Spinning Thorns

by Anna Sheehan

  ‘You need a jester’s cap and staff to make a proper joke, Your Majesty. I am not amused.’

  Two more guards came in flanking the king, and he nodded towards the prince. ‘Release him. It’s been enough.’

  One unlocked the chains and the other disconnected them from Ferdinand’s form. Lurking behind the panel, peering through a strategic peep hole, I twisted the strand of gold I had slid into my pocket on my first night’s work. I had never before used my magic to kill a man. It was one of the ways of truly becoming a demon. To use your own magic to snuff out another’s life could twist your mind, twist your magic, turn everything you did to evil, turn you into a warped and dangerous version of yourself. If I had done such a thing as a pure faerie, undimmed by Namelessness, I would have had my name stripped from me for what I was about to do. But what more could they do to me? So my sister was right, and I truly was heading toward evil; able to lie, able to kill, unable to do any good with my powers. If I killed Lesli, every spell I ever performed from this time on would cause harm somewhere. So be it. Will’s life was worth it.

  ‘Is this some cruel trick?’ Prince Ferdinand said from across the wall, ‘Or are you finally going to execute me?’

  ‘On the contrary, my dear Prince. I need you very much alive.’

  Ferdinand gently protected his wounded arm with his uninjured one. ‘Whatever for? To play your fool, or to fight some beast? Win your wars for you? You’ve slaughtered my horse and slain my hawk and hound. I don’t see what good you think I can do for you.’

  ‘Quite a great deal. You’re here with your beloved slumberer, not in the dungeon. I’ve let you relax and recover. I’ve even supplied you with food and drink. Now that I’ve displayed you to the princess, you can be of great value to me. I need you to keep my dear wife in line. Presuming she survives this second test I’ve set her.’

  ‘Another test? What is she to do this time? Turn dirt into diamonds? Starlight into silver? I’m sure she’ll bleed her own blood into rubies just to please Your Majesty.’

  Hiedelen laughed. ‘I thought you might not have been aware of much when I brought you to the princess. Pain has a way of blocking out all else. All I ask of her is the same as before. I’m not so particular as to require more than one wonder from my wife. Please don’t mistake me, Prince Ferdinand. I have no delusions about my young bride-to-be. She is not in the least fond of me.’

  Ferdinand was buying me time, I knew. The spell was difficult to cast. I’d no spindle, and I was not accustomed to killing people. The spell I’d used to subdue the guards at the royal vault was the closest I’d ever gotten, and I’d had a spindle then. The spell would be easiest to cast if I could somehow get the thread about his person, but crossbows would kill me as surely as any other, so I couldn’t attack openly. I couldn’t cast a true invisibility without a spindle, either, and the room was too bright to sneak up on him using a shadow spell.

  The king continued. ‘Until I can wring a child or two out of her, I’ll need you as leverage to keep her in line.’

  ‘You don’t know her,’ Ferdinand said. ‘You don’t need me. She’d care about anyone.’

  ‘Possibly true,’ Hiedelen said. ‘But if that is indeed the case, I can kill you now.’

  One of the guards raised his crossbow.

  Prince Ferdinand stood straight and tall. ‘Do your worst.’ I was impressed. He wasn’t all show, this Ferdinand. I could see why Will loved him.

  Hiedelen laughed and moved his chin. The line of the crossbow changed, pointing instead at the sleeping maiden on the bed.

  ‘Ah, no!’ Ferdinand flung himself upon the bed, shielding her with his body.

  ‘Ah, so there is someone you care about as well,’ Hiedelen said unctuously. ‘What a weakness this affection is.’ My heart twisted. I agreed with Hiedelen. Wretched fondness. I’d heard a saying somewhere; a cat may look at a king, and a knave may love the princess, but only the cat will be satisfied. Something along those lines. It was true enough, in the end. I was wasting my time and my powers on someone who would never throw herself in the path of a crossbow for my sake. No, but she would for Ferdinand. He was straight and tall and honourable as a prince should be – a fitting match for her. I was darkness incarnate.

  ‘So,’ Hiedelen said. ‘Willow will behave because I have you. You will behave, because of her.’ He pointed to the sleeping princess. He looked Ferdinand up and down. ‘I don’t know what tricks my betrothed has been teaching you, but no more demons. I don’t permit magic from just anyone, you know. You might find it more difficult conjuring illusions without any hands.’

  As Hiedelen turned to leave I pulled the knot tight in the golden thread. It should have worked. His throat should have closed as if I had him locked in a noose. Hiedelen thirsted for the gold I created; I should have been able to spin a spell around him without any trouble. Instead the thread snapped in my hand, and I was thrust against the opposite side of the passage by a failed spell.

  Failed spells are a bit like being kicked by a horse. They tend to leave you winded and shaky for quite a while, and sometimes things are broken inside you. Not bones, but it takes a while for one’s magic to settle back into something one can utilize. I gasped and slid down the wall to the ground, my heart beating fiercely. By the Light, what had happened? Hiedelen was protected in some way. Magic slid off his oily personality as water off a duck. Some shadowy power pulsed from him, as if he had a real demon protecting him.

  No wonder he didn’t worry about the Sleep. He knew he was immune.

  After a little time the light brightened, and Ferdinand snuck in beside me. ‘Are you well, my friend?’ he asked. ‘Have you cast your spell? Will we be hearing the death knell of King Lesli at last?’

  I searched for a little while until I found my breath. ‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s protected in some way.’ I grunted. ‘I need … rest. Failed spells are the worst.’

  ‘I’ll fetch you a pillow,’ Ferdinand said. He was actually very thoughtful, and he fetched a pillow and wine and cheese for me. I found myself hating how gallant he was. He was exactly the kind of creature Will deserved. If the kit were older, I wouldn’t have even opposed her considering someone like him as a marriage partner. Finally he left me alone, safely concealed behind the wall, and returned to his beloved slumberer.

  I lay in the darkness for a long time, trying to put myself back together inside. My magic ached, still humming as a metal gate hums when struck by a hammer. It galled me how Ferdinand tended that wretched princess. I could hear him murmuring endearments and comforts when she cried out with nightmare flashes of my life. She couldn’t hear him. Why wasn’t he upstairs, tending Will’s scratches, guarding her virtue as she slept with her exhaustion? I wished I could be. I wished she wanted me there.

  I lay thinking for hours, meditating on Will, on Ferdinand, on Lavender. In the end, I dreamt up a plan. It was not a good plan. Like executing a man with my magic, it was an act that would finally ensure my road to hell, but it didn’t matter. Condemned to Namelessness since I was an infant, in the end there was no way I could have grown to be anything but a demon.

  When I finally closed my eyes it was to a smile. Lynelle had been right all along.

  I took my leave of Ferdinand without making my exit known. I was afraid he’d ask what I meant to do, and it was not something he’d ever permit. As the sun set it took me a little time to find where they had put Will. I knew it would be somewhere in the East Wing. I searched for a while before I realized, if this was to be her final test, it would be the most difficult one.

  Sure enough, she was in the East Ballroom, a room the size of our clan’s grand house before our names were stripped from us. She was sitting on her own in the deepest centre of the thorns. She was dressed this time in hunter’s leather, a wise decision. There were much fewer fresh scratches on and about her, as she wasn’t even trying to wrestle the thorns into submission. As I watched her, she muttered her stilling spell again, but she wasn’t putting her f
ull power behind it. The thorns trembled and shook. ‘Will!’ I hissed.

  She gasped when she looked up at me, and I thought I caught tears in her eyes. ‘You came.’ The words came in a whisper that tore as fiercely as the thorns. She hadn’t thought I would.

  I was stung by her disbelief. ‘Of course I did. Think I’d spend this much effort on you and then leave you to die?’

  ‘Maybe you should,’ she whispered.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I don’t have anything else to pay you with.’

  I blinked. I’d forgotten she didn’t trust me. I’d forgotten that I was supposed to hate her. ‘I’ll think of something,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  Her innocent question annoyed me. Now that I knew the truth, saying anything else was a lie, and lying was painful. Wretched beautiful thing. ‘I like having you in my debt,’ I said, as that was true enough.

  To my surprise she began to cry. ‘Why not you, too?’ she muttered. ‘I have nothing to give you. There is nothing left of me.’

  ‘Oh, Will, that’s not true,’ I said, very quietly.

  I think she heard the tenderness in my tone, because her tears slowed. She sniffed. ‘Have you truly come to help me again?’

  ‘That’s what I said, isn’t it?’

  ‘But why? Why do you keep helping me? What’s in it for you?’

  Your happiness, I thought. ‘I know what I want,’ I said. ‘And you can give it to me.’

  She swallowed. ‘What?’

  I want you to be free. I want you to have the happiness I can never have. I want you to have light and life and love, and I can give you none of that. Except like this. ‘I want …’ The lie burned at my throat, but I forced it out. ‘I want the first born of Lyndaria.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want the heir. The first born.’

  ‘You want my unborn child?’

  ‘What would I do with a baby?’ I glared at her. ‘No. I want your entire kingdom. I want your sister, the heir to the throne.’

  Will went white. ‘What did you say to me?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘But she’s asleep.’

  ‘It’s my spell,’ I retorted. ‘I can deal with it.’ That wasn’t true; I had no idea how to reverse it, and still didn’t really want to.

  ‘Then why don’t you?’

  ‘Because I want your kingdom,’ I said again. The lies were burning my mouth by now, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep it up.

  ‘I can’t agree to this,’ Will said. ‘I’m not the queen.’

  ‘Upon your mother and father’s incapacitation, you are the only capable member of the royal house of Lyndaria. This makes you regent, if not queen.’

  ‘But King Lesli—’

  ‘Burn Lesli!’ I shouted the words, and they rattled the thorns. ‘Do you want to live or don’t you!’

  Will gulped and looked about her, and at that moment the thorns shook off her stilling spell and writhed towards her. I grabbed one of the tendrils and twisted it into a knot. Droplets of my blood trickled down the cane as the thorns stiffened and retreated with my spell as dejected as a slapped puppy. My resolve had increased my powers.

  She stared at me, her eyes wide with something like fear, or awe. I wondered what I looked like. Probably something demonic. ‘I-I do want to live,’ she whispered.

  ‘Done, then!’ I cried, and darted past her, diving for the spinning wheel.

  The lovely old wheel felt familiar in my hands by now, and I almost sighed with relief at the touch of it. I felt more complete with a spinning wheel at my fingertips. It was as if everything came together.

  The spinning of those thorns was the hardest thing I ever did in my life. Before I was halfway through, my strength was failing. Each successive skein took longer and longer to spin. I was red faced and sweating long before I was finished. Finally I took off my hood and jacket. Golden lines of thread were burned onto my vision when I closed my eyes.

  I couldn’t have done it at all but for Will. Long after her stilling spell failed she continued to wrestle the thorns, bringing fresh canes to me again and again. Her leather clothes were sufficient armour against the least insistent of the briars. Once or twice I had to leave my spinning and go to rescue her when a briar had her by the ankle or she was surrounded by writhing thorn canes. She never cried out for my help, always insisting that she could do it herself.

  The birds were beginning to sound in the pre-light of dawn, and I still had at least four more skeins of thread to spin. ‘Hurry!’ Will whispered. Lines of blood caked her face and hands, and her hair was a nest of broken thorns. ‘If they see you here, they’ll kill me all the same.’

  ‘You think I don’t know that?’ I snapped. I twisted the last line of thread and tore off the skein. ‘Give me another briar.’

  She helped me feed more briars into the spinning wheel as the sky turned purple, then red. Only little shreds of light peeked through the briars which were plastered against the vast windows of the ballroom, but it was enough to see that we were running out of time. I could tell that Will wanted to ask me something, but I didn’t have breath or energy left for talk.

  There was still one pernicious bush in the corner where two windows met, probably the mother bush that had spawned all the rest of the briars in the ballroom. ‘I can’t break it!’ she cried out as it grabbed for her.

  ‘I’ll bring the wheel over,’ I said, and tried to get to my feet. I swayed as I stood, my exhaustion gripping me. It was all I could do to stay upright as I grabbed the spinning wheel and dragged it behind me.

  I could see the line of the briar snaking up over her head, but I hadn’t the strength to cry out to her. I dropped the wheel and tried to point, but she was exhausted too, and didn’t understand. Earlier in the night this would never have been a danger. Will was too alert, and I was fast on my feet. But with the sand running out of the hourglass, I had poured almost every ounce of my strength into these blasted skeins of worthless gold, and Will was pale faced and wide eyed with fatigue. The branch wrapped itself around her throat with a satisfied creak.

  Will screamed for all of a second before her air was cut off. Terror gripped me, and that gave me strength. I clutched the spinning wheel and took off across the ballroom running. Will was dangling like a rag doll. The branches creaked and swayed with their prize, and Will had been pulled off her feet, nearly to the ceiling. ‘You will not!’ I shouted at the thorns. Of course they had no reaction, other than to start inching tendrils toward me.

  I kicked at them, feeling no fear. ‘Just hold on!’ I called to the dangling princess. Will thrashed and pulled at the briars, breaking off narrow canes, but the thick branch which held her was past her strength to break. Not past my magic though, I hoped.

  I began pulling canes through the spinning wheel, starting with the central branch, almost a trunk. I was surprised I could get a grip on it, but with a strand of gold to start it, it spun as well as all the others. I tugged. With a shriek of splintering wood the plant cracked. It let Will go, and she tumbled through the air, only to fall on another branch, which promptly wrapped itself around her. At least she could breathe again. I could hear her coughing as I readied myself to pull another cane. ‘The thorns!’ Will choked.

  ‘I know!’ I said, but I spared a glance at her anyway. She wasn’t just informing me of her predicament. She was pointing at me. Two tendrils of briar had worked their way around the front of the spinning wheel. I abandoned the branch and pulled these furtive tendrils into the thread.

  ‘Ah!’ Will cried out then, and I grabbed for the previous branch. I looked up at her, and saw what had caused her cry. A particularly nasty thorn, as long as my hand, had pierced Will’s chest, near her heart. She was gasping around it, and her face was twisted in agony. With a fierce pull I grabbed the base and yanked the entire branch through the wheel. It pulled from her chest with a sucking sound and whirred through the wheel, scratching my cheek as it came pa
st me. Another branch, and another. Only a few more to go.

  Will was dangling over me now, her eyes wide with fear, and her blood fell on my hands. It was bright red, not the deep red blood of a wound, but the true heart’s blood of a slaughterhouse. It slowed my work, but I wasn’t about to let it stop me. The briars trembled and shook, as if they knew their time was up. One sneaked around my arm, but I couldn’t let go of the branch which held Will. It had her by the throat again, and she was losing too much blood. I pulled the branch through the wheel and Will was thrown against the wall as it surged. She slid down and landed awkwardly on her hip.

  The last branch was firmly embedded in my flesh, and I wrenched it out with a cry of pain as I forced it through my wheel, through my magic, and onto my spindle. I let the wheel stop and I sagged as I let my magic die. Where had I found the strength at the end? I panted and pulled my eyes to Will, who lay crumpled on the floor, blood streaming from her chest.

  I knew where I had gotten the strength, because the sight of her brought more. I crawled my way to her side and pulled her to me. She was only semi-conscious. Her mortal blood stained my hands. The wound in her chest was too deep, she was losing too much blood. That blood was so bright – I’d never seen blood so bright from any creature that had lived. I had to close the wound somehow. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t reach the magic, I had no strength at all. No! It wasn’t fair! I sobbed with the injustice of it all, and tried to find a reserve of strength within me.

  There wasn’t one.

  No. I refused to accept that. I’d survived brutal winters and furious mobs and starvation and illness and I wasn’t about to give up when it came to this terrible, wonderful, misfit princess. We hadn’t come this far to have it end now, at her moment of victory. I reached behind me and yanked at the spinning wheel. It toppled over, but the spindle turned, and a line of golden thread rolled towards me. This thread had a rose tint, alloyed with her heart’s blood, and the blood from my bleeding hands. I grabbed it and yanked it from the spindle. I went through the motions of twisting it into a spell, but despite the blood-charged thread, there was no power in my knots. It was futile.