Unspun

by Ruth Nickle

  Her feet found the ladder, and she swung the door shut behind her. Climbing down, she huddled in the corner, her only light the green glow from the jewel. It shined off the wall and the hay. And then she saw it, the reason why the prince had made her swear to stay away years ago. There, among the dirt, mixed in with the hay, a skull stared up at her.

  Fog seeped from the cracks in the floorboards above, twisting through the hay and revealing even more bones. The air around her started to chill. Light bloomed from the emerald around her neck as wisps of fog wrapped around the bones on the floor, lifting them into the air to form the shape of a small man.

  “Ah . . . ” The image breathed. “If only I could smell the sweet mint and sunshine one last time.”

  Tessa’s heart froze and she fell to her knees as she recognized her father. Tears of disbelief streamed down her cheeks.

  The light from the emerald grew brighter and brighter until it was nearly blinding. The image of the man began to dim.

  “Father? Father, no! Please! I need you! Please don’t leave me,” Tessa cried out.

  “My sweet child, finally I have peace. You have reclaimed what was once mine and is now yours.” He bent down and kissed her forehead, but instead of the warmth she had been expecting, there was nothing.

  “And now, my little one, my spirit must leave. But remember, as long as you have the jewel, a piece of me will always be with you.” She wanted to scream at him to stay, wanted to wrap her arms around the bones and demand answers. But there was no use. Her father was fading, leaving her yet again. The room filled with light and cold until the air seemed to burst.

  She covered her face with her arm until it was dark once more. Curling into herself, she sobbed. Why were his bones buried there, deep within the castle and under the castle floorboards? A weight so heavy she felt she would never again be able to stand settled into her bones. The trapdoor above her rattled. It creaked open and light spilled in.

  The faces of two guards looked down at her.

  They took her by the arms and dragged her out of her hiding place. She raged as one of the guards reached for the necklace, straining her muscles against their iron grasp, biting and kicking and screaming. They couldn’t take it away. Not the one piece she had left of her father.

  * * *

  Tessa had hoped that her father would appear at the castle, that he would run to her, embrace her, and then take her away from this place. Each day she would go to the woman who had found her and ask if she had heard any word. All the woman ever replied was that she couldn’t possibly know where to look or who to ask for without a name.

  Each night Tessa would stay awake, searching her mind for some shred of a memory. Something that would give her a clue as to what her father’s name could have possibly been. She had only ever called him Papa. All she remembered was that he had told her a name was something special. Something sacred. And so she would drift off to sleep, tears clinging to her lashes while the name slipped through her thoughts.

  One night, however, she remembered something. An R. The next morning, Tessa worked up the courage to ask everyone for different names that began with the letter. She asked those who had barely given her a second glance and even those who never looked upon her at all, the maids, the cook, even the stable hands. Most ignored her, some shooed her away, and the rest gave names that didn’t spark her memory. Names like Reagan and Ryan.

  By the sixth day, she finally gathered the courage to ask those who hated her most. The children in her class. They were the ones she had once hoped to call friends but who instead laughed at her pale skin and dark hair. They were those who mocked her size and couldn’t understand why she, an orphaned pet of the prince’s nursemaid, was allowed to attend the school.

  With trembling knees and a wavering resolve, she walked toward the group of children during a break in the lesson. She stood at the end of the long wooden table, still too afraid to speak, when a boy took note of her.

  “What do you want, Crow?” The boy looked at her as if she were a fly on his meat. She tried to swallow but her mouth felt dry.

  “I . . . I was wondering if—”

  “Speak up, Crow!” the boy said, throwing his apple core at her while another boy cawed.

  She wanted to go hide, but she needed to know. She had to try to figure out who her father was.

  “Can you think of any names that begin with the letter R?” she managed to ask.

  “Ruben,” someone said. Another chimed in with “Robin and Ranaldo.” “Rhinoceros!” a boy exclaimed, to a chorus of laughter.

  The teasing made her shrink deep down into herself. She ran from the room then. Stopping in the hallway to balance herself against the wall, she closed her eyes to the tears she could not hide.

  “What’s wrong, Princess?” The prince’s voice came from behind her. At fifteen, his voice was getting deeper.

  She turned to see him standing a few feet away, a ray of sunshine in her bleak world. Her chin wobbled, and he closed the distance between them.

  “My father . . . He is never coming to get me.” She covered her face to hide her tears.

  With a rare gentleness, he lowered her hands then lifted her chin until their eyes met. “But you have me, Princess. And you know what? We’re better than any family.” He guided her into his embrace and kissed the top of her head as she cried on his shoulder.

  * * *

  Tessa ran a hand across her cheek to wipe away the last of the guards’ spit. The vile insults and names they spewed upon her as they dragged her down to the dungeon could not compare to the damage done to her broken heart. The pain had been great at first. It had left her huddled in tears. But now? Now she sat on the cold, hard ground of the prison cell and felt nothing. Her father was gone, dead, and now the emerald was gone as well.

  Her hope had extinguished.

  While she sat alone in the cell, everything started to come together. The stories of the queen being able to spin straw into gold. The hushed whispers of a little man who had helped her do it. Those were the tales that were forbidden. The tales she only ever heard snippets of. But now it all made sense. The queen had used Tessa’s father. She had made him her slave, and then once she had figured out the source of his power, she had killed him for it.

  “Little Crow?” The prince’s voice broke through the darkness, making Tessa’s head jerk up in response. He came closer until the light from the window lit half his face, shining in one of his blue eyes. His hands clasped the bars between them. She looked away.

  “My mother is fading. It’s as if that jewel she wore was somehow poisoning her while feeding her at the same time. Her skin is . . . ” he paused. “It’s gray and wrinkled. Her hair is falling out. If father was still alive, well . . . I’m not sure what he would do, but Tessa, do you . . . ” He paused as if he couldn’t believe what he was about to ask. “Do you know if her necklace can heal her?”

  “Her necklace?” she spat the words, finally looking up at him. “You mean the one she stole from my father?”

  At least the prince had the decency to look surprised by her accusation. Then with a sigh, he shrank as if the weight of a thousand worlds hung from his shoulders. “Please, Tessa. Please. You, more than anyone else, know that I know how cruel she can be.” His jaw clenched as if remembering her sharp tongue and wicked strikes. “But, Tessa, she is my mother.”

  The look in his eyes nearly undid her: The hurt of a little boy.

  “I cannot be sure. The jewel was my father’s, not mine. I’m . . . I’m sorry I cannot help you more.”

  Unable to stop herself, she stood and made her way over to stand in front of the prince. She touched his hand that clenched one of the bars between them. “I didn’t mean to do it. I . . . I just couldn’t help myself.” More than anything, she wanted the prince to open the cell door and embrace her, wanted to feel his warmth, his safety.
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  He swallowed hard. “There is something else.” He looked down as if he couldn’t bring himself to meet her eyes. “If I could stop it, oh stars, if I could stop it, I would. Believe me I would.” His voice cracked on the last word while the only tear she had ever seen him shed rolled down his cheek. He coughed as if it were the only way he could get the rest of his words out. “Oh, Princess,” he said, finally looking up, his eyes rimmed in red. “You are to be hanged.”

  Cold dread slipped down Tessa’s back, but she remained still, expressionless. What could she say? What could she do? Quiet tears, the empty useless things, streamed down her face. And in spite of herself, she wanted to live.

  * * *

  Happiness had always seemed like such a foreign thing to Tessa. Something she saw in others but couldn’t quite grasp. And yet as she sat hugging her knees in the middle of the meadow where the sun melted like warm honey around her and the grass whispered its hellos, she could feel its once familiar embrace.

  The meadow was her place of peace where time moved slower. As she watched the dandelion blossoms float languidly through the air, she heard someone walking up behind her. She didn’t need to turn around to know it was the prince. He was the only other one who knew where this place was. Years ago, when she and the prince were playing, they had found it deep within the woods. Ever since that day, she went there whenever the kingdom became too much for her. It wasn’t too far away, but far enough as to not hear all the noise and feel all the chaos.

  The prince sat down beside her. He settled in the grass and put an arm around her. She leaned into him and there they sat for the longest moment without a word spoken between them. This, she thought, was what true happiness was. If she could have this impossible daydream for the rest of her life, she would be content.

  But he was the prince and she was nothing more than an orphan. She would have to be satisfied with the sun and the wind and her daydreams.

  * * *

  Gray clouds were smudged across the sky, blocking the sun and the warmth. The wind was too harsh, too cold. The coarse rope was itchy around Tessa’s neck while the trembling of her legs made the stool she stood on wobble against the wooden platform.

  A bell tolled in the distance.

  “The queen!” The voice rang out above the crowd. “The queen is dead!”

  The stool was kicked out from under Tessa. The rope cut into her neck. One last breath; her lungs and throat turned to thunder. She kicked her feet, but it only made the pressure and the pain worse. Her vision began to blur, fading in and out.

  The bell tolled once more.

  “Wait!” The prince’s voice sounded. “Stop! By order of your new king, I command you to release her!”

  The world turned black. The burning stopped.

  Tsar Vislav, Tsarina Vislav, and the Firebird

  by Sarah Chow

  Tsar Vislav nervously rubbed one of the golden apples in the basket on the bureau. He’d been in the midst of his nightly routine when Tsarina Vislav returned from her retreat, and his chances of getting peacefully to bed were dwindling fast.

  “I take my first month away from home—ever—and what do I come home to?” she shouted. “House in an uproar. One son married, two sons dead, new horse stabled in my horse’s spot, and a shrieking bird in the bedroom!” She jabbed a finger at the luminescent firebird perched in a golden cage beside the dresser.

  The tsar gripped the apple. “This was not how I intended things to go, my sweet pear. Please do try to understand.”

  “Understand?” the tsarina shouted. “When I left we were dealing with nothing more than a simple thief taking your precious golden apples from the orchard. I come back to complete madness!”

  “My sweet cherry,” the tsar said. “As soon as you left, I sent our oldest son into the orchard at night to watch for the thief, but he slept and saw nothing. So the next night I sent our second son to watch for the thief, but he too slept all night and saw nothing. On the third night I sent our third son, Prince Ivan. He managed to stay awake all night and discover that it was actually this firebird coming to eat the apples. So the boys went off after the firebird.”

  “You mean to say, you sent them,” the tsarina muttered.

  The tsar pretended he had not heard this remark. “Prince Ivan returned with not only the firebird, who belonged to Tsar Feliks, but also with a horse with a golden mane, who belonged to Tsar Afron, and with the lovely Helen the Beautiful, daughter of Tsar Hedeon. Prince Ivan’s brothers were jealous of his success and attacked him, so naturally he killed them both, and he has now wed Helen the Beautiful and left on his honeymoon.”

  The tsarina’s voice dropped suddenly, soft and menacing. “And did no one even think to invite me to my own son’s wedding?”

  “I tried to delay the wedding until your return. Truly, I did. But Prince Ivan simply would not wait.”

  The tsar rubbed his temples. “Honestly, I don’t understand why you’re so angry, my sweet peach. Prince Ivan won all these marvelous treasures through his cleverness and daring. Most tsarinas would be proud.”

  The tsarina huffed. “A thousand blessings on our youngest son, but ‘clever’ and ‘daring’ are not words even our most flattering servants would use to describe him.”

  The tsar glanced around for support, but the only sound was a squawk from the firebird, so the tsar simply said, “He’s a remarkable young man.” It sounded unconvincing, even to his own ear.

  The tsarina raised an eyebrow. “The kidnapped princess I can understand. Dramatic, but that seems to be the trend with young men these days. The horse I can understand. A bit ostentatious, but a good mode of transportation. The murdered brothers I can understand. Brutal, but there’s certainly precedent for that among royal families. But a FIREBIRD? Seriously? You mark my words, that bird will be the ruin of us all.”

  At that the tsar protested in earnest, “Are you questioning the quest? We simply had to catch him. He was stealing my golden apples!”

  The tsarina was unmoved. “So you brought it back here. And now what does it eat?”

  The tsar shifted a little so he was standing in front of the golden apples on the bureau.

  “I thought so,” she said. “Well, if you love your precious apples so much, you can just sleep out in the orchard with them tonight.”

  And that was that.

  * * *

  The tsar did not have a comfortable night in the apple orchard. His retinue brought out the second-best velvet blanket and the second-softest royal pillow from the royal linen closet. Even so, there was something entirely unnatural about sleeping out of doors. One of the lesser pages held an umbrella over the tsar’s head to keep off potential rain. He tossed and turned, longing for the polished cedar walls of his bedroom.

  Before long, an entire orchestra of crickets struck up their music from the branches of the nearest tree. “How on earth,” the tsar muttered to himself, “did my first two sons manage to sleep through such a racket?”

  A few hours later a dewdrop slid off the page’s umbrella and struck the tsar’s neck. “It would take a feat of will to sleep through this! Perhaps I should have commended my other sons who slept out here all night rather than Prince Ivan who stayed awake and saw the firebird.”

  * * *

  At breakfast, the tsarina sat at the farthest end of the table, her hair still rolled in curlers.

  “I didn’t sleep a wink,” she complained, jabbing the toast with her butter knife. “That gleaming bird was so bright I could see it with a pillow over my face.”

  The tsar thought it unwise to compare their sleeping arrangements, but he could not resist defending the firebird. “You must admit the firebird is beautiful, my sweet blackberry.”

  “The firebird is absurd,” the tsarina said. “Its cage, on the other hand, is beautiful. If you could just get the bird out of it long enough to admire
the gold workmanship and the jewels. Maybe if you kept a pigeon in it . . . ”

  The tsar dropped the argument. “Would you join me, my sweet grape, for a ride this afternoon? I would love to see you ride the horse with the golden mane.”

  “You mean the horse that was stabled in my horse’s stall when I returned last night?”

  “Prince Ivan thought you would like the horse,” the tsar said. “He was Tsar Afron’s finest beast. He’s stabled in your stall because he is a gift for you.” Prince Ivan had not actually said this, but under the circumstances, Tsar Vislav thought Prince Ivan would not mind if Tsarina Vislav rode the horse. At least sometimes. “My sweet currant, his bridle is encrusted in rubies and his mane is purest gold.”

  “I don’t care what color its mane is, I was quite satisfied with my horse.”

  * * *

  At one o’clock the Tsarina Vislav met Tsar Vislav in the stables, now without curlers on her head.

  The tsar grinned his most winning smile. “You look lovely, my sweet plum.”

  The tsarina rolled her eyes.

  Tsar Vislav half expected her to refuse to ride the horse with the golden mane, but she mounted and set off before he could get astride his own black stallion.

  After an hour, Tsarina Vislav stopped trying to outpace the tsar and slowed to ride beside him. She was still staring straight ahead, though, so he kept his eyes on the magnificent bridle, all braided with gems, that she held in her hands.

  At last Tsar Vislav broke the silence. “How was your retreat?”

  Tsarina Vislav sighed wistfully. “Glorious. The food was absolutely divine. I finished a mountain of quilts, two wall hangings, and even some horse blankets. With those peasant clothes you got me, no one even suspected I was a tsarina. I blended right in with all the ladies there. And I connected instantly with these three other women, Katya and Uliana and Bella. I finally have some friends who really understand me.”