Page 53 of The Moorwitch

“It’s stopped raining, your brother is away, and Mrs. MacDougal will be dead to the world until lunchtime.” I take her hand, feeling only a small twinge of guilt. When Conrad learns I’ve gone behind his back like this, after swearing to his face that I would not teach her, he will surely hate me. But I cannot sit by and let Sylvie’s magic wither, no more than I can let her injure herself or worse in attempting magic on her own. If Conrad will not be persuaded, he will have to be circumvented.

I give Sylvie a smile. “It’s time for your first real lesson in the art of Weaving.”

Sylvie tells me she knows the perfect place for the lesson, and leads me over the soggy moors to the east of the house. She can hardly contain herself, leaping and twirling and dancing around me as I pick my way over the brittle heather. The day is cool and still, with clouds like banners streaming across an iron gray sky. We see not a soul, save for a few errant sheep ambling over the rolling hills. I spot Apollo the lamb gamboling about his mother, who regards us uninterestedly as we walk by. She ignores my friendly wave and goes back to her meal of grass.

Finally, we come to a bluff that juts over a narrow stream. Atop it spreads an ancient oak, whose branches are just starting to bud with new leaves. Scores of ribbons and threads are tied to the limbs, so the whole tree flutters and rustles when the wind rises. Beneath the boughs stands an oblong rock twice as tall as I am. The sight of it makes the hairs on my arms rise. The color, the shape, the size—it might have been hauled from the same quarry and erected by the same hands as the ones in the fae circle.

“Here it is,” Sylvie breathes, as we climb the hill. “The Moorwitch Stone.”

I circle the stone, noting that unlike its forest counterparts, it has been carved with ancient, unfathomable runes, and with patterns that can only be ancient spells. There are images also, of people and animals and phases of the moon.

“What is it?”

“It’s a magical, sacred place,” says Sylvie. “Which means, obviously, Connie’s forbidden me to come here. You’re supposed to tie a ribbon to the tree as an offering to the faerie queen. They say she murdered a hundred moorwitches a long, long time ago, and if you don’t pay respects, she’ll send her servants to take your soul at Samhain.”

A chill runs down my spine. “The faerie queen?”

She nods. “See?”

She points to the highest carving on the stone: it shows a severe woman in flowing robes, one hand raised as if about to render judgment, the other held out from her side; on her open palm stands a spider, and its web drapes over the crown on the woman’s head.

I think of the spiderweb spells spun around the stone circle, and my blood turns to ice.

Sylvie’s eyes glow when she looks at the stone. “They say the moorwitches were taught Weaving by the faeries. They could threadwalk—move themselves from Edinburgh to London in the blink of an eye, if they wanted to. They were awfully powerful, and completely wonderful. But the faeries killed them because they got to betoopowerful, and the people put up this stone to remember them by, and as a warning that you should never meddle in the affairs of immortals. At least, that’s what Mrs. MacDougal told me, when she got drunk on punch last Wintertide. She made me swear not to tell Conrad about it.”

Wryly, I turn away from the stone. “Do you believe in faeries?”

“Of course!” She looks affronted, as if only a fool wouldn’t. “And dragons and ghosts and all of it, no matter what Connie might say.”

“What does he say?”

“That they’re all stories and nonsense.” She sniffs. “He’s the best brother in the world, but honestly, sometimes he’s no fun at all.”

I squeeze her hand and smile, but feel the carved woman’s eyes as if they are piercing my skin.

“Let’s sit over there,” I suggest, pointing to a mossy bank well away from the moorwitch stone.

Sylvie is too excited to eat and kneels with her utter attention at my command. She’s practically shaking with eagerness.

I sit cross-legged on the blanket and open my threadkit. Sylvie sighs in appreciation, running her fingers over the little compartments with their spools, needles, and thimbles. With a smile, I remember touching the kit much the same way when I first held it, tracing the trefoil knot of the Moirai carved into the lid as if it were the key to heaven.

“Now, at its most basic,” I say, as I take out the compartmentalized insert with all its accessories and set it aside, leaving an empty box, “magic is energy that we pull, ordraw, from the natural, living world and then channel into the threads we Weave. It is strongest in animals and people, but only dark Weavers draw from such sources.”

She nods. “Like Napoleon’s Red Guard.”

“Exactly.” It wasn’t so long ago that the French general sent out his infamous Red Guard, who sucked the life from their enemies and turned it into devastating spells. As I open the threadkit, folding its sides down to transform it from an empty box to a rectangular board, I continue, “The laws against drawing from humans are universal and punishable by death. In Britain and most other countries, it’s also illegal to draw from animals.”

I can’t help but think of the birdcages around Fiona’s cottage, and the grisly remains inside them.

The threadkit is fully open now, and Sylvie runs her fingertip around the circle of shallow holes bored into the wood. I hand her a few wooden pegs, then show her how to insert them in the holes to create a pegboard—a ring of spokes for Weaving complex patterns.

“So ... where does our magic come from?” she asks.

I wave my empty hand at the hills around us. “The plants, mostly, but a good Weaver knows how to find it even in stone and soil and water, where the tiniest living thing can grow.” I pick one of the few green blades around us and hold it out. “But you must be careful. If you draw too much from one source, it will die.”

I wind thread around the pegboard, twisting around spokes in a simple but mesmerizing pattern. The threads crisscross, the spell taking shape layer by layer. Sylvie watches entranced, hardly blinking. When I am finished, I pause and stare at the pegboard, my heart beating faster.

A circle of pegs.