Spindle (Two Monarchies Sequence Book 1)

by W. R. Gingell

  “With pleasure, dear ladies! What are we– oh. Well now. That’s more than a bit frightening.”

  Poly looked into a dazzling array of curling, variegated threads that wove in and out of each other to form a terrifyingly powerful spell, and felt as though the spell might possibly be looking back at her. Michael was right: it was both vast and frightening. There was more of her missing than memories. This type of thing took knowledge. Where had that knowledge gone?

  “What is that?” he asked, lounging across the window-seat on his stomach. “It’s– wait, is it moving?”

  “Yes,” said Poly, more briskly than she felt. She ran one finger carefully along a strand that seemed bluer than its fellows, and knew with an oddly unbalanced feeling that wavered between familiarity and strangeness that this was certainly her magic. Her magic, and–

  “The Other Thing,” nodded Angwynelle. She was watching Poly steadily, but her eyes had lost their twinkle and were serious. “It’s new and raw, and so is the magic.”

  “It can’t be!” Michael said, sitting up. “That would mean the caster only just came into his power when he performed the spell. You can’t make a spell like that on a month’s notice. You couldn’t on a year’s notice.”

  “Not unless you knew an awful lot of theory to start with,” said Angwynelle quietly.

  The faint ache that spoke of missing pieces stung again, and Poly wondered bitterly just how much knowledge Mordion had taken from her.

  Michael looked swiftly from Angwynelle to Poly, opened his mouth, and closed it again.

  Eventually he said: “Don’t think I didn’t notice your ‘so is’! What else is it made of? I know that’s not just magic.”

  “No, it’s not,” agreed Poly. She found herself thinking, ridiculously, Well, if Luck had been right, so had she. Before Mordion, and the curse, and Midsummer Night’s Eve, she hadn’t had magic. Not magic, nor unmagic.

  “It must have been something Mordion did,” she said slowly. “Perhaps the curse woke something up.”

  Michael leaned over her shoulder, tickling her ear with his hair. “Is that part of the curse?”

  “Oh, what a shame,” sighed Angwynelle. “And you’re so pretty, too. It’s got nothing to do with the curse, simpkin: it all belongs to Poly.”

  “I might be a simpkin, but I’m certain I remember you telling me that you don’t have magic, Poly.”

  “I didn’t know about it then,” said Poly, and thought: How ridiculous! I didn’t know it then, but I did before then.

  She added: “Now I have a little bit again: it’s not much, though.”

  “This should help,” said Angwynelle, looping the blue scarf around Poly’s neck. “Play with it later, Poly: what about the spell? Helpful or not?”

  “I can see what little bits of it are for, but not how it all works together. Oh, I wish Luck was here!”

  “Yes, about that,” said Michael unexpectedly. “You didn’t tell him where we were going, did you?”

  Poly thought about it and then said carefully: “He knows where we are.”

  “But he was meant to come with you, wasn’t he? Don’t try to flummox me, Miss Poly!” he added, eyes dancing in spite of the severe tone. “I know that look: I’ve seen it on Margaret scores of times. If we’re playing hookey, I want to know when to run.”

  “I’ll give you good warning,” promised Poly. She sat back on her heels and sighed. “Will I be able to get back?”

  “To this particular point in the book?” asked Angwynelle. “No. But there are dozens of illustrations: some more of me, even. Come back and see me when you can. You can access the spell from anywhere in the book if you know where to look.”

  “Good. Luck will want to see it.”

  Angwynelle’s eyes narrowed. “Who is this Luck? Why didn’t you bring him with you?”

  “It’s time to go home,” said Poly hastily. Angwynelle would only flirt with Luck anyway, and Poly thought that such an exercise would be rather irritating to watch. It was bad enough to have to stand by stupidly while she flirted with Michael.

  What if, she thought rather wistfully; what if Lady Cimone had taught Poly how to flirt with her eyelashes and charm with her conversation, instead of stuffing her head full of history and language and how to read a courtier through the surface lies?

  Then I’d be Angwynelle, and who would be me? said her thoughts.

  “I’ll find out, you know,” sang Angwynelle. Her eyes, wickedly dancing, caught and held Poly’s. “A pretty simpkin and...a Luck? Which one?”

  “Neither!” squeaked Poly, mortified. Michael was grinning, which made it worse; but he also winked at her. “We have to go now!”

  Angwynelle made a pout that only just escaped being a purse-lipped smile. “Oh, all right. You first, simpkin: through the window.”

  “A thousand pleasures to have met you, mistress!” said Michael, still charming from his straddled position on the window sill.

  “Yes, I know,” said Angwynelle, and pushed him off. She grinned unrepentantly at Poly, but said: “I won’t push you. Promise. Wasn’t his surprise delicious, though!”

  “That wasn’t nice,” Poly said, but her voice burred on a laugh, and Angwynelle laughed along with her.

  “You know you wanted to do it, too. You had to. Well, I mean; I am you, after all. Idealized and romanticized, but I’m you, all the same.”

  “Of course you are,” Poly sighed. “I really think I must have been too clever for my own good. But I don’t flirt, you know.”

  “I know,” said Angwynelle, helping her over the sill in a sisterly fashion. Her face was already beginning fade, and the colour leached from her red-gold hair as Poly slid tentatively across the sill into emptiness. “That’s why I do!”

  Reality hit with a gentle bump and nudged Poly into a flowery hillock.

  “There you are!” said Michael. His face was both pleasantly and frighteningly close, and he seemed content to tickle Poly’s nose with a butterflower while she collected her scattered wits. His proximity made the exercise considerably more difficult. If Poly hadn’t discovered the blue skerry-silk scarf around her neck when her fingers automatically fluttered to check that she was still all in one piece, she might have lain there for some time still, gazing up into Michael’s blue eyes.

  The cool, slippery slick of it around her neck made Poly sit up rather quickly, which seemed to startle Michael as much as being pushed off the window-sill had.

  “Now that’s interesting!” he said, surprise melting into curiosity in the blink of an eye. “How did you bring a physical something out of an ethereal something? That shouldn’t be possible.”

  “Yes, Luck’s always complaining about that. I don’t think it’s really a something, though: I think it just looks like a something.”

  Michael gazed at her limpidly. “Erudition fairly drips from your lips, Miss Poly! Dizzying, unfathomable...and, well, I honestly don’t know what in the Two Monarchies you just said.”

  Poly gave vent to a little spurt of laughter. “I mean that it only looks like a scarf. It’s a little bit of my magic: I seem to have stored bits and pieces of it through the trilogy to collect when I escaped from the curse.”

  “That really was your spell?”

  Poly lifted one shoulder. “It must be. I recognised the magic.”

  “What about the spindle? You said it does two things: makes you remember, and pushes spells to take you somewhere you need to go.”

  “That’s what I can’t quite figure out,” said Poly regretfully. “I seem to have spelled my mind to access memories that Mordion tried to take away, but the spell only works in the right conditions. Now that I know how, I should be able to get them back. It’s the way the spindle hijacks Luck’s spells that I can’t figure out. The spindle itself isn’t bespelled: there isn’t even any magic in it.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Not the tiniest– oh! Oh! I wonder if I was that clever?”

  “Of course you were!�
� said Michael, pleasingly prompt. Poly couldn’t help laughing, which made him grimace self-deprecatingly. “Habit, Miss Poly; sheer habit! What were you clever about?”

  “I don’t think I put a sneaky spell on the spindle. I think I took magic out of it.”

  “It must be clever: I don’t understand it at all.”

  “It was one of the first things Lady Cimone taught me,” explained Poly, feeling automatically for the tag of blue magic that labelled the spindle. “One of the lessons in theory that I seem to be able to remember. Magic abhors a vacuum. Almost everything and everyone has the tiniest bit of magic in them because an absolute absence of magic attracts magic. I think I pulled every last bit of magic out of it because I knew I’d need as much as I could collect after, or if, I managed to break free from the curse. It’s pulled me from power source to power source and collected more magic every time.”

  “That’s easy enough to prove,” said Michael interestedly. “Obviously my magical education has been deficient. Out with it, Miss Poly! Only you will put your books away first, won’t you? I don’t think I could survive another encounter with Angwynelle: she may be beautiful, but she’s the most terrifying thing south of the Forest.”

  “Do you have enough energy to work another Shift spell?”

  “That hurts me, Miss Poly!” said Michael solemnly, and then grinned. “Honestly, no: but I have a small Shifter in my signet for emergencies.”

  “Is there a good strong magic source nearby?”

  “There’s the Forest, but we don’t want to be stealing magic from there,” said Michael feelingly; and Poly just as feelingly acquiesced. “The jinx is closer, and it’s one of the stronger pulls in the village, but the village clock is the strongest of the two. Will the spindle look for the nearest source?”

  “I don’t think it looks for magic, exactly; it’s just that magic is attracted to the emptiness of no magic, and sort of– well, reaches out. Then the magic pours in trying to fill the vacuum.”

  “Then the closest source should be the one that pulls us?”

  “I assume so,” said Poly dubiously. “But I don’t know if there was anything closer than the Frozen Battlefield when it pulled us in, so I can’t say for sure.”

  “Reasonable risk,” Michael said cheerfully. “If we die in the attempt–”

  “Luck will kill you,” nodded Poly.

  “Well, I was going to say that I wouldn’t speak to you again, but that too. Are you ready?”

  Poly briefly displayed the spindle between her fingers, and as briefly nodded. “Remind me to put the tag back on, won’t you? Only I’ll forget it if you don’t.”

  She pulled the flicker of blue magic back into her hand, and just for a moment forgot why she and Michael were standing there, waiting. Then Michael said: “Here we go, Miss Poly!” with a tiny blaze of sliver magic, and something vast and ageless and terrifyingly strong narrowed its gaze on them...and pounced.

  The Shift happened either very quickly or very slowly, Poly wasn’t quite sure which. All she was certain of was a sense of being lifted by the scruff of her neck like a recalcitrant puppy and deposited somewhere that was somehow alive and hard to breathe in. The shadows were velvety-green and seemed to move without sound. Poly barely recognised the wild, living greenery as the quiet and really quite civilised forest she’d entered the night of the games.

  “How did we end up in–”

  “The Forest,” said Michael hoarsely. “Poly, please tell your hair to stop sucking up forest magic. The Forest is very protective.”

  “I don’t– oh, that’s strong!” panted Poly. “I can’t stop it, Michael! I can’t– it’s too strong and there’s too much of it. Oh! Michael, please Shift us! It keeps pushing more in and I can’t fit any more!”

  Under the oppressive weight of too much, too strong magic, Poly only vaguely felt Michael prise something out of her hand. The light flicker of silver magic that Michael attached to the spindle helped her to remember that it was the spindle, but by then she was drowning in a surfeit of forest magic. She vaguely felt Michael slip his arms around her and was as vaguely grateful to be able to let her head drop onto his chest.

  The Forest must have let them go. Poly wasn’t sure if it was because the spindle was no longer so obviously magic-less, or if it was because Michael’s Shifting spell blazed stronger than before in his urgency to get away; but after another, too-full moment there was blissful weightlessness.

  Poly found herself able to appreciate the pleasure of being embraced by Michael for one delightful second.

  Then Margaret’s voice, quiet and a little bit scratchy, said: “Oh, Poly, not Michael too!”

  Poly’s dazed look around comprehended a dizzying catalogue: walls, house– Luck’s house; Margaret, pale and big-eyed; Josie, thoughtful and sharp-eyed; Annie, cheerful but watchful; and Luck looking white about the mouth with Onepiece’s skinny wrist grasped in one hand. She looked up and met Michael’s blue eyes, which were startled and somehow undecided. His mouth opened as a flurry of skirts attended Margaret’s dash from the house. Then Poly was let go abruptly, cold and shaken, and Michael dashed for the door.

  “Margaret! Wait, it wasn’t– Meg! Please!”

  “Well done, Poly!” said Josie’s fat voice, complacently. “I’ve been wondering exactly what it would take to shake a bit of sense into those two.”

  “I always like an autumn wedding,” Annie said.

  Poly blinked and smiled painfully, hoping that she didn’t look as shocked and miserable as she felt. She found herself gazing stupidly at Luck, whose eyes had gone very green and narrow, and heard him say: “What do you mean by going into the Forest when I tell you not to?”

  “Accident,” whispered Poly, tears threatening to spill over. Josie saw the exhaustion, if not the tears, and became bustlingly supportive, calling on Luck not to be ‘too hard on the poor mite’; and even Annie was bold enough to say: “Look at her! Pebbles and Primroses, she’s all done in!”

  “Out, biddies!” demanded Luck outrageously. “I won’t have ‘poor Poly’ here and ‘poor Poly’ there! She sneaks out behind my back, steals magic from the forest, and won’t share! Out!”

  “Well, I never!” said Josie; but she said it on her way out the door, and Annie was even quicker to go, with a commiserating smile at Poly.

  When the door shut behind them Luck dropped Onepiece’s wrist and said: “Well, that got rid of them. Are you going to cry now?”

  “Um,” said Poly in a watery voice. She sat down by a pile of scalloped metal and Onepiece pattered over to cling to her knees, looking anxiously down at the tears that were trying to escape. His painfully worried look was at first touching and then amusing, and in playing games with his fingers to cheer him up, Poly found herself gradually regaining her composure.

  Luck sat down next to them at some stage and said: “He was too young for you anyway, Poly.”

  Poly gave a slightly wet giggle. “Of course! I couldn’t think of anyone under the age of four hundred!”

  “That’s right,” said Luck. “And he’d never be able to keep up with you. Your hair is growing again, by the way.”

  “I know,” said Poly, fighting back another wave of misery. “I really liked him, Luck. I thought– well, for a minute I thought he was–”

  Luck was observing a violet stain on one cuff. “I thought so too. Thought his taste was beginning to improve.”

  “You yelled at me.”

  “Oh. Yes. Sorry about that. You needed a moment to–”

  Poly stretched up to kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you. Onepiece, don’t do that to my hair. I’m trying to tie it up.”

  Luck silently watched her tie her braid with the blue scarf and then asked: “Where did you find your magic?”

  “Angwynelle had it. Did you know I wove–”

  “–an entire trilogy of books into time and space? Yes. Well, I guessed. Nifty work, that.”

  “We were testing a theory with the spindle when the
forest pulled us in.”

  “Told you not to go into the forest,” said Luck mildly.

  “Michael thought we’d end up at the clock tower.”

  “Huh. I knew he was an idiot. The spindle doesn’t pull magic, magic pulls it. The stronger the pull, the likelier you’ll end up with it.”

  “I know that now,” said Poly. “I keep going wrong. I’m missing some memories I need to have.”

  “I’ll get the dog to bite you again. So long as there’s blood it should trigger your sensory programming.”

  “Not those ones. That’s from the day before it happened.” Poly paused, struggling with the concept, and at last said: “I don’t think it’s memories, exactly. I think it’s knowledge. A big piece of knowing that I used to know, and don’t know any more. Magic theory and court politics were the two things that Lady Cimone taught, but I only remember the politics and some basics of magic theory.”

  “Someone took them out of your head,” nodded Luck. “They must have been very much afraid of you, Poly. There are three kinds of preventatives in the three-verse curse itself, two more in the spellpaper, and you’re spelled to fall asleep again every time you think about the castle or your old life. They made certain you wouldn’t wake up, and that if you did, you’d never be a threat to them.”

  “He always did like chess,” Poly said. “It’s all a game to him, but he’ll always make sure he’s at least six moves ahead of you.”

  “You’re talking about Mordion again. I told you, it can’t be him.”

  “It can’t be, but it is. He was there, in the memories I don’t remember.”

  “Then it must be a different one,” said Luck stubbornly.

  Onepiece, looking from Poly to Luck, said hopefully: “Bite?”

  Luck said: “Yes,” his eyes brightening.

  Poly said: “No, darling. Maybe later. Luck, we have to leave the village: someone trying to kill me nearly killed Margaret.”

  “More importantly, someone knows you’re the princess and has been sending messages to the Capital,” said Luck, leading Poly to wonder who was the less important factor; herself, or Margaret.