Arwa sighed. I knew that while she understood what Saoud was saying, she felt in her heart that he said the words because she was too young to be useful.
“Someday you will be tall enough,” I said to her. “And then you can take part in all the terrible plans that require climbing.”
She laughed, and Saoud relaxed, and except for Tariq, who was still lost in the maze of his thoughts, we were all happy for a moment.
“They are going to be unhappy,” Tariq said. “I know it. I know it.”
“The king and queen, or their guards?” asked Saoud.
“No, no, no!” said Tariq. He threw his bowl on the ground, and lentils went everywhere. “Them, them! How can you forget them?”
Saoud and I exchanged a look, and before I could help myself, I glanced at Saoud’s pack. He sighed, unhappy, but went to where he had set it and opened the knots. Carefully, he pulled out Tariq’s spindle and two handfuls of wool, and then returned to his place by the fire.
“Here, Tariq,” he said, passing them over. “I will stop you if you cough so badly again.”
I don’t think Tariq heard him. He fell upon the wool and grabbed the spindle like they were the tools of his salvation. He had no leader thread, but that didn’t stop him. He quickly twisted some wool to use instead. It wasn’t the best method and would mean the start of his thread was bulky, but that hardly mattered. Once he had that, he set the rest of the wool close to hand, rose up on his knees, and dropped the spindle.
We watched it whirl, faster and faster as Tariq spun. His thread stretched thin in places, and was thick and uneven in others, but he didn’t care. All he wanted, all he needed, was to feel the pull of the spindle’s drop and the growth of thread beneath his fingers. Soon enough, the raw wool was gone, and Tariq grabbed at nothing for a moment before he realized that he reached out in vain. Saoud caught the spindle before it could reverse and undo Tariq’s work, and looked down at the thread Tariq had made.
“I have made better,” Tariq said. “But it was good to make anything.”
Arwa nodded and helped him wind the thread up. I wondered if that made her feel better, or if only spinning would suffice. When they were done, Saoud took the spindle and packed it away again. Then he refilled Tariq’s bowl with the lentils that remained in the pot and passed him a spoon.
“What do you mean when you say ‘them,’” I asked, “if not the king and queen?”
Tariq swallowed. He was calm again, balanced like a perfect whorl as the world spun on around him.
“I have been thinking about the demon bear,” he said. “We know from the oldest stories that demons can overtake a thing and make it theirs. Once they used people, but then they were weakened. I don’t think our victory over the bear was as complete as it might have appeared.”
“You mean we didn’t kill it?” Saoud said. “Tariq, we ate most of it.”
“We killed the bear,” Tariq said. “But we didn’t kill the demon. We just drove it out and away.”
“Will it come after us?” Arwa asked.
“I don’t think they can easily leave the mountains,” Tariq said. “I don’t think most of them are strong enough to. But I’m not talking about the demon that was in the bear. I’m talking about the demon that came to the Little Rose’s birthday party, all those years ago.”
Of the four of us, only Tariq had been in the room that night, and since he had been only four years old himself, he remembered nothing. They all looked to me instead.
“I didn’t see it,” I reminded them. “And I had the sheep pox, so I was fevered and dreaming anyway. I am not sure anything I remember would be useful.”
“Tell us the story, how your mother told it,” said Arwa, “and we will see what it means when we add it to what we have learned.”
“You’ve all heard it before,” I said. “You’ve all heard her tell it.”
“We know, Yashaa,” Tariq said. “I want you to tell it. Remind us of what we know, and we’ll compare it with what we know now. It helps to do these things out loud.”
So I told them the story as I knew it. How the Great Hall had looked, and how the creatures had come to give gifts to the Little Rose. I told them how five gifts were given, and then the demon came and gave the curse, and how only the piskey remained to countermand that great magic. She could not do much, but she could help the Little Rose, and the king and queen were grateful for it.
“Why couldn’t she help us, too?” Arwa asked.
“Magic is about balance more than anything, and always has been since the Storyteller Queen made it in the desert,” Tariq said. “Whatever the piskey did, she did as much as she could. Remember, the others had already done their magic and made a tangled net of the threads. We’re lucky the piskey was able to do anything at all.”
“Some luck,” I said. “She still helped only the Little Rose.”
“We need to know the exact words,” Tariq said. “Not just the piskey’s words, but the demon’s words as well. Not rumors and not tales of them, but the words themselves.”