Lies of Golden Straw

by E. L. Tenenbaum

  “That’s more like it,” Merlin decided. “Lemon tart?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Such a perfect afternoon wouldn’t last forever, and very soon Merlin was turning back into a bird so he could get out of the palace before anyone spotted him. He would fly home to tell my father that I was well and still alive, for the time being, then catch up to me when I was on my way home. Or so we planned. I’m surprised we didn’t hear Heaven chuckle when we bid each other farewell till later.

  I was sad to see him go, but figured I’d see him soon enough having already passed the test. I would see him soon, though not at the mill but back at the palace, when the nightmare of the previous day replayed itself in a larger room.

  The truth is, in all that time, I never really felt fear until I was locked into that second room and saw how much more straw it contained than the first. It was only then that I realized this was no longer a matter of trying to escape a lie, but the dire need to perpetuate one. There was nothing I could say to keep the king from locking me in a larger and larger room each night with more and more straw in the expectation that I would spin gold whenever he so wished. And if the little man would come back to help me, what more did I have to give him? I shuddered to think that I would have to start sacrificing fingers or toes, which could only lead to more stories and lies.

  Before that horror came, I was still happily lounging about my room believing myself to be but hours away from returning home. I had sat around all day in my borrowed silk nightdress and it wasn’t until early evening that I finally put on my freshly laundered shamrock-green dress. Enough time had passed to verify the authenticity of the gold the little man had spun, and with this little lark over, I supposed the king would be glad to send me on my merry way.

  Minutes after I’d dressed myself, there came a knock at my door. I opened it to find Kirkin fidgeting on the threshold.

  “I’m to take you to see His Majesty, miss,” he said, not quite meeting my eyes.

  From the way he spoke, I should have known right then what was to come.

  “Lead on,” I replied, stepping out of the room to join him.

  I followed Kirkin back down the hall to the throne room, although this time, I walked more beside than behind him. With the uncertainty and fatigue of the previous day gone, I eagerly took in my surroundings, and they were quite a treat for my simple village eyes.

  Despite the stones that built the palace, the interior had been designed to mimic the hillside as much as possible. Large windows commanded any wall with an outdoor view, ushering in an overabundance of natural light and often tricking the viewer into thinking there was no separation at all. Even then, the setting sun so domineered the glass wall that it rendered the rest of the hallway irrelevant. I figured that was why there weren’t many paintings or tapestries about, to avoid fading the colors in direct sunlight.

  Rather, green-painted iron vines climbed the walls opposite the windows, dipping and twisting between the crevices of the stones, undulating in their rise and fall like naturally growing plants. Interspersed all along were vibrantly colored flowers, bold purples and cobalt blues, rusty oranges and antique reds, even deep golden yellows that looked to have been dipped in the sun’s rays.

  At the end of the hall, where the way split in three possible directions, I heard the trickling of water and turned to see sheets of it gliding down the stones of the wall beside me. I froze, mesmerized by the sight.

  Noticing I’d been left behind, Kirkin came back to retrieve me. “Whenever you see a wall like this,” he said, gesturing to the running water, “you’re close to the main fountain.”

  With that, he led me past it and soon we were stepping into the open air courtyard with the bubbling fountain at its center. In the rising moonlight, the water lost some of its icy color and took on a silvery hue, like slivers of magic pouring forth to feed the metal vines on the palace walls. Merlin had spoken true when he’d told me magic was everywhere and glad to be given shape.

  Fortunately, I didn’t know what awaited me in the throne room, or I never would have noticed the faerytale-like details of the palace. Brimming with awe and true wonder, I came in to face my impending doom with a clear mind and soaring heart.

  The same crowd of noblemen greeted me as I entered the throne room, so I had to wonder if they hadn’t been waiting there all day so as not to miss any part of the curiously unfolding tale. I didn’t hold anything against them. I was just as eager as they to see the story conclude.

  Except this wasn’t the end. Not yet, anyway.

  I kept behind Kirkin as he led me down the red carpeted aisle toward the king. The water flowing on either side of us tugged at my eyes and ears. Having viewed the path it carved throughout the palace, I could now only see it for the magic coursing through it.

  Kirkin presented me to the king and I dipped into a low curtsy, keeping my eyes downcast, my entire bearing respectful. I wasn’t about to commit any slight that might keep me from being sent back home.

  “Rise, Miller’s Daughter,” the king commanded.

  I straightened, but kept my gaze averted, waiting for the words that would send me on my way, not knowing they wouldn’t be coming.

  “We have determined,” the king announced, “that the gold is real, spun by your spindle, from the straw given to you.”

  A ripple of excitement rolled through the gathered nobles, and though nobody moved, it felt as if all had pressed closer toward me, as if to catch a glimpse of the magical girl in checkered green.

  “However,” the king continued, and even now I hate the sound of that word, “to do something once is simply good luck. To do it again,” he paused for effect, “well now, that’s something to speak about.”

  I glanced up then only because I couldn’t believe the implication of the king’s words. Surely he didn’t mean—? But he did. I knew it the moment I saw the twinkle in his eye, the dancing mischief challenging me to defy logic once more. My blood ran cold then hot, and I wished I was anywhere but there.

  “Something the matter?” the king asked, in a tone too tender to be sincere.

  I pulled myself together before I answered. Whatever he’d seen was too much, even if I had already presented him with bobbins wrapped in gold thread. I lifted my chin and dared to meet his eyes.

  “Not in the least, Your Majesty,” I replied with all the confidence I could muster.

  The king pretended to look concerned. “Surely you wouldn’t mind spinning just a bit more? Your father can spare you another day?”

  At the mention of my father, I seethed. Spare me, indeed. The very man who had gotten me into this mess. The man whose fast tongue and faster lies had fed his pride and overtaken his reason to spew forth nonsense so often that people had actually begun to believe him. It would serve him right if my life was the cost of his foolish fancies. Let him live with the guilt that his carelessness had brought my untimely death. Let him think twice before he ever spoke again.

  And yet, at the same time, I knew in some dark and sick part of my soul, none of that would ever be. Having once presented the king with gold, my small feat would turn into legend in my father’s mouth. My soul would not find rest with the satisfaction of his tormenting guilt; rather, I would be allowed little repose as the tale would grow into how he’d discovered some latent magic in me he’d always suspected was there. I was trapped now as always in the gnarling vines of my father’s words, and I couldn’t ignore the irony of how much he owned me because of them.

  In a similar vein, he owned my mother, too, because only he could speak of her memory. She died so soon after I was born that not only did I never get to know her, but I also never really knew the truth of her in my father’s tales. Despite the bits I had sifted out, there was still so much of her life, and even their life together that I didn’t know. I had to trust that some parts of my father’s stories were true, but I only had the ones he’d told me to choose from. My life, my past was not my own, but chained to Father�
�s imagination. Even if I were to spin straw into gold, the myth, the mystique would follow me the rest of my days, the only way to ever escape it would be to lose my name and kingdom and make a home in a new land where my father’s stories couldn’t ever reach me, though their power would surely linger. They had formed me, after all.

  The proof was that I was still maintaining, albeit unwillingly, the lie that had brought me here to begin with.

  “Father and I,” I told the king, with a bright but humble smile, “are honored to do whatever we can to serve His Majesty and our beloved kingdom.”

  “Very well, then,” the king nodded.

  He signaled behind me and Kirkin stepped forward to take up his place as my guard and guide.

  “The new room,” he commanded.

  Kirkin bowed deeply and I followed suit, then turned to walk stiffly behind him, back down the red aisle, never once looking right or left, not even caring if Lady Mulberry’s Pomeranian’s growling would turn into a full scale assault on my person. I left thought and feeling—and in some ways dignity—on the floor at the king’s feet, and neither were to return until fear crept in with the closing of the door to the second straw-filled room.

  The spindle stood ominously in the center of it all, judge, jury, and executioner to witness the end of what I was now quite certain would really be my final night alive. Neatly stacked inside were fifty bales of wheat straw. Over seven times the amount of the night before. As the king himself had said, the little man had surely only appeared the first night because I had been lucky. Were he to appear a second time, well, that would be something to talk about.

  The euphoric feeling from earlier that day came crashing down around me, sharp drops of ice from a plummeting fall, beating into me, pushing me down, down, down. I sank to my knees in the middle of the room, sobbing in frustration against the tangled web of lies that held my life in its fragile prison. Except, unlike a real web, I couldn’t simply break through this one on my own. For this one was spun with something far stronger than spider’s silk. This was spun with gold, and the only way out was to melt it down and pray I wasn’t burned alive.

  My sobs finally trickled to a few stubborn tears, and I used my sleeve to brush them away. I looked once more at my surroundings, but froze when I saw the little man seated on the seat of the spindle, watching, calculating.

  “Mistress Miller, why do you cry?” he asked, though he knew the answer well enough.

  “The king wants me to spin this straw into gold,” I replied anyway. “It seems we really were meant to meet each other again.”

  The little man didn’t bother to hide his self-satisfied smile. “It is unwise for someone as old as yourself to be so ignorant of the world.”

  A bitter laugh escaped me. “I am learning quickly,” I assured him. “Before today, my world revolved around ample rains, an abundant harvest, and the grinding of the mill’s stones.”

  “The world is bigger than that,” the little man remarked. “Much bigger.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “For it must be big enough to contain man’s greed, his mischief—”

  “—and his lies,” he finished for me, and I nodded my assent. “Although,” he added, “there is beauty in the world as well. Like magic, it’s found by those who know how to see and shape it.”

  I shrugged in response. “Neither will help me here tonight.”

  “Uh-uh,” the little man cautioned, “we made a bargain once before, and we can bargain once again. What have you to offer me?”

  “I have nothing left to offer you,” I replied sullenly.

  The little man tsked. “Why despair so easily, dearie? I spun six bales into gold for only a necklace. I can do more even for something of similar value.”

  I stared at him, wondering what possible gain he sought from all this. No doubt he knew more about the world than I, but that was irrelevant now. I tried but failed to see through his mismatched gaze the benefit to him granted by my current situation. How did he predict this would all eventually turn out?

  Thinking on it now, despite how right he so often was, I know for fact the little man couldn’t see the future. He never would have been so eager to bargain with me if he could.

  But what did I know then of what would be? Each turn of the lock sounded like a knife to me, the metal carefully slicing away the years I was intended to live. I clasped my hands and gripped them tightly in an attempt to pull myself together. I needed to corral my thoughts, surely there was something I could offer this strange, mischievous imp.

  “That’s a very lovely ring,” he said softly.

  I looked down in surprise. I had forgotten about my mother’s ring. It was so much a part of me it felt like a natural extension of my hand. I twisted it between my fingertips. Perhaps I really would be required to sacrifice appendages to assuage the king’s greed.

  “It was my mother’s,” I said, my voice distant.

  Was it really, though? For all my father’s stories, I couldn’t be certain of the real origin of the ring and necklace he’d given me. Still, the ring, the necklace, and the garden were the only things I had that connected me to my mother. She hadn’t even given me a name before she’d left me in this world. Yet I was fairly certain, though my desperation could have added the details, that there had been something in my father’s eyes, to the set of his lips, when he’d told me of my mother’s jewelry. I couldn’t bear to think it might be otherwise.

  “Of course it is only a ring,” the little man cut into my thoughts. “Surely it’s worth the cost of magic needed to save a life.”

  “Surely,” I echoed softly after him.

  I took in the room once more, and sudden clarity slammed into me. Why was I so sentimental about a ring and necklace when my life was on the line? Merlin hadn’t been able to find any way to help me last time, and despite the sequence of events that had brought me here, I was the one stuck in this room. I was the one who wouldn’t walk away if there was still straw here come morning. The others may mourn my passing, may even be riddled with grief for a while, but time would pass and their lives would resume. Mine would not. Either my father or Merlin had always been there to help dictate the course of my life, but they weren’t here now. I was. Just me and a little man who had proven he could help. For the price of a necklace. For the price of a ring. It was worth it.

  Without another thought, with hardly any regret, I slid the ring with its maybe-history of seventeen generations off my finger and gave it to the little man.

  “Let’s get to work,” I said.

  The little man cackled and pressed the treadles, gearing up the drive wheel so it spun strong enough to rival the gusts of a tornado, replete with zaps of green lightning. I fed him straw as quickly as I could, and neither one of us stopped or said a word until there was none left to spin.

  We stared for a quiet moment at the lines of bobbins sparkling in the dying candlelight. Outside, the night was still blanketing the sky, the stars still winking as if they knew of the ruse going on in the palace far below.

  “Thank you,” I finally said into the stillness.

  The little man admired the ring on his finger. “I must say it has been a pleasure,” he replied.

  I studied the bobbins again. We’d never been rich, but I’d never wanted for much either. Still, like any girl, I sometimes dreamed of the finery I would grow up to have, of the silks and jewels and golden baubles I draped around my noble person. Now, with so much gold before me, I suddenly felt the urge to turn my head away. I couldn’t appreciate the glint of gold anymore; I couldn’t revel in its shine. It was fool’s gold, all of it, for that’s what it made of men.

  “I hope this will satisfy His Majesty,” I murmured.

  A short burst of laugher that sounded like busting glass came from the magical man. “Hope all you wish, miss,” he sang, “but don’t forget how big the world can be. This isn’t the last of it, I can assure you.”

  “How much more can the king possibly need?” I asked
in exasperation.

  The little man smirked and the light of mischief, or perhaps even wisdom, danced in his mismatched eyes. “Need? Need?” he parroted. “Dearie, a man who has one wants two. A man who has two wants four. A man who has four wants eight, and so on, until all his days are done.”

  I slumped against the wall and covered my face with my hands. “I will never see the end of this,” I lamented.

  The impish man studied the ring again. “All things in this world have an end,” he counseled. “No matter how big the world is.”

  I shook my head at him There was little comfort to be found in the play of his words. For his part, the man was quite pleased with himself, and perhaps even a little glad of my circumstances. I don’t know what he did all day, but he was surely finding great fun in his recent nighttime excursions, which I didn’t appreciate in my dismal situation.

  “Well, I must be off,” the man said with an exaggerated bow. “Until we meet again.”

  And then he was gone, and I almost called out after him, if only because I didn’t want to be alone. But alone I was, and despite my previous dismissal of Merlin and even my father, I wished at least one of them was there with me. My thoughts were dark, made all the more so when the candles finally sputtered out and I made no move to replace and relight them. What for? The work was done and I scarcely wanted to look at it anyway, scarcely wanted to see the proof of what my life had become, hypnotized by a breathtaking palace by day and a locked stone room of straw by night.

  I sat with my back against the wall, my head tilted so I could see the sky outside. There was a time when the sight of the sky was a promise to me, not just the Heavenly clock that marked the passing time. I tried to remember what it was like to be a bird, to see the world through Merlin’s eyes, the sun warm on my back, the wind cool beneath my wings.