The Broken Circle: Yarns of the Knitting Witches

by Cheryl Potter

  An evergreen branch reached across the track to snag Trader’s leather jerkin. Quick as lightning, he warded it off with the light from his stick.

  “Now help me onto one of these mounts,” Trader said. “We need to pass quickly, before these trees catch us up in thickets so dense that we lose our way.”

  This cloak requires an intermediate skill level, and one size fits any traveler. Approximately 50" long (from the neck) by 74" (bottom edge).

  Get the pattern from PotluckYarn.com/epatterns

  The smell of death hung heavy in the sun-warmed valley.

  CHAPTER 4

  SQUINTING IN THE SUN’S GLARE, the sledder standing on the icy outcropping watched a lone figure far below scavenge the newly dead. Trained as a scout, the tall and well-muscled youth had spent most mornings honing his sled craft at the snow bowl practice slope behind the garrison. There wasn’t anything else to do. Pulling his fine horn snow goggles from his pack, he adjusted the straps over his army-issue toque. Even so, his curly hair escaped beneath the cap and caught on his goggles. If only he had his Potluck hat. Right now he could use its ability to make him serene or to pass unseen. But the cap had been taken away, along with his other personal possessions.

  The thin and ragged form below darted from one to another of the downed soldiers that lay in the bloody snow. It dug through uniforms and packs, most often finding nothing. The sledder had been tracking the forager for two days, since he’d noticed the ransacking of bodies. Caught unaware, soldiers from his unit, mostly farm boys from the Middlelands who knew nothing of war, had been slaughtered by Lowlanders coming through the lower passes hidden by the Blind Side of the glacier.

  Horrified, he and the other sledders had watched the carnage from above. His scouting party could do nothing from the heights but sled back to warn the rest of their company, camped to the east. The sled-der had stayed behind and looked on as their unit was crushed like ants. Scant hours later, he had seen this person creep out into the rock-strewn valley and begin to pick over the bodies, slowly, methodically. When he returned to his unit that night, the mood around the campfire had been sullen and the talk bitter, laced with glacier beer. It grew worse when he told the other scouts about the creature he had seen among the dead. Several in his detail had vowed to sled down through the foothills and kill whoever dared to desecrate their kin.

  Although they called the scavenger an old witch, the sledder was certain that no one else in his unit had any idea who it was. He did. These green recruits had not grown up hearing the yarns, told and retold around the fireplace before bed. If he was right, this lone soul could be not only a witch but also one of the Potluck Twelve, as his mother was. When the Northland Guard had come for him last winter, Warren had sworn to his mother to protect her and her brethren at any cost. Sierra had given him a puzzled half-smile, for she had not known why he would pledge such a thing. But his father had. One look at Kendrick’s stony face told Warren that he had much to make amends for, despite, or perhaps because of, his father’s part in the Glacier Wars.

  Before dawn on the morning after the carnage in the valley, Warren pulled his sled out of line from the entrance to his assigned route for that day, which was the main trail that wound through the foothills on the eastern side of the glacier. Flipping the bobsled over his head in a single move, he traversed to another chute that meandered south before cutting west. The path would mask his route through the glacier pass. He knew the risk. Leaving his unit would brand him a deserter and render his comrades suspect. His detail would most likely be questioned and detained, and then broken up and scattered, lest another traitor remained in their midst. He had seen it happen, even though he had been a scout for the Guard for less than two months.

  Warren left silently, not daring to tell his friend Niles that he sought to find the old hag and keep her safe. If Sierra’s tales rang true, the river rat had been an apprentice at the Potluck, chosen to become one of the Twelve. If he was wrong—well, he was in enough trouble already. His father had seen to that.

  Ever since he had been conscripted by the Northland Guard, Warren had been privy to the restless gossip that flew from bunk to bunk inside the training barracks when all should have been sleeping. New recruits were locked inside their dormitories like prisoners at night, although it seemed he was the only one suspected of a crime. Everyone knew that he hailed from Top Notch, rumored to be a wild place where mercenaries sledded the military road without passes, and sledders for hire broke track for Lowland raiders. Whispered words like turncoat and traitor had floated boldly around Warren’s head in the dark—names no one had dared to call him by day.

  Even here along the northern border, everyone knew Warren was the best sledder in all the lands. As a boy, he had won tournament after tournament in the Middleland Games held in the Runne River Valley, and last year he had won the adult division of the larger Winter Games. Now all competitions were canceled due to the war, and ironically here he was riding lead sled in the Northlands against his will. He had been handpicked by the garrison commander to break trail for the army. There was no sport in that.

  The other recruits in Warren’s barracks had no doubt that he would rise quickly through their ranks and soon be regarded as too valuable to send on scouting missions. Although sledders rarely saw combat, the garrison leaders would not want their most skillful guide hurt or missing. Conscripts with much less talent than Warren had escaped into the snowy foothills, where they were waiting out the war. Many had joined the roving bands of fossickers. Warren had been warned that as soon as a fresh group of recruits arrived in Bordertown, he would be assigned to train novice sledders at the snow bowl inside the safety and confinement of the garrison walls.

  Not all the murmured accusations directed toward Warren had been true, but enough were. However crude, there was secret track called the Blind Side Loop hidden below the slope of the backside of Top Notch that was used by the Lowland army. Warren’s father had forced him to help build the section of it that passed through their land. What gain Kendrick had expected or received from the South, Warren had never discovered. Not once or twice, but three times his father had faked moose hunts at the Sleep Out, where his so-called hunting parties consisted of mercenary road crews who risked their lives for newly minted Lowland coin.

  Although Sierra said nothing, Warren was not sure his mother had been fooled. As the secret sled trail grew from a riverbed connector to a track heading north, Warren became afraid for Kendrick, who at times seemed like a complete stranger, not kin, much less father. Warren knew now that Kendrick had used his own sons as Lowland decoys, and he thanked the luck of the dye pot that he had been the one spotted by soldiers, not Garth. The Northland Guard had come for him a week later. Now he was a deserter from an army he had never joined and involved in a war he did not believe in.

  Warren watched intently as the figure made its way around the killing field. Once in a while the creature secreted her finds into a pouch slung round her neck. Most often, her plunder went into a pantry sack she at times dragged behind her and other times hefted across her back. He feared that the dead soldiers she robbed this day had been another detachment from the Middlelands. Their torn banner bore the emblem of a World’s Fair tent, its pennants flapping against a bright sky above a blue swath of river. He knew he had to investigate, if only to satisfy himself and the families of those who might otherwise never know what happened to their husbands and sons. His biggest fear, one he could not voice even to himself, was that he would come across the bodies of his father or his younger brother in the snow.

  He positioned his bobsled at the top of the pass and began slow easy slaloms across the slope, using the switchbacks to control his speed and direction down the steep mountainside. Last night’s snow, just a light dusting, sprayed fresh powder around him. It glittered and hissed across his horn goggles. Hunkering down inside the sled’s cavity, he picked up speed as the wind resistance lessened. He felt confiden
t that the hide of the Alpine Moose that formed the bob of the sled would allow him to pass relatively unseen among the snowy outcrops. He came to a halt and left the sled high enough on the mountainside that when he returned to it the downward slice would allow him the momentum to mount the next pass without a carry—or so he hoped. Tightening his nailed glacier boots, he began the task of sidestepping carefully down the slope.

  The smell of death hung heavy in the sun-warmed valley. Working as a scout, he had never been directly involved in a skirmish. The reddened snow and thawing bodies made his stomach churn.

  Taking slow, deep breaths to still his innards, he focused on the torn banner flapping in the breeze partway down the slope. He made his way across to it, through the deep drifts. Pulling the stiff canvas from the snow, he ran his moose-hide mittens over the familiar emblem and feared he would recognize youths he knew among the slain. With growing dread, he trudged from body to body, forcing himself to look for the jackets of Northland blue and gray, to turn over those forms lying face down in the powder.

  The bruised purple and burnt gold uniforms of the Lowland dead were easy to spot and avoid. He’d seen few Lowlanders at close range, and most of those had been dead. Even without the sunset-hued uniforms they would be easy to identify. The Lowlanders were short and muscular, with red skin burnished copper from the desert sun and dark eyes under hair streaked russet and gold. Their words were few to none. It was rumored that they had mastered the ancient language of Mind Speak years ago, during the conflagration that resulted in the Burnt Holes. Some said they talked more with their eyes; others said they communicated with secret hand gestures. Warren hoped he would never get close enough to a band of them to find out. Among the Middleland dead he recognized a few ruffians from the mead halls in Middlemarch, as well as a boy from the Granary in Banebridge, who used to hold the ponies when Warren backed the wagon to the loading dock for feed. Warren forced himself to look at the young face frozen in a wide-eyed grimace, thinking to honor the boy’s life by paying attention to his death. Warren trudged down the icy incline, seeing no sign of his father or brother. He recognized no one else until he rounded the last drift on the slope. Across the field the scavenger rummaged on, seemingly in a world of her own. At his feet was another infantryman, facedown.

  When he turned the body over, as he had been doing with many others, his heart clenched. Dark cropped hair lay unruly across the peaked brow of his childhood friend, Averill from the Mill on the Rill. For the pan of a breath Warren fooled himself into thinking Averill lay asleep. Then his gaze dropped. A series of gashes made by a Lowland short sword severed the uniform, now blotched with rusty red. The surrounding fabric was as blue as Averill’s lifeless lips and eyes, and almost as blue as the hair ribbon clutched in the boy’s bloody hand, a torn length of silk that could only belong to his sister, Skye. Warren tugged the ribbon free from Averill’s grip and tucked it inside the lining of his mitten. How would he tell his sister that her childhood sweetheart was never coming back?

  He straightened Averill’s jacket for no reason he could think of, and turned away, blinking back tears. Would Averill’s sister Katarina learn of his fate? They had already suffered the loss of their father. How would their mother and grandfather take the news? Shaking his head and fingering the piece of sky-blue ribbon inside his mitt, Warren realized there was nothing left for him to do but walk away.

  It took him less than a quarter of an hour to scout his quarry. Soon there were only a few stunted trees and snowdrifts between him and the searcher. He could see clearly now that she was, indeed, a woman. A bone-thin hag, she had a mane of ragged white hair and skin browned and wrinkled by the high alpine sun.

  He stole closer and hunkered down behind a juniper bush. She had her back to him and was singing a tuneless ditty that sounded like a nursery rhyme with the words “Mae, Mae, Mae,” where the verses might go. Oblivious to the carnage, she picked through the bodies with the glee of a child sorting pebbles on a beach. She had donned several army jackets, layering them like quilts. Warren spotted the light blue-gray of a Northland Guard tunic hanging below a vest of maroon and burnt gold of the Lowland Infantry, covered in turn by a mercenary coat of arms he had never seen.

  Pins and medals the old woman had foraged were arrayed down one sleeve of the coat, where they winked garishly in the sun. As she swung toward the next body, Warren glimpsed a small but heavy drawstring pouch slung around her scrawny neck on a fine, braided cord.

  Warren knew then who she was, for he remembered the tale of the pouch and the story of the lost crystal supposedly hidden inside.

  With a hasty look around, the crone tucked the swinging sack back inside her shift, the yellowed nails of her clawed hands scrabbling at her throat. Although he was sure she could not see him, Warren froze when she abandoned the body she was kneeling over and let her tune dissipate into silence.

  Rocking back on her haunches, she sniffed the air like a wild dog, and Warren’s breath caught in his throat. Warily, she rose to a half crouch, like a wolf sensing prey. Warren squeezed himself lower behind the juniper bush, so that he could barely glimpse her between the dense branches. Slowly she turned, sniffing, coiled like a spring. As she stretched her arms to the skies, the pantry sack slung across her back slid to the snow unheeded.

  In one fluid motion she sprang and Warren gasped. Suddenly they were face to face, with just the juniper branch between them.

  “Mae,” she screamed, smiling in the sun. “Mae, Mae, Mae.”

  “Ma-Mae?” he stuttered. For now he thought he understood. “Lavender Mae? You are Lavender!”

  “Ha!” she screamed, her smoky breath blasting his face. He quickly opened his eyes again, but she was gone.

  This intermediate-skill-level pouch is available in two sizes, depending upon how many crystals you wish to secret inside. Size small is 4" long by 3 ¼" wide and size large is 5 ¾" long by 3 ¼" wide.

  Get the pattern from PotluckYarn.com/epatterns

  The crystals began to pulse with the footfalls of many booted feet.

  CHAPTER 5

  WHEAT HAD NOT WINTERED WELL. Last fall, the Lowland invasion had forced her to stray far to the Western Highlands with her flock, and now she was having a tough time shepherding her Jacob sheep back to the Middlelands. The little black-and-white spotted ewes were heavy with lambs, and the paths were uncommonly steep. Sudden spring rains had swollen the rills and streams to block her usual route, further delaying her return. To add to her uneasiness, a rank scent of smoke increased as she trekked closer to the Northland Glacier.

  She knew the stench was burn-out from the ice caves, yet she could not hazard a guess as to what the Lowlanders had set on fire, or why. Finally she hiked near enough to glimpse the layer of sooty fog that settled into the valleys under the shadow of the ice. She feared that the secrets the Potluck Twelve had sworn to protect might have been unearthed, although there had been no summons from Aubergine. It wasn’t as if she could have plainly seen any sign in the sky anyway, she reflected, because she was so far from her usual route.

  Wheat’s tardiness meant that she would miss the World’s Fair for the first time in two decades. It was a crying shame, since the fair committee depended on her to judge the skirted fleeces and the finer handspun yarns. Known throughout the lands as a fiber savant, Winter Wheat had only to touch animal fiber to identify its origin, staple length, subsequent loft, and best future twisting structures. She could even envision possible finished garments and the properties they might have, although she almost always reserved this knowledge to herself.

  To stay safe, Wheat kept her true identity a secret. Always large, she had grown in girth through the years and doubted anyone from her past would recall her as one of the Twelve. Only the contents of the felted backpack under her oilskin cloak or the two crystals knotted around the curl of her shepherd’s crook could give her away, if anyone were near enough or old enough to recognize these things. Afte
r a close encounter with the band of Lowlanders last fall had sent her scurrying to the western prairies, Wheat had not seen a Middlelander or Northlander. Winter snowstorms soon blocked the migratory footpaths through the prairie. The shepherds in the Western Highlands seemed to have no knowledge of the Twelve or the fabled yarns. Even so, Wheat had dared to reveal nothing about herself to them. Magic was forbidden everywhere, even in the untamed west.

  The amber crystals hanging from her staff clacked together in the breeze, chattering to each other in a way she had not heard in decades. In fact, the last time Wheat had witnessed the slightest glow from either of them was years ago, when she caught Smokey Jo playing with them in the alley behind the Potluck dye house. No bigger than quail eggs, the cabochons were crystallized amber gleaned from glacier tunnels that some said led to the legendary Crystal Caves. Each orb encased a large beetle that had been imprisoned when the crystal had not yet hardened. These two rare jeweled coffins lay dormant now, and weathered by seasons past. Yet Wheat could recall when each golden scarab had cast an opaque fire, and the beetle preserved for eternity had been lit from within. Catching the spheres in her plump hand, Wheat gave them a gentle squeeze and thought she might have felt a replying pulse of warmth. But when she scrutinized the crystals, they remained dull. With a sigh, she let them loose to swirl around her staff. She had more immediate concerns.

  As she trekked east, Wheat worried about simple day-to-day quandaries. She needed to cull several rams from her current herd; many of her ewes were due to lamb, and she was sorely short of the shiny new coin of the realm. She hated to even conjecture the handsome price her yearling rams would have brought in the exotic-breed auction at the fair, but she gritted her teeth and calculated the loss in her head, for she had counted on that money. Her Jacobs had distinctive horns and grew glistening patterned fleeces, and her rams were genetically perfect for stud.