Archive of Our Own

She sat in the cold room high in the tower on a bed of straw. Loose straw, great mounds of it, piled at all the edges of her cell. The spinning wheel in the middle of the floor had an accusatory look to it. An icy wind whistled in from the barred window.

It had all happened so fast. She had not been consulted. She had not even known. All these reckless words, all these boasts, all these bargains, and she had not known a thing about it until the soldiers came, with gleaming helms and bouncing plumes, to take her away. Her father had not had the good sense to warn her. Her life had been sold for someone else’s lie.

All at once, she sprang from the straw and ran to the window. On tiptoes, she could reach the bars. She grabbed hold and pulled. The iron was old and rusting – she could feel it flaking in her hand – but still it did not give. For a moment she leant there, staring down at the town so far below. There was still snow clinging on in the dimples of the ground. It had been a harsh winter so far but it looked beautiful now. The cold gleam of the first stars taunted her.

With a growl in the back of her throat, she flung herself from the wall and whirled to face the cell. There had to be something she could use. No convenient ropes to climb down or weapons to wield but perhaps….

She grabbed the little three-legged stool and flung it with all her might at the wall. It struck the stone with a disappointingly muted thud. One leg splintered. She stamped on it until it finally broke away. With all the strength she could muster, she jammed it between the bars. They did not move an inch. She wrenched on her makeshift lever but to no avail.

“It’s a long way down,” said a calm voice behind her. “I hope you have a plan.”

She had not heard the bolt slide back or the hinges creak. The important thing was to remain calm.

“I’ll think of something.”

“Best think fast. It would be a shame to fall. I’m surprised you didn’t try setting the straw ablaze.”

“I’ve never been very good at starting fires without a tinder box,” she replied. “Besides, there is always a chance they would let me burn.”

She turned round fast before she could lose her nerve. A man sat cross-legged on the straw, the trailing edges of his ragged coat fanning out around him. His face was twisted, his mouth pulled into a sneer. One eyelid hung heavy whilst the other eye was startlingly wide.

“Get up.” She hated the tremble in her voice. “Stand in the light.”

The stranger obliged. In the glow from the oil lamp, she took him in: the limp in his walk, the stoop to his back, the narrow bird-boned hands with their gnarled knuckles. His hair was so vivid a red that it looked as though it were burning. From within his pocked face, his eyes glittered like beetles.

“Who are you? Why are you here?”

“Think of me as….a friend.”

Her heart hammered against her ribcage. “Why are you here?”

“What is your name, girl?”

“I am my father’s daughter,” she said bitterly. “It seems nothing else matters.”

“Come now, you must have a name of your own. Everyone does.”

“Not to the likes of you.”

To her surprise, the little man smiled. It seemed genuine, cracking across his face like the sun breaking through stormy skies.

“You would be surprised how many people don’t think that far ahead. Very well, daughter of your father. I am here to bargain with you.”

“I’m afraid I am already spoken for. Enough deals have been made for my life.”

“I don’t want your life. At least, not for long. I just want to borrow it, for a while.”

He watched her intently. The Daughter was unused to being looked at that way. It seemed as though he saw past her, past skin and bone and into something else, something even she did not like to examine too closely.

“Only fools make contracts with your kind,” she managed over the clamour of her panicking mind.

“No, my dear. Only fools break contracts with my kind.” His teeth glinted in the moonlight. “In your case, I think only a fool would refuse to deal with me. You know what fate awaits you.”

“I am to die.” The unfairness of it nearly choked her. “They will kill me for a lie somebody else told.”

“Indeed. Life is cruel.” The little stranger did not seem particularly concerned by that fact. “I offer you a way out. More than that, my dear – I offer you power. Accept my terms and I will make you the most powerful woman in Molorra.”

A laugh broke from the Daughter’s mouth, too sudden and too loud. “What makes you think I want that?”

“Isn’t that what everyone wants?” His eyes narrowed as still he looked at her. “Power? Triumph?”

It was tempting. Her ideas of what power would look like were hazy. She had never felt it before. Wealth, perhaps. He could shower her with gold. A rich woman had to have some power of her own. She might leave everything behind, not be forced to bite her tongue for anyone…

“No.”

“No?”

At least he did not seem offended. The Daughter took courage from the amused curve to his mouth.

“No,” she repeated. “I don’t want – I don’t need that.”

“Oh, need, need,” he sneered. “What is need? Who deals with the old magic for what they need? I am offering you what you want. You want power. Everyone does. Power, freedom, what is the difference? Haven’t you always longed to escape?”

The Daughter felt suddenly exhausted. The long afternoon of shocks and threats seemed to have piled up too high at last. She sank down onto the straw and closed her eyes, willing it all away.

“Do not hide from me.” The stranger’s voice was suddenly harsh. “Do not shut this out. This is your chance, your only chance, to be something more than the daughter of your father. I shall make you Queen of Molorra.”

The Daughter’s laugh came out closer to a sob. “And marry King Richard? That is your offer to me? My handsome captor for a husband?”

“Wealth, status, power.” She felt rather than saw the stranger sit beside her. “Is that not enough for you?”

On any other day, the Daughter would have demurred. She would have hurried back to the safety of maidenly modesty, buried all her wants and dreams. Of course it was enough. It was too much. It was more than any girl should ask for. Perhaps she was angry or merely hopeful but she did not swallow the truth.

“No,” she snapped. “It isn’t.”

The man’s laugh was low and delighted. “Ah, my dear, how well we shall deal together if you are just honest with me! Let me tell you what I propose: you marry King Richard for a year – just a year – and after that, I shall set you free.”

“Free?” the Daughter echoed bemusedly.

“Free,” he repeated. “No more orders, no more duty. Your life can be yours to control.”

Her heart stuttered in her chest. She dared to look at him. Sitting down, their faces were level. He was close enough that she could sense the magic of him. His eyes bored into her soul.

“And what,” she fought to keep her voice steady, “do you want me to marry him for?”

“That is not part of the deal, my dear. I save your life and make you rich and powerful. You marry the king, of course – he will ask you, and you could not refuse if you wanted to. But after a year, I shall release you from that marriage.”

“Where’s the trap?” she asked suspiciously. “What else do you want?”

His gaze was completely steady. “I want your first-born child.”

“You…?” The Daughter’s breath caught in her lungs. “Why?”

“That is not your concern. When you have a child, we shall play a game for it. If I win, I take the baby. That is all you need to know.”

“And that is the contract?”

“That is the contract.”

Her throat was dry as ash. Her eyes flickered around the room: the locked door, the barred window.

“The – the gold,” she managed. “Will it not be….enchanted? It will turn back to straw in the morning.”

The stranger laughed. “A common misconception, my dear. It will turn back to straw when our deal is complete. In common trades, yes, a day is usually enough but on this occasion I think it will remain gold for some months to come, don’t you?”

It would be so easy to refuse him. It would be the virtuous thing to refuse him. More to the point, it would be the wise thing. But wisdom was for those with choices and her father had left her with none. If she did not deal, she would die. She was not prepared to be martyred for his arrogance, not yet.

She held out her hand. “Then I agree, friend. If you keep your word.”

He clasped it firmly. She could feel the rough scars on his fingers. There ought to be have been a shimmer of light or pulse of energy but there was nothing.

“If you keep yours.”

At once, the stranger released her and jumped to his feet. The Daughter watched him mutely as he hurried to the broken remains of the stool.

“Up, up!” he commanded. “You will spin, and I will transform. We have not a moment to lose.”

“I don’t know if it is even possible to spin straw,” the Daughter objected.

“We shall learn soon enough.”

He pressed the broken leg back into place and bound it around with his belt. For a moment, the room seemed airless. The draught from the window was stilled. The Daughter tasted metal in her mouth. As quickly as he had begun, the man unwound the belt to reveal the stool whole and complete again as if it had never been broken.

“Sit.” He shoved it towards the wheel. “Spin.”

The Daughter sat. Her hands were shaking, her mind still screaming, but this she could do. Her foot knew the rhythm of the pedal, her fingers knew the pattern they must work. Magic or no magic, spinning didn’t change. Even when the man sat beside her and gathered the fraying threads of spun straw into his hands, she stayed calm. She did not flinch as she tasted metal on her tongue and saw the first few strands turn to shimmering gold.

They worked in silence for several hours. The moon stayed bright, letting them work even as the oil lamps began to die. The thump of the wheel was the only sound. It was as familiar to the Daughter as the rhythm of her own heart, but not so the stranger.

“What do women do,” he asked at last, “whilst they spin? It seems tedious work.”

The Daughter roused herself from the hypnotic doze wrought by the wheel. “Hmm? Oh, we talk.”

“Talk,” the little man echoed, as though he had never heard of the concept before.

The Daughter nodded. “Most everything I know I learned at the distaff. Stories, gossip, lessons…whatever people have to share, they’ll share it spinning together.”

“Stories.” A thin smile curved across his ugly face. “Tell me a story then. A true one.”

The Daughter hesitated. “Fair exchange. I tell you a true story, you tell me one in return.”

“What story would you like?” he asked with mock gallantry. “Your wish is my command.”

She span a few more strands to gold before she answered.

“I want the story of why you’re here tonight. Why you’re helping me.”

His hands stilled, the straw in them remaining unchanged. “I see. And what will I get in return?”

“What would you like?” she asked cautiously. “I have little that is true worth the telling.”

The little man set to work again, his posture relaxing as though he had never faltered at all. “You shall tell me the story of your mother,” he said decisively. “And you shall go first.”

The Tale Of The Good Woman

Once upon a time, there lived a girl named Hannelore. She was the eldest of four siblings and by far the prettiest. The family lived in a little cottage on the edge of the woods and though they were poor they were happy. That happiness was not to last, however, as the girl’s father fell very sick. When he died, the family could not remain in their cottage. They had nowhere to go but the house of Hannelore’s uncle, several days’ journey away.

Her uncle was not a good man as her father had been. He lived in a tumbledown cottage and survived by doing odd jobs for his neighbours. He drank a great deal, and fought too. He had nothing to offer his sister and her children but a roof over their heads and even that leaked.

But Hannelore did not despair. She was the eldest child and she knew that it was her duty to care for the others. With her mother’s help, she began to repair the cottage with sticks and leaves. It was not perfect but it kept the weather out. Her mother was heartsore and sick from the loss of her husband, and so it was Hannelore who first set out into the village to find work. She did jobs for the elderly women, fetching and carrying, in exchange for a loaf of bread or a basket of plums. She brought them home to her grateful siblings.

Hannelore had one great love in her life: her mother’s spindle. Since she was old enough to walk, she had been learning to use it. Now she span every free chance she got. She span so much and so often that the women of the village started to take notice. They invited her to come and spin with them of an afternoon.

From these women, Hannelore learned not just to spin but to weave. She learned to make delicate lace, painstakingly, over many days. She learned to dye cloth with madder root. Over the next few years, all the women of the village agreed that Hannelore was blessed. They had never seen someone spin with such skill before, not even the oldest woman whose hands still flew over a loom like birds despite her withered fingers.

Through all of this, Hannelore had been helping her mother to keep house. Her mother did become less heartsick with time but she never became hale and healthy again. Hannelore could not find enough food for her, nor keep the winter’s chill at bay. In time, her mother succumbed to it. Hannelore was left alone, with her four siblings to protect in the house of her wastrel uncle.

But still she did not despair. She taught them to help her with the chores: cooking, cleaning, the endless slow process of laundry. Her uncle never thanked her for her labours but her brother learned to. All the while, in secret, Hannelore made plans. She had been selling her cloth at market for several years. She had never seen the market, for it was many miles away in another town and she was always so busy with her chores, but one of the village women took her work along with her and brought back a few pennies each week. Hannelore hid it inside the mattress.

Hannelore dreamt of the day she left the village behind. She imagined herself as a fine town lady, spinning the most beautiful threads anyone had ever seen. She used to daydream whilst she worked of the man she would meet, the one who would understand her craft and love her like men only love in stories. But though she saved every penny she could, still her purse never grew any heavier. Her littlest sister needed shoes. Her brother grew sick and the doctor demanded a high price for his care. Hannelore paid each time, kept her dreams to herself, kept hoping and praying for escape.

When Hannelore was fifteen, she was the most beautiful girl in the village for all she was thin and tired. Twice, men offered for her in marriage and twice Hannelore turned them down. She could not be a baker’s wife, not if she ever wanted to see the far-off town of her daydreaming.

One day, her uncle fell down a well. He was very drunk, it was very dark, and nobody heard him shout. Hannelore tried to be sad for him but in truth she was mostly sad for herself. For all he was an unpleasant fellow, he had continued to bring home just enough to pay rent on the tumbledown cottage. With him gone, Hannelore was truly alone with her four young siblings to care for.

She thought about running. She could have hitched a ride on a cart headed for town, taken her spindle and her shawl and never looked back. She longed to. But when she crept in the middle of the night to fetch the few pennies that she had from their hiding place in the mattress, she saw the faces of her sisters. She had stood guard over them for so long now. How could she leave them? What would become of them without her?

So Hannelore stayed. She made them breakfast. She told them that they were not long for that cottage. She promised to find a way to save them all from destitution.

That way arrived at the end of the week in the form of one of the village’s richest men. He was a miller, and very proud of it too. He had watched Hannelore for a long time. Now he took his opportunity and asked for her hand in marriage.

He was twice her age and pompous besides but Hannelore thought about the money. He could provide for her siblings. They might stand a chance, with a room in the miller’s house and his influence to find them decent work. Hannelore accepted his offer and within days the whole village was swept up preparing for the wedding.

Hannelore, now the miller’s wife, left behind the tumbledown cottage and moved into the pretty stone house of the miller, high up on the hill. She brought her siblings with her. The miller was not happy about that but Hannelore assured him they would only stay until they had lives of their own to go to. She began to cook and clean – which took far longer now, with finer foods and a bigger house. She grew plump and anxious under the miller’s care, doing all she could to keep him happy. She span in solitude, let her threads pile up unsold.

One sister met a tailor from town when he came to measure the miller for a new suit. She married him, and so she left the village and Hannelore behind. The next sister met a farmer at church, who was quiet and whose family were kind, and so she left the village and Hannelore behind. The third sister met a coachman who drove for a fine family many miles away as he was passing through the village. She married him, and so she left the village and Hannelore behind. Her brother – the youngest of all of them – she had apprenticed to a blacksmith so that he might have a trade that would always be useful. He left her home, and her, behind.

And so it was just Hannelore, the miller’s wife, alone in his fine house. The miller was not a cruel man. At least, he did not mean to be a cruel man. He did not know what kindness would have looked like. He encouraged her to stay away from the women of the village, to spin by herself rather than in their company, for she was his wife and she was better than them. He urged her to sleep beside him every night.

In time, Hannelore found herself with child. The miller was overjoyed for he had always wanted a son. When the baby was born, however, it was a little girl. The miller bought his wife a silver necklace and told her that it would be a son next time.

[“What was the little girl called?” the little man asked.

“They called her –” She stopped abruptly, and laughed. “You won’t catch me out that easily.”]

Hannelore did her best to teach her daughter all she knew. She sat her on the floor at her feet whilst she spun. She showed her the hypnotic patterns of the loom. But Hannelore was no longer as strong as she once was. Years of hard work, of not enough food, of missing sleep, had taken their toll. She was frail, like her mother before her.

She rarely went into the village anymore. She kept to the house. She scrubbed it daily. She cooked three good meals for her husband. She bathed her daughter, brushed her hair, tried to teach her manners. She did everything she could, and still her hands shook and her legs trembled when she climbed the stairs.

When she was with child again, the midwife worried. Hannelore worried too. The miller, however, was delighted. Here at last was to be the son he had always wanted. He bought his daughter red ribbons for her hair in honour of a baby boy and went all round the village telling everyone that he was to have an heir.

But when the time came –

Her voice faltered. “But when the time came, things did not go smoothly. The baby came early. The midwife couldn’t…. There was blood on the sheets. I was only little, you understand. I don’t remember fully. I…”

The little man said nothing. She was grateful. People tended to tut or sigh at this point, to put their arm around her or to nod sagely like they understood. Perhaps they did. It didn’t matter. She did not want to be understood.

“The baby was born dead. Can a thing be dead if it has never been truly alive? It was born blue. They put it in…in the chamber pot. The basin was already full of blood, you see, and –” Her voice wobbled dangerously. “They buried them both at the end of the week. ‘Beloved wife’. That’s what they wrote on the headstone. That’s all she was. His wife. I don’t think he ever loved her. And the boy…the little boy who never was…they wrapped him up in cloth and buried him alone. His sister used to have nightmares about it, about how lonely he must be, all cold, under the earth.”

“What happened to the sister?” the little man asked softly.

“She grew up,” the Daughter said simply. “Her father did his best, I suppose. Can you blame someone if their best is not enough? The women of the village who knew her mother taught her what they could. She learned to spin. She was never as good as her mother was but she tried. Until one day, her stupid bragging father made some ridiculous claim about her being able to spin straw into gold.”

“And here we are.” The little man’s laugh was deep and gentle. “A child of duty and a creature of the wildwoods.”

“Duty killed my mother.” The words lurched out of her mouth against her will, as if they had been waiting to escape. “Being good killed her.”

The little man’s face betrayed nothing. “Yes.”

“I will not die that way.”

“No, my dear.”

She nearly jumped out of her skin as his long fingers rested gently against her hand.

“I promise, you won’t.”

*

It seemed as though she had barely laid her head down when the door burst open. The Daughter restrained her instinct to run. Self-consciously, she blinked sleep from her eyes. She made a show of stretching drowsily like a cat. The stranger had made it clear that his plan somehow hinged on her appearing at ease, confident in her own magic. She was determined to play her part well.

Three men crowded into the room with her. Other faces peered in from the doorway. It seemed as though every guard in the castle had contrived a reason to be there. In the middle of them all strode the king, all dressed in blue.

“It’s not possible,” a guard breathed, edging away from her.

King Richard did not even look at her. He reached out reverently and gathered a handful of gold thread. In the morning light, the Daughter got her first good look at him. He was a handsome man, as warm and silver as a summer night. His blue eyes shone. The smile he turned on her was dazzling.

“It is real. I’d know it anywhere.”

The Daughter choked down any well-trained instinct to be respectful. “Of course it’s real. Are you satisfied? May I go home?”

“Go home?” Richard looked stunned. “Why would I ever –?” He checked himself. “This could easily be a trick, a deception of some kind. You must remain until we are certain.”

Inside, she raged. Outwardly, she was serene. She had to be. She had a part to play.

“In that case, I will thank you for bringing me breakfast. And a basin of water,” she added conscientiously. “I wish to wash my face.”

“Hmm?” Richard’s eyes had already strayed back to the gold. “Oh, naturally, I’ll have someone bring it up.”

“May I speak with my father?”

“Your…?” He dropped the handful of gold and frowned at her. “Your father is many miles away, girl, hard at work. You will see him in good time.”

The Daughter forced herself to settle back against the gold. She crossed her ankles perfectly, kept her spine straight. She had to be beautiful. She had to be regal. That was part of the bargain.

“Very well.” She dared to look him in the eyes. “I prefer my tea with sugar.”

Sugar she did not get but toast and butter made it up the stairs. It was one of the guards who brought it in, an older man with a grizzled beard. She suspected he had volunteered for the task. Compared to some of the baby-faced recruits, he seemed unintimidated by rumours of her power.

“You will be moved from this room,” he said, slamming the tray down, “at sundown. Until then, remain quiet.”

“Will supper be provided?”

She tried to inject her voice with the right note of casual insolence but the guard did not look impressed.

“That’s up to his majesty,” was all he said, and left her alone for the duration of the day. The Daughter slept fitfully, stirred awake by mother-haunted dreams.

*

The new cell was bigger than the last one. To the Daughter’s inexpert eye, it seemed as though it had until recently been a bedchamber, now stripped of all its furniture. It was probably for unimportant guests, or perhaps the very important servants of the most important guests, but nonetheless an improvement on the bitter cold of her previous cell. It was also filled with straw. This time, it was stacked in bales in every free space. A new spinning wheel was waiting for her, and a new stool. A supper tray with bread and butter lay beside it.

“Friend?” she asked haltingly, as soon as the lock was turned. “Are you there?”

Part of her was certain he would not arrive but he was there in the blink of an eye, fading out of the shadows like an optical illusion.

“Little witch.” He raised one gnarled hand in salute to her. “You are playing your part admirably.”

It was a silly thing to feel proud of, but she felt it all the same. “They have given us more.”

“And in bales.” He sounded almost insulted. “So much extra work when it’s packed in tight like that. We must begin at once.”

“Would you like some supper?” She settled herself down on the stool. “I don’t know if…if your kind eat bread.”

For a moment, the man seemed surprised. The laugh that overtook him was as startled as it was pleased.

“We eat much as you do, my dear,” he assured her. “Thank you. We will eat whilst we work.”

This time, the silence was somehow companionable. The Daughter tried to put out of her mind all the idle conversation of the previous night, in which she had told him more than she ever intended and he had revealed nothing to her. The ghost of her mother had been awoken and refused to return to rest.

The wheel clicked and thumped. The straw span. The gold coiled at the little man’s feet. The Daughter’s hands, long accustomed to such work, were not tiring.

“Tell me now,” she begged. “Tell me what this is about.”

The little man paused. He raised a strand of fresh gold to his lips as if to taste it. He sighed.

The Tale Of The Foolish Fae

Once upon a time, in a land that was quite remarkably similar to our own, there lived a young countess. She was born to the least of the noble families, out in the provinces on the edge of the woods. As she grew up, there was little to distinguish her from the other girls in the area. Like them, she picked berries and braided grass. Like them, she learned to sew, to wash clothes, to cook pepper pies and steamed puddings. But, unlike them, she caught the attention of a young and handsome king.

As young and handsome kings are wont to do, he sought a young and beautiful bride. There could be none more beautiful than that countess, not in the whole of the kingdom. The moment he caught a glimpse of her, he knew he had to have her. Who was she to resist? He decked her in rubies and took her away to be his queen.

I cannot tell you if he loved her. I suppose it does not really matter. She loved him, in her own way, but most of all I believe it was a job for her. It was her duty to her family to marry well, and have much better can a girl from the provinces marry than to the king himself?

The court welcomed her. They thought her charming, refreshing, with her backwoods innocence and lack of pretension. She was a breath of fresh air in a stifled court. But they whispered too. They whispered about her family, about her future, about her fitness for the throne. She heard the whispers and she feared them.

There are two jobs in the life of a lady: to marry well, and to bear an heir. The queen had achieved the first exceptionally but the second eluded her. Try as she might, no child was forthcoming. Months passed and there was no quickening. Years crept by. The king grew colder. The whispers grew louder.

Till at last the young queen took matters into her own hands. She left the castle and journeyed back to the house where she had been born, and there she walked alone into the woods where she used to play. These were old woods, ancient woods. There were trees that had stood there since the dawn of time, wide and strong as any castle tower. There were creatures living in the darkest depths that you do not even have a name for, so secret and rare were they. If only you could have seen it! How beautiful it was!

Deep inside, where no child ever dared play, there was a pool of still water, cold as death even in midsummer. Far down amongst the rocks, many-legged creatures crawled and fed on dirt. Up on the surface, lilies bloomed. Such lilies! White as an egret’s wing, pink as a lady’s blush, delicate as a dream. You have never seen anything as big, as bold, as perfect, as they.

On the banks of this pool lived a sprite, of sorts – one of the Good Neighbours, as your people might say – in a little house of bark and moss with jasmine round the door and crocuses at the window. It was to this cottage that the queen came alone, with her fine slippers muddied and her precious gown torn, to beg the aid of its owner in securing herself an heir.

Well, this…spirit of the woods, he was reluctant to involve himself in the affairs of mankind but he had a soft spot for the queen. He had watched her grow, seen her pick blackberries at the shallow edge of his wildwood. He had seen her nurse a baby bird back to health. She was His, just as every stumbling fawn born beneath those trees was His. And so he offered her a bargain. He would give her the son she craved, and in return she would ensure that his home remained safe forevermore. He had heard the rumours, the whispers on the wind, of plans to cut it down for timber, clear the land for growing grain. This place was to be his forever, and in return she got her child. The queen agreed.

It is no easy thing to create a son from nothing. When the queen returned to her castle, keeping secret her bargain, the sprite headed for the mountains. There is a lake, malachite green and still as glass, between two peaks. In its icy waters swims an orange fish. He dived in and caught it with his bare hands, packed it safe in a basket. Then he stole away to the castle and crept to the queen’s chambers, where they cooked it on the hearth. She ate, and so the magic began.

No effort did he spare in his quest. He journeyed over the seas in a boat he hewed himself to steal for her the egg of one of the purple heartbeat birds that live on the sunny side of an island far west of here. He bargained with a hangman for the teeth of an innocent boy sentenced to death. He planted them in the earth by the deep pool, watered them with his own blood, and so grew from them the sweetly soporific herb that would ensure a boychild. The queen ate it in a soup.

He even braved the realm of his people, the homeland he left so long ago, to steal an unborn soul.  Oh yes, it can be done. You need the caul from a baby’s head fashioned into a sack to carry it, else it will drain out and dissipate. You must take care to catch it quick and tie it tight before it flees, but it can be done. If you are good enough. If you are clever enough. If you want it badly enough.

Sure enough, the queen became round with child. He cared for her in secret throughout her confinement, sneaking in the shadows, bringing her what she needed. Dew gathered at moonlight from the petals of a daisy. A talisman carved in pear wood and varnished in mistletoe. All the old ways, all the old magic, to ensure a healthy birth. He considered her a friend. At times, perhaps, he considered her a daughter.

The child was born healthy. He was a bonny thing, plump and perfect. The kingdom rejoiced. The king was delighted. The sprite vanished back into the trees where he belonged, content to watch his miracle babe grow from a distance, to listen to the whispers on the wind. For a time it seemed that all was well.

Yet before the prince reached his fifth birthday, the queen betrayed him. The woodcutters came to the wildwood. They tore down trees. They cleared paths. They trampled the flowers under foot. The sprite did his best but his magic is nothing against cold iron. They killed the wildwood. They murdered it. All its guardian could do was watch helplessly as it died, listen to it screaming.

There was a family of rabbits – new-born babies burrowed at the roots of a tree. When the tree was torn down, they were all exposed. The men let the dogs have them. There were deer in those trees that had never seen a hunter’s bow before. They were killed without question, and the traitorous queen feasted on their flesh beside that wicked husband of hers. The deep pool and its lilies…all gone now. The little house was burned. The sprite watched it burn. The smell of jasmine in the fire…

[For a moment, the little man fell silent. His hands trembled. The gold between his fingers turned back into straw.]

The spirit of the wildwoods went to the queen to demand his rights, to make her honour the bargain they had made. She told him that it was not her fault, that she had asked her husband not to. Asked! The deal was not to ask! It was to defend! On her son’s life, it was to defend!

Yet when the sprite raised his hand to strike her down, he could not. He had cared for this woman. He had trusted her. He had loved her as kin. And so, throughout their long months working together, he had given her his name. He was powerless against her. There was no magic that he could use to enforce the bargain, no power he could call upon, not when she ordered him away by his true name.

He fled. Up to the mountains, up to where the woods were young and harsh but safe for now from the axes. He worked to put down roots, to rebuild his power. He watched. He waited. He listened to the whispering of the wind.

In the silence that followed, the Daughter swallowed down the lump in her throat. “Until?”

“Until?” A wicked little laugh escaped his crooked mouth. “Until you, my dear. Until all the pieces of my plan were put in motion. I cannot kill him. I made him, I created him – it is not in my power to kill him. Nor could I ever kill her, who held my name. But I can hurt him. I can punish them both.”

*

That night, the Daughter did not sleep at all. She lay in the brief hour between the completion of their work and a watery dawn, drifting. Though they had talked long afterwards of other things, though the man had been reluctant to discuss any of his story further, she could not tear her thoughts away from it. There had been something terrible in his voice, something low and violent, something she knew to back away from. Yet in the deepest parts of her mind where she buried the thoughts she must not think, there came an answering cry.

Make them bleed. Make them hurt. Make them see me. Make them know.

She had thought for many years that the sharp-clawed creature that lived inside her had been tamed. It had slumbered by the hearth-fire of her heart, undisturbed. Yet now it was awake, hungry, spilling poison into her veins. She wanted things she was not permitted to want. She wanted to scream. She wanted to break.

When the sun was over the horizon, the lock turned. She did not bother to sit up. She felt woolly with exhaustion. King Richard stood gleaming in the doorway, flanked by half the guards in the castle. The gold bounced light back onto their faces, giving them haloes against the wall.

“It is done,” she grumbled, covering her strained eyes against the glare. “May I sleep now?”

“It is all gold!” Richard laughed like a child as he seized a handful of it. “Every bit of it!”

“May I sleep?” the Daughter demanded, though she knew the answer. “May I yet go home?”

Richard reached out and grabbed her wrists. It took all her self-control not to flinch away. He pulled her upright till she was sitting, brought her calloused hands to his lips.

“Miracle worker,” he breathed. “You shall not go back to that mill to toil away. One more night, sorceress. One more night of magic and I shall make you Queen of Molorra.”

There were gasps from the watching guards. There were reverent sighs. The Daughter looked into the king’s beautiful face and felt…nothing at all. Just tiredness. Just the dry sting of her eyes. There was not even shock.

“I will not spin again,” she said.

Richard’s face crumpled in confusion. “What are you saying?”

“One more night, and then I spin no more. Marry me if you will, but I shall not sit and spin for you all day as your wife.”

She could see him thinking about it. His eyes told the full story. Slowly, a smile returned to his face.

“There will be no need for it,” he promised. “As Queen, of course, you need not spin. Tonight you shall ensure the future of Molorra. After that you will have earned your leisure.”

His lips were dry as he kissed her unresisting cheek. She hoped her lack of smiles would appear refined, dignified rather than unenthusiastic. She hoped he kept his word. She hoped this wasn’t all about to collapse in on her.

“I shall have them bring you food,” Richard promised, “and water.”

“And a pillow.” She could not stifle a yawn. “Gold is not a comfortable place to lay one’s head.”

“And a pillow.” Richard stood up fluidly and turned away from her. “Come, gentlemen! We have preparations to make.”

*

When dusk rolled around again, the Daughter expected to be taken up into another tower. Instead, she was led down a wide, sweeping staircase. Servants and courtiers peeped out from behind doors to watch her pass. She pretended not to see them. It was easy enough to do; her whole life had felt like a dream these past few days. Nothing was real anymore.

A vast door was opened and the Daughter stepped through into a ballroom. She was so taken aback that she did not even hear the lock behind her. The scale of it overwhelmed her. There was more glass in that one room than she had ever seen before, in great mirrored panels striping the walls between ancient tapestries. The vaulted ceiling above was carved with a hundred tiny people, children with angelic faces cavorting across every arch. The grand chandelier hung swaying from its chain, so dizzyingly huge that she did not know how to even estimate its length. A carved dragon glowered down from it, fangs bared. In its forehead gleamed the famous Ruby of Molorra, the pride of the crown’s collection. She had only heard rumours of it before. In the candlelight, it glowed as though from a fire within.

“A fine thing, isn’t it?” Her friend’s tone was contemptuous. “Just a lump of stone but it gleams so prettily.”

“You do not admire it?” She was no longer surprised by his sudden arrivals.

“It is dead,” was all he replied.

The Daughter lowered her gaze from the glories above to the ocean of straw spread out before her. King Richard had had the ballroom filled from wall to wall. If he only had her magic for one more night, he clearly intended to get the most out of it.

“We must get to work.” She settled herself at the wheel. “As always.”

Her friend smiled at her. “I trust you have more stories to tell me.”

“Only the ordinary kind.”

“Then tell me the ordinary kind.”

The hours passed as the wheel span. An enchantment seemed to fall over the ballroom, one different from the magic spilling from his fingers. The pulse of the wheel dragged them into a trance. Time slowed to a crawl. They talked of idle nursery nothings.

“What is it you really hope to achieve?” she asked, some time after midnight. “What is the point of all of this?”

“I told you why I was doing it.”

“Yes, but not what you were doing. I know you want me to marry him. I know you intend to take my child away.” She was refusing to think of that terrifying future any more than she had to. “But what is the point? What are you hoping to get out of it?”

The shadows seemed to creep from beneath the hem of his coat. “Vengeance, my dear. Only vengeance.”

“A child for a child?”

He was silent for a moment. The gold slipped seamlessly through his fingers to pool at their feet. She watched him out of the corner of her eye. She couldn’t help herself in these moments when a glimpse of his true nature was visible, like something from a nightmare.

“I am making a legend,” he spoke at last. “He should have been my legacy. Instead it shall be you.”

“What sort of legacy am I?”

“With luck, one that lasts a thousand years.”

The Tale Of The Witch-Queen

Once upon a time, there lived a handsome young king. As he lived in one of the finest little kingdoms in the world and slept every night on silk sheets and feather beds, you might imagine that he was very happy. But this king had a great longing for something that he could not name, not yet. Until one day he was riding through a small village with his retinue and stopped to speak to a miller. The miller told him that his daughter was the most beautiful girl around and that she had great power. She could take straw and spin it into gold.

Well, the king did not believe him for a moment but the idea intrigued him. He ordered the girl brought to his castle. There, in a tower, he prepared a spindle for her and an enormous mound of straw. When she arrived, he was astounded to see that she really was as beautiful as her father had claimed. She was too proud to bow to him, instead demanding to know what he had summoned her for. The king locked her in the tower and told her that if all the straw was gold by morning, he would let her live.

The king did not think for one moment that she would manage it but when he appeared the next day to challenge her, he found her sleeping peacefully on a pile of gold. He could scarcely believe his eyes. Could it be that this woman was one of the wild old ones? Did she have a witch’s touch? Were he a wiser king, he might have known then to send her back home with a smile and no more said for it never pays to tangle with witches. But the king was not wise and so he ordered another room prepared, this one with twice as much straw. He told the lovely girl that if she managed to make it all gold by morning, he would not kill her.

The girl was very angry with him but she agreed to do it so long as his guards treated her kindly and brought her breakfast. That night, the king could scarcely sleep for anticipation. When he rushed to the tower in the morning, sure enough he found an enormous pile of gold and the girl fast asleep.

He might not have been a wise king but he knew what he wanted. He made a plan to marry the girl, for who could ever say he was not the greatest king of all when his queen was as beautiful as any and had enough magic at her fingertips to make his kingdom the richest around? He did not want to marry her right away, however, as she was only a miller’s daughter. He decided to set her one more test. He told her that he would ask her to spin one more night and, if she succeeded, he would make her his queen.

The girl was thoughtful for a moment. She said, “When I am queen, I shall never spin again.”

The king thought that this was a good bargain. After all, she was beautiful and he was already rich. Nobody need ever know that she had stopped spinning for him. Besides, she might change her mind. So he agreed and had his men fill a vast ballroom with all the straw they could lay their hands on, enough to make him rich for ten generations at least. He shut the girl inside and went to bed.

The next morning, he half-believed she would have failed but he arrived once again to find her sleeping and every inch of the ballroom filled with pure gold. He was ecstatic. He woke the girl and embraced her, telling her that he would marry her by the end of the month. She was taken away to a different tower, with a beautiful room and the finest gowns. The king set about preparing for the wedding.

The whole kingdom rejoiced to see such a beautiful queen. Though some were scared of her great power, most were fascinated by the gold she always wore – gold that she had spun herself. For a time, it seemed that everything was well. The young queen was with child. Soon the king would have everything he could ask for: wife, child, wealth, crown. But it was not to last.

The king grew complacent in all that he had achieved. He forgot that his wife was the one who had brought him wealth and power. Disinterested in her now that she was his, his eye began to stray. When the queen gave birth, the king doted upon the baby. His wife was of little interest to him. That is, until a stranger arrived at the castle gates demanding to see the queen.

This stranger was obviously one of the Fair Folk, and he greeted the queen as an old friend. He said that he had come to claim her child. The king was outraged, but the queen seemed to have been expecting it. She explained that it was custom, that this was the price to pay for her magic. She would play the stranger in a game, and if she lost he would take the child.

The king was furious. He accused his wife of being a sorceress, a trickster, a monster. He threatened to have her killed. The queen reminded him that his magic had been what he wanted and that all magic comes with a price. She told him that if he killed her, the child was still forfeit.

So the queen played the game with the stranger. If she called him by his true name, he must leave and never return. They played for three days. Not once did the queen guess correctly. She grew anxious, guessed more frantically. The king grew more and more angry. On the third day, he struck her across the face and told her that the child had not been hers to barter. All at once, the queen was calm. She was very quiet.

When the stranger arrived, the queen made her guesses as though bored.

“John,” she said.

“You’ve already guessed that one,” the stranger replied. “On the first day.”

“Oh yes.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Perhaps Skimbaranbalal?”

When midnight came and she had not answered correctly, the king rushed to defend his baby but he was too slow. The stranger made it to the cradle first. He gathered the royal child up and brought it to the queen. She kissed the pretty forehead, and then both stranger and baby were gone.

There was much mourning in the castle that night. The king ordered his wife to tell him how to get the child back. The queen did not speak a single word to him. She did not speak to anyone. The royal physician said that she was in shock but it was not so. She was a witch-woman, and the king had forgotten her power.

That night, the queen vanished. Nobody saw her leave. When her attendants arrived to wake her, they found the bed empty. Not a trace of her was left, as if she had never been. The only sign was a necklace of straw lying atop the counterpane.

There was much hullabaloo about the vanishing queen but soon the king’s attention was fixed on another matter. The gold in the royal coffers had turned back into straw. In fact, it seemed that more than just the original gold was straw. Priceless jewels passed down over years were now ordinary pebbles. Coins in the counting house had become hammered tin.

The king had had wife, child, wealth. All three were taken from him that night. As for the last, that most precious thing of all, his crown? That would take a little longer. For when people began to realise that the gold was gone, they began to whisper. Servants and soldiers found that their wages had become dirt. Neighbouring kingdoms whom the king had paid mighty prices for wondrous things discovered bales of straw where gold bars should have been. The swords began to be sharpened. Debts were to be collected.

It was a brief, bitter little war. The handsome king never stood a chance. His own soldiers had turned against him. And so, in the end, she took it all from him: wife, child, wealth, crown. As for her, she was never seen again in those parts. Some say she returned to her homeland, somewhere beyond the north star. Others say she transformed into a cat and still lives eternally in the forests and mountains of the kingdom. If you take anything from this tale, let it be this: if you harm one with wild blood, you shall live in misery ever after.

The Daughter let it sit with her for a long time. It took a moment to process her own role.

“You cannot know that,” she said, at last. “About the war.”

“No,” her friend admitted. “I don’t. But, as I said, he is not a very wise man. I think him predictable.”

“How did the other jewels turn into ordinary stones?”

He winked. “That I shall explain to you when the time is right. In truth, I have not fully mapped out that part of the plan myself.”

She bit her lower lip until she tasted blood. “I do not much like the part I play.”

“It is a part of great power.”

“Only after the pain.” She frowned at him. “You have made me a martyr.”

“My dear, you always were a martyr. I’m giving you the chance to come out of it alive.”

She thought back to the future he predicted for her and her stomach lurched.

“So to you I am also a piece in a game.”

“Am I not the same to you?” he countered. “Do you hate me, my dear? As much as you hate them?”

“No,” she admitted, though in a way she wished she did. “At least you don’t pretend. I know the rules of the game with you.”

A grin flickered across his face like firelight. “That is all any of us can ask for, my witch.”

“What will you give me, if I bear his child for you?”

“So mercenary!” He looked delighted. “So cold! For that, I shall give you your liberty.”

*

The Daughter did not get a chance to rest her head before morning came. She was spinning even as the sun crept over the horizon. Barely had the last strand passed through her hands when the sound of the lock turning rang loud throughout the ballroom. She cast a panicked look to her friend but he was already gone, fading back into the shadows that he came from. King Richard entered, looking clean and well-rested and everything the Daughter did not feel.

“It is…magnificent!”

The whole court seemed to be there, decked in their finery, to stare at the miracle she had wrought. She could scarcely believe it herself. It held little appeal to her now. The gold had become commonplace, as uninspiring as the straw it started as. She would have gladly given it all for a comfortable bed to rest in.

“My lovely one!” Richard crossed the room to seize her hands, pulling her to her feet until her chest was flush against his. “My angel!”

The kiss was forceful, claiming, and the Daughter submitted to it patiently. She let him run his hands through her hair, drag out an errant strand of gold with a short incredulous laugh.

“We shall be married, my beauty,” he promised. “Before the next lambs are born, I shall have you for my wife.”

Everything seemed to happen at once after that. The Daughter scarcely remembered it afterwards. All she wanted was to sleep. She let them drag her down cold castle corridors, prepare for her the absurd luxury of a warm bath. Unfamiliar ladies with worried frowns pushed cups of tea into her hands, coaxed her to eat slices of toast. They treated her like a doll, bathing and dressing her, combing through her tangled hair with dextrous fingers. By the time they were helping her into bed, she scarcely felt as though her body were her own.

“Get some sleep, my lady,” one of them said gently. “You must be exhausted, poor love.”

The Daughter lay in the dark and stared at the embroidered canopy high above her. The contract was far from over. There was still so much to do.

*

The Daughter sat at the window. The moon was riding high above the misty clouds. There was still a chill in the air, fogging her breath against the glass. She traced the distant hedges of the palace gardens so far below her. If she let her eyes unfocus, the lattice of the window panes looked like bars.

“My dear little friend,” she whispered, “are you there? I need you now.”

“You cannot be thinking of fleeing.”

There was no longer any shock in it. She turned slowly and there he was, leaning against the tree-trunk-thick post of the vast bed. His coat was the green of deep woods and cold waters. In the faint gleam of the moon, his blazing hair had dulled to embers.

“Tomorrow, you shall be queen,” he said. “You must enjoy the theatricality of it, at least a little bit.”

It had indeed been a theatre. The mere process of fitting her a gown had been a vast production, with a whole chorus line of attending seamstresses and an obsequious designer playing the role of conductor. She had only caught glimpses of the floral arrangements, the musicians rehearsing, the pages practicing their walk. There had been arguments about her role, her status, even her very name.

“I suppose,” she allowed grudgingly, “it is how the story ought to go.”

He laughed. “Does it not please you on some level, to have succeeded in your job? If the role of a daughter is to marry well, you are surely the best daughter in all the kingdom.”

“I am frightened.” 

The words burst from her mouth against her will. His expression was hard to read in the shadows. Her hands shook where they fisted in her skirts, searched for something to hold onto.

“I know, my dear,” he said quietly. “I have asked much of you.”

“I do not want it. I do not want to be his wife.”

He stepped towards her to catch her trembling hands in his. His palms were rough, his grip sure.

“For a short time only,” he promised. “Then you shall have anything and everything you ask for. I guarantee it.”

The trees lining the road hung heavy with blossom. The air was sickly sweet with their perfume. The cheers of the crowd echoed off the buildings, doubled back to become nonsense. The Daughter descended from the carriage feeling as though she were dreaming. Her ladies-in-waiting were ready to usher her forward, fluttering around her as pretty as butterflies, and the Daughter could think of no way to drag her feet. She moved like a marionette, one careful step at a time. The world was hazy, unreal.

From blossom-sweet sunlight to incense-laden shadows, the cool rainbow-splashed interior of the vast cathedral, and the watching eyes of the court. It seemed that there were hundreds of them, dripping in jewels. Through the heavy bridal veil, they appeared wreathed in mist. Still she could sense their judgement, their suspicions, their doubt. She was unworthy. She was dangerous. She would need to prove herself to them again and again.

At the far end of the aisle, Richard struck a remarkably small figure. He gleamed in regal red and gold. The organ swelled as the Daughter approached. He might have smiled at her. It was hard to tell. She found her mind focusing instead on the feel of the ancient slab floor through her delicate slippers and the crushing weight of her gown. It moved around her less like a garment and more like a building she was carrying, layer upon layer of silver and white, dripping with jewels. The veil dragged behind her, slowing her pace. It obscured the edges of her vision, left her only with a tunnel of clarity right to the king’s waiting hands.

Everyone watching her. Everyone waiting for her. Richard taking her hands at last. She could not feel his skin through her gloves, could not even detect the warmth of flesh. He smiled at the veil. The priest began to intone the opening lines of the service. The Daughter’s mind was a rushing river, the noise of it drowning out all sense. She could not understand what was being said. She felt distant, disembodied, as though she were a thousand miles from her own self.

When it came to speak the vows, she knew her voice could not carry beyond the first row. Richard, in turn, was loud and clear. So many eyes, so many ears, and even at the centre of the room she was hidden from all of them, entombed in ceremony. She could have been anybody. She should have been somebody else. If she were to disappear then, vanish leaving only the veil behind, would they even know?

*

It was a burning summer. The grass slumped golden and dead throughout the meadows. The Queen sweltered beneath the weight of her gowns. She thought longingly of the light linen petticoats of her former life, of how she would soak a kerchief under the pump in the garden before tying it around her dizzy head. The cool of the water had been more restful than sleep. The summer court dresses were practically diaphanous compared to the hip-bruising heaviness of the winter brocades but even so, she was pinned beneath layer after layer of silk and linen. The air in her lungs was stifling. She lurked in the shadowed corridors, where feet of stone kept the sun’s heat at bay.

There was a stranger inside of her. The swell was invisible beneath her clothes but when she stood in her shift it seemed unmistakable. She was yet to feel the stirrings of movement but the whole court seemed to expect the baby any day. Every time she entered a room, she felt the faint trace of disappointment. The Queen was disappointed too. There was a part of her, a mad part, that wanted to rip open her own belly with her fingernails, scratch and claw and tear out the stranger that ought not to be there. It was not an animal instinct. It was the opposite.

Richard had been overjoyed to hear the news as soon as her monthly courses stopped. He saw her more often now than he had in the days following their marriage. He measured her belly with his petal-soft hands. He knelt before her and stroked the bare skin where it distorted, whispered loving words to the heir in waiting. Coldly, distantly, the Queen acknowledged softness in him, gentleness, the ability to care. She ought to warm to him. She could not. She had tried. There was good in him; it simply wasn’t enough. When he ran his hands over her stomach, she felt like an intruder in this intimate moment between him and her body.

Alone, at night, the Queen lay awake until the little man arrived. She no longer had to call for him. He was there every evening when the candles were blown out, with his knapsack full of magic and his eyes clear no matter the darkness. The first night after she told him, he brought her a vial.

“Drink,” he commanded.

“What is it?” The Queen was already raising it to her lips.

“Dew from a daisy’s petal, collected in moonlight.” His smile was crooked but real. “We have to keep you safe, little witch.”

Every night since, he was there. Vials of mysterious liquids were a common gift. The Queen drank them slowly, sitting with her legs crossed and her back against her fine feather pillows. He lay on the bed, chin on his hands like a child, and told her of the deals he had made to get the ingredients, the parts of the kingdom he had visited, the secrets that he knew. If it wasn’t something to drink, it might be a herb to chew or a berry to swallow. Each one came with a story. In those long nights, the Queen learned how to coax a firebird to surrender a feather or how to find a star-touched oyster with a magic pearl from a vast bed of the mundane kind.

His eyes grew sharper when he talked of such things. He glowed with a wicked light. He looked at her all the while, watched her, studied her every reaction. The Queen would eat anything he brought her, even poison, to get him to keep looking at her that way. His eyes strayed to her belly only on occasion. They seemed anchored to her face, swinging back after every glance away.

Her ladies-in-waiting remarked on the shadows under the Queen’s eyes, worried the royal physician into a visit over her lost sleep. He gave her a tonic. She poured it out the window as soon as he left the room and refilled it with water. She tried a little harder to hide her darkened eyes, her yawns. When it was suggested she take some time of retirement, to maintain her strength for the pregnancy, she agreed at once. Time alone, time away from the court, was precious indeed. Sometimes her friend joined her on those afternoons too. Softly baked and sun-stupid in the Queen’s chamber, they would talk of magic and mountains till she fell into a quiet doze, drifting on the edge of sleep.

The weeks passed slowly. The Queen was alone when she first felt the baby move. Her hands flew to her stomach at once. She froze still, felt the life of the stranger within her. The baby had not felt real before. It was some kind of fairy tale, a strange dream. Now it was here, making itself known, waking up. The instincts warred: to tear out the interloper, to gather it close and hold it tight.

I must not love you, she told it, feeling the panic flutter her heart. I cannot. You will know one day. You will understand.

A memory surfaced. It scratched its way out of a lonely coffin. Her mother’s smile, so sweet and gentle, in a tired face. The Queen had pressed her childish hands against her, felt eagerly for the kicking feet of the unborn brother. It had seemed a miracle then: life within life, a thing within a thing, a person formed from nothing. Her mother had been a holy thing, a vessel, a cradle. The Queen felt no less a vessel when those tiny feet kicked inside of her but there was little of divinity about it. Blood and bone. Animal. Profane, in the simplest sense.

The memories were like lightning strikes: blood on the sheets. The well-worn leather of the midwife’s bag. The tiny unfinished body in the chamber pot. The dew from the churchyard grass soaking into new stockings.

She curled her arms around herself and folded inwards. The sun poured through the narrow window to burn in a harsh slice across her back. The air was too thick, too still, too hard to breathe. She held them both together, squeezed as tight as she dared, wished without knowing quite what she wished for.

Oh, do not kill me, little stranger. Do not tear me apart.

*

Autumn came in earnest. The first frost took a bite out of summer and left it for dead. It seemed all at once that the world was unrecognisable. The icy chill returned to the castle’s long hallways. Fires burned merrily in grates once more. In the grounds, the trees were ablaze with colour.

In her chambers, the Queen clutched at the back of a chair and tried to keep breathing. The pain was sharp and building. It felt like waves gathering at the beach, like an evil tide coming in.

“Don’t,” she pleaded. “Please. I’m not ready. Please don’t.”

“Are you hurting, my little witch?”

She turned sharply. “Oh! You are here. I –”

The pain hit her again. Her hands flew to her belly. Her friend’s eyes followed them there, narrowing.

“It’s early.”

A wail rose from her throat as though from a stranger. “No!”

“You must summon the midwife,” he told her sharply. “You must! I cannot do this for you.”

“It will tear me!” She knew she sounded hysterical but she couldn’t choke it down. “It will kill me! Stop it! You have to stop it!”

“It will not kill you.”

He grabbed her hands just as another pain came. She squeezed so tight that she felt his bones move beneath her grip.

“It will not kill you. Look at me, my dear. You have trusted me this far. Trust me now.”

“I cannot – I heard her screaming! She screamed and screamed and nobody helped!”

He released her as she doubled over in pain. He strode to the bell-rope himself and rang it angrily, yanking again and again.

“How long have you been like this?” he demanded. “You should have got help as soon as the pain started! These women are not stupid – they can help you, they can keep you safe!”

He abandoned the bell as shouts rose in the distance. He was back to help her to the bed, effortlessly taking her weight on his narrow shoulders. The Queen let him. She clung to his hand as he lay her back on the bed. She had been trying so hard not to cry but now that the first tear was out, it seemed there was no stopping the rest of them.

“I hear them,” he said roughly. “They’re coming. You have nothing to fear.”

“The blood! There was so much blood… My friend, don’t leave!”

“I’ll be here,” he promised. “In the shadows. I swear it.”

“I don’t want to die!” She gripped his hand tighter as the running feet drew closer. “I don’t want to die like this!”

“I will protect you.” His eyes burned with something she had never seen in a human before. “I promise you, my dear. I am going nowhere.”

*

The midwinter cold had laced the windowpanes with ice. The first snows had not yet fallen but they could not be far away. The clouds were iron grey, heavy and bulbous with their own weight. The light in the nursery was dim even at midday. The Queen held her daughter gently, carefully, still too fearful to move with confidence.

“Elfriede,” she whispered into that tiny ear. “That is your name. Elfriede.”

The kingdom and the world would know her by another name. Richard had called her Hilda, after his own mother. The Queen had made no objection. Instead, she had performed a quiet baptism of her own. Princess Hilda might be her public face but there would always be a girl named Elfriede lurking behind. A secret name, safe from any bargains, unable to be sold or used against her. A place to retreat to.

The Queen had never considered herself the maternal sort. Even now, she was not convinced by it. When she saw the easy, careless love that the wet nurse showed to both Elfriede and her own little girl, she felt utterly unequipped to be a mother. She ought to have felt bereft, having Elfriede nursed by another, kept away from her so often, but she did not. She was relieved, in a childish way, not to be responsible for all those things that babies need most. Marta – two years older than her, two children at home already – could do all of that, could wash and change and feed.

Yet there was Elfriede. And there was the love she had tried so hard not to feel. It was not sweet and gentle, as she had imagined a mother’s love to be. It was fierce and possessive. This little creature, so vulnerable and soft, was hers, was from her body, was her own flesh in the most literal and blood-soaked fashion. Every time she looked at her, a little clock inside her heart chimed mine, mine, mine.

“She smiles.”

The Queen looked up into the twisted face of her friend. “All the time. I don’t think she controls it yet.”

Elfriede had never seemed concerned by the ugly little man appearing and disappearing at random from her life. Perhaps, on some level, she recognised him. Perhaps in the womb she had heard him talk for hours on end.

“She is perfect,” he declared. “Simply perfect.”

Elfriede made a small noise that might have been deliberate or might simply have been a bubble but either way it sounded like agreement.

“Richard is already talking about sons,” the Queen said quietly. “He dotes on her but still, he wants a son.”

“He shall not get one,” he replied. “I had the magic to see you through safe and healthy; I have the magic to ensure you are barren for a while.”

The Queen did not take her eyes away from Elfriede’s face. “She will be safe, won’t she?”

“Hilda?” He looked surprised. “Of course. She is too important.”

*

The late winter snow was melting away into rain. The roads were nothing but mud. Messengers arrived dripping puddles from the drooping feathers of their caps. Nurse had grudgingly allowed the Queen to see Elfriede before she put her to bed for her afternoon nap. The Queen had tried many a time to insist that she be allowed to stay with her whilst she slept but Nurse appeared to regard mothers as unwelcome interlopers into her well-organised nursery. Only Marta, who was still up day and night to feed, was treated with anything approaching respect. Even Richard, whom Nurse had cared for in his time too, was dismissed and ignored with well-meaning contempt.

Nurse obviously regarded the Queen as abnormal. There were plenty of rumours around the court about it. They said she was strange, unnatural, a witch-woman. The Queen doubted Nurse had any concerns about magic but clearly she had an idea of what a good mother was and the Queen did not suit. She had never let that stop her. She refused to be cowed by Nurse’s pointed remarks.

Her father had visited with some remarks of his own. It was funny how they did not reach her now. Perhaps it was a question of ownership. She was not her father’s daughter anymore, not the miller’s girl. She had been traded away. He had no power over her. From that new vantage point, she was able almost to pity him. He seemed a stranger to her, older and less secure, his bluster and demands as weak in practice as his aged back.

“I thought I would find you here.”

She looked up quickly from her daughter’s face to see her husband in the doorway.

King Richard smiled at her. “How are you, my beauty?”

He pressed a gentle kiss to her powdered cheek. The Queen accepted it with equanimity.

“She is almost ready to be weaned, according to Marta.”

“A fine little lady already.” Richard seemed to glow as he reached out to touch his daughter’s tiny hand. “We shall have to start thinking about betrothal.”

The Queen swallowed her distaste. “Not yet, surely.”

“Not yet,” the king agreed, beaming as Elfriede grasped his finger in her chubby fist. “Not until we have a son, I think.”

The Queen felt the familiar wave of doubt that crept over her whenever sons were mentioned. Richard must have seen some flicker of it break through her mask because he leaned over to kiss the top of her head.

“Don’t worry yourself, my beauty. There’s still time. Look what you have given me already. There will be a son one day.”

He lifted Elfriede from her arms and held her, pacing slowly around the room, swaying. The Queen watched him with thorns in her heart. She ought to love him. It would all be so much easier if she could love him. But this was the man who had bargained for her life and her heart remained unmoved.

*

The thunderous skies shook the blossoms from the trees in a downpour of pink and white. Raindrops clung trembling to the leaves of daffodils. It was a turbulent spring, full of storms, but that did not stop the merriment reaching its way into the castle. The apprentices were courting, and the young nobility too. Posies of flowers were passing hands and the Queen had dutifully pretended not to see any number of snatched encounters that she passed on her way. She could not help but feel an echo of their excitement. The time was drawing near. Soon it would be over, for better or for worse. Soon all debts would be paid.

Her friend had given her no hint as to the day of his official arrival so she was as startled as the rest of the court when he limped into the throne room, eyes flashing, a rumble of thunder in the distance his fanfare.

“I am here for the child,” he announced, filling his voice with all the menace she had forgotten it could hold.

“Guards!” Richard rose to his feet. “Seize him!”

Her friend spat in his direction. “You’ll keep a civil tongue in your head, your majesty, if you know what’s good for you. It’s your wife I want to speak to.”

All eyes of the court were on her so not one of them saw the stranger wink roguishly at the Queen.

“I have been expecting you,” she said.

“What child is he here for?” Richard moved as though to shake her, before pulling back. “He is not here for the princess. He cannot be.”

“What did you think the price would be?” the sprite demanded. “All your coffers filled with gold and you did not ask yourself what you would pay?”

“It was her magic!” Richard snarled. “Her power!”

“Everything is an exchange. Everyone pays sooner or later. She will pay now.”

“It is custom,” the Queen said quietly. “I knew the rules when I chose to play.”

“You knew?” Richard was red-faced and furious. “You sold my daughter to this creature?”

Rage lashed through her like a whipcrack. “I bargained my daughter.”

“Oh, your majesty.” A wicked smile danced across her friend’s face. “Do not despair. Your wife may yet win her child’s life. We have a game to play.”

“I’ve heard enough!” Richard roared. “Guards, seize him!”

“No!”

It burst from her throat against her will. Even her friend looked surprised. Richard’s red face was rapidly turning white as bone. He stared at her in cold horror.

“No?” he echoed. “No?”

“They would be dead before they laid a finger on him,” the Queen improvised, her heart fluttering moth-like in her chest. “He is protected by the contract. It is old magic, older than you know.”

“Old magic,” Richard sneered, but he gave the signal for the guards to stand down.

“The game is simple,” her friend said calmly. “Speak my name, and I shall leave you alone forevermore.”

“That is it?” Richard demanded. “Just your name?”

“My true name,” the little man acknowledged. “That is all.”

The king rounded on his wife. “Do you know it?”

“No.”

Richard flung his hands up. “Then what kind of riddle is this?”

“No riddle, your majesty, no riddle. Merely magic at play.” It seemed for a moment as though her friend’s eyes reflected flames that were not there. “I shall visit three times. If at the end of my third visit you have not named me, I shall take the child.”

A murmur of consternation ran through the court. The Queen felt sick. She tried to meet her friend’s gaze. She tried to remember how straightforward this had once seemed.

“When do you begin?” Richard asked through gritted teeth.

“Now.” Her friend planted his feet squarely and looked at her expectantly. “Your majesty?”

The Queen unglued her tongue from the roof of her mouth. “Is your name perhaps John?”

“No.”

“Stephen?”

“No.”

“Paulos?”

“No.”

The game went on, and on, long into the night.

In the shadowed corridor outside her chambers, the Queen felt a grip on her shoulder. Her husband span her round, slammed her back against the wall.

“How dare you?” he hissed. “How dare you not warn me of this? We could have found a way round it.”

“What way?” she demanded. “You know what he is. You cannot trick them. You can only beat them at their game.”

“You had no right to make such a bargain!”

“You wanted the gold!” she yelled. “You wanted power! Well, this is what it costs! This is the price! How much is she worth to you? Name a sum. Tell me how much more gold I would need to have spun for you to trade her away.”

Richard looked stunned. “How dare you shout at me?”

“How dare you scold me for the bargain you forced me to make?” She could not keep the real anger from creeping into her voice. “How dare you blame me? I will win the game, if I can, and if I lose, what is it to you? After all, one day there will be a son.”

She turned heel and slammed the door behind her. Her friend was waiting on the other side, a smirk playing about his mouth.

“Don’t,” she warned.

“I would not dream of it. You were magnificent, my dear. The witch-queen they will remember for a thousand years.”

The Queen sagged onto a chaise. She had been sure, for a moment, that Richard would strike her. She did not know why the idea terrified her so.

“He might try to hide her from you,” she warned. “Or set guards around her.”

“It won’t stop me,” he promised. “Nothing ever does. That was quick thinking earlier, with your little lie about me.”

The look he gave her was too knowing. The Queen refused to acknowledge it.

“I’m sure you have your own ways of protecting yourself.”

“Plenty, but it had so much more drama the way you told it.”

The Queen passed a hand over her eyes. “I shall be lucky if nobody tries to kill me. What if I guess your real name by accident?”

Her friend laughed loudly. “I assure you, little witch, you won’t.”

*

The second evening of guessing passed slowly. Richard had had his men out scouring Molorra for names and now she read from the list till her throat was sore. The entire court watched, utterly silent. The Queen could feel their mounting anger, their distrust. They had always suspected her. They had always doubted. Did they wonder if she was losing on purpose? Did they have some inkling of all that had been planned?

At the thirteenth hour, her friend declared time was up for the day. The Queen sat back on her throne, exhausted. Richard had a white-knuckle grip on his sword hilt. The silence in the room was deafening.

“Very well,” Richard ground out. “Begone. We shall see you again tomorrow night.”

Once the little man had left, Richard turned sharply to the captain of the guard.

“Send out everyone you can, everyone you know. Every servant must be out scouring the kingdom for names. Every soldier is to be pulled from duty. I want no book unread, no record unsearched. We must have every name ever devised. Go!”

He turned back to the Queen where she slumped in her throne.

“Go to bed,” he said coldly. “You will need your strength, I’m sure.”

The Queen was only too glad to obey. She drifted alone back to her chambers, where her friend was waiting. He had already poured her wine. It soothed her aching throat and settled some of her jangling nerves.

“What will you do with her?” she asked abruptly.

They sat on the bed as they had during her pregnancy: her against the pillows, him leaning on his hands before her. The candles were blown out. Only the moonlight, making a rare attempt to shine through the clouds, illuminated the planes of his jagged face.

“That is not part of the bargain.”

“We are friends, aren’t we?” She hated how desperate she sounded. “I just have to know.”

“I told you she would be safe. That is what’s important, isn’t it?”

The Queen closed her eyes and tried to remember to breathe. “I don’t know what happens to me after tomorrow.”

“No more do I.” She could hear the crooked smile in his voice. “After tomorrow, you shall be free. What you do with that is your own choice.”

“Will I see you again?”

Silence followed. When she dared to open her eyes, she found him watching her thoughtfully. Slowly, as though approaching a skittish animal, he lay his hand over hers. The Queen’s heart swooped.

“If you want to.” His eyes bore into her soul. “We are friends, aren’t we?”

A great void yawned before her, an abyss she could throw herself into if she chose. It was all in his eyes. She did not know what it promised but something in her soul cried out to take the leap.

“Of course we are.” Her voice was just a touch unsteady. “My dear little friend.”

His hand curved round to hold hers tightly. He rose onto his knees. She leaned towards him. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears, feel it in every finger and toe. All she could see was his eyes but she sensed the magic running through him, the shadows that clung to him.

His lips brushed her ear as he whispered, “My name is Rumpelstiltskin.”

The Queen nearly jumped out of her skin. He sat back with a smug smile playing on his face.

“You’re lying,” she stammered.  

“No.”

“But –”

“I will see you tomorrow, my dear.”

He was gone before she knew what to think. The world seemed to tilt on its axis. Rumpelstiltskin. She did not doubt that it was true. She felt the truth of it. His voice had been laden with it. Rumpelstiltskin.

The Queen of Molorra sat on her bed feeling as though someone had broken the rules, though she could not quite say who. It may have been her. Her head reeled. She felt unaccountably rejected. She felt trusted. She felt betrayed. She felt younger than she had since that day the soldiers arrived at the mill to take her away.

Hands shaking, she pulled on a heavy robe and crept from her bed. The corridors were empty at this time, the torches out, the shadows everywhere. She stole in silence to the nursery. The door creaked when she pushed it. The Queen froze, but nobody awoke. She hurried at once to Elfriede’s crib.

Elfriede. Her daughter.

She had not wanted to care. When she made the bargain, it had seemed so easy. What was a baby, after all? Just a lump of flesh and potential, nothing more. She had not even wanted one. Why should it matter to her if it was taken away? It might hurt a little but she would live. People lived through worse every day.

But Elfriede was a person now. She looked at people as though she saw them. She spoke in a gibberish language that nonetheless sounded like conversation. She wriggled around by herself. This was someone. Someone whose life was in the Queen’s hands.

“I was not ready,” she whispered, stroking her sleeping child’s hair. “I was not ready for you. I am so sorry.”

The future stretched before her, unwritten. Was it enough to love someone? Maybe it would all go as it did in her most secret daydreams. Maybe she would flee this place at Rumpelstiltskin’s side, see the world, live free. Maybe she could climb the mountains with him and learn their secrets. Maybe Elfriede would be there with them. Maybe she could grow up that way, beholden to no one, afraid of nothing.

But what was love, when all was said and done? How could she trust that she had the faintest idea what it ought to feel like? Her daughter had everything here. She had everything here. Every need taken care of, every material want provided for. A future, an education, a chance at power and influence. Could she rob her of that? Freedom was her dream, not Elfriede’s. Perhaps all that waited for them out there in the world was destitution. She could stay. She could protect her, help her, raise her. There could be happiness in it for her. She knew there could.

“I am so sorry.” The Queen gathered her baby to her chest and held her tight. “I am so, so sorry.”

In the chair by the fire, she wept until she had no tears left to give. Elfriede slept on, unaware.

*

On the evening of the third day, the Queen dressed with care. This was the making of the legend, after all. She must look the part. She chose gold, gold everywhere, every piece of gold jewellery Richard had ever given her. The gold she had spun hung round her neck. Her hair was threaded with strings of it. She felt Richard watching it catch the light. She hoped he felt even a sliver as guilty as she did.

Rumpelstiltskin arrived in a rumble of thunder. The Queen scarcely dared look at him. She made her first guesses fumblingly, tripping over her words. Richard shoved the list impatiently into her hands. She stared down at it unseeingly. All those names, in scores of different hands, gathered from all across Molorra. Not one of them the right one.

But still she read them. Her heart thundered in her chest. Richard shifted impatiently beside her. Rumpelstiltskin’s eyes burned holes in her face but she refused to meet them.

“Balthazar,” she suggested.

“No.”

“Perinbarabala.”

“No.”

The hours passed like a funeral march. The Queen could feel the walls closing in. No more time for denial. No more time to delay.

“The thirteenth hour will soon be upon us,” Rumpelstiltskin remarked. “You have one more guess.”

The court stirred, an anxious susurration. Richard nodded to the guards, who peeled off no doubt to stand guard over Elfriede’s crib. The Queen finally dared to look her friend in the eyes. They gleamed like green beetles, iridescent in the lamplight. He smiled at her.

The name was there in her throat, just waiting for its cue. She could end this in an instant. It was her choice. It hit her like a lightning bolt. It was up to her. Whatever happened next, it was all up to her. Adelinde of Molorra looked into Rumpelstiltskin’s eyes and returned his smile.

With a heart suddenly light as a summer day, Adelinde chose.