Spinning Thorns

by Anna Sheehan

  ‘No, there wasn’t,’ I said. ‘There was rampant lawfulness. All the governmental officials had the right to do as they pleased, without superiors to report their atrocities to. People were tortured to death for littering in the streets.’

  She glared at me. ‘That can’t be true.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Where did you read this?’

  I blinked. I was letting my age show. ‘Never mind. Are you going to help me with this, or do I get to go home?’

  The princess frowned, then squared her shoulders. ‘What exactly did you have in mind?’

  ‘If you can get them to open the door of the vault, I can sneak inside and use the spinning wheel to get us, and it, out.’

  She looked at me, annoyed. ‘I wish you’d told me that in my chambers,’ she said, and she ran off on me, leaving me staring after her in bemusement. I finally shrugged. Either she’d be back or she wouldn’t, and either way it wasn’t my problem.

  A while later she came back, her hair fixed and a cloak over her arm, sans shadow spell. Something glittered in her hand. As she walked past me she whispered, ‘You coming?’ but she didn’t look at me. I twisted my own shadow spell into my hair and followed along behind. She approached the vault without fear. ‘Open up, please. The jewels selected for tomorrow are unacceptable.’

  The guards bowed. ‘We weren’t informed by your mother, Highness.’

  ‘You think with all this she has time to do this personally?’ She held up a glittering diamond necklace that reminded me of Winnowinn’s glacier. ‘This is far too ornate for a time of mourning. I’ve come to exchange it for my grandmother’s sapphire.’ She held up a large brass key. ‘I have the second key.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the guard. ‘I suppose that’s all right, then.’

  Then he actually turned and inserted a key into one of two locks in the vault. Apparently it took both the guard and a member of the royal family to open the vault. Willow opened the other lock, and she held the barred door open wide for a moment before she entered. A moment in which a dark shadow slipped into the vault before her.

  For the first time I touched the spinning wheel. I felt a hum as I touched it, a cold, calculating efficiency. There was no hatred, no desperate vengeance in my aunt’s spinning wheel, such as had created my own Sleep. Just sheer willfulness and relentless determination.

  While Will made a big show of exchanging the ornate diamond necklace for a more plain and older-fashioned one of diamond and sapphire, I pulled a ragged thread from my hood and threaded it through the mother-of-all, creating a leader line. I had thought, when I first saw the wheel, that it was maintained by the palace staff, but I knew at a touch that the longevity of this wheel was entirely my aunt’s doing. The machine fairly dripped with magic, as if it had been immersed in oil. Magic to keep the dust off, to keep the joints oiled, to keep the leather drive solid and in place on the flyer and the fly wheel. I snatched a spindle from the lower rack and screwed it into place, keeping one ear on the guards.

  Being surrounded by iron did sap my strength a little, but I had more than enough to twist the wheel widdershins and tighten the leader line, using that twist to tighten the blood vessels in their throats. As the blood was cut off from their brains their heads began to weave dizzily. With a silent nod, they both lost consciousness and fell to the ground.

  Will caught one of them as he fell, but the other collapsed against the cage, making the whole thing rattle and slamming the iron shut around us. I felt sick. ‘There!’ I said, still holding the thread. ‘Get me out of here.’

  Will lowered the guard carefully and opened the door of the cell. ‘What did you do to them?’

  ‘If you want them to die, by all means, keep me here chatting,’ I said. ‘We don’t have much time.’

  She stepped quickly over the guard, and I released the leader thread, letting their blood flow freely once again. Their colour returned instantly. Their consciousness wasn’t far behind, I knew. I hoisted the wheel against my chest, like carrying a chair, and like carrying a chair, it was awkward and hindering. I came through the cell door backwards, and Will ran ahead of me … in the wrong direction. ‘Where are you going?’ I hissed. ‘The exit is that way!’

  ‘No it isn’t,’ Will said, and she pressed a wooden panel on the wall. With silent hinges, the wall twisted on itself, leaving a gap two abreast, into which she disappeared. With a blink of surprise I followed after her, hoping there was enough space within the wall for the spinning wheel.

  There was, but only barely. As the guards groaned with their revival Will closed the panel behind us, leaving us in comparative darkness. ‘What did you do?’ Will whispered to me.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Just put them out.’

  ‘How?’

  Explaining that I could have done the same thing by squeezing their throats didn’t seem like the best thing to say at that point. ‘It doesn’t matter. They’ll wake up any second.’

  ‘Unless the Sleep takes them while they’re out.’

  Shrug. ‘Not my concern. Is this your secret exit?’

  ‘Down there, turn left, second right, third right, then—’

  ‘Inside the walls?’ I asked.

  She nodded her head. ‘Let me go first,’ she said, and then tried to get past me. The spinning wheel made that difficult in the cramped passage. She twisted then turned, but she was not a narrow figure, and the magic on the wheel resisted any attempt to climb over it.

  ‘Oh, for Light’s sake!’ I reached over the wheel and hoisted her off her feet, sliding her backwards over the wheel, which spun in protest. She gasped. I don’t think she’d been picked up since she was a child. Anyone less strong than a faerie would have had a tough time of it. For a stunned moment she stood in the dark, my hands still holding her ribs beneath her large, warm arms. I could feel her breathing. I deliberately released her. ‘Your exit?’ I said pointedly.

  It took her a moment to find her voice. ‘Right. This way.’ She turned and headed down the passage, leaving me to drag the spinning wheel behind me.

  It wasn’t pitch dark. Occasional stars of light shone through the walls as breathing or spying holes let air and sound into the passage. It smelled musty, and I could see spider webs in the corners, but it was evident that someone tended here, or it would have been filthy. ‘What is this place?’

  ‘Shh,’ she said. ‘Whisper. These are the escape routes,’ Will said. ‘They’re to enable us to escape a siege or a coup. Only the royal family knows about them.’ She walked on a short ways before looking back at me. ‘You realize I’m trusting you with a pretty big secret, here, right?’

  I frowned. ‘You’re trusting me?’

  ‘Yea.’

  Well, that showed poor judgement. There probably wasn’t anyone in the country who hated her and her family more. ‘Why?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Probably because I need your help.’ She looked back toward me in the gloom, but I doubted her human eyes could see me. ‘And you do keep helping me.’

  I tried not to choke. I did keep helping her, almost entirely against my will. It was bizarre. ‘Don’t count on it,’ I said, brusquely. ‘I expect payment.’

  ‘You’ll get it,’ she said. ‘All three volumes of The Zarmeroth Cycle, I promise you.’

  I sniffed. ‘I’d better.’

  We travelled the rest of the way in silence. Eventually she twisted round a corner and stopped so abruptly that I bumped into her. I sniffed as the smell of roses in her hair caressed my nose. ‘This is it. You’d better stand back, the thorns are pretty querulous just now.’

  I dutifully stood back and let her open the door. I should have put her behind me and opened it myself. The moment the door opened there was a creak and a shriek, and four tendrils of thorns lashed out at the princess. She stepped back with a gasp and tried to close the door, but two of the canes were already through, and, as if the hands of a vengeful army, they started prying the door back open. ‘Sorry!’ Will panted
, wrestling with the door and the thorns that were reaching for her wrist. ‘I told you they’ve gotten more aggressive!’

  ‘Maybe you should recite the stilling spell before you open the door?’ I asked, keeping the spinning wheel well behind me. I couldn’t risk it getting grabbed by the thorns, or we’d never get out of here.

  Will took a deep breath and muttered the spell. With a quiet sigh the thorns wiggled and then settled, as if tucking themselves into bed. ‘Good,’ I said. I pulled open the door to a solid wall of thorns. ‘Now. Sit down, and don’t get in my way.’

  She slid sideways past me, enveloping me in another cloud of rose scent. She did not dart past me as quickly as I would have wished – likely her size made it difficult in the narrow passageway, and her skirts were tangled in the thorns that had attacked her. She hesitated against me as she extricated herself from the briars, and for another heated moment I felt her practically in my arms. Something about it reminded me of Lynelle, and rage surged inside me. ‘Get off me!’ I growled, and I heard her murmur an apology as she twisted away down the corridor.

  Trembling with rage from that burst of memory, I grabbed for a handful of the quiescent briars. I twisted the selection of thorns into the leader thread. Ignoring the prickles on my fingers I tested the tension, positioned my foot on the treadle, and threw the wheel forward. With a leap of a living thing the thorns pulled from my fingers as if they were nothing more solid than threads of flax, the magic inherent in my spinning, and in my aunt’s faerie spinning wheel, pulling the stiff wooden briar canes into a soft and pliable fibre before it spun them into thread, which in turn was pulled around the spool.

  Will watched me for three pulls, her eyes growing wide. ‘What are you—’

  ‘Quiet.’

  It was strange spinning the thorns. I had spun grasses and even pine needles into ropes and thread and – once – into gold, but the thorns welcomed the spinning in a way I had not expected. Whatever they were turning into – and I hadn’t decided, I’d simply spun the briars and let them decide what they wished to be – was heavy and very smooth, almost more like silk than flax. But whatever they wanted to be, it certainly drew the power from me. If I hadn’t been sheathed in darkness I could tell I’d be glowing brightly from the amount of magic that surged through me. I couldn’t spare much attention from the spinning itself, because within a few moments the thorns awoke from their enforced sleep and started thrashing at Will again. She muttered the stilling spell again without being asked, and I spared a glance of thanks in her direction. While I could have muttered the spell myself while I spun, it was tricky holding two spells at once, particularly handling this much power.

  Spinning a path through the thorns took about an hour, while the moon rose quietly in a cloud-studded sky. Rather than carefully ply the threads I made – I was only trying to get us through, after all – I pulled them whole off the spool whenever it grew full, leaving the threads in tangled little nests behind us as we progressed through the forest of briars.

  Then, with a final cracking of canes, with one last pull of the wheel, we were through. I hoisted the spinning wheel out of easy reach of the thorns and stepped back. My shoulder ached icily, and my neck had a crick in it. I hadn’t spun so much in a long time. The wheel was a joy to touch, but that much spinning was no mean feat when you were performing magic along with it.

  Will had followed silently along as I’d inched my way through the forest of thorns, and she followed me now. She held a little nest of thread in her hand. Like everything else, it was silver and blue in the moonlight. ‘What did you turn this into?’ she mused.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said. I wasn’t sure myself, I had only let the thorns take on the form they wanted. ‘Flax probably. Or something like it.’

  ‘It’s heavy,’ she said.

  ‘Forget it,’ I said, snatching it from her. I jammed the thread into my pocket and hoisted up the spinning wheel. I positioned the wheel under a tree which would keep the snow off it. It was just too big to take with us. ‘Make sure you fetch this when you get back,’ I said. ‘Or rest assured, I will.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said, and strode on ahead of me, her feet squeaking in the snow.

  I caught up to her fairly quickly. ‘You don’t know where you’re going.’

  ‘The enchanted forest, I presume,’ Will said.

  ‘Yes, but where?’

  ‘That’s where you come in.’

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  We lapsed into silence for a long time. She had a long stride. It felt very odd to me. I rarely walked anywhere with anyone. I kept myself hunched to hide my height, but I hardly needed to with Will so tall. Her legs were almost as long as mine.

  I could feel her looking at me, long sidelong glances before turning back to herself. Then she’d look again. I was waiting for her to speak long before she finally opened her mouth. ‘What did you do back there?’

  ‘Got you through the hedge,’ I said. ‘That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’

  ‘But what kind of magic was it? I’ve never even read anything about it.’

  ‘I suspect all the books on spinning magic were the first to be burnt.’

  She shrugged. ‘Probably.’ She stared at me, her brow furrowed. ‘So how did you learn it?’

  I turned to look at her. ‘I promised to bring you to Mistress Cait, Princess,’ I said, ‘not to give you a treatise on my personal history.’

  She looked away. ‘Sorry,’ she said, but I could tell she didn’t mean it. I strode on ahead. ‘Ahm,’ she said, utterly unable to keep quiet. ‘Re—’

  I whirled on her. ‘What?’

  She swallowed. ‘I only wanted to thank you again for coming tonight,’ she said. ‘They really were going to kill me.’

  This was getting on my nerves. ‘Stop – thanking me for that!’ I said, my words clipped with anger.

  She swallowed. ‘You regret it,’ she said.

  Her wide grey eyes caught me as she said that. I glared. ‘Saving the life of a Lyndarian princess was not on my list of aspirations, no.’ I strode on ahead.

  Her next words came quietly, calmly, with neither pleading nor anger. With mere curiosity she asked, ‘Why do you hate me?’

  Damn. ‘Who says I hate you?’

  ‘You do,’ she said. ‘Every time you glare at me and snap at me like some fox puppy. You turn disgusted whenever you get close to me.’

  I closed my eyes. ‘It’s just my nature.’

  ‘You’ve a very strange nature,’ she said. ‘Are all magicians misfits?’

  I looked at her sidelong. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you’re obviously not your average run-of-the-mill Lyndaroner. And I …’ She looked down at her ill fitting dress with distaste, ‘I don’t fit anywhere.’

  I scoffed. ‘You know where you fit. You’re a princess. You know who you are.’

  She frowned. ‘I guess,’ she said. ‘That doesn’t mean I find it comfortable.’

  I strode on ahead, at faerie speed. ‘Do you intend to talk all night, or would you like to get to Caital’s tower before daybreak?’

  Will ran a few steps, and then fell into step beside me. We continued on to the enchanted forest in silence.

  I didn’t take her anywhere near our burrow this time. I took a more direct route and we approached the forest from the north-west. Here the smaller, younger trees had been cleared for the road, so there was no buffer of normalcy between the blank white canvas of the winter fields and the sudden city of enchanted trees. The enormous trees were shrouded in cloaks of snow, and sparkled prettily in the moonlight. I strode into the shadows beneath the trees without a blink, but Will hesitated. I glanced back at her. ‘Are you coming?’ I asked.

  She stared up and up at these trees, wide around as towers and taller than her palace. ‘Yes,’ she said finally. ‘Yes, I am.’ The snow squeaked under her feet as she took the final few steps into the forest. Then the sound faded as the magic of the forest turned the
snow into a thin white carpet.

  ‘I’m coming to see Mistress Cait,’ I announced to the trees.

  ‘What are you—’

  ‘Shh! I bring the Princess Willow Lyndal with me.’

  The trees moved with the wind a bit, shedding quiet handfuls of snow. ‘Proceed,’ they whispered.

  ‘What, no wolf this time?’ The trees didn’t answer me. I shrugged. ‘Guess that’s all we get. Come on.’

  ‘Who were you talking to?’ Will asked.

  ‘The trees,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you hear them?’

  ‘The wind?’

  I looked at her. She truly hadn’t heard the whisper. ‘Caital won’t let us through unless we ask,’ I said. ‘They told us to proceed.’

  ‘Oh.’ She gestured me ahead. ‘I guess we go on, then.’

  ‘Stay behind me,’ I said. ‘I don’t trust this place. I’m not sure Cait’s all there, really.’

  It took a long time to get through the forest. The night was growing colder, and the wind had picked up. Even before it started to snow I had noticed Will growing perceptibly slower. ‘Can you hurry up?’ I asked her.

  She squared her shoulders and picked up her pace, but I knew she was putting up a front. It was very cold. I found it cold, and Will wasn’t a faerie. The frozen numb pain in my shoulder had spread down my arm, and I kept flexing my fingers to keep it at bay. Will kept huddling down into her cloak. When she started to shiver, I wanted to lose my temper. Instead, I found myself becoming worried. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, but her teeth were clenched to keep them from chattering.

  When the snow began to fall, at first I was glad. Usually that meant the temperature would climb a bit. No such luck. The wind caught the snowflakes and blew them against the skin like shards of glass. It began as just an annoyance. I pulled my hood low over my brow and lifted the mantle over my face. Soon the whirling snow was a positive torment. Will was wrapped so deeply in her fine cloak that I could barely see her eyes. That cloak. It may have been warm, but it wasn’t made for heavy work. It wasn’t meant to withstand a blizzard. Which was what this snowstorm was rapidly becoming. I growled at the trees. ‘You aren’t making this very easy, you know!’ I shouted at them.