Spindle

by E. K. Johnston

  “Why don’t you do it?” Saoud said.

  The Little Rose flexed her fingers, hands retreating into the sleeves of her dress.

  “You know—you must know,” she said, desperation in her tone, “what it is to want that which you cannot have.”

  Saoud, who wanted to belong. Arwa, who wanted her mother. Tariq, who wanted to do his work. And me…who wanted more than I could name.

  “Yes,” Saoud said.

  “That is how much I want to spin,” she said. “I was born to it. Spinning is my blood, and the blood of my people, from the time before we came across the great desert to settle in this land. I was beginning to learn, you know, when the curse happened. Yashaa was probably already a master of it, but I had other lessons besides. I remember, if I think about it, what it felt like to spin—to feel a work grow under my fingers. I miss it.”

  It was fully dark now, and we needed to go. We needed to save our talk for when we were more sure of our safety. But I saw her eyes and knew that not even Saoud would interrupt her now.

  “I should know so many things,” she said. “I should be able to bake bread, even though my kitchens will always have a bread mistress. I should know how to weave a tapestry and write a trade agreement. I should know, but I can’t. I was born and bred to do these things, and my heart cries out for them, and I can’t. I cannot make anything. Every stitch, every note, every letter, and every dance step would prepare me for the demon’s curse, and spinning would seal it. And I cannot take the piskey’s gift. I would sleep forever, but the demon would be free—the curse would remain unbroken—and then my kingdom, my people, would be queenless and cursed, both.”

  The full weight of it settled onto all of us. Arwa wiped her face with her borrowed scarf. Tariq stared into the distance, adding more pieces to the ever-growing story he kept in his mind. I could think of nothing to say or do, but Saoud was already moving.

  He knelt before her then, the only one of us unsworn to her, though I did not know what power was in the oaths of children. Perhaps they were sufficient, as they were made with innocence and heart.

  “Princess,” he said, “I do not know what I can do, but I am yours. I do not promise this out of pity for you, nor even any particular loyalty to you. I swear it for them, those that you have said I love, because I do. My service is yours, if you will have it.”

  “I will, Saoud,” she said. “And I am glad of it. Guide and guard them, as you have done, and we will follow you.”

  “The moon is rising,” Tariq said, and I could see by its light that there were tears in his eyes.

  “We have to go,” Saoud said, rising to his feet. “I will lead, then Tariq, then Arwa and Zahrah, and last Yashaa. Do not speak above a whisper. Try to follow the steps of the person in front of you as closely as you can.” He hesitated for a moment and then spoke again. “We cannot go back for the spindles. I am sorry.”

  “It’s for the best, I suppose,” Tariq said, looking at the Little Rose. “We have nothing she can use to spin.”

  He spoke so bravely, and I knew his heart was breaking. Arwa’s and mine were, too, for those spindles had belonged to our families; if they were lost, all we had was each other. And the Little Rose. I saw even in the dark that she knew it, and she rested a hand on Tariq’s shoulder.

  “My friend,” she said, and was somehow at once both unreachable and ours. “Thank you.”

  Saoud hefted his pack on his back and looked at me. I nodded, and we set out into the night.

  IT WAS A HARD MARCH. Though we had not wandered aimlessly before we met the Little Rose, we had been on no real schedule, and thus had not exactly hurried on our way. Now that we feared the hunting dogs of Kharuf were right behind us, with horsemen in the van alongside them, we fairly fled. The blisters that marked the Little Rose’s feet burst and bled, but she continued to walk without so much as a whisper of complaint. Even with him knowing the magic behind it, I could tell that Saoud was impressed. Arwa found a plant that would make sure none of the open wounds became infected, but I knew that if we wanted to make a habit of walking, we were going to have to find a better pair of shoes.

  At last we reached the steep slopes where no heather grew. We were well north of the pass by now, and did not think of turning toward it. Instead, we climbed the trackless ways over rock and deadfall, pressing through the underbrush, even when there was no clear way before us. Our going was slow, but we had reached the mountains with no sign of pursuers, and the pressure on our lungs had lifted when we crossed the border again, so our pace did not chafe then as it might have otherwise.

  “It is possible that my parents will stall as long as they can,” the Little Rose admitted on our second night in the mountains. Saoud had commented on the lack of a chase—relieved, but also perplexed, and too weary to think about it—and she looked embarrassed at her answer.

  “They won’t want you back?” Arwa said, clearly unwilling to believe it.

  “Oh, I am sure they do,” the Little Rose said. “But they don’t know what to do with me when they have me, either.”

  “Except lock you up,” Tariq said darkly.

  “I went to that willingly,” the Little Rose said. “Or as willingly as I could. It would not solve anything if I was murdered, or if I gave in to temptation and learned to play the harp.”

  The levity from her was relatively new, and it further increased my discomfort, so I didn’t comment on it.

  “You really think they’ll be happy to let you go?” he said.

  “My mother sent us on a quest we had no wish to go on,” I reminded him. “Who knows why our parents do anything, except that they still have some strange hope that we will find a future? Even if it is one they cannot share.”

  “I agree with Yashaa,” the Little Rose said. “Even if they do not believe it themselves, I think my parents will spread the story that I have fled over the desert, to whatever freedom I can find there. Or, if they choose to believe that I was kidnapped, the spinners will be among the first suspects—and everyone knows that the desert is where spinners go. If the riders are sent out in force, they will ride south and east for the sand, not west for the stone.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Saoud said. “We’re going to have enough trouble surviving up here without worrying about unexpected company.”

  We made even slower progress after that, because Saoud and I called frequent halts while we scouted out the terrain for a place where we could set up a permanent hiding spot. Arwa took advantage of the time to gather all the useful plants she could, and Tariq made what repairs to our gear were possible with his limited tools. The Little Rose sat and watched them, and I knew it must have been a torture for her.

  I hated spinning with nearly the same intensity that I loved it. It pulled at my soul and galled it. Even now, when the fire burned at night time, my fingers missed the familiar rhythm of the work. I could not imagine feeling that love, that calling, and being forced to deny myself time and time again. We saw daily evidence of the Little Rose’s strength in her feet, but I was starting to gain an appreciation for the pure will that must have comprised her character.

  On the fifth day, when Tariq carefully used up the last of the grain we carried for porridge and set it above the cooking fire, Saoud found a valley that would suit us. Its walls were so steep that I suspect he fell into it, rather than spotting it beforehand. On two sides it was sheer rock, cut straighter than the blocks that made the Little Rose’s tower. The third side was a waterfall, an unexpected but very welcome blessing. Not only would the falls’ pool give us fresh water, but the noise of the water would help hide any noise we might make ourselves. The fourth side was the steep green slope down which we walked after Saoud came to fetch us.

  “Bless the Storyteller Queen for these mountains,” the Little Rose said.

  “Indeed,” said Tariq.

  “Saoud, I think there is a cave,” Arwa said, perched on one of the few outcroppings the valley boasted. “There, behind the ca
scade.”

  She was right. The valley was an even better refuge than we had imagined. Now, even if someone found the valley itself, they might never find where we camped—assuming the cave was habitable. Saoud went along the ledge and through the water to find out, and I went behind him.

  “It will be dark, even with a fire,” he said. “The smoke might not exit well, either. We’ll have to be careful.”

  I nodded, and then remembered he couldn’t see me in the dark.

  “How far back do you think it goes?” I asked, walking forward with my arms held out before me.

  “Hopefully not too far,” Saoud said. “Though I doubt a bear could make it down that slope to den here.”

  My fingers hit hard rock, and I groped sideways to see if the cave changed direction. As far as I could tell, it didn’t. We wouldn’t know for sure until we lit a fire, but it seemed that we would be all right in here, though we would certainly be cramped. I sniffed the air, and smelled only water and stone. There wasn’t even the smell of bat droppings. It was, after such a run of hardship, almost unbelievably good luck.

  Saoud and I went back to the mouth of the cave, and waited a moment for our eyes to adjust to the light before we attempted the ledge again. The others were waiting for us, their packs still on their backs, hope on their faces.

  “It will suit,” Saoud said. “Come. Mind your feet along the ledge.”

  When we were inside, Arwa pulled a small collection of sticks and dried grass out from under her dress, kept mostly dry by the fabric. She set it on the floor of the cave and waited for Tariq to light it. It took some effort for him to get a spark, and we all held our breath while he worked on it. At last the fire caught, and Saoud carefully fed it the larger branches he had carried in his pack.

  In the meager light of the fire, the cave seemed less than welcoming. It was high enough for us to stand straight in, and went back into the mountainside farther than the reach of the light. This spoke more of the feebleness of the light than the size of the cave, I noted; but I could not exactly criticize as they were all we had.

  “Come on, Yashaa,” Saoud said. “We have to go back to the ridge and pick a lookout spot. Leave the others to set up camp.”

  I nodded, and followed him out once more. We scrambled back up the slope to the ridgeline, a hard climb, and then walked along it with great care. At last, Saoud found a tree that was to his liking, and we climbed into it with one of the tents. It would not be a comfortable watch, but the view was good, unless something came over the mountain itself for us.

  “That would have to be dragons,” Saoud said when I pointed this out to him. “In which case, we’re cooked whether we see it coming or not.”

  Neither of us really believed that a dragon would come, nor that it would eat us if it did, but the mountains were generally uninhabited for a reason, and I knew that I would never be fully comfortable here.

  “I’m going to take Arwa and Tariq down toward the pass as soon as we’re settled here,” Saoud said as we worked. “We’re going to need more food, the type we can’t hunt for, and the Little Rose needs things she can’t exactly buy herself.”

  “You can’t buy them and say they’re for Arwa,” I said. “She’s too short.”

  “We’ll say we’re buying them large in case she grows,” he replied. “Yashaa, you know we must go.”

  “And I must stay, and deal with the problem I so cleverly brought upon myself.” I tried to make light of it, but my reluctance to separate showed in my voice. I didn’t want them to go and leave me alone with the Little Rose, and they would be gone for a long time. I had never been without them, and I didn’t know if I was ready to spend so much time with her.

  “Don’t be an ass,” Saoud said. “You heard me when I made an idiot of myself and took your problems as mine, from here to the end of time, lest my lady release me.”

  “Now who’s an ass?” I asked, but I felt like laughing true laughter for the first time in days.

  “We’ll be a matched pair,” Saoud said. “I understand royalty likes that sort of thing.”

  I was still smiling when we slid back into the valley and made our way along the ledge. They had done good work while we were gone, I saw as soon as I entered the cave. There was a fire pit laid out on the rock floor near the front of the cave, and what remained of our gear was laid out around it to be useful. The Little Rose’s blanket had been hung up, blocking off one side of the cave for her privacy and Arwa’s. The rest of the bedrolls were rolled near the fire, to save space.

  “We’ll have to dig a privy somewhere away from the pool,” Tariq said. “And then take care using it in the dark.”

  “Very good,” said Saoud. “I will take you up and show you the lookout tomorrow. Tonight, I think we should all sleep here.”

  Tariq was assembling a supper from the last of the bear meat, and Saoud went to dig the privy. Arwa was sitting next to the fire, with an old shirt in her lap. I watched as she tore it into strips. The Little Rose sat beside her, rubbing her feet and watching closely, and all but stewing in her uselessness. I took a seat across the fire and watched with some confusion.

  “Bandages?” I asked, as Arwa took several of the strips, stacked them on top of one another, and began to carefully stitch a seam along the sides.

  “Of a sort,” said the Little Rose.

  “They’re too short,” I said.

  “Some advice, Yashaa,” she said, all the dignity she could muster in her voice, and a desperate need to be taken seriously behind it. “Never ask a girl who cannot make things what she might need so badly she would have to ask a child—sorry, Arwa—to make for her.”

  “I don’t mind being helpful or being a child,” Arwa said. “I am happy to make them and not need them yet. It seems a troublesome annoyance. No one’s ever explained it before, that’s all. My mother never got the chance.”

  I could tell that the Little Rose was uncomfortable, so I let it drop, and didn’t remark on how quickly Arwa tucked her work away when Saoud returned to the cave.

  “We’ll have to hunt tomorrow,” Saoud said. “And probably the day after that, too, unless we are very fortunate.”

  “And then what?” asked the Little Rose.

  “Then they’ll leave us here for a time,” I said. I did my best to use the voice Saoud’s father used when he barked commands at us on the training field. “We need things we cannot get here, and there is no other way.”

  The Little Rose did not protest, and Arwa and Tariq swallowed any remarks they might have made. Saoud nodded his thanks and began to inspect his knives. Arwa, with a touch of defiance, took out her sewing again as though daring us to comment on it, but no one did.

  The Little Rose only stared at the fire, her idle hands clasped tightly in her lap, and said nothing.

  When you make a thing and keep it, you control it utterly. If no hands but yours have touched it, then it is yours. If you make a thing and give it, you relinquish that control, but earn in its place a sort of trust between you and the person to whom you have made your gift. If a thing is made and stolen, then it can be twisted; and this has always been my way.

  The thrice-damned Storyteller Witch had tried to change that. She had given so freely that she had nearly died of it, and the creatures she gave to the world kept it safe for her after her power had waned, and even after she died. They took up her watch in our mountain prison, and the poison that plagued us here had no effect upon them. They set themselves in the little valleys and on the slopes, even on the topmost spires of the highest peaks, and hounded us from every side.

  Oh, if only the Storyteller Witch’s power had been ours. She was the greatest maker-of-things her kind had ever known, even if she did not understand until the end how her magic worked. If she had been stolen and twisted, as her husband was for a time, my kin might have ground the human vermin so far into the sand that they would not crawl out of it until the skies fell. Instead, we could only watch as she raised these mountains from
nothing and decorated them with everything our jailors loved.

  There were wide glades on sheltered mountainsides where fields of flowers grew. The piskeys and sprites danced upon the wind with floating blossoms underneath their wings. There were deep pools and caves cut from the iron-laced stone where the dragons could lay their eggs, and hatch new fire-breathing menaces, without fear of us finding them in their only vulnerable state. There were grassy fields in hidden valleys where the unicorns could graze by day and sharpen their horns on the stones by night. There were mountaintops where the phoenix could roost. And there was good dark earth, hidden from the wind and scouring rain, where the gnomes could grow whatever they liked, and garden themselves to insensibility.

  All of these things the Storyteller Witch gave, and gave with her heart full of love for the creatures she’d made, and the world she set them in. I wanted each of them to burn in fires so hot that their flesh melted from their bones; to scorch the ground so badly that nothing would ever grow there again.

  We settled for petty destruction where we could. We fouled the rivers that fed the pools where the dragon eggs were laid. We struck the heads off every flower we could find. We set fire to the grass, and trod upon the gnomic gardens whenever we found them. We gloried in the days when the mountaintops were obscured by clouds too thick for even phoenix fire to pierce. It gave little satisfaction, as the years turned to decades and then to centuries, but at least it was better than nothing.

  The creatures did not fight back. They did not have to. With their powers combined, they were more than a match for us, so they had only to stand firm. I took my lessons from the wind and rain: two forces that seemingly affected the mountains little, but in truth accumulated their damage over the span of years. I could match that span. I did not foul rivers, I diverted them. I did not pick the flowers, I found insects to devour them. Little by little, I wore away at the very earth the gnomes could turn to their use, until their gardens were few and far between.