Spindle's End

by Robin McKinley

  The door crashed open, and a little gust of rain and Rosie walked in. Rosie was humming. Since her hums were all more or less tuneless, you never knew which song she had in mind if she didn’t say any of the words. She looked at Aunt’s and Katriona’s faces and said, “What’s wrong?” Katriona smiled at her, feeling at once better and worse for the sight of her, thinking, not for the first time, of what the king and queen had lost—not just their daughter, but Rosie.

  “We were talking about the princess,” said Aunt.

  “Oh,” said Rosie. She had some fellow feeling for the princess, since they were the same age, and she had grown up with the mystery of what had become of her, and of the grown-ups’ interest in any tale purporting to have news of her.

  Rosie had a notion that the only way grown-ups knew to protect you was to lock you up somehow—even protective spells usually had a locking-up quality about them, like the anti-drowning-in-a-bog one Aunt had laid on Rosie about eight months ago, after what Rosie still insisted indignantly was nothing like a near miss, and which simply prevented Rosie from walking in certain directions in certain places, although there were quite a few certain places round the damp and fenny Foggy Bottom. (There were serious disadvantages to being a fairy’s niece. The bog spell took more upkeep than ordinary families could afford. Aunt had at least let the utterly humiliating spell that prevented her from being sat on by large animals lapse a couple of years ago; of course within a day or two a horse she was holding for Narl had stood on her foot, but he was the sort of horse who if he hadn’t been able to stand on your foot would have bitten you instead, so she supposed it didn’t count. Besides, it had happened at the forge, where even Aunt’s charms became wandery and confused. She hadn’t mentioned the episode at home.)

  Suggestions about the princess’ whereabouts nearly always included some reference to a fortress or stronghold, so Rosie always imagined the princess surrounded by a lot of stonework. At first she had seen her in a tiny tower room, but then she thought no, she’s a princess, she can have a large room—and lots and lots of grim-visaged guards armed to the teeth with an assortment of deadly and terrifying weapons Rosie had never seen and could only pretend to imagine. It sounded like a pretty miserable life and Rosie felt sorry for her.

  “Why don’t we look for her?” said Rosie. “She could live with us. Aunt, you’re the cleverest fairy in the Gig. Even Narl says so, and he’s not trying to get a spell for free. If you found her, no one would know where she’d gone, and so she’d be safe. She could have some fun here. I could show her where all the bogs are.” Rosie had not come indoors in the best of tempers, as she had forgotten which way she had been headed till she found herself reheaded home, briskly carried by insurrectionist feet. The ballad she’d been humming as she came through the door—another one Barder had taught her—had a pleasingly bloodthirsty chorus which suited her mood: “ ‘I lighted down my sword to draw, and hacked him into pieces sma’, and hacked him into pieces sma’ . . . ’ ” Maybe she could be the princess’ guard.

  There was a little silence. “That’s an interesting thought, dear,” said Aunt, “but I’m afraid you have a rather inflated idea of my skills.”

  Katriona, fascinated, said, “What would we tell everyone about where she came from?”

  Rosie shrugged. She had lived as long as she could remember with Aunt and Katriona; they seemed a fine sort of family to her. The only question she had yet been moved to ask about her parents was how tall they had been, as it was plain she was going to be taller than either Aunt or Katriona. (Her outlandish colouring, in mostly dark- or mouse-coloured Foggy Bottom, had been explained by a tow-headed father from the south.) “That Aunt has another niece, and us another cousin, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Aunt. “How sensible you are, Rosie. What a pity we are unlikely ever to have reason to make use of your suggestion.”

  Rosie looked at her suspiciously—“sensible” was not a word she was accustomed to hearing applied to herself—but Aunt only gave her her usual serene smile, her temper quite recovered from Gismo’s foolishness, as she went on with her spinning, the shiny nose of the gargoyle making a tiny bright blur as the spindle went round and round and round.

  Sarkon, Barder’s master, died as winter was closing in, on one of the shortest days of the year, when the cloud cover was so low and heavy the lamps in Cairngorm’s pub had burned since morning. His pyre was lit the next day, and only Barder and Joeb, his Second Apprentice, asked for his ashes, for his wife had died years before, and they had no family. Because there was no one else, Barder and Joeb agreed to hold the three months’ mourning.

  Cairngorm and Aunt and the wainwright’s sister, Hroslinga—the wheelwright and the wainwright shared a yard across the square from the blacksmith—helped as they could. Mourning should not be borne by two young men alone, and this was just the sort of situation likeliest to bring the Gig’s chief priest down upon Barder and Joeb and Foggy Bottom generally, with orations about proper respect and reverence and the importance of upheld tradition. Barder looked tired and preoccupied all that winter, and only twice came out to Aunt’s cottage, where he promptly fell asleep in his chair.

  Katriona already wondered, fearfully, if they hadn’t been seeing less of him since the evening he had made the joke about Rosie being the princess; if he hadn’t needed more of his half days to do something else in; if he wasn’t less likely to stop for a moment if Katriona met him in town. There had never been, in the years they’d known each other, any specific words between them; neither of them could afford to get married and they both knew it, although Katriona had long believed he would have spoken if he could. He had made her the egret she still wore round her neck, and only she and Aunt and Rosie had spoons and knives with Barder-carved handles; but she couldn’t help remembering that Barder had lately spent his spare time carving spindle ends, and that these were sent away for sale outside the Gig. Not that they needed another spindle end, she told herself, fiercely petting the gargoyle’s nose.

  Flora had told her comfortingly that Barder’s mother had been heard on a number of occasions complaining about his attachment to “that fairy,” saying that there wasn’t any fairy blood in their family (which was manifestly untrue, since Barder’s aunt in Treelight descaled half the village’s kettles although she didn’t otherwise practise) and that Barder himself had walked into the middle of one of her perorations at the pub one day and told her bluntly, if unfilially, to be either quiet or civil.

  When Barder had befriended Rosie, Katriona had thought (pleased and gratified) that he did so initially for her, Katriona’s, sake, but in the shadow cast by Sarkon’s illness and death she began to wonder if he had befriended them both out of a more generally philanthropic feeling that they needed friends. Even the story of his confrontation with his mother could be read as natural chivalry.

  On a day early the following spring, Katriona sniffed the air, looked at the clouds, consulted the weather-guesser, and decided that the rat-gnomes in Truga’s henhouse could wait another day. She swept the floor as a sop to her conscience, finagling the chalky detritus of magic out of the corners with a few scouring charms, and then went out to dig in the garden. Aunt had gone to Crossroad Hill to meet Torg and Aileena, the chief fairies of Treelight and Moonshadow; Rosie was, as usual, with Narl.

  She hummed while she dug and weeded—her own humming, she thought, under Rosie’s influence, was much less melodic than it used to be—and thought about nothing in particular. She was still thinking about nothing in particular (except perhaps how it was that weeds grow so much more quickly than anything you’ve planted) when a human-shaped shadow fell across her. But when she looked up and saw Barder, looking uncommonly tidy and even more uncommonly nervous, she could not help her heart giving a great, voice-throttling leap, and tears prickling at the corners of her eyes.

  She stood up, and went toward him, and then realised her hands were filthy. She raised them, and looked at them in astonishment and di
smay, as if she had never seen filthy hands before in her life, beginning to turn away to go toward the water butt where she could wash them . . . but he reached for her just before she moved, and seized her by the wrist.

  They stood like that, their two arms extended almost full length between them, him leaning toward her, she half turned away to go to the water butt, but having turned her head back to look at him when he touched her—and their faces told each other all they needed to know, for he didn’t seem able to talk either. They moved toward each other, she uncertainly, still not quite believing he had come to her after all, and he stepping forward eagerly. He kissed her, and she curled up her dirty hands so she could put her arms round his neck without spoiling his best collar.

  “I would have sent for you if you hadn’t come soon,” said Aunt, returning an hour later. Barder and Katriona were kneeling side by side, companionably weeding; he had taken off his good coat and collar and rolled up his sleeves, but was ruining the knees of his good trousers. (Weeding had the attraction of novelty for Barder, besides the fact that he would have done anything Katriona asked after the important question had been answered the right way, first in silence and then in words. Weeding was one of those fairy eccentricities; no one else did it; but fairies were always up to strange things, and no one would want to take the chance that their balms, tonics and potions might be denatured by undesirable proximities in the fairy’s garden.)

  Barder laughed, but Katriona said, “You wouldn’t.”

  “Perhaps I wouldn’t’ve, but I would have thought of it. I have thought of it,” her aunt replied, not the least discom posed.

  “And you didn’t know,” said Katriona. “You didn’t know.”

  “If you mean my magic didn’t tell me, it didn’t need to,” said her aunt. “The entire village has been waiting. Possibly the entire Gig.” Barder was growing as famous for the things he could do with wood, other than wheels, as Narl had been for some time for the things he could do with cold iron, besides buckles and horseshoes and ploughshares. The progress of such a prominent figure’s romance was, of course, interesting. And everyone—except Katriona—had known perfectly well why Barder had been so absorbed recently in selling as many spindle ends for as high a price as possible; Sarkon’s was a good house, but rather in need of the sort of repairs one wanted to have made before one brought one’s new bride to it. Katriona now made a strangled noise, and Barder’s ears, more visible than usual from the severity with which he had tied his hair back, were bright red. “I shall miss you, Kat,” Aunt added, a little wistfully.

  “Oh, but you’re coming too!” said Katriona, climbing to her feet and taking her aunt’s hands without, this time, considering the condition of her own. “We’ve just been talking about it. Lord Pren has agreed that Barder should have the house and yard and be called Master, since he is First Apprentice, and even Lord Pren knows that all the really interesting stuff Sarkon has been doing for years is really Barder—”

  Barder made protesting noises.

  “—And you know the house is big enough—big enough and to spare—and there is even a shed for the cows and chickens. You must come. What would we do about Rosie?”

  Barder said shyly, “I’ve known all along that I could never have Kat if I didn’t want you and Rosie, too. You can put in a garden like this one—in rows, and weeded. Joeb and I will break up the ground for you before you come, and put up the fence to keep the chickens out. Or in.”

  “You know you’ve been saying it’s not good for Rosie to live outside the village with only two fairies, and it’s more important as she gets older,” said Katriona. “And I’ll be very careful about the binding spells round the yard—you know I’m good at those. Our neighbours will barely know we’re there.”

  “Hroslinga has a dja vine,” said Aunt mildly.

  “Oh—well—I’ll think of something,” said Katriona. “Oh, Aunt . . .”

  Aunt had a preoccupied look. “I knew Rosie couldn’t go far from you, Kat—nor, I think, from Narl—but I was thinking of the house that Med left—”

  “Because it’s haunted,” said Katriona, “with a particularly unpleasant mould spirit, who turns everything squashy and green, and moans all night.”

  “I could probably turn it out, you know,” said Aunt.

  “Is it—is it very distasteful to you, the thought of living in the wheelwright’s house?” said Barder sadly.

  “Aunt!” said Katriona.

  “Oh my dear—my dears,” said Aunt, “I will gladly accept your invitation to live in the wheelwright’s house, if you are sure that you would like it.” She looked at them and smiled, and then said with suspicious briskness, “I am going to make tea,” but Katriona saw the tears in her eyes as she turned away.

  “Then all that’s left is to explain it to Rosie,” said Katriona.

  “Won’t Rosie like the idea of living closer to Narl?” said Barder. “If Narl can stand it.”

  “Yes, she will, but she has a lot of—friends in the forest,” said Katriona. Barder knew, of course, about Rosie talking to animals, but as he had watched her grow up thinking of her as Aunt’s niece and Katriona’s cousin, he had never found it surprising; and he had tried to put his memory of a certain evening some months back as far out of his ordinary daily thoughts as possible, to keep it safe and secret. He shook his head now, as the old view of Rosie collided with newer knowledge, and Katriona, guessing to what—or whom—the headshake referred, looked at him worriedly.

  He saw the worry and, in his turn, guessed what it was about. “Don’t fret,” he said. “I took you for the good times and the bad ones in my mind years ago—and I’ve always known you were a fairy, even when you still thought you weren’t. The rest of it doesn’t matter.” He paused. “I took you, and gave you me back—even if you didn’t know it. What’s happened to you has happened to me, too—even if I didn’t know it.”

  Katriona put her forehead on his shoulder and sighed. Small spider weave, she thought. I wish it were as simple as that none of us speak aloud what we know. She still often heard the queen’s voice in her mind: I miss my child so much. . . . Tell me you are real. But she rarely remembered the small fairy’s And a poem is all I can give her, my dear, my only darling!

  But at least I know one more thing—important thing—than I did this morning, thought Katriona. She smiled against Barder’s shoulder, and raised her face to be kissed.

  Rosie, to her dismay, found that she didn’t know what she thought about the news that Katriona and Barder were to be married, and that they were all moving into town to live in the wheelwright’s house with Barder and Joeb, who wished to stay on. That Katriona and Barder would marry she knew as well as everyone in the village (except Katriona) had known since Sarkon died; but she suddenly realised, now that the change was upon her, that she had never thought about what would happen afterward.

  I have been thinking like a child, she said to herself, in dismay and shame. She wanted to have thought about it before, so she would have those thoughts to help her know how to feel. Not knowing what she thought made her feel lost; and feeling lost made her feel suddenly as if she were somebody else, and that feeling set up echoes, deep down inside herself, and these scared her. These echoes told her that she really wasn’t Rosie: and that she had never been. She was someone else; she had always been someone else. Someone who didn’t belong to Aunt and Katriona, to Foggy Bottom. Who the someone else was the echoes didn’t say. They only took things away—comfort, peace, security—they didn’t give her anything to replace them. Almost she thought she could hear some strange voice saying some strange name, her name, her real name. She put her fingers in her ears, but it was not that kind of hearing.

  For the first time in her life she woke up in the bed she’d slept in every night since she was old enough to sleep in a bed without rolling out, and didn’t know where she was. She lay awake, listening to Katriona and Aunt breathing in their sleep—Katriona deep and low, Aunt with a little rustling
noise—and didn’t recognise them either; and she knew the noises of their sleeping and the shadowy shape of their bodies in their blankets as well as she knew anything, as well as she knew the shape of her own hand, her own name . . . but the shadows told her her name was not hers, and the shape of her hand was changing. She was fifteen, and she had grown four inches in the last year, and her body was evolving from square to lanky, and even her fingers were suddenly longer, the knuckles knobby, instead of dimpled like a child’s.

  She lay in the dark and listened, and heard the faint mumbles of the house mice, telling each other that Flinx was only just outside, and that one of the shutters was unlatched. She felt an owl wing silently overhead, its head full of wordless thoughts of dinner, loud enough nonetheless for Rosie to hear through rafters and deep thatch. And she heard other things, voiceless, thoughtless things: she heard the necklace that Katriona prized so highly sitting in its niche; she heard the gargoyle spindle end sitting in the wooden ring where it hung when the wheel stood idle, and they said to her: Sleep, sleep, we will watch, and watch over you. And then Rosie knew she was dreaming, and fell asleep smiling.

  She didn’t mention her confusion of feeling to Katriona and Aunt, partly fearing it might hurt them, especially Katriona, and partly fearing one of Aunt’s foul-tasting tonics, but both Katriona and Aunt noticed. Katriona worried, because Katriona always worried, but also because she knew that what had started it was the news that they were all to move into the village and live with Barder; but Aunt said that Rosie was growing so fast she probably didn’t know backwards from sideways while the rest of her tried to catch up.