Granny Magic

by Elka Evalds

  So Fitchet had sent them on purpose to get into Will’s house.

  Suddenly Will became conscious of the fact that he was wearing his pyjamas and very far from his own bed. The darkness seemed very dark.

  Inside, Fitchet spread the mittens on a steel table and picked up the one that looked like Will’s jumper. He stretched it over a chrome stand and then pulled on a pair of glasses that looked like two brass microscopes. Making notes on a tablet beside him, he examined the mitten, and took pictures of it. Then, using a pair of tweezers, he slowly pulled a strand of sparkling gold yarn from the mitten, placed it on the table and separated it into three smaller strands.

  Finally, Mr Fitchet walked over to one of the huge spider machines and pressed a button on it. A screen lit up on one side of it, and the man began typing on a keyboard. He did the same at two other machines. A deep thrumming shook the building, and Will felt his palm tremble on the window ledge. The man took the thin strands of sparkling wool and fed them, one by one, into the machines.

  The thrumming grew louder. Then, clickety clackety slap clack crash, the machines began to whirl, the coloured spools to spin. Ten seconds later, each of the machines spat what looked like a mitten on to the floor. Mr Fitchet scooped the mittens up, and spread them on the table under the lamp. They were perfect copies of the mitten Gran had made.

  ‘Oh!’ said Will. He didn’t realize he’d said it until it was out of his mouth.

  Mr Fitchet’s head snapped up. Will stumbled backwards into the murk as the huge factory door creaked open. Light fell in a triangle on to the grass, and the dark silhouette of Mr Fitchet stepped into the doorway.

  ‘Just what do you think you’re doing?’

  Will heard a rustling in the leaves behind him. He turned to see moonlight glinting on a pair of purple glasses. It was the short lady from that Gang of Grannies who had come to the house! She was wearing what looked like a long knitted cloak, and she was walking towards Will. To Will’s surprise, however, she didn’t look at him at all, but strode towards the building with her head in the air, staring at the man in the doorway.

  ‘I could ask you the same thing,’ she said, her voice clear and steady. ‘If I’m not very much mistaken, you have stolen property on these premises.’

  She was right up next to Will now, and as she passed, she swept the cloak off her with one hand, and flung it aside. Before he knew what had happened, the cloak had flown right over Will’s head and covered him entirely.

  For a second Will panicked, pulling his breath in so quickly his throat closed. But it only lasted an instant, before the cloak surrounded him with a soft shhhh, and he was breathing again, quiet and sure.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, madam,’ Mr Fitchet said. ‘I shall call the police if you don’t leave immediately. You are trespassing!’

  Will looked through the tiny holes in the knitting and saw Purple Glasses pull herself up so that she almost seemed tall. ‘I will warn you once,’ she said in her deep head-teacher’s voice. ‘Leave Gertie’s family alone. If you harm them, if you steal from them, if you harass them in any way, believe me, we will know.’

  Gertie? She was talking about his own family!

  ‘Is that supposed to frighten me?’ Mr Fitchet’s oboe voice became harsh. ‘I insist that you leave my property, madam.’

  ‘You have been warned,’ said Purple Glasses. She turned and walked into the darkness towards Will, and the factory door slammed behind her.

  As she passed she put her arm around Will.

  ‘Come with me,’ she said softly.

  As they reached the riverbank, four white-haired figures ran out from the trees, rushing towards Will and Purple Glasses. It was the Gang of Grannies.

  ‘Are you all right, Jun-Yu?’

  ‘Did he have Will?’

  ‘What did he steal?’

  Purple Glasses raised one hand in the air and waited until the talking died down. Then she swept aside the arm that was holding the cloak around Will. ‘He’s safe.’

  The grannies let out a quartet of sighs.

  ‘Is that an Invisibility Cloak?’ asked Will. This was getting more and more exciting.

  ‘No,’ said Purple Glasses. ‘Not even your gran could quite do that. It’s more like an Un-noticing Cloak. I pulled the hood down when he came out, so that he’d notice me instead of you. Then he didn’t even see it was in my hands when I flung it over you.’

  ‘My gran made it? How does it work? Are you really part of her knitting club?’

  ‘So many questions! But this is not the place, Will. I’m not sure that we’re safe here.’

  Four white-haired heads snapped around, surveying the car park like a herd of deer catching a scent. The stout one, Will saw, was gripping a giant knitting needle.

  ‘We should get Will home,’ said the little sparrow-lady with the bun.

  Will let them follow as he pushed his bike back up the hill. They stopped at the end of the alley.

  ‘Can you meet us tomorrow?’ whispered Purple Glasses. ‘At the knitting shop in Woolwick Lane? We’ll be there all morning.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ said Will.

  ‘Good lad. We’ll watch to make sure you’re in safely. Lock the door behind you – and lock your window too.’

  Will wasn’t smiling as his head hit the pillow for the second time that night, but he managed a chuckle before he fell asleep. Dad was right. There had been more to Gran than he’d ever imagined.

  Will supposed that The Knittery had always been there. He’d just never noticed it before. It certainly looked at home in Woolwick Lane, which was lined with crooked, pointy houses, each looking like one of Gran’s teapots. The shop window looked like the inside of Gran’s house: full of knitting. There were green-striped socks, hats with fox and rabbit ears, and fluffy, speckled mittens. A clothes line stretched along the top was hung with spotted oven mitts, and jumpers for dogs in several sizes.

  Will stood across the street, pretending he was waiting for the pasty shop to open. The Knittery didn’t seem like a place a boy would ever go. Finally he took a deep breath and, looking up and down the cobblestones to make sure no one he knew was nearby, he shot across to the shop.

  A cluster of bells tinkled as he opened the door, like a winter sleigh in the snow. Inside, sunlight stretched across a red brick floor. Wooden cubicles lined the walls, crammed with balls of wool. Will found himself staring at the wall ahead of him. He’d never realized how many different kinds of blue there were: Superman blue, and Smarties blue, and biro blue. Blue-jeans blue, and swimming-pool blue, and blue like a summer bedtime sky.

  ‘Bandits! Bandits!’

  Will jumped and whirled around. Next to an old stone fireplace was a wooden table with a till on it. Behind it, a teenage girl in a red-and-pink striped sweater-dress and black Doc Marten boots sat cross-legged on a stool. She had two buns on top of her head with knitting needles stuck through them, and she was knitting something huge and purple.

  ‘Three o’clock!’ she shouted.

  ‘What?’ asked Will.

  ‘If we were standing on a giant clock face, and I was in the middle of it,’ said the girl, ‘you would be at three o’clock.’ She had a crooked smile, as if everything was half-funny.

  ‘Oh,’ said Will. He was very confused.

  ‘I’m Holly. Dorcas’s granddaughter.’

  Somewhere above their heads Will heard a voice. He thought it said, ‘Send the tiddler up!’

  ‘They’re waiting for you,’ she said. She nodded towards a narrow stairway in the corner between the reds and the yellows. ‘Up there.’

  The staircase wound round, like a staircase in a castle. When he came to the top of it, Will stepped into a room with a steeply sloping ceiling and huge timber beams. Around an oak table, with knitting in their hands, sat the Gang of Grannies.

  ‘Will!’ Purple Glasses jumped up and put an arm lightly around his shoulders, leading him to the table. ‘Welcome to The Knittery!’ She sme
lt of tangerines and fairy soap. ‘Allow me to introduce Dorcas, Ivy, Matilda and Hortense. I am called Jun-Yu.’

  ‘And you were . . . Gran’s knitting club?’ asked Will.

  ‘Have a look, Will,’ said Jun-Yu. She pulled a chair out for him and slid an old-fashioned photo album across the table, the kind with actual photos stuck on to the pages. Will opened it. In picture after picture, on page after page, he saw Gran with this Gang of Grannies. Here they were decorating Christmas trees; there they were cradling spring lambs; here they were singing Happy Birthday around a giant Victoria sponge. And everywhere they were knitting. Knitting in kitchens, gardens and tea shops; knitting at football and rugby matches. Knitting at morris dances. In one photo, labelled ‘The Motomaids!’ it even looked like they were knitting at a motorbike show, clacking away while girls in white minidresses rode motorcycles through rings of fire.

  ‘You see. We were your gran’s team.’

  ‘But,’ said Will, ‘how come we never knew you?’

  ‘It’s not terribly powerful, what we do, Will,’ said Jun-Yu. ‘But, as I think you understand by now, it is magic.’

  ‘It’s best to stay under the radar,’ whispered Hortense, the tall one, waggling her eyebrows behind her round glasses. ‘Sneaky beaky,’ she said, tapping the side of her nose.

  ‘And you all make . . . magic knitting?’ asked Will.

  Jun-Yu looked round at the others, who nodded at her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘There are three ways. The first way is the pattern itself. Some patterns are simply powerful.’

  ‘It’s a bit like writing code,’ said Hortense.

  ‘And Gran knew how?’ asked Will.

  ‘Oh, your gran knew dozens of powerful patterns,’ said Dorcas, the tiny little sparrow-lady.

  ‘Ve-e-e-ry potent,’ said Ivy, the one with the plaits.

  ‘Top-hole stuff!’ said Matilda, the one with the strong arms. She sounded like an Enid Blyton book.

  ‘The second way,’ said Jun-Yu, ‘involves focusing on what you want the object to do as you knit it. Filling your mind and your heart with it.’

  ‘Anyone who knits does a bit of this sort of magic knitting whenever they make things for someone they love,’ said Dorcas, smiling.

  ‘But a gifted practitioner with many years of practice can make it quite strong,’ said Jun-Yu.

  ‘That’s why grans are best at it,’ said Dorcas, her white bun jiggling as she nodded.

  ‘Your gran was the bee’s knees,’ said Hortense.

  ‘The kipper’s knickers,’ said Ivy.

  ‘She thought big, Gertie did,’ said Jun-Yu.

  ‘Really?’ asked Will. Gran? Gran was all about sticking plasters and gingerbread houses and tying shoes slowly enough to show how it was done. Gran was about fetching them from school when no one else could come, making knights out of tinfoil and games out of old sheep’s fleece. Gran was all kinds of things . . . but not big.

  ‘Before we met your gran,’ said Jun-Yu, ‘we each had little tricks that we used when we knitted for our families. One of us knew a way to make hats a bit warmer than they should be. Another could make blankets a little more comforting. One of us knew how to make soft toys that could put a baby to sleep. But your gran, she was in another league.’

  ‘She could help people heal after surgery,’ said Ivy.

  ‘She could stop the nightmares of soldiers who came back from war,’ said Hortense.

  ‘She could make people calmer, kinder and wiser,’ said Dorcas.

  ‘She’s the one who recruited us,’ said Hortense, pushing her glasses further up her nose. ‘She’d turn up wherever there was knitting. Cricket matches. Parish council meetings. The WI. She’d spot anyone who was gifted, and strike up a conversation.’

  ‘Grandchildren. Currant jam. Dahlias,’ said Dorcas.

  ‘Size you up. Then rope you in,’ said Matilda.

  ‘And then – only when she was sure of you – she’d tell you about the third way.’

  ‘The third way?’ asked Will.

  The grans all looked at each other again.

  ‘The third way is Magic Wool,’ said Jun-Yu.

  If anyone had tried to tell Will that there was such a thing as magic wool a fortnight ago, he would have nodded politely and assumed that the person was mad as a box of frogs. But because it was this week, he said, ‘Oh. Where does that come from?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Dorcas softly.

  They were quiet for a moment.

  ‘And we’ve almost run out,’ said Ivy.

  ‘But Gran knew?’ asked Will.

  Jun-Yu nodded. ‘Only one person in a knitting knot knows, you see – in order to keep the secret safe – and that was your gran.’

  ‘A knitting knot?’

  ‘That’s what we call a knitting club,’ Jun-Yu explained. ‘Your gran called our knot together for a meeting just before she died. We think she was going to tell us more about the Magic Wool, because she knew she was ill. But then – well, there wasn’t time in the end.’

  ‘But what about Mr Fitchet?’ said Will. ‘He stole those mittens from my house – and Sophie’s dog. He must have known that Gran could make magic.’

  ‘He’s up to some kind of jiggery-pokery, that’s for sure,’ said Hortense, shaking her head.

  ‘He said he used to know Gran,’ said Will. ‘A long time ago.’

  ‘I feel sure I remember his name,’ said Dorcas, looking down at her knitting as if it might be written there. She was the most wrinkled of the grans, with the whitest hair. ‘But I can’t remember how.’

  ‘What about your Memory Shawl?’ said Ivy.

  ‘Can’t remember where I’ve put it!’ said Dorcas.

  ‘Well, whatever he’s doing in that factory,’ said Matilda, ‘it’s not cricket.’

  ‘He was studying the patterns of the mittens,’ said Will. ‘And I think he copied them into his computer.’

  ‘I do NOT like the sound of that,’ said Ivy, shaking her head so fiercely her silver plaits swung out in an arc and smacked her on the nose.

  ‘Let’s not get in a flap, now,’ said Jun-Yu. ‘None of the patterns we’ve used – and none of the patterns Gertie ever used – will help the wearer do evil. And as far as we know, you can’t make them in a factory, no matter how many old knitting mills you buy. It doesn’t work like that. Each garment needs your full attention.’

  ‘I’m sure it couldn’t work without a talented pair of hands,’ said Matilda firmly.

  ‘I’m sure it couldn’t work without love,’ said Dorcas.

  ‘And it would only be really powerful,’ Hortense dropped her voice low, ‘if he had Magic Wool.’

  ‘He took little bits of wool out of the mittens he stole,’ said Will. ‘The sparkly bits.’

  There was silence.

  ‘Nobody panic,’ said Jun-Yu. ‘The wool will not let itself be used for anything bad. We know that.’

  ‘Won’t let itself?’ asked Will.

  ‘It will simply unravel.’

  ‘It can also make you feel really sick,’ said Ivy, with a sideways glance at Will.

  ‘And it is extremely unlikely that he’ll be able to get hold of very much of it,’ said Jun-Yu.

  ‘Not that the blighter hasn’t tried,’ said Matilda.

  ‘He’s been haunting the Oxfam shop, where your gran’s things ended up,’ said Ivy to Will.

  ‘But so have we,’ said Hortense. ‘The shop is sorting through it bit by bit, so we have to keep checking.’

  ‘Aren’t there any – oh, I don’t know – knitting police?’ asked Will.

  Jun-Yu sighed. ‘There is an organization called the Knitwork. Gertie was a member. And we know that the head of the Knitwork is called—’ She stopped.

  ‘The Knitwitch,’ Ivy whispered.

  ‘But we’ve never met her,’ said Matilda.

  ‘Or any of them,’ said Dorcas.

  ‘It’s all don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you,’ said Hortense, waggling her e
yebrows.

  ‘Oh, I do wish they would call,’ said Ivy. ‘We were doing some good work with the Magic Wool, and we could keep on doing it, if only we could get hold of some more!’

  ‘I’m sure in time they’ll get word that we’ve lost the leader of our knitting knot,’ said Jun-Yu with certainty, ‘and they’ll send someone down to sort us out.’ She looked over the top of her purple glasses as if daring anyone to contradict her.

  ‘If they think we’re good enough without Gertie,’ Ivy muttered.

  ‘Why don’t we just go and knock on his door, ask what he’s playing at and take our stuff back?’ asked Will. ‘He was bang out of order stealing those mittens. I hardly even got to try them on!’

  ‘I’m not sure that would be prudent,’ said Jun-Yu.

  ‘Seems a bit of a loose cannon, that one,’ said Matilda.

  ‘Don’t trouble trouble if trouble doesn’t trouble you,’ added Dorcas.

  ‘Safest to give him a wide berth for now, I think,’ said Jun-Yu, with a brisk nod. ‘I’ve given him a warning, and when the Knitwork arrives, they’ll sort him out.’

  Will hoped she was right.

  ‘There’s one other thing,’ he said, trying to think how to ask, then deciding to come right out with it. ‘Will you teach me to knit?’

  All the grans smiled fit to burst.

  ‘We thought you’d never ask,’ said Ivy.

  ‘Why are you wearing your dad’s socks, Will?’ asked Mum.

  It was fete day in Knittington, and Mum, Will and Sophie were on their way to the abbey grounds.

  ‘Because they’re magic and they make me jump higher, and I want to show Ben!’ said Will. He had to force himself not to bounce out into the road at the pelican crossing.

  ‘Magic? Oh, yes, that’ll be it!’ Mum laughed.

  The abbey grounds smelt of cut grass and roses and hot sausage rolls. Accordions were pumping and bells were jingling, and morris dancers with daisies on their hats bobbed and leapt in the middle of the grass. Along the edges of the grounds tables stood under marquees, some spread with lemonade, tea and cake, others covered with jumble and old books. In one corner a bouncy castle trembled, and in another people were throwing cricket balls at a stand full of mismatched old crockery.