Saltboy

Originally published in Lost in the Dark.

The girl had her eyes set high. The last apple was gripping stubbornly to the cloudmost branch of her Father’s scraggly tree. He had planted it the year she was born. It had grown to twice her height. The apple hung out of her tallest reach. She blew a lock of mousey hair out of her eyes. She was crowned with dirty leaves, as if the tree had been throwing its only ammunition at her, fighting for its last fruit.

The girl took a stone and threw it at the apple. She overshot. The stone sailed out of the yard and into the close, encroaching forest. Like all little girls, she hadn’t bothered to think of what would happen if she failed. 

“Ow!” came a voice from the forest. The girl’s ears perked at the sound of a horse, not the heavy stamp of a working horse but the light toss of a hoof that can afford to be shod and reshod in silver.

The second the horse’s head peered around a bend in the path, the girl darted into the house. The head was white, bled free of all the muddy browns and blacks that marked the peasant horses she knew.

She slammed the door. Her father grumbled a little from his room, where he lay pillowed on a foul-smelling earthen jug. She bent to a knot hole and spied greedily out.

The man on the horse was stained with expensive purples and skin-deep crimsons. His cloak stretched past his back into a blanket for his mount. It was lined with soft, unsullied white fur. He held a whip with a brushed copper handle. The girl couldn’t make it out at this distance, but she imagined the cord was soft brown skin, just enough to give a gentle prodding to a loyal marching steed or servant.

“Warrit, gel?” muttered her Father. She had heard him coming. Even on an earthen floor, his steps echoed.

“It’s the king, father! I hit him with a stone!”

“You did what?” roared her father, already throwing open the door, letting his face fall. “Your majesty!” The king dismounted, still holding the whip. He reached a ginger-colored hand to his forehead and tested the anger of a bright red bump.

“I demand to know the meaning of this. Speak quickly, or it’s the stocks.”

“My liege!” The girl’s father bowed and scraped at the dry soil beneath his face. “It was my daughter!”

“Your daughter, whom you are responsible for. Where is she?”

The girl’s father pointed back to the house and the king flexes the hand holding his whip. “Tell her to come out this instant.”

The girl came without being called, close enough to hear for herself. “I’m sorry, your majesty,” she murmured.

“Sorry is an excellent way to be, girl.”

The girl stared curiously up at the king. He was only a head taller than she. The strand of his whip was hard, black. His eyes were pale enough to be called white. There was no hint of amusement beneath his mustache.

“Will you curtsey to your king, girl?” She did. “How old are you?”

“If it please your majesty, she is at her sixteenth since being named.”

“You are in no position to question what would please his majesty, even were you sober.” The girl laughed. The king turned back to her and brought a hand up to his nose, across the nostrils. He smelled of horse, rich and huge. “You are an impertinent girl.”

“Majesty. I don’t know that word.”

“I would not expect you to. Tell me, what words do you know?”

“I know how to name each thing in this yard, and in the house. I know words to name you, and your horse. I know myself.”

“You would name my horse for me?” There was no amusement blushing the King’s face, but something similar brushed against his voice. “Do so.”

“He looks a Thruppence to me, your majesty.”

“She cost a good deal more than thruppence, girl. What is your name?”

“Esmerelda,” blurted her Father. He felt lost, hung-over, and he clutched at this tiny contribution as though it could save his life. The king stared down at the back of his head. A corner of his lip rose, pulling away from the grime and lice.

“Where is your mother, Esmerelda?”

The girl shrugged. Her father dared to roll back onto his heels. His eyes were level with his daughter’s tiny breasts. 

“Your majesty. She passed away last year. In winter.”

“I’ve done all her work since then, lord. Plus his, when he’s in his cups and bottles.”

“Esme!”

Now the king laughed.

“A daring girl. You shall lose your right arm for the stone. Your left, though, you will keep, as I trow the burden you are made to carry, here. What is it you do?”

The girl was speechless. How, she wondered, could he put, in a single sentence, the words to wound her straight next to a pleasant question? She opened her dirty mouth to retort.

“She is wool-spinner, lord. But lord!” The king lifted both eyebrows up into his tousled hair.

“Yes?”

“Don’t punish her haughtiness, lord. She is a stubborn girl—” a belch interrupted the plea. The king’s nostrils flared, and the girl’s father fought against the blood threatening to abandon his face.

“Stubborn is a word. Haughty. She thinks herself above her station. I shall have her executed.”

Desperate instinct framed the father’s next words. “She can spin straw into gold, my lord! She is only haughty, as you say, because her talent makes her so.”

“Straw into gold? Is this true, girl?” He fixes his eyes on the girl. She is silent. He slides his gaze down, over her small swelling. There is her Father’s pleading face, peeping around her body like a groundhog testing the air to see if it’s really Spring.

“Of course it is true, my lord. I told her to never tell. Can you imagine what would happen? Why, she would be drowned as a witch.”

“At least.” The king turned away and leaned an arm on his horse. He paused, and both the girl and her father balanced on the pressing of a knife’s edge. The King swung up into his saddle.

“Come, girl. With me. We shall see this magic of yours tonight. Afterward, if I am not pleased, you shall lose not one, but both of your arms. And you—” the king extended a hand to the girl and a glare to the father “—you shall speak nothing of this. Not now, not ever. I shall send men to ensure you are properly stewarding this land tomorrow.”

The king pulled the girl up into the saddle. She felt his manhood grow into the small of her back as they clattered down the path on light, ringing hooves. She didn’t cry.

A pair of eyes watched the forest. They blinked and creased as a grin pressed against them.

#

The castle smelled of piss and poor man’s air. The girl said as much and the king exploded with laughter.

“Perhaps your tongue as well, lass.”

They had left the horse in the stables near the keep. Piles of dung clogged their steps to the double oaken doors. Some of the stench clung to the girl’s shoes. She asked for leave to take a bath. The king responded with a heavy hand on her shoulder and a step closer.

He took her down worn stone steps. She went a pace in front, his hand not so much guiding as adding impetus. She slipped once or twice. His grip followed her down. The first time, he tried to offer his other palm, open in aid, but she brushed it away, knowing as she did that she had invited another chop on the block.

He halted her at the bottom of the steps. She blinked in the gloom. They were beneath the ground, surrounded by dark mouths that must have been doors. She opened her mouth to ask where they were. A sharp squeak halted the words at the tip of her tongue. The king hauled on an old, rusty door. It looked as though the rust was holding it together; given a good cleaning, it would be nothing more than an iron skeleton.

The king stepped aside, brushed the burnt red dust off his hands, and mocked her in a low bow.

“Your chambers, great sorceress.”

She slipped in like a mouse in short hurried steps measured with long pauses. The cell was a cylinder, several stories tall. A single high window shone dirty light and stink in a gray column, picking out the center of the floor and hiding everything else in black contrast. She moved into the light and shivers.

“What am I to do?” She paused long, received no answer. “If I am to spin, give me the wool.”

“Yes,” said the king. “Your wool.” He smirked.

How could her father do this? she thought. If only he had been sober— but no, her father’s sobriety was no different from his drunkenness, merely interrupted by fewer belches and bawdy, repetitive stories.

“The straw, then.” She drew herself just out of the light, letting it fall between her and the king.

“I shall have my steward bring you a small pile. I expect to be pleased by the morning. If I am not, you lose your arms.”

“And perhaps a leg and tongue,” the girl shot back.

“Which would all be a shame, lass. You are quite beautiful, in your woodsy way. No matter. If your magic carries you through the night, however, you can be sure that I shall give you a bath, a few nice clothes and trinkets, and a warmer, fuller bed to sleep in.”

“Yours?”

He crossed the room and slapped her. The weight behind the blow drove her to her knees, scabbed from the forest, now scraped on the cold stone. The king turned and left. The door squealed shut and a bar shot through a lock like a thunderclap.

“God’s wounds!” screamed the girl. She pounded a shuddering fist against the floor. She imagined her curse battering against the walls of her cell like a bat in a cage, finally finding the small window, blistering across the sky and into the Lord’s magnificent eye. 

“Give me strength.” These words dripped out of her mouth and into a cold puddle on the stones.

The steward arrived some hours later with a bemused expression, a small cart of straw, and a spinning wheel. He warned the girl against accidentally pricking herself on the spindle and she glared. The steward gave her an amiable shrug, halted an habitual bow, and slipped out the door.

The girl lifted a piece of straw and twirled it in her fingers. The light was deepening in color, heading toward pure black. She kicked at the spinning wheel. It was old, cracked, and mostly useless. She didn’t think she could even spin wool on such a machine; that is, if she knew how to spin wool.

She cried small tears. They dripped out of her open eyes, off her chin, onto the floor, into the cracks between the flagstones.

“Hsst!”

Startled, the girl looked around. It had sounded like a cat. It was nearly full dark now; the window hung in the sky like a malformed moon. A squat silhouette leapt at the hole and whuffled like an ancient dog.

“I say! Hsst!”

“Who is there?”

“A charming little beggar boy? No! Not such! I am a helper, a creature, a tinker and thinker, and transfigurator — specializing in the plain and the ordinary.” During the speech, the silhouette crawled down the wall of the cell, now speaking into its own chest as it flipped easily over a handhold, now grinning its words up into the girl’s shadowed face. “I heard from the birds and the wind of your plight and would offer my humble services to you, if you would take me.”

“You would help me spin this straw to gold?”

“I would spin this straw to gold, meadow lark. You would sleep. You look as though you need it.”

“But why would you help me?”

She peered at the man. He was squat and nimble, wide-mouthed, deep-chested, and musical in tone. He was a contrast walking, and the girl would not have been surprised if, in daylight, his face was Moorish on one half and Norse on the other.

His head tilted and she hears what must be dry skin creaking as his mouth gapes even further.

“You are beautiful, my woodsy girl. I would help you just for this chance to look on you again. Now take you to that corner and lay down your worries as your pillow. Come morning, I shall be gone, and this straw shall be gold.”

The girl did as she was bidden. As she slid into a dream of white horses and small, wet sounds, she heard the frantic squeaking of the wheel, whirling around its unusual task.

The little man smiled as she slept and let a word fall off his tongue, honey and magic, over and over again. Each time the word found straw it spread, thick and sticky, softening the fibers and staining them gold. The bobbin spun, collecting thick, rich strands that would echo the sun come the morning.

#

The girl was awake before light. Her dreams had been troubled and the floor too cold for a comfortable sleep. She let her eyes slit open, fearful of seeing a pile of straw, and berating herself for having fallen asleep. The little man could have done anything he pleased to her, but it had seemed like the right thing to do at the time, to curl up and forget, to be haunted by strange dreams instead of hideous reality.

The pile of straw was gone. Seven bobbins absolutely full of spun gold stood in a neat row beneath the wheel. The small tendons in her feet started to spasm uncontrollably as  she stood. She picked up one of the bobbins. The thread was almost warm; it at least carried the memory of warmth, as though all gold were descended from sunlight.

She dropped the bobbin and whirled around, certain she had felt eyes on her neck. There was no one else in the room. She looked up; no one was at the window. The little smiling man was gone, and might not ever have been there if it weren’t for the riches flanking the old wooden wheel. She bent down to right the spilled bobbin and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

The sun was climbing higher, but the light in the cell was still cold and gray.

The door wailed and the king strode in. His eyes fumbled about in the dimness, came to rest on the seven bobbins. He was surprised, yes, and shocked, but mostly pleased, having gotten to be king by delighting in surprising fortune.

“Well, well, girl! You have been busy, haven’t you?”

The girl bobbed a curtsey, peering past his cape while her eyes were down. The steward stood in the doorway, mouth like a fish’s.

“Stand up, girl. Esmerelda. And tell me: how is it that you were able to do all this?”

The girl bobbed again. She bubbled small words that meant nothing and the king grumbled, reminding her of the previous day.

“Answer me plain, girl. You do not, after all, need your tongue to spin.”

“Please, your majesty, it was so hard,” she begged, hoping to draw some sympathy like a veil across his face. For a moment, there was something in the way his eyes were set, but it tore from ceiling to floor as the sun spiked onto the wheel and the gold shimmered anew with faerie promise.

The king’s mouth opened, stuck between a word and a sound of glory. He swallowed, settled on a word.

“I shall be that much more pleased to see my wealth increased on the morrow, then. Steward: I am satisfied. Tell Rickard that he may go back to the kitchens.” The steward turned and muttered. A pair of heavy boots scraped up the stairs. The girl didn’t see to whom they belonged. 

The king smoothed his mustache. “Bring her bread and water. And another batch of straw. Larger this time.”

The king himself bent and stacked the bobbins in his arms, letting his thick gloves brush against the grime of the floor and trail through the small stagnant puddles. He almost dropped one of the spools. He chuckled to himself, adjusted his armload, and swept out of the cell without another word.

Around mid-day, as the girl judged by the slant of the sun, the steward returned with two cartfuls of straw and a bit of a smirk. 

“My privacy, sir.”

She sat in front of the spindle, enclosed by the dirty yellow piles. Her thoughts blurred across the whole spectrum from fear to outrage. Would the little man return? The empty light started to spill out of the cell. It was getting darker by the second. Her eyes were getting emptier. 

As the last bit of sun faded, she picked up a single spear of straw. She placed it on the wheel and pumped the pedal. The straw just sat there, unwound and untouched. She trawled her dreams, trying to dig up the words the little man had spoken as he spun. They had sounded like: Truth-in-broken-cousin. She let the sounds elbow their own way off her tongue, and got a mush of muddled tongue and meaning. Nothing happened.

She sobbed, just once.

“Hsst!”

The sharp whisper lanced down into her prison and she looked up with a shining, invisible smile.

“You’ve returned!”

A little, echoing laugh made its scampering descent from the window. 

“Never before have I heard such a pretty phrase to greet me. Never before. I am a happy little man, and helper, too. The birds and wind—” he was in front of her, now, and a little closer than she might like. She could smell him; he smelled as though he had never bathed. “—they told me of your second task. Don’t worry, my little woody wench! These things always come in threes. Nearly finished now, nearly done.”

“You will help me again?”

“I may.”

“Oh, but sir—” her words were cracked by his laugh, but she stumbled ahead like a young aristocrat anyway. “—you must help me!”

“Must I? I helped you once, and where’s your gratitude? Naught but a smile for the little tinkering, thinkering man.”

“What could I give you? I have nothing!”

“You have your berry lips, little help-lass. If I could taste of them, then I would feel the strength to spin the whole of the night, every star from its silver light into soft silk. Just a kiss, little gel.”

“Just a kiss?” The girl’s lips peeled back of their own. She pursed them, purposefully. The man stank, but surely a little taste of bad breath would be worth the freedom it would buy her. She nodded. The little man didn’t dance or clap his hands. He just tilted his head up, opened his eyes wide and pushed out his distended lips.

The girl closed her eyes and shuddered down until their lips met. He tasted of wood-smoke and old potatoes; she, the mold of captivity. When she pulled away, she saw a sadness in his eyes, suspended by his bushy arching eyebrows.

“There,” she managed. “Is it to my lord’s pleasure?”

The little man laughed again, transforming his eyes into thin slits of humor.

“Your lord, lass, will never kiss you. Now get you again to sleep, and dream of the future. When you wake, your king’s treasury shall be deeper, and you that much closer to breathing back the open air of your happy forest home.”

She obeyed, gratefully. She chewed on her lips, but couldn’t dislodge the taste of him. Nor could she shake the thought of her happy home, reeking of alcohol, floored in dirt, and sparsely draped in small, wrinkled fruits and last month’s vegetables.

#

Morning came with a fanfare. The door burst open while the girl was still blinking the night away. She had slept in this morning. Already the sun was making brilliant fourteen bobbins full of gold. The king shoulders his way past the heralds as they are lowering their trumpets. There were other men clustered in the hall outside the cell, all robed in finery and identical in their gaping expression.

“Stay out of the way, girl,” his majesty hissed. Then, louder, “See, good men? Pure gold! You may test it if you like. I have been very thorough, of course, but there is no need for me to be fearful of your happening upon a clever trick or jest. The girl is far too bovine, and I am far too blessed!”

The king underhanded one bobbin to the gathered men. They conferred among themselves in voices too low for the girl to make out. Before long, one man cleared his throat.

“We can find no fault in the alchemy, your majesty,” he said. The king beamed.

“Esmerelda—” tossed the King over his shoulder as he loaded his arms with the riches “—if tonight you can turn all the stables’ bedding to gold, you shall have golden bedding of your own. I swear on my family name.”

The door shut. The girl was again alone and cold. She stood still, a rod of cold iron seeming to splint her spine. Hours passed. Daylight waned. She didn’t bother to capture her thoughts and wrap language around them. They washed around her in red waves, chilling her and warming her in their ill-timed turns. Monsters, or ghosts of monsters, or voices of ghosts, or the taste of voices. Nothing made sense. Freedom comes when you don’t have to think— but she halted that thought before it fully formed, narrowing her eyes at the cracking mortar of her cell.

Freedom was the forest and the monolithic stones she used to play were castles before they were quarried, hewn down, made into gravestones and dungeon bricks, the bricks that blocked her sight and smell.

One more night. The moon rose.

The girl stretched her shoulder blades apart, letting the iron holding them straight dissolve. She hunched her back and took a good look around the cell. The steward hadn’t come by during the day with a new load of old straw. Did the king expect her to perform out in the stables, where he could watch her and her deception.

“Hsst!”

No, not yet, thought the girl. She clenched her fists and closed her eyes. She smelled the smoke and sweat of the little man, getting stronger and stronger.

“I heard another rumor, woodsy girl.”

Her teeth were clenched as fists. She pummeled out her words.

“There is naught here for you.”

“Naught and nothing? Oh, but hear how wrong you are!”

The door squeaked and the steward backed into the room. He was tugging on a huge mat, spilling over with dirty straw. His back was straining, and his white hands were covered in dung. He dropped the mat, turned, and glared at the girl, huffing loudly so she would take notice. Gradually his eyes trickled off her cold, unresponsive stare and down to the wide-eyed, grinning face of the little man.

“Who is—”

The little man opened his mouth and spoke one word. It entered the girl’s ears, she was certain, but she couldn’t remember what it sounded like, or how it felt, or tasted. It had had a smell, she knew, but it had only touched the tip of her nose, like a sweet kiss, then giggled away.

The Steward’s eyes rolled up into the high corners, then clicked back down. He scowled, grumbled, “There are eight more matfuls,” and never looked at the little man again.

The girl did. She was met with the widest grin yet, and a shrug.

“What’s your name, my girl?” the little man asked.

“Mother called me Esmerelda.”

The little man hummed her name without opening his mouth, just letting the sounds drift around his tongue and teeth. He swallowed and spoke.

“You have quite a job to do tonight.”

“Me? But I thought—”

“Of course I’ll help you. But this time not for your beauty, and not for your kiss.”

The steward backed into the room, grumbling, hauling another mat. The little man didn’t speak until he had left for the next.

“This will be the largest favor I have done for you. And what have you given me?”

“My beauty. My kiss,” stammered the girl, missing his oddly twisted and musical words.

“Not enough. Not much, and not enough. I need much more from you, tonight, in exchange for this. My fingers will bleed, and my tongue will be bruised and thick in the morning”

“Then what? What do you want for this?”

The little man walked in a small circle, blowing air between his teeth, half-whistling. The tune wriggled through the girl’s ears and made her want to go swimming.

“If the king returns tomorrow and finds you sleeping amid a pile of horseshit and hay, you will lose your fingers, your hands, your arms, your legs, your pretty breasts and nose. He won’t speak to you. He will be cold, silent, but right there in front of you, watching Toothless Rickard at his work. You will plead for a morsel of pity, at least until your tongue comes out. He will take your house as the crown’s and kill your father; a swifter punishment than yours, for certain, but no less hideous. And when you are gone and thrown into the pit, I will swing past, drop my pants, and take a shit on your ungrateful grave.”

“But sir—” a sharp laugh “—please! I haven’t . . . I mean, I don’t even know what you want me to do.” She saw herself underground, covered over with soil, and his hairy arse adding derision to death. She is sure that soft jade grass would cover her everywhere but that one spot, which would be brown, cracked, and fever hot.

He stopped whistling. “Your maidenhead,” he said.

“No!” She backed up. He matched her steps. She flattened herself against the freezing wall. The steward entered, gave her a funny look, dusted off his hands, and left again. “Help!” she cried and he doesn’t care.

The little man stared into her belly. “Give me your maidenhead,” he said. “A child will come of it. The child will be mine, without question or care.”

The girl lost control of her tongue. She babbled, was silent, screamed; it made no difference to the little man. The steward came and went, finally bringing in the last haul of straw. The piles ringed the doorway, blocking it from sight. In a moment of silence, the girl heard the door shut, a delayed echo of her hysteria. The bolt pierced the lock.

A sob— she realized it was hers. She brought herself up straight and focused on the little man. He hadn’t moved an inch or whisker.

“Well?”

“You shall have my firstborn child.”

“And your first time, whore.”

The dark words scrambled up her legs and dug dirty hands into her stomach. “And my maidenhead,” she said.

“Good. Then I can help you! Bring the wheel.”

She tugged the old machine in fits and starts, filling her palms with splinters. The little man wandered among the piles of filthy straw, muttering under his breath and poking at the odd lump of dung.

“Lie here.” He pointed at a pile much cleaner than the rest. Cold, she stretched on the straw. “Lift up your skirts.” She tried to let her eyes anchor on a point on the ceiling, but it was far too dark, the ceiling invisible. Her eyes wandered, loose and frightened by the freedom.

She felt a stab of warmth. She didn’t dare look. It felt like a beetle crawling between her legs with small warm feet. She closed her eyes the first time he groaned, squeezed them tighter the second time, and sobbed the third.

“All done, princess, all done. Now, you must go to sleep and remember what you’ve promised. Golden dreams, my little woodsy girl. Golden dreams.”

She didn’t open her eyes. Her skirts were bunched about her waist. Her sex was held in the palm of the hot, stagnant air. The wheel started to spin, squeaking each revolution, rhythmic, a songbird. She couldn’t think of anything but the in and out, her mind producing dreamlike images of things she hadn’t seen, of his thing, of him bending over her, and he squeaked like a wheel every time he pressed into her. 

The little man watched the girl fall asleep while his tongue and fingers pulled the straw through the dyeing magic. “Don’t forget, child.”

#

He was gone when she woke halfway through the night. The wheel was silent. The straw was gone; even the smell of dung had drifted away, replaced by that summer apples and cut bark. She shivered through a short chain of half-formed thoughts. She fell asleep again, to dreams of giving birth.

Her child bawled into the world. It was a dwarf with a hook nose and long beard. Its teeth were yellow and it wouldn’t stop grinning. The twisted mouth gaped wider and wider, giving its own birth to a mirror lodged in the short stump of a throat. The mirror cracked, and each shard reflected a new ray of light, brighter and brighter and then morning was on her.

“I told you to get on your feet, girl.” The king was standing in front of her. She hadn’t heard the door, his boots, his first order. She pushed herself up off the floor, leaving her head bowed. Even the straw she had slept on had been taken. Turned to gold? She wanted desperately to look around, to make sure the payment the little man had taken had been worth the product. She pulled her curiosity down under the hoods of her eyes and curtseyed.

The king was wearing his soft skin gloves. He stroked her cheek with one and pulled a lock of hair behind her ear.

“Do you know how rich I am?” She shook her head. “Enough that I could start a crusade of my own into the Holy Lands, and may well do just that, if the mood takes me. I can pay off all the debts the realm incurred before my kingship.” He laughed. “I could buy France.” He started to walk around behind her. The king sighed deeply; she could hear the way his cynical smile shaped the sound. “I can not, however, allow this wealth to spread. If every peasant father had even a spoonful of gold for his dirt-grubbing family, then my own treasury would be that much less valuable —not to mention that much poorer.

“So, my girl—” he was in front of her again “—I can’t, you see, allow you to go home. You would bring the news of my wealth to your father, and he would tell it to his ale, and be overheard by every filthy little thing that sweats beside you folk in the fields. You must stay with me.”

“Yes, your majesty.” At least there would be food.

“As simple as that, girl?”

“My father is a bastard, your majesty.”

“That I don’t doubt. Not even coming from you.” The king breathed gold deep into his lungs and exhaled hesitantly. “You will be cleaned up and looked after. I will allow you run of the keep and castle, with this one condition: you may not speak. If I learn that you have opened your mouth even once save to stuff your face, then you will spend the rest of your years here. Right here.” The king’s hand stabbed down to the floor. The girl almost laughed to see how the soft leather wobbled and waved, like a turkey’s wattle, like a little clown gamboling in his motley. “Do you understand me, girl?”

She looked up and nodded.

“Good. I will get you a bath, after you help me carry this to my treasury.”

#

Before long, the girl had learned the ways of the keep. She spent a good deal of her time in the kitchens, because it was warm there and smelled as she always thought summers should smell. Once she was reaching for a pasty and, burning her callused fingertips, let out a yelp of pain. The kitchen maids all craned their necks to stare at this child they had been told was a mute. The girl was mortified. She would be damned by any words of explanation, and silence offered suspicion. Thinking quickly, she made a few sounds like a fool, tongue glued firmly to the top of her mouth. The head cook shook her dimpled head, dislodging flakes of pity. She handed the girl a cooler pasty and shooed her out of the kitchen. 

The girl threw the pasty to a dog. Then she kicked the dog in the ribs. It snarled at her. She kicked it again, then ran.

The king heard about the incident and beat her. It was not seemly for a king’s consort to behave so in the presence of servants. “I told them you were mute, not an imbecile,” he had said.

As the months went on,  became filled and round by the mystery child in her womb. She sat long in her chambers, just down the hall from the king’s, within hollering distance. He had cursed when the maids told him she was expecting. Then he came to her at night and explained the situation to her, and warned her again not to speak. 

The king took her when he liked. The girl wanted him to be sure that her child was his, as much as she detested his loves of gold and iron. If he suspected even the smallest amount that the child, the freak it would certainly be, were not his, he would kill her. That had been an unspoken part of their agreement. So, whenever he came to her, she wouldn’t make a move of protest, much less a sound. The first time, she prayed his strong seed would clean her, clear the field planted by the little man. She only felt dirtier.

And now, her husband gone to France to fight a battle that he excitedly called a war, she fidgeted with her skirts and waited for happy news. To distract herself, she watched the sun crawl across the floor.

#

There was a clearing, far from castle and town, floored with deep moss and roofed with ancient branches woven into each other like lovers only wish they could be.

At its center sat the little man, humming to himself with his eyes closed. He listened to the wind buffeting the leaves, the leaves speaking like cicadas. His legs were crossed and his gnarled fingers danced over them. He smiled as though coming to a decision.

He creaked to his knees and then to his feet. He turned in a slow circle. He spied an old tree, twice struck by lightning and nearly outweighing its own roots. He padded over to it.

Masked behind a mass of thick brush, three men in black watched as the little man stroked the bark of the tree and murmured words they couldn’t hear. One man held a tiny crossbow, its string wound so tight it almost hummed. The other two held daggers, blackened so as not to glint in the filtered sunlight.

The little man took a step back, sucked in a great breath and screamed. His tongue moved as though it were shaping words, but all the assassins could hear was one long wail, the sound of a lone wolf, of a whole pack’s answer, of the moon tearing in half and dripping her pain on the oceans. They covered their ears and squinted shut their eyes.

With their eyes closed, they didn’t see the ancient tree topple, they couldn’t see the trunk suddenly hollow, sprouting a doorway here, a small window frame there. They couldn’t see the tiny bluebird flung from its nest or hear it chattering angrily into the netted branches.

The little man closed his mouth. Through it all, the air never moved beyond a breeze; but now it felt cooler, emptier. The assassins opened their eyes.

They saw the little man rap on the front door, putting his ear against it, testing its resonance. He poked a finger into the window frame, scratching at the smooth wood. He rocked onto his heels and clasped his hands behind his back. He whistled a tune, light and twisting as a curl of wood smoke.

The crossbow bolt stuck into his back. His groan of pain was visible, but silent. He reached one fluttering hand to finger the shaft, curled his fist around it, and yanked. He fell to his knees.

Daggers out, the other two assassins rushed him. The little man held the bolt in his right hand. He muttered a word and the blood vanished from its metal head, from the stained shirt on his back. He turned to face the assassins. His eyes were wild, angry, dark and getting darker.

He opened his mouth. One word slithered out and brought the world to a halt. Something blurred. A head fell into the moss, painting the green with red. The thick ground swallowed it up. Then there was nothing but the peaceful clearing and the twitter of the homeless bluebird as it flew away.

The little man didn’t smile. He heard the thrashing of the third assassin as he fought through the trees, blind with horror. The little man started to run. He dodged branches and melted through underbrush, shaded out of sight and silent. He stopped, breathing steadily. He was ahead of his quarry, the crunching of the assassin coming toward him, now.

The assassin nearly stumbled past the little man, hollow eyes grasping at the path ahead. A small, strong hand whipped out, grabbed him under the ribcage, and pulled. There was a crack and a scream. The assassin fell to the ground and looked up at the little man, who opened his mouth.

There was fire, this time. A soft rain put it out.

#

The girl had never taken up stitching as the king’s other maids and consorts had. They had tried to teach her, at the king’s insistence, but the needles had hurt her fingers, and the other girls had been too jealous of her to keep up the lessons. Not having much for distraction, she sat in front of her highest window and brooded on her plan. She looked down on the rows of apple trees of the king’s orchard. It was near to spring, but the trailing ends of cold and snow still clung to the mud and draped over the trees and fields like the train of a cape. The girl watched snow melt and considered spitting on one of the guards stationed at the foot of the keep.

A bird, desperately beating the air, grabbed her idle attention. It flew the way the king moved when he was drunk, listing mad back and forth, but somehow moving steady to his goal. The bird started to circle, gaining altitude. The girl stepped back from the window, puzzlement claiming the color of her cheeks.

The bird flew to her sill and stopped, folding its wings and shrugging like an old man testing the warmth of his coat.

“My lady? Have I news for you?”

“Have you?”

“You haven’t heard the news?”

“I haven’t heard anything, little bird. Tell me your news.”

“Did I live in the clearing, near to the little man? Did I overhear him singing about the lady and her baby— and did he call the child his own?”

The bird kept leaping back and forth on the sill, its head taking in all the room and world in fast movements, like wet lightning. The girl sat down and cupped her hands around her belly.

“You know where the little man lives. What of my assassins?”

“My lady? They were men dressed all in shadows?”

“Yes. The finest assassins in my lord’s flock.”

“Did you hear the word the little man spoke? Why did he make the men so apart? Did you see the blood?”

“He . . . killed them.”

“Did you see him break my nest? Why did he do that? Why did he sing about my lady’s baby?” The bird hopped a couple times. Its talons were so small as to be invisible, but the girl could hear the small click every time it moved. She hugged her stomach tighter. The little man was still alive. He had killed the finest murderers in the land.

“He spoke a word to do this?”

“Yes, yes, yes.”

The girl closed her eyes, heard the squeak of the spinning wheel, and something softer and more magical beneath.

“Did you hear what he said?” The bird was silent. It dug its beak into its breast. “Speak,” said the girl.

“My lady? If I speak, will it hurt?”

The girl hadn’t considered that. She thought for a moment, then she raised herself and crossed to an expensive writing desk. She had insisted the king teach her to read and write, as an alternative to needlepoint. She had written a letter to her father. The king had come to her while she was writing it. He had thrown it in the fire and was rough to her that night.

She took a sheet of rough paper and placed it in the center of the desk. The inkwell was half-filled. She took it and spilled a small puddle next to the paper. A beckon, and the bird perched on her shoulder.

“Make the sounds, here.”

The bird bobbed between staring into the girl’s ear and at the spreading pool of ink.

“My lady? What does a sound look like?”

She took the bird to her bed and taught it in the voice of a patient wind. Some time later, she watched its forked black feet hop across the page, spelling a word. Then she wrung the bird’s neck.

#

After she had given birth, she held her baby and traced the line of its mouth over and over. She was glad to have it out of her, and glad that it slept beside her in her bed.

But when the king came home, he would know. He would know it wasn’t his, or suspect her magic somehow twisted his firstborn. 

He wouldn’t know. The girl stretched, letting her muscles scream themselves hoarse. The baby pulled a breath into its small, sunken chest and stretched its horrible wide mouth into a yawn.

One of the maids knocked and opened the door.

“My lady. A visitor to see you.” The maid’s eyes were glazed. The new mother sank a shudder under the warmth of her quilts and nodded. The maid backed out and the little man waddled in. He hopped up onto the foot of her bed.

“Well, well, my little woodsy girl. What have we here?”

He tried to peer at the baby, but the girl blocked his view.

“This child is not yours.”

“Now, now, we had an agreement. You have paid for but half the price of your gold. I’m here for my other half.”

“Why not go father your bastard on some peasant girl?”

“That is what I did. Give me the child.”

The girl scooped her baby to her breast. Its head snapped forward and back before she remembered to place her hand beneath its neck. As she died, she bit down on another shudder of revulsion. The little man was crawling towards her, his eyes going black.

“You don’t dare harm me. Not while I hold your child. Reason with me.”

“You are a half-wit, and a girl beneath that. You have seen what I can do.” He grinned, empty. “And you may not have heard, but I took care of those men you sent to bargain with me.”

The girl took a deep breath and clutched the baby tighter, feeling its skull dig into the flesh over her heart.

“I heard. I heard more than you think.”

He paused and leaned back on his haunches, narrowing his eyes. “What?”

“I know the word.”

“What!” he exploded and leapt back. He somersaulted off the bed and out of sight. The girl could hear him, pacing, frantic and muttering.

“It’s true. I know your secret.”

His head flew over the baseboard, framed by two gnarled, angry hands.

“You know nothing. You are less than the cows in the field. You are just the field.”

She opened her mouth and the first syllable crawled off her tongue. It tasted like the searing heat of vomit. Her ears refused to let it into her head. She felt as though she were silent, mute. The little man screamed to cut her off and she covered the baby’s ears.

“No! No, you can not use that word. That word is my name! It is not yours to use.” He gave her names of her own, again and again, never repeating himself. She bit her lip, drawing blood.

He whirled and yelled a word she had never heard. She felt suddenly strange, as though dreaming. Beaten by strangers and left on the roadside. Nursed and raped by a wild boar. Sold into slavery by her brother but she doesn’t have a brother and she isn’t a hard worker.

She looked down and screamed. Her legs were gone. The little man stood where they used to be, smirking.

“I have more words, brazen bitch.”

Her heart stopped and sank to her stomach. She felt it throbbing, empty. She had vomited everything when the contractions started.

She opened her mouth and forgot everything except a fear that burnt her hair black and a plea that brought her heart back to her chest. 

Minutes passed. She looked down at her baby. It wasn’t breathing. She pulled her hand away from its neck. Its head flopped into her blankets.

The little man was gone. There was blood on the walls.

The king stormed in, some time later. He demanded to see his child. The girl’s ears were ringing. She couldn’t hear him. He leaned over her, shook her, slapped her hard across an already red cheek.

The word came to her again, and this time everything went black.

#

She called herself the queen, and, with urging, the extended royal family took it up. She ruled a fearful kingdom. Those who hadn’t seen her had heard. She became barren, would never produce an heir. No one had the manhood to urge her from the throne.

She visited her father twice. The first time, she gave him the corpse of her baby and told him to bury it. A week later, she returned, found him drunk and the baby rotting in a corner. She told her honored guard to plug their ears. She spoke, briefly, and then returned to the castle. It took her two baths in water and one in milk to wash the stench of smoke away.

She chose Wednesdays for court days, presenting herself before her subjects. It wouldn’t do for their queen to be disfigured, though, so she sent for a local artifax. He crafted her a pair of wooden legs, wrapped in soft deer skin. Her maids help her into the throne before any of the courtiers arrive.

She judges harshly. She only knows so much.

When she is bored listening to small complaints of land and marriage, she wriggles the stumps of her legs together, watching the stilts of rumpled skin flap like fool’s motley. They make a sound like a timid grasshopper. The queen laughs to herself. No one else dares understand the joke.