Spindle (Two Monarchies Sequence Book 1)

by W. R. Gingell

  “Thank-you, dear!” said that lady warmly, attaching the pin to her collar, where it nestled among several others. “Mika always misses one or two.” She gestured behind her as she spoke, and it took Poly a few, blinking moments to recognize that the tiny, furry bundle of clothes nestled among the draping fabric, was, in fact, a monkey. It was picking at the carpet with the same studious intensity that it would have searched for fleas, and as Poly watched, it drew a wickedly sharp pin from the carpet, and leapt, chattering, to its owner’s shoulder.

  The lady patted it absently on the head, provoking the monkey to display its teeth as it secured the pin in her collar with the others, and said: “You must be Poly, dear: Mrs Hobson, very much at your service. Josie mentioned that you might find your way here today. Blue and green, I think. Bespoke or ready-made?”

  “Two ready-made and two bespoke,” said Margaret, forestalling Poly. “Luck’s account.”

  Poly felt her lips quirk ruefully at the corners and reflected once again that Margaret and Josie really were very much alike. She allowed herself to be bustled up onto a step-stool, and hoped fervently that dressmaking had become more expedited with the passing of three hundred years, not to mention the loss of whale-bone and stuffing as regular accoutrements to a frock. Judging from the flush of pleasure mantling Mrs Hobson’s cheeks and the dreamy look of an artist in her usually sharp black eyes, however, Poly rather thought not.

  Poly was pinned into a dress of moss-green velvet with silver trim at the cuffs, her feet encased in the softest of new slippers, when the door swung open madly, violently ringing the bell, and a young man strode into the room.

  “Good heavens! A maiden!” One bright blue eye laughed at Poly from between the fingers that the young man put over his face. “Madam, I protest I wasn’t looking!”

  Poly met the dazzlingly blue gaze and felt a pleasant shock that made her say more prosaically than usual: “Well, there’s not really much to see.”

  “I beg to differ,” he said, with a frankly admiring gaze.

  Poly hoped rather desperately that her cheeks weren’t as hot as they felt, and was grateful when Margaret said: “Oh, don’t tease her, Michael. She’s not village: she won’t understand you.”

  Wondering if she should feel insulted, Poly said calmly: “I won’t take offence, I promise, even if I’m not village.”

  Margaret grinned at her, informing Poly that she had reacted appropriately. “Don’t you think it’s a little dark?” she asked, nodding at the green velvet.

  Poly’s fingers curled into the velvet protectively. She liked darker colours. The frock was pretty and quiet at the same time, and the silver trim added a touch of distinction to the greenness that was pleasing.

  “It’s warm,” she said instead. “And it will wear well.”

  “What tosh!” said Margaret indignantly. “That’s no reason to buy a gown!”

  “It sets off your eyes,” said Michael, leaning casually into the window and giving Poly an unabashed look-over. “Grey eyes, slate-black hair, and moss green velvet–” he kissed his hand with a flourish. “And what hair! What have you got in there? Spells?”

  “Little bits and pieces of magic,” said Poly. She self-consciously touched a hand to her hair and dropped it in annoyance when she realised what she was doing. “Mostly from Luck but some of it came from my– from a boy we met, and I found some floating outside the village.”

  Michael cocked his head. “Free magic, eh? What–”

  “Oh, Michael, what do you want? We’re busy.”

  “Well, if you don’t want your invitations I suppose I’ll leave you to your shopping,” said Michael, without moving. “I have patterns to cut, too, you know.”

  He winked at Poly, who much to her own mortification found herself blushing again, and turned to greet Margaret’s sharp-eyed interest with wide, innocent eyes.

  “What invitations?” Margaret demanded, abandoning Poly’s prospective wardrobe for more important considerations. “Who is having a party, and why do you know about it before me?”

  “Sheer charm of manner and the small fact that me Ma happens to be the one giving the party. Two weeks from now, last bell. Are you coming?”

  “If I have nothing better to do,” Margaret told him loftily, her tone belying the anticipation in her eyes.

  “I was asking Poly,” said Michael provocatively. “I don’t much mind whether or not you come, Miss Margaret; only me Ma told me to ask.”

  “Fibber,” said Margaret, but without heat. “If I didn’t talk with you no one would. You need me there.”

  He shrugged and tilted his head enquiringly at Poly, who said: “I’d love to come. Will your mother mind if I bring along one very small boy?”

  “Mind? She’ll love it. She’s always complaining about how big and ugly I’ve gotten. She’ll cuddle and cook and bring out ancient sweeties. You won’t be able to get away.”

  “Onepiece will love it,” said Poly, laughing.

  “In the interests of making sure that Onepiece isn’t the only one in the village enjoying himself,” began Michael, a gleam in his blue eyes that brought out a responsive twinkle in Poly’s: “May I inveigle the promise of a dance from you tomorrow? Just a small one, and I promise it won’t be painful.”

  Poly opened her mouth to agree gladly, a warm little burr of contentment in her throat, when it occurred to her in a dashing moment that she didn’t know any of the current dances.

  Quiet in her disappointment, she shrugged and said: “I don’t know the right dances. Sorry.”

  “Oh, I make up my own anyway,” said Michael easily. He gave her a small, curving, devastating smile and added: “And now that you’ve promised me a dance there’s no getting out of it. Goodbye, Poly; goodbye, Miss Meg. Buy the dress!”

  “That boy!” said Margaret when he had gone. Despite the stringency of her tone, she was smiling. “Don’t listen to his nonsense, Poly; he’s a flirt and a constant bother.”

  “So I gathered,” murmured Poly, trying not to think about laughing blue eyes and a curving, mischievous smile. Her mouth twisted wryly as she said, more for her own benefit than Margaret’s: “I hope I know better than to be won over by a charming smile and a few compliments.”

  But she bought the dress.

  Chapter Nine

  “What is last bell?”

  Luck’s dishevelled head appeared from behind an untidy pile of books. “Poly! You look different. What did you do? No, never mind; where were you yesterday afternoon? The–”

  “I know, I know,” sighed Poly, resigned to the inevitable. “The balance was out all day. What is last bell?”

  “No– well, yes, actually; but that’s not what– I was imprisoned all afternoon, Poly. In my own house. The hordes just kept coming and coming. And there’s still something sideways in the village! People are beginning to complain. Where were you?”

  “Shopping with Margaret,” said Poly, automatically straightening two books that had fallen down on one of her carefully ordered shelves. There hadn’t been sight or sound from the gremlins since she left the cheese out for them yesterday, and she had slept well– and better yet, woken without Luck’s help. It was looking like a beautiful day.

  “Apparently my taste is outmoded and my clothing outdated. Have those people been lining up since dawn?”

  “Probably,” said Luck, with a slightly wild look. “The line doubles in size every time I look out the window. Last bell? Last bell is the ceasefire order.”

  “Last bell is the end of the work day,” Poly mused aloud, making a mental note. That reminded her of another lingering question, and she asked curiously: “Luck, how is it that we could understand each other when we met? Language doesn’t work like that; things must have changed while I was asleep.”

  “Oh, that. I put a spell on you.”

  Poly blinked rapidly, then said with deceptive calmness: “You put a spell on me?”

  “It was that or learning to speak Ye Olde Civet again.
They stopped speaking that way a few years after I was born, you know. It was easier to put a spell on you.”

  Poly briefly remembered Luck’s lips moving just out of synch with his words on the day she met him, and a small part of her was obliquely satisfied at a solved puzzle. A larger part, rising in indignation, caused her to say: “You’re running a spell on me and you didn’t even ask?”

  Luck stopped looking hunted for long enough to say: “No. It stopped working a few days back when your brain caught up with the dialect. All I had to do was start it: when you stole some of my magic you took over the spell yourself.”

  Poly wavered between pointing out firmly that Luck had thrown magic at her, and that she had not in fact stolen it, and reiterating just once more that as she didn’t possess magic it was impossible for her to have kept up a spell, outside magic or no.

  Instead, she said: “You’ve no right to run spells on me, Luck! My personal space extends to putting spells on me.”

  “Huh,” said Luck. “You should have said. Poly, what are you– no, this is my sanctuary! A few more minutes and they might think that I’ve already gone out. Poly!”

  But Poly, with reprisals in mind, had already passed through the library wall. The line was stretching out of sight through the window when she peeked out, and when she opened the door an older woman with a worried face gazed up at her in dawning relief.

  “Luck can see you now,” she told the woman.

  A barely audible sigh slipped through the woman’s lips. “Pebbles and primroses, I thought I wouldn’t get in before last bell! You’re Josie’s niece, aren’t you? Hmm,” she added, without giving Poly a chance to reply; “You don’t much favour her.”

  Poly met the shrewd blue gaze and came to two conclusions. “You’re Michael’s Ma,” she said slowly, ushering the woman into the house. “No, I’m not Josie’s niece. You knew that already.”

  “I might have guessed,” she said, smiling infectiously. “But then, I’ve known Josie for some time. Come to tea with me one afternoon, dear: you can tell me who you really are. Just between you, me, and the bees. I suppose my lump of a son didn’t mention me by name– no? You can call me Annie.”

  Poly shook the hand that was offered, and called out somewhat unnecessarily to Luck: “Your first visitor is here, Luck!”

  “I’m not at home,” said Luck’s voice sulkily, but he came out of the library anyway. One of his grubby, once-white cuffs was torn, and there was blood on his wrist from what Poly strongly suspected was a gremlin-bite.

  “Luck, what did you do to the gremlins? I just got them settled!”

  “They mounted a pincer movement from the ancient history corner and stole my pocket-watch,” said Luck irritably. “I’m wounded, Poly. Possibly infected.”

  “Show me,” Poly ordered, and took a leaf out of Luck’s book by seizing his wrist without waiting for permission.

  “It’s too late, I’m probably already dying,” Luck said. “Have I met you? What do you need? I don’t do love spells.”

  Correctly assuming that these questions were for Annie’s benefit, Poly ignored them and tilted Luck’s wrist to the light. Luck said an absent-minded ouch but didn’t otherwise acknowledge the inspection.

  “We’ve met,” said Annie. “I wouldn’t bother you, wizard, but it is getting quite urgent.”

  Poly, discovering with some surprise that Luck was right and the bite really was infected, heard the note of deference in Annie’s voice and owned herself even more surprised. She touched the slightly bleeding bite carefully, exciting the tiny specks of magic that were ferociously attacking the surrounding skin, and lent one ear to the conversation.

  “You’re the one with the jinxed field,” Luck was saying. “Slightly sideways strawberries or something like that. Standard for something that close to the Forest.”

  To Poly, carefully drawing out shards of burrowing magic, it sounded as if he had said it with a capital. Not forest, but The Forest.

  “The Forest isn’t the problem,” said Annie. “It’s the jinx itself; it’s gone sideways.”

  Luck’s green eyes glazed a little, warning the initiated that he had begun to grow bored with the subject.

  “It’s a jinx, it’s meant to go sideways. There’s a standard clause in the bill of sale allowing for a variance of eight degrees within the first ten years of sale.”

  “It’s a family plot, and the variance in the last year alone is fifteen degrees,” Annie said rapidly. Perhaps she wasn’t as uninitiated as Poly had assumed. “Premium planting for the strawberries began early this month, but Michael hasn’t been able to so much as turn the soil without the risk of turning himself inside out, or the field tricking him into thinking that he’s a strawberry and ought to plant himself.”

  “Huh,” said Luck. “Clever. When did you last have an incident?”

  “Two nights ago,” said Annie, stirring in Poly the memory of a captured intruder she had freed from a malicious bit of magic. “He got away, but it was a close thing.”

  Poly looked up rather guiltily. “That might have been my fault. Is your field the only one that’s unploughed?”

  “For the last fortnight,” Annie nodded, her eyes narrowed. “Fault, child? What fault?”

  “I was out for a walk and saw someone caught in a piece of nasty magic, so I disintegrated it. I didn’t really think until it was too late that it could have been a thief.”

  Annie laughed out loud; a dry, warm gurgle. “Thief, my eye! That was Michael! He was trying to fertilise and turn the sod, but after a few square feet the jinx had him fast and wouldn’t let him out. He says that a beautiful shadowy damsel with the oddest magic he’s ever seen passed by and released him with a wave of her hand.”

  Poly was surprised into a chuckle. That sounded just like the blue-eyed boy she had met yesterday.

  Annie’s eyes twinkled at her in amused comprehension as she added: “Of course, I asked him how he knew she was beautiful if she was shadowy, and he said it was too great of an adventure for her not to have been beautiful. We’ve been at a loss to know whom to thank.”

  “Poly,” said Luck sharply; “Have you been taking off your glove in public? What did I tell you about that?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” Poly told him. “And it wasn’t in public, it was in the fields after midnight.”

  “Rubbish. I must have. Anyway, you’re not to do it; I don’t care how many boys you’re trying to save.”

  Poly counted carefully to ten in her head before she picked up Luck’s wrist again. “We were talking about Annie’s jinx, Luck. Hold still please.”

  “Oh,” said Luck vaguely. He was gazing down with blank eyes, whether at her or his wrist, Poly wasn’t certain. “All right. I’ll have a look at it. Goodbye.”

  “I’m obliged,” said Annie, with a respectful nod that came just short of being a curtsey. Her eyes, bright and inquisitive, dwelt on them both for a while longer until she caught Poly’s eye, whereupon she mimed drinking tea in what seemed to be a silent encouragement not to forget their engagement for afternoon tea.

  Poly gave her a warm smile in return, as much for her own sake as for the chance of meeting Michael again, and tugged the last gnawing thread of magic from Luck’s wrist as Annie closed the front door behind her.

  “Well, you’ve done it now,” said Luck gloomily, passing his other hand over the bite. When his fingers fell away the bite was an old scar, fading quickly. “Now they’ll all know I’m here. Batten the hatches, Poly; you’re going to be my assistant.”

  By the end of the day Poly almost regretted the loss of temper that caused her to call Annie in. Visitors had flowed in and out of the parlour like a stream, never-ending and inquisitive, and Luck had kept her busy fetching this and that. The visits were made even more nerve-wracking by the fact that a good many of them seemed to be young men who had come upon the flimsiest of pretexts, and who were more pleased to be talking to Poly than Luck. Two of them were bold enough to strike up a prope
r conversation with her, but the rest of them were content to gaze bashfully at her and blush every time she accidently caught their eyes.

  Later in the afternoon Onepiece staggered into the room, gleefully supporting himself on the walls and leaving grubby handprints on the plaster. As much as Luck expected this fetched and that pinched did Onepiece expect congratulations and encouragement and kisses; and between the two of them Poly found herself very nearly exhausted by the end of the day.

  It was only when Margaret, dressed in deep blue muslin that admirably complimented her chestnut style of prettiness, bounced into the room and enquired wasn’t Poly ready yet? that Poly remembered the reason for that little curl of excitement in her stomach that refused to be quite banished.

  “Oh, good, you’re here,” said Luck, oblivious to dress and conversation alike. “Hold this.”

  Since this was a greasy carriage-wheel, Margaret’s look of horror and subsequent relief at the tolling of Last Bell were entirely understandable.

  Poly, amusedly aware that Luck hadn’t, or wouldn’t hear the bell, said calmly: “Last bell, Luck.”

  “Can’t be. It’s only lunch-time.”

  “I’m going to a party at–”

  “Mistress Pritchard’s.”

  “–at Mistress Pritchard’s. If you want me, that’s where I’ll be.”

  “But I want you now!” Luck objected. “Margaret, too: it’s a three person job.”

  The unfortunate owner of the spelled wheel, aware that he was encroaching upon forbidden time and possibly eager to be at the party himself, said hastily: “I’ll call for it tomorrow,” and made good his escape.

  “Yes, but it’s last bell, and Margaret is in her party frock,” said Poly patiently. “Even the nice man who owns the spell has gone.”

  Luck looked around blankly and said: “Huh. Where did he go?”