Perhaps it is for the best.
In the darkness, I hear a mournful sound. A cow, mooing. I walk over to the corner whence the sound came. A cow! One cow. My hand meets her smooth back, and I slide my arm along it, stroking it. We have a cow at home, Brunhilde. Soon, she will wake, and there will be no one to milk her, and Father will know I have been gone all night.
I lay my head upon the cow’s back. She feels warm and familiar, and I begin to sob.
A streak of light shoots through the barn. Is it him? Karl? With my mirror?
“Young lady?”
It is not. It is a man’s voice, strangely familiar, but not Karl’s.
“Young lady, are you here?”
I raise my head from the cow’s back. I see a shape, only a shape in the darkness. A man, walking toward me. He holds a lantern, but low, so I cannot see his face. As he comes close, I see that he is a small man, short and slight, with curly hair and a crooked, wrong-turned nose. The young man from the bookseller’s stall!
“You! Why are you here?” I fairly gasp.
He walks closer. His eyes are the color of the steel poker I use for the fire. He does not smile but says, “I have come to help you.”
“Help me escape?” For I note that the door is still closed, must have closed behind him. Stupid! Can he open it again?
Now he laughs. “No, my fine lady. I have come to help you spin straw into gold.”
“But that is impossible.”
He smiles, a queer smile, as if he possesses a wisdom I cannot see. “Not for me. We all have our talents. That is mine, though I may not be a handsome prince.” He rather spits the words handsome prince, and I wonder if he knows what Karl did to me, if Kendra told him. “I am here to help.”
“But how did you know I needed help?”
“Kendra has ways of knowing.” He gestures broadly around with one arm, and as he does, the barn is bathed in light. “Do you wish me to leave?”
“No. No! I just didn’t know why you were here, why you would do such a kind, generous thing for me.” I do not believe he can do it.
He winks a bit at that. “Oh, I am not kind or generous. I require payment for my efforts.” He walks closer and lays his hand upon my arm, staring directly into my eyes. His smile is crooked. His eyelashes are long, and when he blinks, they brush his cheeks.
“Payment?” He does know about Karl and me.
“People only value that which has a price. Remember that in all things, my dear.”
I know not what he means by a price, but I nod. He keeps gazing at me, and I relax under his gaze. He will help me. I know it now. But that is silly. I do not know this man. I know nothing about him except that he likes to read books.
Still, the fact that a person likes to read books makes him rather more likely to be worth knowing than not.
But what if he wants something that I do not wish to give?
“What sort of payment?” I ask, not moving from his hypnotic gaze.
It is he who backs away now. He looks me up and down, down and up, before his strange gray eyes settle upon my hand. He smiles.
“Your ring.”
The ring is nothing special, a fede ring with a symbol of joined hands. It was my mother’s. I love that little ring. It reminds me of happier times. It belonged to each of my sisters first, but they gave it up once they had wedding rings to wear. It is mine now, and I meant it to be my daughter’s.
“Why do you need it, if you can make gold?”
“I told you. People only value that which has a price.” That makes me think of Karl. I gave myself too cheaply.
I slip the ring from my finger. He reaches toward me with a hand long and bony and nothing like Karl’s powerful ones. I drop the ring into his outstretched palm. He pockets it and then rummages in a bag he carried on his back. He pulls out a book that is barely a book, more a collection of old pages, held to its broken spine by a bit of ribbon. He holds it out to me. I fear to take it, for it crackles so much in his hands that I worry it will fall to dust in mine.
He says, “You will sit with me and read as I spin. You will keep me company.”
At the very sight of the book, my eyes start to close. I would much rather sleep than talk or read. But I can hardly deny his small request when he is about to do so much for me.
Having relieved himself of his burden, the man drags the spinning wheel over to several large bales of straw. He sits upon one, and it crunches. He gestures to me to sit upon another.
I want to watch, to see him spin straw into gold, but when I look at him, he points to the book. “Read,” he says. “You do your work and I mine. You spin stories as I spin straw.”
So I open the book and begin the story of Kriemhild, the prince’s sister, who has a dream of a falcon killed by eagles. Her mother says this means that Kriemhild’s husband will be killed. So Kriemhild vows not to marry.