Smokey sank heavily into the soft cushions of her chair, and, reaching across her meat pie, bit dejectedly into a cookie. She kicked at a few balls of yarn that had rolled across the dusty floor.
“I wish Lily was here,” she said. “The back room is a mess and we’ve no one to cook for us or ready the house, with all of them coming.”
“The Potluck could use some spring cleaning.” Aubergine assessed the streaked windows and cluttered counters.
Smokey raised her brows. “Unless you think none of them are coming? It’s been two days.”
“Oh, they’re coming.” Aubergine smiled, pouring the tea. “Just not all.”
“There’s been no answering fire.”
“Perhaps the other box is lost,” Aubergine replied. “As ours was, all those years.”
“I know who’s not coming. I can guess,” Smokey crunched up her cookie and brushed the crumbs to the floor before reaching for her teacup. “Tell me if you think I’m right. Teal isn’t coming.”
“Since we’ve seen nothing of her for twenty years but the odd wisp of smoke, that’s a reasonable wager. But I’ve a feeling she’ll send someone in her place.”
Smokey Jo nodded shrewdly, gesturing with another cookie. “And Tasman.”
“The Dark Queen.” Aubergine’s gaze seemed to focus far away and her eyes grew violet. “That is what they call her now. She is nowhere and everywhere.” Aubergine considered before she spoke. “No, she will not arrive like the others, although I am certain she will be among us.”
“Locking the doors won’t help?”
“No, little one,” Aubergine gave a tired smile. “Besides, I thought you lost the key.”
Smokey glanced around the untidy shop, at the shelves and baskets overflowing with yarns and rovings, needles and notions. A tippy pile of unanswered posts littered the counter next to a sleeping cat. “It’s here somewhere, probably,” she said. She rummaged in the cookie sack. “Esmeralde and Indigo will come.”
“Perhaps they will be the first ones here.” Aubergine unwrapped her meat pie. “No doubt they have convinced each other that they can run the Potluck better than we.”
“They’ve been sharing their visions again, have they?” Smokey asked anxiously.
Aubergine nodded. “They are under the impression that I don’t know. Their so-called visions laced with Crystal Cordial and glacier weed come to me unwanted, like indigestion.”
“What are they looking for? Something we have?”
“They don’t agree. One says an intruder, while the other thinks an interloper.” Aubergine smiled. “As we do, they seek the lost crystal. Yet they erroneously believe that Lavender Mae has it, or another that will substitute.”
“Lavender Mae has many crystals.”
“But neither that one nor a twin.”
“Do you think it isn’t lost after all? Perhaps around here somewhere, misplaced like the keys?”
“It is no more lost than Teal is dead,” Aubergine said, laying aside her pie. “Greasy, that,” she complained, reaching into the sack for a cookie. “If Lily shows up and we ask the right questions, we’ll find both Teal and the crystal hiding in plain sight.”
“Wheat will be here.” Smokey slurped tea. “And Sierra.”
“I am not certain of Wheat,” Aubergine admitted. “She may have been delayed in the Western Highlands. And I’ve a bad feeling about Sierra Blue. There’s something amiss with her.”
“Have you been conjuring visions over the dye pot, too?” Smokey demanded, searching in the clutter for the honey pot. She finally found it, stuck to the table, under a sheaf of patterns. “Without me?”
“No,” Aubergine shook her head wearily.
“I dislike it when you retire to your room so early in the day,” Smokey objected, stirring more honey into her tea.
“I just need an afternoon nap now and again,” Aubergine said gently. “I have much to consider for an old woman who runs a yarn shop.”
“It is I who runs the yarn shop,” Smokey said. “I’m right down here most days.”
Aubergine began to laugh. “Why do you protest so?”
“Because the Twelve are coming!” Smokey explained, swiping a napkin across her face. “And we’ve much to do!”
“Surely it can wait until after lunch. Don’t you want your meat pie? It’s bear sausage with anise.”
Smokey shook her head and crunched another cookie. “I don’t have time for meals. Plus sweets give me energy. Have you seen the condition of the back room?”
“Not since last summer. I am sure you will put it to rights.”
“Not without help.” Smokey shook the bag, but the cookies were gone. “What about Lavender Mae? Is she coming?” She answered her own question. “Hard to say.”
“Perhaps if we went and got her,” Aubergine suggested. “She might need persuasion.”
“Don’t look at me. I hate the cold. That leaves Mamie and Ratta. Do you think Mamie passed?”
“Perhaps.” Aubergine sipped her tea. “As well she should have, by now. If she did not, she’s no longer the Mamie we know. Her presence will bring more harm than good.”
“Her red-haired henchmaid Ratta will see to that.” Smokey gave Aubergine a defiant look. “I cannot stand her.”
“Nor can anyone else, it would seem.” Aubergine emptied the last of the tea into their cups and reached for her knitting.
“Well, why would they? You know, at the end of it she would not even listen to Sierra’s yarns, and you know we all loved Sierra’s stories.”
“Yes we did.” Aubergine began to count stitches.
Smokey squirmed in her chair. “I’m most wary of Lily. Not of her exactly, but of what she knows.” She looked Aubergine in the eye. “Lilac Lily knows a lot about me.”
“She knows a lot about everyone,” Aubergine said complacently and slipped a marker between two stitches. “That’s her gift.”
“Well, she’d better not tell everything.”
“I think she will be more careful this time,” Aubergine said, straightening her row. “We all will.”
“I know I said I forgave her for breaking up the Potluck, but I didn’t,” Smokey picked at her pie. “I couldn’t.”
“It wasn’t wholly her fault.” Aubergine pinched the stitches she was counting between her fingers to hold her place and looked up.
“It was Tasman’s fault for running off, or maybe it was my fault for believing Tasman only wanted to try on the necklace.”
“It was Sierra’s for letting Tasman take her place,” Smokey said darkly. “Sierra never would have stolen the necklace of the Twelve.”
Aubergine resumed her work. “We all had a part in what happened.”
“What was mine?” Smokey asked, watching Aubergine knit. Her stitches were so small and even that she never had to glance at her work. Smokey had to watch her knitting constantly, because her loops were so big that the knitting refused to stay on her needles. She might be better off taking a beginner knitter class rather than trying to teach one.
Aubergine’s birch needles clicked and clacked. “You, little one, should have pestered me to summon the Twelve last year or the year before, before the Lowlanders started coming up beyond Top Notch.”
“I was thinking we should, except I couldn’t remember where we hid the tinderbox.” Smokey admitted. “Come to find out, it was on a high, high shelf. And you know I am vertically challenged. Plus I fear ladders.”
“I have a feeling Tasman’s lackeys have broken into the Crystal Caves.” Aubergine paused for a moment before she continued. “I’m afraid we shall have to get out the big pot and have a simmer, to see.”
“The pot is full of old dyestuffs, none of them good any more.” Smokey began to pile the remains of their lunch on a tray. “And it feels heavier than it used to. I can’t push it to the fire pit.”
“It might be
worse.” Aubergine handed Smokey her empty cup. “The Crystal Caves are a treasure, but the real prize for Tasman would be the tombs of the ancients.”
“What would the Dark Queen want with the graves of the First Folk?” Smokey struggled to keep the pile of crockery from tipping over.
“There is no telling without seeing,” Aubergine said, rummaging in her knitting bag for her magnifiers. “Thus we need to circle the pot.”
“What we need is help!” Smokey said, setting the tea tray back on the table. First the teaspoons and then the saucers clattered to the floor. She bent to pick up the broken dishes. “Is there no other way to gain the knowledge of the Crystal Caves?”
“Sierra Blue cannot tell us. She doesn’t know.” Aubergine settled her half-moon spectacles across her nose. “The one yarn Mamie never spoke aloud was the lost tale of the First Folk buried beyond the Crystal Caves.”
“I shall wring the story from Ratta’s throat myself if I have to,” Smokey said fiercely. “You watch.”
“She may know nothing,” Aubergine soothed, looking up from her pattern. “Or even if she can recite the tale, she may not understand it. To derive the meaning of a legend, you have to understand it.”
“I doubt she can tell the time of day, let alone an ancient yarn,” Smokey climbed under the table to retrieve her knitting basket.
“What about the stable boy?”
Smokey’s voice was muffled. “What?”
“He can move the dye pot to the fire pit,” Aubergine suggested. “We must have a simmer.”
Smokey straightened up so quickly that she hit her head on the underside of the table. “Aubergine, we let him go last winter after the horse died. Don’t you remember?”
Aubergine nodded. “I remember the horse. Dapple-gray draft, wasn’t he? And the stable boy was big and brawny.” She watched Smokey paw through her untidy basket of half-knit scarves and mittens. She sighed at all the dropped stitches. “He smoked glacier weed in the stable, though, and I won’t tolerate that. The horse is dead?”
“Of old age. The boy is gone.” Smokey abandoned her knitting and gave Aubergine a quizzical look. “And we have no cook or gardener or housekeeper. There are just you and me to ready all.”
“We shall have to hire help, then.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” Smokey sat back down, exasperated. “The Twelve can show up here at any time, and none of the beds have linens and none of the rooms have been aired. No fires have been laid, and there is no heat at all upstairs.”
“I don’t care for stairs.” Aubergine pointed a needle toward the narrow staircase in the front hall. “I prefer to sleep downstairs.” Yawning, she set her knitting aside. “Go hire your help, if you must.”
“I shall run down to the farmer’s market and post a notice,” Smokey said, climbing down from her chair before Aubergine could change her mind. “I shall post two notices, one for a housekeeper and one for a handyman. That should do to start.”
Before Smokey could fasten her cloak, the bell tinkled and the door swung open. She stopped in her tracks. The lined face looked familiar, but she wasn’t certain of who it was until she noticed the market bag. “Lilac Lily?” she asked. Then, “Lily! Am I glad to see you!”
“And I you,” Lily laughed, setting down her bag and shedding her cloak.
Smokey clasped her hands and did a little jig. “We were just speaking of you!”
Lily glanced toward the table and the smile left her face. “Meat pies from a street vendor for lunch?” She looked to Aubergine in alarm. “Weak tea, and store-bought cookies! Does the oven no longer work?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know,” Aubergine replied, rising to give Lily a hug. “We have not lit it in months. How are you, dear?”
Lily held her close. “I have weathered better than you, I fear,” she murmured into Aubergine’s neck, before releasing her. “What a sorry state of affairs. Look at this place!”
“We’ve kind of let it go,” Smokey admitted, watching as Lily took in the overflowing baskets of half-knit socks, bins of tangled yarn, and dusty spinning wheels, surrounded by sacks of jumbled roving. “I was just now going out to post a work-for-hire bill in the market.”
“You will do no such thing.” Lily began to clear the lunch tray from the table.
“The dust and dirt are worse upstairs,” Aubergine said, as she and Smokey followed Lily into the neglected kitchen. “Some of the doors to those rooms have not been opened in years.”
Lily stood in the dim space, taking in the littered countertops and the small round table piled high with take-away sacks and with hot pots rimmed with old tea leaves. Forgotten market bags half full of sprouted potatoes and rotting vegetables sat on chairs and the floor. The air smelled of rancid cream. Lily opened the icebox and shut it quickly.
“How long has it been since the ice man came?”
“Quite awhile,” Smokey said. “He stopped coming when no one shoveled the snow from the garden path.”
“What about the stable boy?”
Aubergine nodded toward Smokey Jo. “She let him go.”
“Well, the horse died,” Smokey Jo put up both hands.
Lily shook her head. “I cannot believe this,” she said, opening a window.
“Don’t go upstairs,” Aubergine warned, as Lily turned away.
“Did you see our fire in the sky?” Smokey asked hopefully, trailing Lily down the hall. “Is that why you came?”
“I did see it, yesterday morning, but I was already halfway here, in Woolen Woods.” Lily was heading for the staircase. “I set out after I saw Sierra Blue at the fair, three days ago.”
“Is she coming?” Smokey’s eyes gleamed. “I guessed she was coming.”
“I don’t know if she will come.” Lily paused, her hand on the banister. “I was afraid to talk to her.”
“Afraid?” Aubergine asked. “Of Sierra Blue? Why in the world, when all fear you? Child, what has come to pass?”
Lily’s eyes dropped. “Aubergine, I did what you asked,” she said, quietly. “For twenty years I have practiced my lore. You have only to ask me the questions and I can answer.” She gave a cursory glance up to the second floor. “Where is that red-haired scullery girl, Ratta? I’ve a few questions I want her to ask.”
“We don’t know,” Smokey said. “You’re the first to arrive.” She trudged up the stairs after Lily. “We haven’t even seen Indigo or Esmeralde, and we thought they would be here first.”
“I wouldn’t count on Esmeralde,” Lily said. “Her booth at the fair was empty. The Northland Guard was everywhere.”
“Do you think they arrested her?” Smokey asked, breathing heavily.
“Maybe,” Lily said. “The milk-route driver I was riding with dropped me at her cottage two nights ago.” She began opening doors along the upstairs hallway. “Ugh!” She swiped at dust motes that swirled around her head. “I stopped there wanting to find out why Esmeralde missed the fair, and perhaps to spend the night.”
“I dislike climbing stairs!” Aubergine called from the hall.
Lily opened the shades in all the rooms. “No linens?”
“In the closet. What about Esmeralde?”
“She wasn’t home,” Lily said, heading back downstairs. Smokey had to trot to keep up. “The remedies that she sells in her booth were by the door—in fact, I gladly found my headache medicine—but the pantry where she keeps her Possibles was empty.” She opened the door to the linen closet. “All the glass vials and stoppered bottles, everything, was gone.”
“What did you hear along the track?” Smokey Jo asked, holding her arms out for Lily to pile high with old sheets and pillowcases.
“Some said soldiers had taken one of the Twelve up the military road, but that could have meant any of us, or an impostor.” Lily, too, carried a load of linens into the deserted dining room, where she began s
orting bedding onto the table. “Everyone saw red the other morning, and you know how people talk.”
“If Esmeralde was captured, the Guard would have imprisoned her in the Burnt Holes.” Aubergine had joined them and was pulling out one of the twelve chairs. “It will be difficult to find her, but nowhere near impossible.” Sighing, she sat. “Freeing her will be the hard part.”
“Maybe she will put a pox on the lot of them and free herself,” Smokey said gleefully.
“Perhaps,” Aubergine said.
“I need help getting out the big pot,” Smokey told Lily.
“Don’t you have a kitchen boy, a gardener, anyone?” Lily asked. Pausing, she looked around the dusty dining room and threw up her hands with a laugh. “Of course not!”
Aubergine took the lid off a serving dish and spilled coins onto the scarred oak table. “We have newly minted Northland silver,” she said. “Lots of it.”
“Where did you get all that?” Smokey gave Aubergine a shocked look. “You didn’t.”
Aubergine shook her head with a glance to Lily.
“Never mind, we’re going to need lots of silver to put this place to rights,” Lily said, pretending not to notice. She scooped the bright coins into her market bag.
Happy once more, Smokey took Lily’s arm. “We’ll be back,” she said to Aubergine. “Why don’t you have a lie-down?”
“Gladly.” Aubergine waved them off.
As Smokey scuttled down the hallway after their cloaks, Lily paused in the dining room doorway. “Don’t forget, I know everything,” she told Aubergine gently. “Ask the question.”
“Will they hate me?” Aubergine whispered, her eyes shining with unshed tears.
Lily shook her head. “Aubergine, we all do what we must. No one will blame you. Everyone here will bring regrets.” She considered what she had said. “Well, almost everyone.”
Wear this intermediate-skill-level cowl as a neck warmer, or pull it up higher for more protection. It measures a 23" circumference by 14" length (adjustable with blocking).
Get the pattern from PotluckYarn.com/epatterns
The Broken Circle: Yarns of the Knitting Witches Page 20
