Chapter 40 #3
“But,” said Callie-Ann, “if you ignore them, push them down, run from them, they’ll just get bigger and louder.
Because they’re trying to make you listen.
And if you won’t listen then they’ll take control of your life for you.
The only way you’ll get her to back off is by showing her you’re ready to listen, without running away this time and without lashing out. ”
The clotheshorse bouncing off the windscreen. The thistle whipped against the trunk of a tree. An elegant hand with pink painted nails.
“What if I can’t do it?” I asked. “What happens if I fail?”
The old woman leaned forward, and her shadow grew behind her on the wall: a giant, a mountain, an unending winter storm.
“She will devour you.”
The fire crackled, sending a waft of woodsmoke up into the room.
That cold, heavy feeling spread across me, the same one I’d felt when I’d lain in bed wondering if I’d come here to die.
I’d dismissed it as maudlin self-pity, but I wondered now if I was right.
If that itching feeling that had haunted me since I’d arrived was right.
Everyone dies. Everyone. But it’s always a surprise when it pops up on the horizon, wearing your own face and a too-wide smile.
Hello, here I am. I’m coming for you now.
A strong, knotted hand covered mine.
“You can do this. I wouldn’t be telling you if I didn’t think you could. If you hadn’t already proved you could.”
She pointed to my bandaged hand.
“You put the needle through your own hand before you could put it in the little shit’s eye.” She sniffed. “Though next time, let’s try not to put the needle through anyone, aye? Speaking of…”
She produced a spool of red thread from a pocket in her giant anorak and presented it to me.
It was red like veins, like a dribble of blood from a broken mouth.
I remembered the old man—Roger—in Rowan’s store picking up that order.
The small parcel with a tiny weight in it.
Embroidery thread, Rowan had said. It was wound around a yellow plastic bracket of some kind that felt uncomfortably familiar.
Callie-Ann drew my attention back to the room.
“This should keep you right, and that needle of yours out of trouble.” She held the thread out in the palm of her hand, and with the other she stuck up four fingers.
“When she tests you, and you want to push a needle into an eye or your own flesh, make a knot instead. Remember, four challenges. Four knots.”
“Four knots,” I repeated and reached out to take the thread.
Callie-Ann clapped her other hand over mine.
“This is old magic you’ll be working in, child. No gods, no devils. Just you and the dark. Understand?”
I nodded my head.
“You have to remember, the place where you’re going, it’s just emptiness.
Anything that’s in it, whether it’s fear or pain or sadness, it’s just what you brought into it.
There’s nothing there that you didn’t already know in the first place.
Nothing she can surprise you with. Nothing but what you bring with you.
Just in the absence of everything else, you can see it.
Clearly and probably for the first time.
Look at it. Own it. And she’ll have nothing she can use against you. ”
I held the red thread in my hands, one freshly bandaged by this strange woman. I felt the weight of it all. There was still one thing I didn’t understand.
“Why are you helping me?” I asked.
“You gave the money back,” said the old woman. “The notes Roger dropped that first time you crossed Bodach’s Brig.”
God, it felt so long ago. I remembered that morning. I hadn’t been motivated by goodness, or fear of reprisal. I’d wanted to take the money and then I’d just given it back anyway.
“It’s not who I am,” I said.
She gave my arm a squeeze then wiggled the joystick for her chair. All the times I’d seen Roger pushing it, I’d never realised it was electric. He’d pushed her around with him all the same.
“Good luck,” she said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need another stout and a nap.”
Callie-Ann went to the bar. I left The Curtyard.
Outside the sun was starting to break through the cloud cover above.
Maybe the old woman was mad. Maybe I was mad. But it was the first time I’d felt like I had some sort of grip on the thing since I’d arrived. Not so much a map, but a narrative. A story for myself that wasn’t the same awful tale I’d been telling for years.
Why don’t people like me? Why am I so unhappy? Why can’t I figure out my life?
No matter how much I pretended otherwise, I’d been telling the same sorry story over and over. I was ready for it to end. One way or another.
I would go into the darkness, and I would look and see what was in there. After that, I would just have to figure out what comes next. It sounded like a terrible idea to be honest, but it was better than going on like this.
I took the needle out of my pocket. Daylight flashed along its sharp point.
I took it off the key’s thin wire ring. It was time I got a better keyring anyway.
Then I took the spool of thread Callie-Ann had given me, something about it still itching at the back of my mind, and threaded the end of the red string through the eye of the needle.
I was ready.
It was time to go home.