My Unfair Godmother (16 page)

I watched him from a distance. “Do you know a fairy named Chrysanthemum Everstar?”

He tensed at the name, then picked up a handful of straw and examined it. “The fay folk are many. Quite a few have escaped my notice.

Why do you ask?”

He hadn’t answered my question, and the way he tensed made me think that he did know her. I could have told him everything—how I was from the future and Chrissy had sent me here mistakenly. But I didn’t trust him and didn’t want to give him more information than I had to. What sort of person says he’s your fairy godfather and then tries to take your baby from you later? It had been a long time since I’d read the fairy tale, but I had a vague recollection that Rumpelstiltskin wanted to eat the child.

Rumpelstiltskin pressed the foot pedal, testing it, and the wheel spun so fast the spokes blurred together. He kept his gaze on me, waiting for me to say how I knew Chrissy.

“She granted me a favor once,” I told him, “but it didn’t turn out like it was supposed to. I want to talk to her.” Rumpelstiltskin fed some straw into the spindle. It jumped from his hand like tiny birds landing in their nests. The straw went over the wheel, broken and bumpy, then impossibly turned into a smooth, golden strand on the other side. It looked like liquid light winding around the bobbin.

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Rumpelstiltskin motioned to the pile, and a stream of straw swirled onto the spinning wheel. “Did you give this Chrysanthemum Everstar any sort of token for the favor she granted you?”

“Um, no.” She had never asked for anything.

“Ah, then it was a gift, not a bargain, and sadly you’ve no recourse. It does no good to complain about shoddy workmanship if her magic was a present.” The corner of his thin lips lifted. “A bargain is binding though. The UMA makes sure of that.”

“Oh.” I suddenly wished I had read Chrissy’s contract more carefully. I also wondered why Rumpelstiltskin didn’t give me a contract since his bargains were binding. Perhaps he didn’t think I could read.

He stroked the edge of the spinning wheel. “You’ve no cause to worry about my work though. You’ll have nothing but the finest gold when I’m through.”

I didn’t feel like talking to him any longer so I sat down next to the door. I watched the wheel turning, watched the hypnotic spinning and the torch light winking reflections off the gold.

Rumpelstiltskin sung a low, lilting song as he worked, and I caught snatches of words: “Today do I bake, tomorrow I brew.” But these weren’t the words I thought about as he spun. It was the phrase he’d said earlier that repeated over and over to the thumping of the foot pedal.
You’ll have nothing but the finest gold when I’m through.

You’ll have nothing. You’ll have nothing. You’ll have nothing but gold
when I’m through.

Rumpelstiltskin looked over and saw me watching. “The night is far spent,” he said. “You must sleep.” As though it were a command that I had to obey, I felt exhaustion sweeping over me. I shut my eyes, lay down, and was asleep.

• • •

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The next morning, I was awakened by the sound of a voice from the other side of the door. I didn’t recognize the speaker. His voice was high-pitched and condescending. “If she is as pretty as you say, perhaps we will stay her execution for a few days, but we doubt we will take a liking to her. That last maiden you brought to our attention—the musical one—we found her dulcimers dull, her vielle vile, and don’t even get us started on her gemshorn.” We? Who was talking? I sat up, wiping away strands of hair from my face. Only a few shafts of morning light made their way through the shutter cracks. Everything in the room was dark and muted.

The bolt slid across the door, and I scooted a little bit away.

“We are quite a bit more discerning about women than you are, Haverton, and we have better taste too. We hope you aren’t wasting our time again.”

The door swung open, letting more light into the room. The bushy-bearded knight strode in with a man who couldn’t have been anyone but King John. He wore yellow-and-orange-striped silk robes clasped together at his throat with a doorknob-sized broach. His shoulder-length brown hair was noticeably thin on top or perhaps even absent. He had draped a large section of hair from the back of his head across the top to cover the bald spot and to act as bangs—a medieval version of a bad comb-over.

He surveyed me and his lips puckered sourly. “We thought you said she had golden hair. There’s not a speck of gold anywhere in it.” Oh. King John talked about himself as “we.” Royalty did that sometimes.

Haverton, the bearded knight, nodded. “My apologies, sire. I only meant that she was blond.”

King John’s lips stayed puckered. “You should learn to speak correctly. Sloppy metaphors lead to confusion and we have quite enough 146/356

of that in the kingdom already. Don’t you recall the time you said the chancellor was casting his pearls before swine?” Haverton hung his head a bit. “Yes, sire.”

“We were nearly trampled by a herd of pigs while we searched their pen.”

“I humbly apologize for that again, sire.”

“And our green robes still smell like manure.” King John flicked his fingers in my direction as though shooing away an insect. “She isn’t golden. She is merely a girl dressed in odd clothing. Probably a French spy come here to ferret out our secrets. We should execute her at once for espionage.”

I stood up so quickly that I nearly toppled over as I curtsied. “I’m not a French spy, Your Highness. I wouldn’t have come here at all except that I was dragged here by your men and—” King John put up one hand to silence me. “Can you prove you’re not French?”

I hesitated, unsure how to do that.

He humphed at my hesitation like it proved my guilt. “Do you speak French?”

“No.”

His eyes narrowed. “Do you know how to spell ‘rendezvous’?”

“Um, probably not. I’ve never been great at spelling foreign words.”

“ ‘Hors d’oeuvres’?”

“Why yes, I’d love some.”

King John didn’t have a sense of humor. He simply stared at me, waiting. I cleared my throat. “No, sire, I don’t know how to spell ‘hors d’oeuvres,’ either.”

He gave me another elegant flick of his fingers. “That proves nothing. The French don’t know how to spell that word either.” King 147/356

John turned to Haverton. “We are not impressed with the girl. True, she is pretty, but she doesn’t have golden hair and she is a bad speller.

We are wondering about your judgment now, Haverton.” He shook his head resolutely. “We are not impressed at all.” Then again, it was entirely possible King John kept calling himself

“we” because he was referring to the other voices in his head.

Haverton walked to the window. “But, Your Highness, you have not even properly seen the girl.” He opened the shutters, and the morning light spilled into the room. Two dozen golden spools shimmered in the sunshine along the back wall.

Both men stared at them. “Wait,” King John said. “We have changed our mind. We are quite impressed.” Haverton’s jaw dropped in amazement. His gaze shot to mine.

“How can this be?” he sputtered. “You spun the straw to gold?” I figured it was a rhetorical question so I didn’t answer. I hadn’t actually done it, and I didn’t want my liar’s hat to go off.

Neither of the men noticed my silence. Haverton paced around the spools, eyeing them in shock. King John dropped to his knees in front of the gold like a man about to pray to the god of greed. As he bent down to examine a spool, his comb-over flopped off the top of his head. It made me feel vaguely like I’d been flashed.

He pulled a shiny thread away from the spool, stroking it like it were a cat, even holding it to his nose and sniffing it. Which made me wonder if gold had a smell.

“She’s a lovely maiden,” King John said without looking at me.

“We are quite smitten, overcome with love, in fact. And now we shall take this gold back to our chamber and get better acquainted.” I was pretty sure he meant he wanted to get better acquainted with the gold and not with me.

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With one hand, he tried to pick up a spool. It didn’t budge. He used both hands, with the same result. Either it was very heavy, or he was very weak. Or both. He got to his feet, bent over, and tried again.

The spool still didn’t lift off the ground. Mostly he just managed to look like he was doing some sort of yellow-and-orange-striped yoga bends.

Haverton took hold of my arm. “How did you do this?” I couldn’t lie, but I wasn’t supposed to tell the king about Rumpelstiltskin. At least, in the fairy tale, the miller’s daughter never let him know how the straw had been turned to gold—not even when their baby was in danger. And if she hadn’t told him, it seemed I shouldn’t either.

I stammered out, “This gold is more than my father’s share in taxes. You must let me go back to my family now.” Haverton shook his head, but not at me—he didn’t give my demand enough notice to refuse it. He was shaking his head at himself.

“What a pied ninny I am.”

I nodded, then stopped. Maybe that wasn’t something I was supposed to agree with.

“I should have known the truth when I saw the riches at your manor,” Haverton said. To King John, he said, “Clearly the girl has a magical gift.”

King John gave up trying to lift the gold and dropped back to his knees in front of the spool. “Yes, yes, she’s charming, but she made the gold too heavy. If we ask our guards to move it, they will rob us blind.

They’re rogues, every one of them.” He took hold of the end of a golden thread and unwound it from the spool. Chortling, he said, “This is how we shall carry it—half a spool at a time.” I tried to pull my arm away from Haverton but he didn’t let go. He turned my hand over so it was palm up. “Your hands have no calluses 149/356

or cracks. The straw didn’t even blister them. How did you spin it into gold?”

I didn’t answer.

He leaned closer, his foul breath puffing into my face. “The king demands to know.”

Actually, the king was humming and winding thread from his thumb to his elbow. It was no wonder, really, that the miller’s daughter never told him anything.

Haverton tightened his grip on my arm. “How did you do it?” Then again, just because the miller’s daughter never told the king about Rumpelstiltskin, that didn’t mean I shouldn’t. Perhaps if I veered from the story script now, I would get a different ending.

Of course, it might be a worse ending. It was hard to judge what King John would do since, at this point, he seemed completely fixated on creating a golden cocoon around his arm. I swallowed hard. “I’ll tell you the truth if you promise not to hurt my family.” My answer only made Haverton squeeze my arm harder. “You shall tell me the truth regardless. Now.” I held firm. “My father hasn’t lied, spoken treason, or refused to pay taxes.”

Haverton pulled me a step closer. “You silly girl, no one cares about your father, but I’ll have my men drag him here in shackles if you don’t speak at once.”

I didn’t have a choice. I spoke. “A man appeared in the room last night and told me he was my fairy godfather. He spun the straw into gold so you wouldn’t kill me. It wasn’t my doing at all, so there’s no use keeping me here in the castle. I don’t have a magical gift.” Scowling, Haverton let me go. I rubbed my arm where he had squeezed it.

“Haverton!” King John called.

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I looked at King John to see his reaction to my confession, but he still wasn’t paying attention to me. He had somehow managed to tangle the thread around the broach at his neck and was struggling to free himself, one-handed.

Haverton went to his side, wrestling with the thread to unsnarl it.

“Our heart’s love not only made the gold too heavy,” King John said, “she made it too unwieldy. She must do better tonight.”

“But didn’t you hear me?” I asked. “I don’t have any magical gifts.”

King John smiled warmly. “Your modesty does you credit, my dear. You have a magic godfather and that is gift enough.” He held his cocooned hand out to me like he was asking me to dance. “Tonight you shall stay in a bigger room with more straw. When your fairy godfather arrives, you shall beseech him to spin it into lighter gold.” Unable to free the king from the golden tangles, Haverton took out a knife and cut through parts of the thread. This allowed him to slip the bulk of the golden jumble off the king’s arm.

King John stretched his fingers. “And if your fairy godfather doesn’t appear, my love, well, ’tis no great inconvenience to execute you tomorrow instead of today. We are nothing if not flexible.” I let out a horrified gasp. Despite his terms of endearment, I was still a prisoner with a death sentence. Telling King John the truth hadn’t made one bit of difference.

King John walked over and patted my shoulder. “No need to fret,” he said cheerfully. “Your fairy godfather won’t let you come to harm.” He kept patting. “Although one can never tell with fairies. They’re such flighty creatures.” He put his hand to his chest and chuckled. “Fairies are
flighty
creatures. What witty wordplay.” Haverton laughed along. I didn’t.

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King John turned to Haverton and eyed me severely. “I say, the maiden has a rather dour temperament.”

“You just threatened to kill me,” I pointed out.

“Business, my dear.” He motioned to Haverton. “We have decided not to carry the gold ourselves, so you must find someone who’s trustworthy to move it to our rooms.” He paused. “When we say
our
rooms, we actually mean
my
rooms. None of the gold is to go to
your
room.” Haverton bowed. “As you say, sire.”

“Feed the girl and …” King John glanced at my jeans and T-shirt disdainfully. “Give her a proper dress to wear.” He waved a finger toward my head. “And have one of the chambermaids do something with her hair. It looks like she’s slept in a haystack.” With that, he turned and walked from the room.

• • •

Two guards took me to the kitchen for some food and watched me from the doorway while I ate. The kitchen was a welcome change. It smelled like spices, and the fireplace not only housed a cauldron, it warmed the room as well. Several servants worked at the long wooden table where I ate, some chopping vegetables, some kneading dough, and a couple plucking chickens.