The Moorwitch

Prologue

All it takes to change your fate is a bit of thread, the book begins. I whisper the next sentence aloud. “But Weaving magic is not for the faint of heart.”

This isn’t helpful. I already know this bit. I don’t need vague warnings. I need a spell, and I need it fast.

I turn the pages frantically with my left hand, my heart splintering with terror.

With my right, I unwind a length of thread from its wooden spool.

Sunlight pours through the library window, glinting off the broken bits of porcelain strewed on the carpet.

The pieces had been my aunt’s favorite vase just minutes ago.

Once milky white with pretty blue flowers painted on it, now it’s just heaps of sharp, jagged edges.

All it had taken was a slip of my elbow and—

Focus, Rose, I order myself. What’s done is done . . . unless you can find a way to undo it.

I glance at the ticking pendulum clock on the mantel.

Aunt Lenore will be home any second.

“Fates, help me,” I whisper, my eyes stinging with tears. Do the goddesses care about one frightened eight-year-old? Will they spare even a moment at their celestial loom to help me?

I doubt it. I’m alone, as I have been since poor Uncle Artie died. That was two years ago, and if I’ve learned anything since then, it is that prayers can’t save me from my aunt’s temper.

My only hope is magic.

Thread pinched between my fingers, I choke down a sob of panic and smooth the page of the book lying on the carpet beside me. My shaking finger follows the line of printed text as if it were the dotted line on a map, leading me to safety.

My ears snatch at every little sound, fearing the thump of Aunt Lenore’s cane in the hallway.

For now, all I hear is the usual noise of Wimpole Street outside the window: fancy ladies chatting; horses pulling carriages over the cobblestones, their hooves clopping almost as loudly as my heart; newsboys shouting headlines; the small white dog next door yapping at everyone who goes by . . .

I turn pages with sweaty hands, skimming diagrams and lists of instructions: threads crisscrossing, embroidery taking shape, strange geometry promising terrible and wonderful power. Every page shows a new spell, and in the margins, Uncle Artie’s neat handwriting adds notes and warnings.

There! I smack the page with a triumphant shout.

A Spell to Mend Broken Pottery. Perfect. And it’s a cat’s cradle, the quickest sort of spell to Weave. No needles or hoops or cloth needed. Just clever, quick fingers, and I have ten.

A creak sounds in the hallway.

I freeze, heart skipping a beat. My stomach hardens into a tight, cold knot, and fear pulses in my eardrums. My fingers move to the bruises still green and ugly on my arms.

I watch the door and the thin crack I accidentally left open when I slipped inside an hour ago. I should have shut it. I can’t believe I made such a big mistake.

But the door stays cracked, and no further sounds come creeping in. Still cold with fear, I turn back to my book, thread, and broken porcelain.

My hands shake as I bite off the length of thread with my teeth, tie it in a loop, and stretch it taut between my fingers.

“Crisscross, loop and toss,” I whisper as I begin to Weave the thread into a cat’s cradle, eyes flickering between my fingers and the instructions in the spellbook. “Hurry, hurry . . .”

Tick, tick, tick. Is the clock speeding up? On my wrist, the circular white scars of past burns prickle painfully in warning. Is that the scent of Aunt Lenore’s pipe smoke on the air?

I have to fix this. I will. Magic can fix anything.

Magic is what I think about when I’m daydreaming over scrubbing potatoes.

Enchanted cat’s cradles and embroidered hexes are what I sketch when I ought to be helping Cook tally the larder.

Ever since I found that first spellbook in Uncle Artie’s library, in those short, happy months before he died, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

Aunt Lenore boarded up Uncle Artie’s study after the fever took him, but being naughty and quick, I managed to raid a few of his shelves before then.

There are books of magic hidden all over the house, where only I know to look.

This one—The Westminster Weaving Primer—I hid right here in the library, beneath Aunt Lenore’s nose.

It felt proper, since this is the only spot in the house where you can hear the great bells of the Westminster School of Weaving ringing at noontide.

Most days, I sit in this very spot and close my eyes and imagine I am one of the students inside, learning to stitch enchanted tapestries at the great looms.

But daydreaming is exactly what got me into this mess. I should have been minding my elbows, not chasing my wandering imagination.

The Weave is soon complete, suspended like a spiderweb between my hands.

The white threads turn to gold in the sunlight.

But the Weaving is only the first part of the spell.

Making shapes out of thread is one thing—anybody can work a needle or tie a knot.

It’s channeling living energy into the threads which makes them come alive with magic, filling wool and linen and cotton with power.

And it’s the patterns you Weave, stitch, knit, or tat which turn that power into spells.

At least, that’s how Uncle Artie used to describe it to me.

Letting out a slow breath, I close my eyes and shut off all my senses but one: the strange, hidden sense that lets me connect with the living energy around me.

After a moment of silent searching, I feel it: humming in the fuchsia blooms and aspidistra leaves in Aunt Lenore’s sitting room; throbbing in the ivy clinging to the outer wall of the house; pooling in the veins of the spinach and cabbage leaves bundled in the kitchen two floors below.

At my touch, the energy responds, reaching back to me in bright tendrils, like a curious kitten being teased out from beneath a cabinet.

Carefully, I pull it in, twining it up and around my racing heart like wool about a spindle.

The heart is key, it says in the Book of the Moirai, which I keep hidden under a floorboard in the larder.

It is this organ which lets the Weaver draw the energy in, convert it to magic, and thread it out of her fingertips.

My entire body tingles, the hairs on my arms standing on end. Magic crackles around my bones; it sparks on my tongue. It tastes like ice: sharp and brisk, awakening every corner of my mind. It feels a little bit like the time I stole a sip of Cook’s brandy: shot through with lightning.

Never do I feel more alive, more bright, more powerful than when I channel magic. I wish I could feel like this always. Aunt Lenore wouldn’t dare lay a finger or anything else on me then. I wouldn’t let her.

But I can’t keep it all inside me, or I’ll burst apart like an ember cracking from heat.

I let the magic flow out of my fingertips and into the Weave stretched between them. The thread glows gold until it brightens the whole library. Frightening shadows leap up from the chairs and sofa and the wooden globe on its stand. My spell is almost too bright to look at.

Maybe the Fates are listening, because it works. Before me, the broken shards skitter over the carpet, piecing their jagged edges together like a puzzle cleverly assembling itself.

I give a long sigh of relief as the threads I wove with turn to ash. This I carefully brush into a cigar box I brought just for this purpose; I’ll be sure to empty the ashes into the hearth.

But at the sudden slam of the library door, the box drops from my startled hands and bowls through the pile of still-shifting porcelain shards. The spell collapses, and broken pieces fall apart onto the carpet, atop a layer of ash.

“Aunt!” I cry.

Aunt Lenore stands in the doorway, a long-stemmed pipe between her fingers, her purse dangling from her wrist and her eyes flinty. Her gown is black, as all her clothes have been since Uncle Artie’s death two years ago.

Our gazes connect, and my bones turn to ice. She towers over me like a nightmare come to life. Even for a grown-up, she’s very tall.

“You rat,” Aunt Lenore snarls.

I jump to my feet and dart behind the sofa, terror pressing against my lungs and making it difficult to breathe.

“Is that my mother’s vase?” Aunt Lenore says, advancing slowly. There’s nowhere for me to run, not with her blocking the way to the door. “And is that one of my poor dead husband’s spellbooks? Which I explicitly forbid you from touching?”

“I—I can explain! It was an accident!”

“Didn’t learn your lesson the last time, did you?

” Aunt Lenore brandishes her pipe. She picked up the habit after Uncle Artie’s death, and now I rarely see her without one of the vile things lit between her lips.

The smoke stings my eyes and makes me cough.

“You don’t deserve magic, girl. Your soul is too corrupt. Your heart is too vile.”

“It is not!” I shout. “I want magic, Aunt. I have a right to it, same as anyone!”

The spool of thread is still clutched in my hand. Hurriedly I pull off a length.

Aunt Lenore hisses, “No, you don’t!”

She stabs her pipe at me, the hot bowl burning into the soft skin of my throat.

Pain explodes up my neck, and I choke on the bitter scent of tobacco and burned flesh.

With a scream, I throw myself sideways, into a bookshelf.

Books crash to the floor, and I stumble, trying to see the door through the jagged lights bursting in my vision.

“Murdering little brat!” Aunt Lenore kicks at me, and I drop and curl up with a cry. The whole house must hear us by now, the staff stiffening over their chores, eyes wide and lips tight. But none will come to help me. They’ve seen what happens when they try.

“You deserve worse than this,” Aunt Lenore says, pausing to catch her breath. “You took the love of my life from me!”

“I loved Uncle Artie too,” I sob.