The Broken Circle: Yarns of the Knitting Witches

by Cheryl Potter

  Finishing her stew, Ratta wiped the bowl clean with the bread. She chewed the hunk of dark rye slowly, disliking the probing she felt from the large man’s eyes. Why had she asked the storyteller for tales of the Twelve? She had no desire to call attention to herself or Mamie.

  The large man bought the bard a pint of ale. Miles thanked his benefactor with a bob of his head, took the tankard from the barmaid, and quaffed half of it quickly. He set the foaming mug on the mantelpiece and continued.

  “As Aubergine’s lore spread, the Potluck became an arcane collection: a studio center, a company store, and a boarding school, all in one,” he explained, with large, theatrical gestures. “The structure was a two-story, timber-framed building of stone and wood, fronting a well-trafficked thoroughfare in the market district of a bustling border town. To the side, a walled kitchen garden stood between the Potluck and a pottery next door, where greenware awaited the kiln. Behind, an arched breezeway connected the main house to a long, low dye shed. Few customers knew of the secret entrance to the dye shed from the alley, a door built to look like an unbroken piece of the fence.

  “Customers entered the shop from the winding cobbles of a merchant street lined with storefronts displaying work of the artisans’ hands. Whenever the door opened, a bell affixed to the handle jingled merrily, announcing the arrival of visitors. Newcomers immediately noticed the rarefied air, swirling with sparking motes that danced in the light. Their ears became assaulted by, but quickly adjusted to, the rhythmic clack of spinning wheels, knitting needles, and looms. The magical multicolored fibers offered a feast for their eyes.”

  Here he paused for effect. As she watched, Ratta wondered where the bard had sourced his story, because so far almost everything he said was rooted in truth.

  “In the front room, spinning wheels revolved as a group of girls learned to treadle, draft the fibers evenly, then spin and ply,” Miles continued, gesticulating wildly as he pantomimed students learning to spin, eliciting laughs from the crowd. “Other interns gathered around the shop’s table, heads bent over knitting needles, learning to finish sweaters with invisible bind-offs and duplicate-stitching techniques that would someday have specialized names. Magical auras floated over garments for sale in the showroom, while the air within the shop mixed the aromas of lanolin, the lavender soap, birch knitting needles, and drying herbs, hung from the rafters.”

  What if this was a trap? Ratta’s eyes flitted between the bard and the merchant. What if the storyteller was in league with the big man, and both were bounty hunters, with a plan to round up the witches? She finished her cider and slid quietly from her stool.

  “Initiates in dye-splotched aprons appeared at intervals from the dye shed with dripping fleeces to spread across the drying racks,” the bard continued blithely. “The wools were the finest Merino and Corriedale, spotted Jacob and Bluefaced Leicester. Other apprentices bent over the rows in the garden, harvesting dye plants. Carefully they separated the flowers and leaves and spread them out to dry on old sheets along the sunny path.”

  As Miles blew a short tune on his pennywhistle, Ratta gazed at the bard intently, wondering if he would dare identify the Twelve. If she heard her name or Mamie’s, she resolved to pack up and leave immediately, whatever the hour. She pulled out her change purse. The barmaid ignored her. The storyteller played another short melody and went on.

  “In the back of the dye shed, the great pot balanced on a circlet of blackened hearthstones. It was cast iron, darkened by the flames of a thousand fires. The soot-stained lip stood so tall that some of the younger girls could not see over the edge. From morning until late afternoon and sometimes into the night, the great pot simmered, infusing fleece and roving with magical shades, hues that refused to fade. Burlap sacks of marigold and cochineal, logwood and indigo sat ready near casks of clear vinegar, boxes of sea salt, and a barrel of spring water. Behind, tucked in the darkened pantry were the rarest dyestuffs, as well as those that were perishable, light sensitive, or for some other reason hidden from sight. Sealed in seamless boxes that only Aubergine could open, were magic dye crystals, gleaned from the freshets that coursed from the Crystal Caves deep within the Northland Glacier. These fragments of ancient rock and cold-fire crystal had accompanied Aubergine when she moved south to the safety of the town on the Border. She used them sparingly, and alone. But that would not be for long, she hoped.”

  Ratta stared at the brightly dressed storyteller in shock. There was no way he could know these things, she realized, unless he was one of the Twelve himself. But that was impossible. Men were not allowed in the dye shed, or in the backroom of the Potluck. She searched the bard’s face for signs of recognition. She found nothing. He could not be anything more than a traveling gypsy. But how did he know so much?

  “Sprinkled throughout the novices and teachers were eleven that Aubergine had chosen to join her, eleven that showed more promise than the others,” Miles continued. “One of them was an unlikely student. She sat dejectedly on her stool before the spinning wheel, kicking at air, for her stubby legs did not reach the treadles. Even when she could spin a yarn, her lumpy roving would not strip evenly. The other girls were wont to pick plant matter out of the silk batts she prepared. So small that she was easy to dismiss, outside of the yarn shop many mistook her for a baby. Ah, until they saw her scamper off quick as a whip down a side street, or squirm under the garden gate to beat the other girls home. She was a gnome named Josephine. All called her Smokey Jo.”

  When Ratta tried to pay her bill, the barmaid refused her coin, inclining her head toward the large man still sitting at the bar. Ratta could stand it no more. She walked over to him and met his unnerving eyes. “No one pays for my meals unbidden,” she said, slapping a handful of coins on the bar. “Do I know you?”

  The large man shrugged. “Take care of your mistress, Ratta. Take care on the road.” His mouth curled into a cruel smile and his eyes sparkled as they held hers. “We’ll meet again, in the most unlikely of places.”

  He rose and left the bar. Ratta turned to question the storyteller, but Miles had vanished without finishing his beer. The tankard sat half full on the mantelpiece.

  Her heart pounding, Ratta ran up the stairs. The door to her room was still locked. When she opened it she could see that nothing had been disturbed, least of all Mamie. Relieved, she bolted the door and fell onto the bed, without bothering to undress. Thanks to fatigue, she slept. Thanks to the man at the bar and the storyteller, her sleep was restless.

  The next morning, with Mamie no better or worse as far as she could tell, Ratta got an early start. By midday she could see the stone walls of Bordertown, under the shadow of the glacier. As she feared, there was a checkpoint at some distance from the city, but she got through it easily in her traveling cloak. The yarn she told was one she had practiced all morning: Her mother had just died, and her final wish was to be laid to rest in the family crypt within the borough of Merchant’s Row. In preparation for the lie, Ratta had covered Mamie, still wrapped in the never-ending shawl, with a light sheet she had taken from the inn. None of the young soldiers chose to lift the sheet, for fear of imagined sickness or plague.

  The afternoon sky was the color of a dusty rose. The air smelled of smoke, a distasteful odor that grew stronger as the mules pulled the wagon along the broad thoroughfare toward the Western Gate. Just a mile or so from the city, Ratta happened upon a curious sight. A shepherd with a large staff strode alongside the track ahead of her, driving a single sheep. Ratta wondered if the tall figure was a farmer returning from the Middlemarch Fair, perhaps having purchased a rare breeding ram. She had never seen anything like this animal, which was spotted black and white, small like a dog, and bore what looked like a crown of thorns protruding from its head. As she approached, she saw that the creature was a sheep with a peculiar double set of horns and that it was limping. The stout shepherd picked up the ram and began to carry it like a child.

  Ra
tta slowed the wagon. “Hold up there,” she hailed the shepherd.

  Even with Mamie lying in the back of the wagon, she certainly had plenty of room on the buckboard for a shepherd forced to carry a lame sheep.

  “You, with the sheep,” Ratta called again, catching the shepherd’s attention. “Do you need a ride?”

  The shepherd turned, and Ratta could see that the voluminous figure was no man, but an older woman. “Thank you. My ram has a stone bruise,” she called, waiting for Ratta to catch up.

  As she halted the mules, Ratta felt a prick of recognition that made her hesitate. There was something odd about the shepherdess, as well as the sheep. Over her oiled canvas cloak, the older woman carried a large felted backpack, dyed in the colors of winter grasses. Her hand gripped a staff, its crook hooded with felt in the same color.

  The shepherdess lifted her eyes from the sheep to Ratta. “If you could carry us as far as the Western Gate?” The words died in her throat.

  “You,” Ratta hissed.

  “Well met on the road,” Winter Wheat said grimly. “I feared I might find you on this track. You have been called, haven’t you?”

  “Like moth to flame.” Ratta gave her a hard look.

  Wheat’s eyes flickered to the empty bench beside the red-haired woman. “Or perhaps you are answering the summons in Mamie’s stead?”

  “I feel the call myself,” Ratta retorted, her hands grasping the mules’ reins fiercely. “I am one of the Twelve, like you. Yet even now you would deny me.”

  Cradling the small ram under one arm, Winter Wheat slid her free hand up along her staff to uncover the crystals tied at its crook. “Where is Mamie?” she asked casually. “Has she passed?”

  Ignoring her, Ratta stood and backed the wagon beyond the range of the amber cabochons. “I will not be burned,” she cautioned. “Keep that staff hooded if you want a ride.”

  Wheat’s fingers fumbled at the felted hood, unable to uncover the crystals while holding Tracks. “If you will just carry my sheep,” she said, “I will hike alongside.”

  Ratta looked at the ailing ram, whose bright eyes gazed at her innocently. “As you wish,” she agreed. Laying the reins aside, she reached down. “You can put him up front with me.”

  “There is no need for that,” Wheat grumbled, carrying Tracks around to the bed of the covered wagon. “He’s a sheep, not a dog. He will be fine in the back.”

  Ratta turned, her frizzy hair flying. “Stay away from there,” she warned, afraid of what accusations would fly from Wheat’s mouth if she saw Mamie. But it was already too late.

  “What is under here?” Wheat asked, lifting Tracks carefully into the wagon. She pulled back the sheet and her eyes went wide.

  “Mamie Verde,” Ratta said quietly. “Don’t you say anything about her. I did all I could.”

  Wheat gazed speechlessly at the shrunken form. Translucent skin, mottled with liver spots, stretched tightly across bone and sinew. Wheat dropped the edge of the cloth and stared at Ratta. “Is she dead?”

  Ratta let her breath out slowly. “Truly, I cannot hazard a guess,” she admitted. She watched Wheat place a practiced hand against the lined skin of the old woman’s face, gently touching the blue-veined eyelids. Ratta gave Wheat a hopeful look. “What do you think?”

  “I can tell whether animals still hold their spirits.” Wheat shook her head. “Not people.”

  “I have just been trying to get Mamie to Bordertown before she died. It was her final wish.” Ratta’s eyes filled with tears and she wiped them away angrily. She glared at Wheat with defiance. “I want to go home. I swore I would never return to that miserable Potluck. If Mamie has truly passed, then I will not. I was only doing it for her.”

  “That is untrue.” Wheat laid aside her staff. She clambered into the back of the wagon next to Tracks and knelt before Mamie. “If you are one of us, as you say, you were doing it for all of us.” Putting a hand to Mae’s cheek, Wheat traced a vein down her neck, feeling for pulse. “We have no choice but to go, for we have been called.”

  “The summons is a hand leading me by the heart,” Ratta admitted. “Once it slapped my face.”

  Wheat nodded, suppressing a smile. Leaning over Mamie, she brushed the back of her hand against the old woman’s delicate neck. “This is strange.” She raised her head and looked across the wagon at Ratta. “I sense that she is neither part of this world nor the next.” Her hand fingered the never-ending shawl. “This old shawl you knit so long ago. What did you fashion it to do?”

  “I dyed the Merino bouclé yarn myself in a single hank, using malachite I found in Mamie’s jewelry box mixed with blush wine from the cellar. I called the new colorway Old Rose. To you, Mamie was a wilted flower past her prime, but even in her last years she was still a rose to me. The pattern is called never-ending shawl; for as I knit, it grew into a triangular wrap and then an afghan, and still the ball of yarn did not run out. I thought that, wrapped in such a garment, Mamie would be safe with me forever.” Ratta’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “Now I see it only kept her in limbo, like a caterpillar trapped in a cocoon. It did more harm than good.”

  The bell around Tracks’ neck tinkled as he stood to peer with interest into Mamie’s wizened face. With a questioning look to Wheat, the little ram began to sniff at the colorful shawl.

  “Mamie was never supposed to become the butterfly you envisioned,” Wheat said gently, stroking Tracks’ back. She paused. “You will have to release her from the magic knits that tie her to this world, so that she may pass to the next. You know that, don’t you?”

  Ratta nodded. Her words came slowly. “I should have let Aubergine release Mamie Verde to the land of dreams twenty years ago,” she said. “She would have performed the ceremony gladly, had I asked. But I could not. I did not want to be alone.”

  Wheat pulled the little ram back as he began to sniff at Mamie’s face. “No, Tracks.”

  Ratta gave her a hard look. “I don’t care what you or the others say. She really did talk to me, even after she ceased to speak. And I could talk back.”

  “I believe you,” Wheat said, raising her palm. “I have seen Lowlanders communicate. They do not utter words.”

  “They talk with their eyes.” Ratta scoffed. “Mamie never did that. She used Mind Speak.”

  “What is that?” Wheat gave her a sharp look. “Something you made up?”

  “I thought so, for a time. But then Mamie told me that it had been the language of the ancients.” She gazed at Wheat. “Do not forget that what you all feared is true. I alone know the Lost Tale.”

  “I expect we will all will hear it soon enough,” Wheat said evenly.

  “We had best get on then. I would like to be in Merchants’ Row before nightfall.” She held out her arms for the sheep. “Give him here.”

  “His name is Tracks,” Wheat said, handing him to Ratta. Tracks sniffed Ratta as Wheat began to clamber down from the back of the wagon, then relaxed in the young woman’s arms. “I call him Tracksie.”

  “You can ride on the bench,” Ratta said gruffly. “Both you and Tracks.” She pointed at Winter Wheat’s staff, which lay forgotten next to Mamie. “But leave the hood over that thing.”

  Their differences settled for now, the childhood adversaries sat side by side as the wagon rumbled beneath the Western Gate and through the stockyards that edged the borough of Butcher’s Block.

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  Smokey felt the jacket being ripped from her shoulders.

  CHAPTER 18

  AS SOON AS LILY LEFT THE KITCHEN, Smokey Jo hopped down from her stool at the counter, where she had been sprinkling cinnamon sugar over the mountain of apples the new kitchen girl had sliced for pie. The stool’s wooden legs scr
eeched as she pulled it across the uneven stone floor to the cook stove.

  After checking to be sure that no one could see her, Smokey climbed the stool, slipped on the giant kitchen mitts, and thrust the bubbling pot of sweet potatoes aside. Water slopped across the newly blacked cook top, and the fragrant hiss of steam made Smokey smile. Taking a griddle handle from its hook on the wall, Smokey pried the hot disc of iron from the top of the wood-stove and peered into the lively blaze. She pulled a strip of birch bark from her apron pocket and touched it to the coals. The translucent white bark began to curl as it smoldered, releasing a delicate aroma in the instant before it ignited in blue flames. Smokey breathed deeply. The burnt wood smelled like roasted almonds.

  “Smokey Jo, leave that griddle alone,” Lily reminded her for the third time, as she swept into the kitchen with the butter and cream she had put to cool in the cellar.

  Because the icebox in the summer kitchen had been too damaged to repair, Lily had ordered a new one from a cabinetmaker. The oak chest would arrive on a flatbed wagon from the borough of Artisan’s Hand, but had not yet been delivered.

  This morning, Lily had begun to overhaul the neglected kitchen. She had cleaned the ashes from the stove, filled the wood box, and scoured the griddle. It helped that on their outing the day before they had hired a scullery maid, plus a grounds man; and a stable boy had started work this morning. It was spring, and it had been years since anyone had opened the windows upstairs or turned the earth for a kitchen garden.