From Fairies and Creatures of the Night, Guard Me Page 7

  Magriet picked up a handful of straw, which pricked her skin, and crumpled in her hand. She had only a vague memory of how to use a spinning wheel. Her own fabrics had always come from town, ready spun, and it seemed unfair to expect her to know how to work such a machine now. There was the magic, of course, the strange aptitude she had for turning things into other things, but using it might lead her even deeper into the mire. And the magic had been easier to call when she’d been a child and had meant it: over the years it had become unpredictable and irascible with lack of use. Spiteful, almost.

  She sat awkwardly at the loom. She wasn’t quite sure what she expected to happen, if anything. Magriet picked up the straw, dry and brittle in her hands. She tried to connect it to hooks as her nurse had done with wool. It took some twisting to secure the straw, but the moment she spun the wheel, it twisted and broke, scattering around her feet.

  The spinning wheel slowed, then stopped entirely, and she could feel it under her hand: the solid ash was somehow comforting. Magriet turn the wheel again, though there was no more straw threaded in it, so that the creaking sound of its motion could serenade the silence. She strained her hearing to catch even a hint of the distant sea, but heard nothing except the fierce wind outside, which had picked up considerably, and what might have been a distant wolf somewhere in the wild.

  It was by then fairly obvious that she was caught in a very clever trap, damned whichever way she chose to proceed. She wondered how she would go on. She could not spin the gold thread even if the magic did take pity and come back. She’d never know a breath of freedom from the king and his greed if she did, she would never leave the tower no matter what her exalted spouse promised her.

  And she would be executed if she did not.

  With a sigh, Magriet rose from the chair and sat on the thick rug instead, her nightdress spreading around her like snow. She wondered if she could somehow run away from the whole sorry mess. The window was narrow and the tower high and treacherous, but surely that was nothing to a girl who could see the shadow of the world.

  Running away would cause a dreadful scandal and to-do, certainly, and she would never again be received in society. But that hardly mattered given the strong possibility of meeting with the executioner’s sword before the month was out, or facing a life of permanent imprisonment in the crumbling castle. It was surely better to take her chances with the woods, the wolves and whatever else was out there.

  Perhaps she could somehow make her way to the French court or the English. Certainly they would not know her there, daughter of a minor nobleman and uncrowned queen of nowhere in particular, a kingdom too small and inconsequential to feature in any histories of the world.

  She doubted there were any envoys from those cosmopolitan courts in so drab a place as Lodewjik’s castle, which had been a marvellous thing once but was now all worn tapestries and disintegrating gilded mouldings.

  She wondered if the king would pursue her. The dark shade of madness in his eyes resurfaced in her imagination and she knew that he would, if only to make sure that no one else had the advantage of her elusive gold thread.

  In all her life, Magriet had never known such a sinking hopelessness, like a boulder around her neck, pulling her deeper and deeper underwater. The queenly necklace at her throat sparkled mockingly. It was as ridiculous as the wardrobe of beautiful gowns, which had been provided to fittingly attire her for her imprisonment.

  Outside, the wind howled on and rain fell like knives onto the roof of the old tower. She had just a month to somehow achieve the impossible. With another sigh, Magriet hid her face in her hands, and tried to think of some way out.

  As she sat thinking gloomy thoughts, there was a slight tapping on the wooden floor, like claws, this way and that. Her head flew up and she blinked into the shadows. There was nothing to see. She took a closer look around, looking for the things she had spent so many years trying to ignore.

  There were a great many shadows around the room, she thought. More than there had been before. The night was dark and endless, and she could almost feel it pressing around her. Her eyes caught the silvering on the cobweb high above the fireplace, the strange flitting of a shape that wasn’t remotely mouse-like in the shadowed edges beyond the candle.

  Such things ought to have scared her, but they did not. She was slowly coming to realise that curdled milk and tangled hair, and even ghosts rattling their midnight chains, were nothing compared to the problems presented by ordinary mortals.

  She smoothed her skirts and tried to see if she could make out any more shapes in the dark. It was much better than dwelling on her dilemma. Magriet wondered if she ought to practice her lute a little, or perhaps to compose a verse while she waited for morning. There would be a lot of time for writing poetry in her tower: a month, at least, and the setting was very complimentary to such things.

  The uncrowned queen watched, unblinking as a cat, as the shadows shifted and swirled around her like Autumn leaves, forming into a single dark shape. At last, a man, or close enough to a man, stood before her, calm and mocking as anything, pale and dark-haired with endless, terrible eyes like death. His face was gaunt and somehow wizened. Magriet did not scream or gasp or make any other sound as she waited for whatever it was that would happen next. She had always been a fine card player, after all.

  The creature stood by the window, his gaze dark and glittering, with a burning intelligence that put Magriet instantly on her guard. His regard was clever and sharp, the mirror opposite of the king’s vague, affable insanity.

  When he moved, it was with a strange mixture of fluidity and awkwardness, as though he was still not quite used to being the shape he was, despite having been that shape for a very long time.

  Magriet rose to her feet without dropping her gaze. Fleetingly, she caught sight of her own face in the cheval glass. Some of the rouge from her cheeks had smeared like raspberries across her skin. Her eyes were wild. There were raspberry-red smudges on the rich dove-grey silk of her dressing gown, too.

  She wondered what one ought to say under the circumstances.

  The margravine would surely have told her that it was most improper for a married lady to receive shadow-creatures in her bedroom, clad in nothing but her nightgown. This thought almost made her laugh which she assumed was surely the first sign of her own impending madness. She hoped heartily that she would not become as mad as the king.

  The shadow creature paused and waited, cocking his strange head to the side, as though still expecting her to shriek or faint or run. But Magriet stood her ground because she hated being bullied, she was tired of feeling powerless, and if she was to die in a month, what did it matter if she offended some fairy thing?

  “Good evening, my lady queen,” the creature said, in a voice that was low, strange and compelling. “It strikes me that you are quite distressed. Won’t you share your troubles with this weary wanderer?”

  His manner exuded an unearthly grace. Magriet wondered if she ought to say anything at all, lest her words blow him back out of the window like strands of moonlight. But if human woe offended him, he would surely not have asked about hers. There seemed no harm in telling him, so she inclined her head and invited him to be seated, taking the other chair herself.

  “I am,” she said after a pause, “newly married to the king, who says that he will crown me if I spin all the straw in this room into gold in a month, and kill me if I do not. And spinning straw into gold is something I cannot do.”

  “Does he say that indeed…” murmured the creature with a whisper of malice. “And where would he have got such a peculiar notion, I wonder?”

  Magriet said nothing, keeping her gaze steady.

  “Ah, Arachne. That is a dilemma indeed,” the creature continued, in a voice like wind through leaves and creaking branches. Now the dark gaze was contemplative, which was even more unsettling. “What moment of mortal hubris are you being punished for, pray?”

  Arachne! The name made Magriet bristle
, because it was certainly not the time for such tasteless jokes. Still, she kept her own name to herself, close and warm like a blanket. She knew all about names and promises – she had her superstitious old nurse to thank for that particular piece of wisdom.

  “A moment of idiocy, rather,” she answered wryly. “But mine is a veritable marital triumph, don’t you know? The coup of the season. I have a wardrobe of gowns like precious stones. It is a pity that it is to be such a short marriage that I won’t get to have my grand social unveiling, or a historic coronation.”

  “Hmm. A great and terrible tragedy. What will you give me,” he said, “if I do it for you?”

  “There is a price then, naturally?”

  “Naturally, there is always a price.” He made an exasperated noise. “If I spin your straw and you become queen, I shall claim your first-born child.”

  Magriet thought about this. If she became queen, she would likely never see the light of day again, nor anything but the spinning wheel until she had spun all of her own magic out of herself and there was nothing for her but to waste away. An awful lot like a tapestry unravelling, actually. But she couldn’t tell him that.

  And that was when she saw something there in his eyes: such freedom as she dared not even imagine. How auspicious that he should turn up that first night, the creature with the strange, endless eyes like pools of midnight sky, offering to do her spinning for her. She found herself telling him that she would think about it. He could come back tomorrow, if he pleased, to hear her answer, and would he like a bowl of blueberries before he left.

  “Whatever makes you think I will return?”

  She found herself laughing. “You said yourself there is a price for everything. There must be aught that you want from me. I will have my answer ready just as soon as I’ve had time to think. I can give you this necklace as surety, if you like – you may return it to me later. Now, the blueberries? Though I own they are not quite queenly fare.”

  It was not in his nature to turn down such an offering and so he lingered, watching her with unreadable eyes. Margiet asked him about magic and by the by enquired his opinion of a rondeau she was writing in the French fashion.

  He had a surprising amount to say about rondeaux, lutes, dulcimers, and the Winterhorns which would herald in the next season.

  At last, with dawn almost breaking, the shadow creature unfolded gracefully, and claimed the necklace, which sparkled in his hand.

  His voice was silk and smoke when he said his farewells. “Then I shall return tomorrow, Arachne, and you may recite me a canzonette.”

  He might have been laughing for a moment, or perhaps it was the shaking of twigs and dry leaves in the arbour outside her window.

  When he’d left, however, she didn’t seem able to lift her duck-feather quill or write a single verse. She wondered what it was that she had just done.

  Magriet knew the story of Arachne – the weaver who challenged a goddess and became the very first spider for her trouble. Magriet had no intention of doing any spinning perhaps, but she wondered if somehow a similar doom awaited her despite this reticence.

  *

  The next day, when the shadows formed into a shape that was less gnarly and more graceful than before, she was once again dressed in her robe and a diamond ring. This time, her dressing gown was the colour of the ocean.

  She knew him by the eyes, which were the same as they had been the previous night.

  She had brushed her hair this time, and her rouge was unsmudged.

  “I have not yet decided,” Magriet declared. “It is a greater dilemma that I had thought. But perhaps I can buy more time from you, with this ring, which glimmers like water, or perhaps a star. Or perhaps a ballad I once learned from a travelling musician? It is still cold out and very wet. Will you have some spiced glintwein?”

  “There is a whole sky full of stars for the catching. I have no need of yours. I will take the ballad.”

  So Magriet poured wine into a second cup and produced her Venetian treble lute – it was the finest thing she possessed.

  “A most peculiar instrument, Arachne.”

  “It got given me by a fanciful aunt as a child,” she said carelessly, checking her strings.

  Days passed and the creature returned night after night, folding out of the shadows. Next, she bribed him with a poem, and then a story. The pile of straw sat untouched.

  The fairy man, for that was what he surely had to be, did not tell her his name any more than he asked for hers. On days when they didn’t have much to say in words, Magriet spun stories and poems and songs out of ghosts and fancies. She taught him to play the lute until music poured out of it like smoke, wove through the air in lazy, elegant arrangements.

  One day, he was in a worse humour than she had ever seen before, and wouldn’t hear any more songs or stories.

  “Very well,” said Magriet, certain now and bold. “I agree to your terms and you may spin the straw as you once offered.”

  There was, after all, more than one way of looking at the terms.

  “So be it.” The voice was dangerous, full of hidden pitfalls.

  The young queen returned to her lute, and he sat at the wheel, spinning with an impossible elegance until the floor glistened in spools of golden thread.

  The sun was just a breath away from rising, when the creature took his leave.

  “I have turned your straw into gold. Our bargain has been struck, and now I will return to claim your first-born infant.”

  This was unexpected. He was not meant to take his leave while she was still locked in her tower.

  Magriet thought quickly and endeavoured to look distressed. “An infant! Oh, but surely I cannot truly wager the life of a child. Let us strike some other deal, I beg.”

  “We have already struck one.”

  But she could be sneaky too, and clever. “A game, then! A riddle.”

  “A game? That is more dangerous than a wager and the stakes are higher. But I will be kind - you may yet win back your child if you guess my name. Three days to guess, and if you should by some chance find it, you will have your gold and you will be crowned queen of all this kingdom in an unmatched gilded splendour. You will be the wealthiest queen in all the world, and you may keep any child you bear.”

  “And if I do not guess rightly?”

  “Then it is to the lands of shadow and magic you will go, to my hidden realm beyond mortal eyes, to bide there forever, and your first-born child with you.”

  Magriet did her best to look brave and grim.

  “I accept,” she said, and spent two nights guessing incorrectly.

  On the morning of her last day, her ladies-in-waiting came in, full of the king’s praise for her fine work and an order to measure her for her coronation gown. They took her walking in the garden, thought it was very cold out. It was meant to create the illusion of freedom, though she was not allowed anywhere beyond the grounds and she could not leave her tower alone.

  “It is only for fear of your safety, my lady,” said one of the handmaids, who still gave the impression of a fluttering butterfly. “The king fears that you should fall prey to some waiting wickedness. Indeed, there are wolves out there.”

  Which seemed to Magriet to herald the predicted life-long imprisonment, now that she was temporarily spared an execution. After all, there would always be wolves outside.

  “Wickedness?” she murmured and thought about the word. It had such a strange shape when she said it. The wolves at the castle seemed much worse than those that prowled the woods.

  The girl looked nervous. “Indeed! Why, just this morning, I had been admiring a late rosebush when I heard a voice coming from the ornamental grove. Singing!”

  She frowned in memory.

  “Singing?”

  “Oh yes. Such a strange voice it was, not human at all, and it had my heart on a string.”

  “What ditty was it singing, to affect your so, Johanna?” teased one of the other girls.

 
Johanna blushed. “It was merely a skipping rhyme! Something about names and riddles. And what a strange name it was.”

  Magriet felt herself freeze. “What name was that?”

  On a giggle, Johanna told her.

  When Magriet got back to her tower chamber, the gold was gone and fresh straw lay in its place. She ignored it.

  That night was Magriet’s very last chance to find a name and gain a crown.

  “Well, have you found it?” said the fairy man, who had become friend and confidant, and maybe soemthing more. He had appeared quite suddenly and he was quite tall now: somewhat devastating and haunted all at once. “This is your last chance, you’ll recall.”

  “So it is.”

  Magriet smiled at him, made herself comfortable, and commenced rattling off names at random, as the clock ticked away to midnight. She paused to take some wine then, while he watched her, and to adjust her shawl, for it was rather chilly.

  Magriet stared steadily into the depths of the night. It wasn’t a very difficult decision at all.

  Then, she turned and looked at him, a steady, sharp look, empty of any playfulness.

  “Magriet,” she said just before the clock struck midnight.

  “Certainty not!”

  The clock struck, and Magriet silently counted to twelve.

  When the last chime had faded completely, she spoke again.

  “You misunderstand: that is my name. Magriet. Named for my mother’s mother. I am giving you it.”

  The fairy man froze, wary. “And why would you take so dangerous a chance when you have already forfeited your life to my realm?”

  She smiled and did a bold thing, crossing the room in her voluminous night dress and taking his hand.

  “Because you never asked for it, not once this entire month, and I thought you ought to know. It puts us on an equal footing, one might say. It’s only fair, since I know yours.”

  “Do you. I doubt very much that that is the case. But it is too late, regardless.” The strange eyes went to her hand a moment before returning to her face, searching.