On the dais, the Little Rose turned her face into her mother’s shoulder. She was only six, but she was still a princess, and I hated her then, because she couldn’t even look at us one last time.
And so we had left and wandered for two years, and then we settled for being poor spinners at the crossroads, when once we had made cloth for a queen. All that time, my mother told me, Tariq, and, eventually, Arwa, about the way the Little Rose had smiled at the phoenix above her chair at the birthday, and how the piskey had delighted her with aerial acrobatics. Her stories always ended well before the demon, and the curse, and maybe that was why Tariq and Arwa loved them so much, but I heard enough from others to understand it. The king and queen had been made to choose between their kingdom and their daughter, and they had chosen their daughter, to the ruin of all else. At the time, I had thought it was anger that gave my mother her determination, because that’s where I always looked to find mine. Now that I was older, I was not so sure.
“I never understood why it was spinning,” Arwa said, as we sat around the campfire. We were high enough in the mountains that trees were few, which made the fire difficult to maintain, but soon we would be across the top of the range. In the meantime, we huddled together and ate smoked bear meat with whatever plants Arwa had gathered as we walked during the day.
“What does it matter?” asked Saoud.
“I only mean that there are other crafts to pick from,” Arwa said. “Why not blacksmithing? Or weaving? Why not farming?”
“It had to be something small,” I said, my tongue so thick with bitter feelings that I could taste them. “Something that no one considers, something that goes unnoticed.”
“How can spinning be unnoticed?” Arwa asked. “It is the base of everything.”
“We know that,” I said. “We have been taught it. But do you think the Little Rose looks at her dresses when she puts them on in the morning, and wonders how they are made?”
“That’s not fair, Yashaa. Your mother taught the Little Rose to spin herself, and she was the most important spinner in the castle.” She paused for a moment. “When she helped teach me, she said that spinning was the beginning of everything. Maybe that’s why the demon picked it. Because that’s where Kharuf begins.”
Tariq and I exchanged a look, and Tariq shrugged.
“It’s like fine silk, magic,” Tariq said. “Most people cannot see the threads until they are unspooled.”
“Why would a demon want Kharuf to be unspooled?” Saoud said. “Why make the curse at all?”
“I don’t think demons need reasons,” I said. “I think they just enjoy destruction.”
Tariq looked like he had his own answer to that question, but didn’t want to start an argument. I was not very reasonable when it came to discussion of the curse, and my head still ached, which made me irritable. I resolved to be less obstructive, but before I could say anything encouraging, Saoud interjected.
“My father says it is not wise to engage an enemy you cannot predict,” he said.
“That is why we are going to find the Little Rose,” I reminded him. “I fought the bear with you, Saoud. I do not wish to fight another demon, in any form, until I know more.”
Saoud looked at me for a long moment, and then nodded. Tariq moved closer to Arwa, and wrapped his blanket around her. I would be so glad when we were back in the lowlands, where summer remembered that it was meant to be warm.
“Tell me again what you remember of the castle,” Saoud said.
It wasn’t very much. I remembered the Great Hall and the spinning room, and our own living quarters, but I could not tell him the shape of the gates, nor how many soldiers guarded them. Tariq remembered the Little Rose’s playroom and nursery with some detail, but we had no way of knowing if those rooms would still be hers, or if she would have moved to different ones once she was older.
“We are going to have to find a village near the castle and ask questions,” Saoud said. “I don’t like that idea very much, but I don’t like wandering into the castle and making an attempt on the princess with no directions at all.”
“You’re right,” I said. “But how do you intend to get them to tell us?”
He was silent then, and so was I, as we cast about for a solution.
“I’ll ask them,” Arwa said.
We all looked at her, surprised.
“You’ll just ask?” Saoud said. He wasn’t mocking her, not quite, but he never could help smiling when he looked at her, so it looked rather like he was.
“People tell me things,” she said practically. “You have seen them do it.”