Spindle's End

by Robin McKinley

  Rosie heard what the man said, but she did not—could not—would not—take it in. She seemed to be floating free from her body; her body remained standing in the fire- and lamp-lit kitchen, Katriona beside her and the rain-drenched stranger kneeling at her feet; but she, Rosie, the real Rosie, had gone away, gone away to a safe place where she couldn’t be told horrible, frightening, devastating lies. Dreamily she looked round her; it was a foggy place she stood in—even foggier than Foggy Bottom—and at first she could see nothing clearly. But she heard voices: animals, her animals, her friends, talking, talking robin to fox and deer to badger and otter to vole. They were all talking, talking to each other, using human kinds of words as the swiftest means of communication, all talking together, for tonight all defenses were down:

  You here!

  Yes, and you!

  And you and you!

  Why did you come?

  And you?

  It is in the air.

  Yes, the air, and the water.

  It fell with the rain.

  I heard it in the wind.

  I felt it in my feet upon the earth.

  Something coming.

  Someone coming.

  Some great thing happening.

  We know of the princess.

  We know of—her who cursed her.

  We know that this thing is coming at last.

  My grandmother told me it would come in my time.

  My father told me. He remembered the day.

  I remember the day.

  The princess and the bad one.

  But this thing—this happens here.

  Here.

  Near to us all.

  I thought of Rosie.

  We thought of Rosie.

  Something about Rosie.

  Rosie, our Rosie.

  Our friend.

  Our speaker-to-all.

  So we came.

  And I.

  And you.

  And all of us.

  But the princess!

  She cannot be!

  She talks to us!

  She is the princess. The humans would not get this wrong.

  The wet black man would not get this wrong. Can you not smell it on him?

  But here!

  Her!

  Rosie!

  Our Rosie the princess!

  I knew there was something wrong about all those strongholds! Did you ever hear of anyone who got a smell of her?

  But here, right here—

  With us in the wet lands!

  Wait’ll I tell the cousins!

  The princess! She’s alive!

  You know the stories, of how we all fed her as she fled across country, away from the one who wished her ill—

  We fed and hid her—

  Fox and bear and badger and deer and cow and ewe and goat and bitch and wolf bitch and cat and wildcat, we all fed her—

  The stories never said where she fled to!—this from a very young and foolish rabbit, who was instantly pinned to the ground by the weight of disapproval this thoughtless remark brought him. Well, of course not, said a goose, and gave a scornful hiss as she swayed past him and settled nearer the door to the wheelwright’s, wriggling between two sheep and a beaver.

  The princess!

  Our princess!

  I should have brought her a gift—I know where there are some apples—

  —some sweet acorns—

  —some beautiful roots—

  —a squirrel that hasn’t been dead very long—

  Rosie laughed, from wherever she was, in the rolling grey fog, and the laughter stirred her from lethargy, and she looked down. She seemed to be wearing a long dress made out of something as grey as the fog, grey and twinkling, but the fog only glittered in the corners of her eyes, whichever way she looked, and the great sweep of skirt that fell round her glittered and winked all over. She could feel the weight of the dress, heavy as cold iron, which made her stiffen her back against it to hold herself straight, like a horse in its first shoes lifting its feet high in surprise.

  She thought, this is the sort of dress a princess wears; but I am not a princess. I left all that behind, back in the kitchen, with the man holding his sword and dripping water on the floor. I left it behind. I am a horse-leech, and I wear trousers, not heavy clumsy skirts.

  She didn’t want to see the dress, and she put her hands over her eyes; but the weight of it would not go away. She dropped her arms again, already weary of the weight of the sleeves. I left you behind, she said to the dress. I left you behind. I am Rosie, niece and cousin to the two best fairies in the Gig, I live in the wheelwright’s house, Barder’s, who is my friend and my cousin’s husband; I am the friend also of Peony and of—of Narl. I am a horse-leech.

  In her mind she glanced once more at the wheelwright’s kitchen, looked at the kneeling man with loathing, but then she looked away from him, at Barder’s kind thoughtful face, Aunt’s sharp clever one, and at last looked at Katriona, at the tearstains still visible on her face, something like the well-known look of love and anxiety there, but now harsh and bleak and almost despairing. I left you behind, Rosie thought wonderingly, and looked down once more at the dress she was involuntarily wearing.

  Something, some individual twinkle, moved as she looked, and she reached out her hand, and the spider crept onto her extended finger. All will be well, it said, and Rosie said to it, I know your voice. I know you. Who are you?

  The spider didn’t answer.

  Rosie closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and ducked out of the cold heavy dress and slipped back into her body, still standing in the wheelwright’s kitchen, and instantly she felt the warmth of the fire at her back, and the poised, tingling tension in the room. The animals were still talking:

  But—the princess—here—that means—

  Yes.

  Yes.

  But if Rosie is anyone’s princess, she is our princess, and we will keep her.

  We will keep her safe.

  Let the humans do what they can.

  Against the bad one.

  And they will. For she is theirs, too.

  But we will do that which has also to be done.

  As soon as we find out what it is.

  We will find out.

  Yes.

  Ours, sighed many voices.

  Ours to keep.

  Rosie’s eyes were still closed, and among the animals’ voices she heard another voice, and against Rosie’s closed eyelids there seemed to be streaks of lavender and purple and black forming patterns that made Rosie feel dizzy and sick; and then there was another voice, a human voice, a voice that spoke to her of her death and was glad of the prediction. I have found you at last, it said. Found!

  But then the voice changed, faltered, lost its malice, and became familiar—familiar and loved and near at hand. It was Katriona’s voice, and it was calling her name, the name she knew, the only name she knew. Rosie. Rosie, Rosie. She opened her eyes, having forgotten that they were shut. The man, Ikor, no longer knelt at her feet, Katriona had her arm round Rosie’s waist, and Aunt stood next to her and held a cup out toward Rosie, saying, “Drink this. How steady is your hand? Shall I help you?”

  Rosie fumbled back a step, found her chair again, and sat down. A dog head insinuated itself onto her knee—one of Lord Pren’s tall sighthounds, she could almost remember his name, yes, Hroc—and a half-grown puppy, far too large for the job, plunged into her lap, Ralf. Several mice ran up her trouser leg. Flinx, as if it were an accident, sat on one foot (Rosie could feel him hooking his claws into her boot to stay on), and Fwab perched on her head. She took the cup with one hand and then decided to add the other hand to the other side of it, but she drank without assistance, and as the tonic—she recognised the smell from one of Aunt’s little bottles—slid down her throat she thought of the terrible voice she had just heard, and in her mind it infiltrated the name the man Ikor had just spoken: Casta Albinia Allegra Dove Minerva Fidelia Aletta Blythe Domnia Delicia Aureli
a Grace Isabel Griselda Gwyneth Pearl Ruby Lily Iris Briar-Rose. And, looking into Katriona’s face, she understood that it was all true; and understood as well why she had not told her; and bitterly resented it, almost hated her for it, almost hated Katriona. And yet she also knew that she was grateful—humbly, shamingly grateful—to have been just Rosie for almost one-and-twenty years; and she felt that her gratitude was an obligation as heavy as the truth, as heavy as the iron dress.

  It’s true, murmured the animals.

  It’s true.

  She looked at the four human faces looking at her, and stamped one leg, because the mice tickled; her other foot vibrated with Flinx’s purring. She couldn’t remember him ever purring for her before. She stared at Ikor, leaning now against one wall, an owl standing on a shelf just above him, shining white as he shone black and silver, his hand on the hilt of his great curved sword, compassion and wonder in his face. What stories, she said to her friends, what stories about how you all fed the baby princess? What stories about how she fled across country after her name-day?

  Stories, said a number of voices, and Rosie forced herself to remember that animals do not tell stories as humans do. Things told were how to build nests and line dens, how to escape your enemies, how to find or catch your food, and how to do these things while not attracting the wrong sort of attention, which included all human attention. Why? said Rosie. Why did you help her—them? Katriona had brought her home—brought her here. Katriona had been the one from Foggy Bottom who had gone to the princess’ name-day; Rosie knew how every village, every town, had been allowed to send one person. The others from the Gig—Osib from Treelight, Gleer from Mistweir, Zan from Waybreak, Milly from Smoke River—all of them were only too glad to tell stories of their journey, of the name-day, in spite of what had happened to the princess. Katriona never spoke of it at all; it was Flora who had told her that Foggy Bottom’s representative had been Katriona. Rosie, well acquainted with Katriona’s tenderheartedness and distress at the princess’ plight, had thought she knew why she did not talk about her experience.

  Why? she asked again. I do not understand. Why did all of you help?

  There was a rustle of puzzlement through the animals, but the puzzlement was at her for her question. At last the owl said to her, We do not know why. It was the thing to do. The bad one is bad; the sort of human-bad that . . . leaks, like an old bole in the rain. Those of us who saw this knew this; it was there. Our parents and grandparents, if they were there, knew this. You humans use “we” and “all of you” differently. We did not gather together. We gave the story of the bad human-gathering day to our neighbours, and our neighbours to their neighbours, and they and we did what there was to do. The story now is the way of things. It is done.

  You are our princess, said other voices. It is now, not then.

  Aunt. Of course Aunt knew; for Katriona would have come home with the baby princess—with her, herself, Rosie—and told her what had happened; and Katriona had been barely more than a child herself, fifteen, five years younger than Rosie was now. Barder—she could see that Barder had known as well, and for a moment she had to struggle to forgive the three of them for this, that Barder had known, too, for he would not have learnt till later; they would have told him over her, Rosie’s, head, her unknowing head. Barder must have read something of this in her eyes, for he gave her a funny, twisted little smile, weaker than usual, but the familiar smile the two of them had exchanged many times in the last years, as the two ordinary people in a house that held two fairies, a smile of equal parts love and exasperation.

  She was glad she was sitting down, for she could feel tremendous forces shifting inside her, aligning this new, appalling knowledge with everything she knew about herself, and everything she didn’t know: with her memories of cutting her hair when she was four, of falling into a bog when she was ten, of looking into the darkness of the cottage loft when she was fifteen, of finding out that she was in love with Narl when she was twenty; of growing up talking to animals as she talked to people, and not understanding for a surprisingly long time that not everyone did this. She felt as if when she stood up again this immense change would have expressed itself physically somehow; she would be taller or shorter or have six fingers on each hand—as people with fairy blood occasionally did—but no, she was the princess, and her family, her real family, had no magic in it.

  And then her eyes filled with tears, and she threw herself forward into Katriona’s arms (Ralf squeaked, but held his place), Katriona, dearest cousin, sister, mother—and none of these, for Rosie was a princess, the daughter of the king and queen, and no blood at all to Katriona, to Aunt, to Jem and Gilly and Gable, and the loss was suddenly more than she could bear.

  “Oh my dear, my dear,” she heard Katriona saying, “you are still our own Rosie; never doubt it.”

  She cried for what felt like a long time, till her eyes were sandy and her mouth dry, and then she stopped. She wiped her eyes (and Ralf’s back) with a towel that Aunt offered her, and Spear and Hroc licked the bits she missed. When she raised her face from the towel the first thing her eyes fell upon was the little grinning gargoyle that Barder had carved. She remembered the story of the blunted spindles, how the lost princess had been cursed to prick her finger on a spindle—an iron spindle, such as Rosie had never seen—on her birthday, and die of it; and she remembered Katriona’s habit of rubbing her finger down the gargoyle’s nose, for luck or reassurance, and how she, Rosie, had picked the habit up from her.

  The room was very full of animals now: sheep and lambs; a fawn, its mum with her head through the door; several more cats—mostly on the table; rabbits and hares; a grizzled old badger and a smallish young pig; a shiny black cock sitting on the back of Barder’s empty chair, pretending to ignore the glossy cock pheasant, whose tail was longer than his if not so iridescent, on the back of Katriona’s. Birds perched almost everywhere that would hold two clutching bird feet, including the backs of the sheep. There were a few moles pretending to be small humped velvety shadows, and a stoat, looking stubborn, as if his friends and family had tried to talk him out of coming and he had come anyway. Lord Pren’s stallion, Gorse, thrust his head through the window Fwab had opened, and Rosie heard Fast whinnying behind him; and she could hear the teem and seethe of the courtyard, as more beasts came, and more and more and more.

  Water still dripped off the trees and trickled down the roof, but the only other noise was what the animals made. Rosie could hear the giggle of otters, and she heard the pattering thoughts of goats and the more laborious ones of cows, and not far away in the forest there was at least one bear. She looked up as another shadow fell across the doorway, and there was Peony, an expression of astonishment on her face, and a half-grown fox cub in her arms.

  Rosie stood up again, tucking Ralf under one arm; there was now a sparrow sitting on one shoulder, and a grouse on the other; one of the sparrow’s wings clapped against her ear as it kept its balance; Ralf was under that arm. But it was only the tiny prickle of Fwab’s claws against her scalp that was making her eyes water. Two of the mice she had shaken out of her trouser leg had scampered up the outside, and dove into a pocket just before her standing would have shaken them loose a second time. Rosie ran her free hand through her short hair in her old familiar gesture—Fwab, very used to it, hopping in the air just long enough for it to sweep under him—but this time, to those looking on, the resulting fuzzy nimbus looked less like a sunflower and more like a soldier having just removed a battle helmet. Her voice was perfectly steady:

  “We haven’t much time to decide what we will say, for Lord Prendergast’s people will be close behind Gorse and Fast, and the village will be close behind them, as soon as they look out their doors for a breath of air before bed this evening and see the menagerie at the wrights’. My one-and-twentieth birthday is upon us—that is what you are here to say, is it not, Ikor?—and my final doom comes with it, for good or ill. What is it that we must do?”

  Part
Four

  CHAPTER 16

  Again Rosie found herself standing at the strange window of a strange new bedroom, staring out into darkness and a series of roofs, and wondering what was to become of her. But this bedroom was still strange to her after three months, whereas the wheelwright’s house had been home in three weeks.

  The window she stood at now was high up, much higher than any village house, higher indeed than any tree Rosie had ever climbed. Nor were the roofs she looked out on the friendly, ordinary muddle of sheds and outbuildings suitable to a house that had belonged to several generations of village craftspeople, and some rather untidy common land beyond, but a long rolling sea of wings and stableblocks and armories and chapels and bakehouses and dairies and servants’ quarters, and still more walls and roofs that she had no names for, surrounded by beautifully kept parkland and pasture and gardens and poultry runs.

  She was at Woodwold.

  She wished for a cat to be lying nearby, flicking its tail in the starlight and muttering indecipherably. But the tower room—chosen by Lord Prendergast and approved by Ikor—was very high indeed, and the confusion of roofs alarming, even for a cat that liked climbing. It was always quiet up here, but tonight not only did no owls hoot, no horses whinny from the stables, no dogs bark in the grounds: the mice behind the wainscoting and the pigeons under the elegant lacery of the overhanging roof were silent.

  Waiting.

  Tomorrow was the princess’ twenty-first birthday. There was to be a grand ball, the grandest ball anyone had ever seen or heard of, and Rosie, as if from exile or through a wasting illness, remembered the old stories of what the princess’ twenty-first birthday ball would be.

  The courtiers, including (so far) forty-four magicians and twenty-six fairies, had been arriving for the last two months. Ikor, the queen’s fairy’s special emissary, greeted them, and told them what they needed to know; and if any of them doubted him (as the magicians surely did, on principle), none of them challenged him. For the story—the story that was given out by Ikor—was that it had been the queen’s fairy, Sigil, who had saved the princess on her name-day, and who had repulsed Pernicia and devised the princess’ sanctuary. (As a result, fairies all over the country were being treated with a reverence they were quite unaccustomed to, and which the more practical among them found rather a nuisance.)