by Holly Hook
Table of Contents
Thread and Spool (BOOK #1)
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
The Abnormals Underground Series
The Flamestone Trilogy
The Barren Trilogy
The Timeless Trilogy
The Twisted Fairy Tale Box Set
Books 1-7
By Holly Hook
Copyright 2017 by Holly Hook
Contains
Thread and Spool (Book 1)
Wolves and Paths (Book 2)
Frogs and Princes (Book 3)
Towers and Braids (Book 4)
Poison and Mirrors (Book 5)
Swans and Silence (Book 6)
Glass and Death (Book 7)
Chapter One
I ruined my life with macramé.
Yes. Macramé.
Someone else might have managed to go skydiving and break their neck. Another unfortunate would have ended up in Burger Planet or Uncle Crap's Coney Island for rest of their lives. Not me. I had to manage a world first.
I was in the fourth grade at the time, and it was Super Enrichment day at my school. We all assembled in the gym, and I held hands with my best friend, Hannah.
"Electro dance looks like fun!" she squealed. "You should come and do that, Brie!" She pointed to where a guy in a blue cape and black mask stood next to a boombox. Other kids were lining up, ready to copy dance moves.
"I don't think I can dance," I shout over the other kids. I was clumsy. As clumsy as a drunken bear, Dad would always say (while holding a beer, by the way.)
"Sure, you can! I'll show you. I take ballet every weekend, and it's awesome. You should take ballet, too."
"I don't like dance," I said. Or tutus. Or the color pink, for that matter. I couldn’t imagine myself in that, then or now. "I like art. I'm going to do that. I'll show you something cool when I get done.”
I eyed the table on the side of the gym, covered in clay, paints, and pastels. Some of the colors had already managed to splatter on the floor.
Oh, if only I had taken dance.
I left Hannah and wove my way over to the end of the table. Colored wool cords sat there that no one else had touched. I hadn't tried that yet. I'd done some clay molding before in the first grade along with lots of finger painting. This project was new. Some kids were already weaving them into patterns. The boombox started blaring out music and Hannah waved me over. I waved back but didn't grant her wish. I should have.
She frowned, turned away and began making moves along with the music. I could never understand how that was entertaining.
A woman in a purple cape and another black mask walked up to me. She smiled at me as I crammed in beside the other kids. She handed me several cords of thick wool, red and yellow and blue and green.
She smiled. "Let me show you how to—“
But I got to work before she could finish, weaving the cords around each other. My hands tingled. They felt warm like something had ignited inside of them. It wasn't a bad feeling— cool. My fingers worked on their own, intertwining the colorful cords and forming a long rainbow braid that would make any My Little Pony proud. I turned my creation around, not sure what I was doing, but a large square of knots began to form in front of me. A wing. I was making a butterfly. I couldn’t believe this.
The caped woman stood by, mouth falling open as I worked. The tingling in my hands grew stronger, almost painful as I finished the second wing. People gathered around to watch me. Someone asked me how I was doing that. I did the final knot and did the worst possible thing I could have done at that moment.
I held up my creation above my head, trying to hold it over the gathering students.
I shouted, "Hey, Hannah!" as loud as I could.
A flash of golden light burst to life around my hands and my project. A couple of girls screamed next to me, my heart leaped, and the light faded.
My project sagged in my grip, and I had to strain to keep its weight from hitting me in the head. My butterfly had gained about twenty pounds in my grasp. I struggled not to drop it but brought it down towards my chest, arms quaking.
And my butterfly was golden.
Not just yellow-golden, but shiny, metal golden.
Every thread. Every knot and every weave had changed. The thick wings even stood on end as if my butterfly perched on a flower. This stuff looked like something I’d see in a jewelry store for kings.
"Huh?" I asked and looked up, hoping the woman in the cape had an answer. But her jaw was about to detach and land on the floor.
The man with the blue cape turned off the boombox.
You could have heard a bug fart in that silence.
Mr. Connor, my teacher, stepped closer and squinted at my project. "Where did you get this?" he asked.
"I don't know," I said. I lifted the project with all my might. It didn’t feel like cloth anymore. It was metal now. Solid metal.
Solid gold.
"Let me see that."
I handed it to him. Maybe if I let this go, everyone would stop staring at me.
Mr. Connor studied it closer. My project shined in the light, and he pressed on the wings, trying to make them bend. They only gave a little. I didn't understand.
"I don't know how I did it," I said. "I was weaving, and then there was this flash of light, and it turned into this. It must be a trick someone played on me. It’s a good one.”
He took off his glasses and squinted at the weave. "I could retire with this," he said. "Brie, this looks like solid gold. I've collected enough coins to know. Where did you get this?" The suspicion in his voice made a lump form in my throat. Did he think I stole this?
The gym went into an uproar, and everyone closed in on me. Hannah tried to push through the crowd, but it was no use. It had thickened even more than the time our teacher went to the bathroom and left the answer key to our fraction problems open.
"Can you make one of those for me?"
"How did you do that? I saw it. That was cool!"
"Make me one!"
"Give me one of those!"
"I want a butterfly. Make me a gold butterfly!"
Hands reached out. Grasping. Greedy. I needed an escape. Any escape.
I pushed through a small opening the crowd behind me and bolted. Hannah yelled my name and kids lapped at my heels, but I cut out of the gym and down the hall towards the playground. My heart raced. I had gotten trapped in a dream. Things like this could never be real. Did I turn a bunch of cords into gold?
The playground lady, Mrs. Vetch, wasn't there to yell "Walk!" as I pushed the door open and raced out into the rain. The door closed behind me, cutting out the shouts from the gym and the whistle. I searched around for a place to hide. Anything. I spotted the Dumpster by the side of the school with the side door ajar. A smashed McDonald's bag sat next to it along with some stuff that might be puke, but it beat the horror inside.
I climbed into the Dumpster.
Then I closed the door.
Gagged on the stench.
I held my breath and waved a fly off me as the rain pummeled the lid.
The school door opened with its familiar squeak. "Brie!" Mrs. Smith, the teacher I had last year, called. "Come back in here! You have some explaining to do."
I didn't dare even to cough.
"Are you out here?" she asked. "Where did you go?"
I waited and waited until I heard the school door squeak open agai
n and shut. I slid open the door to the Dumpster. All clear.
I ran home. It wasn't far, and I got soaked on the way. Mom and Dad would yell at me for leaving my umbrella. My homework. For running out of school early, even though there was no work left for the rest of the day. But when I climbed our crumbling concrete steps and opened the door, I ran right into my mother, still dressed in her waitress apron.
She'd gotten home from work early. The school had just called her to get me. It was the last thing I needed.
Dread filled my stomach, and I held the tears back.
"Brie!" she shouted, taking my arm. "Get in here. We're going to have a little talk."
She dragged me back into the house, and I felt like running once more. I wanted to be back in that Dumpster. I had screwed up again. Last week, I'd left my laundry on the floor. The week before, I'd forgotten to twist the lid on the orange juice all the way and it dripped all over the inside of the fridge. The week before that, I had dropped the newspaper in the gap between the house and the stairs, and Mom made sure to remind me of my idiot move for the rest of the day.
No matter how hard I tried, I was a rotten kid.
I always wondered why they'd chosen to adopt me. I'd overheard Mom telling one of her friends one night that I was useful for tax breaks, whatever those were. Otherwise, I was annoying.
And now I'd done the worst thing ever.
She made me sit on the couch. I hated that couch. It was always where I got sentenced.
"Tell me exactly why you decided to run out of school today." She waited. "Tell!”
I swallowed. My lunch burned the back of my throat. I had ruined my life in the space of fifteen minutes.
And then I managed to make it even worse.
I decided I had to do the right thing for once. I told my mother the truth.
And she laughed, doubling over and grabbing the end table. "You should be a writer, Brie. It's about time you get to be good at something."
I clenched my fists and my face flushed with hate. "Get me some yarn, and I'll show you."
My mother still laughed. She left the room and returned, tossing a ball of multicolored yarn at me. She slapped a crochet hook down on the coffee table. I was the joke of the day. Maybe that was better than a rotten kid. "Spin me some gold, sweetheart," she said. "Perhaps you can kiss a frog and get me a prince while you're at it."
"Fine!" I seized the supplies. I had never used either of these before. I forced the tears back. I was going to look stupid all over again.
My hands tingled.
Warmed.
Maybe I wasn't.
And I began to hook the yarn through the needle as the heat grew across my palms. A row of woven fabric appeared before me, blending every color of the rainbow in soft tones. Another row, and another. A strange calm washed over me as Mom watched, trying to hold back a laugh. I turned my square creation over and added another layer on top of that, thickening it into a kitchen potholder. What was I doing? I'd never done this before, and I was making something like a pro.
"Done," I said, holding up the potholder.
The flash of golden light made my mother scream. The heaviness returned to my grip, and I blinked, finding a shiny square of woven wealth in my hands, along with the crochet needle forever stuck through it.
My mother reached out, paling and unbelieving. Her eyes lit with wonder, and she reached out. "Sweetie, how did you do this?"
"I don't know," I said as she took my creation. "I don't know. I've never done it before."
The wonder morphed into something I'll never forget. Hunger.
And then, greed.
Mom hugged me. For the first time, she hugged me.
"I'm not in trouble?" I asked. I hugged her back, a sense of dread creeping under my stomach.
"No, sweetie. Of course not! You've made me very, very happy today. How about we move to a new house, a big one where we can have anything we want?"
She released me, and too late I realized I had made the biggest mistake of my life.
Chapter Two
Seven Years Later
I lifted my paintbrush and added another stroke onto the nobleman who strolled down the city street, his arm intertwined with a maiden's. A flock of birds took off into flight from a wagon up ahead. The sun descended on the scene, and the first stars appeared overhead. I still needed to fill on the sky. I grabbed my other paintbrush and went to work on the setting sun.
A pair of hands grasped my shoulders. "Hey, Brie!"
I jumped and barely managed to avoid putting a line of red across my painting. "Hardy!"
He was standing there, smiling, puckering his lips and coming in for a kiss. I caught my breath and accepted it. It was habit by now. His lips were cold today, almost like he had just walked out of a freezer. Hardy's glasses were crooked like he'd been outside running. He must have run home after last period and then back to the school in a major hurry. I looked at the clock on the classroom wall. Almost four-thirty. Art Club let out a quarter to five. He'd been hoping to catch me before I headed home to do my daily round of chores.
Bad sign.
I straightened up, catching my breath. It was more from the scare than the kiss. Sadly. "Hey." I hoped it didn't happen again today. That for once, Hardy had something else to talk about or something else planned.
"What are you painting?" he asked.
I faced my creation. The other students kept painting away. Cars. Self-portraits. Even a terrible picture of a cat with eyes that were way too big. Mr. Crinkle walked up and down the room, admiring everyone's handiwork. Maybe I'd get lucky, and he'd tell everyone to wrap it up for the evening.
"A scene in a medieval town," I told him. "No one else is doing something like that." I liked painting castles and knights and peasants. Painting was a safe activity. Ultra safe.
Crafts were a colossal nope.
"It's cool," Hardy said. He pushed his glasses up further on his face. I checked out his shirt. There was a guy in a space suit holding a gun on it today. Yesterday, it had been a square zombie in some world made of blocks, and the day before, his shirt had a dinosaur and some triangle emblem with bright colors around its points. I wondered what game the space suit guy inhabited.
I wished I had never opened my mouth to Hardy.
I wished I had let him go when he started getting obsessed with his live-action role-playing stuff and calling me less. I regretted pulling him into an empty classroom two months ago, grabbed some of Mrs. Parrott's yarn, and showed him what I could do.
I had reeled in a monster.
Hardy shifted leg to leg. He used to come to Art Club with me before Playstation 4 came into his life and replaced the larping thing. And then the XBox followed, and then the WII, and then one old Nintendo system after the other. Our dates had stopped in the past few weeks unless they included a drive to a retro gaming store.
"So, what's with you?" I asked, tensing. "I haven't heard from you since yesterday morning in class." Guilt trip, guilt trip.
"Well," Hardy said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "I was over at Mike's house the night before last. I took my XBox over there, and we were up until two last night, playing Halo."
"Sounds like fun," I said, turning back to my painting.
"Come on, Brie. You should try these games. Don't you want to see what--" he lowered his voice--"what your ability is getting? I can't believe you don't use it more."
"I use it enough at home," I muttered, giving Hardy a view of my back.
"Huh?" Hardy asked.
I should have never shown him what I could do.
I had managed to keep him, all right, but at this rate, we'd never get past the kissing and hand-holding stage. We could barely even do that anymore.
I decided to give the maiden a red dress. A long, flowing, angry red dress with sharp sleeves and bright highlights.
"So, there's this sale going on with Steam right now."
Steam. It was some website that Hardy liked to frequent.
You could buy games there.
"Up until the end of the week, you can get all these games for sixty percent off. There's this one I'm looking at where you get stranded on an ocean planet, and you have to survive all alone. It looks like a lot of fun, but I don't get my allowance money up until next week, and it's not going to cover the cost."
He ended it there, with a big, hanging question that he didn't need to speak out loud.
When I didn't respond, he started telling me more about the game.
I painted another slash on the dress. I changed brushes and worked towards molding the woman's mouth into a scowl. I painted in her eyes, making her glare at the man. Maybe then, Hardy would get the message.
Or maybe not.
I glanced down.
Hardy's backpack was lying next to my feet. It was open a little and wedged in between a math book, and a Literature volume was a ball of yarn, complete with a blue crochet hook sticking through it.
I fought the urge to take out the hook and stab something else with it instead. "Hardy," I said, interrupting his talk about crafting stations and giant sea monsters. "If I do this for you--again--you have to buy me something, too."
"Sure. I'll be able to do that. What do you want?" His voice lightened a bit, and his shoulders sagged in relief. He was nervous about this today.
"A shirt that said JP Morgan Chase on the front," I said.
He molded his face in confusion.
"Because if I'm your bank, I at least want to look the part." I backed away from my painting and fluffed out my hoodie. Then, I waved to my dragon leggings.
Hardy let his forehead slap down to his open hand. "Brie," he managed. "This costs you nothing to do."
Mr. Crinkle moved on to my easel and stopped for a second. He smiled and reached out towards my work. His sleeve rolled back as he rubbed his hand down the side of my easel. His tattoo showed a bit. The bottom of a coat of arms stuck out from his shirt sleeve. I caught the image of a castle and a goose before he moved again, taking it out of sight.
"I like this, Brie," he said. "You're always coming up with something different. I love the detail you put here between the couple. Very thought-provoking. It makes you wonder what's going on between that couple in the middle."