The Broken Circle: Yarns of the Knitting Witches

by Cheryl Potter

  “Lavender Mae knows her way through those caves and beyond.”

  Esmeralde cracked eggs, one by one, onto the griddle.

  “Who’s she?” Garth spread butter onto toast.

  “Another witch, I bet,” Trader said, crunching a dry crust.

  “What should we do?” Skye asked. “Mother said to journey to Bordertown to find someone named Aubergine.”

  “They all want Aubergine,” Esmeralde moaned.

  “Who is she?” Garth said.

  “Another witch I bet,” Trader added.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Skye asked.

  “The witches were my secret,” Trader said. “Now I find out that everyone knows.”

  “That’s because they aren’t witches,” Skye said. “Don’t you know your yarns?”

  “Get off your high horse about those stupid stories.” Trader rose from the table. “Until yesterday, you didn’t realize your own mother was one of the Twelve.”

  “She wasn’t,” Garth said simply. “She was just our mother. You know, she kept the house, made the meals. . . .”

  “Hand-knit magic garments,” Skye interjected, “that turned lies into truth and allowed the wearer to pass unseen. Garth! What other mother does that?”

  Garth opened his mouth and then shut it. Indigo and Esmeralde chuckled. Ignoring them, Trader sulked at the window.

  “You, too?” Garth asked the old women. “You’re part of the

  Twelve, too?”

  Esmeralde gave a wink while Indigo just nodded.

  Garth shook his head, as Esmeralde plopped fried eggs onto his plate. “I thought you were just nice to me, like favorite aunts or something.”

  “We’re something all right,” Indigo said, looking around her shambles of a kitchen. Sudden bright light flooded the room.

  “Come quickly!” Trader cried, beckoning from the front window overlooking the greenhouse. “Come look at the sunrise!”

  Skye slid from her stool and crept over. “Heavenly hand knits,” she breathed.

  “What?” Garth demanded, wolfing eggs from his perch at the table.

  Trader turned. The fossicker’s face, like Skye’s, was bathed in pink light, and their eyes glistened with wonder. “The day dawns red,” Trader whispered.

  Skye nodded. “Fire in the sky, like the legends said.”

  Esmeralde flung open the door and rosy light streamed in. She gave Indigo a triumphant look.

  “We did it!” she said.

  These intermediate-skill-level fingerless gloves are ideal for gardening on a cold day. The pattern is sized for an adult women’s hands.

  Get the pattern from PotluckYarn.com/epatterns

  The first time, the world had ended in ice.

  CHAPTER 10

  AS HE STOOD AMONG THE BODIES STREWN across the river valley, Warren looked after Mae’s retreating figure, dumbfounded. When she had noticed him, she abandoned her pantry sack and ran off as if she were being chased. He scooped up the sack and trailed after her through the snow. She was surprisingly agile. Granted that he was lugging the sack, but soon he could barely see her, far ahead, wending her way through the scree at the rock-strewn valley’s edge. He had the unsettling thought that at times Mae lingered as she began to climb through the granite outcroppings beneath the glacier’s shadow. She seemed to want him to follow her. But why?

  He glanced over his shoulder, hating to leave his sled behind. But he couldn’t risk losing sight of her to retrieve it. She must have a hideout nearby, perhaps a dwelling, if she used mere pantry sacks to transport her spoils. Maybe she would lead him to a fissure in the rock where she cached her stash, or to an abandoned animal lair she used for a winter camp. Wherever she was going, he was determined to find out. He was certain now that this was Lavender Mae, one of the Twelve, known as the Keeper of the Magic Crystals. His mother had told so many stories that he felt he actually knew her.

  In his mother’s yarns, Mae was the knitting witch who went mad and disappeared. A hermit, she wore a pouch of gemstones around her neck, and spent all her time searching for the lost crystal. As the years passed, or so his mother said, Mae had become a lone river rat who smoked too much glacier weed and wore hats and mitts she knit from bits of animal fur she found snagged in thorn bushes.

  Now that he had found her, Warren did not think it would serve the Northland well if she were killed by soldiers for pilfering from the bodies of their kin. But how could he protect a crazy recluse who ran from him? He hiked up the steep slope toward the rocks. Mae’s course ended at the granite face beneath the Burnt Holes. The sheer cliffs looked like a dead end.

  When he reached the impenetrable wall at the foot of the glacier, her tracks through the snow ended, as he knew they must. He had passed by this bluff countless times and never found any gap in the stone at the foot of the glacier. After a moment, he thought he heard a low chuckle, although maybe it was just wind. Feeling foolish, he looked around and shouted, “Mae!”

  He heard the laugh again, louder and unmistakable now. Squinting, he saw her scrawny form outlined against the glare of the alpine sun. She was standing on a narrow ledge over his head, partway up the crag.

  “How did you get up there?” he called.

  But almost immediately he saw a series of hand- and footholds in the weathered granite. Tying the pantry sack to his belt, he swiftly gained the defile where Mae waited. She clutched his arm with claw-like hands, pointing, and he saw why she was so agitated. A small band of Lowlanders was crossing the valley where they had just been, bent on the same activity Mae had been engaged in, scavenging the dead. His heart sank at what he saw next. Collecting their brethren, they piled Lowland body after body onto his bobsled.

  “They are treating my sled like a hearse,” he said.

  “Mae,” the scrawny old woman remarked, gravely.

  He gave her a curious look. “Did you know they were coming?” Mae patted the precious pouch hung around her neck. “Mae,” she nodded.

  Warren wondered if she meant something in her pouch had warned her, or if she was just reminding him of who she was. Mae pulled an odd-looking watch cap from the inside pocket of the Lowland jacket she wore. She looked at it, as if either puzzled or making up her mind, and then handed to him. It looked a little like his father’s Potluck Hat, except that it appeared to be knit from wild animal fur. Warren did not know if the hat was magic, but when he put it on, it warmed his ears instantly. Mae put a finger to her puckered lips and pantomimed sneaking away. Warren nodded.

  Still beckoning to him, she disappeared into a crevasse hidden in the granite face. From there, they descended toward the belly of the glacier on a steep and narrow path. The walls of the passage had been formed from yellowed ice, studded with shale and river stone that the glacier had swallowed long ago as it made its slow journey south. The air grew colder and lost its freshness. The light faded, and before long Warren could barely see the outline of the old woman in front of him.

  “Mae,” he whispered.

  “Shh!” she hissed. And then he knew why, because he could hear it. His voice echoed and echoed and echoed back at them, getting successively fainter but still recognizable, “Mae, Mae, Mae, Mae Mae. . . .” followed by her admonishment, “Shh, shh, shh, shh, shh. . . .”

  Mae halted. Reaching into the pouch around her neck, she picked out a round crystal of pink quartz half the size of her fist. She held it in front of her face and blew on it slowly. After a moment, the quartz took on a warm glow. Warren caught his breath. The stone was lit from within by a growing halo of light.

  Mae flashed him another silencing glance before handing him the pink orb, which he played along the narrow passage before them. He thought he could hear the water roaring underfoot, but all the shining crystal illuminated was frozen rock.

  Time seemed to stand still within the belly of the glacier. Warren did not know how long they walked, and had no
idea where they were going. It got colder and colder, but with the fur cap on he barely shivered. Mae seemed oblivious to everything except moving onward. Whenever he tried to question her, she shushed him with a backward wave of her hand. He finally just gave up and followed.

  At last their path leveled out and they came to a chasm that looked like an anteroom on the left side of the tunnel. The tunnel itself continued past this space, following a channel carved through the ice by an ancient river. Mae motioned for him to shove aside a stalactite that seemed to have fallen during a cave-in, but when he shouldered it aside, he discovered behind it the entrance to another room of hollowed ice.

  Mae ducked through the doorway and lit four beeswax candles. What Warren had first thought was a small chamber was actually a long, low cavern, packed floor to ceiling with trash and treasure. The sweet scent of glacier weed filled the air. A small clearing in the hoard contained a fire pit and a bench, on which sat a kit for making hand-rolled Smokies, along with a twig basket filled with rabbit fur and sheep fleece, alpaca and musk-ox down. On top of the fiber rested a drop spindle, half filled with yarn.

  Mae took the pantry sack from Warren and emptied it onto her bedroll, which lay upon dried rushes strewn across the frozen floor. With a grunt, she dropped to her haunches. Ignoring him, she began sorting the spoils, singing the same sort of mindless tune he had heard from her when she worked over the bodies. He took this as a sign that it was all right to talk.

  “Mae,” he asked, surveying the dim cave filled with plunder. “What is this place?”

  Turning, she spread her arms wide and offered him an impish grin. “Mae’s,” she said. “Mae’s, Mae’s, Mae’s.” Rising, she twirled around and around and then suddenly stopped and grinned at him, gap-toothed.

  “All of this is yours?” Warren asked. “Unchallenged?”

  “Mmmm,” Mae began, nodding. “Mine.” She said the word like it was a long phrase she barely knew, savoring the sound.

  “Impossible,” Warren said. The cavern’s rich plunder contained much more than just military articles ransacked from fallen armies. “You collected all this truck yourself?”

  Mae nodded absently, watching carefully as he fingered hammered swords and jeweled daggers, dented helmets and lengths of fine chain mail. The front bobs of a sled on the floor gave him an idea of how Mae might have toted some of her salvage. Warren was amazed that Mae had been able to drag some of her stash as far as this cave. They were, indeed, deep within the glacier.

  “It must have taken a decade to find all this,” he blurted out. “Maybe more.”

  “More.” She blinked in the light. “More and more.”

  “Why?” Warren had to ask. Fossickers like that little ferret Trader would sell relics like these to the highest bidder, but Mae looked worse for wear, not better for her riches.

  “More,” Mae echoed, uncomprehendingly. She rubbed her head as if it ached.

  “I understand it’s more,” Warren persisted. “But what’s it for?” Putting her hands to her ears, Mae shrugged and turned away. Warren stared at her. “Mae, do you have any idea what you have here? Some of this is worth a fortune. You could live a life of ease if you sold just a few of these things.”

  Ignoring him, Mae skipped ahead and then came back. She tugged on his arm like a little girl, urging him into the cavern’s dark recesses.

  With the glowing chunk of quartz held high overhead, Warren followed her deeper into the cave. Chuckling to herself, Mae lit a Smokie and led the way. She pulled him into an alcove, its walls lined with chests and traveling trunks. Some of the containers had locks, now hacked apart, while others appeared to have no lids. Several trunks remained closed, with metal-banded strongboxes arranged on top, while others had been thrown open to reveal raw crystals and semiprecious stones of every color imaginable.

  As Warren picked through the unpolished bits of turquoise and garnet, star sapphire and lapis lazuli, amber and tiger-eye, Mae also sifted through them, laughing like a child. Some of the rough gemstones were as small as peas; others were as large as quail eggs. Once or twice Mae examined a stone and compared it to one from the pouch hung around her neck, then cast it aside.

  Warren thought that none of these stones had been scavenged from the dead. They were too rough, still unpolished and unset in silver or gold. He imagined that Mae, over the years, had gathered them one by one from the freshets that flowed out of the glacier each spring. If that was the case, they had to have originated in the Crystal Caves.

  “Mae, are these magic crystals?” He asked, with dawning awareness. “All of them?”

  The old woman dropped the crystals as if they burned her hands, and offered him an innocent look.

  “I am not here to surrender you to the Guard,” Warren assured her. “My own mother used stones to dye yarns. Do you have any idea what you have here? Does anyone else know?”

  Mae began to wander farther down the passage.

  ”Mae,” Warren called, waiting for her to turn and look at him. “Mae, there are men in my unit who have pledged to kill you for scavenging their dead. And now I fear others would kill you to steal this plunder, if they knew you had it. Let’s get out of here. Let me save you.”

  Mae let out a hoot of laughter, followed by a long trail of smoke. “What’s so funny?”

  “You.” She pointed an accusing finger. “You. Save. Me.” Turning, she ran back down the passage toward the clearing with the fire pit. Her voice rang down the tunnel: “Ha!”

  Warren had to admit that it seemed unlikely that he could protect her, seeing as she has just saved him from Lowlanders. Or maybe the herb was making her silly. He let the semiprecious stones sift through his fingers and drop back into the chest.

  “Fine,” he muttered, not bothering to go after her. He shut the chest’s creaky lid. “Fine.”

  Further into the cave lay mining gear, picks and axes, and a wooden barrow Mae must have stolen from Lowlanders who sought passage into the legendary Crystal Caves, the mythical gateway to the tombs of the ancients. Warren had seen iron tools like this, hauled north on large sledges dragged not by draft ponies or oxen but by the Lowlanders’ own brute strength. Such raiding parties marched from the south, up through the Notch above Teardrop Lake, along a section of track his own father had built.

  While scouting for the Northland Guard, Warren and his friend Niles had, from time to time, observed small groups of Lowlanders in the foothills below, sneaking around the backside of the glacier along a trail called the Blind Side Loop with their smudge torches. They guessed that these bands stayed small to remain undetected. Free from discovery, they could search the Blind Side of the glacier for an entrance to the Crystal Caves. Warren knew of no one—friend or foe—who had ever seen the Crystal Caves, rumored to be guarded by the graves of the ancients, known in the Northlands as the First Folk. Warren had repeatedly circled the southern base of the glacier on his bobsled, but he had never found a passageway of any kind to any cavern or tomb, real or imagined. Except for the Burnt Holes, of course, and they were nothing more than a makeshift prison used by the Northland Guard.

  As Warren neared the back of Mae’s lair, she appeared once again and began to trail behind him, humming loudly. He turned, annoyed at her mindless prattle, which grew in volume as she followed, watching. Her singing became an aggravating chant in which every third or fourth word seemed like it was her own name, Mae. He glared at her but she wouldn’t stop. Instead she remained just out of striking distance, apparently thinking he might try to silence her with the flat of his hand. Ignoring her, he cast the light of the quartz crystal toward the back wall of the cave. What he saw there made him gasp.

  “What in cracked crystal . . .!” his voice trailed off, as he strode quickly to take a closer look.

  “Ha!” Mae cried out. “Ha! Ha!”

  Stacked up on tattered remnants of tapestry against the back wall of the icy cavern, stood two huge ea
rthenware vessels that looked older than anything he had ever seen, relics that could have only come from the tombs of the ancients. If he was not mistaken, the big jugs were hard-fired burial urns, hand-painted with dyes mixed from ground crystals. If he was right, the tapestry fragments were funeral drapes from the burial caves. One piece of carved limestone even looked like a broken coffin lid, chiseled in the shape of a man’s body and painted with twin suns. Warren turned to Mae, who knelt in the dirt. She had not been chanting, he realized. She had been praying to the old deities, the two suns Re and Rah, which once blazed in the sky over the Tigris and the Eye, the Rivers of Life.

  Of course Warren knew the childhood fairy tale of the twin suns and intertwined rivers that snaked through the valley that spawned the First Folk. Everybody did. All had heard the creation story, but, as far as he knew, none could prove that these ancestors ever existed. His mother’s legends had centered on First Folk follies, and as a child the tales had fascinated him. On many cold winter nights, Sierra had knitted before the fire, spinning yarns of the ancients for her three children. Before he could cipher his letters, Warren had known the old stories by heart.

  According to legend, before the age of ice, the First Folk had flourished in a fertile valley fed by the waters of the Tigris and the Eye and warmed by the twin suns. Their world never fell to darkness. The ancients worshipped both suns equally and lived in harmony with nature in the crescent-shaped bottomland between the rivers. In time, the older sun began to weaken. Fearful, the First Folk fought among themselves, and in their foolishness they lost all faith in the failing sun and quit worshipping it, turning their attention to the younger one.

  Abandoned, the first sun sputtered out. Great chunks of smoldering black rock rained across the valley, causing floods and throwing the world into frigid darkness for half of each day. Instead of finding a way to cope with just one sun and the rising rivers, the ancients quarreled over the remaining warmth and light. In their folly, they let the world grow colder and colder, until the single sun could no longer sustain them and all the lands froze solid.