Spinning Thorns

by Anna Sheehan

  She didn’t like the way he skulked and slunk about. He had a rather obvious contempt for her, and that annoyed her. He was selfish and almost cowardly, stealing the gift she’d given to his sister. And his greed was beyond limit. He might have counted as a friend, but he was a friend she had to buy. That wasn’t real friendship.

  Except … except. He was hard to pin down, this one. He had saved her life. Without asking for reward. He’d risked imprisonment to get her out of the palace. He had shown her the secret of his spinning magic. As much as she trusted him, he was trusting her, whether he knew it or not.

  In the end, none of that even mattered. The biggest thing about Reynard was that he was not, nor could he be, a friend to Princess Willow Lyndal. He was poor and rough and roguish, and the princess couldn’t risk herself or her country to such an association.

  But Will was two people. She was the public princess who was going to marry Prince Narvi tomorrow, the noble Willow Lyndal whose life was devoted to her country and her people. But she was also Will, an overly big, outspoken critic of royalty in general, who wanted only to study her magic and never go to another ball again. Will was her father’s daughter, a rough, lowborn child more of a miller than a queen. Princess Willow’s life was her country’s, not her own. And Will’s life was shackled to Princess Willow.

  Reynard could be Will’s lover. He could never, ever be Princess Willow’s. Besides, Princess Willow was in love with the world’s most wonderful prince … who technically belonged to her sister Lavender. Will and Princess Willow hated one another. The princess hated being big and plain and longing for things that a princess could never have, like freedom and magic. Will hated having to force herself into being a princess, like shoving her big body into a dress that didn’t fit, leaving her uncomfortable and constricted.

  There wasn’t enough of her to fill both roles, but there was too much that didn’t fit into either one. Each part of her spilled out into the other, and left her scattered and out of place.

  Leaving her here. She had abandoned everything it was to be a princess so that she could fulfil the role and become the princess she had to be. What on earth was she doing to Reynard? It was inexcusable to kiss him like that! But she hadn’t been able to help it. He’d been so close, and it felt so good to be warm again after the cold. And he had seemed so … lost. She thought he was telling the truth; he didn’t know why he was helping her. Her gratitude had bubbled through her, and Will’s little voice had sounded inside, saying, This is it. Your chance to be your own person for once. You’ll never get another opportunity. So she took it.

  He had tasted of wood smoke …

  Will hadn’t moved at all, so it surprised her when Reynard said, ‘We should go.’

  She looked up at him. ‘How did you know I was awake?’

  He looked at her with a slight smile. His teeth flashed white in the dark. He had the most wicked smile she’d ever seen, toothy and impish. It was strange seeing him smile. Usually he did nothing but scowl. His red-brown eyes looked very large in the dim light. They disengaged from each other and Reynard wrapped her cloak more properly around her. She swallowed. ‘About … what happened ….’ She stopped. She wanted to talk about it, but she didn’t know what she wanted to say.

  ‘Best to forget it,’ Reynard said.

  Will nodded, but she wasn’t sure if she was agreeing or just acknowledging.

  They climbed through the snow and back out into the night. The wind was still rattling the winter trees, but it had also blown the clouds away. Bright patches of moonlight punctuated the snowy forest. ‘I’m turned around,’ Will said. ‘Which way?’

  Reynard shrugged, pulling on his coat. ‘It doesn’t matter. Mistress Cait decides direction and distance here, to some extent.’

  A low growl made the cold creep up Will’s spine with icy fingers. ‘What was that?’

  Reynard turned and glared with a combined look of relief and frustration. ‘About time you showed up!’

  Will followed his gaze. In a tiny ray of moonlight a silvery wolf was standing, hackles raised. Her eyes glowed green, and Will took a step backward. The wolf frightened her.

  Reynard, on the other hand, seemed merely exasperated. ‘And where were you two hours ago when the storm hit?’ he asked. ‘You could have saved us quite a walk.’

  The wolf barked, then growled, and Reynard tossed his head in scorn.

  ‘You can understand what it’s saying?’ Will asked.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But a growl is pretty universal.’

  The wolf stalked forward, and Will took another step back. The moonlight seemed to follow it, and it still shone even in the shadows. It growled at Will. ‘Follow her,’ Reynard said, but she frightened Will terribly. She reached out and took Reynard’s hand. It stayed stiff for a moment before curling around hers, and they followed after the wolf together.

  The sun was already rising by the time they found Mistress Cait’s. Will was surprised by the brown tower that looked so like a tree, but Reynard had been expecting it. He knocked on the wall, and a door appeared under his hand. It opened into a bright room, and Reynard hesitated. ‘You should go ahead,’ he said.

  Will looked back at him, lurking in the shadows outside the streaming light from the doorway. ‘You’re not coming in?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’d better not.’

  Betrayal stabbed at her. ‘You’re abandoning me here?’ she demanded, angry. ‘How am I meant to get home?’

  ‘I’m not abandoning you,’ he said.

  ‘What would you call it?’

  He snorted in annoyance. ‘I only agreed to get you here, not play nursemaid.’

  Will glared at him. ‘You coward,’ she snapped.

  He scowled. ‘What did you call me?’

  ‘You heard me. Is it Caital who scares you, or are you suddenly afraid of me?’

  His face went blank with incredulous rage, and Will nearly laughed. It was so easy to get him angry.

  ‘It’s himself he’s afraid of, dear,’ said a voice from behind her. ‘Don’t worry about him. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do from one minute to the next. But that’s his own problem, not yours. Turn around, let me look at you!’

  The faerie woman who stood behind her looked like the head gardener at the palace, that greenness to the edges of her eyes, though the gardener’s eyes were actually brown. Will had known, from what Lavender told her of her christening, that Mistress Cait seemed to be part plant, but Lavender’s childhood memories hadn’t done it justice.

  ‘You took your sweet time!’ the faerie said, taking Will by the shoulder. She opened Will’s cloak and seemed to survey her dress. ‘I was expecting you all hours ago!’

  ‘Your wolf, and your forest, decided to play us a trick,’ Reynard said from outside. ‘She left us lost in the frost. You should teach her some manners.’

  ‘I’ve been trying for over a hundred years,’ said the voice. ‘Ylva’s never been easy to tame.’ She looked out into the darkness. ‘Though in this instance … Well. Come in, you’re letting in a draught!’

  Reynard hesitated, then sighed and came in, hovering as close to Will’s back as he could. He really did seem afraid of something, though it didn’t quite seem to be Cait.

  ‘Just ignore him,’ Cait said, pulling Will towards the fire. ‘Let me look at you!’ She took Will’s snow-laden cloak off and shook it into the fire, which hissed as the lumps of snow fell into it. She cocked her head on the side and regarded her as if she were a tea table, and she was wondering if she had forgotten the cream pitcher. ‘I must say, I’m proud.’

  Will was a little embarrassed. ‘Ahm … thank you.’

  ‘You should thank me,’ Cait said. ‘I’ve done my best by you.’ She examined Will’s hand and lifted her palm to measure her height. ‘Yes, I think I’ve done quite well. It all failed with Lavender, of course, but the eldest are always hard to refine.’

  The wolf barked and growled. Will started, but Cait only laug
hed.

  ‘Oh, don’t mind Ylva. I think she’s learned her lesson where royal families are concerned.’ She looked over at Reynard. ‘Unlike some people.’

  Will glanced at Reynard, but he was across the room, lurking in the shadow cast by the stairs, like some petulant schoolboy (which at his age was pushing it). ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Will said.

  ‘I’m talking about you,’ Cait said. ‘I think you’ve turned out very well.’ She smoothed her hands down Will’s ill-fitting travelling dress. ‘Now this is my idea of a princess!’

  ‘Ex-cuse me, if you’re trying to make a joke, I don’t have time for games.’

  ‘A joke?’ She looked at Will curiously. ‘You think this a joke?’

  ‘Well … yes. I’m probably the least princesslike princess in the history of Lyndaria.’

  ‘Exactly!’

  Will was a bit lost for words. ‘I don’t follow,’ she said.

  ‘That was my goal, you know,’ Cait said. ‘I was hoping someone like you would be the result. I did my best to keep out those blasted arrogant princes. I thought, now, if poor Amaranth wakes up to some inbred monstrosity, nothing is ever going to go right for her. She’s too wise, too sensitive. Those pompous, overbearing, lordly little creatures would crush her! She’d wither under their black thumbs. No, she needed someone to counter all her perfections. I was hoping for a gardener, but a miller’s well enough. I must say, I was impressed with the selection of your father.’

  ‘She didn’t select my father,’ Will said. ‘She had to marry him because he rescued her.’

  ‘I didn’t say she selected him,’ Cait said. ‘My thorns did. And they did very well by the look of things.’ She looked Will up and down. ‘I haven’t seen you since you were a baby, of course, but I’ve heard about you. Smart as a whip, a sense of humour and purpose, a disdain for frivolity, and above all a gift for magic! You’ll shake things up, and about time, too. You’re a great success, Willow.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Will said. ‘Your thorns?’

  Cait frowned at her. ‘But of course my thorns. Whose did you think they were?’

  Reynard stepped up at this point. ‘It is widely believed they were a product of the interregnum.’

  Cait frowned at him as if trying to remember who he was. ‘Oh. Well, yes, but no. I planted them to protect poor Amaranth when the Sleep claimed her. Poor dear.’

  The wolf barked again.

  ‘Oh, can’t you ever let that go?’ Cait asked her. ‘It was over a century ago!’

  ‘What is she saying?’ Reynard asked.

  ‘She’s just being stubborn,’ Cait said. She turned back to Will. ‘Now. Princess Willow.’

  Will was standing dumb. She searched for her voice. ‘The thorns are yours?’ she hissed.

  Cait wrinkled her forehead. ‘Did I not just say as much?’

  Will was appalled. ‘Have you any idea how much chaos you have caused?’ she snapped. ‘How many dozens, even hundreds of innocents have died in their clutches!’ Will’s entire world view cracked. She was suddenly frightened. She had thought Cait was meant to be the good faerie, the saviour, the one who abhorred death and preserved her mother. Now it seemed she was a heartless, thoughtless maniac who believed it best to murder innocent people and animals all for some misguided belief about who the princess should marry.

  Cait was not offended. Indeed, she hardly seemed to notice Will’s outburst. ‘Of course the thorns are mine,’ she said. ‘That is where my strongest gifts lay, in my plants. You just walked through my sentient forest, isn’t it impressive?’

  ‘The forest is sentient?’ Reynard asked.

  ‘If a little scattered,’ Cait admitted.

  Reynard chuckled. ‘Considering its progenitor,’ he muttered.

  Cait did seem to notice that. ‘Have more respect for your elders, young man.’

  Will shook her head at her. ‘That’s just his way,’ she said. ‘I was talking to you. If the thorns are yours, I demand, by right of inheritance, that you remove them. Immediately.’

  Cait raised an eyebrow. ‘Ah. Well, I thought one of you might ask that one day.’ She turned and poured a cup of tea from a table she had set by the fire.

  Will took a step toward her. ‘And?’

  ‘Tea?’ she asked.

  ‘Tea?’ Will was appalled. ‘Tea? Someone could be bleeding to death in the thorns this moment, and you’re offering me tea?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I? I can’t do anything about them. I’m afraid they’re there to stay.’

  Will was not going to be denied. ‘If you put them there, you can take them away again.’

  Cait leaned away from Will, who looked like a firecracker about to go off. ‘I can’t. Any more than your mother can make you keep your mouth shut. My children have power over themselves, after a while.’

  Will’s breath caught in defeat. ‘You can do nothing about them?’ she asked. ‘Nothing?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. Their life is their own, and no longer mine.’ She smiled, looking out the window at the towering trees. ‘I sometimes wonder what this forest will do once I’m dead and gone. It is very fond of me.’

  Will scoffed. If it took on the kind of life her so-called protective thorns had, it would go marching through the countryside slaughtering entire villages. Cait regarded her with concern. ‘You seem very distraught, my dear.’

  ‘My palace has been besieged by your thorns,’ Will said. ‘They grow a thousand times faster than weeds, a veritable forest of bloodthirsty, flesh-tearing death.’

  ‘Don’t exaggerate,’ Cait said, ‘it detracts from your veracity.’

  ‘I’m not lying,’ she said. ‘They’ve been growing a foot a night since Lavender took ill.’

  ‘They’re growing that much?’ Cait asked.

  ‘Yes!’

  Her brow furrowed. ‘That is curious. They must be very worried about you.’

  Will blinked. ‘Worried about me?’

  ‘All of you,’ Cait said. ‘They are semi-sentient, you know. I did create them to protect you.’

  ‘Then why do they try to kill me?’ Will asked.

  ‘Well … protect Amaranth, I should say,’ Cait amended. ‘If you threw her into the centre of the briars, no doubt they’d twine around her like lovers.’

  ‘Until she was bled white,’ Will muttered.

  ‘Oh, no. Well, they might not ever let her go, so she probably would die in the end. But they’d never pierce her skin.’

  ‘They seem to like mine.’

  ‘Well, that’s because you aren’t her, dear,’ Cait said.

  Will sighed. ‘But Lavender is,’ she said. She wanted to melt to the floor. Will’s perfect sister. True to form, she hadn’t a scratch on her when they carried her from the thorns. They had picked her up, shredded her clothing, but Cait was right. They hadn’t tried to hurt her. Once again, Princess Lavender exceeded all expectations of perfection, the distillation of all that was blessed about Queen Amaranth, with some delightful specialness all her own. And Will was the dross left over. And the thorns knew that as surely as everyone else did.

  ‘Now, you didn’t come to berate me over my children,’ Cait said. ‘This young man here told me he was hired by you to find me.’

  ‘Yes,’ Will said. ‘A new Sleep has overcome my sister, and is slowly engulfing the castle, and the surrounding area. It’s a terrible thing. The afflicted are plagued by nightmares of … dreadful potency.’ She swallowed, remembering the fear and the horror and the hunger.

  ‘Why come to me?’ Cait asked.

  Wasn’t that obvious? ‘I need you to tell me how to break the Sleep.’

  ‘Oh, I can’t do that,’ Cait said.

  Several things went through Will’s mind at that moment, but the only one that really seemed to matter was, ‘Why not?’

  ‘It isn’t my spell.’

  ‘The last Sleep wasn’t your spell, either!’ Will shouted. She was losing it. ‘The curse upon Mother
wasn’t your spell, but you managed to counteract that!’

  ‘Not very efficiently,’ Cait said. ‘I couldn’t remove the curse entirely, I could only soften it. Ylva’s still furious at me over it.’

  ‘The wolf?’ Will was losing her patience over this wolf. ‘What has the wolf got to do with anything?’

  ‘You don’t know?’ Cait tilted her head to the side. Will suddenly realized that she wasn’t entirely sane.

  ‘Know what? Why would I know anything about your wolf?’

  ‘Ylva’s the faerie who cursed your mother,’ Cait said. ‘As I said, she’s very touchy.’

  Reynard surged to his feet. ‘Her? You?’ There was a terrible moment of silence that burned the very air. Will took a step away from him. He looked very frightening just then. He pointed at the wolf. ‘You!’ So quickly that Will could barely follow his movement he launched himself forward and grabbed her by the scruff. The wolf yelped and growled, and Reynard held her down by her throat. ‘Do you know what I’ve been through because of you? Do you?’

  The wolf continued to growl and tried to snap at his face.

  ‘Go ahead and try it!’ he snarled.

  Will took several more steps back. She knew better than to get between two dogs fighting. If the wolf and the fox were about to go at it, Will wanted to be as far away from the two of them as possible.

  Cait, however, did not seem at all perturbed. ‘Stop this,’ she said calmly. A honeysuckle on the wall began to move, much like the thorns when they were reaching for blood, and fixed themselves around Reynard and Ylva’s legs, pulling them physically apart. Ylva barked angrily, but Will’s eyes were fixed on Reynard. As he was dragged against the wall he smouldered with a fury Will never wanted to see directed towards herself. His brownish eyes were glowing red, and he seemed to writhe in darkness. He was positively terrifying.

  Cait addressed the wolf. ‘Ylva, you know perfectly well he’s quite right. You weren’t thinking very clearly, and the whole Stiltskin clan suffered for it.’