The Broken Circle: Yarns of the Knitting Witches

by Cheryl Potter

  Her favorite male was little Tracks. The young ram knew his path from the Middlelands into the highlands instinctively. Such was her fondness for this animal that she treated him like a pet dog, and he was the one sheep she could never part with willingly. His silver bell was the first tinkle she heard at daybreak before the hungry bleating of the ewes began outside her tent, signaling time to move to fresh pasture. The winter grasses had been plentiful in the western prairies, but now the sheep grew hungry as they foraged in the snow. Having missed the auction, Winter Wheat had no choice now but to herd her sheep east through the glacier lands, then south into Bordertown, and finally from there to the stockyards in the borough of Butcher’s Block.

  Ahead of Wheat loomed the landmark she had been looking for: the signposts of the Crossings, a campsite where she would choose the high glacier route that would take her to Bordertown rather than her usual easier trek into the southern valleys. Often other shepherds were camping at these four corners, and sometimes she found a peddler or two selling wares. But when Wheat finally reached the Crossings not one wisp of smoke curled from the rings of blackened rock that marked the vacant tent sites. New snow dusted the cold ashes of the cook fires. Wheat tried to brush her worries aside. She had hoped to pass through here days ago. Perhaps the campground always emptied out during the fair.

  Wheat stuck her shepherd’s crook into a snow bank next to a crudely lettered sign offering food and drink at the General Store in Coventry, a community in one of the southern river valleys. Coventry was known for fine ironwork. As she blew into her gloved hands to warm them, the crystals on her staff clinked once more. There was not much daylight left, and even to her practiced eye the high track ahead looked daunting. Climbing the switchbacks to the mountain passes below the Burnt Holes would add two days to her trip, but taking the southern route only to arrive after the fair ended would prove useless. As if reading her thoughts, Tracks trotted up, his black-and-white face nosing at her oilskin coat, his bright eyes seeming to question the difficult path that loomed ahead.

  “Two more days, along the ridge track,” she said to him, scratching the fur around his three tiny horns as the other sheep milled restlessly around the camping grounds. “It can’t be helped, even if the ewes lamb before we reach Bordertown.”

  Tracks turned and trotted toward the familiar trail to the southern pass.

  “Tracksie,” she scolded, as the other sheep began to follow him. “Tracks, come back here.”

  With a turn of his fine head, Tracks offered her a questioning look, his bell tinkling merrily, before he continued down the lower trail. Soon the entire flock was ambling along behind and he had disappeared around a snowdrift at the first bend. Wheat could not understand what Tracks was doing. He never defied her. Shaking her head wearily, she plucked her staff from the snow bank and tapped it on the ground, the crystals clacking.

  “Tracksie, now look what you’ve done,” she called after the retreating sheep. Soon she would have to hurry to the front of the flock to ward them off, or she would end up chasing her own sheep down into the flooded valley. She rapped the crooked staff on the ground again, and then pounded it, this time with authority. “We need to take the high road.”

  The crystals hit and sparked as she spoke. Startled, the sheep moved off more quickly, the downward slope offering them momentum. “There’s too much water down that way,” she called after her disappearing flock. “I don’t want to hike into the valley only to find we have to ford some new river or go round another freshet.”

  Winter Wheat was alone. “Fire and ice,” she swore softly. What she wouldn’t do now for a mug of mulled cider around a friendly campfire at the fair.

  Though darkness was falling, Wheat felt the weak glow before she saw it. The amber crystals tied to her staff sputtered, like tiny oil lamps whose wet wicks almost refused to catch, and sent a beat of warmth through the wood that reached her curled fingers even through her sheepskin gloves. Wheat watched the golden glow spread through the orbs, outlining the scarab beetles, which shone with jeweled radiance. Tilting the staff experimentally, she focused the light on an icy drift. The circles of amber met with a sizzle, searing through the snow in seconds. Wheat smiled in satisfaction at the hissing sound.

  The insects within the crystals looked luminous, as they had when alive.

  Over the many years since she had last seen the magic cabochons look like this, Winter Wheat had grown to believe that, like many other forbidden things, the beetles would remain forever dormant. She chuckled at the memory of how so long ago she had punished that red-haired kitchen wench with this same staff, burning holes in the sleeves of the serving-maid’s dresses whenever Ratta turned her fiery tongue on Sierra or Aubergine. Mesmerized by her staff’s renewed powers, Wheat almost failed to recognize the insistent glow for the signal it was: danger.

  But suddenly she became aware of the smell of bitter smoke, and then the crystals began to pulse with the footfalls of many booted feet. Then she glimpsed the dark outlines of soldiers heading toward her in the settling dusk, marching down from the trail above. They looked like Lowlanders, short and muscular. If she had taken the high road, she and her sheep would have met them head-on. Had Tracks known? Had he heard the footfalls, or caught a whiff of the smoke?

  She had no time to wonder.

  The group above was a large raiding party, fifty or more foot soldiers. Scouts lit the way with smudge torches. Behind them, six squat soldiers with shoulders as broad as draft ponies were harnessed to a sledge. They strained to haul a load that looked like plunder encased in ice.

  In one swift move, Wheat pulled off her oilskin cloak, unshouldered her felted backpack, and loosened the drawstring. The Lowlanders would see her as soon as they reached the clearing. She had no place to hide but in plain sight. She dowsed the crystals with the hooded staff cover, made by Sierra many years ago. Thank heavenly hand knits I throw nothing away, Wheat thought, hurriedly pulling the rumpled traveling cloak from her pack and throwing it across her broad back. Both garments had been fashioned for emergencies such as this, although Wheat had not needed to hide the amber crystals from anyone in twenty years. The cape was snug and would barely close in front. Flipping up the hood, Wheat stood stark still, hoping she would be unnoticed and therefore unseen. Two Lowlanders with smoldering torches came to the Crossings and halted not ten yards away.

  Too late, Wheat noticed her oilskin cloak, which she had hastily discarded in a dark heap atop a snow bank. She hoped that the torchlight would fail to reveal it, but the scouts picked out the slick garment right away. One of them hooked it on his pike and sniffed it disdainfully before he swung it around as an offering to the leader of the group that followed. Refusing to touch it, the man gave it only a desultory glance. Instead, he scanned the clearing, searching for the wearer. The fish-oil smoke of the torches tickled Wheat’s nose. She held her breath, willing herself not to sneeze, her hand gripping the hooded staff, ready if needed. She looked intently at the ground. To seem like part of the landscape, it was best to avoid eye contact. Even knowing this, she could not help but steal glances at the Lowlanders. She could feel their leader’s gaze, but he seemed to look right through her. Out of the corners of her eyes, she noticed a few dismissive hand gestures. Then her dark oilskin dropped to the ground. The scouts moved on.

  As the six-man team pulling the sledge entered the clearing, Wheat let her breath out slowly. Confident now that they did not see her, she examined the Lowlanders with fascination. Their skin was a burnished red brown, and each had a curly crown of brick-colored locks streaked gold from the sun. All wore boiled-leather helmets and short, belted tunics the color of sunset, with matching leggings of a cloth that looked too thin to withstand winter.

  Although she had heard rumors that Lowlanders communicated in the silent language of the ancients, she was close enough to see that the rumors were not true. Dark eyes blinked as the soldiers lifted their chins toward each other,
sending messages through eye movements and facial expressions, accompanied by brusque hand gestures.

  Further head shaking and hand waving made it obvious, even to Wheat, that these underdressed southerners had seen the sheep’s tracks and meant to steal her flock along with whatever else they had plundered. She realized with dread that if her Jacobs were herded to the Lowlands they would not be shorn for fleece, but slaughtered to feed hungry soldiers. It was all she could do not to reveal herself, but she had to remain hidden if she wanted to save herself or rescue her flock.

  As the Lowlanders moved down the southern track, Wheat retreated silently to let them pass. It was full dark now. As the sledge slid by, she saw it held a huge chunk of ice, yellowed with age, perhaps chipped from a frozen wall that had taken eons to form. Although the ancient ice was opaque, Wheat thought she could see the outline of a large darkened form inside. She bit her tongue to keep from crying out. This could not be. But somehow she knew it was. The form trapped in ice was an undead creature, straight from the old tales.

  Wheat had never believed those ancient legends, even though she had sat at Mamie Verde’s knee listening to the stories, just like the other girls. Now fear stabbed her heart.

  Wheat did not remember the yarns as Sierra Blue did, yet she mustered a vague recollection of what had happened to the First Folk. According to Mamie, who had been the Keeper of the Tales, the last world had ended in a sudden ice age that froze everything. For eons, the world had stood still while snow fell silently. Ice caves formed and became graveyards lost in time. Finally, for some reason Wheat could not recall, the lands began to thaw. According to lore, the Northland Glacier had been young, and much larger than it was now. The glacier began a slow trek south, sculpting mountains and scraping valleys as it reshaped the lands. All evil lay entombed deep within the huge glacier’s belly, along with the civilization of the First Folk, everything frozen solid. All beings encased in ice while they lived were hidden in unnamed, labyrinthine caverns that had formed beyond the Crystal Caves in the thousands of years it took for the world to wake again.

  Wheat did not believe in the undead, yet she knew she had just seen one of them. After the Potluck broke up, the Dark Queen’s first act was to send Lowland forces north to burn an opening in the south face of the glacier. People said she wanted to find the monsters called Watchers that some claimed were guardians of the Crystal Caves, but the Lowlanders did not discover the caves or the creatures.

  Eventually the Northland Guard gathered enough soldiers to turn the Lowlanders away from glacier’s south face. The fires burned out and the gap froze over. The yawning caverns left behind became known as the Burnt Holes, and later were used by the Northlanders as a prison of sorts, to isolate those who had committed crimes against the realm.

  Wheat feared that the Lowlanders must have infiltrated the Crystal Caves and stolen deep into the glacier. Surely they had thieved this entombed form from beyond the lost caverns.

  Wheat recalled that there had been a tale about the frozen graveyard, a tale that Sierra could not recall but that Ratta, the sharp-tongued kitchen maid seemed to know. That tale told what would happen if the ancients were disturbed.

  How had the Lowlanders found a way into the secret places? The ice was reported to be impenetrable. Wheat glanced up the high track that wound down through Glacier Pass to the Crossings. The Lowlanders had come from the northwest. They could have trekked around the back of the glacier, known as the Blind Side. Yet, as far as Wheat knew, there was no Blind Side passage through any part of the glacier.

  Wheat unhooded her staff and gazed at the glowing beetles. No wonder her crystals had roused themselves. She had to reach the

  Potluck—and quickly. There was no time to waste if Lowlanders were robbing ancient graves or planning to harvest magic crystals from the caves. She must convince Aubergine to summon the Twelve soon, or the world might end again as the legends foretold, in fire or ice.

  From the smoke in the air, Wheat thought it would not be ice this time. But first she must see to her sheep. Perhaps she also might get a closer look at the frozen form on the sledge. As the last Lowland soldier disappeared, she picked her oilskin from the snow and stuffed it in her sack, and then followed the raiding party—and, in front of them, her wise ram, Tracks—down the well-beaten path to the south.

  Keep your belongings safe during travel with this intermediate-skill-level project, which is approximately 13" high, 12" wide, and 6" deep.

  Get the pattern from PotluckYarn.com/epatterns

  Like the fresh flowers Lily favored, all of the novices had opened up to her in time.

  CHAPTER 6

  LILAC LILY FILLED THE STONEWARE PITCHER with fresh-cut daffodils to set on the harvest table. She and her sister Lorna had spent all morning shopping the flower stalls at the World’s Fair, and had tucked into their market bags a bevy of spring blooms as well as bulbs and seeds to plant. Tonight their lovely old rooming house, just past the fairgrounds, would be packed with half a dozen out-of-town guests. She had just enough time to set the table before seeing to supper. Lorna had found a basket of early greens in a food stall, and among the outside vendors Lily had discovered a flask of wine vinegar to dress the tender shoots. With a nicely salted ham and sweet potatoes from the root cellar, they would all eat well tonight.

  Lily pressed her damp hands to her apron and slipped into the warm kitchen to check the oven. The ham was crisping nicely. She plunged the sweet potatoes into a bucket of cold water and scrubbed the dirt off with a hog-bristle brush before pricking them with a fork and settling them around the ham. Helping her sister run a country inn was a far cry from managing the large and boisterous household of the Potluck Twelve, but it kept her busy. She liked her simple life, and she could no longer imagine any other.

  No, that was not quite true. She could imagine her previous life, but dared not dwell on it. Even at each year’s fair, she avoided the center aisle of the main tent, where she might run into Sierra Blue and her yarns or Esmeralde and her remedies. She also ignored the exotic-breed tent, because she wanted nothing whatsoever to do with Winter Wheat. And, heavenly hand knits, forbid that she would have the misfortune of running into Indigo Rose or Lavender Mae smoking glacier weed behind the Mead Hall. The thought of red-haired Ratta pushing mute Mamie Verde around in a wheeled chair along the midway, coupled with what Lily knew about their odd relationship, often threatened to send her into a panic attack. For although the circle had broken up, and all who remained at the time had said they forgave her, she could not help what she held: their secrets.

  When Lily had become the Potluck housemother all the girls confided in her freely. Aubergine was preoccupied with the crystals, and Mamie Verde with the tales. As the only other adult in the house, it had been Lilac Lily’s job to keep the peace or stir the pot among the girls, as she saw fit. Like the fresh flowers Lily favored, all of the novices had opened up to her in time, revealing their hopes and dreams, their plots and schemes. As the warden of the Potluck and its secrets, Lily’s own talents seemed like nothing more than well-placed suggestions. Yet she alone held the uncanny ability to guess who to approach for answers or where to find something amiss. And she had never second-guessed herself until the end. Because she had known all alliances and disputes within the house, she had the power to mend or build fences. Nonetheless, confessions she had been under oath not to reveal had at times brought on headaches so extreme that even Esmeralde’s strongest tinctures could not soothe them.

  Lily’s gift had been both blessing and curse. She knew all but was able to reveal nothing unasked, without tempting fate. The one time she broke her oath, the magic of the Potluck had turned on the Twelve. Lily blamed no one but herself for the Potluck’s demise. Because of her desperate foolhardiness, life had changed dramatically for everyone involved.

  Lily remembered that horrible night like it was yesterday. All that day, Aubergine’s amethyst necklace had flashed in her mi
nd’s eye. She knew of Tasman’s consuming avarice for the power held by the twelve rare jewels. She had known Tasman would attempt that very night to don the circlet of crystals and abandon the Potluck. But instead of warning Aubergine right away, Lily waited and watched. Tasman’s scheme to steal the necklace from right under Aubergine’s nose was unbelievable, and the veiled threats Tasman shot Lily’s way petrified her. Lily let precious minutes pass until it was too late. As Tasman fled with the necklace, Lily made a desperate move to place nearby Tracery Teal in her path, and that decision cost them dearly. No one had since seen traces of Teal, or Tasman, or the crystal necklace. In the fray, the silver clasp had broken open and one of the crystals was wrenched from its setting and lost.

  The door creaked as Lorna stepped from the back porch into the kitchen with the greens. “All cleaned,” she said, handing Lily the basket and the paring knife. “It smells like the ham is well under way.”

  “And the sweet potatoes as well.”

  “Too bad we didn’t pick up any sourdough bread, or yeast rolls,” Lorna said. “That Mill on the Rill was just inside the main tent. How did we miss it?”

  “The line was too long,” Lily explained, although it hadn’t been.

  When she had peeked inside the tent, Sierra Blue and her young daughter had been conversing with the owners. Sierra had sent a meaningful look Lily’s way, and her serene face recognizing her yet revealing nothing, made Lily anxious. Turning, she had lost herself quickly in the throng, conscious of the felted market bag she carried, a bottomless pit of a satchel that Sierra had fashioned from potluck wool in shades of rose and lavender, named for Lilac Lily. No matter how much produce or dry goods she stuffed inside, the bag had never become full or any heavier than a normal shopping bag. Sierra had made one for each of them, in their own colorway.