“Is it for the gnome?” she asked. Her bare feet moved back and forth through the grass. Even after all the days she had spent out of the tower, the ground was yet a wonder to her.
“It is,” I said. “Though I am nearly ashamed of it, the thread will be stronger than the reeds we used yesterday. This will make the fence stronger. Or,” I amended, “at least parts of the fence. There isn’t enough for the whole thing.”
“It’s a wonderful gift, Yashaa,” she said. “Shall we go and give it?”
“Breakfast first?” I asked, even though she was already standing and looking at the slope in a measuring sort of way.
“Here,” she said, and tossed me half of a pomegranate.
I caught it, and we began to climb. Now that we knew where we were going, it took us far less time to reach the glade. The Little Rose didn’t bring her shoes at all, and soon we were close enough to smell the flowers. I went first to check the snares, which were empty. Upon short reflection, I removed them entirely. I no longer had a wish to kill anything that happened into this glade. That done, I went back toward the gnome’s garden, where the Little Rose was waiting.
“Look,” she said, awe writ on her face.
There was a basket, small enough that I could lift it with one hand. It must have been made by someone far smaller than I, though, because it had two handles. It was carefully woven and just as carefully filled. There were grains and fruit, the nicer sorts we had been too fearful to take the day before. There was no vetch at all. It could not have been a clearer expression of thanks had the gnome itself appeared to speak to us. I stuck the shaft of my makeshift spindle into the ground, the thread side pointing up so that the gnome would be able to see it, and picked up the basket.
“Do you feel better about magic this morning, Yashaa?” the Little Rose asked. She set down her own offering, flowers that didn’t grow in the glade, and looked at me.
“No,” I said. “Not really.”
She waited. Even her silence had power.
“I’m a spinner, princess,” I told her. “I spun thread for your mother. I spin thread for you because you can’t do it for yourself. And so the gnome gets thread, and I get misgivings about the whole process, but it is my duty, and so I do the work.”
“I don’t understand you sometimes, Yashaa,” she said.
“If it is a comfort,” I told her, “I never understand you at all.”
She laughed, and I watched her dance through the flowers. There was no reason or direction to her steps, no trace of the court dances she ought to have known. Instead, she spun seemingly at random, as much carried on the wind as the blossoms that surrounded her in the air. Her skirts and veil flared around her, and for just a moment, I wondered what she would look like with her hair grown out, its summer-wheat color spread against the blue of the sky and the green of the grasses.
“Do you dance, Yashaa?” she asked, having caught me staring.
“No,” I told her. “Well—just the staff dances that Saoud’s father teaches us. That’s what I was going to teach you, if you like.”
“There’s never been a pretty girl in a traveling caravan that caught your eye?” she pressed. I was not entirely sure what answer she was after, so I settled on the truth.
“No, princess,” I said. “There has never been.”
She flopped into the grass. Had I thought her less dignified, I might have said she was pouting.
“You are a terrible disappointment, Yashaa,” she said to me. Her voice was quite serious, but her eyes still danced.
“Oh?” I said, sitting beside her.
“Yes,” she said. “I have always known that my wedding would not be for love. At best, it is hoped I will love my children. No one ever has anything good to say about the Maker King’s son. So I have spent my life listening to stories of shepherdesses and spinners, of traveling dancers and merchants, of all the sorts of people who get to marry for love. It helps me remember why I must get married at all.”
“I will confess I have not thought very much about marriage,” I said. “Though, I suppose one of us will marry Arwa. Probably Saoud, because then her children will be of Qamih, and they won’t starve. She might even be able to join the guild.”
The Little Rose looked at me, and I knew that I had spoiled her game. She wanted me to tell her of some dream I chased, but I couldn’t do it. The only dream I had ever chased was her, and they had not been particularly good dreams.
“I suppose only the very lucky marry for love,” the Little Rose said.
“My mother used to say that the king and queen were lucky,” I told her. “They had only met twice before their wedding, and yet they did their duty to the kingdom, and wed. And then they grew to be fond of one another.”
“It’s true,” the Little Rose said. “I am terribly jealous.”