The Wishing Thread

by Van Allen, Lisa

  Mischief night, they said. Every year, it’s always something.

  In his house high on the hill, Steve Halpern was going out to get the paper off the front lawn in his bathrobe. His wife was inside, spinning his tie rack in an effort to find the flaming Horseman tie that he wore every Halloween. He bent to reach for the paper on the dewy grass and saw that the old cement horse tie-up at the curb had been covered in some kind of crazy, mismatched yarn. It seemed to him to sparkle for a moment, a Technicolor obelisk, and his first instinct was to laugh with delight. But then he thought of the Stitchery and everything his mother had told him about it. He thought of Tappan Square.

  He yanked the yarn sock—or whatever it was—off the concrete tether with some difficulty, and then he tossed it into the bottom of the neighbor’s recycling bin. When he went inside, he did not mention what he’d found to his wife. He knew she would have tried to assure him. Instead he thanked her for the tie.

  Little by little, theories about the yarn began to spread among people who did not know about the Stitchery. Bloggers took pictures of the hats that had been fit over the pumpkins in front of the day care. The local online news magazine reported on the mysterious displays, teasing out the fine line between vandalism and art. It seemed an excellent omen, many people along the parade route agreed. Good-natured high jinks. A friendly rib.

  But Tarrytown’s old burghers—who did not want to credit the displays with even the barest acknowledgment, and who had always thought the Van Rippers would be Tarrytown’s downfall—stood in the Halloween sunshine at the parade they had organized, clutched their steaming cups of spiced cider, and smiled so fiercely that passing children had to squint at the shine off their teeth—all the while wishing for the end of Tappan Square.

  “I can’t believe we didn’t get caught,” Meggie said.

  Bitty looked up from her cereal—delicious sugary cereal that she hadn’t eaten in uncountable years of calorie counting. Although she had every reason to be exhausted, she could not sleep. She had tucked her children into bed when the sun had started to rise an hour ago. Carson seemed to be unconscious before his head hit the pillow. Nessa had mumbled something about shadow knitting before passing out. Aubrey had vanished in the wee hours before dawn, at about the same time that the yarns had vanished—presumably recovering from her spells. In the yarn room, every last strand of yarn, every skein and hank and cake in the Stitchery, was gone.

  “Maybe I should go into town and look around,” Meggie said. “To see what’s happening.”

  Bitty poured herself a second bowl of cereal. “We decided that we would let it go, remember?”

  “Don’t you want to know what people are saying?”

  “Of course I do,” Bitty said. “But at this point, it’ll be what it’ll be, whether we’re out there listening or not.”

  “Fine.” Meggie sighed. “You’re right.”

  “You know, I think it’s going to work,” Bitty said.

  “You do?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You don’t believe in magic.”

  “That’s true,” Bitty said. “But I believe in the power of symbolism. Wholeheartedly. And I think what we did last night, all over town, was a powerful symbol of protest and a strong showing of how Tappan Square is fundamental to the fabric of Tarrytown.”

  “Fundamental to the fabric? Was that a deliberate pun?”

  Bitty smiled. “I always thought I’d make a good lawyer.”

  “Seriously,” Meggie said.

  Bitty laughed.

  “No, I mean it. Seriously.”

  Bitty took a swig of her coffee. She could see the river outside the Stitchery window, slogging on. For all her years of living with Craig, she felt like she’d been alone—that she’d been raising her children alone. She hadn’t had a moment to give a thought to herself. But now, ensconced within the walls of the Stitchery again, and with her sisters ready to support her and her kids with everything they had to offer, she thought—maybe. Maybe she could go to law school. Maybe she could start again.

  “So do you think we should wake her up?” Meggie asked, pointing with her spoon to the ceiling.

  “Aubrey? No. Not yet.”

  “She looked like hell last night.”

  “Like the tenth circle of it,” Bitty said.

  “What did she sacrifice? Do you know?”

  Bitty put down her spoon. She hadn’t thought of what Aubrey might have forfeited to cast her spell last night. In the rush and panic and slapdash coordination, there hadn’t been time. And now that Bitty was thinking about Aubrey’s sacrifice, she worried. To Bitty’s mind, even if Aubrey had given up nothing last night, she still would have sacrificed enough. “Well, whatever it was, I hope it was worth it.”

  “You don’t think …”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I guess we’ll wait and see what happens.”

  “At this point, that’s all we can do,” Bitty said.

  When Aubrey opened her eyes again, bright daylight was filtering into her bedroom. Her head ached—pain like she’d never known. The sunlight was an ice pick in her eye. Her bladder was stretched taut as a basketball. Last night, she’d cast the biggest spell of her life—perhaps the biggest she would ever cast. It had depleted her so fully and completely that exhaustion was not the word for what she felt. Her sleep had been so deep and opaque, it was more like death than slumber. But all in all, things could have been worse. She had not thrown up in front of the women of Tappan Square, as she had on the night of Craig’s appearance—that was a blessing. And the fact that she was already awake was a good sign, too.

  Slowly, she righted herself in her bed. She’d fallen asleep in her jeans and sweater. She sat with her bare toes on the cold wood floor a moment, waiting to get her bearings. She crossed the hall to use the bathroom and wash her face.

  The sense of panic that had plagued her these last few days—the sense that her life was crashing down—was gone. Vic, and whatever happiness she might have found with him, was lost; she would never be with him again. She knew that her heart would not recover and that there would never, for the rest of her life, be another man she could love as she loved him. But Tappan Square, the Stitchery, the things that were bigger than she was—she was so certain that her neighborhood was saved, forever and truly, that she would have staked her life on it. She felt the truth of her optimism carried on the chill of the morning air. For the first time in her life, she felt glad of who she was. Unembarrassed and proud. She was a daughter of the Stitchery, and she was powerful, and confident, and generous in the most generous way she could be. She was not on the outskirts; she was essential. The possibility that her spell might not take, and that she had given Vic up for nothing, flitted through her mind. But it bore no more significance than a bird passing in front of the sun.

  She opened the bathroom door when she was finished and made her way back toward her bedroom. Meggie and Bitty were there, in the hall, waiting. Meggie wore black denim jeans and an orange tie-dyed shirt. Bitty was in her workout gear. Aubrey supposed they must have heard her wake up.

  “Good morning,” she said. And then she laughed at how rough her voice sounded, as if she had been asleep for twenty years.

  “Actually, it’s afternoon,” Meggie said.

  “I slept late, huh? I haven’t slept so late since—since ever.”

  Her sisters did not so much as smile.

  “Are you okay?” Meggie asked.

  “I feel …” She stretched her back. “Stiff. Tired. Hungry. But … good. Really really good.”

  “Oh God, Aubrey—” Bitty gasped.

  Aubrey felt suddenly self-conscious. Her sisters were looking at her. They were looking, and their mouths were open, and their eyebrows were high. Aubrey rubbed her cheek. “What? Did I sleep on my face? Do I have headlines?”

  “No, it’s …” Bitty peered at her. Aubrey resisted the urge to flinch away. “Do you see it, too?” Bitty asked Meggie.

&
nbsp; Meggie squinted. “I see it. At least, I think I do.”

  “Jeez, guys,” Aubrey said. She lowered her gaze to the floor. “Sorry. I forgot. This happened last time, remember? They got really bright. I’ll go get my glasses.”

  “No—you don’t understand,” Bitty said. “They’re … normal.”

  Aubrey said nothing. She felt a tightness in her throat like a choked laugh. Maybe there was just some shift in the light. Some freak optical illusion. Maybe she was standing in a shadow. She returned to the bathroom. She looked into the mirror above the little sink. There was her face, her same old face, and there were her same old eyes.

  “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” Meggie asked.

  Aubrey stood straighter. “I think so. I’m just drained. It was a long night.”

  Her sisters exchanged a glance.

  “Don’t be worried, you guys,” she said cheerfully. “We did the best we could with the spells. And all we can do now is just wait and see what happens when they vote tomorrow.”

  “Aubrey,” Bitty said. “It is tomorrow.”

  She rubbed her eyes. “I’m not following.”

  “It’s Monday,” Meggie said.

  Aubrey dropped her hands. A strange vertigo seized her. The Stitchery seemed to tip on its side. “Wait—it’s … Monday?”

  “Yes,” Meggie said.

  “I slept for …”

  “Over twenty-four hours,” Bitty said.

  “Oh my God, Monday—what time on Monday?”

  “Noon,” Bitty said.

  Cell by cell, Aubrey’s body was waking up, flickering to life and full awareness. She’d been sleeping for ages. And there was something that her sisters didn’t want to tell her, something they didn’t know how to say.

  “So does that mean …?”

  “They had the vote this morning,” Meggie said.

  Aubrey gripped the porcelain edge of the sink. She felt breathless. “And …?”

  Meggie was looking up at her with sorrowful, pitying eyes.

  “It’s no good,” Bitty said.

  “No!” Aubrey heard her own voice as if it were coming from outside of her. “That’s not possible. There must be something wrong. A miscount. An absent voter. Something.”

  “I’m sorry, Aubrey,” Meggie said.

  She was too shocked to cry. The disbelief was a void the size of the universe, an awareness of something gone missing. She thought of Mariah, of all the names in the Great Book in the Hall, of the many battles the Stitchery had faced over the years, the many battles the guardians had faced before they overcame the odds. Aubrey could not envision what the end of the Stitchery would be like any more than she might imagine with clarity the end of the world. The spell failed, she repeated to herself. The spell failed. She could not fathom what it meant. The spell failed.

  “Maybe it’s not over,” Aubrey said. “Maybe there’s going to be an appeal. Or a recount.”

  “It’s done,” Bitty said. “It’s all done.”

  It’s done? Aubrey thought.

  She listened, but the Stitchery had nothing to say.

  From the Great Book in the Hall: No gift is meant to last forever. Knitted projects are ephemera—meant to be used until they can be used no more. All magic fades. In a way, a magic spell is less like a castle than the scaffolding that helps to raise the stones. Our best hope is that the strength of our spells as we made them will be so effective in their time that the castle will continue to stand long after the bricklayers are gone.

  By mid-November, the beauty of a vibrant autumn in the lower Hudson had worn off. The leaves had become as brittle as mummified pharaohs. The first snow fell—unexpectedly violent—and Tarrytown was encapsulated in slick ice while the electric company struggled to restore power and the plows were rushed into the streets.

  Aubrey moved about the Stitchery like a ghost of herself, oblivious to the ice tapping the windows, the whistle of a steaming kettle, the snowslides avalanching off the eaves. She did not pick up her needles. She did not even read. She went to her shift at the library, she played with Icky and cleaned his cage, she ordered her spicy dragon rolls, and all of it felt as if she were moving underwater. Sometimes, she cracked open the Great Book in the Hall, but rather than read it—the names of all the guardians, the lists of sacrifices, the notes and gentle guidance of the women who had gone before—she simply stared. Her heart in her chest was so heavy with guilt that it pulled her shoulders down. She had reached the fullest capacity of what she could handle; she could not withstand shouldering even one more particle of despair. She did not allow herself to think of Vic—of what he was doing or feeling at any given moment, of where he was while Aubrey was staring at the ceiling or standing in the shower until the water went cold. If she thought of him, his glinting eyes, his broad smile, it would shut her down.

  Vic had been her only chance. It was Vic or it was no one.

  It was no one.

  The only bright spot in her future was her sisters. Meggie had made herself at home in the Stitchery, and she’d found a job at a travel agency in Manhattan. On first glance she seemed to be dressing more conservatively—wearing pencil skirts and jackets. But her blouse was usually dotted with sequins, and under her skirt she wore a hot pink garter. In the evenings, she strapped on her roller skates and resumed her place among the Flying Dutchesses.

  Bitty, too, remained in the Stitchery. Her children had transferred to Tarrytown’s schools, and she’d begun to research going back to school herself. She was looking for an apartment but was in no rush to cut short her family’s last weeks in the Stitchery. She made frequent trips to see her lawyer but found that she was even better at negotiating her divorce than he was.

  As the winter wore on, Bitty and Meggie—even the children—were tightly strung, treating Aubrey with diligent gentleness and caution like women of ages past drying their wool on tenterhooks. Aubrey loved them for their efforts, even as she tried to shore herself up, to boost her own spirits, and to put on a better show.

  They did not talk about the loss of the Stitchery, and what felt to Aubrey like the loss of magic. Each day, Aubrey discovered a flicker of irresistible hope that perhaps something would happen, someone would swoop in for an eleventh-hour rescue, and the Stitchery would be saved. And each day, she had to quash that hope for happiness. Because even if the Stitchery was miraculously but belatedly saved, she still would never get back Vic.

  Aubrey had stood in front of the people of Tappan Square and had staked her good word on the Stitchery. Yes, she’d warned them that the magic might fail. But in her heart she didn’t believe failure was possible, and her actions told the true story of her feelings loud and clear, told it with more authority than the contradictory words she spoke. The women of Tappan Square dismissed her initial warning like boilerplate legalese and instead clutched on to the core truth that Aubrey was offering them: that if they tried hard enough, the magic would not fail them. How horrible it was—Aubrey thought to herself at times—to have proclaimed her naked confidence before everyone, only to have it desert her. She did not know if she was a martyr or a fool. She did not know if there was a difference.

  Every day, the council’s plans to bulldoze Tappan Square moved forward. Properties were being sold one by one to the village, families were trickling out of neighborhoods, windows were boarded, doors nailed shut, houses condemned. The Stitchery’s neighbors across the street, who had never been friendly toward the Van Rippers, had packed up their belongings, including the blue-and-white concentric nazar that hung on their front door. Old Mr. Hussein had always insisted that he would refuse to sell, that he would throw his body in front of the bulldozers if they ever came to knock down his home; but instead he’d taken the money the village offered and bought a trailer in Florida. Family by family, the neighborhood was being dismantled.

  “It’s just not fair,” Aubrey muttered to her sisters on an unusually warm day in early December. They had gone out for gyros. As usual there were no
open tables in the restaurant and so they shivered in the afternoon chill on cold metal chairs set on the sidewalk outside. Aubrey’s hair was greasy. Her eyes, her dull normal eyes, were shadowed in blue. The real estate section of the newspaper was on the table, weighted down by a cell phone and luffing like a sail in the wind.

  “I wish you would just go to talk to him,” Bitty said. “Explain things. Give the man some credit. I’m sure he’d understand.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about Vic,” Aubrey said.

  “But maybe you should,” Bitty said.

  Aubrey sighed. They’d been over this before. Bitty and Meggie wanted her to seek out Vic, to make things right with him. But even though the Stitchery had turned its back on Aubrey, she could not bring herself to turn her back on it. Rules were rules: Sacrifices could not, under any circumstances, be returned—even if a spell failed. If Mariah hadn’t been cremated, she would have rolled over in her grave to know that Aubrey was entertaining the possibility of throwing herself at Vic’s feet and begging for mercy. Because in fact Aubrey had thought, many times, of doing just that. She wanted Vic back. She wanted to go to his house and prostrate herself on his walkway. She wanted to see him look at her again like she was a living, breathing miracle—and not a woman who had stabbed him in the back. She wanted to wear his ring, and hold his hand at circuses, and scary movies, and funerals, and when they got old, she wanted to push his wheelchair down the sidewalks of Tappan Square.

  No one could stop her from going to him. The Stitchery had abandoned her—why shouldn’t she reciprocate? And yet, for as often as she’d been tormented by the idea of reclaiming her sacrifice, she knew she could not do it. She was too well trained. Too loyal to Mariah’s teachings. But she wasn’t certain of anything anymore.