The Needleworkers

Winner of The Audacious Book Club Short Story contest

In July 2024, our book club read Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Cuckoo. One of my favorite things about the novel was the way she wrote a horror story that felt utterly original and reminded us that the ways our society treats people on the margins is far greater a horror than any dark imagining of the monsters beneath our beds. We were so inspired by the novel that we held our own horror short story contest, and today we’re publishing the winning story: “The Needleworkers” by Dyana Herron. Dyana is a writer and editor originally from southeast Tennessee. She holds an MFA in poetry from Seattle Pacific University and has taught as an adjunct writing instructor at several universities. She lives with her historian husband, wonderful friends, and community gardening pals in Seattle.

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The aunts keep the needles locked in an upstairs room of the common house. They know otherwise the temptation would be too great for us nieces to sneak between chores and mealtimes to handle them—measure their weight in our palms, test the sharpness of their points, rehearse a threadless stitch or two.

And how could we resist? The needles are beautiful. Most are true silver, polished to a perpetual shine through use. Some are wood whittled thin. A few, the oldest, are carved from bone. They are all bright and smooth, unlike the dusky tin spoons we use at mealtimes and the rough, disfiguring mirrors in the hall. They are lovelier than anything else that belongs to the community, and much more valuable, because they are what we use to stay safe from harm.

In fact, the aunts told us that, long ago, the needles were used to create the wall that surrounds our village. Back, back, and back, the story goes, when the community was newly born and vulnerable as a wet lamb, the first aunts gathered and prayed throughout the night for a way to protect themselves from any danger that came in the dark. Their cries were as wild as storm winds, and their tears fell into the dirt like rain. Then, when the sun rose in the morning, they found before them a box containing needles, thread, and a heavy black book.

That was the beginning of our practice.

***

We only gather for lessons at night, when the uncles and nephews are sleeping and the moon is at its quarter phases. I remember the first time Lara, my bunkmate and closest friend, woke me. She squeezed my shoulder hard, but said nothing. Through bleary eyes, I saw the other girls dressing by candlelight and gathering near the door. Wordlessly, I rose to join them.

Just like that first night, each walk from our sleeping shed to the common house is completed in silence. We carry nothing with us, no candles or lanterns. It can feel like a dream, navigating the dark woods, just broken from sleep, taking care not to trip on stray branches or stones, skin chilled by air that is heavy with damp and night-scents: hay always, a bit of smoke, and something thorny. Sometimes blackberry. Sometimes rose.

When we arrive at the steps of the common house, it is dark except for the attic window, which glows orange from behind heavy drapes. We enter the building and ascend the middle stairs two by two. The only sound is the creak of our weight on the musty wood.

On these nights, the door to the practice room is always open. Once we have entered, one of the aunts will close and lock it again.

***

It is wonderful to be a niece. I would hate to be a nephew, though they likely feel differently about it. Children arrive in our village when they are small, one group per year, on the spring equinox. Sometimes there are a good number, sometimes only a few. It’s an exciting day: we scrub ourselves clean, dress in our best clothes, then walk to the village gate to meet the newcomers.

The children are always unaccompanied; the older ones carry those too young to walk. They bring no belongings with them, only bags of hardtack and skins of water. Though they arrive dirty and tired, the children are generally strong and in good health. Worthy additions to the village.

For a while, we stand and take each other in: our faces smiling, theirs blank, or maybe a little frightened. Welcome, we say. Then the boys go with the uncles and the girls with the aunts, and after that our lives become largely separated. The nephews will learn to build, hunt, and care for the animals, work that leaves them sore and stinking. The nieces will tend to the garden, cook, clean, and practice their needlework. The uncles and nephews understand ours is a superior labor, and treat us with deference. But we know the value of their role as well and try to be kind, even if we pity them a little.

***

The girls whisper that it isn’t the same everywhere else. Lara told me that in some villages, ones far beyond our wall, a child is cared for by one woman and one man, a mother and a father. And instead of arriving once a year like our young ones do, the children are made by the man and the woman through some wild magic. I cannot imagine how they know to do it—perhaps they, too, have a book that shows them the way.

Together, their family share a dwelling and divide chores. They gather with other members of their community only sometimes, when it is time to worship, celebrate, or sell and trade. Some even sleep in rooms alone at night. Their animals live in pens beside their homes instead of in a common field. Their village has no wall; they are not hemmed in. This all seems to me both a lonely and dangerous way to live.

***

Our lessons begin simply. First, the basic stitches: back, basting, blanket, blind.

Catch, chain, cross, ladder.

Running, slip, whip.

We practice these stitches until we can do them effortlessly, without thinking, or, more accurately, without thinking of anything else. Until they are as natural as breathing.

Once we have mastered them, we learn the intermediate stitches, which take a higher level of dexterity and concentration.

Backstroke, bent, briar.

Halo, hammer, hook.

Spear, spine, star. These stitches draw sweat.

Finally, we are taught the stitches that belong to our community only, the ones from the book, the ones with names we can read but aren’t allowed to speak.

These stitches require blood.

***

Although the nieces aren’t supposed to consort with nephews outside of meals and other common times, of course it happens.

Lara made me swear I won’t tell that she slips away sometimes from garden chores to meet the nephew called James. It’s easy, at the height of summer when the corn and beans and sunflowers have grown overhead, to be lost in the field. I caught her returning, once, and would have mistaken the high pink in her cheeks for too long spent in the sun if not for her empty harvest basket.

When I asked, she confessed to sneaking away with James for an hour here and there to the creekside. They don’t do anything much, she said. Only dangle their feet over the bank, dropping leaves and sticks into the water and watching them be currented away.

Lara has never lied to me before, as far as I know. But that day there was something in the softness of her smile and how she turned her eyes away that made me wonder if finally she had a secret too precious to share. I looked into the shadowed woods and decided to let her leave it there.

***

Though the lessons are arduous, their structure is mostly the same. The aunts watch us closely, discerning our faults and talents. They pace the attic floor between the cane chairs where we sit, needlework in hand, and silently note whose stitches are straight and even and whose snare or break.

Some nieces are skillful menders; they can disappear holes and tears without a visible seam. Some are natural weavers, welding many strands into a smooth cloth. Others are gifted at embroidery—across drab swaths of fabric they conjure lively, colorful scenes. Some have an affinity for spinning, pumping the treadle in an even tempo, steady as a heartbeat. Though our tasks are separate, we are all connected by this rhythm. It is like a spell we cast together over ourselves.

***

Emboldened by Lara, I allow myself a secret, too.

One afternoon while gathering yarrow, I saw the nephew called Caleb sitting in the clover, cooing at a stump. Curious, I walked closer. When Caleb looked up, he seemed surprised only for a moment, then smiled and reached inside a hollow in the wood. Carefully, he lifted out a fluffy little bundle, a tufted owlet, with one injured wing set and wrapped.

“Found him two nights ago,” Caleb said shyly, “fallen from the nest, nearly dead with hunger. But after a supper of field mice, I’d say he’s feeling better now.”

The owlet was sweet, its head oversized, eyes comically round. But it was Caleb I couldn’t stop watching. His freckled hands caressed the bird with gentleness I’ve never seen from a boy before.

“Will it live?” I asked, moving closer. “They’re happy omens, you know.”

“I hope so. Though I can’t keep it too long. It won’t survive without its wildness.”

Caleb and I sat together for a while, not saying much, laughing as the owl nipped at his fingertips. A few days later, I returned to the stump to see if the creature was still inside. It was gone, but in its place was a small carving of a bird made from cottonwood. I glanced around and, seeing no one, put the figure in my pocket and hurried away.

Since then, I’ve found many new carvings in the stump hollow. The details on each are delightful: the patchwork shell of a turtle, the miniscule paw of a curled-up cat, and the broad, flat tail of a beaver. Only someone who watches the world carefully could craft such treasures.

Still, I know the aunts would not approve. So I carry each figure to the sleeping hut and sew them into my mattress beneath an invisible stitch or two.

***

One night, we nieces enter the attic and see that no needles have been set out for us, no hooks or looms. It is dark; no lamps are lit. Instead, the aunts stand at the side wall with the eldest, Cora, in front. The lantern she holds casts its yellow circle toward us.

“Follow me,” Cora says, before leading us back down the stairs, out of the common house, across the village square, past the animal pastures and fields of timothy hay, then into the woods. We walk and walk—along footpaths, until those grow faint and disappear—beyond where even the bravest niece has dared to go before. The night deepens, and the underbrush thickens and tears at us.

Finally, the forest thins to a clearing, and we spill into it with relief. The half-moon casts just enough light to illuminate what we were brought here to see: the village wall, as high as two men, stretching endlessly into the dark.

Cora gestures for us to go closer and tells us to examine it. Though I know the wall was first created by needleworkers, still I am surprised to see that it is made of fabric and not some sturdier material. The fabric, too, is different than I’ve seen before. It is thin but tough, like animal skin scraped clean of hair and sinew.

Most remarkable, though, is the needlework. Every inch of the wall is covered in perfect, intricate stitches—some I recognize and others I don’t. The effect is mesmerizing. Some lines flow straight, and others curve into spirals or explode into starbursts. Together, they join to create an unending constellation of mysterious forms that could almost be read, if you knew the language.

“Nieces,” Cora speaks, her voice deep like an empty well, “this wall is your inheritance and your responsibility.” Instinctively, we draw close together, and the aunts surround us in a loose circle.

“Back, back, and back,” she continues, “when our community was newly born and vulnerable as a wet lamb, the first aunts prayed throughout the night for a way to protect themselves from the dangers of the dark. Their cries were as wild as storm winds and their tears fell into the dirt like rain. Then, when the sun rose in the morning, they found before them needles, and thread, a book of instructions for what must be done next. Then they began to create this wall.”

Cora’s voice remains steady. She appears to grow taller.

“Since that time, the village wall has kept us safe from harm. And in return, the women in our community practice the stitches that were given to us, so we can preserve the wall and protect everything—and everyone—that lies within it.” She spreads her hands wide. “This practice is what binds us together. Without it, we would be torn apart.”

As she speaks the other aunts draw nearer to us. They are distributing something, one to each girl. When a soft object is pressed into my palm, I squint at it in the dim light. It is a small sachet that smells as though it is filled with herbs. A symbol I haven’t seen before is stitched to the front.

“This is your inheritance,” Cora repeats, “and your responsibility. Take this piece of our history and keep it with you always. The stitches allow you to create, but this will allow you, if you need, to uncreate. It will help protect you from harm.”

I look across at the other girls. Their expressions are blank, like mine, and difficult to read. We place our sachets in our dress pockets and, after a few moments, Cora turns and the aunts lead us back to the village.

***

I rarely see the uncles speaking with the aunts. I wonder, do they converse when the nieces and nephews aren’t present? I wonder too whether the uncles have traveled to the village wall, whether they are tasked with keeping watch at night, or inspecting it for rips or tears. If anything, the uncles seem alert, almost nervous, at meals and other common times. I think they would be good at keeping watch.

***

One day, at the stump, I see Caleb again. I have gone to check for a carving and he has come to leave one. It is a robin, its belly smooth and round. When he places it in my palms, his hands cup around mine and do not move. I am scared to look at his face, but when I do, I notice his eyes have warm brown specks in them.

“Thank you. It’s beautiful,” I say.

“Can you meet me tonight?” he asks, and my stomach turns over. Behind him, at the treeline, I think I see something move, a person maybe. Surely it is my imagination, my fear of Cora or another aunt discovering my disobedience. When I look again, nothing is there.

“Yes, I can come after supper,” I answer, heat rising in my face. Caleb looks happy and gives my hands a squeeze.

“I will see you then,” he says. He glances once over his shoulder toward the same treeline, as if he were also afraid of being found out. But when he looks back at me, the familiar carefree smile has returned.

***

When I arrive at the stump later, the sun has sunk beneath the horizon, and a sickle moon is rising. The evening chill has set in, and I wish I’d brought a shawl or sweater. I wait for an hour or so, feeling more and more unsettled. In the distance, there is a howl.

I think perhaps Caleb was delayed or changed his mind. I decide to leave so I’m not late to the sleeping house. But just as I stand, I hear the crunch of footfalls on the path.

“Caleb?” I ask, but I know immediately that the dark form that emerges in the twilight is too tall and broad to be him. The figure grabs me roughly, and throws me to the ground.

“Not Caleb,” an older boy says, bringing his face close. I recognize him now, a nephew named Nick.

“What makes you think you can meet Caleb here alone, when you never even speak to the rest of us?” Nick’s voice is a snarl, and though I writhe wildly, he has me pinned to the ground, arms twisted painfully above my head.

“Is it the stupid little toys he leaves?” he breathes, spitting a little with each word. “Is that what you girls like, stupid little boys with stupid toys?”

When I scream, he lifts a hand and hits me hard across the face. “Quiet!” he says, “or I promise I will give you something to scream about.”

My mouth fills with blood. Nick is strong, but he’s breathing hard, and I can tell he’s growing tired from the struggle. I try to calm my panic enough to think clearly. I’m not sure anyone could hear me even if I screamed again. And it’s still too early for Lara or the others to notice I’m missing.

Quickly, I spit my mouthful of blood into Nick’s face. Though he’s still sitting on my torso, he yells and raises his hands to wipe at his eyes. I shove my hands into the pockets of my dress, searching for anything I can use to defend myself. I feel nothing heavy or sharp, but then my fingers close around something soft, and I remember the sachet from Cora.

Keep this with you, she had said. It can protect you from harm.

With my body still pinned, I use all of my strength to pull the fabric from my pocket. I hear a rip, and as soon as I yank the sachet free, Nick falls to one side, shrieking and rolling. With his weight lifted at last from my chest, I can breathe freely and take a moment to fill my lungs with air before struggling to my knees.

Nick is still on the ground, screaming as if in agony. I wonder if something in my pocket wounded him after all, but I feel nothing there. All I have is the sachet, clutched tight in my right hand, with a rip in the fabric.

Then I see Nick has lifted his shirt and is holding his side, a dark liquid seeping through his fingers. A thought comes to me, and a stillness. I place my fingers within the small tear of fabric, then pull them apart, hard. It will allow you to create, and to uncreate.

As the rip widens, so does the wound across Nick’s waist. It is as if his flesh is being unzipped from the inside. Even over his screams I can hear it rending. I stand, stronger now, holding my talisman before me, as the cavity of Nick’s abdomen empties itself onto the ground. I hear his insides landing wetly, and then he stills, and his screaming stops.

***

That night, when I climb the staircase of the common house, I am alone. There is no sound but my weight on the creaking steps.

Though it is not a practice night, when I reach the attic, the door opens before I touch it. Cora stands with a lantern. I try to imagine what she sees, me standing there, dress torn, covered in dirt and tears and blood. It occurs to me I am not the first niece to arrive here this way.

When I enter the room and collapse at last, the aunts are there to catch me. They carry me gently to a chair by the fire, where first they will wash and feed me and say a prayer of thanks for my safety. Then, as I sleep, they will take out their needles—the best, shining, most precious ones—and begin stitching me back together.