The Spinner and the Slipper

by Camryn Lockhart

  Heloise listened to this explanation, her brow knotting in a frown. Though she hated to admit it even to herself, she couldn’t understand a word. Or rather, the words were fine, but the thoughts expressed were entirely beyond anything within her realm of comprehension.

  Deciding to change tack to something more reasonable, she plucked one of the paper remnants from the sylph’s collection and held it up to her face for inspection. “What’s this?” she asked, studying the squiggling ink marks.

  “I don’t know! It is mortal. Is it not beautiful?” said the sylph.

  It must be writing, Heloise decided. If it was a drawing or an etching, she might recognize it. As it was, it looked as though some sort of tiny worm had performed a wriggling ink dance across the page, resulting in an assortment of bumps and lines.

  Yes. Definitely writing. No doubt about it. Probably words even. That’s what people tended to write, or so she was told. Words. She frowned, hoping it was an intelligent sort of frown, and studied the slip, unaware that it was upside down.

  “Ahhhhh,” said the sylph, and the way it gusted implied sudden anxiety. It plucked at the paper tentatively, as though afraid of angering her. Then, working up its nerve, it snatched the scrap out of her fingers and stuffed it back into its bundle. “It’s mine,” it said.

  “Did you write it?” Heloise asked.

  “No,” said the sylph. “Mortals did. It is a mortal magic. And it is mine now.”

  Heloise eyed the sylph. It is difficult to eye something that isn’t visible, but Heloise managed. “Did you steal it?”

  “No!” said the sylph. Then, more softly, “Yes.” Then, “Maybe?”

  “Stealing is wrong, you know,” said Heloise. She hated herself the moment the words left her mouth. She sounded just like Evette.

  But the sylph didn’t seem to mind. In fact it laughed again, and twirled about, wafting the paper around it like a swirling cloak. “That is mortal talk! Such mortal talk!” It whooshed up and down, and something caught and held Heloise’s face, like two gentle, breezy hands. “I love you, mortal,” it said. “You are so funny!”

  Heloise had often wondered what a declaration of love might be like. Evette got them all the time, of course, but Heloise hadn’t expected to receive any of her own for . . . well, years yet. If ever! Certainly never from something she couldn’t see. “Um,” she said, stepping backward out of the sylph’s grasp. “Thank you. I mean . . . well, what does it say?”

  “What does what say?” asked the sylph, still chuckling to itself and rubbing the bits of paper together to make a quiet susurrus chorus.

  “The writing. What does it say?”

  Something without a face or form cannot look confused. But the sylph certainly gave off a sudden sensation of confusion. She could almost see—well, not see, but feel—the invisible being tilting its head to one side. “I do not know,” it admitted. All the bits of paper shifted into a great, ragged fan, as though the creature were holding them up for inspection. “I do not know what it says. But the Dame will.”

  “What dame?”

  “The Dame of the Haven. She was mortal like you once. She understands the ways of mortal magic. She’ll read these to me when I take them to her. She’ll read all the little words . . . all the little memories . . .”

  Heloise had never heard of such a person. Few people in all Canneberges could read or write—the marquis, his son, and the bailiff. As far as she knew not even the marquise had the gift, and she was the most highly educated woman imaginable, at least as far as Heloise was concerned. But then, she supposed, the world probably did consist of a bit more than the breadth and boundaries of Canneberges. Besides, she’d never before encountered invisible wind-beings, singing shadows, and (though she still refused to acknowledge this as real) reflections with minds of their own. Indeed, the world was opening up to all sorts of interesting possibilities.

  “Where does one find this dame and this haven?”

  “She lives in the depths of the Wood,” the sylph answered readily enough.

  “The wood? You mean this wood? Oakwood?”

  “No!” said the sylph. Then, “Yes.” Then, “Maybe?”

  “Well, which is it?” Heloise looked about them at the tall trees surrounding. Oakwood was safe and familiar to her. She had worked within its boundaries for years now as a bark-gatherer. If there was any dame hiding in any haven anywhere within that acreage, surely she would know about it. Or someone in Canneberges would.

  “It is . . . difficult.” The sylph drifted to and fro before Heloise, trailing paper bits. “It is . . . it is all Between. And this is all so Near. And everything else so Far. I don’t know the mortal way of saying it.”

  It was only then that Heloise noticed something which should have been obvious to her at once. Later on she would try to excuse herself to herself (she found herself to be quite a desperate nag sometimes), saying she was so distracted by hearing a wind speak at all, was it really her fault she didn’t notice what language it spoke?

  She noticed now, however. As the sylph sighed out the words Near, Far, and Between, she realized that she wasn’t hearing them in her own mother-tongue. At least not when they first struck her ear. What she heard was a wild, lilting language full of depths and heights and unusual spices. A language unlike anything she’d ever heard—

  No. No that wasn’t true. It was the language of Le Sacre.

  Not the same words; not the words she’d grown up singing softly to herself as she worked, sounding out the odd assortment of vowels and consonants. But she knew it was the same. And it was the language she had, but a few minutes ago, heard sung in a voice of pure darkness; the words striking her ear even as these did, then changing shape in her head, forming themselves into comprehension.

  Suddenly she felt cold. It was a chill morning of course, and her fingers and toes were bare and numb. But this was a cold that started in the center of her heart and worked its way out to the extremities, not the other way around. It was a cold she might almost call fear.

  “Was that you?” she demanded, her voice sharp and sudden. “Was it you I heard singing?”

  “I’m always singing,” trilled the sylph. As though eager to prove this statement, it called out a loud “Falalala!” that sent even the old fir tree cringing to its roots.

  “No,” said Heloise, pressing her hands to her ears against that cheerful howling. “No, was that you I heard before Master Benedict came? Was that you singing Le Sacre?”

  “Le Sacre?” The sylph tasted the words curiously. “What is that? Sing it for me.”

  Heloise blinked, surprised by this abrupt request. But she could see no reason to refuse. Besides, she needed practice performing for an audience, and what audience could be less intimidating than this invisible one?

  The sylph waited. It twirled in place, humming to itself, as patient as an ageless thought, never once feeling the passing moments of silence, for sylphs do not experience the world in moments. It trailed the paper shreds to and fro and waited for Heloise to sing.

  She cleared her throat. Then she opened her mouth and forced the words. They came most unwillingly, thin, staggering things, starved of all beauty. But she forced them out:

  “Cianenso,

  Nive nur nor—”

  The sylph screamed.

  I hear the song. Even from this distance, which isn’t as vast as one might suppose.

  I hear the song. It is in her heart even when it isn’t on her tongue. She does not have to sing it. The song sings her.

  And even now I wish I could scream like the sylph as the words of that song reach out to my ear. O! Lumé above! What have I done? What have I helped to do?

  FIVE

  Many moments passed before Heloise could bring her trembling limbs to pick themselves back up and put her on her feet. For a while she’d wondered if she would ever be able to move again. A sylph’s scream has that effect: It can turn a man of iron into a quivering jelly.

  Heloise’s ea
rs rang, and the resounding echoes were so jarring in her head that her eyes seemed to pulse with the throb of them. But she got up and brushed off the fallen sticks and leaves that covered her like a blanket. Several trees had broken and dropped large branches around her, leaving a terrible mess on the path. It looked as though a small hurricane had blown through. She was fortunate none of those limbs had landed on her head.

  The sylph was gone. Heloise would have liked to tell herself that it had never existed to begin with, but she wasn’t so foolish as to try. Instead she straightened her garments and went in search of her peeling knife and gathering basket. Her basket had been blown well across the path, caught in the branches of the fir tree in its ditch. Only for a moment did Heloise hesitate to slide down and collect it. But the sylph was gone, and so was the shadow she’d heard singing; she needn’t be afraid.

  But they would be back.

  Mirror.

  Heloise froze, her hand tightening its hold on the peeling knife. But no, that voice . . . that thought had come from inside her own head. It wasn’t the sylph. And it wasn’t the shadow. It was an internal voice, speaking her own language.

  Mirror.

  “Forget the mirror,” she growled.

  All her peelings of oak bark had been tossed far astray; she found only a few of the largest curls. Well, she had a task to complete and no one to interfere. Why should she go running home, bellowing about invisible beasties? Or for that matter, why should she rush to peer into her mother’s dim little glass? No point in that, no point at all.

  Hiking up her skirts, she continued down the path to the next oak tree, dropped her basket among its roots, and clambered up into the lower limbs. Perhaps she wasn’t as careful this time about checking for old scars. Perhaps she wasn’t as gentle with her knife. But she did her job as she was supposed to.

  Hoofbeats sounded in the forest once again. Heloise, perched in the oak, turned and saw a blue hat and cloak appear through the sylvan shadows. Master Benedict had found his horse.

  He rode at a brisk trot right under her tree, never once looking up, and continued to the place where she and he had spoken; there he dismounted. Heloise, up in her tree, watched him silently.

  “Little girl?” he called. His voice was anxious and his eyes were very wide as he surveyed the damage to the forest all around. “Little girl, are you here? Dragons blast it! Dragons blast and eat it! I should never have left her.”

  Oh. Heloise smiled a small, rather silly smile. So he’d come back to rescue her. A little late, to be sure, but still . . .

  She almost called out to him. But when he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted for all the world to hear, “Little girl?” she decided not to. Heroic rescue notwithstanding, she didn’t think he deserved an answer to that.

  With another curse or two, Master Benedict climbed back on his horse and rode away. Heloise watched him go. Then she returned to her peeling. In the distance, she could still hear Master Benedict’s voice calling out the occasional, “Little girl!”

  And behind that, the sylph’s scream echoed in her brain. Only now, several minutes afterwards, did it begin to take shape in her mind, forming words she could understand:

  “Night! Night! The Song of Night!”

  She would have to think about that. Later. For now, the south-end dye house still awaited her delivery.

  There could be no smellier place in all the world than the south-end dye house. Except—said a tiny, reasonable part of Heloise’s mind currently uninfluenced by the assault upon her nostrils—possibly the east-end, west-end, and north-end dye houses. They, in their various fetid corners of the estate, each as far removed from the central manor house as possible, were probably just as smelly. But Heloise had never traveled far enough across the sprawling acres of Canneberges to verify it. Besides, her pride rather liked the distinction of her dye house being the smelliest.

  The big dyebath sat inside the stone-walled house itself, and from the appalling stench wafting through the door and window openings, Heloise guessed the dyers had an impressive batch in the works. Outside the dye house, many little fires burned, tended by a host of sweaty dyer-boys. Some scooped shovelfuls of wood ash; some boiled great caldrons of stale urine. A few prepped other fires beneath caldrons near piles of oak bark ready to be boiled down for the tannins. To these Heloise must add her offerings.

  “Hullo, Heloise!” one dyer-boy called cheerily. His eye held a hopeful gleam, and she knew exactly what his next question would be. “How’s Evette? Is she with you today?”

  “Mmmhmmmph,” Heloise said, which was the best greeting she could muster while trying not to breathe. She dumped her basket of oak-bark curls onto the waiting pile. “Mmmph,” she said with a quick bob and a hint of a smile.

  But the dyer-boy wasn’t paying attention. He looked over Heloise’s head, an expression of pure joy lighting his sweat-streaked face. “Hullo, Evette!”

  “Hullo, Edgard.”

  Hearing her sister’s sweet voice, Heloise whirled about. Great Lumé’s light, what was she doing here? With everything else already on her mind, the last thing Heloise wanted to deal with was Evette’s kindhearted pretense that their scuffle of that morning never happened.

  Had she really thrown pottage into her sister’s eye?

  No wonder Master Benedict called her a little girl . . .

  Heloise felt her face heat up, and she couldn’t meet her sister’s smile. But Evette went on smiling anyway, drawing up alongside Heloise and chatting to the dyer-boy just as though he didn’t stink worse than all the pig-keepers in all the kingdom rolled into one. He bore the beatific look of a man receiving angelic blessings from above. It was almost enough to transform him from the plain, smelly, red-faced young lump that he was. But not quite.

  Heloise tried to sidle away.

  “Oh, dearest,” said Evette, deftly linking arms with her. Heloise hated when Evette called her “dearest,” partly because Evette always said it with such genuine affection. “I have only to deliver these new skeins for Meme. She gave me permission to ask the dye master if they have finished skeins to carry up to the Great House. Wouldn’t you like to come with me? For your birthday? I know Meme wouldn’t mind.”

  Heloise’s face burned brighter at these words. Sure, Meme wouldn’t mind. Meme wouldn’t care.

  “I should head back,” Heloise muttered, extricating her arm from Evette’s. She ignored the hurt look in her sister’s eye. “The boys at home . . . you know . . . they’ll break something. Or each other.”

  “Grandmem’s come calling, and she’s watching Clotaire and Clovis,” Evette persisted. “Do come, Heloise. I know you love to see the Great House.”

  This, Heloise could not deny. An opportunity to see Centrecœur, the massive center of all Canneberges estate (some of the wings of which were more than six centuries old) was not to be sneered at. It was a rare chance that saw Heloise on the road to Centrecœur, and she hated to pass it up now.

  She didn’t answer, but Evette, knowing her sister well, took her sullen lack of protest for acquiescence. “It was lovely to see you, Edgard,” she said, curtsying prettily to the dyer-boy and no doubt sending him into raptures without end. “My best to your mother.”

  “Oh, Evette?” the dyer-boy called before they’d progressed even two steps toward the dye house. Heloise groaned. She could guess what was coming now as well. It was remarkable how predictable everything about Evette had recently become. “Evette,” said the dyer-boy, “are you going to Le Sacre Night?”

  What a stupid question. Everyone went to Le Sacre Night. That was the whole point of Le Sacre. Heloise rolled her eyes and huffed.

  But Evette turned her sweetest smile on the poor, gasping lad. “Of course I am. With my family.”

  “Would—would you let me escort you this year?” the dyer-boy asked.

  Heloise sensed the pricking of ears around the dye-yard. All the other boys of certain age looked up from their various tasks. If looks could kill, th
at yard would be full of murderers. But poor stinky Edgard didn’t seem to notice. His heart, his life, his fate, hung upon Evette’s next words.

  “I’m sorry,” said Evette, still smiling. “I’m going with my family. But thank you for asking. That was most kind.”

  He could not have answered, so Evette did not make him. She dipped another curtsy and, once more taking Heloise by the elbow, led her away to the dye house. Heloise cast a glance back over her shoulder, and even she felt a dart of pity for the crushed Edgard returning to his fire-tending.

  “Poor Edgard,” Evette murmured. “I wish he wouldn’t ask. I feel wretched turning him down.”

  “Well, why do you talk to him at all then?” Heloise hissed, not wanting to be overheard by the other boys in the yard. “You only get his hopes up. You should try snubbing him sometime. For his own good.”

  Evette cast her sister a sideways glance. On anyone else, her expression would have seemed irritated or possibly superior; on Evette it was simply concerned. “Edgard is a polite, respectful young man. I couldn’t be anything less than polite and respectful to him. Besides, Fleur Millerman has her heart set on his asking her, and I know Edgar will get around to it once he thinks about it properly.”

  Evette would never see, of course. Heloise sighed, watching as Evette called into the dye house and delivered Meme’s newly spun flax thread. Evette would never see that Fleur, for all her virtues, had one glaring fault against her as far as the boys of Canneberges were concerned: She wasn’t Evette.

  It wasn’t that Evette was the prettiest girl on the estate. Heloise could think this without malice, even as the two of them gathered reams of red-dyed thread to be delivered to the Great House. Evette wasn’t particularly pretty at all, certainly no prettier than Heloise, not even as pretty as Fleur Millerman or Agnes Shearman or even Edwidge Flaxman (no relation—there were lots of Flaxmans in Canneberges).