The Broken Circle: Yarns of the Knitting Witches

by Cheryl Potter

  Ratta felt the call again, like a rosy hand reaching out toward her chest from the sky. She actually felt herself lean forward on the bench, preparing to slap the reins against the flanks of the tired mules. It took all she could muster to resist. Mamie must have felt the urge, too, for she seemed to experience a brief spasm. Ratta dipped the rag into her tea again but Mamie no longer wanted the cloth, which dripped across her lined face, leaving a sticky track like tears.

  Ratta felt a prick behind her eyes and put a hand to the side rail of the wagon to steady herself. Her stomach lurched and she gave a dry swallow. She knew she was about to have a vision. It had been so long since one had come to her that the images took her by surprise. She suddenly saw a dizzying sequence: taloned fingers rifling through bodies on a killing field; a soldier boy with Sierra Blue’s blond coloring and features; Lilac Lily riding beside a milk-route driver along the track toward Esmeralde’s cottage; Winter Wheat as midwife, hatching a wet-winged creature from a chunk of ice; Indigo and Esmeralde standing in rain, watching green fire erupt from a fieldstone chimney. Ratta shook her head, but the pictures kept coming: children raced dun ponies through a tangled copse of trees; Sierra Blue strained to glimpse the moon through a window in what looked like a cage.

  Ratta grabbed her head and tugged at her curly red hair. Where were these visions coming from? She looked suspiciously toward the vacant house and then at Mamie, who did not open her eyes or speak, although for a moment Ratta thought she could hear Mamie’s inner voice, weaker than a whisper, yet coherent. Ratta shook her head in disbelief. The old woman did not have the strength for Mind Speak; and even if Mamie was trying to talk to her again Ratta did not want to admit that she was afraid to hear what the old woman might have to say after all this time.

  Honestly, Ratta could not be certain of who was saying what. She had not slept in two nights, and voices in the form of whispered half-truths abounded everywhere recently. Since she had driven through Coventry last evening, she had heard talk up and down the track among folk returning from the fair. They spoke of little other than the Twelve. Rumors at the Coventry General Store had ranged from hearsay—that one of the Twelve had been captured by the Northland Guard—to conjecture that the Twelve were actually the Guard’s allies, helping to gather forces in the Northlands. Fairgoers speculated that the combined power of Twelve and Guard would be First-Folk fierce. Others imagined that the Twelve would seize control of all the lands, unite the north and south, and end the glacier wars in a shower of icy sparks. The alternative, also proposed, was less optimistic—that the world was about to end, either in a burst of flames or locked again in ice.

  The morning’s blazing sky fueled such gossip. Resting the mules at a pull-off, Ratta had feigned disinterest when one fair follower reported that a member of the Twelve had been abducted up the military road. Others argued that the Twelve were but eight now, since one had been banished to the Burnt Holes, a second killed by a dark one who fled south, while yet a third had lost her mind in the Crystal Caves, where she wandered still. Ratta noted that their math worked no better than the logic.

  While Mamie’s voiceless message tumbled unintelligibly through her mind, Ratta climbed down from the wagon and tried the cottage door. It opened easily, not having been locked. Piled just inside the entry were Esmeralde’s remedies, as if she had been packing or unpacking them. Ratta lifted one container after another, finding nothing that looked strong enough to sustain Mamie. All she found was basic Farmer’s Market stock: strengthening teas and cough cures, salves and ointments.

  What Ratta sought would surely be secreted in the pantry behind the kitchen, where it was rumored Esmeralde practiced her lore. Over the years, those dying of fever or cancerous sores sought the back room. Esmeralde had tended such folk on a broad table covered with a clean sheet, which sometimes doubled as a funeral shroud. Ratta hustled to this back room only to find the pantry ransacked, and the table bare. Not a vial or bottle remained on the shelves. No wonder the door had been unlocked. Ratta wondered if Esmeralde had been the one caught and taken up the military road. If so, then why had her vision shown her Sierra Blue behind bars?

  Ratta returned to the front room and sank into one of Esmeralde’s rockers, not noticing its creak of protest. It was starting to look like she would have to wend her way north to find help for Mamie. But first she would water the mules and get some sleep, and also see if she could force a little gruel into the old woman. In the jumble of ordinary remedies by the front door, she had noticed some victual syrup laced with cordial and a few other sustenance vials. They might not help much, but they couldn’t hurt.

  Ratta felt better as the day waned, coating the pink afternoon with the comfort of familiar dusk. After settling Mamie on a threadbare settee in the cottage, she tended her animals and washed herself in Esmeralde’s basin, then dozed by the fire. Later, she slowly stirred some soup on the wood stove, all the while watching Mamie. The more she pondered her earlier visions, the more they chilled her, fleeting and unbidden as they were. It had taken her all day to come to terms with the source. She had first thought that Aubergine had sent the visions as part of the call, then that Esmeralde had used them to keep intruders from her house. Finally, she decided that it was Mamie who had cast the inner sight her way, to get her attention. Even now the old woman’s lips moved, straining to form syllables that Ratta could neither hear nor interpret.

  Ratta forced herself to be as still as was humanly possible, barely breathing as she tried to feel the old woman’s words resonate within herself. She rested her stirring spoon in the pot and let her eyes fall shut, the better to receive the words as the images that she suspected would come. She had discovered this process when she was a girl, all those years ago as Mamie had ceased to utter sounds. Of the Twelve, only Ratta found that she could understand the old woman, who began to speak with her eyes, much like it was rumored that Lowlanders did.

  For a while, she caught herself answering Mamie aloud, to the disgust of the other girls, who assumed her replies were playacting. Whenever Wheat heard Ratta responding to Mamie, she mocked Ratta by burning holes through her clothing with the crystals that swung from her staff. As time passed, inner visions began to accompany Mamie’s silent words and Ratta no longer needed to look into the old woman’s eyes or verbalize answers. Ratta named their private language Mind Speak, after the archaic language of the First Folk. Whenever Mamie was about to contact her, she would feel a small prick in her temples like a mosquito bite, followed by a flutter like butterfly wings as Mamie opened her mind and began paging through her memory. But that, too, had dwindled to nothing as the years passed.

  The way Mamie spoke from her mind was different from the call to the Potluck, which Ratta felt even now as a foolish urge to hitch the mules and leave in the night. The summons of the cold-fire crystals was Aubergine’s blatant red-sky magic trying to smother her, as it had the horizon. Ratta found it irritating, like an itch she refused to dignify with a scratch. But she knew she would succumb to it eventually, perhaps even within the hour, because as night fell the call grew plaintive.

  Mamie’s magic had always been more subtle and sublime than anything the rest of the Twelve could muster. Standing by the stove with her eyes closed, Ratta felt the familiar prick as the old woman began to seek her out once more. She sensed a soft flutter, a hesitant touch, and a parting of memories. Ratta felt her feet sway as her mind cleared to reveal a graveyard of crypts within a vast cavern of ice. Becoming queasy, she sank into Esmeralde’s rocker. She recognized the ancient cemetery from the lost tale, the yarn Mamie had revealed only to her, a story that—if left to Ratta—Sierra Blue would never know. Ratta believed the graves were those of the First Folk, who had died in ice before the world began again. She saw ruined mausoleums housing limestone markers, stone coffins, and burial urns, some of which still bore traces of the dual suns and braided rivers. Lesser-buried dead had been stacked row upon row in catacombs that lined the co
rridors.

  The entire cemetery was a shambles. Glacier run-off had carved out chasms and passageways, causing cave-ins that sealed over the mouths of some sections. Many of the crypts had been cracked open and the neat rows of catacombs had been twisted, whether from frost heaves or desecration by grave robbers, Ratta could not tell. Coffins lay scattered with broken lids, and ornate funeral tapestries crumpled where they had fallen.

  Her vision showed the sole remaining entrance to this cemetery, by way of a serpentine passage through the Crystal Caves, where, according to legend no living person had ever set foot. Few even believed this place existed. Amethyst and onyx stalactites, resembling jeweled spears, hung from the cavern roof and pearly stalagmites rose like jagged teeth from its floor. In her mind’s eye, Ratta had frequently visited these caves and the various tunnels that led to them, sometimes at Mamie’s bidding, and sometimes on her own. Mamie bade her go there now.

  “Watch Mae,” the old woman urged in their special language, speech without words. “Mae, Mae.”

  “Mamie,” Ratta answered in Mind Speak, but as soon as she repeated the name she knew she’d said it wrong, and a grimace fluttering across Mamie’s face suggested the same. She caught a glimpse of light bobbing through a dark tunnel, a dull glow from a chunk of crystal held high by a scrawny arm.

  “It is Mae,” Mamie clarified. And then Ratta saw the yellowed fingernails and recognized the crone from her morning vision of the killing fields. It was, indeed, Lavender Mae, older than when Ratta had last seen her but still intoning tuneless ditties. As Ratta watched, the light crept along a frigid path toward the burial grounds and all around the voices of the dead began to whisper. To combat the cacophony, Mae put her hands to her ears and chanted louder. “Mae, Mae, Mae!” she screeched.

  “She’s gone mad.” Ratta quietly observed.

  “Mae has the voices of the ancients inside her head,” Mamie explained, with the familiar old gravelly tone beginning to tinge her silent voice. “Do you remember the lost tale?”

  “Yes, of the ancients we call the First Folk. They lived beneath the twin suns, Re and Rah, in the fertile crescent between the intertwined rivers, Tigris and Eye.”

  “You will tell this tale one day soon,” Mamie reminded her. “To everyone. Even Sierra Blue.”

  Ratta remained stubbornly silent, watching Lavender Mae gnash her teeth and shake her head, as the voices grew unbearably loud.

  “Take heed,” Mamie warned. “For this is what happens to those who enter the Crystal Caves unbidden. The First Folk find you. They inhabit your mind.”

  “Mae needs to turn back,” Ratta said, watching as Mae drew forward toward the crypts, like a moth seeking fire. “Why doesn’t she?”

  “She cannot, for the ancients call to her. She did not enter the caves unnoticed the first time, nor does she now. Mae has been here too often.” Mamie’s sadness weighed on Ratta’s heart. “The voices of the First Folk echo within her. It is too late.”

  “Has the Guardian seen her?” Ratta asked.

  “All the Watchers have. And scavenging Lowlanders have breached the caves from the Blind Side. The Guardian has seen them as well. Can you recall the Lost Tale of the Ancients? All of it?”

  “I do, but I don’t know what it means.”

  “You were never meant to understand.” Mamie paused. “Tell Sierra Blue. She will know what to do, for she knows my fate as well as her own.”

  “Why not Mae?” Ratta argued. “I see how she is drawn to the graveyard, while crying out her own name. Perhaps the Guardian’s watchers wait for her. Perhaps she knows.”

  “No,” Mamie said. “She calls for me, as do the Watchers even now. The Guardian’s tenure is complete. It is I who am to be the next protector of the Crystal Caves.”

  With a blast of sputtering liquid, the soup began to boil over. Ratta’s eyes flew open and she ran to lift the pot from the stove before turning to Mamie.

  “Not you,” she begged. “Let them take her. It looks like they already have her!”

  “It is the ancients who have claimed Mae, not the Guardian. If she doesn’t have my help, they will drive her crazy.” The old woman’s bleary eyes blinked open. Ratta gasped. Mamie’s eyes were now so filmy and opaque that she knew her mistress could see nothing but the visions inside her head. “As Guardian, I will be the only one who can free Mae from the ancients.”

  “No,” Ratta protested in her mind, her eyes stinging with tears. “No!”

  “Those who watch from the tombs beyond the Crystal Caves call to Mae, but it is me they crave. Take me to the Potluck, so that Mae can lead you to them. I can free her. I can save you all.”

  Ratta shook her head. And then she screamed aloud. “No!”

  “Have Smokey Jo prepare the great pot for a simmer. Then you must loose me from this shawl,” Mamie continued, paying no attention to Ratta’s outburst. “In this world I am neither alive nor dead. You alone know the tale and the prophecy.”

  “But I do not believe the prophecy,” Ratta protested. “I never did.”

  “Your beliefs matter not,” Mamie said gently. “It is past time that I join the Guardians.”

  “No,” Ratta said. “Let us die together in fire as it is foretold. I do not care.”

  “I am dead already. There is nothing you or Esmeralde, or even Aubergine, can do but let me pass.”

  Ratta waited, resistant, as the thoughts tumbled in her brain. Finally, they settled and she felt resignation wrap around her, like an unending sadness. “Only if you truly will it,” she said at last.

  “I will it so.”

  “I feel the summons,” Ratta admitted.

  “As do I,” Mamie said. “When you reach the Potluck, you will tell the entire lost tale.”

  “As you wish,” Ratta said, as tears streamed down her face. “Is this goodbye? I always loved you.”

  “And I you,” Mamie said, slipping away.

  Wiping her face on a dishrag, Ratta went out to hitch the mules. She would go slinking back to the Potluck, but only for Mamie’s sake. Lilac Lily had been right. She had no choice. Though Mamie was now lost to her, she would wait until she reached the Potluck to unwrap the precious body from the never-ending shawl. She could not bear to let the old woman pass without the support of the Potluck, even though she feared Mamie would never be able to communicate with her again.

  These advanced-beginner-skill-level mitts are quite stretchy and will fit most women’s hands. The soft self-striping yarn gives them colorful rhythm and they are suitable for tender chores.

  Get the pattern from PotluckYarn.com/epatterns

  The back room of the Potluck bore almost no resemblance to the hallowed space it had been when all Twelve had circled the great pot.

  CHAPTER 14

  SMOKEY JO PULLED THE LACEY COWL UP over her curly head and trotted out to the dye shed once more, huffing at her exertion. Sierra had knitted the cowl in a merry colorway that Smokey Jo had dyed in a kettle long ago. The shaded reds and rust, with licks of indigo and slate, reminded Smokey Jo of a fire in the hearth, so she named it “Smoken.” Unfortunately, there was no hearth-fire today. Her fingers and even the tip of her upturned nose felt numb with cold.

  The back room of the Potluck bore almost no resemblance to the hallowed space it had been when all Twelve had circled the great pot. Smokey had spent part of this morning clearing a path through the heavy sacks of unskirted fleeces, the baskets of undyed yarns, and the bumps of roving that left a scent of lanolin lingering in the chill. Many of the fleeces had been graded and tagged years ago, but because fewer and fewer hand spinners made their way to Potluck Yarn these days, no one had thought to haul the bags of fiber out front to sell. Smokey had found sacks of musk-ox down and Angora rabbit fur, bricks of silk, curly kid-mohair locks, and the odd bale of carded possum. There was enough here to fill another entire shop, she mused. Too bad the shop space out front, which she managed
with Aubergine, was full to bursting. They must really stop collecting so much fiber and actually start spinning and dyeing it again, or at least prepare it for sale.

  Smokey’s breath came in ragged gasps as she attempted to drag the dye pot over to the fire pit, wresting it one way and then another. What she wanted was for it to sit squarely on the stones, ready to be lit. But the huge iron cauldron was heavy, and the floor over which she needed to haul it wasn’t clear. Cartons of dyestuffs had been scattered about. Squirrels had upended some crates, while mice had eaten through the wooden slats on others. Smokey tugged on her cowl, which had fallen down over her eyes. It was discouraging. She needed help.

  As if on cue, the bell tinkled over the front door signaling a customer. But when Smokey bustled through the narrow hall connecting the dye shed to the yarn shop, it was just Aubergine returning with their midday meal. With just the two of them here, they rarely laid a fire in the hearth or used the bread oven anymore. Instead, they bought food from the row of stalls on the next street over, closer to the city center. There, just a few coppers could bring them spiced meat pies and hot honeyed teas, as well as Smokey Jo’s favorite snack, kettle corn from the street-cart vendor, who popped the kernels in an oiled iron pot. She loved it drizzled with cinnamon icing or caramel, or sometimes buttered with a generous sprinkling of maple sugar.

  Today Aubergine’s market bag held no rolled cone of hot buttered corn. She began to unpack just meat pies and a pot of lemon tea with sugar cookies.

  “No kettle corn?” Smokey Jo cleared a space for their lunch on the cluttered table. She threw her knitting into a twig basket beside her chair and pushed a few knitted swatches into a heap in the middle of the table.

  “It seems your kettle corn vendor is still not back from the fair,” Aubergine said. “The others told me he has a stand along the main track beyond Banebridge and won’t be back before midweek.”