Spindle

by E. K. Johnston

  This was the way I was able to leave the prison of the Storyteller Witch’s making. It galled me to take so much time and expend effort in such a ludicrous way, but it worked. I was not free forever, and I could not meddle overmuch in the affairs of the lowlands without attracting the attention of my jailors, but I could begin; and, in beginning, I regained my strength.

  There was a cost, of course. There is always a cost. The long years I’d spent wedging open the cracks in the mountain prison had not gone unnoticed. Weaker fae than I were struck down, or cast into ore-lined caves to suffer the long pain of iron sickness, but I evaded capture and swore further revenge in the names of my destroyed kin. Once I began to focus my efforts on the kingdoms of the King Maker and his descendants, those cracks were filled once more. Flowers bloomed again, and water ran clear and crystal over the smoothed-out stone. It was a careful balance, and one I fought to maintain as my plans for freedom coalesced. And it was enough.

  At last, I needed only the Little Rose to grow into the queen I would have for my own use. Though her life was nothing to mine, those years were the longest of my long wait. I could not spy on her as much as I wished to, to my abject frustration, and was forced to rely on the clumsy maneuvers of the Maker King and his abhorrent son. At last though, she was nearly ready to be mine. I needed only for the magic of my curse to complete itself in her, and then I would be victorious.

  I had also done my best to avoid temptation. When I had cursed the Little Rose, I could have taken her back to the mountains with me then, and raised her to suit my purposes exactly. I could have made sure that her mind was perfect, rather than leave it to chance and the whims of her tutors. I might have raised a monster, prepared in every way for the horrors I would use her body to unleash; but I chose a different path. If I had had the Little Rose on hand, I might have taken her the moment she showed promise, my weariness at my isolation driving me to recklessness. So instead I separated myself from her—pushed her away—and made sure that when our paths did cross, it would be time for her life and soul to become my tools forever.

  When she disappeared, I laid waste to every flowered glade I could find, and cared not if every piskey in the whole cursed range watched me do it. Then I went to see the Maker King, for there was work to do.

  I WAS DOUBLY GLAD OF THE WATERFALL after Saoud and the others took their leave of us, because when they had gone, the silence that settled between the Little Rose and me was nearly intolerable. With Arwa and Tariq to buffer us, we had at least maintained some level of courtly niceties, and Saoud had kept us all grounded in the reality of our situation. Without them, I found I did not know what to say to her, and so as a result I said nothing. I had held her in my mind as a princess for so long that, when faced with her as a person, I couldn’t reconcile the two. Cursed or no, and whether or not she had shoes, she would always be a princess. And I was a spinner, or at least I might be; so I spent my time debating with myself about what our next steps should be.

  She let that stand for three days. Three days of echoing quiet around the pool, around the cooking fire, broken only when I bid her good night and ascended to the lookout post that Saoud and I had constructed. I tended to the camp and cooked our food. She gathered kindling and, when I was busy or distracted, she soaked the strips of cloth that Arwa had sewn for her in the pool. She clearly did not want to be disturbed, and so I did not disturb her. On the fourth morning, she took the bowl of bitter vetch from me when I offered it to her and then grabbed my hand before I could pull away.

  “Yashaa, this will not do,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, princess,” I told her. “It’s too early for wild wheat, even if Arwa had been able to find some before she left.”

  “I don’t mean the food, Yashaa,” she said, aggravated. “Or the camp, or anything else like that.”

  “I’m not sure I understand, then,” I said. “But if you tell me, I will—”

  “Oh, be quiet,” she snapped, and then immediately softened. It was an odd contrast. When she was angry, she might have been my friend. Kind, she was a princess to her fingertips. “Or rather, don’t be quiet. You’ve barely said anything to me since the others left. I’m sorry you are stuck here with only me for company, and I do regret that I forced you to take me with you in the first place, but I couldn’t think of another way out of the castle.”

  “Princess, all of that is fine,” I said. “What do you want me to talk about?”

  She took a deep breath, as though she wanted to say all manner of things and couldn’t decide which to say first, and I knew that I still irked her in some fashion. Apparently she decided not to hold it against me, however, because she took a bite of her vetch and chewed without any indication of the pent-up anger she’d exhibited only a moment before.

  “Tell me about Qamih,” she said. “I know very little about it, and nothing at all that doesn’t in some way relate to the Maker King. Tell me about the people there, and how they have treated you since you left Kharuf.”

  Now it was my turn to chew. I was a fair hand at camp rations, but not even Tariq could do very much with bitter vetch. I forced it down, and marshaled my thoughts.

  “I have only the faintest memories of Kharuf, before we came back to you,” I said to her. “I remember the smell of the heather more than anything else—anything outside the castle, in any case. It always seemed to be a gentler land to me than Qamih, though that might be because it was my home, and because my mother always speaks of it with such fond longing.”

  “I will remind you,” said the Little Rose, with a smile. “Only, tell me first of Qamih.”

  “It’s wider, somehow,” I said to her. “I have walked it from one end to the other when I was a child, and though I know its borders, it feels like it goes on forever. It is bounded by the sea, as you know, and there are great flats where clay is harvested like a sharecrop. There are forests, too, and broad fields where wheat and barley are farmed.”

  “It doesn’t sound so bad,” she said.

  “We were not welcome for very long in any of the towns,” I said. “They have guild laws in Qamih, and their own spinners and weavers, and they did not want anyone from Kharuf encroaching on their territory. It was nearly impossible to gain admittance to a guild, save through marriage, and few of the guild members would marry an outsider. My mother did not seek a suitor, in any case, and neither did Arwa’s mother, though she was younger and had not given her heart to Arwa’s father, as my mother gave hers to mine.”

  “Did your father die?” she asked, concern writ in the lines around her eyes.

  “No,” I said. “Or at least if he did, my mother never heard of it. He went back over the Silk Road into the desert before I was born, because he has his tasks there, as my mother had hers in Kharuf.”

  “I have always known that my marriage would not be for love,” the Little Rose said. “I had hoped that others would not feel so constrained by their duties. But I suppose it is the way of the world.”

  “My mother told me that she loved Queen Rasima and her position in your parents’ court too much to leave it, and that my father felt similarly about his own path,” I told her. “They chose between two loves, not for lack of it.”

  “I’m not sure that’s any better,” she mused, and I nodded my acknowledgement of the truth in her words.

  “In any case,” I said, “my mother did not marry, and so there was no position for her in the guild. We wandered until Arwa was well into her walking years, and then we set up a permanent camp at the first crossroads beyond the mountain pass, coming from the Kharuf side, of course. We met Saoud’s father there, and he agreed to teach us staff fighting and knife work.”

  “And your mother could talk to the wool traders, and hear news of Kharuf,” the Little Rose guessed.

  “Yes,” I said. “Though she rarely passed any such information to me. She was determined that I would grow up and become a guild member in Qamih, so that when you wed, you would have at least one ally on th
e west side of the mountains.”

  “I am flattered by your mother’s foresight,” said the Little Rose. “Did you resent me?”

  “Of course I did, princess,” I told her. “You had cost me my home, and your curse was killing my mother. I watched Tariq’s father breathe himself to death.”

  I had not meant to speak so harshly. In the days since the others left, I had let no moment go by without reminding myself of who she was, even though my own feelings for her were complicated by long misunderstanding. I had tried to be polite, even though whatever court training I had ever had was long since faded from my memory. And then to say that!

  “It’s all right, Yashaa,” she said. “That is how curses work. They poison everything.”

  “The demon was not content with just hurting you,” I said. “It hurt others in your name, and because I did not know it, or how to hurt it back, I turned on you instead. I thought it was your selfishness, or perhaps the selfishness of your parents, that kept the curse intact. I know better now, and I am sorry.”

  “There has been too much suffering in my name,” the Little Rose said. “I hate it too, and if I could end it, I would; but now I am as much trapped by the piskey’s gift as by the demon’s curse.”

  Her words hung there, like the pot we hung over the fire to cook in, and then I looked straight into her eyes for the first time since I had first beheld her in the tower.

  “There must be a way,” I said.

  “What?” she said.

  “There must be a way to avoid the piskey’s gift and keep you from being taken over by the demon,” I repeated. “Look at what we know of the demons already, what we’ve learned since we started exchanging information. The Storyteller Queen was human, and she was able to roust evil from her own husband, who murdered every girl he married before her. If we can find out how she did it, we could do it too.”

  “There is no one left alive who knows that,” the Little Rose protested. “You were brought up on stories less than ten years old, and look how they misled you. How are we to tell what is true and what is myth, if we start to ask questions about her? Even Tariq doesn’t know that, and he knows the stories better than the rest of us combined. Who else would we ask?”

  I was silent a long time, listening to the waterfall. Saoud had said that we would see anything coming from our lookout point—anything except a dragon, which would fly over the mountaintop instead of climbing the side of it. There were demons here, yes, but there were other creatures too, and they didn’t die the way humans did. Their memories were long.

  “We need to ask a piskey,” I told her. It had seemed impossible when I had said it before, but now that we had the Little Rose with us, now that we were in the mountains where the piskeys lived—now that I had had some time to think about it, and discard all the other, even more terrible ideas I had considered—it seemed more plausible. There were two parts to the magic that bound the Little Rose, and if we couldn’t find the demon, we could at least try to find the creature who was less likely to kill us on sight. “If possible, we need to find the piskey who was at your birthday party, but I think any one of them would do. They were there when the Storyteller Queen told the greatest of her tales. They were part of it. And they were there when you were cursed, so they must know how to help us.”

  “That is a terrible plan,” said the Little Rose.

  “That’s exactly what Saoud said before I climbed your tower,” I admitted. “So at least you will know I am consistent.”

  She laughed, and for the first time I heard the sprite’s gift at work. She had said the sprite’s gift kept her sane; her world was a flat and empty place, with dark horrors lurking at every edge of it. And yet she did not shrink from it, nor wilt under the weight. I wondered if it would also keep the sanity of those around her.

  “Very well, Yashaa,” she said. “We will leave this valley, and go in search of creatures that only a few living beings have ever beheld.”

  “Your feet have only just healed,” I pointed out. “Would you prefer to wait for the others to return before we try?”

  “And spend more days sitting across the fire from your quiet contemplation?” she said. “I think not, Yashaa. The tower was prison enough that I don’t need to repeat the experience here with you.”

  I was horrified, and then I realized that she spoke in jest. Or at least partially so. The past few days had proven that I was, at best, poor company.

  “As you command, princess,” I said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to find better food while we seek enlightenment.”

  “That would be quite appreciated,” she told me. “I know I said earlier that your cooking was adequate, but I am afraid I was lying when I said it.”

  “I know, princess,” I said. “I am the despair of my mother’s teachings on all fronts.”

  She laughed again, and I was overcome by the desire to make her laugh forever. If this was the service that my mother had so loved before the demon’s curse had ruined it, I felt at last that I understood some part of her calling to stay so long in the court of the king and queen who ruled Kharuf. My mother had risked illness and suffering, and I had always thought it was a folly, but now I knew better. I would serve the Little Rose, not because I had once hated her and now wished to make amends, but because I wanted to; and I would serve her at risk to myself if I had to.

  The Little Rose took the bowls to the pool and set to washing them. It was a task she could do, because unlike the cooking itself, it did not result in the creation of anything new. Likewise, she could collect wood, though she could not make a fire, even if she had known how. It was a poor freedom, several steps below the life we had made for ourselves at the crossroads, but it was hers; and as I watched her make the most of it, I felt a stirring in my soul I thought might be hope.

  BY THE TIME WE WERE ready to start our search the next morning, the Little Rose and I had reached an unspoken accord. I would pretend that it did not trouble me to speak to her as I spoke to Saoud, and she would pretend she didn’t notice every time I was troubled by it. It became easier as I practiced, though I could not bring myself to call her “Zahrah,” nor could I think of her as anything but a princess. But I could talk to her, and since conversation was one of the few things she could make without fear of consequence, I knew it was a service as important as any I might otherwise provide.

  I concealed all evidence of our camp in the valley. There was only the smallest chance that anyone would find us in the mountains, but I didn’t want to take it. We had, after all, essentially kidnapped a princess. The grass was thick and lush enough that we had not left tracks, and everything we had could be fit into the cave. The Little Rose gathered sticks and rocks so that I might leave a message for Saoud on the cave floor, where I was sure it would not be disturbed, telling him that we had gone for food and would return. I doubted very much that he and the others would make it back before we did, because we were not planning to be gone overnight; but on the off chance that they did, I had no wish for them to worry overmuch.

  So, on the fifth day after we had found our small haven, we left it. I carried a small pack, because while we did not intend to be abroad for very long, I wanted to prepare for as many contingencies as I could. The Little Rose had her shoes in her hands, because the grass was soft; the less she wore them, the better for her feet. Keeping that in mind, I directed us up the slope, rather than down it. Arwa had reported a glade nearby, and I thought that would be as good a place as any to start looking for food, as well as the more difficult object of our explorations.

  “Do you have any idea where the creatures might be?” I asked the Little Rose when I finished explaining my intentions.

  “Only stories,” she said ruefully. “But I suppose they have gotten us this far.”

  As we climbed, I told her about the bear we had fought. I didn’t want to frighten her, but she needed to know that the woods around us concealed danger in more forms than she might imagine.

  “Can you
climb trees?” I asked.

  “I never have,” she said. “But I have never climbed down a rope to escape from a tower either, and I managed that well enough.”

  “Climbing up is easier most of the time, in any case,” I assured her. “If there is a need, you must find a tree and climb it.”

  “And leave you to defend me?” she asked.

  “No, I will be right behind you,” I said. She smiled. “At least until I have assessed the situation.”

  “How did you know it was a demon in the bear?” she asked, her smile fading.

  We had reached a rocky outcropping. I watched as she looked at the terrain, then at the shoes in her hand. She decided to take her chances, and we continued on.

  “Its eyes,” I said. “There was something very strange about its eyes. I had never seen a bear before, but I have seen plenty of animals, and there was something not quite animal when the bear looked at us. Also, it seemed too intelligent. It didn’t react to pain as it should have.”

  “Wonderful,” she said, stumbling slightly on a ledge.

  I caught her without thinking about it, my hands on her waist and shoulder, and set her on her feet again. I would have done the same for Arwa, or Tariq when he was younger, but with the Little Rose it was different. My fingers knew that the cloth of her dress, plain and unadorned, was of a finer weave than anything Arwa had worn in years, but there was something else when I touched her…something I could not name. I felt my cheeks flush and I did not like it.

  “Yashaa?” she said when she realized I had stopped walking. “Do you see something?”

  “No, princess,” I said. I shook my head, and the world righted itself around me. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I drift into my own thoughts. I will be more careful.”