by Neil Gaiman
They were almost nose to nose, now, and the fair-haired girl seemed so much younger than the queen.
“Why don’t you just go to sleep?” asked the girl, and she smiled guilelessly, just as the queen’s stepmother had smiled when she wanted something. There was a noise on the stairs, far below them.
“I slept for a year in a glass coffin,” said the queen. “And the woman who put me there was much more powerful and dangerous than you will ever be.”
“More powerful than I am?” The girl seemed amused. “I have a million sleepers under my control. With every moment that I slept I grew in power, and the circle of dreams grows faster and faster with every passing day. I have my youth—so much youth! I have my beauty. No weapon can harm me. Nobody alive is more powerful than I am.”
She stopped and stared at the queen.
“You are not of our blood,” she said. “But you have some of the skill.” She smiled, the smile of an innocent girl who has woken on a spring morning. “Ruling the world will not be easy. Nor will maintaining order among those of the Sisterhood who have survived into this degenerate age. I will need someone to be my eyes and ears, to administer justice, to attend to things when I am otherwise engaged. I will stay at the center of the web. You will not rule with me, but beneath me, but you will still rule, and rule continents, not just a tiny kingdom.” She reached out a hand and stroked the queen’s pale skin, which, in the dim light of that room, seemed almost as white as snow.
The queen said nothing.
“Love me,” said the girl. “All will love me, and you, who woke me, you must love me most of all.”
The queen felt something stirring in her heart. She remembered her stepmother then. Her stepmother had liked to be adored. Learning how to be strong, to feel her own emotions and not another’s, had been hard; but once you learned the trick of it, you did not forget. And she did not wish to rule continents.
The girl smiled at her with eyes the color of the morning sky.
The queen did not smile. She reached out her hand. “Here,” she said. “This is not mine.”
She passed the spindle to the old woman beside her. The old woman hefted it, thoughtfully. She began to unwrap the yarn from the spindle with arthritic fingers. “This was my life,” she said. “This thread was my life . . .”
“It was your life. You gave it to me,” said the sleeper, irritably. “And it has gone on much too long.”
The tip of the spindle was still sharp after so many decades.
The old woman, who had once been a princess, held the yarn tightly in her hand, and she thrust the point of the spindle at the golden-haired girl’s breast.
The girl looked down as a trickle of red blood ran down her breast and stained her white dress crimson.
“No weapon can harm me,” she said, and her girlish voice was petulant. “Not anymore. Look. It’s only a scratch.”
“It’s not a weapon,” said the queen, who understood what had happened. “It’s your own magic. And a scratch is all that was needed.”
The girl’s blood soaked into the thread that had once been wrapped about the spindle, the thread that ran from the spindle to the raw wool in the old woman’s hand.
The girl looked down at the blood staining her dress, and at the blood on the thread, and she said only, “It was just a prick of the skin, nothing more.” She seemed confused.
The noise on the stairs was getting louder. A slow, irregular shuffling, as if a hundred sleepwalkers were coming up a stone spiral staircase with their eyes closed.
The room was small, and there was nowhere to hide, and the room’s window was a narrow slit in the stones.
The old woman, who had not slept in so many decades, she who had once been a princess, said, “You took my dreams. You took my sleep. Now, that’s enough of all that.” She was a very old woman: her fingers were gnarled, like the roots of a hawthorn bush. Her nose was long, and her eyelids drooped, but there was a look in her eyes in that moment that was the look of someone young.
She swayed, and then she staggered, and she would have fallen to the floor if the queen had not caught her first.
The queen carried the old woman to the bed, marveling at how little she weighed, and placed her on the crimson counterpane. The old woman’s chest rose and fell.
The noise on the stairs was louder now. Then a silence, followed, suddenly, by a hubbub, as if a hundred people were talking at once, all surprised and angry and confused.
The beautiful girl said, “But—” and now there was nothing girlish or beautiful about her. Her face fell, and became less shapely. She reached down to the smallest dwarf, pulled his hand-axe from his belt. She fumbled with the axe, held it up threateningly, with hands all wrinkled and worn.
The queen drew her sword (the blade-edge was notched and damaged from the thorns) but instead of striking, she took a step backwards.
“Listen! They are waking up,” she said. “They are all waking up. Tell me again about the youth you stole from them. Tell me again about your beauty and your power. Tell me again how clever you were, Your Darkness.”
When the people reached the tower room, they saw an old woman asleep on a bed, and they saw the queen, standing tall, and beside her, the dwarfs, who were shaking their heads, or scratching them.
They saw something else on the floor also: a tumble of bones, a hank of hair as fine and as white as fresh-spun cobwebs, a tracery of gray rags across it, and over all of it, an oily dust.
“Take care of her,” said the queen, pointing with the dark wooden spindle at the old woman on the bed. “She saved your lives.”
She left, then, with the dwarfs. None of the people in that room or on the steps dared to stop them or would ever understand what had happened.
A MILE OR SO from the castle, in a clearing in the Forest of Acaire, the queen and the dwarfs lit a fire of dry twigs, and in it they burned the thread and the fiber. The smallest dwarf chopped the spindle into fragments of black wood with his axe, and they burned them too. The wood chips gave off a noxious smoke as they burned, which made the queen cough, and the smell of old magic was heavy in the air.
Afterwards, they buried the charred wooden fragments beneath a rowan tree.
By evening they were on the outskirts of the forest, and had reached a cleared track. They could see a village across the hill, and smoke rising from the village chimneys.
“So,” said the dwarf with the beard. “If we head due west, we can be at the mountains by the end of the week, and we’ll have you back in your palace in Kanselaire within ten days.”
“Yes,” said the queen.
“And your wedding will be late, but it will happen soon after your return, and the people will celebrate, and there will be joy unbounded through the kingdom.”
“Yes,” said the queen. She said nothing, but sat on the moss beneath an oak tree and tasted the stillness, heartbeat by heartbeat.
There are choices, she thought, when she had sat long enough. There are always choices.
She made her choice.
The queen began to walk, and the dwarfs followed her.
“You do know we’re heading east, don’t you?” said one of the dwarfs.
“Oh yes,” said the queen.
“Well, that’s all right then,” said the dwarf.
They walked to the east, all four of them, away from the sunset and the lands they knew, and into the night.
Witch Work
The witch was as old as the mulberry tree
She lived in the house of a hundred clocks
She sold storms and sorrows and calmed the sea
And she kept her life in a box.
The tree was the oldest that I’d ever seen
Its trunk flowed like liquid. It dripped with age.
But every September its fruit stained the green
As scarlet as harlots, as red as my rage.
The clocks whispered time which they caught in their gears
They crept and they chattere
d, they chimed and they chewed.
She fed them on minutes. The old ones ate years.
She feared and she loved them, her wild clocky brood.
She sold me a storm when my anger was strong
And my hate filled the world with volcanoes and laughter
I watched as the lightnings and wind sang their song
And my madness was swallowed by what happened after.
She sold me three sorrows all wrapped in a cloth.
The first one I gave to my enemy’s child.
The second my woman made into a broth.
The third waits unused, for we reconciled.
She sold calm seas to the mariners’ wives
Bound the winds with silk cords so the storms could be tied there,
The women at home lived much happier lives
Till their husbands returned, and their patience be tried there.
The witch hid her life in a box made of dirt,
As big as a fist and as dark as a heart
There was nothing but time there and silence and hurt
While the witch watched the waves with her pain and her art.
(But he never came back. He never came back . . .)
The witch was as old as the mulberry tree
She lived in the house of a hundred clocks
She sold storms and sorrows and calmed the sea
And she kept her life in a box.
In Relig Odhráin
When Saint Columba landed on the island of Iona
His friend Oran landed with him
Though some say Saint Oran waited
In the shadows of the island, waiting for the saint to land there,
I believe they came together, came from Ireland, were like brothers
Were the blond and brave Columba and the dark man they called Oran.
He was odrán, like the otter, was the other. There were others
And they landed on Iona and they said, We’ll build a chapel.
It’s what saints did when they landed. (Oran: priest of sun or fire
Or from odhra, meaning dark-haired.) But their chapel kept on crumbling.
And Columba took the answer from a dream or revelation,
That his building needed Oran, needed death in the foundations.
Others claim it was doctrinal, and Saints Oran and Columba
Were debating, as the Irish love debating, about Heaven,
Since the truth is long-forgotten we are left with just their actions
(By their actions shall ye know them): Saint Columba buried Oran
Still alive, with earth about him, buried deep, with earth upon him.
Three days later they returned there, stocky monks with spades and mattocks
And they dug down to Saint Oran, so Columba could embrace him
Touch his face and say his farewells. Three days dead. They brushed the mud off
When Saint Oran’s eyes blinked open. Oran grinned at Saint Columba.
He had died but now was risen, and he said the words the dead know,
In a voice like wind and water.
He said, Heaven is not waiting for the good and pure and gentle
There’s no punishment eternal, there’s no Hell for the ungodly
Nor is God as you imagine—
Saint Columba shouted “Quiet!”
and to save the monks from error shoveled mud onto Saint Oran.
So they buried him forever. And they called the place Saint Oran’s.
In its churchyard kings of Scotland, kings of Norway, all were buried
On the island of Iona.
Some folk claim it was a druid priest of sunlight that was buried
In the earth of good Iona just to hold the church foundations,
But for me that’s much too simple, and it libels Saint Columba
(who cried “Earth! Throw earth on Oran, stop his mouth with mud this moment,
lest he bring us to perdition!”). They imagine it a murder
as one saint entombed another underneath that holy chapel.
While Saint Oran’s name continues,
Martyred heretic, his bones still hold the chapel stones together,
And we join them, kings and princes, in his graveyard, in his chapel,
For it’s Oran’s name they carry. He’s embraced in his damnation
by the simple words he uttered. There’s no Hell to spite the sinners.
There’s no Heaven for the blessed. God is not what you imagine.
And perhaps he kept on preaching, for he’d died and he had risen,
Until silenced, crushed or muffled by the soil of Iona.
Saint Columba, he was buried on the island of Iona
Decades later. But they disinterred his body and they took it
to Downpatrick, where it’s buried with Saint Patrick and Saint Brigid.
So the only saint is Oran on the island of Iona.
Don’t go digging in that graveyard for the kings of old, the mighty,
Or archbishops and their riches. They are guarded by Saint Oran
Who will rise up from the gravedirt like the darkness, like an otter,
For he sees the sun no longer. He will touch you,
He will taste you, he will leave his words inside you.
(God is not what you imagine. Nor is Hell and nor is Heaven.)
Then you’ll leave him and his graveyard, and forget the shadow’s terror,
as you rub your neck, remember only this: He died to save us.
And that Saint Columba killed him on the island of Iona.
Black Dog
There were ten tongues within one head
And one went out to fetch some bread,
To feed the living and the dead.
OLD RIDDLE
I
THE BAR GUEST
OUTSIDE THE PUB IT was raining cats and dogs.
Shadow was still not entirely convinced that he was in a pub. True, there was a tiny bar at the back of the room, with bottles behind it and a couple of the huge taps you pulled, and there were several high tables and people were drinking at the tables, but it all felt like a room in somebody’s house. The dogs helped reinforce that impression. It seemed to Shadow that everybody in the pub had a dog except for him.
“What kind of dogs are they?” Shadow asked, curious. The dogs reminded him of greyhounds, but they were smaller and seemed saner, more placid and less high-strung than the greyhounds he had encountered over the years.
“Lurchers,” said the pub’s landlord, coming out from behind the bar. He was carrying a pint of beer that he had poured for himself. “Best dogs. Poacher’s dogs. Fast, smart, lethal.” He bent down, scratched a chestnut-and-white brindled dog behind the ears. The dog stretched and luxuriated in the ear-scratching. It did not look particularly lethal, and Shadow said so.
The landlord, his hair a mop of gray and orange, scratched at his beard reflectively. “That’s where you’d be wrong,” he said. “I walked with his brother last week, down Cumpsy Lane. There’s a fox, a big red reynard, pokes his head out of a hedge, no more than twenty meters down the road, then, plain as day, saunters out onto the track. Well, Needles sees it, and he’s off after it like the clappers. Next thing you know, Needles has his teeth in reynard’s neck, and one bite, one hard shake, and it’s all over.”
Shadow inspected Needles, a gray dog sleeping by the little fireplace. He looked harmless too. “So what sort of a breed is a lurcher? It’s an English breed, yes?”
“It’s not actually a breed,” said a white-haired woman without a dog who had been leaning on a nearby table. “They’re crossbred for speed, stamina. Sighthound, greyhound, collie.”
The man next to her held up a finger. “You must understand,” he said, cheerfully, “that there used to be laws about who could own purebred dogs. The local folk couldn’t, but they could own mongrels. And lurchers are better and faster than pedigree dogs.” He pushed his spectacles up his nose with the tip of his forefinger. H
e had a muttonchop beard, brown flecked with white.
“Ask me, all mongrels are better than pedigree anything,” said the woman. “It’s why America is such an interesting country. Filled with mongrels.” Shadow was not certain how old she was. Her hair was white, but she seemed younger than her hair.
“Actually, darling,” said the man with the muttonchops, in his gentle voice, “I think you’ll find that the Americans are keener on pedigree dogs than the British. I met a woman from the American Kennel Club, and honestly, she scared me. I was scared.”
“I wasn’t talking about dogs, Ollie,” said the woman. “I was talking about . . . Oh, never mind.”
“What are you drinking?” asked the landlord.
There was a handwritten piece of paper taped to the wall by the bar telling customers not to order a lager “as a punch in the face often offends.”
“What’s good and local?” asked Shadow, who had learned that this was mostly the wisest thing to say.
The landlord and the woman had various suggestions as to which of the various local beers and ciders were good. The little mutton-chopped man interrupted them to point out that in his opinion good was not the avoidance of evil, but something more positive than that: it was making the world a better place. Then he chuckled, to show that he was only joking and that he knew that the conversation was really only about what to drink.
The beer the landlord poured for Shadow was dark and very bitter. He was not certain that he liked it. “What is it?”
“It’s called Black Dog,” said the woman. “I’ve heard people say it was named after the way you feel after you’ve had one too many.”
“Like Churchill’s moods,” said the little man.
“Actually, the beer is named after a local dog,” said a younger woman. She was wearing an olive-green sweater, and standing against the wall. “But not a real one. Semi-imaginary.”