising every knot.

  ‘Magic is not a mathematical formula. It’s not an encyclopaedic study. Can you learn to dance by studying the biological mechanics of the muscles?’

  ‘But there are certain rules, surely?’

  ‘No. No rules, my dear.’

  Rules. They were the grid lines of her life. They gave things a framework for measurement, for meaning. In her head the grid lines began to rise up, criss-crossing, entangling, floating off into space – but what was left? A rootless, drifting world.

  ‘There aren’t rules, but there are patterns. Patterns is a better word, it’s open-ended, growing, full of possibility.’ Selene gesticulated to the night’s sky above them. ‘We find patterns in the heavens whether they are there or not.’

  The wine bottle lifted in the air in front of her and poured Selene another glass.

  ‘OK, how did you do that?’ said Anna, exasperated. ‘Everyone’s always doing magic without casting at all. Aunt casts magic by making knots in the air with her hands and no cord. I thought you needed a language to cast?’

  ‘Did you know that there were seven original languages of magic?’ said Selene.

  Anna shook her head.

  ‘Planetary. Elemental. Botanical. Verbal. Imagic. Symbolic. Emotional. All of them need something, a translation – except the last one. The language of emotions. To cast a spell with nothing but emotion alone, that is the most difficult kind of magic and an extremely rare language. When I light a candle without word or movement, I am drawing on nothing but what is inside me.’

  Anna’s world continued to open, drifting free of its restraints. ‘But surely there’s no end to that? You could cast any spell with nothing but your mind?’

  Selene smiled. ‘It’s not your mind, Anna, and no, the possibilities, unfortunately for most witches, myself included, are limited. As a language, emotional is by far the most difficult. Why do you think I can only pour myself wine or light candles using it? I could never cast a love spell using emotions alone; the demands of it would be far too intense and complex. I fall back on my potions for that is the language which speaks to me and which I understand.’

  ‘My language is going to be one of the original languages,’ Effie declared. ‘Like the greatest witches.’

/>   ‘There are great witches in every language, Effie,’ Selene tempered.

  ‘The most powerful then.’

  ‘How will I find out which of the seven languages is mine?’ Anna asked, hoping she could master just one in her lifetime.

  ‘Seven? Anna, you’re limiting things again. I said there were seven original languages, not seven in total. Think of those seven as the main constellations in the sky, drawn and labelled. Now look up and tell me just how many more stars there are.’ Anna was overwhelmed again by the depth of the foreverness above her. ‘However many stars you see doesn’t come close to the number of languages there are.’

  ‘But there are potentially an infinite number of stars.’

  ‘Exactly. I’ve met people in my life who work magic through the patterns of willow bark, hand shadows on a wall, the sound of raindrops, computer circuit boards, through tracing the flight of birds across the sky. I knew a group once who cast spells through synchronized swimming, another through orgies …’

  ‘I met a guy who could only cast while skydiving. Apparently the act of falling was a powerful generator,’ Attis added.

  Anna’s head was swimming with stars.

  ‘Now where are your rules? Where are your categories?’ Selene’s voice was bitter and Anna sensed the words weren’t directed at her any more.

  Anna looked at the sky again. What if magic really could be like that – endless connections, endless possibilities. ‘I want to learn it all.’

  Selene’s smile faded. ‘You will, one day, you will. Right, I’m going to take myself to bed. All this talk of magic is exhausting. To be young and starry-eyed …’

  She left and Anna found it strange to be alone on the roof with Effie and Attis, as if she were somehow invading their space. They were complete without her, a whole already. I don’t belong. Effie snuggled into the crook of Attis’s arm and Anna yawned. ‘You know what. I think I’m going to go to bed too. Thanks for the dinner and the candles …’

  ‘Don’t thank us, you’re part of us now,’ said Effie.