Spindle

by E. K. Johnston

  “No, you listen,” I said. “You have been my brother for as long as I have known you. You stood beside me while I learned, even if it was a lesson you didn’t share. Your father taught me, and my mother taught you, even if her lessons were hard and cold. And you have sworn your service, by your own choice, to the princess I was born to. That, if nothing else, spins us into the same thread.”

  Saoud laughed, or sighed perhaps. It was a quiet sound in the dark, and because I couldn’t see him, I couldn’t read it properly. But I hoped I had given him peace.

  “Good night, Yashaa,” he said to me. “Wake me up for a turn at watch, or I’ll make you carry my pack when we set out.”

  He slept in truth then, while I waited up with the stars.

  SAOUD LET ME SLEEP until one hour past sunrise. He must have gone down to the cave to check in with the others, because when he shook me awake, it was to tell me we would head straight for the glade, and the water skin he handed me was still dripping. He also had flatbread and olives. The bread was stale, but I didn’t care. I had been eating porridge or vetch for days, with the exception of the gnome’s gift from the day before, and even stale bread was a welcome change.

  “Come on, then,” I said, when I had spit out the last olive pit and put the stopper back in the skin. “It’s not very far.”

  Saoud was a quieter companion than the Little Rose. He was content to follow where I walked, and was not easily diverted to look at interesting trees or unfamiliar flowers. Of course, Saoud had spent enough time abroad in the world that he could walk and admire the view at the same time.

  We reached the glade just as the sun was cresting the trees that sheltered it, and so Saoud saw it at its best: sun-drenched and green, with the light breeze stirring the flowers as though to welcome us specifically.

  “I see what you mean about this place, Yashaa,” he said. “And what the Little Rose means as well. This is good magic.”

  We sat in the sun like children, as though we had no cares or burdens, or reason to flee the pursuit of a prince with a questionable reputation at best. Saoud unrolled the map his father had given him, which had guided our steps through the mountains until we’d strayed off of the known paths to hide. Saoud had added his own markings, and I guessed that they were the villages he and the others had visited when they had gone down without us.

  “This village had no bread at all,” he said, pointing to the mark that was closest to where he would have come out of the mountains. “They were eating what game they could catch, but to make bread, they’ll have to go into their seed for next season.”

  “Will they have to eat the sheep?” I asked. It was only ever considered as a last resort. Kharuf needed wool more than it needed meat, but if there were no alternatives, then desperate measures had to be taken.

  “Not until the winter, at least.” Saoud knew enough about sheep to know that made little difference. The sheep had been shorn only a few weeks ago. They would not yet have enough wool to merit a second shearing. Saoud pointed to another mark. “This village had bread, but little else,” he said, and moved to the next mark. “Here was where we were finally able to trade, but we had to be careful because we were closer to the main trade routes, and rumors travel more quickly than goods these days.”

  I nodded. If they had bought obvious desert gear and henna, it would have been more than enough of a clue for the prince tracking us to at least send men after us, if not follow us himself.

  “If we stay north, we should be able to avoid all but the most resilient shepherds,” Saoud said, tracing a finger along the route he wanted us to take.

  I looked at it. Saoud’s father had not spent much time in Kharuf, so his map was not particularly accurate. However, it was unlikely that any villages up in the northern regions had survived this long, and the terrain itself was only slightly rougher than the heathered slopes to the south. We could not walk entirely due east, but we would be able to accomplish nearly that, unless we ran into a river that hadn’t made it onto the map.

  The desert was represented on the map by a single delineation, separating the place where grazing for sheep was easy from the place where grazing them was hard. This was the land the Storyteller Queen had called the scrub desert. It was possible to live there, if you had water, and so that would be our chief concern.

  “It is going to be a long walk,” I said. “But if you think it is safer than staying here, then we will do it.”

  “The things I heard, Yashaa,” Saoud replied, “they made my blood run cold.”

  “The prince is that bad?” I asked. I trusted the Little Rose’s opinion of him, but thought perhaps her gossip might be out of date.

  “Not just the prince,” Saoud said. “They say the demon who cursed the Little Rose rides with him, or at the very least directs him.”

  “Why would it do that?” I asked.

  “It wants the ruination of Kharuf,” he reminded me. “And marrying the Little Rose to the Maker King’s son is the best way to ensure it. Qamih already bleeds Kharuf dry. After the wedding, when the Little Rose is legally required to share her rule of the kingdom, Prince Maram will have all the power. He will be able to make it so that Kharuf is on fire if he wants to, and the villagers seem to think he might.”

  “My mother thought the wedding might save Kharuf,” I said.

  “Yashaa, your mother dreamed more than Tariq does,” Saoud said quietly. “She always had hope, even when there seemed to be none, and when she got sick, she only hoped harder. Tariq thinks about the stories like they are pieces that he has gathered, and he looks at them from all angles. I know your mother is a good woman, but she was wrong about this.”

  I was quiet. Though there was no cloud above us, I felt that the light of the sun had dimmed.

  “I don’t mean that she was foolish, or naïve,” Saoud continued. “But she wanted to believe so hard that I think she made it true. Except she only made it true for herself. You and Arwa and Tariq will have to find your own truth, and it will not be so pretty as hers.”

  “You will be with us, too,” I said. “It’s your truth as much as it is ours.”

  “I know, Yashaa,” he said. “But I have a different path, even though we have walked together for so long.”

  “Come,” I said, having had as much truth as I could stand. “I will show you the garden.”

  I pulled him up after me, and led him across the glade to the little hollow where the garden was. Already, the reeds that held the fence posts to the crosspieces were being replaced by the string I had made. I had taken a spool of Tariq’s thread the night before, telling him what it was for, and left it now.

  “Look,” said Saoud, and I went to where he was standing on the far border of the garden.

  I had not expected another gift, from the gnome or otherwise, and yet here before us was just that. There was a basket of food, larger than the first one, as though the creatures knew there were five of us now instead of two. Beside it were two small wooden boxes with clever catches on the lids, so they would stay closed even if they were packed away and carried on someone’s back. Saoud picked one up and opened it. Carefully he licked the tip of his finger and tasted the contents.

  “Salt,” he said, and made a face. I passed him the water skin so he could wash his mouth out.

  “It will be useful in the desert,” I said. Saoud’s father hadn’t been the one to tell us about that particular method of survival. My mother had known it, from the days when she still thought she might someday take the Silk Road herself.

  “Indeed,” said Saoud. “And it is expensive.”

  “I have left a spool of Tariq’s good thread,” I told him. “Do you have anything else?”

  I had only my knife and the clothes I was wearing. Saoud was much the same, except he also had the hoops he was wearing in his ears. They were small and not worth a great deal, but they were his and he loved them. He reached under his kafiyyah and began to twist one of them off.

  “Oh, no,�
�� I said. “I didn’t mean that. They’re from your father.”

  “It’s all right, Yashaa,” he said. “I will keep one and leave the other. I don’t craft things the way you do, so it is the best thing I can offer. And when I remember the one I still have, I will remember this place.”

  He walked back around the garden, and set the hoop down on top of the spool of thread. I stepped closer and looped it through the thread itself so that it wouldn’t get lost if the spool was somehow disturbed, and we carried the gift from the gnome back through the glade.

  A creature stood there, the first living thing I had seen in some days that was not a far-off bird or my own friends. It was very short and very white, and it stood on two legs, though it carried itself as though it could also stand on four. It had two little horns on its head, gossamer wings on its back, and a long face that smiled at us. It was not the sort of smile I was used to. It wasn’t joyful or glad or kind. Rather, it simply was, and it did not need us to judge it. It was both reassuring and deeply unsettling.

  We stood there, frozen to the spot, while it regarded us. It seemed to decide that we were worthy of it, for it inclined its head as though in greeting. Neither of us spoke. I could not have said words to it, even if speaking then would have solved every problem I had ever faced. It didn’t speak either, which I took as a mercy; but its smile grew in intensity, and I found that somehow, the wider it smiled, the more comforted I was. Then it laughed, and my heart soared to hear it.

  The sprite, for it could not be anything else, wavered in the sunlight, and then vanished before our very eyes. We stood still for a few long moments, though I could not have said what we waited for, and then we turned together and left the glade.

  “This plan of yours,” said Saoud, after we were well on our way. “You plan to talk to one of those things.”

  “Maybe not a sprite,” I said. “Or a unicorn or a phoenix or a dragon.”

  We both shuddered.

  “It was overwhelming, even though it was small,” Saoud said.

  “Yes,” I said. “But I think a gnome or a piskey might be a little bit more approachable.”

  “What makes you say that?” he asked.

  “I have no idea,” I admitted. “I only hope they are, because otherwise I am not sure how we are ever going to talk to one.”

  “Maybe the Little Rose will have an easier time of it,” Saoud said. “They seem to like her already.”

  “We can hope,” I replied.

  We didn’t talk the rest of the way back to the hidden valley that had been our haven. I had not stayed there very long, and I had felt lonely, angry, or desolate when I did, but somehow I was reluctant to leave this place, even though I knew we would be safer in the desert. I had begun to know the Little Rose here, and thought about how my life would follow the course of hers, whatever course that might be. That gave me peace, and it was a peace I was sad to relinquish for a dash across Kharuf to the unknown sands beyond it.

  So I took each chance I had to memorize the grass and the stone and the way the sunlight gleamed off the ore that still hid in the rocks where the Storyteller Queen had put it, and I hoped that it would be enough to sustain me on my road.

  IT TOOK A DAY TO REACH the gentle foothills that hemmed the mountains to the north of the main trade pass. Moving downhill and over mostly familiar ground, we were able to make good time. We could have pressed on, but Saoud wanted to camp for one last night in the shelter of the hills before going back into Kharuf. He remembered, after all, the manic nature that had all but overcome us there, and wanted to be sure we would face it as well rested as possible.

  “Come on, Yashaa,” he said, holding my staff in one hand and his in the other. “It’s been too long since we practiced.”

  It was easy to fall into the rhythms of staff patterns with him, to block each of his strikes and mirror his movements with my own. We did the straight-line patterns first, and then he nodded and we began the circular forms. Stepping carefully, we moved around each other. We didn’t need to watch our feet—the ground was even enough—and I hardly even needed to watch Saoud; I knew where he would step next in the pattern.

  I felt all the discomfort of the past weeks slide away as we trained. All the oddness of the Little Rose, the danger and magic of the mountains, and the almost certain peril we would face in Kharuf seemed to fall into the pattern beside me, and then they were ordered into something I could manage. Only that last argument with my mother refused to fall in line, and I pushed it away so it would not be a distraction.

  “Are you ready?” Saoud said. We had done the full circuit twice, and he was grinning.

  “Come and get me,” I replied.

  He stepped outside of the pattern then, staff flying in a flurry of movement. I answered his motion with my own, stepping into his strikes to get past his guard. Fighting with Saoud was like breathing. He came at my left side, which I had momentarily exposed when I’d raised my staff to block him. I saw it in his chest and shoulders, his slight overcommitment to the move. Years of practice, and he still thought I was weaker on the left than I was. I stepped into the blow instead of dodging it, turning so that Saoud’s staff cut the air next to the place where my shoulder had been. I saw realization on his face, a brief flicker of rueful acknowledgement that I had him again, and then I neatly hooked my staff behind his knee and brought him down.

  “It’s not about hitting at all,” the Little Rose said, as I helped Saoud back up and we bowed to each other. “You use the staff to put your opponent out of place, and then you press your advantage when you have them on the ground of your choosing.”

  Saoud looked impressed.

  “That’s true, Zahrah,” Arwa said. “Saoud’s father says that that is the first lesson of staff fighting. He would be pleased to have you as a student if you learned that so quickly. Have you seen staff fighting before?”

  “Not really,” she said. “But this was an excellent example of it, I think.”

  “Tariq,” Saoud said. “It’s your turn.”

  Tariq took my place, and they squared off. We watched them execute the same patterns, only slower, and the Little Rose followed each rise and fall of Saoud’s shoulders, not his staff. Then it was Arwa’s turn, and the pace slowed further, though Saoud still moved deliberately against her.

  “Saoud’s father calls himself our dancing master,” I said. “Saoud is nearly as good a teacher as he is, though he’ll tell you that it’s only because his father started the work.”

  “Do you teach?” she asked.

  “No, princess,” I told her. “I train with Arwa sometimes, because it teaches me patience, but I learn as much as she does when we do it.”

  “You said you would show me,” she said. There was a delighted sparkle in her eyes when she spoke. I thought she must be desperate for any sort of activity after a life of idleness.

  “Saoud is better at it,” I said. “I expected them to be gone for longer, and for us to have to find something to do to pass the time.”

  “Show me,” she said.

  I hesitated, remembering her headache after we had repaired the fence.

  “Tariq,” I said, “give the princess your staff.”

  He passed it over with some measure of reluctance and followed us to a patch of ground where we would be clear of Arwa and Saoud. I showed the Little Rose how to stand, and marveled at the quickness with which she mastered the starting pose. It was not an entirely natural way to stand, and most newcomers to the fighting style leaned too far forward. The Little Rose found her balance immediately, and even the placement of her hands on the staff was perfect.

  “You said you had never done this before,” I said.

  Saoud’s father had finally got so fed up with my tendency to put my hands too close together that he had made me carry a stick around for days at a time, so that I would become accustomed to the proper distance. Even Saoud hadn’t mastered it right away. Yet here stood the Little Rose, feet and hands expertly sprea
d.

  “The sprite’s gift includes dancing,” she reminded me. “Maybe this is it.”

  “If you say so, princess,” I said. Magic, it seemed, would follow me everywhere. “Here is the low block.”

  I demonstrated the move and then practiced it with her. To the relief of my dignity, while her form was excellent, her strength did not match mine. When I switched her to the low strike, she grasped it much more quickly, and I realized it was because I had used the move on her to teach her the block. I had forgotten to count for her, so that she would know the rhythm of the strikes, but she seemed to know the rhythm innately and matched her movements to mine without effort. Except for the disparity of force, it was almost exactly like sparring with Saoud.

  She was smiling and breathing hard when I held up my staff to signal a stop. Saoud and Arwa had finished and had both come over to watch. Saoud’s face was troubled.

  “I was careful,” I told him. “You know I can hold back, you’ve seen me do it.”

  He only shook his head, and went back toward the fire.

  “How do you feel, princess?” I asked. She wasn’t holding her head, but the headache had taken a while to appear the first time.

  “It’s wonderful,” she said. “It’s much better than the fence.”

  That worried me.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Yashaa,” she said. It was unmistakably a command, and I straightened as she spoke it. “Remember, the most enduring part of a rose is the thorns.”

  “Of course, princess,” I said automatically.

  Tariq took his staff back and commended the Little Rose on her first efforts. Arwa followed them back toward the fire, chattering in her excitement at having another girl to train with, since we boys were far too cautious with her. I caught Saoud’s eye. He smiled briefly but immediately looked away, and I knew that he was still troubled. I couldn’t face him yet, so I stayed off by myself, listening to the sounds of the night as they came alive around me.

  These were the sounds I had known all my life. The insects and night birds, the creaking of trees. I knew that I had, at one point, known only the sounds of a stone castle in the night, but I did not remember them. My life had been a long march and a meager camp, but the constants in it had been fireside spinning, and the sounds of night. I wondered for the first time what night sounded like in the desert. With the lack of greenery, the insects must be different. And surely there were no trees at all.