Threadneedle

by Cari Thomas

  The words were coming up now, spilling out of her.

  ‘What do you mean, stick you with needles?’ Attis dropped to the ground next to her. ‘What does she do to you?’

  ‘Nothing permanent, don’t worry.’ She looked away from him.

  ‘What about your mother’s death?’ Effie asked eagerly. ‘At the Library, you said you wanted to learn more about your family. What do you want to know?’

  Anna took a deep breath, calming herself, wondering how to relate something she’d never related to anyone but herself. ‘Well, supposedly my father killed my mother because she found out he was having an affair. Aunt always says it was love and magic that truly killed her, led her on a path, as if my mother’s magic was somehow wrong, dangerous.’

  ‘Your psychopathic aunt would say that – she thinks all magic is dangerous,’ Effie spat.

  ‘But what if there’s something there? What if there’s more to my mother’s death she’s not telling me? What if there was something wrong with her magic and it’s the same thing that’s wrong with Aunt and … me? Is that why Aunt hates and fears magic so much? You’ve both seen the curse mark …’

  Attis paced away from them.

  ‘Curses can run in families,’ said Effie.

  ‘It’s extremely rare,’ said Attis, his voice strained with cynicism. ‘Anna, I know it’s not what you want to hear but it’s much more likely your dad was simply a murderer.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Anna replied, taken aback by his resistance. He was normally so open to all possibilities. It riled her up even more. ‘But I’ve spent my whole life accepting what I’ve been told. I’m tired of it. Isn’t it my right to finally question it? Why does Aunt tell me so little? Why is Selene so cagey? Why did neither of them tell me my parents died in the house I live in now? Why did my parents not tell anyone I existed? Why was my mother researching curses? Why did she go to a curse witch called Nana Yaganov?’

  Attis span round. ‘Who?’

  ‘The man in the Library said he knew my mother, that she’d gone there searching for something and that she’d found this woman, Nana Yaganov. So I’m going to find her.’

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘A crazy man in the Library claims he knew your mother and then gives the name of a potentially crazier old bat. None of that makes any sense.’

  ‘Nothing about this year makes sense, but maybe I have to follow the patterns.’

  ‘You’re chasing shadows that aren’t there.’

  ‘It sounds suspicious to me,’ said Effie.

  ‘Everything sounds suspicious to you,’ Attis retorted.

  Anna dried her tears in the wind. ‘I just feel like, even if there’s nothing sinister there at all, if I can understand what happened, who my mother was, then it’ll give me the strength to become a Binder, or … to find a way out.’ I have to find a way out.

  ‘I’ll find this Nana,’ said Effie, fired up. ‘I know a lot of witches; I’m sure someone will have heard of her. You’re not becoming a Binder. Your aunt will have to go through me first.’

  Anna smiled briefly. She looked at Attis but he had stalked away to the edge of the roof. Effie rolled her eyes. ‘Attis, go and get us a drink. Something strong.’

  He nodded and disappeared down the stairs into the house.

  Effie’s mouth curved. ‘I knew there was a lot more to you than meets the eye, Anna Everdell.’

  Anna didn’t know how to respond to that. ‘Well, you know, it could be nothing, but I can’t ignore the curse mark any more.’

  Effie caught some more snow in her hand. ‘Ignore Attis. He just needs time. He has this thing about protecting people. He’s probably just annoyed that he didn’t see it sooner – how frightened you are of your aunt. I saw it the first time we met, but, Mother Holle, I didn’t know how bad it was or what she’s planning to do to you. You can’t let her—’

  ‘It’s not that easy,’ Anna interrupted.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘No. She’s not like Selene. You can’t just get your way with someone like my aunt.’

  ‘You think I get my way?’ said Effie, irritated. ‘You don’t get your way with Selene; she just makes it feel like you do.’

  ‘But Aunt took me in, raised me, I can’t just—’

  ‘You’re in so fucking deep you can’t see how deeply fucked it is.’

  They sat breathing heavily, cradling their own hurts.

  ‘Look. Let’s just start with Nana and go from there. I’m not giving up on you yet,’ said Effie forcefully.

  Anna nodded, glad of Effie’s strength. She would need it. ‘But can we just keep it to ourselves for now? Don’t tell the others.’

  ‘Your secrets are safe with me.’ Effie twisted an imaginary key to her lips as the sound of Attis’s footsteps came back up the stairway.

  He put their drinks down on the table. Effie picked hers up and swallowed most of it in one go. ‘Thanks,’ Anna said to him, taking a sip.

  ‘Come out with us now,’ said Effie, jumping to her feet. ‘It’ll cheer you up. I promise.’

  ‘Ah. I don’t think so – I’m going to head to bed.’

  Effie looked as if she would argue but then nodded with something like understanding. ‘Come on then, Attis. Let the snow take us!’

  They wound back into the warmth of the house. Anna went to the spare room and listened to them leaving, unsure if divulging her secrets had made her feel better or not. As soon as her head touched the pillow she fell asleep. She dreamt of snow – her and Effie catching snowflakes, all of them beautiful and identical, Attis reaching inside his heart and pulling out a shard of glass, Effie eating it, blood running down her chin, then the snowflakes growing darker, a flurry of black spots which Anna realized were flies – clouds of flies, like static, forming patterns, seven circles …

  Anna woke, thrashing around the bed. It was four in the morning. She crept into the hallway making her way towards the bathroom.

  Noises stopped her. Giggling, insistent giggling, and then heavy breathing, knocking – something falling – a moan of pleasure. Anna rushed into the bathroom and shut the door. Had the noise been coming from Effie’s room? Was Attis in there? Or had it been upstairs? Selene and her fawn?

  She quietly poured herself some water and sat on the edge of the bath trying not to imagine Effie and Attis together. It was hard not to; they were already moulded to one another – two halves of one whole. I don’t belong to either of them.

  Anna woke early. She pulled up the blinds and saw that snow had settled across the roofs and dusted itself across the roads; the trees clutched at it as if they too had been hands reaching for snowflakes all night. Someone was battling with a half-frozen car windscreen.

  Effie’s door was shut and there was no sign of Attis. She checked his forge but it was empty, the ash of the fire still twinkling with old heat. She could smell him in the smoke. She walked to his shelf – to the jar of keys – but the white key was not in it any more.

  When she got back home the house was cold and empty. She sat down with a cup of tea and looked out across their ordered garden. Anna wondered if Aunt had left her somehow incomplete, like one of her plants, snipped and sheared into submission, moulded into a shape of her choosing – growing more inward than outward, the secrets between them buried under thirty feet of snow. Aunt would ask her about her evening and Anna would lie, as always. She’d become adept at filtering the truth of her visits. She would not mention the drinking, or Selene in the bath with a man, or catching snowflakes on the roof, and she was careful never to mention Attis at all.

  Restless, she threw her coat back on and headed for Cressey Square garden. It was a fairy tale today, ringed by a frozen iron fence, snow wreathing the bare hedges and bracken of the flower beds, the air frosted and fresh compared to the sterility of the house. Anna made her way down the path to her usual spot, past the water fountain turned off for winter to the small patch of trees at the end. She put her coat down on the ground and sat beneath the old oak tree. D
espite the cold, she could somehow feel the warmth inside of it: life trickling deep within its thick and sturdy trunk.

  She picked up the bones of a leaf from the floor, remembering her spell the night before. It had been a small spell, small as a snowflake. It felt so right. She took two red cords from her pocket and tied them together with a loop in the middle: the Ankh Knot, Life Knot.

  She focused on the leaf and envisioned it bursting back to life – uncurling, growing strong, reclaiming its brightness. The knot in her hand quivered with sudden, unknown energy. She pulled it free, feeling a release. Anna gasped. The leaf was whole again: green and fresh as a summer’s day. She held it up like a trophy – it blazed green against the green leaves behind.

  Anna turned slowly around. The entire oak tree above her was green. The floor beneath her feet was swathed in grass. She spun around to find the other trees of the garden swaying green in the breeze, the bushes cloaked with leaf, the flower beds an eruption of colour. The water fountain had sprung to life. The entire garden was in the throes of summer. A bird began to sing above her.

  Beyond the fence it was winter still. The contrast could not have been more stark, or noticeable. Her magic was plain for all to see.

  The neighbours! And Aunt! She’s due home any minute …

  Hands shaking, Anna formed a Choke Knot. She tightened it, trying to constrict the magic she’d released, but the tree remained stubbornly tree-like. Please!

  She sank to the floor, chanting, tying, pleading to the Goddess of the Dark Moon and every other kind of moon. She couldn’t have said how many minutes of terror had passed when, to her sudden, unbearable relief, the leaves began to fall …

  She pulled the knot tighter and the garden slowly died around her: rotting, freezing, the snow beginning to fall over it once more, covering the scene of her crime.

  Thank you. Oh thank you, Goddess.

  She scanned the neighbourhood – all was quiet – and then she made for the house, unable to shake off the cold or the fear of what she had just done. As she approached, a movement caught her eye in their own house. The curtain of the top-floor window. The room on the third floor. Anna stopped in her tracks and stared up at it. Had the curtain moved? But all was perfectly still, the room dark as always. Just a trick of the light – or I’ve finally cracked.

  Still, Anna found herself hurrying inside, to the safety of the house that was no safety at all.

  WHISPERS

  The control of another’s will should only ever be utilized for their own good. We are here to guide and to mould, to bring out the greatest potential in every Unbound.

  Binders’ Magic, The Book of the Binders

  As the week progressed Darcey and the others were forced to turn their attention from harassing people to some small but strange rumours wiggling their way into the school’s consciousness.

  Darcey’s been spending a lot of late nights at school with Headmaster Connaughty …

  I heard Olivia had that chin reduction over the summer so she’d look more like Darcey …

  Did you see the way Corinne looked at Katy yesterday when she was late for yoga class? I thought she was going to strangle her …

  And that was how it began. Innocuous little comments appearing out of nothing. Whispers stirred. Phones vibrated. Darcey laughed them off, as if she were merely batting a fly away, but they quickly returned, until the whole school was buzzing.

  Did you hear? Darcey was in Connaughty’s office for over an hour today …

  People laughed at them disbelievingly and yet, the next day, they found themselves repeating what they’d heard, exaggerating, beginning to believe it themselves. Anna could sense the rumours as she walked through the corridors of the school, as if they were threaded into the air, forming faint suggestions on the tip of her tongue, waiting for release.

  When the coven met that week they couldn’t contain their delight.

  ‘You’re welcome, you’re welcome.’ Effie bowed to the row of mannequins.

  ‘Read this one, read this one. It’s too good.’ Rowan shoved her phone under Manda’s nose.

  Manda put a hand over her mouth, giggling at whatever she’d read. ‘Darcey looked so mad in class today. I’ve never seen her like it; she was snapping at everyone,’ she said.

  ‘I haven’t spotted anyone taking a picture of me for days,’ said Rowan. ‘Everyone is too busy whispering about Darcey, Olivia and Corinne. Their reign is coming to an end!’

  Effie laughed. ‘Step up Queens of the Dark Moon.’

  They spent the coven session reading all the rumours they could find, laughing until they cried. It felt good – it felt so good to watch Darcey fall into the web of her own making. When the session was over, Anna hung back, waiting for a moment alone with Effie and Attis.

  She tried to sound casual. ‘Anyone find anything about Nana?’

  Attis breathed out, nose flaring, eyes sparking. ‘I told you that line of enquiry was pointless.’

  ‘I know. I didn’t listen.’

  ‘Well, I’ve heard some things, but nothing solid yet,’ said Effie. ‘There are rumours about a crazy homeless witch in London who goes by the name of Nana. One guy said she was the oldest witch in the country, descended from a line of ancient Russian casters. Another swore she was from New Orleans. No one knew how or where to find her though.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Anna, trying to hide the disappointment in her voice.

  ‘I can ask Selene?’

  ‘OK, but maybe don’t tell her why you’re asking. I don’t think she’d be happy with me looking into my mother’s death like this.’

  ‘Of course she wouldn’t be happy,’ said Attis. ‘This woman claims to be a curse witch. She’s probably more deranged than Effie.’

  ‘All the more reason to find her,’ Effie responded.

  They walked back through the school, Anna relating the incident with the snow and the garden and her panic as it had bloomed. She made light of it, hoping the story might soften Attis, but he did not smile or say goodbye when they parted ways. Anna sat on the train and grew more angry at him.

  The following week the rumours continued to spread at an alarming rate. Darcey was not taking it well. She was angry, lashing out. Anna had heard that Corinne and Darcey had had a falling-out and now they weren’t speaking.

  I saw Connaughty put his hand on her knee under the table during the council meeting …

  She’ll do anything to make sure she gets a good reference for Cambridge …

  She likes her men with lots of meat on them …

  When Anna met the others for lunch in the common room, the whispering had taken on a life of its own, voracious and buzzing. She watched as a fly landed on a girl’s face and crawled towards her lips. She moved and it flew off to join others clamouring at the window.

  ‘Speak of the devils,’ said Effie, pointing openly at Darcey and Olivia, who had just entered.

  Darcey held her head high, striding into the centre as if to dare anyone who would talk about her, and yet there was a slight tremor in her eyes – the look of a hunter realizing they have become the hunted. The whispers quietened but did not stop.

  ‘Disappear,’ said Darcey to a group of girls leaning against one of the high tables. They scattered and Darcey took their place. She clicked her fingers at Lydia to come and sit with them. Darcey began a conversation as if she hadn’t a care in the world. When Peter entered she called him over and pawed at him, playing with his hair, his ears, until he looked mildly irritated and left.

  Only when Darcey was leaving did she look their way, trailing past their table.

  ‘Pudding, Beast, was that wise? A moment on the lips, a lifetime on your fat arse.’

  ‘You wish you had my arse, Darcey,’ Rowan replied, relishing another bite.

  Darcey’s eyes narrowed imperceptibly. A fly landed on her smoothie cup and crawled onto her finger; she shook her hand free of it. It returned. She flapped her hand again, growing more irritated. It clung to her fi
nger. ‘Ugh, trust your table to attract the flies.’ She tried to brush it off and it flew into the air and then landed on her hand again. She made an irritated noise, slapping the fly and crushing its body into her skin. She brushed the debris off and looked between them with suspicion – a suspicion she obviously didn’t know how to pin down or put into words, but was there nonetheless.

  ‘Let’s get out of here, Olivia, it’s disgusting.’

  Olivia linked arms with her and they flounced out.

  ‘She knows it’s us.’ Manda was reeling. ‘She knows.’

  ‘So?’ said Effie. ‘She’s going to be so busy fighting fires she’s not going to have time to light any new ones. We’ve got her now and the school is ours for the taking.’

  Manda giggled slightly hysterically. ‘She can’t do shit any more.’

  ‘Manda, did you just say shit?’ Rowan laughed.

  ‘Lydia,’ Effie called. ‘Yoo-hoo, over here.’ Lydia looked around and hesitated. She knew talking to Effie would be crossing enemy lines, and yet Effie had her own form of influence. She walked towards their table.

  ‘Come sit with us. Did you hear this thing everyone’s been saying about Darcey and Connaughty?’ Effie made a shocked face and then leant in conspiratorially. ‘Do you think there’s anything in it?’

  Lydia hardly needed any encouragement; she began to betray Darcey at once, spilling all the gossip she’d heard.

  After lunch Anna went to the music room to play. She’d barely sat down when a song began to free itself from her fingers. It opened low and foreboding, followed by a series of high notes chasing one another, up and down. She wasn’t sure where the music was coming from, her or the piano: it felt as though they were playing each other.

  After several minutes she became aware of a shadow in the doorway. The notes jarred to a halt. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Attis closed the door behind him. ‘I have just as much right to be in this room as you. Perhaps I want to practise myself.’