“Bran’s back, Papa!”
The Golden Needle nestles next to Curio in a long, leaning row of workshops that house their owners in narrow second floor quarters. The tailor, Benito Soren, moved in just two years ago, when I turned sixteen. He and his wife Gita opened The Golden Needle in the sunny space next door and suddenly a whole batch of Sorens, eight in total, overflowed like bunting from every window and door. This included Bran, the oldest, whose tiny attic room shares a wall with mine.
I made the discovery one day when I opened my little cupboard beneath the rafters and saw strange objects mingling with my own. Inside lay a wooden box with a “B” carved upon the lid, a worn measuring tape used for learning the tailor’s trade, and oddities like shiny rocks rubbed smooth, a bird’s egg, a pocket watch whose face had been rearranged, an assortment of tiny tools and a bag of coins. A note, hastily scrawled on a scrap of receipt, read, “I see that this is a safe place for secrets. I’ll keep mine with yours, if you don’t mind. - Bran Soren”
I did mind—and I told the new boy next door as much when I reached in and poked through what I previously thought was the back of the cupboard. It swung open to the foreign space of his room. He was crouched directly on the other side, as though he’d been waiting for me to open the door.
“I do mind, you know,” I insisted, trying to dampen my curiosity at being afforded a window into a stranger’s room. It was the very mirror of mine, with a sloping ceiling and a small window resting above wooden slat floors. His bed was draped in a soft gray spread and I could see a pair of smart leather boots tipped over in its shadow.
“Why?” asked the boy from the other side of the cupboard shelves.
“Because this cupboard is mine,” I said defensively.
“It seems to me that it is ours. It opens for both of us. Seems like we should share it,” he said confidently. “It is a cupboard with two doors.”
I bristled. “I was here first.”
“But not really,” he replied in a steady voice that made me want to linger in front of the cupboard, though I initially contemplated slamming it shut in his face. “Someone else was here long before us. Haven’t you ever wondered who they were?”
“They?”
“The person who built the cupboard. Or persons. Clearly they built it like this for a reason. I wonder if it was an old spinster, shut up in the attic, kept hidden by a vicious master to spin golden threads. Perhaps this cupboard was her only means of sending secret messages to the outside world, through the lonely housewife who took pity on her from next door.”
“What?” I said, taken aback.
“Or maybe it was built by a pirate, retired here after a life on the sea, a man now sadly bed-bound, his body ravaged by drink and overwork. He would give away his gold to his many illegitimate children next door, coin by coin, administered daily through the cupboard so that he might never have to touch them and thereby acknowledge all that he had squandered and lost.”
I stared at the boy through the cupboard, mesmerized by his words and enthralling dreaminess. I had never imagined that my cupboard had other lives before me. Or that it would open a door to another world: Bran’s world.
From that night on, I couldn’t close the cupboard door on him. After agreeing upon a secret knock to signal to one another, we began a series of hushed conversations through the cupboard. We would talk about our work, our lessons, or the mundane trifles of our day, sometimes traipsing into the more uncertain territory of the past and our dreams for the future. Despite our closeness, Bran didn’t know—and must never know—the truth about me. No one could.
Tonight, the cupboard is open while I lie on the floor, my head upon my pillow, bare feet tucked up against the wall where it slopes steeply into the roof. All I can see of Bran through the open shelves are his hands, fluidly stitching the long seam of a soldier’s stiff linen shirt, his needle moving like miniature flashes of lightning against a white sky. I love his hands—always so agile and sure. My own often feel at odds with themselves unless they have a chisel or a piece of wood beneath them.
“You really should tell them,” I plead for the thousandth time, my voice drifting through the narrow space of the cupboard, where it meets Bran’s finely shaped ears and disappears in the light of his room.
A sigh escapes through to my side.
“I will.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“You’ve been saying soon for months.”
“Soon always comes quicker than we think, Pirouette.”
“You have to give your parents time. To prepare.”
“I know,” Bran says a little too roughly. “Emmitt says there’s no rush. In the meantime, I’ve sworn him to secrecy about my plans to apprentice with him. I’ll tell them when I’m ready.”
It’s no secret that Tailor Soren hopes to pass The Golden Needle on to his eldest son. But Bran spends every moment he can spare at Schulze’s clock shop, reveling in the stable purr of ticking clocks and marching gears. Though lately, Emmitt spends most of his waking hours aloft in the high gables of the rathaus, charged by the Margrave with repairing the massive, two-storied glockenspiel gracing the town hall. The clockmaker has become Bran’s hero. His new choice of vocation will hit his parents hard, but with time, I’m sure they will come to accept it. Bran is not.
Tired of trying to change his mind, I pluck a tiny, wooden dancer from the shelf in the cupboard. She’s the first toy the puppetmaster made for me, a little ballerina whose legs dangle with impossibly straight posture, her pointed toes shod in painted slippers lacing to her knees. Prima Ballerina, I named her then, delighted with this gift from the warm, gentle man who said I could call him father. Dark brown hair, the same shade as my own, dashes across her forehead, topped off by a wooden bead for a bun. I love her still.
“So, what about you?” Bran’s voice interrupts my memories.
“What about me?”
“You can’t keep ignoring the truth.”
I look through the cupboard, blood rushing to my head. The sensation jolts me as it always does. I’m always surprised by how hot and immediately blood flows from one place to another in my body against my will.
What does he mean? I’ve always been so careful.
“When are you going to say something to Gephardt, get him to see reason? He can’t possibly go on like this. Both of you are exhausted. Gep doesn’t look good, Piro.”
“He’s fine,” I say shakily, trying to convince myself as much. “We’re fine.”
“Fine is for kettles of fish. You are not fine. Neither of you.”
I rub my dry and bleary eyes, feeling the delicate clink of Prima’s legs against my cheek as I cradle her in my hand. It was past midnight when I left my father sound asleep at his workbench and tiptoed up to my room, too tired to prod him toward his own sleeping quarters. I’m just grateful he’s actually getting some sleep.
“You know we have no choice, Bran. The Margrave won’t pay us until we deliver this next dozen. And with the money we’ve had to spend on paint and supplies … his quoted price will earn us a little overage, but still. My father must finish the soldiers. And I must help him.”