The Broken Circle: Yarns of the Knitting Witches

by Cheryl Potter

  Folk from the village hooted at the rolling chair Ratta had made for Mamie from a broken rocker and a set of wheels from a child’s wagon. Ratta was pleased with her work. It allowed her to wheel Mamie around the village of Coventry when she brought eggs to sell. Mamie slept almost all the time now, and Ratta was afraid to leave her alone. She dreaded the possibility of returning from errands to find Mamie dead in her cot by the wood stove. Ratta knew her fear was selfish. She was afraid of living alone in an unknown world, bereft of magic.

  Because of the many wildfires up north, this winter had been so warm that daffodils had already poked their heads through the snow, while green shoots showed at the garden’s edge. Soon it would be time to turn the earth and plant seeds. Ratta grabbed a rake and worked savagely on the dead leaves next to her cabin. The signs of spring made her so angry she had to shout, even though she knew Mamie could not hear her.

  “The world’s waking up, and you’re dying,” she raged, her red hair flying wild.

  Only the shawl sparkled in reply. It was the same never-ending shawl Ratta had started to knit when she thought the magic of the crystal-dyed yarns would keep Mamie alive forever. The shawl held a lot of history. Ratta had made it from a ball of bouncy bouclé yarn that never ran out. Sierra had spun the yarn from Merino roving she had bartered a few felt hats for at a fiber festival, and Indigo Rose had dyed it in the soft crystalline colorway she called Dusty Rose. Cocooned in the shawl, Mamie had only to transform into the butterfly of her next life to offer Ratta peace of mind. That had not happened yet. Ratta was afraid, with her spotty interpretation of the tales of old that it might not happen at all. She knew she was supposed to do something to ease Mamie into the afterlife. She could not figure out what.

  Ratta propped the rake against the garden shed and crossed to the bench beside Mamie’s chair. A flask sat beside her knitting bag. Ratta sat down, uncorked the top, and sipped the still-warm honeyed tea. She gazed at Mamie and sighed. The old woman hadn’t stirred all morning.

  Life had not been this dismal when Mamie had first ceased to speak, for that had happened years ago when they all still lived at the Potluck. The big bay windows of Mamie’s chamber overlooked the kitchen garden. Ratta’s space was a small adjoining anteroom. Day after day, Mamie and Ratta sat in the sun, creating conjoined magic in secret. Their enchantment did not require spoken words. The other Potluckers became envious. Sierra, who had learned Mamie’s tales verbatim, was outright rude, for she could not fathom why Ratta no longer listened to her yarns.

  Only Lilac Lily had guessed the truth, and she could reveal nothing unless asked. Why should Ratta have to listen to Sierra’s rehashed tales when the voice of her mistress, inaudible to the others, echoed in her ears? When Mamie directed her gaze at Ratta, Ratta could hear the old woman’s slow, careful words reverberating with the wisdom of the legends. She felt no need to linger at breakfast with the other acolytes, debating the underlying meanings of the old tales or discussing the will of the ancients. With Mind Speak, Mamie’s silence told Ratta everything she needed to know.

  Although Ratta’s attention to Mamie’s health never wavered, Mamie’s decline quickened when the Potluck broke up. Mamie became convinced that she must return to her abandoned farm outside the ironworks of Coventry. Her attendant had been more than grateful to load the wagon. Ratta understood clearly that Mamie wanted her back at the old cabin in the woods as her successor and the guardian of the tales, not as the lowly farm maid she had been when they arrived at the Potluck. Although she would not be able to recite the stories as well as Sierra Blue, and she did not understand some of them, who else was left? Tasman had broken the amethyst necklace and run off, Teal had disappeared, as had the largest stone, and Sierra had escaped to a dreamy life along the Lavender Rill. Who else would offer the legends a safe haven? Certainly not Lilac Lily, who could hardly keep a secret, or Aubergine, now painfully disillusioned, or everyone’s little pet, Smokey Jo. Lavender Mae could not stand to leave the pipe leaf alone, and Indigo had her own set of delusions if she thought she and

  Esmeralde could rival Aubergine’s authority with visions obtained by sipping Crystal Cordial and smoking Glacier Weed.

  The only one of the Twelve that Ratta had ever crossed paths with again was Wheat, whom she liked least. One day last spring, when she was in town alone selling eggs, she had seen Wheat leading a flock of spotted sheep along the migratory foot path that wound down to Coventry from the Western Highlands. Wheat had grown stout and used her staff as a walking stick. The amber crystals tied to the crook looked dull, and Ratta assumed they had gone dead. Still, she steered clear of Wheat, lest she was mistaken and the scarab beetles were only sleeping.

  Ratta noted Mamie’s sunken cheeks. She would like to believe that the old woman was just sleeping, too. There was one among the Twelve who might be able to help Mamie. Ratta had been mulling that idea all winter. According to rumor, her classmate Esmeralde had grown from selling homemade cough syrup in her dormitory room into the most powerful healer in the Middlelands. Her simpler remedies were sold everywhere, even the Coventry General Store. Yet rumors suggested that Esmeralde practiced more serious lore in the back room of her cottage south of Banebridge. Now that the roads were finally passable again, Ratta considered seeking her out.

  Ratta picked up her knitting, and then set it aside. When they had all gone their separate ways, she had been excited about following in Mamie’s footsteps. Preserving verbal history, like Sierra wanted, was one thing. Possessing the power to ward the legends against those who would destroy them was quite another. Ratta had hoped that with the entire body of the tales at her disposal, there would be no need for visions over a dye pot or conjectures around a table. Even before she left the Potluck for good, Ratta had been able to recall one tale that Sierra had never heard. She thought Mamie knew even more yarns, darker stories yet untold. She believed that if she returned Mamie to her homestead, they could practice uninterrupted and she could learn those mysterious tales.

  But things had not gone as she envisioned. On the journey to Coventry, Mamie suffered a shock of some kind, or maybe a stroke. The old woman’s hearing began to wane, and then disappeared.

  At the homestead, Ratta closed up the big house and brought Mamie to the small cabin in the woods, where she could watch the old woman constantly. This move caused an uneasy stir back east, among Mamie’s nieces and nephews who all wanted to lay claim to the homestead. For a time, the family tried to place Mamie in an old-age home in Bordertown until it became clear that Mamie would rather die. The baleful hate in her watery eyes needed no translation into words.

  With each passing year, Mamie had become more unresponsive. Ratta could no longer hear the Mind Speak voice, which had dropped to an unintelligible murmur. With dread, she realized that—short of some kind of miracle—there would be no more secret tales.

  A few days earlier, in desperation, Ratta had stopped knitting her never-ending shawl. It was unfinished, of course, but she hoped the wrap’s weak power could keep Mamie from getting worse. She knew it could not make her better. She began to bind what would become the last row off the needles.

  Horse hooves crunched on gravel and Ratta looked up expectantly. No one ever visited the wooded cabin unbidden, so even before he came around the side of the dwelling she knew the rider would be her childhood friend, Tyler.

  He waved. “I thought I’d find you in the garden.”

  Ratta watched him dismount, balancing on his good leg while he slid his walking cane from its holster under the saddle. “The eggs are gathered,” she said. “I can drop them off at General Store on my way through.”

  “There’s no need for that.” Tyler said, looping his old mare’s reins around a low branch of an apple tree. His twisted leg did not hinder his movement. It had been this way since he was young, and now he was glad of it because it made him unfit for war.

  “I thought I told you to leave the chores for me.”


  “I wanted to do them one last time,” she said.

  “You have enough to do.”

  Leaning on his cane, Tyler limped to the chair in which Ratta had nestled Mamie’s still form. He put a hesitant hand to the old woman’s translucent skin.

  “She lives,” Ratta said. “But I don’t think she knows we’re here. For a time now, she hasn’t noticed me even when she’s wakeful. Her eyes seem to stare at nothing.”

  Tyler pulled on his short beard. “Will she eat?”

  Ratta shook her head. “She refuses all food, even when I touch a spoon of honeyed porridge or warmed milk to her lips.”

  He watched her carefully. “It might be her time to pass into the land of dreams.”

  Ratta nodded silently. These past few days had led to loneliness unlike any she had ever known and given her too much time to contemplate how little her life would hold after Mamie died. Would her family return from the fisheries of the east and take over the farm? Would they banish her from the cottage where she had cared for Mamie these twenty years past? Or would they ignore the old woman’s passing as they had ignored her life and let the boarded-up buildings rot away, leaving Ratta to practice the remnants of Mamie’s lore alone?

  “Mamie is unable to pass, for the never-ending shawl I knit is magic,” Ratta said. “Wrapped in it, I fear she will remain in limbo until she is either reborn or dried up to a husk.”

  “What is her will?” Tyler asked.

  “I don’t know.” Tears welled in her eyes and one slid down Ratta’s face. “If only she could offer a clue.”

  “Take her to the remedy woman,” Tyler urged. “Surely there is something Esmeralde can do.”

  As they watched, Mamie’s milky eyes opened slowly, and blinked in the sunlight like those of a week-old kitten.

  “Ask her,” Tyler said.

  Ratta knelt before the wheeled chair and stared into the old woman’s face. “Mamie,” she said silently in Mind Speak. “Mamie Verde, what would you have me do?”

  “Use your special language,” Tyler interrupted.

  Ratta gave him a frustrated look. “I’m trying.”

  The old woman was unable to focus her gaze. Her unseeing eyes offered them an impression of such complete despair that Ratta immediately regretted not having left for Esmeralde’s cottage this morning at first light.

  “She wants to pass,” Tyler murmured, as Mamie’s eyes closed once more.

  “But she can’t.” Ratta looked at him. “Something’s undone.”

  She rose to her feet. Tyler put a comforting hand to her shoulder, as she stared down at Mamie in dismay. Here Mamie was, wrapped in a magic shawl that kept her alive against her will. What Ratta had done to prolong her existence was little better than the old-age home Mamie’s relatives had threatened.

  “I would do anything for her,” Ratta told Tyler fiercely. “Even let her go, if I must.”

  “Then take her to the remedy witch.” Tyler gave Ratta’s shoulder a squeeze. “I’ll watch things here.”

  Leaving Tyler with Mamie, Ratta hurried to the barn and hitched up the mules, blinking back tears. Tyler helped her lay Mamie gently among quilts in the back of the wagon, still snugly wrapped in the shawl.

  As she slapped the reins and waved, Ratta vowed to find a way to waken Mamie’s voice once more—or let her die trying. There were still tales to be told, tales of vast icy graveyards and of frozen dead entombed in palatial caverns. She had seen these things through Mamie’s eyes, but she didn’t know where.

  This “never-ending,” intermediate-skill-level shawl will take you safely to the afterlife. Shoulder line measures 73" with a depth of 52" after blocking.

  Get the pattern from PotluckYarn.com/epatterns

  “Ever hear of hiding in plain sight?”

  CHAPTER 8

  THE DELL WAS RICH WITH SPRING GRASSES. The ponies hungrily cropped the tender shoots while Skye washed in the nearby streambed. Lifting her face to the midday sun, she became aware of how much she had disliked the Copse, where branches caught at her skirts from the sides of the narrow track, barely kept at bay by the light that shone from the jewel lashed to Trader’s walking stick. The ponies had rolled their eyes and whinnied nervously at the dark branches waving at the edge of the trail, and no matter how many times Trader urged her to keep close, Skye lagged further and further behind.

  With relief, the two people and two ponies finally broke through the ferns into the warm and sunny river valley that the fossickers fondly called the dell. Shaking the icy water from her hands, Skye rose and trudged back to where Trader had a cook fire crackling in the blackened crescent of rocks before the lean-to. She spread her damp traveling cloak across a bush to dry and pulled her lace shawl close. This was the fine shawl she had meant to dazzle everyone with at the fair. Now the fabric, with its intricate frost-flower design, served only to warm her shoulders around the campfire. The campsite beyond was all but invisible, hidden by tall bushes bright with new leaves.

  Various fossickers had camped here over the winter. A footpath to the spring and a privy were evident as were fishing spots along the stream. Trader’s lean-to looked sturdy to Skye, though worn. The heavy oiled canvas stretched over the notched wood frame was soiled and threadbare, likely from having been broken down and moved in haste so many times. Tucked beneath the awning, bedrolls lined the sloping wall. Cluttered among them were packsacks and pantry bags, ready to be carried off at a moment’s notice. From the amount of truck piled against the canvas, Skye thought the band of fossickers must be larger than she had first imagined.

  “It’s a nice spot,” she said, approaching the fire, near which Trader sat on a bare log. Water boiled in a battered kettle into which he was stirring birch bark and honey for tea.

  “It’s home,” Trader eyed her with a grin. “To us filthy fossickers.”

  “Come off it,” Skye said, sitting beside him. She smoothed her torn skirt around her ankles. “I can’t help what I hear.”

  “Nor I,” Trader admitted. He pulled strips of dried jerky and a rind of cheese from an open pantry sack. “You hungry?”

  Skye nodded, taking the cheese and knife he offered, plus the bit of planking the boys obviously used for a cutting board. Trader pulled the kettle off the fire and poured the tea into mismatched mead cups.

  “How long have you been out here?” Skye asked, as he handed her a cup. He was younger than she had first thought—no older than her brother Garth, or maybe just scrawny for his age. She blew across the rim of the cup to cool the steaming tea. “Living like this.”

  “Off and on,” Trader said. “When need be. It was easier before the Guard started hunting us like wild game.”

  “Looking for conscripts?” Skye asked, slicing cheese, and he nodded. “They took my brother Warren. He’s a winter older than me. Warren was the best sledder in all of the lands. He won the Winter Games last year.”

  “No doubt.” Trader bit off a piece of jerky and offered her the rest. “Soldiers slinking around are always after me and my mates. We have to look sharp.” He nodded toward a corner with a pile of surplus bedrolls. “Some of us are not so lucky.”

  “Were they taken by the Northland Guard?”

  “Who knows,” Trader sighed. “Boys come and go. Everyone wants to make their fortune as a fossicker until they find they have nothing to trade, and the weather turns cold, and the rivers icy. Then the family farm they ran away from and Mother’s stewpot looks good once more.”

  “What about you?” Skye asked softly.

  “I’m always here,” Trader shrugged, chewing a rind of cheese. “I got nowhere to go.”

  “But you get by,” Skye conjectured. “With stealing and thievery?”

  “Finds,” Trader corrected her, waggling a finger. “I know where to find things. And what to look for—that’s the difference. There’s brisk trade in fossicks the glacier leaves behind, if you k
now the right folk looking.”

  “Fossicks like that magic rock atop your walking stick?” Skye asked, sipping tea.

  “No.” Trader gave her a sharp look. “That’s mine unchallenged.”

  “Unchallenged?” Skye smiled, seeing she had hit a nerve.

  “At least for now,” he mumbled, looking away.

  “Well, have you ever found fossicks? I mean, real ones?”

  He smiled slyly. “I do discover the odd crystal now and again. Once I found a jeweled beetle inside a piece of amber. Traded it for leather boots and this new jerkin.” He showed her his leather jersey, laced at the top. About to go on, he caught himself. “Lately there’s better trade in the truck the soldiers leave behind.”

  “Weaponry?” Skye asked. “Uniforms?” She looked at him with dawning horror. “Do you scavenge from the dead?”

  Trader shook his dark head. “Mostly it’s just camp stuff the Guard leaves behind when units move on. Tools and broken bits, dishes and bedding. That’s where this kettle came from, and the mead cups.” He started laughing. “Once we came across a raiding party of Lowlanders and raided them back while they slept. Oh, the food! We had beans with bacon ends for days, black bread and mustard, gallons and gallons of hard cider.” He looked around. “It’s all gone now.”

  “The cheese, too,” Skye laid the knife across the barren plank.

  Trader sucked on his lip. “There’s nothing more. We ate all else.”

  Skye dumped out one of her twig baskets. “I’ve no apples left,” she said, picking though the empty sacks. “And the ponies ate all the grain.” Worriedly, she looked to Trader. “What now? There’s a little coin in Mother’s change purse, but it’s not Northland silver.”

  “We’ll meet up with the others at dusk under the bridge,” Trader assured her, “after the soldiers are off the road. Clayton and Micah will bring our barter.” His eyes drifted toward Sierra’s rucksack beyond the baskets. “We’ll need all sorts of truck to trade if we expect to reach the Border Lands.”