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Witch Wednesday

Story Reclamation Series 01 – Week 2

The Book of 21 Night Mothers

Chapter 2 – Part IV: The Ledger and the Thread

By Petra Nein

(Has not, and will never, bend to altar or empire.)

The girl had not spoken since the candle was relit.

Petra handed her a square of cloth.

“Take it,” she said. “You’ll understand by the end.”

It was plain—undyed, soft, the kind of fabric used to wrap bread or dress a wound. But its edges were finished in a stitch the girl didn’t recognize.

“She wasn’t seen again in the palace halls,” Petra said. “After the night of the poison. But the thread remained. Not just in linens and hems. In records. In rot.”

She leaned closer to the fire.

“The Bureau of Inheritance had tried to erase her. Marked her unfit for lineage. No name. No kin. A clerical ghost. But files began to warp. Ledgers went missing. Every time they tried to recalculate the king’s line, a different daughter appeared—always at the edge of the scroll, never quite scannable.”

The wind lifted again outside, soft as a woman’s breath in a locked room.

“One night, the banner over the palace gate fell. The seam had given way. Inside, the steward found a line of red thread stitched into his robe, a seam he swore hadn’t been there before. It wasn’t blood. But it knew where blood had been.”

The girl ran her thumb over the cloth.

“She’d stitched herself into the kingdom,” Petra said. “Not to rule it—but to undo it.”

The fire flickered.

“The records began contradicting themselves. Births unlisted. Deaths unverified. Sons without ancestors. Taxes paid by ghosts. Every system built to hold power started unraveling—quietly, invisibly, like a hem undone while the wearer speaks.”

The girl looked up.

“So she cursed them?”

Petra shook her head.

“No. She rewrote the story with a thread no scribe could see. She did not curse the King. She made him irrelevant.”

The square of cloth in the girl’s hand suddenly felt heavier.

Petra sat back.

“She’s not gone. She’s just beneath the pages. And every time they bind a new ledger… the stitch appears again.”

“Even the stars watched men devour the soil, and blinked in disbelief.”

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