MOTHS

Choke Knot: To bind another’s will.

Knot Spells, The Book of the Binders

The next day Aunt heaped extra chores on her. Anna settled into their dull monotony, only slowing in her dusting to pick up a picture from the mantelpiece. She wiped the dust gently from it. It was the only photograph in the house that contained her mother: Aunt and her mother together in their early twenties, her mother at the forefront, eyes playful beneath her black fringe; Aunt standing behind. Anna stared at her mother’s face and tried to feel something. She had nothing to give.

She put it down and began to dust the other photographs – she and Aunt at various ages in various staged poses. People said they looked alike, with their green eyes and red hair. Aunt had always told her they were alike too, that they were cut from the same cloth; her mother coming from a different type of fabric altogether: Weak. Soiled. Corrupted with magic.

Anna didn’t know why Aunt had brought magic into their lives at all if she loathed it so much. After all, they had lived for six normal, magic-free years together – or as close to normality as they had ever come. It was when she turned seven that everything had changed. A few days after her birthday, without warning, Aunt had taken her to the doctor.

Anna remembered her childlike fear. She hadn’t felt unwell, which surely meant that an injection, some routine vaccination, was waiting for her, but when Aunt took her into the room, old Dr Webber had leant forwards, eyes bulging, and asked her how she was feeling. Anna had said she was feeling fine, that nothing was hurting, and he’d smiled dispassionately, revealing sharp yellow teeth. ‘I’m talking about your feelings inside, little miss. Have you felt particularly happy or sad the last few days?’ That had thrown her. She’d been excited about her birthday but she wasn’t sure if she was meant to have been excited so she told him no. ‘Excellent,’ he’d said, wheeling his chair over to an unassuming cabinet at the far side of the room which she’d never noticed before. He’d taken a key from his pocket and opened it, extracting several implements, while she was made to lie down on the bed.

He’d put a stethoscope, which didn’t look quite like any stethoscope she’d ever seen, to her chest and she’d felt a strange sensation inside, as if her heart were drawing towards it. He made various concerned noises as he listened and had then produced the dreaded needle. Anna remembered the sharp pain of it in her arm and wishing Aunt would take her hand, but Aunt had not moved as the blood flowed into the glass bottle. He’d poured a few drops of it onto a thin metal disc, and the moment her blood had touched the metal it had begun to sizzle and spit.

‘A vigorous iron test – the magic is pure; however, heart readings show considerable emotional charge. Considering everything, we ought to take precautions.’

Anna had been ushered out of the room before she could hear anything more. When Aunt eventually appeared she’d had a small packet in her hand and a frown furrowed into her brow. Anna had felt as if she’d done something wrong but she wasn’t sure what. The doctor had spoken of magic …

Anna smiled as she recalled her childish reaction. She’d hoped if she was somehow magical that it would be like the magic of fairy tales, that she’d be able to call a fairy godmother to her, or speak to birds, or send whole kingdoms to sleep. She’d soon learnt their magic was not the stuff of fairy tales, it was not to be enjoyed but endured—

‘Anna!’

The duster fell from her hand.

‘Casting practice. Dining room. Now.’ Aunt’s voice sharp as a cut lemon.

Why did I have to open my mouth? Anna knew why, but even so, her momentary yearning for magic, diminished against the growing dread she felt as she entered the dining room.

It was gloomy and unwelcoming as always, set aside for rare special occasions and dinner parties that never happened. A small window filtered light onto the long table in the centre; a mahogany dresser displayed their best china plates begrudgingly. Another rose bush grew from its pot placed at the far end, dotted with rose heads, tightly sealed. My Hira is twine and thorn.

Aunt sat at the table, a moth dancing in the air above her. Her heart began to beat as fast as its movements. She twisted one of the knots in her Knotted Cord.

‘If I wanted to tie this moth’s wings together, what colour cord would I use?’ Aunt’s eyes landed on her.

Anna tried to focus. ‘Er – black for restriction.’

Aunt nodded, picking up a black cord from the selection on the table.

‘Which knot should I use?’

‘The Servant Knot could work, or the Shackle Knot perhaps?’

Aunt tied a knot in the cord with such quick precision Anna was barely aware of it happening. She pulled it tight and the knot snapped shut. With that, the moth fell to the table, wings locked together, legs squirming madly. Aunt held up the cord for Anna to see – a single knot in its centre.

‘That is all you need if your Hira is focused and strong.’

It was an easy knot but absolute in its power: the Choke Knot.

When she was young, Anna had quickly learnt that there was nothing fairy tale about the Binders’ magic. No magic lamps. No wands or capes. Knots were the only magical language tolerated by the Binders. A knot is concise. It is secure. Above all, it is discreet, Aunt had explained. It can be done out of sight without anyone seeing. It keeps our secrets safe.

As if that wasn’t dull enough the correspondences made it endlessly worse. You couldn’t simply tie a knot, you had to consider the material of the cord, its colour, how many cords, the type of knot, the number of knots, the month you cast, the day, the time: they all had certain magical associations or correspondences: Imagine each spell is a sentence, each cord a word, and each correspondence a letter that helps to form it.

That was manageable perhaps, but there were innumerable combinations which could alter the meaning of a spell by degrees. Nearly half of the Book of the Binders was dedicated to detailing them, a vast vocabulary with little room for error and no room for joy.

‘Your turn.’ Aunt untied the knot in the black cord. The moth’s wings fluttered back to life and it flew up into the air.

Anna took the cord and prepared the knot. She studied the silent motions of the moth and allowed the intention of the spell to form in her mind: As I tighten this knot so may the moth’s wings be locked. She could feel Aunt watching her. She let the intention harden. My Hira is twine and thorn. Focusing on the strength of the cord beneath her fingers, she pulled the knot tight. The moth fell to the table, but before Anna could celebrate her small moment of magic, its wings flickered and it flew back into the air. No.

Aunt closed her eyes, but a small, satisfied smile escaped from her lips. ‘Your Hira is weak. This is simple magic. Simple.’

Anna was used to Aunt’s disappointment, but when it was about her magic it still stung. The moth landed on a candlestick, its feelers twitching and assessing her. It flew off, as if it had found nothing of interest. Anna glowered at it and then felt stupid for glowering at a moth.

‘When you decide to pay attention, we shall continue.’

Anna turned to Aunt, her expression one of solemn dedication. Aunt’s hands were a flurry of activity as she tied two cords into a series of Twin Knots, little figures-of-eight looping up and down its length. There must have been ten in total before she finished. Anna looked at the moth in the air but nothing had happened.

Aunt untied the first knot. Anna looked back at the moth and found with surprise there were now two. Aunt untied the second knot and Anna watched as the second moth became two. It happened as quickly as a single beat of their wings, like an origami trick where the paper seems to grow as it’s folded. Aunt’s hands traced down the remaining knots, untying and producing further moths above the table until there was a shivering, shadowy cloud of wings above them. Anna felt the strong urge to scratch her head all over.

Aunt tied a Choke Knot in her cord and one of the moths fell to the table.

‘How do you do it so quickly?’

‘It looks like chaos, doesn’t it?’ Aunt watched the thrumming cluster of moths. ‘It is chaos, but contained, under my control. Everything is connected by threads, Anna, and if you know the true nature of a thing you may pull the strings of its life – forwards, backwards, up and down. The moth may feel itself free – but it is not. I own it.’

‘You believe—’

‘I believe nothing. I know, I know with a certainty beyond all else. My Hira is twine and thorn.’

‘My Hira is twine and thorn,’ Anna repeated. It was the way of the Binders.

‘Now make one fall,’ Aunt commanded.

If she’d failed with only one moth, Anna couldn’t see how contending with multiple would make her task any easier. It wasn’t meant to. Aunt worked in illogical ways like that – if Anna had found it difficult the first time then it would be all the more so the second, by way of punishment. Anna focused on one of the moths, following its movements. She drummed up the same intention as before, adding force to it. Twine and thorn. Twine and thorn. I own you, little thing! She pulled the knot tight.

Nothing happened. She groaned loudly and in frustration tied another before Aunt could stop her. Still nothing.

‘Bloody stupid moths!’ Anna cried, throwing the cord onto the table.

‘Anna.’ Aunt did not raise her voice, but it had tightened like a screw. ‘How dare you speak like that.’ She made a small movement with her cord.

Anna felt a flickering inside her mouth. With a deep and nauseous revulsion she knew what Aunt had done. She opened her mouth, releasing a silent scream – a moth flew out, its thick, furry body rising into the air. Anna retched, wiping frantically at her tongue, trying to rid herself of the feel of its legs twitching against the side of her mouth.

‘That will teach you to watch your tongue.’ Aunt smiled at her own joke.

Anna felt for a moment angry enough to bring a whole cloud of moths down on Aunt’s head but she reached for the Knotted Cord in her pocket and lowered her eyes, afraid to say or do anything again.

‘At least we don’t have to worry about binding your magic.’ Aunt turned to her and smiled faintly. ‘There’s hardly any there at all.’

Anna knew Aunt was right, but still, her words stung. Aunt picked up the black cord and tied Choke Knots across it with rhythmic purpose. The moths fell one by one from the air, until the dark wood was covered with a sad pool of spasming legs and broken wings. As unnatural as they were, Anna felt sorry for them – brought into existence only to be cut down.

‘Clean them up,’ said Aunt, pushing her chair away from the table and heading for the door.

‘But they’re still alive.’

‘That’s your fault.’

Anna tried – different cords, different knots; tying and untying – trying to set their wings free so she could open the window and let them out, but she could not. The moths lay on the table twitching desperately. I’m sorry. I can’t save myself and I can’t save you.

Aunt sharply pulled the brush through her hair while Anna sipped on the glass of milk Aunt had brought for her (calcium for growing bones). It was how all their evenings ended. Their little ritual. The knot that tied the threads of their days together.

Anna had little left in her but weariness and she submitted to the hard brush. Aunt pulled out the waves of her hair into a soft, unflattering fuzz. When she’d been young, people had made a fuss of its colour, caught somewhere between red and blonde, like the sunset on a field of straw, a woman in a shop had once exclaimed admiringly. As she’d grown older the comments had dried up along with her hair. It was no longer ablaze. Its spark had turned to ash.

‘Did you enjoy your little spell practice earlier?’ said Aunt with a yank of the brush.

Anna sensed the question was a trap. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’

‘No. You shouldn’t have. I decide when and how you are allowed to practise magic. You should not be craving it.’

‘I’m not, I promise.’

‘You think I don’t know where this is coming from? Selene’s arrival.’ The lines of Aunt’s neck pulled taut, like a ship’s sail under harsh winds.

‘No, it’s not that—’

‘What have I always told you? Magic is a terrible curse, Anna. It makes us weak. It makes us vulnerable. It makes us prey. It is a threat to us, to all witches. And people like them, her, are everything that is wrong with the magical world: casting flagrantly, openly, attracting attention, endangering us all. You must be in control. You must be ready for your Knotting.’

Anna was unnerved by the new urgency in Aunt’s eyes; she could not escape from it. A thread of blood ran silently from Anna’s nose. She got nosebleeds all the time. Dr Webber had said they were a result of her anxiety. Aunt handed her a tissue with irritation.

Anna dabbed at it and tried to find the right words. ‘I just thought that … I still need to learn, don’t I? That, maybe someday, when I’ve proved myself a responsible Binder, when my bindings are released—’

‘If your bindings are released.’

‘If my bindings are released, there may come a time when I will need to carry out magic in the name of duty, like you, to serve the Binders. That is why we train and practise—’

Aunt laughed silently. ‘You think that’s why we let you practise magic? No. We let you taste it so that you know exactly what it is you’re giving up, so that you understand the true meaning of sacrifice.’

Sacrifice. Yes. Anna knew that much about her Knotting initiation ceremony. The Book of the Binders explained that her magic would be bound inside of her, but how? The details were fearfully sparse: ‘With control you will be ready to make the sacrifice required.’ Anna had never liked the sharp, slicing sounds of the word. What sacrifice? Her magic? Or something more? She’d tried to extricate further detail from Aunt on many occasions before, to no avail. The ceremony was a tightly kept secret and she knew she’d have no true idea of what she’d be facing until she was facing it. Anna looked up at herself in the mirror – through herself. Will I be ready? Does it really matter? She had so little magic in her, she might as well give it up.

‘You think now I am a Senior Binder that magic is easy for me?’ Aunt’s long fingers fluttered to her neck. ‘No one understands sacrifice more than I do, Anna.’

Anna’s stomach tightened. ‘I know.’ She wished she did not know.

‘If only your mother had been bound, she would still be with us now.’

‘No.’ Anna shook her head weakly. ‘My father killed her.’

‘Your father’s hands might have done the killing but it was magic that made your mother weak to it. Magic and love. Love and magic. They destroy everything in the end.’

Aunt did not believe in love. They had never had a man in their lives; Aunt insisted they did not need one, that she was quite capable of doing everything a man could. Anna did not believe in love either.

Aunt sighed, putting the brush back in its set place within the antique silver-plated vanity set: brush, comb and mirror. ‘I know you think me hard on you, but I’m just trying to protect you. You’ve only got one year left until your Knotting. School will be busy, boys will be joining your classes now you’re in sixth form, emotions will be running high. You have to keep them in check. You know where they belong. Weakness in feeling; strength in control.’

‘Weakness in feeling; strength in control.’ Anna nodded, touching her Knotted Cord, doing her best not to think about the year ahead at St Olave’s School for Girls. It was no escape.

‘If we don’t have trust …’

‘We don’t have anything,’ Anna replied.

Aunt lowered her face until it was beside Anna’s in the mirror, their eyes side by side in a unison of green. ‘How alike we are, my child.’ She smiled, resting a hand on Anna’s shoulder. It always pleased her to compare them. Their features seemed as if they should match, but did not. Aunt’s were cut from marble, arguing with their own beauty: high brow, angular cheekbones, glassy skin, deep eyes set in a bony scaffolding. Anna’s followed the same outlines but were softer, more easily lost. She wished she was less peculiar looking, so pale and strange and haunting. Aunt continued to watch her, an uncomfortable silence growing between them.

Of all her silences, the silence of her love was the hardest to bear.

‘Sixteen tomorrow. I can’t keep you a child forever.’

Anna noticed a little of the defences that held Aunt’s face together crack. Anna lightly placed her hand on top of Aunt’s and breathed in the familiar magnolia scent of her perfume. Aunt was many things, none of them easy, but she was also the only mother Anna had ever known. The person to whom she owed everything. Aunt gripped her hand back and then let it go. She made a gesture and Anna’s hair responded, knotting itself gently into a plait. Aunt was so adept at knot magic she didn’t need a cord at all; she could make knots of the air.

She picked up the empty glass and made for the door. ‘They’ll be here at three. I want you up early. That silver isn’t going to polish itself.’

Anna smiled. ‘It’ll be polished before dawn!’

Aunt allowed her a small smile in return. ‘Goodnight, Anna.’

‘Goodnight, Aunt.’

Anna never slept well, but tonight, she knew it would be impossible. Her emotions flapped about her like moths: agitation, fear, excitement. She looked at her Knotted Cord, knowing she could use it to bring them back under control. She resented every knot along its length: the years of training, the cruel tests, the parts of herself she could no longer feel.

She threw off her covers, crept to her bookshelf and selected the Book of the Binders. She remembered Aunt presenting it to her matter of factly after she’d turned seven as if it were a perfectly normal birthday present and not a large and heavy book full of the Binders’ tangled, suffocating words. Its black cover was engraved with the image of a circle studded with nine knots; in the centre of the circle was a rose, its petals closed. The Nine-Knotted Cord and the Closed Rose: the symbol of the Binders.

Anna knew it off by heart: the rules, the blessings, the knots, the spells, the correspondences – every damn, dull word, but one chapter she returned to in secret over and over …

She sat down in the light which poured through the balcony windows – moonlight and street light and the general, incessant light of London; the only sound the rustle of pages as she opened it to ‘Banned Magical Languages’. She lay on her front, white nightie pooling, and began to read them quietly, so that she alone could hear the words: Planetary. Botanical. Runic. Ogham. Imagic. Divination. Necromancy. Elemental. Symbolic. She would never get to practise them, but still, she could taste them, couldn’t she? Each one a droplet of syrup on her tongue. Potions. Wands. Words. Mirrors. Image Magic. Hexes. Sex Magic. Blood. Emotional.

She tasted each word and found herself desperately, feverishly hungry.