She studied the straw, toeing a few pieces that had drifted from the pile. It was clean straw. Sweet-smelling and dry. She wondered if the Erlking had ordered it harvested earlier that night, under the Hunger Moon, because she’d told him that gathering straw touched by the full moon made it better for her work. It seemed unlikely. Any straw gathered recently would still be wet from the snow.
Because, of course, the king did not believe her lies, and he was right. What he asked for could not be done. Or, at least, not by her. She had heard tales of magical ones who could do marvelous things. Of people who really had been blessed by Hulda. Who could spin not only gold, but also silver and silk and strands of perfect white pearls.
But the only blessing she carried was from the god of lies, and now her cursed tongue had ruined her.
How foolish she’d been to think for a moment that she had tricked the Erlking and gotten away with it. Of course he would realize that a simple village maiden could not possess such a gift. If she could spin straw into gold, her father would hardly still be toiling away at the gristmill. The schoolhouse would not need new thatching, and the fountain that stood crumbling in the middle of M?rchenfeld’s square would have been repaired ages ago. If she could spin straw into gold, she would have ensured by now that her whole village prospered.
But she did not have such magic. And the king knew it.
A hand went to her throat as she worried over how he would do it—with a sword? An ax?—when her fingers brushed the slender chain of the necklace. She pulled it from beneath her dress collar and opened the locket, turning it so she could see the face of the girl inside. The child peered out at Serilda with her teasing eyes, as if there were a secret near to bursting inside of her.
“There’s no hurt in trying, is there?” she whispered.
The king had given her until one hour to sunrise. It was already after midnight. Here in the bowels of the castle, the only way to track the passing of time was by the candle burning in the corner. The persistent melting of wax.
Too slow.
Far too fast.
No matter. She was hardly one to sit still for hours, suffocating in her own self-pity.
“If Hulda can do it, why can’t I?” she said, grabbing a handful of straw from the pile. She approached the spinning wheel as if she were approaching a sleeping wyvern. Unclasping her traveling cloak, she folded it neatly and settled it in the corner. Then she hooked one ankle around the leg of the stool that had been provided and sat down.
The strands of straw were tough, the ends scratchy against her forearms. She stared at them and tried to picture tufts of wool like those Mother Weber had sold her countless times.
The straw was nothing like the thick, fuzzy wool she was used to, but she inhaled a deep breath anyway and loaded the first empty bobbin onto the flyer. She spent a long time looking from the bobbin to the fistful of straw. Usually she started with a leader yarn, to make it easier for the wool to wrap around the bobbin, but she had no yarn. Shrugging, she tied on a piece of straw. The first one broke, but the second held. Now what? She couldn’t just twist the ends together to form one long strand.
Could she?
She twisted and twisted.
It held … sort of.
“Good enough,” she muttered, running the leader yarn through the hooks, then out through the maiden hole. The entire setup was beyond precarious, ready to fall apart as soon as she pulled too tight or released those weakly connected strands.
Afraid to let go, she leaned over and used her nose to push down on one of the wheel’s spokes, so that it gradually started to turn. “Here we go,” she said, pressing her foot onto the treadle.
The straw pulled from her fingers.
The tenuous connections disintegrated.
Serilda paused. Growled to herself.
Then she tried again.
This time, she started the wheel sooner.
No luck.
Next, she tried knotting a few ends of straw together.
“Please work,” she whispered as her foot started to pedal. The wheel turned. The straw wound around the bobbin. “Gold. Please. Please turn into gold.”
But the plain, dry straw continued to be plain, dry straw, no matter how many times it slipped through the maiden hole or wound around the bobbin.
Before long, she had run out of knotted strands, and what had been successfully looped around the bobbin started to splinter as soon as she took it off the flyer.
“No, no, no …”
She grabbed a fresh bobbin and started over.
Pushing, forcing the straw through.
Her foot mashing against the treadle.
“Please,” she said again, pushing another strand in. Then another. “Please.” Her voice broke, and the tears started. Tears she’d hardly known were waiting to be released until they all flooded forward at once. She hunched forward, clutching the useless straw in her fists, and sobbed. That one word stuck on her tongue, whispered to no one but the cell walls and the locked door and this awful castle full of awful ghosts and demons and monsters. “Please.”
“What are you doing to that poor spinning wheel?”
Serilda screamed and tumbled off the stool. She landed on the ground with a bewildered grunt, one shoulder smacking the stone wall. She looked up, pushing away the strands of hair that had fallen into her face and stuck to her damp cheek.
There was a figure sitting on top of the pile of straw, cross-legged, peering at her with mild curiosity.
A man.
Or … a boy. A boy about her age, she guessed, with copper hair that hung in wild tangles to his shoulders and a face that was covered in both freckles and dirt. He wore a simple linen shirt, slightly old-fashioned with its generous sleeves, which he’d left untucked over emerald-green hose. No shoes, no tunic, no overcoat, no hat. He might have been getting ready for bed, except he looked wide-awake.
She looked past him to the door, still shut tight.
“H-how did you get in here?” she stammered, pushing herself upright.
The boy cocked his head and said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, “Magic.”
Chapter 11
She blinked.
He blinked back, then added, “I am extremely powerful.”
Serilda’s brow furrowed, unable to tell if he meant it. “Is that so?”
In response, the boy grinned. It was the sort of look that was meant to hide secrets—lopsided and laughing, with flecks of gold sparking in his eyes. Standing, he brushed away the bits of straw that clung to his hose and glanced around, taking in the spinning wheel, the cramped room, the barred window in the door. “Not the most pleasant of accommodations. Lighting could be improved. That stench, too. Is this meant to be a bed?” He toed at the pile of straw.
“We’re in a dungeon,” Serilda said helpfully.
The boy cast her a wry look. Obviously they were in a dungeon.
Serilda flushed. “In Adalheid Castle, to be precise.”
“Never been summoned to a dungeon before. Wouldn’t have been my first choice.”
“Summoned?”
“Must have been. You are a witch, aren’t you?”
She gawked at him, wondering if she should be offended. Unlike all the times she’d called Madam Sauer a witch, this boy did not cast around the word like an insult. “No, I’m not a witch. And I didn’t summon you. I was just sitting here, crying, contemplating my own demise, thank you muchly.”