Spindle

by E. K. Johnston

  The Maker King departed the following day, taking his company with him, and normalcy did indeed return. For one more year, we lived in the castle in peace and comfort, until the Little Rose turned five, and came under a curse. Then the Maker King offered marriage again, on harsher terms and with no pity. And Qasim was forced to accept it; and our long suffering was begun.

  ILL-CLAD AND BAREFOOT though she was, they knew her for the Little Rose immediately. They knew the same way I had: by her hair. You could not say her summer-wheat hair was lovely, not shorn close and patchy as it was; but it was recognizable, and they recognized her. She would need a better scarf to wrap her head with, or we would be caught the instant someone saw us. Instead of the instant afterward, I supposed, when one of us deferred to her accidentally and gave her away. Tariq was all but making formal prostration at her feet. She could not help but notice.

  “You had better call me Zahrah,” she said to them. She ran a hand over the patched scarf on her head, and I knew she was thinking the same thing I was. “And forget where I came from.”

  “We can’t do that,” Arwa said, leaning toward her the way she leaned toward the fire when the nights in the mountains were cold. Her face shone in the moonlight. “Don’t ask us to do that.”

  Saoud said nothing as he rummaged through Arwa’s pack, hunting for her spare shoes. They would be tight on the Little Rose but better than nothing. He would not speak his piece in front of her, not until he was sure of her character. The rest of us had been brought up to love her, but Saoud had been raised to question strangers in the night, and not without reason.

  “Did I know you before?” she said to Tariq. I remembered them, racing ahead of the nurse or hanging off my hands, and fought off a wave of jealousy. She had not recognized me.

  “Yes, Prin—Zahrah,” he choked. “We played together when we were small.”

  “You were meant to bring back information,” Saoud said, dropping the shoes in the Little Rose’s lap. His words were only for me, even though everyone else could hear him. “Not the princess herself.”

  “You didn’t see it, Saoud,” I said. “You didn’t see where they were keeping her. You would have brought her back, too.”

  He hadn’t heard her voice, the quiet assumption that I had come to kill her. He would hear her soon enough, I thought. He would hear, and he would finally understand what it was to be a spinner of Kharuf, to truly be one of us.

  Saoud wanted to argue with me, but the moon had come too high in the sky, and it was too bright to go back. It was too late to do anything except run for it.

  “When will they miss you?” he asked her. He did not use his gentle voice, but the Little Rose didn’t quail.

  “Tomorrow morning,” she said. “About an hour after sunrise. That’s when they come to bring my breakfast and take the blankets away.”

  “Why do they take the blanket?” Arwa asked.

  “To check for threads,” said the Little Rose. There was pain in that voice, and a longing so deep I wavered on my feet. “They have to make sure there aren’t any loose threads.”

  “Why—” Arwa began, but Saoud held up a hand. It would have been a flood of questions if she started to ask right now, and we didn’t have the time. The moon was high and bright, and, worse, the sun was coming.

  “Later, little goat,” he said. “Now we have to run.”

  We didn’t run, exactly, but we did move very quickly. The Little Rose had clearly never made such a trek before, but true to her word, she did not give voice to a single complaint. Arwa’s spare shoes must have pinched her, and she couldn’t have been accustomed to wearing shoes at all, but she followed us. Even Saoud was as impressed as he could be, with his own exhaustion to worry about.

  Whatever peace of mind we had bought by spinning was wearing off quickly, and I could feel my own focus begin to fray. We made no attempt at clever misdirection. We had neither the time nor the skill to lay a false trail, and we were too tired to even try. Instead, we made for the mountains by the straightest route we could and hoped for a river to cross. We found it an hour after dawn, right when, presumably, the Little Rose’s breakfast was being delivered to her empty room and the alarm at the castle was being raised. It was little more than a brook, but it was wide enough to serve us. We waded upstream for an hour, which Saoud deemed enough to confuse any hounds, and hopefully enough to slow down the experienced human trackers, and then we turned toward the mountains again.

  It was slower going after that, as Arwa and Tariq both flagged when their lack of sleep and struggling lungs bogged them down. I was exhausted too, my legs aching to match my arms, when Saoud finally found us a place to camp. It was a little hollow, a dip in the gentle hills that footed against the mountains. It would hide us even in daylight as long as we built no fire, and we were too tired to find fuel for one in any case. Instead we laid out our bedrolls, and slept as close to one another as we could. Saoud and I took the ends of the row without discussion, but the Little Rose hesitated with her blanket in her hands as we finished setting ourselves up.

  “Do you want me to sleep somewhere else?” she asked, as polite as she might have been in her father’s hall.

  “No,” said Saoud. “It’s too cold. Lie here, between Arwa and Yashaa.”

  It was dreadfully improper, of course. At least Arwa was yet a child. But Saoud was right. It was cold, and this was hardly the time for gallantry. Arwa, bless her heart, took the blanket and spread it out without a second thought, making a space for the Little Rose between us as though we had been sleeping thus for weeks.

  “I’ll watch first, if you like,” I said to Saoud, thinking to make up for my folly.

  “Don’t be stupid,” he said. “The climb took more from you than the wait did from me. I’ll wake you later.”

  He turned on his blanket so that he was facing away from us, but still gave some heat to Tariq. There was no talking after that, but even though I was exhausted, I couldn’t fall asleep. To see the Little Rose so unexpectedly after all this time, and to feel pity for her instead of the hate to which I had become accustomed, made me restless. I could feel her behind me, and the touch reminded me of the hours we had spent together before the curse. My memories were fragile things, but the feel of her was stronger, and my mind raced. I had so many questions, and we had no time.

  “Yashaa,” she whispered after a while. She said it slowly, like her memories were finally catching up to her in the wake of her flight. I hoped her father’s hounds were much, much farther behind. “I remember a Yashaa.”

  “Yes, princess,” I said, just as quietly. If Saoud heard us, he gave no sign. “I was there.”

  “Your mother,” she said, nearly stuttering over the words. “Does she yet live?”

  “She is dying,” I said. I made my voice flat and grey. “She was ill when she sent us out on the road, and she was very sick when she sent us away. I do not know if she lives.”

  “I am sorry,” she said.

  Rage filled me. My mother struggled to breathe, and I wanted the Little Rose to know what that was like. But also, I didn’t. I couldn’t. My hate boiled against my pity, and I thought I would drown in them both.

  “Save your pity for Arwa and Tariq,” I told her. “Your curse killed their parents. At least I still have mine.”

  She did not reply for a long time, so long that I thought—hoped—that she had fallen asleep. But then she spoke again.

  “When we wake,” she said, “you must take the blanket. I will carry it when we walk, but first it must be checked for threads.”

  Fury nearly took me again. She could not even sleep with a frayed blanket, and we were stuck with her care upon the road.

  “I am sorry,” she said again, “to be a burden. But if there are threads, I will find them, and if I find them, I will spin them. Yashaa, you promised me.”

  Saoud gave an odd cough. I didn’t know what to think, so I sat up and looked at the Little Rose. The sun was high in the sky now, and I co
uld see that her face, though it was as brown as mine, lacked the glow of stored sunshine. She had been inside that tower room for a very long time.

  “What did I promise, princess?” I asked her, as formally as I might have done were I her vassal in truth. “Tell me.”

  “You know the cruel part of the curse,” she said to me. “That my kingdom and my people suffer in my name. You have felt the touch of it, driven as you were from my house and from my lands; and you feel the pain of it, as your mother sickens. But Yashaa, there is a vicious side to it as well. And that viciousness is mine and mine alone.”

  “Tell us.” Tariq was awake. Of course he was. He longed for the truth as much as I was sure I knew it.

  “A princess is taught so many things,” she said. “How to run a castle and kingdom. How to dance, and how to sing. How to speak to men and women, and learn their troubles. How to solve those troubles, where I can. How to embroider and weave and sew. And, as you know, how to spin.”

  Her fingers played along the blanket as she spoke, and I saw a thread that was loose upon the hem. Without knowing why, I reached over and pulled it out, throwing the thread up for the breeze to catch. The Little Rose watched it, her eyes hungry, but did not reach after it.

  “The gifts I was given for my birthday were meant to highlight those lessons,” she continued. “Meant to make me a strong ruler for Kharuf. For each of you.”

  Oh, how we would have loved her.

  “But the curse was for those lessons as well,” she said. “Each facet of what I learned would turn my mind into the perfect host. My parents kept me from learning anything, as much as they could, but it doesn’t matter. If I spin, the curse will be complete, and the…inhabitation will begin. The demon knew my parents would put off my spinning for as long as they possibly could, and they did, even though the price was high. It guessed eighteen years, long enough for me to become entirely aware of my curse, and what it was doing to my kingdom.”

  Arwa had tears in her eyes, and Tariq was pale. Even Saoud watched us now, concern on his face. He knew the stories as well as we did. That once there had been a king who was not a man, and he had done terrible things before the Storyteller Queen remade him good.

  “So it is selfish,” she said. “I do not wish to be taken thus. I want to be queen, my own queen. I want to work and lead, to make things that help everyone in the kingdom, and I can’t. Everything that I make, if I make things, would make me a better demon. If I spin, the demon will know that I am ready, and it will come for me. But Yashaa, I swear to you, as awful as that would be for me, it would be awful for the people too. The marriage would still take place, to begin with, tying us to the Maker Kings, and I wouldn’t be human anymore.”

  I reeled, even though I was sitting on the ground and had nowhere to fall. Arwa wrapped her arms around the Little Rose, as though she could protect her from the demon that sought to take her very soul, but the Little Rose’s eyes never left mine. In my mind I saw the drawings on the floor of her tower prison—intricate, but easily destroyed by the lightest breeze or the softest brush of cloth. She had sketched in dust with her own fingers, so desperate was she to make. She could not do anything. She could not make anything. Ever.

  “I will check the blanket,” I said.

  It would not be nearly enough, I knew, and I saw that Saoud knew it too, but it was the only place that we could start.

  WE WAITED UNTIL IT WAS nearly dark before we set out again. Any pursuers would have caught us during the day, as they would be on horseback, and Saoud had rightly guessed that the moon would give us enough light to travel by. As the sun was setting, we had a cold meal, and I inspected what remained of our supplies. It was not much, but it would get us to the mountains; when we were more safely hidden, we would have time enough to hunt and forage if we needed to.

  The Little Rose did not help us as we tied up the knots on our packs. I checked the blanket for her, and rolled it up to put in her bag. Arwa had given up her own veil to hide the Little Rose’s hair, and wore Saoud’s kafiyyah instead. The Little Rose would need a better cloak in the mountains, but we had no time for that sort of thing now either.

  “Should we go?” Saoud said.

  I looked out of our hollow and shook my head. The sun still kissed the tops of the higher hills, purple heather against the purple sky. It was enough light for us to be spotted if we moved, but not enough for Saoud to find us another place to hide, were we to need one. Everything in me wanted to run. The restlessness from not spinning was worse than it had been before, and I wanted to be free of the constant pressure on my lungs. Our parents had sickened slowly once they left Kharuf. I hoped we would be so lucky, once we managed to get free of it. I wanted to go, to go now, but I knew better and breathed as evenly as I could to calm down.

  “Wait until it’s fully dark,” I decided.

  Saoud sat down beside me and glanced at the Little Rose. He had not spoken much to her, or to me really, for the whole day. I could tell that it was upsetting Arwa. Saoud and the Little Rose were both heroes to her, in vastly different ways, and to have them at odds made her quiet. I didn’t much like it either, but I understood. Saoud had no heritage with the Little Rose, no reason to fall naturally into her service. No reason to accept her undeniable burden.

  “Why does she trust you?” he said to me, after a long silence. “She remembers Tariq, and vaguely remembers you, but that shouldn’t be enough. Explain it to me.”

  I looked at the Little Rose. It was not my story to tell, though while we waited for the sun to set, there was at least time to tell some secrets.

  “It’s the gift, Saoud,” Arwa said, either not seeing the tension or having no patience for it. I suspected the latter.

  The Little Rose was sitting with her legs tucked under the hem of her dress. She stuck her feet out now, and even in the growing darkness, we could see they were nearly a ruin. Blisters lined her toes and the places where Arwa’s shoes pinched too tightly. Welts had formed across the backs of her heels, and her ankles were swollen. Soon she would have to walk on them again.

  “Did you wonder, Saoud,” said the Little Rose, “how I lived in a small room for years and years, and yet kept up with you today? Did you wonder how I could follow Yashaa down the rope, when he is a strong boy and I am only a wisp of a girl?”

  “Zahrah,” breathed Tariq, who had always believed. “Your poor feet.”

  She glanced at him fondly, as though they had never been apart, and then looked back at Saoud.

  “The phoenix’s gift was rebirth,” she said. “I tire and I sicken and I ache, and yet I go on. If I were a warrior, strong in body and trained to seek perfection, I would be nearly unstoppable. Alas, I am a girl who was kept in a tower, and my body is weak, except for the fact that it is nearly indestructible.”

  “My lady, I am sorry,” Saoud said, his voice still twisted. “Forgive my ignorance.”

  “There is nothing to forgive, Saoud,” she said. “Or at least, if there is, it is I who ought to ask your forgiveness. I know all of my weaknesses, and still I forced my company upon you. Indeed, I used my gifts to ensure it.”

  “How then, princess?” he asked, lapsing into formal speech as she had done. That made me feel a little bit better. I didn’t know why I couldn’t help but treat her as my princess. She made me uncomfortable, stirring memories and feelings I hadn’t considered in more than half my lifetime. It made me feel very unbalanced to see Tariq and Arwa treat her almost like she was an old friend.

  “The dragon’s gift is discernment,” said the Little Rose. “I believe with dragons, the ability is used to determine the value of things: gold, jewelry, the construction of houses and the like. For me, when I combine it with the unicorn’s gift—to see the truth—it lets me gauge the intentions of a person. I knew when I saw Yashaa that he would see me to safety, even though in his own heart he is not so sure of himself. He has many feelings, but in all ways he is honest. And that is why I knew to trust him.”

&nbs
p; I prayed that it was too dark for them to see how hotly my face burned at her words. I had known since I was six years old that the gifts of the Little Rose were as real as my own nose and teeth, but to hear her explain them—to hear her explain me, and so bluntly—was nearly painful.

  “And so you trust me?” Saoud said. “Because you trust Yashaa?”

  “I trust you,” said the Little Rose, “because you love Yashaa.”

  “Of course he does,” said Arwa. “He loves all of us.”

  Saoud floundered for words for a moment, unused to being so freely talked about. Arwa smiled at him so sweetly that I nearly laughed at the absurdity of everything that had transpired since I climbed the tower, and when Saoud glared at me again, it was with no small measure of amusement.

  “Will you be able to walk?” he asked the Little Rose. “Will the shoes even go back on?”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” she said, and began the painful process, with Arwa’s help on the laces.

  “So, discernment and stamina, and seeing the truth,” Saoud said. “What else?”

  Tariq helped her to her feet. She took two steps, wincing, and then seemed to bear down on the pain, accepting it and steadying herself in its wake.

  “Presumably I will be very good at growing things, should the need arise,” she said. “That is from the gnome. The sprite gave me a lightness of spirit, which I have always believed is what keeps me sane.”

  “What about the piskey?” Saoud asked, and I knew that we had reached the heart of it.

  The Little Rose looked at the sky and smiled. She could not have seen very much of it through the window of her tower room, and I wondered if she had missed the stars.

  “The piskey offered me escape,” she said at last. “Just a little more magic on top of what was already done, but the threads were already spinning when the gift was given. Should I choose to, I can take up a spindle and set myself to spinning thread. In the moment when I reach for the whorl, I will instead prick my finger upon the pointed end. There will be a pain like the sting of a bee, and I will be lost to the waking world before the demon can overtake me.”