A story from The Witch Cord

The blue dress is gone and whilst I no longer want to find it, I still wear it in my dreams.

I picked it up on the shore and it was not blue then. It was the colour of a still born calf beneath an amniotic tide. The colour of veins on a thin wrist. The beach clung to it as the waves pulled back, smoothing the creases as though a nervous bride was stepping into the church. I kicked it a little, checking for a crab or a jelly fish, and then ran my fingers over the soft brocade and gathered it into my arms. It held an ageless beauty to its breast, a beauty I longed for.

Despite who knows how many years beneath the sea, the dress felt warm to my touch. As I walked across the pale sands back to the cliffside steps, its many pleats shifted and sighed as it awoke from its long sleep. The steps were slippery but my feet had known them since I could walk and so they sang the same song of cracks and crevices. There was no need to hold the thick knotted rope the council had installed last year. That was for tourists. And neither the dress nor I could be called that.

Our house was at the top, all unpainted windows and sand-scratched doors. I let myself in and cut through the living room towards my room.

“What have you dragged in this time?”

Mum was home as usual, staring at the television like a fisherman. Beyond her, two wide windows blinked out onto the sea. I could drag in a whale and she wouldn’t care. She talks, but only the way the wind talks, because it does. I didn’t answer. I’d stopped answering four years ago.

“There’s a high tide in fifty-seven minutes,” she mumbled. “Dinner was yesterday.” Much of what she said made no sense and the rest didn’t matter. She was emptier than the dress I held.

She changed channel and I slipped my shoes off, kicking them across the wooden floor ahead of me. Dad used to go spare when I did that. But the shoe cupboard he’d built was stuffed full of newspapers now. I glanced over to mum again. She’d set the telly to mute and was piling cushions behind her. One of them flopped over the back of the sofa so I skated across in my socks and picked it up and put it with the others. I had to shift the dress around to do so.

“Jellyfish,” she said, looking at the crook of my arm.

I turned back to the stairs, and then turned again. “It’s a dress,” I said.

“Sea tripe and octogons.”

“No, mum. It’s a dress.” In for a penny, I suppose. “Feel it.” I pushed it onto her lap and guided her hand to the folds of silk.

“See? Bit grimy but beautiful. I’m going to mend it.” I looked away. “For the prom. Maybe.”

Her fingers slipped in and out of the shadows the dress had dragged with it from the seabed and she traced the patterns of the celtic knots upon the breast.

“I’ll fix it up, wash it and dye it. The seams are good. Strong. And the silk hasn’t spoiled.”

Red was Dean’s colour, so I’d decided to go with that. He’d pointed out some girl at the rival high school once and said how their uniforms were better than ours. Ours were blue. Not red like girls who like to flirt. Blue like the sea to hide the dirt. Well we always had a fair bit of that on our uniforms, Dean and me. Running through the dunes after school, lying on the marram grass and talking about other people. Always other people.

We were friends. Just friends. Good friends, he told me. I didn’t mind that. Any time with him was good. Maybe prom could change things though. And the dress.

“I’m going to read up on it as well,” I told mum. “I think there’s probably a history to it. It’s very old. Do you think…” I looked at her but the light in her eyes had died again and her arms had fallen back to the remote control. I lifted the dress away and didn’t stay to watch as she lay down on the cushions and closed her eyes.

Finding the age of the dress online was easy. The knot patterns were unusual, some might say gaudy, and I didn’t think they would stay fashionable for long. I was right. A few photos of it spread across my bed was all it took for the image search to pick up similar garments. From what I could tell that style of dress dated back to the fifteenth or sixteenth century – after Shakespeare but before the death of King James I.

The dress wasn’t court fashion, not really. Noblewomen would have worn ones similar, just not in the King’s presence. They were seen as a little too daring, hinting as they did at the magic of witches.

I pulled out my sewing machine and set a thread. I’d spotted a few tears along the back where the eyelets were and wanted to fix these before I dyed. Though I was beginning to have second thoughts about that. The dress didn’t feel as though it wanted to be red. There were parts to it, hidden parts within the tightest folds, where the original blue could still be seen. It was beautiful. Rich and deep, the colour was like nothing any of the other girls would be wearing. Dean and I would be like the king and queen – even though I knew we wouldn’t really be. Melinda or Jessica would always be queen. But with Dean beside me then at least I might feel like a queen.

According to the internet, there were only a few dresses like this one which had survived. Most of them would be upcycled into cushion covers or clothes for dolls at the end of their life. I guess people weren’t as obsessed with preserving everything for future generations like we are.

I couldn’t find any details of a dress lost at sea though. Where dresses were described their owners seemed terribly dull women, pressed into the leaves of their husband’s history. Their only daring was to wear an item of clothing associated with witches – just within the small acts of rebellion open to women.

I read there had been an increase in witch hunting under James I. He had taken a special interest in it for some reason, even writing a book on the subject called Daemonologie. I shuddered. This was exciting.

The dress sailed beneath my needle, healing like skin as I worked around the tears in the fabric. I’d give it a wash before dyeing. One final cleanse just to make sure I wouldn’t get any nasty surprises on prom night. I didn’t want to be bitten by a leech or crab or something.

I fixed mum some food whilst I waited for the wash cycle to finish. We didn’t talk and I had nothing new to catch her interest. So I mostly watched the washing machine whilst she watched the telly. There was a film on about a man trapped on a desert island. He talks to a box and nothing much seems to happen. I left mum to it and put the dress in the dryer.

When dad left I convinced myself he had run away to sea to find his fortune and that he would be back with a twinkle in his eye and treasure in his backpack. When, after a few weeks, he didn’t come back I decided he had been trapped on an island and I used to comb the beach each morning for a bottle with a message in it. I still comb the beach, but not for dad’s message.

My back pocket buzzed. It was Dean. Did I want to hang out by the pier? The grin on my face felt good. I’d not seen him since Wednesday because he’d been hanging out with other friends. I was half way out of the kitchen and reaching for my coat on the peg when the tumble drier rattled to a stop. My grin became wider.

Thumbs tapping like a seal on a beach, I sent him back a hurried and mysterious message before dragging the dress out of the machine and up to the bathroom where I set a bucket full of blue dye into the tub. I plunged the dress into the bucket and swirled it around with a stick. This was my cauldron, I whispered. Dean Fellows, you’re mine now. I stirred once more and blue water trickled over the sides, revealing old scratches in the bathtub. A dry riverbed receiving the sky’s promise.

Another text buzzed in and I sent back another mysterious reply. Was this power? If so, I liked it. I skipped into my bedroom and swung the laptop onto my legs. A reply had come in on one of the groups I’d posted to. Ophelia6258 liked my dress and had I read the story of the Winter Queen?

I hadn’t.

Elizabeth Stuart was the daughter of James I. She wrote a letter which described a voyage taking the daughter of Charles I to meet her future husband. Elizabeth described each of the dresses in their possession. She described my dress and the way she had sewn it to fit the new bride-to-be. Sewn it with a thousand tiny knots.

After mum’s breakdown I took to being the parent. I cooked the dinners and mended my own clothes. I skipped school with Dean and wrote my own letters to the teachers, giving myself permission. Elizabeth’s letter spoke of her brief reign as queen of Bohemia ending and of how she learned to take more control in her marriage. Of reaching for equality. And yet here she was, helping give away another woman.

The dress!

I skimmed over the rest of the story and darted back to the bathroom. The instructions said to leave the garment in the mix for no more than an hour. I wanted it to be in for less time than that. The blue had to match the original. I lifted the dress and spread it over the maidandreg – the wooden rack we had for drying clothes over the bath. It looked beautiful. Like the sea had taken human form. I wanted to wear it wet and run to Dean across the sands.

My phone buzzed. It was Dean. He’d had enough of waiting, of me being mysterious, and was going home. I caved.

“Dean,” I said the instant he answered his phone. “Dean, I’m sorry. I was… That is I just wanted to… Can you hang on a bit longer?”

I waited. I could hear the sound of the sea crashing under the pier.

“Thirty mins, Em.” There was another long pause and I bit my lip. I didn’t want to ruin the surprise but I didn’t want to lose him either. “Jamie’s here at the moment and that’s the only reason I don’t mind hanging about. But he’s going soon and I have to be somewhere after that so don’t mess me about again, ok?”

I nodded, unable to speak at first and only just managed to squeak out a “no problem” before he hung up. I sat in the bathroom, the sound of the dress dripping like a clock.

There was no way the dress would be dry in thirty minutes. I tugged it down from the rack and squeezed as much of the water out of it as I could but it was still too wet. Grabbing my hair dryer I set it to full and blasted it. I could almost hear the dress shriek under the treatment. I was connected to it now, the more I’d read, the more I’d stitched it and repaired it and held it the more I knew this dress would bring Dean and me together.

The blue dye still ran along the cloth but I couldn’t wait any longer. I pooled the dress onto the floor and stepped in. It felt as though I was returning.

Downstairs, mum was still lay on the sofa. I shook her awake.

“Mum,” I whispered. “Will you fasten me in?” Her eyes opened and some of the old light returned to them.

“I wore blue,” she said.

“I know, mum. I remember.” I turned and knelt and felt her fingers reach for the new lace I’d threaded into the mended fasteners. I gasped at each sharp pull until mum knotted the laces and I felt myself become the dress.

“Thanks, mum,” I said, touching her blue fingers with my own and running for the door.

“I wore blue,” I heard her say.

Dean wasn’t dad though.

I ran. I was late. I ran.

Dean was walking away from the pier. He saw me running towards him and stopped. The blue dress and I broke against him and he held me and kissed me. We were just friends but sometimes we kissed, when there was no-one else around.

“Em,” he said. “You’re lucky. I was just leaving. Can’t stay now.”

I shook my head and looked down at the dress. “Do you like it?” I asked. “I found it and fixed it up, an end of school present really.” I was catching my breath. The dress was tight, a prison for my heart.

“It’s beautiful, Em. Just beautiful. You’re a star.”

The dress took him by the hand and led him to the end of the pier where the sun was begining to set. Four hundred years of being a woman flooded through me as each tiny knot in the embroidery rubbed against my undergarments.

The Winter Queen had learned all about magic from her father. And a woman’s magic is found in knots. The knots that bind, the knots that undo. Whilst her father had been interested in demons, Elizabeth had walked a different path. It was a path of being a gift to men, of having to present other women as gifts to other men. In the brief time she was queen she had earned the name ‘the Winter Witch’ but the dress told me the truth. A witch is just a woman wronged and that voyage was wrong from the start.

“Em.” Dean pulled at me but I kept walking. “Em, slow down. I can’t stop. I just wanted to talk about the prom.”

“Yes,” I said, my face to the sun. “I will. That’s what the dress is for. We will be the king and queen of the prom.”

I felt his hand wriggle out of mine.

“Em, no. We’re friends, Em. You know that. You’re there when I need you, aren’t you? That’s what friends are, isn’t it?”

I didn’t turn to face him. I held on to the rail and looked across the sea. The dress whispered to me in the wind, silk against silk. “Yes, but…”

“Well I need you now, Em.”

I felt his arms encircle my waist, that now tiny waist trapped in the whirlpool of the dress.

“I gave you a way out when your dad left, didn’t I? So will you give me something now?”

I was ready to give him myself.

“Will you give me that dress, Em? It would make me so happy if I could take Melinda to the prom in that dress. You make it look so beautiful.”

The dress whispered to me. You’ll never be free, it said. We never are. Below me the sea promised to catch me when I fell.

“Yes,” I said. “Of course. What are friends for?”

I felt his lips kiss my neck. “Thanks, Em. You’re my treasure. I’ll swing by tomorrow. Hope your mum is ok.”

Over the centuries the dress had many owners. Each of them faced with looking beautiful for someone else. Each one ending her life in the ocean. The Winter Witch had put her life and soul into the dress. I’d read her letter but I lived her magic.

Mum had tied herself to dad. She couldn’t cope when he severed the knots between them. She was adrift. I was too, for a time. And then I met Dean. He was my anchor.

I climbed the bench at the end of the pier. The Winter Witch was taking the daughter of Charles I to live the life she had lived. She believed the only way out was to die. There was no way to live for yourself. The dress whispered the truth to me. Whispered its magic and I felt the fingers of the Winter Witch pulling me down.

Only, Dean was not my dad. I was not my mum. I reached behind me. The knots on the laces were too tight, too far from my grasp. I’d repaired all the tears along the seams and now I understood how they’d got there. I pulled and pulled at the silk. Around me, the dress tightened, forcing me to bend double and almost toppling me into the water. I pulled again and heard the material rip.

The dress swirled and reached seaward as though the wind had picked up. All the heavy material dragged me closer and closer towards the pier rail. I did not want this. I did not need Dean. I did not need my dad to come back with treasure in his pockets. I tugged at the dress and felt it split in two. One part for the sea and one part for the sky.

I crouched, shivering against the bench and watching the dress float away. A part of me wanted to dive after it, gather it back into my arms and repair it. I still wonder how many other women had torn that dress from their bodies and how many had surrendered to the magic of its beauty.

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