“Fault is a relative concept. Do you suppose people often care whether scrawny foundling boys are at fault for their transgressions?” When I shake my head no, he says, “I did not mind being sent back to the foundling home. The food was poor, and I was not loved. But these things could be said of the farm as well. It was merely the beating I wished to avoid. So, when the farmer’s wife locked the barn door, I hoped to escape through the window high above me. But how could I reach it? First, I tried to pile up the straw to climb upon it. But it was too thin. I fell through it, and there was not enough to reach the window anyway. I was sad and tired and hungry. I tried to eat eggs from the chickens that clucked around me—the ones I had not carelessly allowed to die. And, in so doing, I spied a spinning wheel in the corner.
“Spinning was something I actually could do. There had been a spinning wheel at the foundling home, and one of the women had taught me to use it. I often helped them. I had not thought to tell the farmer of this ability, for I knew it to be women’s work. But now I thought if I could weave a rope of the straw, perhaps I could pull myself up on it and escape.”
I sigh at this. I know enough about straw to know this would never work. Such a rope would be flimsy and fall apart much like the daisy chains I made with my sisters. It would not lift even his slight weight.
“Of course it did not work, and as I saw the sun grow high in the sky and then sink again, I knew the farmer would be back soon. I spun furiously and wished and concentrated and wanted the chain to be made of a stronger material, and suddenly a rope of gold began to fall from the spinning wheel and onto the floor. I did not know what I had done other than wanting it—desperately—but I put in straw and out came gold! Gold!”
“Had anything like this happened to you before?”
“No. Maybe. Little things like wanting a pfennig to buy a sweet, then finding one.”
“Then can you get everything you want that way, just by wishing?”
He stops spinning then and turns toward me. His gray eyes sweep from my face to my toe, then back again. Finally, he says, “No. No, I cannot get everything I want by wishing.”
He begins to spin again, faster than before, and I think I hear him say something under his breath.
“What?”
“Nothing.” The wheel turns furiously. “To finish my story, I climbed the golden rope to the window by swinging it over a nail I saw. That I was able to climb it was as miraculous as being able to spin straw into gold, for I was quite weak at such pursuits. When I reached the window, I could see the farmer, coming in from the fields, so I knew I had no time. I swung down upon it, then I gathered it to take with me. It proved too heavy, though, and I left it in the wheat field, a good surprise for whoever found it. I ran back to town, fast as I could. I likely need not have bothered. No one there wanted me. I made my way back to the foundling home, where they were none too delighted to see me either. So that is how I happened to be there when Kendra came in a few months later.
“‘I seek a child with special abilities to work in my shop,’ she said. ‘Do you know such a child?’
“She looked at me when she said it, and I thought I knew what she meant.
“‘I can read,’ I said. ‘I mean, I enjoy reading.’ This could be said for few boys I knew.
“‘Reading is a marvelous ability,’ she said with a smile, ‘but it is not the one I seek, not the only one. Has, perhaps, anything unusual happened in your life, in any of your lives?’ She looked at all of us, but she started and ended with me. Some of the others raised their hands, volunteering their skills: They were hard workers. They were the fastest runners. One of the boys said he was an expert pickpocket, so he could catch thieves in her store. Kendra smiled pleasantly at each, but finally, she turned to leave.
“I could not believe it! The opportunity to work in a bookseller’s stall, gone forever. Squandered! I had to say something, do something to make her stay, to make her choose me.
“As her hand reached for the doorknob, I jolted up and barreled toward her. When I say I barreled, I mean I literally went as fast as a rolling beer barrel, knocking against two other boys in the process. I arrived at her side, breathless.
“‘I . . . I . . . ,’ I stammered.
“‘What is it, young man? You have already told me your accomplishments, that you can read. Have you any other, less tiresome abilities?’ But, despite the cruelty in her voice, the gleam in her eyes said she knew I had. ‘You can whisper it in my ear.’
“With my hand, I beckoned to her to lean down. Then, I whispered, ‘I can spin straw into gold!’
“A boy who had been standing nearby heard and repeated it loudly. This caused all the assembled boys to roar with laughter. I started to slink away. But I felt Kendra’s hand upon my shoulder, turning me back toward her.
“‘You have done this?’ she whispered, and when I nodded, to the boys’ further laughter and the disapproving sneers of the other adults, she pulled me away, out the door into an alley, where she said, ‘Where? Under what circumstances?’
“So I told her about the farmer and the barn and the chickens and my marvelous escape. And when I finished, she appeared interested. Not only interested but smiling.
“‘And you believe you could do this again?’ she asked.
“Away from my taunting peers, I said, ‘I think so. If I needed to enough.’