Threadneedle

by Cari Thomas

  ‘Why?’ said Rowan.

  ‘We need the rumours to travel everywhere and most of the gossip in this hellhole of a school lives inside them.’

  Attis began shaking salt out around the perimeter of their circle, then back into the centre forming a pentagram shape. Once he’d finished, Effie stepped forward. They turned to look at her. Her eyes flashed in the light and she held up her hands.

  ‘Energies joined, joined we stand,

  May none enter our ring of hands.

  Between the worlds we now roam,

  Take us there and safely home.

  As above so below, as within so without,

  Weave our circle without doubt!’

  Anna imagined a circle surrounding them, powerful and protective. They repeated the words until she didn’t have to visualize it any more, she could feel it, solid and whole, cutting them off from the world beyond, placing them somewhere else that could have been anywhere else: a dark forest, a high mountain, a wasteland.

  Effie looked at Manda and she stepped forward, nervously. ‘I call to the watchtowers of the North, to the element of Earth. Bring forth your justice which is strong and sure.’

  Rowan stepped forward. ‘I call to the watchtowers of the East, to the element of Air. Bring forth your justice which is cunning and true.’

  Effie’s turn. ‘I call to the watchtowers of the South, to the element of Fire. Bring forth your justice which is force and fury.’

  The words came out of Anna without her needing to try, as if they had been waiting for her to find them. ‘I call to the watchtowers of the West, to the element of Water. Bring forth your justice which is passionate and pure.’

  They spoke together. ‘By pentacle, wand, blade and chalice, charge our spell with nature’s justice.’

  Effie opened the jar of flies; they flew out but remained in the centre, chasing each other in circles, buzzing madly. Effie placed the pieces of paper on which she’d written the rumours inside the container.

  ‘Curdle and coil, serpents of spite,

  How you hiss and rattle, with tongues that bite.

  Gossip and spoil, rumour fly and infest –

  Swallow them whole at our behest.’

  As their chant grew the flies began to buzz with a demented energy. Anna felt the same energy coursing through her. It was different to magic she’d experienced before, which had come almost by accident, gentle and tentative, dream-like. This magic was certain, forceful – within her and beyond her. It was the elements; the whirr of flies; the dark rumours and the darker words – the threads binding tightly together into a web that quivered and shook with dark delight. Their voices rose. Anna felt torn between exhilaration and panic – the feeling you get standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down.

  ‘Gossip and spoil, rumour fly and infest –

  Swallow them whole at our behest!’

  The power of the spell expanded, threatening to pull them apart – they held tight, raised it up into the air, flies reaching the ceiling like a storm cloud. Effie laughing. Candles sputtering. The sewing machine on the altar bursting to life, needle chattering: Ticker. Ticker. Ticker! Anna felt as if her head would explode, as if water were filling it, as if it were buzzing with flies. They called out the words – louder, louder, louder – and then, suddenly, the flies were released, flying away, disappearing.

  ‘By pentacle, wand, blade and chalice, elements be released. As below so above, as without, so within. Close our circle but leave it spin.’

  The candles went out and they were plunged into darkness. Anna felt herself returning from wherever she’d been, her head flying in different directions. She’d never experienced magic so intense before. Effie stepped into the centre and sealed the jar of rumours with relish and placed the empty cups on the altar.

  ‘That was good. We can do better, of course, but that was good.’ Her eyes were wide, otherworldly, still high on magic.

  Rowan dropped to the floor. ‘I’m exhausted.’

  Manda slumped down next to her. ‘I didn’t even feel like myself for a while there, it was … intense.’

  Attis entered their circle with a smile. ‘It was. I was terrified.’

  Effie put her arms round him. ‘I told you, didn’t I? I told you this would work.’

  ‘I never doubted you, as I never do.’

  ‘I’m always right.’

  ‘I bow to Queen Effie.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Rowan who had just picked up her phone from the floor.

  ‘What?’ Effie turned to her.

  ‘Er …’ Rowan turned her phone around to face them.

  The screen was glitching – static – no, not quite – a pattern was beginning to form through the noise. Circles. Seven circles. Anna’s heart lurched.

  Slowly, they all turned to look at her.

  ‘It might not be seven circles.’ Rowan squinted at it. ‘It’s hard to make out – could be six. Could be, er, eight.’

  Manda and Effie picked up their phones to investigate and turned the screens round – they were filled with seven circles too. Anna didn’t know what to say.

  ‘I hope it’s not broken,’ said Manda with a touch of accusation.

  ‘Point is,’ said Attis, ‘the spell worked. Job done. Let’s go.’

  ‘We need to keep an eye on this,’ said Effie, drawing their attention back to the static.

  ‘I don’t know why …’ said Anna. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ Attis repeated.

  They cleared up and gathered their things. Their phones went back to normal after restarting them, but the pattern of the seven circles was not so easy to erase from Anna’s mind. Cursed. A dark explosion of the heart.

  She left last and, before turning the lights off, looked around the room – along its windows, into its corners. There were no flies. Where have they gone?

  FEAR

  Thirteen Years Old

  Anna pushed against the cupboard door. It was locked.

  It wasn’t completely dark inside; more like twilight, when the sun has just sunk below the horizon and the world is not so sure of itself. She knew the cupboard well. She was in and out of it several times a week for cleaning appliances, but it was different now – its familiar outlines morphing in the darkness, shadows appearing. She tightened the knot in her cord.

  She pushed on the door again. Still locked. Her heart jumped and the darkness of the room was constricting. She couldn’t see so much now – only faint silhouettes – as she pulled the knot harder, but the panic was making her fingers shake. She tried to look at the dark space behind her: Empty. She spun back around: More emptiness.

  The fear opened up like a dark hole in which anything might live. It had no edges to it, nothing to hold onto.

  Anna began to beat against the door madly, shrieks erupting from her. ‘Let me out! Please let me out! Aunt! Aunt! Oh please!’ She dragged her fingernails down it.

  The cupboard was now a darkness that she could not comprehend. The kind of darkness that was alive, with claws and fangs and a gaping mouth. A deep nothingness, threatening to swallow her forever. Anna had dropped the Knotted Cord and could not move to find it. There was an awful sound, strangled by darkness – she realized it was her own moaning.

  The door opened and light flooded back in. She gasped at it as though desperately thirsty, crawling out on hands and knees.

  ‘Pull yourself together,’ said Aunt.

  Anna looked back at the cupboard and saw that it was nothing out of the ordinary at all.

  ‘The more you fear the darker it grows. This should be easy; fear is not a complex emotion. Like darkness is the absence of light, fear is the absence of reason. You merely need to learn how to switch it off.’

  But Anna had not felt fear to be like that. Like darkness it had no beginning and no end – it was a circle that surrounded you. It knew exactly what it wanted with the precision of a needle.

  SNOWFLAKES

  Emotions must not be engag
ed nor understood, only recognized and silenced.

  Binders’ Training, The Book of the Binders

  Anna went back with Effie and Attis to the house. All was quiet; Chinese takeaway half-eaten on the table alongside a bottle of wine.

  ‘I see Selene’s already had a feast to herself. How nice,’ Effie huffed, shovelling a leftover spoonful into her mouth.

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ said Anna, heading upstairs. It was time. She had to speak to Selene about the curse mark. Selene had always been such an advocate of her magic and she didn’t want to disappoint her, but she knew no one else could help and she couldn’t ignore it any longer. The static of the phone screens crackled in her mind. Something was wrong with her magic – her family’s magic – and whatever it was might contain the truth about her mother’s death.

  ‘Selene?’ The bathroom door was ajar again, steam escaping, anointed with deep herbal scents. Anna smiled and pushed the door open. ‘I was just hoping to – oh—’

  Selene was not alone. Another head rose from the water next to her. A young and pretty head.

  Selene laughed and lay back in the water. ‘Anna, would you like to meet my new bath toy?’

  The man nodded, mildly embarrassed. ‘Henry. Good to meet you.’

  ‘Er—’ Anna panicked but, halfway out of the door, not wanting to be rude, she stopped. ‘Anna. Good to meet you. I’m, right, well, have fun …’ She pulled the door shut and could hear them laughing behind it.

  She trudged up to the roof. Attis and Effie were lying in deck chairs, the sky was piled high with clouds, full of wintry promise. It was a fiercely cold February night and even Attis’s fire failed to warm up the surrounding air. Anna settled onto the sun lounger next to them.

  ‘Speak to Selene?’ Effie asked.

  ‘She was occupied.’

  ‘Has a new man, does she? What’s the spec, old and gentlemanly? Middle-aged and married? Young and fawn-like?’

  ‘A young fawn in the bath with her.’

  ‘That’s my mother. Never there for you when you really need her.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Anna tried to hide her disappointment. ‘Maybe we should go in? It’s freezing.’

  ‘Nonsense, it’s beautiful. It smells like snow,’ said Effie.

  ‘Anna’s right,’ said Attis. ‘You’re both shivering and I can’t make the fire any hotter than it already is without it melting the container.’

  ‘Warm me then,’ said Effie, reclining yet further. ‘Anna, Attis has this magical trick of warming you—’

  ‘I’ve shown her before,’ said Attis.

  ‘Oh. When?’

  ‘At the house party.’

  ‘It was when I was outside, after Peter left me,’ said Anna quickly.

  ‘Well, do it again,’ said Effie with a frozen smile.

  ‘What?’ Attis asked, confused now.

  ‘Warm Anna again.’

  ‘I thought you wanted to be warmed.’

  ‘Guests first.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Anna, stilling her shivering with effort.

  Effie ignored her. ‘Warm her.’

  Attis wandered over to Anna’s chair and sat down on the edge. Anna felt trapped between them.

  ‘You have to take your jumper off,’ Effie instructed. ‘For him to get to your skin.’

  ‘He can just do it on my hand,’ Anna protested.

  ‘Take your jumper off,’ Effie insisted, clearly in her most obstinate sort of mood. The grey sky pressed overhead. Anna yanked her jumper and long-sleeved shirt off – she was wearing a vest top underneath. She put her arms around herself, unable to stop the shivering now.

  ‘Come here,’ said Attis, eyebrows meeting. Anna moved down the sun lounger towards him and presented her arm. Attis took it, his hand so warm against the cold air it felt as if it were burning her. With the other he drew a concise pattern on her arm and she felt the warmth of it spread like a ripple across and down her body. She stopped shaking almost immediately.

  ‘Better?’ he said.

  Anna nodded, fingers brushing against the spot where he’d touched her. She reached for her jumper and shirt and pulled them back on, crossing her arms around her knees.

  ‘Isn’t he wonderful?’ said Effie. ‘Come, Attis, warm me all over.’

  She pulled up her top revealingly. He shook his head and then sat down beside her and drew a mark on her goose-pimpled skin.

  ‘Works every time,’ said Effie. ‘Now you can keep me warm the old-fashioned way.’ She shuffled forwards so there was room on the chair behind her. Attis sat down behind and wrapped his arms around her. Anna could still feel the warmth he had generated circulating around her body, as if his arms were around her too.

  They sat that way for a while until Effie jumped up suddenly. ‘It’s snowing,’ she announced, delighted as a child. ‘Hail to Mother Holle, I love snow!’

  Anna looked up and saw the flakes falling, as if the sky had grown so heavy it had shattered. Effie spun round, grabbing at them. The only time Anna ever saw her this excited was when she was doing magic. The snow suited her, settling on her black hair like fallen stars; her cheeks were turning pink. She’d never looked so young.

  ‘Come, Anna, come,’ said Effie, pulling her up. They tilted their heads back to the snow, laughing. It felt as if it was reaching them first and the rest of London after. Attis lay back on the sun lounger, watching them.

  ‘Check this out.’ Effie caught a snowflake on the tip of her finger. ‘It’s beautiful, right?’ Its intricacy seemed almost impossible, a pattern of six little trees joined together – a tiny forest of ice.

  ‘How’s it not melting?’ said Anna, entranced.

  ‘Magic. You try.’

  ‘I haven’t really nailed the magic with my mind thing yet.’

  ‘This is as easy as it gets. Just hold out your hand and believe the snowflake won’t melt. Feel it.’

  Anna put out her hand, finding it easy to sink into magic under the open night’s sky in a snowstorm. She felt her thoughts shift from the logical world to some other hazy place. My Hira is needle and thread. She drew the strands together – the night and the snow, her palm a frozen landscape, but the snowflakes continued to melt. Feel something …

  She looked at the sky and felt a yearning, a yearning for something of beauty in her life and the sadness that came with it. She pulled at the strands of feeling and wove them into the spell. She couldn’t have said how much time passed amidst the gentle ticking of snowflakes before one landed on her palm and remained – a pattern of everything she’d felt.

  ‘I’m doing it!’ she squealed.

  Effie caught her own snowflake and they held their fingers together, excitement jumping between their eyes. Effie peered more closely. ‘They’re identical …’

  Anna studied them. It was true. The snowflakes on their fingertips were a mirror of one another – every ridge, curl and frond.

  ‘Impossible,’ said Attis. ‘There are over a trillion water molecules in a single snowflake, meaning there are almost an infinite number of potential arrangements.’

  ‘Well, smart-ass, get up out of your chair and look,’ Effie rebuked him.

  Attis jumped up and walked over. He scrutinized the snowflakes but Anna found her magic couldn’t fight the heat radiating off him and her flake melted.

  ‘See,’ said Effie, letting hers melt too.

  ‘They were very similar,’ he conceded.

  ‘Men are infuriating, never willing to believe what they deem impossible even when it’s in front of their eyes.’

  ‘You’re right.’ Attis nodded. ‘I just hate science.’

  ‘Whatever. Let’s go out,’ Effie pleaded. ‘I know a club in London that reflects the weather outside. We can dance in the snow.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Anna, wanting nothing more. ‘If Aunt found out …’

  ‘She’d what? Lock you in your bedroom for a few days? Trust me, it’ll be worth it.’

  ‘She’d do a lot worse than
that.’ The words slipped out. Anna had been careful to reveal as little as possible about her life with Aunt.

  ‘What do you mean? What would she do?’ said Attis, rounding on her.

  Anna laughed lightly. ‘Well, I might never be let out for one thing.’

  Effie moved closer, studying her face. ‘Does she hurt you?’

  Anna wasn’t sure if it was the snow or the way they were looking at her, or the fact she was desperate to talk to someone, but something made her sit down on the sun lounger and put her head in her hands. She tried to hide her tears.

  ‘Anna.’ Effie sat down beside her. ‘You have to tell us.’

  Anna pulled at the Knotted Cord in her pocket. ‘She does have her little punishments … but it’s not the physical stuff. How do you say no to your own mother when they’ve planned their whole lives around you?’

  ‘She’s not your mother,’ said Attis sharply.

  ‘She’s as close as I’ve got. She has my whole future mapped out. She pretends to give me choices but I don’t see I truly have any. I know she’s going to make me become a Binder.’ As she said it she was sure of it. Aunt had never given her a choice before – why start now?

  ‘What’s a Binder?’ said Effie.

  ‘Selene never mentioned them?’ said Anna, surprised.

  Effie shook her head.

  ‘They’re a grove my aunt belongs to. They don’t agree with magic – believe it will bring the downfall of all witches. When you become one, your magic is bound.’

  ‘What the fuck?’ Effie cried. ‘That’s insane. Wait there, I’ve seen your aunt cast …’

  ‘The Senior Binders have their magic released. They believe they need it, in the name of duty.’

  ‘How convenient for them,’ Effie snapped. ‘They sound like maniacs. You can’t join them, Anna. It’s madness to remove your magic.’

  ‘Is it? I don’t know. Aunt can lock my mouth shut, stick me with needles like a pincushion, and I can deal with it, but she has other ways of convincing me she’s right, that there’s only one way. My mother’s death …’