Familiars
Where they come from, how they live with you, and five workings: for the one you already keep, for calling one of your own, for meeting the one that was born with you, for the bargain, and for letting go.
- KinPart IThe four ways
KinPart IIWhat the line knows
KinPart IIIThe workings
KinPart IVThe dead speak
Coming as audioA guided meditationUnder this roof
The four ways
My grandmother did not keep a cat. She kept something that slept where a cat would sleep.
It had a place at the foot of her bed, on a folded piece of grey wool that nobody was allowed to wash. When I was small I called it the cat, and she let me. She put out the first spoon from every pot for it, and the first drop from every cup. When I asked what its name was, she said that names were not for saying under a roof.
I never saw it. I saw the wool, pressed down in the middle. I saw the dish, and in the mornings it was not always as full as she had left it.
When she died, it did not leave with her.
That is the first thing you should know about familiars. They are not pets, and they are not servants. They follow a line, or they follow a bargain. Sometimes both.
This month, my kin, we go looking for them.
The rest is for my kin.
Begin here
Five minutes to find your way, the three rules of Kin, and the first working, which cannot go wrong.
Graveyard Work
How to go in through the gate and how to come home again. How to tell a grave, how to borrow from it, and how to wake one of your own and send them back to sleep. And the Kept Pages, for the night something follows you home.
Love Magic from the Black Books
The four strengths, from the small workings that bind no one to the old binds my great-grandmother kept in her second tin. And the loosing, for the day you want out.