‘The Threads that Bind us’

Lyra had desperately wanted to visit the Stones of Gawain so she could hardly believe she was finally standing right in front of them! They were exactly as she had imagined, full of majestic grandeur and a little mossy and crumbly around the edges. But then, they were thousands of years old. As she took her final photo using her phone camera, she noticed a figure hovering in the background. She tried to enlarge the photo on her phone, but her battery suddenly died.

 ‘Strange, I’m sure it was showing 30% a few minutes ago!’

It was quite a trek back to the village and the inn at which she was staying. The footpath crossed through fields and forests, and it was getting dark. Only a few visitors remained now.

Lyra found a small wind-up torch in the bottom of her rucksack. A gift from her ex, Jay, when they were on their last hike together.

‘You’ll never run out of power with this one!’ He’d laughed.

Lyra had never thought she would be grateful for what she had dismissed as a tacky gift. It took a few minutes to wind it up enough to get a steady beam of bright light. There was a full moon tonight, which would help. But the torch comforted her somehow.

As Lyra retraced her steps back to the village, she thought about Jay again. How they’d said that they were forever. The pact they had made as teenagers. But life had an odd way of throwing curve balls when you least expected it. Her new dorm buddy, Sara took an instant dislike to him. It was only when Lyra had gone back to their room one day with a migraine, halfway through her lecture, and caught them together that the penny dropped! Now she had two exes!

She had reached the village high street and was walking towards the inn. She stopped outside a little shop, painted black, with a flickering candle in the huge bay window. It was aptly named ‘In the Light of the Moon.’

 The lights from the inn where she was staying glowed brightly in the distance, welcoming her back. But something told her to try the handle on the door of this little shop. The black and gold sign depicting a full moon and a black cat was swinging in the wind. Only…there wasn’t any wind tonight.

Hesitating, Lyra pushed down on the huge metal handle. The door jolted and groaned on stiff hinges, then slowly opened. She stood there for a few minutes, suddenly aware that she might be trespassing. All the other shops had long closed, why was this one still open? Maybe it wasn’t. The fact that the door had practically opened itself seemed to escape her. A rustle caught her attention. A dark figure appeared behind the shop counter at the far side. Lyra narrowed her eyes, trying to focus in the dimly lit room, when the lights flickered on almost in answer. The figure pushed back their hood, it was a woman with the longest, most beautiful, thick red hair.

‘Welcome to my home,’ she said.

‘Oh, I am sorry. I thought this was a shop. I didn’t realise it was your home,’ Lyra said, embarrassed.

‘It may be one, or both. Are you seeking answers or questions?’

‘I wasn’t seeking either, just passing really.’

‘Those who do not seek guidance are usually the ones who need it most,’ the red-haired woman smiled.

Lyra’s eyes greedily took in the array of ancient books and shelves of old apothecary jars. This was the kind of shop she loved! There were some unsettling objects; many looked African or Asian. The shopkeeper noticed her attention lingering and said, ‘Those effigies are imbued with voodoo magic and are incredibly old.’

‘And also very creepy,’ Lyra muttered under her breath.

‘They cannot hurt you here in my shop,’ she told Lyra.

She had never seen so many curiosities in one place. It was so interesting and not filled with cheap souvenirs ripping off the history of the area either.

‘My shop exists also to guide those who want answers or desire to right a wrong,’ the woman said, unclasping her purple cloak and hanging it on a peg behind her counter.

‘I came here to see the stones because I have no idea what I want from my life anymore. Once I thought I had it all sewn up, but now everything seems to have completely unravelled.’ Lyra surprised herself at how open she was with a stranger.

‘So, you need a needle and thread!’ the woman said triumphantly opening a drawer behind the counter and taking out a huge needle. It was at least a foot long and made of a material that glistened like cut glass. She pulled something else from the drawer and cut through it. Lyra could see nothing at all.

‘Here, take the needle and thread back to your room at the Inn, it will sew up what you need mended.’

Lyra hadn’t mentioned where she was staying.

The needle was visible; the thread was not, but she could feel it running through her fingers. She did as she was told, despite telling herself that all of this was plain crazy.

‘There’s no harm in humoring the woman.’ She thought.

Back at the Inn, Lyra ordered a sandwich and a cola from the bar and took them up to her room. She carefully lay the needle and thread on the dressing table and sat on the bed to eat her supper.

What was she meant to sew up? How do you sew your life back together?

Lyra had no idea. It had been a long day, and she soon dozed off sitting on the bed with the tv on quietly in the background. As she slept, she dreamed of the shop and the mysterious woman who lived and worked there. The dream placed her back inside the room with unnerving clarity. The heady aroma of Vetiver, Labdanum, and something else she found hard to place drifted into her nostrils. Lyra had recognised the scent when she entered the village shop. She had dabbled in a little perfumery, making candles and diffusers, sometimes room scents. They were two expensive essential oils, so she used them sparingly.

The scent seemed to grow; she awoke with a start. Someone was in her room. The tv had long shut down so she leaned across the bedside table and switched on the lamp. A shadow flitted towards the open window and was gone. The hairs on the back of her neck rose. ‘What was that?’

She knew she hadn’t opened the window, so she got up to shut it. A figure stood in the carpark directly below her window. A gust of wind appeared from nowhere; the figure lifted upwards with the dust swirling into the air. Her pulse began to race, filling her ears with a loud whooshing sound. She closed the curtains quickly, almost pulling them off the pole. But not before a huge owl took flight from a nearby tree, flying silently towards the village high street.

‘Had it been watching her as well?’

When Lyra awoke in the morning, her limbs ached as though she had walked for days. A heady scent still hung in the air. It seemed familiar. After breakfast, she went back up to her room and studied the huge needle on the desk. She had to search for the thread. After patting her hands gently over the desk, her fingers found a faint ridge, and she rolled the invisible thread into her hands. The minute she threaded it, not an easy task, the needle began to move through the air on its own, weaving back and forth, stitching something invisible in the air. Tiny tugs tightened around her heart. When the needle finally stopped, it vanished into thin air.

Lyra rested a while, feeling unusually tired again but lighter as if a weight had been lifted from her. She made her way back to the shop, to explain that the needle had gone, but also to sneak another look at its contents. The door was wide open.

‘Hello?’ she called through the door.

The shopkeeper from the night before silently appeared behind her.

‘Good morning. Did you sleep well?’

Lyra startled at her sudden appearance. ‘I didn’t hear you walk up.’

‘That’s because I didn’t!’ she chuckled as she stepped into the shop.

‘You look tired. I take it you had a restless night then?’

‘Yes, just a bit. But I cannot remember what I dreamt about.’

‘Dreams are funny like that, aren’t they?’ the woman said, adding ‘Do you feel lighter?’

Lyra stared at her, astonished. ‘How…did you know?’

‘Because I gave you the needle and thread,’ the woman said simply.

Lyra glanced around the shop, wondering what other magical objects were hiding in plain sight. The woman seemed to catch her thought before it had fully formed. ‘Everything in my shop has a use and is useful!’ Lyra realised that the woman’s way of speaking was also a little mystical.

‘You never told me your name, did you?’

‘No, I don’t believe I did, Lyra!’

Lyra thought it better not to ask for it now. ‘Do you have something here that will help me to forget about him? Jay, that is,’ she added.

‘I have many remarkable things in here, and some I am unsure as to what they can achieve, given the correct circumstances. I inherited all of this from my great-grandmother, who was gifted it by an incredibly old friend.’ The woman emphasised the ‘old’ part.

‘Wow, some gift!’ Lyra said, running her fingers over a small statue of an angry-looking cat.

‘Take care with Macbeth, he bites!’

Lyra was about to laugh when a row of sharp teeth bit her on the side of her hand. She pulled it away quickly, grimacing at the sudden pain, just as the black statue stretched, yawned, and jumped down from the desk to snack on a bowl of kibble.

‘Now then Macbeth, play nicely please!’ said the woman, bending down to stroke the cat’s now thick, glossy fur. Macbeth released a protesting mew, then continued its breakfast, purring loudly while it ate.

‘Would you like some herbal tea?’ The woman asked a startled Lyra.

‘If you have something like chamomile to settle my stomach, that would be lovely.’

‘I have just the thing!’

A pinky velvet covered small octagonal table, with tassels around its edges and two tiny red velvet stools with fringing around them, stood in the corner by the shop window.

‘We can sit over here, if that’s agreeable,’ the woman said. ‘It was owned by one of the very first fortune telling Romani women and is rumored to possess magical properties.’

Lyra sat down opposite the woman, taking care not to spill her tea over what was obviously a rare and priceless antique.

‘Could you help me to forget about him?’ she asked again.

‘Why don’t we consult the cards?’ The woman took a large slurp of tea. The sudden noise caused Macbeth to turn and emit a low yowl towards them. ‘Sorry Macbeth!’ she apologised.

‘Do you mean Tarot cards?’ Lyra asked.

‘Ah… yes, I will fetch the cards and we will see.’ She opened a drawer on the largest set of wooden cupboards Lyra had ever seen and removed an ancient looking deck of Tarot cards. She shuffled them and dealt four cards face down. Then she asked Lyra to slowly turn them over, one at a time.

The first card was the 3 of Swords, a large red heart with three downward facing swords piercing through it. ‘This card symbolizes sorrow and heartbreak. It can mean an ending, hurt, and pain. It says that you have been let down, big time!’ She saw the recognition on Lyra’s face and added, ‘But you should use your pain for growth!’

She signaled for Lyra to turn another card. The 9 of Swords: an image of a man sitting up in bed, grasping his head in despair. ‘When this card appears, life is truly getting you down,’ the woman said. ‘Sleepless nights caused by illness or backstabbing.’ Lyra nodded.

 The next card was what the woman described as a ‘Major Arcana’ card. No.8, Strength. A white robed angel stroking a Lion. The woman said simply, ‘It means ‘You’ve got this!’ 

She hesitated before turning over the final card, saying, ‘The order is irrelevant. It is what they are showing you that counts!’ The card was the 3 of Pentacles. It showed a man holding up a reel of cloth, with a woman and a man looking on. They were all dressed in rich robes. The woman thought for a few moments before giving her judgement. ‘It is about working together. Teamwork. Creating and building. Learning a trade or becoming an apprentice. And most importantly, embracing the help of others.’

Lyra frowned. ‘Is this because I left my university course after what happened with Jay and Sara?’

Macbeth jumped onto the table, bringing the proceedings to an abrupt halt and scattering everything. The woman quietly picked up the cards from the floor; her gaze seemed far away.

‘I never told you my name, but you knew it already, didn’t you?’ Lyra said.

‘I have always known who you are, Lyra.’ The woman stood up slowly, as though choosing each word with care. ‘You were brought up by your aunt after both of your parents were killed in a road accident.’

Lyra went still. The shop, the cat and the owl, the Tarot cards, even the scent of herbs seemed to all pause for a moment.

‘You hated living with her because she showed you no love,’ the woman continued more gently.

‘Your mum was special, like me and like you. We come from the same ancient family, one that spans centuries. Your name means harp or harpist in Ancient Greek, it is a sacred name, as was your mother’s.’

‘Celeste!’ Lyra spoke her name softly, remembering her tall, elegant mother with the long golden hair and the brightest sky-blue eyes.

‘Yes, my sister, Celeste. Her name means “heavenly” and “of the sky” the woman replied. ‘Your aunt was not your true aunt. She was once a close friend of your mother’s, but her friendship turned to hatred when Celeste married your father. Your ‘aunt’ had also fallen in love with him.’

Lyra lowered herself back onto the stool before her legs gave way. The questions came too quickly. Her aunt, her mother, this family she had never known, and the inconceivable feeling that the woman in front of her was telling the truth.

The woman let the silence settle before she spoke again. ‘I sent for you in your dreams. Not to frighten you, but because this world has dealt you so many cruel hands, and you were finally ready to be mended.’

A huge Tawny owl flew through the open door and settled on a large shelf behind the counter. The woman smiled, ‘I believe you have already met Sir Gawain?’

‘He was outside my window last night. I had a feeling I was being watched’

‘I asked him to keep an eye on you for me. I am sorry if he scared you.’ Sir Gawain bobbed his head in solemn agreement. ‘Yes, thank you for watching over Lyra.’ She laughed.

‘Does he wear scent? Only, there was a strong aroma of Vetiver and Labdanum in my room last night.’

‘No, he does not wear scent, but I do. It was your mother’s favourite perfume. We used to make it together when we were young.’ Her voice softened. ‘I wear it now to keep her memory alive. Labdanum, Vetiver, and Oakmoss. All three are steeped in historical magic. But you already know that Lyra!’

Lyra looked down at her hands. She had studied those oils, their histories, their rituals, and associations. She had never imagined they might be part of her own story.

The woman moved closer.

‘You chose to study an MA in Magic and Occult Science, exploring the history, literature, and cultural impact of witchcraft, folklore, and esoteric traditions. That was not an accident, Lyra.’

‘Let me introduce myself formally. I am Morganne.’ She paused, watching Lyra’s face. ‘I was once apprentice to the great magician Merlin, before he cast me out of his tower many moons ago.’

Lyra gave a short, disbelieving laugh, but it caught in her throat. Yesterday she would have walked out at the name Merlin. Today there was a cat that was a statue one minute and eating kibble the next, and an owl on the shelf watching her with bright, knowing eyes.

‘I would like you to become my apprentice,’ Morganne said. ‘One day, all of this could be yours. But first, there is something we must do.’

The words hung in the air between them.

‘We need to get Celeste back!’

Lyra gasped loudly. ‘My mum is dead; she has been for many years!’

Morganne made a loud snorting noise. ‘My sister is not dead. She is just suspended in another realm, waiting for us to wake her. That is all.’

For the first time since Jay, since Sara, since every lonely year in her aunt’s house, Lyra felt the promise of a future she had not planned and did not yet understand.

Morganne extended a perfectly manicured hand with long bright purple nails. Lyra looked at it and then into the face of this woman with the long thick red hair and piercing green cats' eyes, whom she had only met the day before. She took her hand and gripped it tightly.

‘When do we start?’

Outside, the sign creaked softly though there was still no wind, and somewhere above the high street, Sir Gawain gave a single, mournful cry.