A Fiery Friendship

Looking at the piece now, Glinda noted that Maud had since embellished it, enclosing the poem within a perfect circle of bold green stitches. Beneath the circle was a kind of zigzag flourish. It took only a second for her to recognize that the additional stitches formed a hidden word: Oz.

  Turning back to Blingle, she asked, “Where’s Gremil?”

  “I sent him to the kitchen to fix my lunch,” said Blingle, with great disinterest. “I must say, I do hope he’s aware of the rules for frosting tea cakes.”

  Locasta’s face registered disbelief. “Rules? For tea cakes?”

  “Of course,” said Blingle. “They must always be frosted right to left.”

  “Left to right,” Glinda corrected.

  “In Gillikin Country we don’t have tea cakes,” Locasta informed them. “But if we did, I’m sure nobody would much care which way the frosting went!”

  Blingle dropped herself into Maud’s rocking chair, plucked a soldier’s coat from the basket beside her, then selected a needle from the pincushion. Its point gleamed as she dipped it into the heavy red velvet and jerked the thread through.

  In all the times Glinda and Tilda had come to Maud’s house, Glinda had never seen the old Seamstress attach so much as a single button to a military uniform. But today the basket beside Blingle’s chair was practically overflowing with them—coats and jodhpurs, shirts and sashes.

  It was terribly strange. And terribly, terribly wrong.

  “Is that company I hear?” came a voice from the kitchen. A second later, Gremil entered the room carrying a tray of cakes and tea. He was a slender youth with a mop of rusty hair and big bright eyes of golden green. Gremil stopped in his tracks at the sight of Glinda.

  “Nice to see you, Gremil,” she said as carelessly as she could, taking the tray from Gremil’s trembling hands. “It’s been quite some time, hasn’t it?”

  “I’m so very happy you’ve come,” said Gremil. But he did not sound happy at all.

  Now Ben pointed to a wide, hand-stitched tapestry hanging on the parlor wall. “Did Maud make this?”

  “No,” said Gremil, lowering his eyes. “I did. It was commissioned, you might say, a while back. Over time, I’ve been compelled to add more details.”

  “Compelled?” Locasta repeated. “Like, forced?”

  Blingle’s rocker gave a loud creak. It sounded like a warning. “Please, do have a closer look at that trapestry,” she said.

  “I believe what you meant to say was tapestry,” Ben noted.

  Blingle pursed her lips and kept sewing. “I know what I said.”

  Ben and Glinda crossed the room to stand before the handsomely embroidered piece. “It’s quite intricate,” said Glinda, awed by the piece. “I’ve never seen such precise needlework.”

  In the rocker, Blingle yanked her final stitch into a knot and bit off the thread. “Yes,” she purred. “You might even call it captivating.”

  “And such costly materials,” Ben noted.

  “Costly, indeed.” Gremil’s tone was grim. “You cannot even conceive of its worth.”

  Glinda leaned closer to admire the luster of the piece, which was awash in colorful yarns and jewel-toned threads. With one very significant exception.

  In the corner of the tapestry was a lone figure embroidered in plain, bleached string. Glinda knew instantly that this was not Gremil’s work; while the stitches were neat and clean, they were far too severe, lacking the grace and fluidity he would have learned from Maud’s loving hand.

  The pale image was of an old woman; Glinda thought she might be familiar, but the absence of color made her difficult to recognize.

  Ben reached out to trace the woman’s colorless threads.

  “Don’t touch that!” Blingle snapped.

  Startled, Ben drew back his hand.

  As her eyes wandered over the crewelwork, Glinda’s unease deepened. At the far edge of the scene she spotted a dark-haired girl sewn with her back facing out, as if she were searching for something in the infinite distance. As Glinda stared, the figure slowly turned her head, revealing her profile.

  She’s moving, Glinda thought. The embroidery is moving!

  The puzzled look on Ben’s face told her he’d seen it too.

  The girl did not look like any Quadling child Glinda had ever met; she was dressed in a hooded gray cloak and heavy brown boots that laced up above her knees.

  To Glinda’s shock, the girl lifted her hand as if to point at something outside the tapestry; the movement created a slight ripple in the fabric, and Glinda imagined she felt the ripple in her own flesh, which was now tingling with goose bumps.

  Pulling her gaze from the girl, Glinda examined the rest of the tapestry, which featured a depiction of the main street that ran through town. She saw the smithy’s barn, and the baker’s kitchen; even the apothecary’s shop, with a tiny stitched replica of a shingle hanging above the door: MASTER ABRAHAVEL J. SQUILLICOAT—APOTHECARY it read. Inside the shop was sewn an image of the kindly old druggist at his post behind the counter. Minuscule as it was, Glinda could see that the resemblance to the actual Master Squillicoat was uncanny.

  He was holding an almost imperceptible piece of chalk (half a stitch in size, at most) and a slate that looked just like the one on which he’d written out countless recipes for his tinctures and potions.

  The memory hit Glinda like lightning—just the day before, Squillicoat had been dragged away from his shop. The soldiers had promised him a pleasant walk to the outskirts. And now, here he was in a handmade tapestry on Maud’s cottage wall.

  With a racing heart, she reached out to touch her fingertip to the apothecary’s distinctively hooked nose.

  In the tapestry, Squillicoat blinked.

  Then, just as the dark-eyed girl had done, the apothecary raised his hand and extended his tiny stitched index finger.

  “What are they pointing at?” Ben whispered.

  “I think,” Glinda whispered back, “they’re pointing at Blingle!”

  Glinda slid a sideways glance at her former classmate and was alarmed to see that with every to-and-fro motion of the rocking chair, Blingle seemed to be wavering back and forth through her own lifespan—when the chair tilted back, she appeared as her familiar, youthful self, but with each forward pitch she transformed, if only for the space of a heartbeat, into a wizened old hag, her skin leathery, her hair a dull and frazzled gray.

  Without warning, the old-then-young-then-old-again Blingle sprang up from the rocker and stretched her arms out in front of her. As Glinda stared, Blingle’s craggy fingers narrowed one by one until all ten had turned into long, pointed sewing needles.

  “Baste and darn, darn and baste

  A stitch for the Witch is never a waste.

  Sew and mend, mend and sew

  Into this crewel so cruel you’ll go!”

  As the Wicked chant filled the cottage, Ben and Locasta began to shrink in on themselves, growing thinner and thinner until they were no wider than a length of string. Two of Blingle’s finger needles released themselves to fly across the room like darts, each catching one of the threads that were formerly Glinda’s friends and plunging them into the tapestry! While these dove in and out of the fabric, Blingle chanted louder:

  “Wizardry wondrous, Wizardry bring

  Eight more lengths of Magic string!”

  Long strands of colorful threads appeared, dangling from the eyes of Blingle’s eight remaining needle fingers. She aimed one disfigured hand at Gremil, sending orange, green, and lavender threads snapping in his direction, twisting with her wrath. The enchanted strings encircled the apprentice, binding his arms and legs.

  Frantically, Glinda grabbed for the threads, but a long pink length shot out from Blingle’s hand to lash her like a whip. Then a red string spun forth and wrapped itself tightly around her ankles. A yellow one bound her wrists.

  Glinda struggled to break free of her colorful bindings, but the Magic was too strong. She jerked her head around to examine the tapestry on th
e wall. It was as horrifically beautiful as it had been just seconds before—a shimmering mural, a textile masterpiece.

  There was just one difference.

  Two additional figures were now embroidered there.

  Ben and Locasta.

  Trapped in the cloth.

  25

  LOOSE ENDS

  Wasn’t that fun?” Blingle taunted, her gray hair returning to its golden richness, her haggard skin softening once more. Only her hands were different—amid the eight shiny needles were two knuckly stubs, all that remained of the fingers she’d sacrificed to sew Ben and Locasta into the trapestry. “My liege Aphidina will be so delighted by my success, don’t you think? She sent me here this morning, expressly to collect you, and now I have.”

  “How did the Witch know I was coming to Maud’s?” Glinda demanded.

  “Our Witch has ways and means, and her ways are mean indeed.” Blingle looked down her pert little nose and lowered her voice to a mock whisper. “Don’t tell anyone, though. It’s a secret.”

  “So you’re a Witch, then?”

  Blingle gave an indignant sniff. “I am a Wizardess. Wizardry is the Magical calling that relies upon ambition, achieved through illusion.”

  “What have you done with Maud?” Glinda asked through gritted teeth.

  “Nothing,” Blingle spat. “Her fate was sealed long ago.”

  Glinda glanced at the prisoners stitched into the tapestry. “What of my friends?” she asked. “And the apothecary?”

  “I assume they’ll remain there until the Witch can think of a use for them,” Blingle replied with a toss of her hair. “My stitches, and Gremil’s too, are hexed so as to be reversible when need be.”

  “And who is the dark-eyed girl? The one in the cloak.”

  “She is absolutely nobody. I found her skulking around the cottage shortly after I arrived this morning. I was appalled, of course. I mean, honestly! Who wears a cloak nowadays?” Blingle gave a delicate hoot of laughter. “She knocked on the door expecting Maud and found me instead. Imagine her surprise! I’d stitched her into the tapestry before she even knew what was happening. Perhaps I’ll just take a blade to her and rip her out altogether. I’m certain no one will miss her.”

  Glinda looked at the girl in the trapestry. The girl looked back at her.

  “Now then,” said Blingle, “all that remains is for me to send word to Aphidina that I have carried out my task with exceptional results.” Sashaying to the door, she opened it, leaned out, and called, “Bird!”

  “Bird?” Glinda echoed.

  “Well, of course,” Blingle trilled, utterly disgusted by Glinda’s stupidity. “How else would I get the news to the Witch?” Again she shrieked, “Bird!”

  An avian creature came swooping into the cottage.

  But unlike the feathery snoops who’d descended upon Glinda’s house yesterday, this bird was not a crow, nor a raven, nor a vulture.

  This bird, to Glinda’s immeasurable relief, was an eagle.

  When Feathertop saw Glinda bound in thread, he let out a screech of outrage. His sharp gaze went to the Wizardess. “I take it this is not Maud?”

  Glinda shook her head.

  With a loud ruffling of feathers, the eagle dove for Blingle, who screamed and swatted at him with her needles. But Feathertop did not retreat; wings thundering, he caught the dangling threads in his beak, dragged her from the cottage, and took to the sky.

  Glinda watched through the open door until they had disappeared over the tree line. Then she turned a frantic expression to Gremil. “Can you untie us?” she asked. “Magically?”

  “I’m a Makewright,” Gremil told her. “A Maker’s Magic does not work that way. What’s wanted here is a bit of Sorcery—an enchantment.” He looked eagerly around the room until he spotted the sewing basket. “Perhaps you can enchant the sewing shears.”

  Glinda followed his gaze to the basket filled with military togs. Tucked into it was a pair of heavy scissors. “But I don’t know how.”

  “Maud taught me that our earliest Magic is born from our emotions,” Gremil explained. “Right now you are coursing with feelings. If you can choose the proper words and speak them with enough resolve, Magic might indulge you, and infuse your spell with the mystic influence you require.”

  “I’ll try,” she said, focusing on the shears in the sewing basket. “The proper words. Must they rhyme?”

  Gremil surprised her with a smile. “It couldn’t hurt.”

  Glinda thought hard for a moment, then closed her eyes and began to chant:

  “Scissors snip and scissors slice,

  Please be helpful, please be nice.

  Nip and clip this horrid thread

  Before my friends and I are—”

  She gulped back the final word with a shudder. “No! I take that back. What I meant to say was . . .”

  “Nip and clip this thread away,

  So Gremil and I can save the day.”

  When she opened her eyes, the scissors were rising up from the basket, opening and closing. They remained there hovering above the military togs, but as they moved, Glinda felt the binds around her wrists and ankles begin to fray and fall away in pieces.

  When she was free, she rushed to the basket, grabbed the shears, and cut away the threads that held Gremil. Then she ran to the tapestry.

  “How do I release them?”

  “It is the Wicked Witch’s Magic that traps your friends,” said Gremil, his voice grim. “I am sorry to say I know only how to sew her enemies into the scene, and not how to get them out.” He let out a long sigh. “Some time ago the Witch came to Maud with a finely woven piece of linen. She required a prison, though she did not call it that. But when she described to us the manner of textile piece she desired, we knew it would be as much a jail as any made of iron bars. Aphidina said the linen was Magical, woven on her own evil loom. She told Maud that she would henceforth be sending citizens to us and it would be our duty to embroider them into the enchanted cloth.”

  “And Maud couldn’t refuse to do it?” asked Glinda.

  “If she had, surely the Witch would have suspected she was a member of the Foursworn. She did try to disqualify herself by telling the Witch that her eyesight was failing and her fingers were no longer nimble enough for such tedious work. I thought she’d convinced her, because Aphidina accepted her excuses with no show of anger at all. She merely said that she hoped Maud would reconsider, left the fabric, and went on her way.” Gremil’s face wilted in shame. “The next morning I arrived to discover that Maud was missing. It was hours before I found her . . . where Aphidina had trapped her in the fabric.”

  Glinda remembered the colorless image embroidered there amid the brightly colored ones. No wonder she had seemed familiar . . . it was Maud!

  “I thought the Witch would spare her once I agreed to do the work,” Gremil continued, “but Maud remained there in the tapestry. The message was clear: if I refused to persist in this horrid work, the Witch would do away with her completely.”

  Glinda went to the tapestry and found Maud, who wasted no time in trying to tell her something—she was making a frantic plucking gesture with her tiny thumb and forefinger.

  “I don’t understand!” said Glinda, trying to make sense of the gesticulations. “You’re . . . pulling? Tugging?”

  Maud’s embroidered head bobbed in the affirmative as she continued to enact the plucking motion, more fervently now.

  In her mind, Glinda was suddenly a child again, sewing in the shade of the ruby maple. Maud was showing her how to fix the lopsided letter I by unraveling it with a firm tug upon the loose end of the thread. Not by tying, but by tugging it, just as she was miming now.

  “If I find the right knot, can I unravel the Magic?” Glinda guessed.

  Maud clapped her hands, indicating that this was correct.

  “But there must be a million knots. How will I know—?”

  With a proud flourish, Maud pointed to herself.


  “Of course. You were the first prisoner in the trapestry. Your image contains the first stitch, the one that started this Wicked Magic.” Folding back the edge of the tapestry, Glinda found the only knot formed of bleached, colorless thread, the knot that secured Aphidina’s first evil stitch.

  She gripped the scissors, preparing to cut. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  “What’s the matter?” Gremil asked.

  “Blingle said that Aphidina would leave the prisoners in the cloth until such time that she had use for them,” Glinda said. “She said your stitches and Blingle’s are reversible. But you didn’t sew Maud. Aphidina did.”

  She turned back to the tapestry to see Maud speaking to the stitched image of Abrahavel. The apothecary shook his head, but the miniature Maud seemed adamant. Finally, with a look that was both grim and grateful, Abrahavel agreed to what Maud was asking him to do. Using his chalk, he scrawled something onto the slate. The word revealed itself in a sloppy backstitch: UNRAVEL.

  “No!” said Glinda. “I won’t do it. Just give me a moment. I’ll think of something else.”

  “Glinda,” said Gremil, “Maud is as keen to defeat the Witches as your mother is. She has devoted her whole life to that goal, and now is her last chance to act on her dedication. Let her contribute this much to the rebellion.”

  Glinda’s throat felt tight. She shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “But you must.”

  Maud was smiling at Glinda from within the tapestry; although her pale stitches were stark and stern, her expression was sweet and sincere.

  And brave.

  “Are you certain?” Glinda whispered to the cloth.

  Maud nodded.

  Once again Glinda folded the fabric over and found the one dull knot, the one Aphidina had tied with her own cold and bony fingers. She slid the blades of the shears around it.

  Snip.

  Then she reached for the loose end and pulled. Stitches began to fall away, beginning with Maud’s colorless ones. In her wake a hundred thousand brilliantly hued stitches released themselves as well, unraveling the schools and the town and the landscape until at last Ben, Locasta, and Squillicoat were standing before Glinda in Maud’s cottage.