“You won’t be able to break in. She’s too strong for that now. Especially with how different things are this time.” One of the logs in the grate popped. “You’ll have to get her on the attack. Make her the aggressive one. That’s the only way to weaken the boundary. Go back to the house, alone, and wait until it’s dark.”
Back to the house. Alone. In the dark.
A tremble ran through my body. But Callie-Ann wasn’t finished.
“Then you go to sleep.”
“Absolutely not!” I said.
“Absolutely yes!” She hammered her stick on the ground. The breeze outside briefly rose then fell away. “She has to think you’re weak. And you have to be in a liminal space if you wish to cross over to her side. Darkness. Sleep. The places where the mind wanders, where you can see things differently. Don’t worry, you’ll wake up when it’s time. She’ll want you conscious when she hunts you. And she will hunt you.”
I saw myself inside that house. Alone. Anyone who’d known me had long moved on, tired of waiting. Not worth sticking around for after all.
“What do I do then?”
“Do not leave the house. You’ll need to find the breach over to her side. Once you do, break through as quickly as you can.”
“And then the shadow will leave me alone?”
She pointed to the square she’d drawn in the ash. “Once you’re on her turf, that’s when the real work begins. There you’ll face her four times. Four for each wall, each corner of your house. Four challenges to prove you are ready to take back your home and take back your life. And four opportunities for her to tempt you. You’ll have to listen, but you mustn’t give in to your impulses.”
I screwed up my face. “I don’t think I—”
“Don’t play stupid, now.” Callie-Ann waved a hand toward the main room. “Your impulses, like when you’ve got the green eye over someone else’s life, so you get the impulse to shag their husband. Or you’re seeing red over a perceived rejection at work, so you get the impulse to spit in your boss’ cup. Anger, envy, they’re misunderstood gifts. If you listen to them properly, they’re just telling you what you want out of life, or pointing out unfairness in the world. And they can give you the power to drag yourself back on your feet when the world has seen fit to bury you.”
I thought of this morning in the orchard, how the ringing tone in my ears came again, but this time it felt less like I was shaking apart and more like I was coming back to life.
“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?”
