Sword and Sorceress XXVII (11 page)

“This hearing stands adjourned.”

After the Guardsmen and Edward had left,
Stephen and Melisande made their way out, with Mika behind them. Before she was
out the door, Logas called, “Michaela!”

The dog stopped and turned to face him.

“Lady Sarras sends her greetings. She
looks forward to seeing you again when she returns to campus next week.”

Mika woofed brightly.

#

 “You should have seen it,” Stephen said
enthusiastically to Melisande. Edward had joined them for supper, and now they
were seated in the living room of the cottage. “Right there in the middle of
the discussion she turned into a souped-up jack-o-lantern. Flames shooting out
of the eyes and mouth and everything. Of course the skull was empty, burnt
completely out.”

Melisande decided no, thanks, she needn’t
have seen it. To her relief, Edward changed the subject. “If she had kidnapped
me, what would that have accomplished?”

“Can’t say for sure, of course, but we
can imagine what the bad guys could do with the Sceptre. Not that they’d need
it themselves, but consider what would happen if they planted it in the King’s
palace. Or the Chinese Emperor’s, or the Caliph’s.”

“And then there’s your daughter. Who I
gather has a name, eh?”

“Well,” said Stephen, “Mika seems to
think so.” He laughed. “Who am I to second-guess the family dog? Who, as it
happens, rescued her and her mother from kidnapping, possible brainwashing,
subversion...and the Paten with her.”

Melisande chose this point to break her
silence and rise to her feet, cutting off the discussion. “You two can stay up
all night theorizing horrors if you want.
I’m
going to bed before I have
nightmares for the next three months.”

#

 “Whatever Mika is, she’s not an
ordinary dog.” Stephen held Melisande close—or as close as he could. “She’s
more like a guardian angel.”

“Or a Guardian,” Melisande murmured,
already half-asleep.

She was dreaming again, the kind of
dream that she now recognized and welcomed. Tonight Mika’s thoughts were
unusually clear:
Who guards the Guardians?
The reply was simple.

I do.

Straw-Spun

by
Leah Cypess

This is
definitely the most unusual take on the story of Rumpelstiltskin that I have
ever encountered, and I love new twists on old stories.

Leah
Cypess lives near Boston, MA, and used to live in New York City, where she
briefly worked as a lawyer. This is her second sale to SWORD & SORCERESS.
Her first, in SWORD & SORCERESS 23, was a retelling of The Lady of Shalott;
she freely admits that twists on familiar tales and tropes are her favorite
type of story. Her two published young adult fantasy novels, MISTWOOD and NIGHTSPELL,
apply this method to shapeshifters and ghosts, respectively. You can find out
more about her and her writing at www.leahcypess.com.

****

Alina unfolded the letter slowly and
with great care: it was very old, and felt thin and fragile under her steady
fingertips. Her heart was pounding in a way unfamiliar to her, and not just
because of the whispers she had heard on the way to the throne room:
gold to
straw
from two passing courtiers,
the end of the peace
from a duke
to a lady,
Rumpelstiltskin
—she hadn’t turned fast enough to see who’d
said that.

She had come to the sitting room to ask
her father about the whispers, but before she could say a word, he had handed
her the letter. She smoothed out the last fold and focused on the ornate,
flowing script so similar to her own.

The king was watching her. She composed
her face and read.

#

I have four days until your third
birthday, and it isn’t enough time. They say if you discover a goblin’s true
name, it gives you power over him. For the past month I have been living in the
library, searching through the forbidden books, trying to figure out which one
he is and if anyone knows his name. It is a fruitless, endless task. I will not
lie: it is also boring. Even the fear of death doesn’t change that.

Four days. I have an entire bookshelf
left. Even if his name is there, which I doubt.

What will he do with you?

You need to understand: when I signed
you away to him, you were nothing. Not a sigh in the wind, not a speck on the
fabric of the world. You were nothing, not even a possibility of something, for
though I had spoken to your father once or twice, I had never even touched his
hand.

Yet you were real enough, to him, to be
worth my life. My life and a roomful of gold. How could something that didn’t
even exist be worth that much?

If I hadn’t done it, you would never
have existed at all. So I told myself. I was buying not just my own life, but
yours: three years of life for you. Children are happy creatures, and I swore
you would be the happiest of them all, you-who-were-nothing. Three years of
joy. Who wouldn’t trade for that?

It seemed so easy, so simple, when you
were not real.

It was lack of experience, you see, that
brought me to this. I didn’t know that parents love their children. Mine didn’t.

The king doesn’t like what I am doing.
Nobody does. Whispers rise around me, suspicious and fearful. Does that make me
seem like a better mother, that I am willing to risk my life for yours? Even if
it’s too late? How could I know, back then, what I was willing to do for a life
that didn’t exist?

Ah, but I lie. I always knew the
whispers would come. That at first I would be their marvel, the girl who spun
straw into gold, the commoner who married a king. For as long as the harvests
were good and the borders at peace. But that when times turned bad, they would
speak of witchcraft, and unholy bargains, and the devil.

Times are still good. But my days were
always numbered. As yours were.

No, it’s no good drawing similarities
between us. No good rambling on when I should be straining my eyes at yet
another book. Cursed sorcerers and their cursedly small writing.

I just wanted to tell you… somehow… that
I failed. I love you after all, despite all I did to avoid it. Your wide dark
eyes when you were drawn from my body, your tiny red fists and feet. When I
realized, suddenly, that you were
something
. The most important
thing in the world. And that I had realized it too late.

I know it is inadequate—even silly. But
I am writing this letter to say that I love you. And that I’m sorry.

#

Alina refolded the letter slowly, until
it was so small she could hide it in her palm. She looked at her father.

“Why,” she said, “did you show me this?”

The king folded his hands together. They
were old, crooked hands; the days when they had wielded a sword were long over.
The ruby signet ring seemed too heavy for his fingers.

“Because,” he said, “we were wrong about
what happened. Your mother never found his name.”

“Then why am I alive?” Alina asked.

She asked it calmly and precisely, the
same way she asked about the progress of the negotiations with Aimar, and saw a
flicker of approval in her father’s eyes. The king was a very calm, measured
person. He found excessive emotion distasteful, and his definition of “excessive”
was stricter than that of most people.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I suspect,
now, that your mother managed a trade.”

Alina rose from her seat and walked to
the back of the sitting room. The portrait of her mother hung between two tall
windows, overshadowed by their heavy sills, nearly invisible when the sun shone
through. There was no good reason to display it more prominently, for there was
nothing remarkable about it. Alina’s mother had not been particularly
beautiful, or regal, or striking. She looked like what she was, a village girl
wrapped in yellow silk.

Until a few moments ago, Alina had never
been told there might be anything about her to admire.

She didn’t know why that made her angry,
but it did; and she knew she had better not let her father see that anger. So
she kept her eyes on the painting, and her back to the king, while she spoke.

“What would a goblin take for a life?”
she asked—but as soon as she asked, she knew. Suddenly she was afraid as well
as angry. She took several deep, steady breaths, trying to hold her shoulders
still, so her father wouldn’t guess.

“I don’t know,” her father lied to her. “The
sorcerers have been working on figuring it out ever since it… happened. We know
a bit about the goblin who is commonly known as Rumpelstiltskin—not his true
name, of course, but it’s what the commonfolk call him. He has appeared
sporadically in the Western Woods for several centuries. He is evil, and loves
to cause trouble for humankind. But there are no stories of his making bargains
with any of us, before....”

His voice trailed off. Alina thought of
the story she had been told: how her mother had discovered the goblin’s true
name, how in his rage he had pulled the ceiling down upon their heads and
killed them both. Her father would not want to repeat the story now. Not when
he was about to tell her the truth.

She could save him the trouble. But
first she must compose herself. She concentrated on what she was: Princess of
Ciern. Sole heiress to the kingdom. Valued adviser to her father the king.

“It will cause great difficulty with
Aimar,” she said evenly, “if I am no longer available to marry their prince.
That is the crux of the negotiations.”

No reply. She turned around and saw her
father staring at her with wide, startled eyes.

“It will mean war,” she said. “That is
the most important thing, isn’t it?” And as she said it, she truly believed it.
Her responsibility to her people settled around her like a comfortable, heavy
cloak.

“Yes,” her father said finally. “But—”

Alina smiled. She enjoyed showing off
how smart she was; people rarely expected it, when they saw her porcelain
features and golden hair. It was especially fun when she managed to surprise
her father, who should have known better.

“It’s rather obvious,” she said. The
folded paper in her palm had grown damp. “What would a goblin take in exchange
for a life, except another life? My mother gave him hers.”

“We know little about the fae,” her
father said warningly.

“I’m not faulting your sorcerers, Your
Majesty. They must have suspected it. But now they know.” Her voice didn’t even
threaten to quaver. She was proud of that. “My mother was fifteen when she bore
me. Eighteen when she... disappeared.” She lifted her eyebrows. “I am eighteen
now.”

Her father leaned back, looking
thoroughly impressed. Somehow it wasn’t as satisfying as it usually was.

“Eighteen years for eighteen years. That
must have been the bargain.” She glanced once at her mother’s portrait before
meeting her father’s eyes again. “And you know it now, because Rumpelstiltskin
is back. The bargain is over, and he’s come back for me.”

#

It was not as simple as that, of course.
It never was, with the fae.

What had happened was that gold was
turning back into straw.

There were fifty bales of gold thread in
the king’s storeroom, left over from Alina’s mother’s bargain. Or rather, there
had been. Until that morning, when the seneschal did his daily check and found
instead a roomful of old, moldering straw.

The sorcerers were universally agreed:
it was a sign of Rumpelstiltskin’s return.

The advisers were universally agreed: it
was an unmitigated disaster.

“The sorcerers might be correct,” Alina
told her maid, Rose, while her hair was being brushed for bed. “The advisers
certainly are.”

Rose made a sound of assent, the brush
never ceasing its steady strokes. Alina caught a glimpse of the maid’s
expression in the mirror. Rose had a broad, pleasant face that usually bore a
slightly puzzled expression. Though far less intelligent than Alina, she was
the closest thing the princess had to a friend.

She also reported everything Alina said
to the king. Alina didn’t mind that. She had no secrets from her father.

“The real question,” Alina went on, “is
what has happened to the gold we’ve already traded. But of course we don’t dare
ask. If our neighbors think we tricked them on purpose, then Aimar, Mosun, and
Palis could all invade at once.”

“The king’s cape is still gold,” Rose
offered, as she worked out a tangle.

Alina refrained from wincing as her hair
twisted sharply against her scalp. Rose did not have a gentle hand with a
brush. It was a small pain Alina chose to bear, for the sake of her only
friendship. And, she often thought, as an exercise in self-discipline. A
princess could not afford to let her feelings show on her face, even—especially—when
those feelings were pain.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Thread that has
already been woven seems to have remained gold.”

For now.
She could only
hope the goblin would tell them what he wanted before the king’s cape
disintegrated and covered him in straw.

Rose put the brush down at last, and
Alina got to her feet and went to her window. Below her sprawled the city,
lights and gray silhouettes in the night. All those thousands of people—and
thousands more, beyond the city—getting their hair brushed, or brushing it on
their own, getting ready for bed. Intact families, with no men gone for war, no
women weeping over the deaths of soldiers.

For now.

Alina had never questioned why her
father married her mother for the sake of bales of gold. Ciern was not a rich
country. The gold—and her father’s wisdom in using it—had helped protect these
people for almost two decades. The king would not have been what a king should
be, if he had spurned his responsibility to those thousands and thousands of
people because he did not love a woman.

Alina knew very few of the thousands of
people in the city below her. She did not love any of them. But she did not
want them to suffer because she had failed them.

She sighed, turned away from the window,
and allowed Rose to change her for bed.

#

That night, the empty room that had once
been used for spinning was suddenly no longer empty. The sentry Alina had
posted there came to let her know, and Rose shook the princess awake from a
dream in which gnarled green hands pulled her down into the earth.

Alina dressed simply and swiftly, in a
long white gown, and hurried through the hallway with Rose’s disapproving stare
burning into her back.

The west wing of the castle was dark,
bare, and deserted. There had been a fire here—years after Alina’s mother had
died—and though it hadn’t damaged the thick stone walls, a faint, ashy smell
still drifted through the corridors, between the singed and crumbling
tapestries and the blackened remains of carved wooden furniture. Alina had a
torch, but its light was only enough to let her see her way, not to show her
what was hiding in the shadows.