Spinning Thorns

by Anna Sheehan

  Will shuddered under my hands, and her heart stopped. Everything stopped. Her eyes gazed unseeing at the ceiling. In that moment, she was dead. She was still warm, but she’d lost too much. It was over. All that would come now was the death rattle.

  Will was dead, and suddenly it didn’t matter any more that I couldn’t do anything for her. She’d been doing it all along – exhausting herself, draining her own reserves with her magic. I couldn’t reach the innate power I’d always had access to, but nothing could separate me from myself. I reached inside me and fuelled the spell with my own life force. I probably speeded up my ageing process by a fifth with that spell, shortened my life span by near a hundred years, and I didn’t care. The twisted thread reached out from my hands, flowing into the wound, binding it closed as if with needle and thread.

  It hurt. If I had peeled my own skin off to save her, it wouldn’t have hurt as much. It hurt too much to even scream, but I held it. Where my golden spell bound her, she healed instantly, the power of my own life restoring hers. Her heart stuttered, and then beat steadily. Will gasped and coughed blood, and her eyes flickered, life returning to her. The spell was finished. I collapsed.

  For long moments I let myself lie half on top of her, feeling her breathing beneath my cheek, listening to her still beating heart. It was such a wonderful sound. The smell of roses was swallowed by dust and leather, sweat and blood, but the feeling of her life beneath me was the most wonderful thing in the world. After a little time she shifted, and I let my weight drag myself from her. I curled on the floor, and Will’s hand reached up and touched my cheek. My eyes flickered open and I stared at her. She was covered in blood, her throat bruised, her eyes shadowed. But she was wonderfully, beautifully alive. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered.

  And at that moment, the door opened.

  Chapter 20

  Will

  With a sudden reflex of panic Will cast her shadow spell. She was not even sure how she figured out, in that second, how to cast it on another, or how to cast it without using all the words, but she did it. In the time it took the men to unlock the door and enter in force she had cast the spell on Reynard and forced herself up using the wall. She had to get away from him, or someone would notice the disconnected shadow lying beside her. She inched her way along the wall.

  The door had been opened by a guard, who came in and stared in wonder at the skeins of gleaming gold in the otherwise empty ballroom. Two more guards pushed past him, and another figure knocked him aside without apology. It was Prince Ferdinand. He looked far better than Will had seen him last. His broken arm was in a sling, and he was washed and rested, despite his deep bruises. He strode across the room and caught her with one arm just as her strength failed. ‘For the love of all the gods, forget that dross and fetch a healer!’ Ferdinand shouted.

  ‘Just … get me … out of here,’ Will whispered to him.

  Two of the guards ran off, but the third began collecting the skeins of gold into a small trunk which he had brought with him. Will wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. Of all the things in the world to be doing! Reynard was behind her, and she wanted to take care of him, and she couldn’t. He’d just risked his life for her, that she knew. But she couldn’t even stand without help, and she felt weak as a day-old kitten.

  Ferdinand led her away, and lay her tenderly down on a couch. She didn’t care where she was or what she was doing. She needed water and food and sleep. She managed to get some weak wine into her before she lost all strength and plunged into an exhausted slumber.

  She dreamed of fighting thorns, and forced herself awake with a cry the moment she noticed she was dreaming. Even in her sleep, Will remembered enough to be afraid she might never wake. Ferdinand was there when she sat up. Of course, Ferdinand had brought her back to the antechamber, where he could keep an eye on Lavender. ‘Will!’ he breathed with relief.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked him.

  He laughed, but it almost sounded like a sob. ‘Yes. I’m well enough.’ He buried his head in his good hand. He pulled away and looked back at her after a moment. ‘You looked half dead.’

  ‘Bled white, I know,’ Will said, forcing herself to her feet. She was shaky and dizzy and ravenous. There was no food, but a decanter of that delicious weak wine was waiting on a tray. She seized it and drank straight from it, not caring for decorum. In the state she was in, it was the drink of the gods.

  Ferdinand grimaced as he watched her, and turned his face to Lavender. Will stopped guzzling the wine and looked at him. His eyes were shadowed. ‘I should have stopped them,’ he said. ‘I should have come to get you. I’m sorry I didn’t.’

  ‘They almost killed you the last time.’

  Ferdinand shook his head. ‘I could … I should take you now. I’m sorry I didn’t marry you when your father suggested it, when Lesli was working on your mother.’

  Will blinked. ‘My father suggested you marry me?’

  Ferdinand nodded. ‘It would anger Lesli, but it would have gotten him to leave the palace. Only to prepare for war, but a fair war was better than what was happening to Amaranth, he said. She wasn’t herself. It was dangerous. And your marriage would protect you.’ He lightly touched Lavender’s autumn hair. ‘I knew he was right, and I would have done it with a content heart … but I couldn’t bring myself to forsake her. Not to protect you. Not even to save your kingdom.’ He looked up at her. ‘I’m only a hero when it comes to Lavender.’

  Will buried her head in her hands. It was so ridiculous!

  ‘I could have spared you all of this,’ Ferdinand went on.

  Will shook her head. ‘We can never know what could have happened,’ she said. ‘Even if you’d agreed, Mother would still have succumbed, the Sleep would still be spreading.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t be drenched in blood.’

  ‘It’s only a few scratches,’ she said, looking down at herself, but even as she said it she remembered she was wrong. Just at the end there had been that terrible thorn, more a stake, really. Sure enough, there was a ragged, blood-stained hole pierced in her leather bodice. She turned away from Ferdinand to look beneath for damage. She was still covered in scratches, some of them deep enough to scar, and her throat was bruised, and she felt dizzy and thirsty and weak – didn’t some of her books on healing magic say those were symptoms of severe blood loss? But beneath that ragged hole her skin was unbroken. Except when she moved into the light a twisted line of gold was etched into her flesh just above her left breast, like a strand of golden yarn. It branched at the edge, and little flecks of gold bled from it until it looked like a few branches from a briar. She knew enough to know that mark was above her heart. So that final attack had truly happened. So why was she still alive?

  Reynard.

  ‘Move,’ Will said, whirling to Ferdinand.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Move!’ she told him again. ‘I have to find out something.’

  ‘What?’ He looked confused and grief stricken, but he moved out of her way.

  Will took his place on the edge of Lavender’s bed. There was no spell for what she was doing, but The Zarmeroth Cycle had a whole chapter on the magical power of mere words. She tried to pour her magic into her plea. ‘Lavender?’ she whispered to her. ‘I know you can’t hear me, but you’ve been asleep the longest. I think you’ve seen everything, witnessed everything. I need to see the worst of it. I need to see the worst moment of his life. I need to know what he was like before he turned so angry and bitter. I need you to find that dream, find that memory, and bring it to the surface. Find it for me, Lavender!’

  Will had no idea if this makeshift spell would work, but it was the only thing she could try. ‘Whatever happens,’ she said to Ferdinand, ‘don’t pull me out of it.’

  He nodded, his eyes wide.

  She closed her eyes and sank into the deepest trance she had ever gone into. The blood loss made it easy. Then she reached into Lavender’s dream.

  Her name is Lyne
lle.

  I am the equivalent of the age when most human men begin to think about a wife. I think I have found one. Lynelle is a woodsman’s daughter. Her mother was the village herbwoman, and knew a few charms, so she doesn’t look down on magic.

  Lynelle is fun. Dangerous. Wild. She runs through the forest in bare feet, and has very inventive curses when they find thorns or sharp stones. Her dark hair is always tangled with sticks and leaves, her fingers stained purple with berry juice or green with lichen from climbing trees. She laughs easily. She even laughs at me, and my gloominess. We meet in the forest, in the shadowy places.

  We have a game we play. When she first asked for my name, I said, ‘I am mine own self.’ She laughed.

  ‘Hello, Mineownself,’ she said the next day. ‘Unless that isn’t really your name.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ I said. ‘I’m One-you’ve-greeted.’

  ‘Hello, Oneivegreeted.’

  Every day she asks for my name, and every day I have another coy reply. Until I say, ‘I’m a dancing man,’ and I catch her in my arms and twirl to the sound of the wind in the trees.

  The false names grow less and less coy. I’m your friend. I’m your dear friend. I’m someone who loves you. Now that I have met her I’ve become so many things besides Nameless that I almost don’t mind. For the first time in my life, I’m not hollow inside. Then the day comes and she confesses she loves me too. From then on when she asks, I am always, ‘Your-beloved.’ I don’t even need to be myself, so long as I am beloved of Lynelle.

  I spin her a golden ring out of the yellow wheat. When she asks me who I am, I catch her hand in mine and I sink to my knees. ‘I am your husband, if you’ll have me.’

  A broad smile spreads over her face. ‘Really? You’d really marry me?’

  I stand up and take her chin in my hand. Of course, she has no dowry, but I care nothing for that. ‘There is no other maiden in the land who had the power to catch my heart. But you’ve done it. And I want to spend every moment of your life with you. I will lay my spells at your feet, and all my magic will belong to you, because you are all my magic.’

  She is blushing bright pink by now, and her face is scrunched up in delighted embarrassment. ‘I’d love to marry you. Anywhere, any time. Yes! Yes!’ She throws her arms around me and I feel as though I have wings. We kiss, and the world flies away, and all the shadows leave my heart.

  But they cannot leave my face.

  Lynelle says she has to go and tell her parents, that they’ll be so happy. And then once again she asks who I am. ‘I’m your betrothed,’ I say, as happy as I’ve ever been.

  ‘No, really,’ she says. ‘It is a fun game, but I can’t very well tell my mother I’m marrying Mineownself, now, can I?’

  ‘Tell them you are marrying your true love,’ I say quietly. I refuse to listen to the warning bells in my heart. ‘That is more than enough.’

  Only then does she realize I’m not playing a game with her. Her smile turns serious. A little frown touches her brow, though she still looks at me with love. ‘You … truly refuse to tell me your name? Ever?’

  ‘I can refuse you nothing. You know that.’

  ‘Then why won’t you tell me?’ She takes a step toward me and touches my chest with just the barest tip of her fingers. ‘Is there something I need to know?’

  I take a deep breath. ‘Can’t we stay as we are? We’re happy like this, aren’t we?’ I reach up to touch her dark hair, but she steps away from me.

  ‘B-Beloved? Please tell me what this means.’ She sounds truly frightened.

  ‘Don’t be frightened,’ I say. ‘There’s nothing to fear from me, I swear it on all I hold dear.’ I smile at her. ‘I swear it on my love for you.’

  ‘How can you love me if you’re truly keeping secrets from me?’ She takes another step back. ‘What are you hiding? Are you a-already married, or, or, wanted for a crime, or ….’ She chokes on a sob. ‘Tell me. Please, tell me.’

  ‘I’ve done nothing wrong,’ I say. ‘But you won’t understand. Lynelle, if you’ll only trust me, trust in my love for you—’

  ‘No!’ Her voice is panicked now. She looks around her and realizes we are alone in the clearing. This fact has never frightened her before. ‘You’re frightening me, please. I love you, you know I’ll always love you, what could be so terrible that you must hide from me?’

  I want to hold her, to kiss the fear from her face. ‘Lynelle. Lynelle, beloved, please. It is nothing terrible, and you have nothing to fear, from me, from anything. Believe me. I’ll keep you safe, always.’

  ‘How can I believe you when you lie to me? How can I trust you if you’re keeping secrets? How can I marry you if I don’t know who you are?’

  I cough an exasperated sigh. ‘I could never lie to you. If I would lie to you, I’d tell you I was named Ren and was the son of a woodsman and that my mother was murdered by bandits. I could tell you my name was Grumblebone and I was the seventh son of a seventh son of a grand house fallen into ruin by my uncle’s drinking and gambling. I could tell you any one of a thousand lies, each of them more plausible than the fact that I cannot tell you my name!’

  Her face is more questioning now than fearful. ‘Why can’t you?’ She takes a blessed step toward me. ‘Are you under a geas? Are you—’

  ‘No,’ I cut her off. ‘Can you not just let me love you, and have an end on it?’

  She blinks at me a few times, and then nods. I heave a sigh of relief and wrap her in my arms. ‘Thank you.’ I kiss her then, and she lets me. As my lips travel down her jaw and to her throat her hands wrap around my shoulders. Then with a jerk she pulls back my hood.

  I am exposed. Exposed before I could tell her – as I meant to do on our wedding day. Before I can pull the hood back, distracted as I was, she has already seen. Her scream echoes over the valley. ‘Stop! Lynelle!’ I cry out, trying to calm her.

  But now she is backing away from me as if from a poisonous snake. ‘Demon,’ she whispers, her voice raw with terror. ‘Demon, Nameless!’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m a Nameless faerie. But I am not yet corrupted. I’ve done nothing wrong!’

  She screams again and runs from me, looking over her shoulder as if afraid to turn her back on me. It is pointless, though. I am a faerie. I am faster than her. ‘Lynelle!’ I catch her up and hold her firmly. ‘Lynelle, stop this, I’m still the same man! I am still your dear friend, still your beloved! Nothing has changed between then and now. You did not fear me then, why fear me now?’

  ‘Demon!’ she spits the word in my face and begins to sob in horror. I release her, staggering backward as if from a blow. The moment her arms are free she begins wrestling at her hand, as if afraid the ring I had given her is fused to her flesh, is as an iron manacle, binding her forever to me. Of course it comes off. It is only meaningless gold.

  I fall to my knees, desperate. What can I say to her? How can I make her understand? But her lovely bare foot comes up and meets my jaw, and I am thrown backward, and dazed. She pulls her gathering knife which she uses to collect mistletoe and tansy and stabs me. I could pull away. I could cast a spell on her. I don’t want to. The knife comes down.

  The well used blade plunges deep inside me, grating against bone. It glances off my ribs, and I still breathe. My heart beats. It doesn’t matter. Though my life continues, she has already stabbed me through the heart. I stare at the sky as she runs away from me, my blood pulsing onto the ground. No longer her beloved. No longer anything but shadow.

  My sister finds me, tends me, forces me back to some semblance of life. When I recover I hear Lynelle was found at the bottom of the ravine, her neck broken from the fall. My sister tells me it isn’t my fault. I know that it is.

  Will knew this dream. In a briefer, less detailed form, it was the first dream she had visited, as Lavender lay wasting on her bed. Stabbed, wounded, but it was the grief and the shame that cut to the soul. Will tried to reach further, desperate to find any hope in that terrible moment, but she
didn’t have the chance.

  Hands grabbed her and pulled her away from her dream, out of her trance. Tears her wasted body could ill afford to lose were streaming down her face. She thought at first that Ferdinand had broken his promise, but he was standing by the bed in horror. The hands that held her belonged to Hiedelen’s guards. ‘Sorry, my lady,’ said Captain Warren, stepping before her. ‘We’re under strict orders not to let you get away with any more magic. You’re to be bathed and made ready before the evening bell.’

  ‘Made ready?’

  ‘For the ceremony,’ he said without expression. The door opened behind him. A gaggle of women came in carrying the wedding dress she had been meant to wear for her marriage to Narvi. And leading them up was – of course – Ginith.

  I lay exhausted, expecting to be seized and arrested at any moment, but the sounds of Hiedelen’s lackeys collecting the fruits of my toil continued around and about me. They weren’t seeing me. I struggled my eyes open and all I saw was in shadow. I blinked. A tangled skein of blood alloy thread was within a few inches of my hand. I reached for it, and it disappeared into shadow. It took me a moment to realize I was shrouded in Will’s shadow spell. She’d altered it on the fly. Well done, Will, I thought. I surreptitiously pulled the skein into my shirt and pulled my exhausted body deeper into the shadow near the corner.

  Unfortunately, the movement made more noise than it should have. The nearest guard looked in my direction. ‘Eh?’ he said. ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘What is it, Levi?’ one of his friends asked.

  ‘Dunno, I just …’ He frowned at the shadow in which I was crouched. He nervously touched the Hiedelen soldier’s tag around his neck and then approached my shadow.

  I wasn’t up for it. If it came to a fight, I was already dead. He reached out into the shadows and made contact with my right arm.

  It was pure reflex that saved me. He touched me, I started back, and my arm caught on his tag. He pulled back, startled, and the cord holding the tag snapped, leaving it twisted around my wrist. ‘Here!’ the guard shouted. ‘Here, it’s … it’s ….’ His words were drowned in a yawn. I felt a surge of hatred, and even before the yawn was finished he listed sideways, and sank to the floor, a victim of the Sleep.