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Annabelle opens the door, a large bag slung over her shoulder. It closes about fifteen times behind her, and she scuttles through the hallway as it turns a lackadaisical loopdeloop before taking her to her destination.
“Annabelle, good to see you,” Helen greets, sitting upon an optical illusion of a chaise lounge. For all intents and purposes, it appears to be fused with the two sofas next to it, forming a triangle around the odd twisting ribbon of a coffee table. Yet Annabelle somehow doesn’t have to climb over any furniture to find her own seat.
“Tea?” she offers.
“Yes, thank you. Spiced orange if you have it.” Helen reaches towards the table, then hands Annabelle a mug of hot water with a teabag of her favorite brew. The end of the coffee table is about twenty degrees left of where it was a blink ago. She puts her bag next to her on the sofa before accepting the tea. Helen reaches again, and she starts pouring cream into her own mug. The table seems to be more pine than the cherry it was just moments ago. Annabelle doesn’t doubt that, if she set her mug down on the table, it would either disappear or become a different kind of tea altogether.
“Let’s get started, shall we?” Helen suggests. “Helen always wanted to start a knitting circle, and I’m quite keen to learn the craft myself.”
“Hold your horses for a bit there, Helen,” Annabelle says. She sips her tea; it’s still understeeped. “I’m having you wind some yarn into balls for me first.”
“Hesitant to have me at your tools, Ann?” Helen asks, grin tilting to a scheming angle.
“Please don’t call me Ann, reminds me too much of my mother,” she says. “And think of this as an initiation–get you used to handling yarn before you try shaping it.”
“Of course, Belle,” she agrees. Annabelle shifts her tea to one hand, reaching into her bag for several skeins of friendly blue. Neither of them missed the layers of the words exchanged. Double meanings are the domain of the Web, twisting metaphors that of the Spiral, and they are meeting in the basement of the Archives. This is more than just some fiber-themed meet cute.
She lets the new nickname slide.
“I must ask, though,” Helen says, “if I’m winding the yarn, then what will you be knitting with?”
“I won’t be. I’ll be spinning some for you.”
“How sweet of you!” she croons.
“You won’t need too much for a first project, anyways. Besides, the yarn you’re holding right now is a gift from Mother.”
“Ah,” she says with a click of the tongue. “Of course.” Annabelle takes a parting sip of her tea before putting it on the table, leaving her hands free for her drop spindle. She pulls out a bundle of undyed roving and begins the process of spinning it.
A silence falls over them, comfortable because neither of them are the type to hide and wait to pounce. Annabelle catches Helen glancing over at her work, hypnotized by the twirling tool in her hands. It’s no surprise at all that the Spiral is drawn to such a cyclical practice. On her part, the blue thread in Helen’s fingers is changing to a dizzying variegation of nuclear green, aggressive pink, traffic cone orange, and false sense of security lavender. As oversaturated as those colors are, Annabelle can’t bring herself to say they’re a bad combination. Time doesn’t mean much in here, but some passes until Annabelle has to reach into her bag for more roving and Helen has five balls of yarn and no more skeins. With nothing to do, Helen fiddles with her fingers, twisting them into impossible shapes–surely that would take three hands. She takes a sip of tea to busy herself. Annabelle takes a moment to do the same herself, glad that at least her mug is still on the table. When the tea hits her tongue, though, she is greeted with the taste of raspberries and cream.
"Ah, we must have switched mugs," Helen comments. Looking again at their mugs, Annabelle sees purple porcelain in her hand and pink in Helen's. She could've sworn they'd both started with green. Helen leans over, holding the mug from the top and offering to trade. Annabelle pulls the pink mug from her claw and replaces it with the purple. They both take a sip as they reunite with their long-lost beverages, and before Annabelle can get back to spinning, Helen again begins fidgeting. Shifting her mug to one hand, Annabelle pulls out her phone, unlocks it, and opens a website before tapping Helen's talons with it to get her attention.
"What's this?" she asks, taking the phone and looking at the screen.
"A knitting site. Take your pick of whatever pattern you like."
"Belle!" she coos, "are you offering to knit me something?"
"I think after what you did to it, that silk won't be worn by anyone else."
"It's quite eager to stick with me, then, is it?" Helen asks, fishing a label out of the couch cushions for the website filters. Handspun usually isn’t so clearly labeled, but Mother is meticulous when it comes to what's Hers.
"It'll be your choice to wear it, of course. But," Annabelle says, exaggeratedly batting her lashes, "It'd take a terribly long time to knit all of it, and I'd be ever so distraught if never was put to any good use."
“I’d hate to upset you, Belle, but it’s not in my nature to be reliable or consistent. Why not make something for yourself?” It’s phrased like a wary challenge, but from the way Helen’s eyes are roving eagerly across the screen, Annabelle doubts she will turn down the offer.
“I’ve made plenty for myself already, and I have others who make things for me. Let me do this for you. You know how I feel about taking care of others.”
“You’re just a sweetheart, aren’t you?” Helen chuckles, passing back the phone. She takes it, and looks down to see a thumbnail of a shawl, perfectly circular and decorated with a spiral of lace. Of course. “I hope this one isn’t too much to ask of you, after such a generous offer.”
“It’s not too much at all. To be frank, anything much simpler would have bored me half to death.”
“Lovely! And I do hate to cut this meeting short, but I believe we both have other things to be getting to.”
“That we do.” Annabelle slips her spinning into her bag, then hands it over to Helen to put the newly redyed yarn in as she stands and drains her tea–somehow, it’s gained a hint of strawberry.
“It’s been a pleasure having you, Belle. Until next week?”
“Yes, see you then, Helen.” She waves goodbye, makes her way past the miraculously unfused couches, and exits the hallways only a block from where she entered.
An alliance has been made.
The pattern Helen selected is knit from the center outward, starting with less than ten stitches and based on a repeat that Annabelle can trust Mother’s little helpers to remember for her. It’s very convenient, because it means that for the first week of working on it, it’s small enough to carry around with her in public, to sneak in a little work while she doles out advice and suggestions in coffee shops and on park benches. She slips the little loops of yarn from needle to needle in the same breath as she slips a spider from the nape of her neck to a victim’s coat. When her nerves respond to a mind not her own, Mother praises her for the balance it strikes between Herself and Spiral, and is pleasantly surprised by the yarn’s change in color. She spends the week lost in doing what she must, what she is told, what she does every week, and when Thursday rolls back around, she walks through a new twisting hallway with a set of circular needles and far too much roving.
“Belle! Good to see you, I’ve made us some tea. I hope the same as last time is alright with you?” Helen holds her own tea, and the coffee table seems to have decided on oak for today as it holds a second. Instead of the amalgam of sofas from last time, the room is filled with armchairs arranged on perspective lines, growing impossibly small for the size of the room.
“More than alright. I hardly like another kind better.” Annabelle sits in a chair directly opposite Helen, putting her bag down and taking up her tea for a sip. It’s far more clove than cinnamon, and it leaves her mouth tingly and a little numb. “Let’s get right into it, shall we?”
“Yes. Today you’re going to teach me how to… knit?” Helen’s eyes dart to the spindle sticking out of her bag, and the final word drops from her mouth with more hesitance than it had when they first organized these meetings.
“Well, about that. I noticed that you seemed interested in spinning last time, so I thought I would teach you that instead. I have needles, too, if you’d rather knit after all.” Spare needles, yes, but no spare yarn. She’s confident.
“You’re so thoughtful, Belle!” Helen giggles, and it pings around the room along those invisible lines. “But it won’t be much of a knitting circle with only one person knitting, now will it?”
“Yarn is yarn. And besides, those in our position shouldn’t worry about such finicky semantics.”
“A fair point, Belle. Then let’s get started.” Annabelle takes the spindle and a thick piece of electric pink roving from her bag, trusts the table to return her tea to her, and walks to the side of Helen’s chair. She perches on its arm and demonstrates the process, shows her how to loop the lead yarn, how to draft the fiber to the right thickness, and how to join one length to the next, all while the spindle spins, twists, and spins to heed a single brush against her thigh. Helen drinks it all in, forgetting the tea in her hands, and when Annabelle passes the spindle, she only fumbles through a few uneven inches before getting the hang of spinning. Annabelle takes her knitting from where she laid it in her lap and begins working on it, staying on her perch in case Helen needs help.
They work side by side in companionable silence, and Annabelle isn’t shaken from her reverie until the stitches of the shawl start getting cramped on their needles. Time for the circular needles in her bag, then. But before she gets up, she looks over to Helen, checking on her to make sure she’ll be alright spinning on her own, and. Her long fingers are delicate on the yarn, playing it like some sort of silent instrument. Her sharp smile is subdued in quiet wonder, and her shining eyes are locked on her work, transfixed. She blinks, batting crisscrossed eyelashes over her cheeks, and her lips certainly weren’t the same magenta as the yarn just a minute ago, were they?
Annabelle shakes her head. Everything here is endless fractals and hypnotic spirals, it’s simply the nature of things to get lost in looking at them. The coffee table mockingly places the two tea mugs with handles brushing each other, and Annabelle takes a long drag of orange and raspberry tea simply to spite it. She sends a helper to grab the needles for her, staying on her perch.
“Say, Belle, what do you say we start inviting others to join us?” Helen suggests at their next meeting, after enough practice to speak and spin at the same time.
“Who were you thinking of asking?”
“Well, there aren’t many we can ask in the first place, so I was hoping to gather as many as possible. The more the merrier, right?” Annabelle feels a flare of jealousy–it’s small, which is irrelevant because there’s no reason she should be feeling jealous in the first place. It’s not as if they agreed that the knitting circle was theirs exclusively, and the coffee table is taunting her with pink cherry wood and backwards mug handles, so that when they touch they form the shape of a–
“Yeah. More the merrier. Who were you thinking of asking first?”
“Melanie from upstairs is on some sort of strike, so maybe her, and I’ve already had a chat with Jared Hopworth–”
“Wait, the Jared you hurled into a river? I can’t imagine he was happy to have that conversation.”
“I’ve made the necessary apologies for his door-fenestration,” Helen says with a smile that curls farther than a face should allow. Without her permission, a loud laugh bursts out of Annabelle. Helen’s face goes blank, and Annabelle sheepishly covers her face, coughing into a fist. Why did she do that? She’s not even a fan of puns.
“Anyways,” Helen cuts through the awkwardness, “Jared ultimately turned down the invitation, but I count it a success anyways. Look what showed up at my door this morning!” She pulls out a swath of sheared wool, unwashed and still in the shape of the sheep it once belonged to.
“Oddly fitting, for him. I hope he doesn’t expect a sweater in return.” Helen snorts, and Annabelle pointedly ignores the table. “I doubt even the two of us could make a sweater that could fit something like him.”
“And even if we could, I wouldn’t want to spend the time to do it for him.”
“Belle, be nice. The man gives us free wool.” They grin at each other, taking a pause to check on their works. Annabelle ticks back to where she missed a yarn over.
“So. Melanie?”
“Yes, I think she’d be the most willing to join us,” Helen says. “Basira spends all her free time with Daisy, The Archivist –” voice dripping with sarcasm– “is starting to hate me less, but not by that much, and Peter’s influence is too much for me to get to him or Martin.” At that name, Mother grasps tightly to Annabelle’s mind. She can feel her will slackening, her priorities shifting to put this new goal above even life as a plan is injected into her. It is familiar to her, but oddly, it is not as strong as it normally has to be. A part of her wanted to pull these people in simply because the tone of Helen’s voice suggested that it would make her happy.
“Tell you what, Helen. You handle Melanie, and I think I can manage to rope in the others.”
“Really? Oh, Belle, you’ve no idea how much that means to me! Let’s get started right away!” Helen does not, however, leave her seat after that declaration.
“...Right away?”
“Yes, after we’re done with our yarn for the day. As excited as I am to invite the others, I’d hate to cut our time short.” As they settle back into their work, Annabelle feels something growing in her chest. It’s not the numbing of her will or the sharp grip of spindly legs. It’s something a bit like yarn. Warm. Soft.
“Do you think you could teach me to make a hat? I like a nice warm hat, they’re very nice to have at sea. I’m planning on staying out at sea sometime within the year, you see,” Peter rambles on as Annabelle leads him through the hallway.
“We can work our way up to a hat. A scarf will teach you faster.”
“Well, a scarf can be just as nice at…” Peter stumbles over his words as he sees the room.
“You said it’d be just the three of us.”
“I said us three would be there. The other two were up for debate.” Sitting around chatting with mugs of tea are Helen, Melanie, and another woman. The coffee table is low to the ground, accommodating bean bags that look like overcoiled springs. Peter glares at her, betrayal in his eyes, before slinking off to the farthest bean bag. Annabelle sits on one closer to the rest of the circle, setting her bag down, and when she blinks, Peter’s knee is pressed against the table. She has to stifle a giggle at his misery.
“Now that we’re all here,” Helen chirps, clapping her hands together with glee, “I figure some introductions are in order. Melanie, Annabelle. Georgie, Peter. And Annabelle, Georgie.” Peter makes no move to be polite, so Georgie leans over to shake Annabelle’s hand.
“I can’t say it’s a pleasure to be meeting your sort, but I still hope we can enjoy these little meetings.” Their palms touch, hold firm, and Georgie’s aura– death in a tidal wave and she learned to float on its surface –washes over Annabelle.
“Well aren’t you just fearless. I’ll say this’ll be a pleasure for the both of us.” Their hands release, and then it’s time to get to business.
“Melanie, I take it you’re not planning on knitting today?”
“Yeah, nope. Helen said you’d think of something else for me?”
“And indeed I did.” Now the center of attention, Annabelle takes from her bag a foam block, loose scraps of colored roving, and a fistful of barbed needles. “I thought that you’d take well to something with such flexibility.”
“Wait. Wait, are you saying I get to stab the wool?”
“Yes. The block is so you don’t stab straight through it to your hand.”
“What can I even make with this?” Silently, Annabelle thumbs at her necklace, fuzzy felted balls threaded on a string. Melanie laughs with delight.
“Awesome!” She snatches the tools from Annabelle’s hands. With free fingers, she reaches back into her bag for a few pages of printed project ideas.
“Make a circle first, then try making whichever of these you like best.” Prying her attention from the needles, Melanie scans through the pictures until one makes her coo.
“Georgie, look! I’m gonna make the Admiral!” Georgie smiles fondly at her as she becomes engrossed in her work.
“I’m glad she took to it so well,” Helen comments, pulling out her spindle. “I’m sure the rest of us would like to get started now, yes?”
“Yes. As much as I’d like to stab wool into the visage of my cat, I’m afraid my tastes in crafting are a bit more vanilla than that.”
“I’ll have you know that there is nothing vanilla about knitting, once you move past the basics.” Georgie smirks at Annabelle’s rebuttal.
“Can we stay vanilla today? I’d like to stay vanilla,” Peter says. “I’m a vanilla kind of guy.” Annabelle shakes her head in a way that would be fond, if she held an ounce of affection for this man.
“I’m sorry to say that we’ll have to stay vanilla until you both are used to knitting.”
"Not too vanilla, I hope. I need to make this scarf as intentionally horrendous as possible. If I give it to him for Christmas, Jon'll be obligated by the best friend code to wear it for the rest of winter."
"Yes, Mother knows how he is about gifts."
"...That lighter he has? With the web on it?" She nods. "Well. I guess, of all of them, you won't try using him to end the world, at least. And a gift from me should cancel out a gift from a fear entity."
"A knit gift, especially. Speaking of knitting," Annabelle says, a dry note entering her voice as she turns to Peter, who has turned out of the conversation and tied three of his fingers to the needles. "Let's start with learning how to cast on."
It takes several explanations and demonstrations, as well as some help untangling Peter and an interruption to fetch Melanie a bandaid and a finger guard, but eventually, her two students have cast on their scarves and are muddling through their first rows. It’s only garter stitch for now, but Georgie noticed the embroidery needles in her bag and said they gave her the perfect idea for the scarf. Peter, on the other hand, refuses to even learn purl stitch. For the sake of the plan, Annabelle has to compensate for his obstinateness by ensuring that there is no possibility of him forgetting how to knit. She won't be able to rope him into another knitting circle. It's easy, of course, to keep her attention on a single person and continually fix his mistakes. What that means, though, is that she can’t let her focus drift. She can’t steal glances at the woman in red spinning yarn just a beanbag away.
It's just for this week, and then the plan will be in motion without her. Annabelle forces herself to her task, and satisfies herself with sips of raspberry tea.
"Peter? I finished that statement you set out. Do I get any answers from you now, or is it just more cryptic…" Martin pushes open the door to his office, but his question trails off as he sees a mess of red wool instead of Peter.
"Ah, there you are," he says distractedly, voice staticky like he's only half tangible. Martin can't seem to spot him from all the–is this a scarf? "That business can wait. I've almost run out of yarn, could you run downstairs and fetch me some more?" From the slow clicking of needles somewhere in the room, he assumes it'll be quite a while before Peter will actually need that yarn. Martin tries to move farther into the room, but, well, the floor is covered in the scarf, and it'd be such a shame to step on somebody's hard work. There is so much scarf in the room, forming a barrier around Peter that is slowly but surely growing.
"Yarn? Downstairs, like the basement?"
"There's a knitting circle every Thursday. Can't miss it."
Martin's reputation for tea and sweaters precedes him. Annabelle is ready to greet him with a smile when he stumbles into the room that has decided to skip gravity today.
“Hi there, I need some yarn for–Oh, there’s–There’s more of you here than I thought there’d be.”
“Hey Martin,” Georgie greets with a wave of her scarf. She’d found some ribbon and lint selling itself as art yarn, and was learning how to knit bobbles with it. Overall, her scarf was hideous, and only someone like her would be able to make it.
“Hello,” Melanie chimes in. Martin looks around in confusion until Gerogie points up. Melanie is happily stabbing together a family of cats, each growing more detailed than the last. Helen is also on the ceiling, sitting where the ceiling dips down towards Annabelle. She tries not to wish that the ceiling would dip a little lower.
“Uh. That’s new. Anyways, I do need that yarn for–”
“Peter won’t be needing yarn anytime soon,” Annabelle assures him. “Between his incompetencies and these little helpers, he’ll never notice himself running out.” A few of her spiders crawl out and fetch the cheap red acrylic that matches everything she’s given Peter so far.
“Oh. That’s–Spiders,” Georgie points out. It’s the first time she’s seen them crawl from her skull. “Interesting.” She returns to her monstrous scarf. Martin seems even more unfazed, which only speaks to Mother’s exceptional taste.
“If that’s all, then, I’ll be going–”
“No, stay a while! Sit and relax,” Annabelle asks, coating her voice in too much sugar. He wavers at the door. “We’re all doing some sort of wool craft, would you like to try your hand at knitting, perhaps?”
“I–I know a bit already, from my mum.” The table produces a mug of tea that somehow smells caffeinated, and it’s the final piece in getting Martin to sit down. Mother lets her know she is satisfied, but somehow, Helen reaching down to pat her shoulder in celebration feels better. She pulls out the spare yarn and needles she had packed.
“What project would you like to start out with?”
“This might be a bit ambitious, but I’d like to try a hat?"
"If you start prattling on about how hats are good for sea voyages, I'm kicking you out," Melanie snipes from overhead.
"No, I–I'd just want it for winter, like a regular person?"
"That's good," Annabelle assures him. Anything that separates him from Peter's behavior should be reinforced early on, no matter how trivial. "For a hat, though, you would want a tubular cast on. How much knitting have you learned?"
"I barely remember what casting on is," he chuckles.
"That's quite alright," Annabelle assures him. "Why don't we start off with a small project to jog your memory? We can even teach you a new technique or two." She passes him yarn in cream and creamy beige, needles that are dwarfed by his hands, and a paper that explains colorwork, buttonholes, and how to make a mug cozy.
He takes to it like a spider to weaving a web.
The knitting circle has being going strong. Everyone is more or less used to the room's various moods, and everyone has a uniquely patterned cozy to keep their tea separate. Martin's, obviously, is the one he first made, with the floats pulled too tight and bunching up the design. First projects are always special.
Georgie has achieved a mastery of making bobbles like multicolored popcorn in the process of finishing Jon's scarf, and as she sews tacky, lumpy flowers to one end, Melanie happily stabs profanities into the other. Martin learned the tubular cast on and completed his first hat long ago. He's moved on to socks decorated in, quoth Georgie, "Acoustic pixel art." Annabelle has almost finished Helen's shawl, and Helen has spun three shawls worth of yarn.
Point being, everyone is proficient enough in their crafts to carry on full discussions with each other.
"So, what’s with the, uh, sheepskin on the ceiling?” Martin asks innocently.
“That’s Jared’s proxy,” Helen answers. “We invited him to the circle, and he turned us down, but he also sent us this beautiful wool. It’s there to save his seat until he comes for a meeting or until we clean and spin the yarn. Whichever comes first.”
As Helen explains, Annabelle reaches into her bag and extracts the last ball of yarn for the shawl. She also fetches her tapestry needle, and uses its tip to fray the ends of the yarn.
"I thought you were almost finished?" Georgie comments from above.
"Almost is a relative term. There is no true end for those like us."
"In what sense?" Helen chimes in, hands busy strumming a brilliant, somehow bloodless red.
"Makers or monsters. Either applies." Annabelle threads her needle with half a strand of yarn and weaves it though itself to make a loop.
"Either way, we're ourselves, aren't we?" Martin adds.
"How applicable is that in cases such as mine?" Helen counters with a wry smile. Annabelle threads the new yarn and sends it through the loop before sending it through itself. Two things that are the same, yet different, bending to meet each other at a singular point before retreating into themselves. It reminds her of herself and Helen.
"Could you please stop talking philosophy down there?" Melanie complains. "I need to decide between asshat and dickwad for this last bit of space." As the room breaks out into gentle debate over which curse is better, Annabelle clips the frayed ends of the yarn away. Just to be safe, she dips her finger in her tea and uses it to roll the join across her palm, felting it together. That spot of the shawl will now always smell of oranges and cloves.
The handles of the mugs are still all backwards.
The knitting circle decides to hold a holiday party accommodating its members' different traditions, and on that day, the Archivist finally gets wise to where half of his staff disappears to every week. In the middle of laughing about how the room had lightly spiked everyone's tea, he comes bursting into the room, the two ex-cops behind him as obvious backup.
"Martin! Melanie! Are you–Wh–what's going on?"
"Hello Jon," Georgie coos mischievously from above. "Merry Christmas!"
"Georgie? What are you doing–What is a sheepskin doing–?" The hideous scarf lands on his face, cutting him off with a sputter. Daisy can't help but smirk at the sight. Basira simply seems tired.
"Are you telling me that the mysterious gathering that's had Jon in a paranoid spiral has been a knitting circle this whole time?" she asks. "And furthermore, that he was right about there being a mysterious gathering?"
"Jon was right about something?" Melanie laughs.
"Here, why don't you join us?" Annabelle offers, Mother encouraging her words. "Basira, I'm sure Melanie would enjoy teaching you about needle felting." Melanie waves several sizes of needles above–below?–her head, holding them so they look like claws.
"Sure, why not," she sighs. As she calmly walks to wear the wall slopes into the ceiling, Helen hands her a finger guard.
"Take care now! I'd offer you tea as well, but the mugs have decided to be spiked today." Basira raises an eyebrow, but otherwise doesn't comment, and she casually walks up to the ceiling and sits beside Melanie.
"Why–Who added profanities to this scarf?" Jon asks, befuddled. Melanie barks out another laugh and almost drops the needle she was handing to Basira.
"You have to wear it Jon, it's a gift from your dear friend!" Georgie taunts.
"I don't have to wear something so hideous," he bites out, even as he wraps it around his neck. "And–Anyways, there's more important things at hand here! Why is Helen here? Who is this other woman?!"
"Annabelle Cane, a pleasure. I take it you've gotten some use out of Mother's lighter?" The blood visibly drains from his face, and Annabelle allows herself to enjoy the sight.
“An–Annabelle? Th–The Web, the li–The lighter, this whole time?”
“Shh, hey, Jon,” Martin says gently, walking to the Archivist and laying a steadying hand on his shoulder. The blood returns to his face, stronger than ever.
“It’s just a knitting circle. I swear, nothing sinister is going on here. It’s safe.”
“What if–What if she’s making you say that?” he asks. “What if–”
“Shh. Jon?” He looks up to meet Martin’s eyes. Martin is smiling. “Remember whose job it is to kill all the spiders upstairs?” It doesn’t matter that Martin’s never killed a spider in his life, and everyone here knows it. That sentence has exactly two jobs: To reassure the Archivist, and to send a very clear message to Annabelle, to Mother. Annabelle smiles. Martin protects what’s his.
Just like Mother.
“...Okay.” Jon agrees at long last, and the faint tension that’s bleed itself into the room drains right back out. Martin leads him to one of the several couches surrounding the coffee table, and they sit nestled in a corner together. Martin makes sure to place a warm mug of tea in Jon’s hands.
“One more gift for you, Archivist.” Annabelle hands him yarn and a crochet hook. “I’m sure you’ll be able to figure it out. And Daisy?” she calls to the last person standing.
“Yeah? What?”
“I have the slightest of hunches that you may enjoy weaving. There’s a loom and a set of instructions set up in the corner, if you’d care to have a look.” The loom is as big as a person, and the corner is very near the group, yet everyone turns to look at it as if they’d never noticed it before that moment.
“...Alright, I’ll give it a shot,” Daisy says, strolling over to the loom and settling herself down on the stool before it.
“Oh, speaking of gifts,” Martin pipes up, diving into the bag he’d managed to make for himself, “I have a little something for everyone here.” From the bag he pulls out an armful of knitted goodies, an abundance of gifts. For Melanie, a stuffed cat pincushion, large enough for the long felting needles. For Georgie, a microphone cover made from wispy eyelash yarn. (“How’d you know the Admiral trashed my old one?” “I didn’t.”) For Basira and Daisy, matching mug cozies, the same design in opposite colors. For Jon, a pair of wool socks, crisscrossed with delicate diamonds. (“Taking the socks for Christmas cliche to the next level, I see,” he teases, though his eyes say that he will treasure this gift for his whole life. It’s a gift from Martin, after all.) For Helen, a thick red headband topped with a white flower. She immediately puts it on, hands pushing her hair back into the curled bob of a flapper girl.
“How do I look, Belle?” Helen asks coyly.
Annabelle, in general, walks with her feet at too precise an angle with every step. She walks through unfamiliar places like there is a path laid out for her. She turns too smoothly when she changes directions. She avoids stumbling best with her eyes closed and her mind distracted. Every moment, she moves as if she is a dancer rehearsing a routine for the thousandth time.
How she wishes that grace extended to her speech in this moment.
Helen from the neck up is from the 20s, from the neck down from the 80s, and all of her is from a place where time doesn’t follow the rules of decades and years. The headband matches her suit, her lips. It contrasts against her bright eyes, emphasizing their–Whatever color they are, it isn’t red. She smiles at Annabelle, her crooked eyelashes batting, her head at an angle, her question unanswered. Not even Mother can help with the lump in Annabelle’s throat.
“You–fine. You look fine.”
“Annabelle, I–I have a bit of a project in mind,” Martin begins one day. The new members are finally proficient enough to talk with the older members, serving as appropriate distractions for each other. They don’t all exactly trust each other, but the lack of suspicion serves just as well for this conversation to be private.
“Do tell.”
“Well, the Archives are still of the Eye–of Elias, right? I know he’s still in prison, but he could still be planning something, and, well–I think you’ve implied plenty that knitting and such can carry a sort of power. Especially from those like us, yeah?” Annabelle smiles wide. It’s absolutely wonderful when a target is happy enough to wrap itself up in the Web.
“Bring me the pattern as soon as it’s ready. As soon as I finish this shawl, we can work on it together.”
“Perfect.” With a smile, Martin turn back towards his latest little project. Jon, however, has lifted his gaze from his crochet–He’s grown fond of lacework. There’s a running bet going as to how long it will take him to realize that the proper term is ‘eyelets.’
The room decides to cater to her for once and shifts their seats closer, fit for a second private chat.
“Jealous, Archivist?”
“O–Of course not! I’m simply wary of you. This all seems particularly well suited to bringing people to your side.”
“You fundamentally misunderstand how Mother operates, Archivist. I am not the one who makes those decisions.”
“St–Still. If you dare to hurt anyone–”
“Oh, but we’re not talking about just anyone,” Annabelle teases, “we’re talking about Martin.”
“W–Well!” Jon flusters with a slight sound of popping static. “It’s not as if you’re any better with–” He cuts himself off before finishing his sentence, a small, vindictive grin appearing on his face.
“Having a threat to hold over my head is pointless against something I never intended to do,” Annabelle frowns at him.
“At least I Know something, now,” he replies. “Just something to bear in mind.” Annabelle turns away from him in a dignified huff, reaching towards the coffee table for tea. She’s picked up Helen’s mug again, the first time since their first meeting, and the strawberries around the mug have somehow warped to look like hearts.
The next time they meet, Annabelle gives Martin a mountain of beautiful white silk, accompanied by a small hill of black silk. The details of the project had been swapped through Mother’s helpers. The instant Martin’s eyes land on the yarn, Annabelle can sense the twitch of his hands as his fingers itch for it. He’ll have it all to himself, for a bit. She still has the shawl to finish.
The room is busy. Melanie has taken to sprucing up an old bag that had begun to wear thin in spots, and Georgie has taken what the scarf had taught her and applied it to a sweater that is shaping up not to be hideous so much as slightly tacky. Basira is adding bright stars to a swath of fabric, and Daisy is working on a rug in a tasteful geometric pattern while they discuss a rental cottage up in Scotland. Martin’s fingers fly through the cast-on of his project, and Jon seems enraptured by his smile while beginning something new himself. And Helen.
Helen is spinning, as always. She donated some of her yarn to Georgie’s sweater, but there are still enough hand-wound balls surrounding her to construct a small throne of wool. She is as entranced by the ever-spinning spindle as she was when she first saw it.
The Archival staff and company trickle out of the room, two by two. They say their goodbyes, and soon, the room falls quiet. The sinking sun would set the room in twilight to match the quiet, if they were not essentially in a basement. If time mattered here. If time mattered when it came to Helen.
At last, Annabelle casts off the last stitch. Her hand dances across the fabric with her tapestry needle, weaving the ends it. Tucking the shawl back into itself, the same at the start as at the end. Helen hasn’t twirled her spindle in a while, but Annabelle doesn’t look up from her work to check. Now it is time to block, and for anyone else, it would be an hours long process of waiting. For Annabelle, all it takes is a hand at the back of her neck, bringing forth so many of Mother’s helpers that she gives herself a head rush. The spiders all grip the edge of the shawl and pull it taut, equidistant. The spiral it bears is perfect. Annabelle whips out the spray bottle from her bag and sets the shawl in its perfection. The room now feels like it holds a boiler, and the warmed air dries the shawl quickly. The spiders let go, and it holds its shape.
“Is–Is it done?” Helen asks, wonder in her voice.
“Yes, it’s done,” Annabelle answers her. With ginger hands, she picks the shawl up, stretching out her arms to hold it across its widest point as it folds over itself. Then, she looks at Helen. She feels barely in control as she decides to take a risk.
With a step forward and a swoop of her arms, the shawl sails over Helen’s head and floats down across her shoulders. A spider brings her the circle-and-stem of a shawl pin, and Annabelle delicately slides it into place at the corners of the double semi-circle.
“Belle,” Helen says, voice warm. Annabelle looks at her face, and her ever-present smile is at a dizzying new angle.
The spiral on the shawl is finite. Helen is a fractal, going onwards and inwards into infinetesimalness, becoming too complexly detailed to be understood. And yet, Annabelle wonders if she could understand her if she simply leaned in close enough, studied those curling patterns Helen is wrapped in long enough to know how they fit together to form the thoughts behind the being that is more than enough of a person for her. She doesn’t have long to wonder.
Annabelle finds herself at the center of the Spiral, a long arm and longer hand curled around her at either side. Helen smells like raspberries, and the confusing non-scents of things like gelatin powder and linen closets. And there is a small spot of orange and cloves, right where her face is pressed as she returns the hug.
“You have a present,” says the dull guard at his cell. The box is slid through the tiny door, and Elias pries open the cardboard lid with a distanced pleasure. It seems that he, in face, has two presents.
The first is a crocheted granny square, an ugly blue and grey that doesn’t match his eyes at all. Through the dark center is stabbed a sharp pencil, and sticking out from the end like a flag is a folded sticky note with the words “Fuck you,” written in a familiar scrawl. Elias rolls his eyes, and he has a chuckle over it. How eloquent.
The second gift gives him pause. A hand knit blanket, bigger than he is by a good measure, when he finally unfolds it. Strange how it fit in that box.. White, with black patterns, far too intricate to feel natural. There is a moth tangled in a web, and his stomach turns a bit when he notices it is the kind of moth with eyes on its wings. A page flutters out of the blanket’s folds, and Elias picks it up to see a different recognizable scrawl.
Elias, we at the Archives hope that prison is treating you as you deserve. Rest assured, we have managed to go on as usual regardless of the change in oversight. This blanket is a gift from us to you, and we hope that it carries our feelings towards you.
Regards, Martin Blackwood.
“I suppose the Mother won that particular custody battle, after all,” Elias says sardonically to himself. He brushes at the phantom feeling of something on his arm, before catching himself and shoving the blanket to the opposite side of his cell. The moth’s eyes crumble, and all he can see are the criss-crossing lines of Web.
“Well played.”
Once the package is delivered, the group decides a small celebration is in order. At long last, Jared’s proxy is freed from the ceiling, and Annabelle brings in the giant plastic buckets needed to wash the wool.
“Any particular ideas of what to make with this, Belle dear?” Helen asks her as the wool soaks in lukewarm water. Annabelle leans into her side, scooting closer and wrapping the shared shawl closer around her. Helen holds her close, under that spiraled web, but not with the sticky threads meant to trap. Annabelle is held there by the threads meant to be roads, for moving towards a reward.
“A wool sweater is always nice–At sea and elsewhere.” Helen chuckles her ping-pong laugh, and it has the same control over her own smile as Mother does.
“I know I already have the shawl, but would it be too much to ask for that sweater?” She takes a sip of tea before putting down her mug. The table has finally ended its campaign of taunting Annabelle.
“You’ve obviously never heard of the Girlfriend Sweater Curse,” She teases.
“Aren’t you able to work around such things?” Helen asks, cheeks flushing with intention beneath those words. She leans in slowly, to shy for words but leaving space for communication all the same.
“You misunderstand. I’m not in control of every minutiae of the yarn.” Annabelle leans in too.
Together, they taste like the leftover raspberry tea on Helen’s tongue and the nerve-tingling numbness of clove.