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.

They were brothers, Tag and Joffrey, but they had come from different mothers. Both of their mothers were dead, having passed away on the same day from the pains of childbirth and the rage that, at that same moment, there was another woman caught in the same labor. Tag and Joffrey grew up with their father, a village tailor.

Joffrey had golden hair. “I have golden hair,” he would say. “My mother was a princess.”

“I have red hair,” Tag would say.

“Your mother was a whore,” Joff would interrupt.

Many were the times their father thought it would have been easier had both of the boys been born with black hair, like his.

The brothers were the fiercest of competitors. When Joff climbed a tree, Tag had to climb higher. When Tag snared a coney, Joff had to kill a brace of them. From sunup to sundown they outdid each other, running in circles if there was nothing more brave to do. Sometimes their battles lasted well past bedtime; one would begin to snore and the other would try to drown the sound with his own, and soon their father’s shack would be shaking like a duck before slaughter with the tidal noise of phlegm and lungs. The boys’ father was overjoyed when apprenticing day finally came. The young men of the village gathered around the well to have the artisans and merchants, the taskmen and the scholars look them over as though they were breeding stock. The most enviable apprenticeship, it was whispered, was to be a student at the college, but only one boy was chosen each year for that position. It meant a clean cell all to himself, warm robes, and no heavy lifting. Tag and Joff stood shoulder to shoulder, straightening their spines when a master came around to them. Some Tag hoped would pass right by them, such as the dung-bailer and the gull-washer — both of those men took boys much thicker around the trunk than Tag or Joff. Then the headmaster of the college came around. He started at the opposite side of the circle, so Tag’s heart had as long as possible to flutter up. The headmaster would come to him before Joff. That single room was surely his!

The headmaster was shorter than Tag. He looked up into the boy’s eyes; Tag resisted the urge to flick his gaze down to meet.

“Can you tell me, boy, what is history?”

Tag unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Master, if you please, I can. History is what happens before now.” Now Tag’s heart seemed to stop beating entirely, for the headmaster gave no nod or shake of the head, no confirmation of success or failure.

“Master, no, I can tell you,” said Joff, elbowing Tag out of the way. “History is just stories.” The headmaster’s eyes had slipped from Tag to Joff like a stone over water. Tag tried to shove Joff back to his position in the circle, but it was a weak try since he didn’t want to appear hotheaded to the master.

“You,” said the headmaster, nodding at Joff. “Can you read?”

“Not yet, master.”

“Fine. Come with me.”

And that was it. The headmaster led Joff through the circle, which parted to allow them through; each remaining boy had a dirty look for Joff, and Joff had a certain gesture to throw back at Tag before the bodies closed in again and he was out of sight.

One by one, the other boys were selected and trailed off after their new masters. Finally, the square was empty save for Tag, his father, and a fishmonger dressing up his wares for display.

Tag’s father sniffed. “Well,” he grumbled. “Let me see your hands.” Tag presented his knuckles, skin red from having been scrubbed that morning. “Palms up,” said his father. Tag rotated his wrists. His father sniffed again. “All right,” he said. “You’ll do.” So Tag followed his father back home to be apprenticed as the village tailor, and he slept that night in his old room, all by himself.

The years passed, and Tag grew first scabs then calluses on his needle fingers. He learned about the chain stitch and the lock stitch, basting, slips, whips, and feathers. He was amazed at how quiet the house became with Joffrey gone. He could hear the blood rushing in his ears, even at the height of the day, when he and Joff used to have their best fights. Maybe his father started feeling uneasy, too, because he took up the habit of whistling as he worked.

Before he knew it, Tag was answering customer calls himself and taking garments to his own side of the table to mend them instead of sliding them over to his father. They would work until light failed, and then light the candles and continue, and father would whistle.

Joffrey would visit from time to time, on feast days and at midwinter. The first time he returned, Tag had expected them to slide back into their old arguments like children on an icy slope. Instead, their throats seized up, frozen. They ate and spoke sparingly. Father didn’t whistle until the next day, when work had resumed and customers needed their warm clothes.

The next winter, Tag’s father died of a fever. His last words to Tag were to practice his embroidery, for it was highly requested by the ladies. Then, as Tag framed a response, he raised a finger to his lips and died in silence.

Tag assumed the duties his father abandoned without a grumble. I might get a touch cold at night, he said to himself, and I might get tired of skinny chicken, but it’s not as bad as all that. It was no warm cloister, but it was, indeed, not as bad as all that.

Joffrey sent him a gift as congratulations for succeeding their father as master tailor. It was a covered basket, delivered by an urchin with a nose ruined by a pox. Tag gave the kid a penny and took the gift to his table. Work was literally piling up, though, so the basket was shoved to the corner in favor of the needle and thimble. Tag had settled into silent, hunched labor when a noise disrupted him. A fly was buzzing around the table, its crazy path seeming to center on the gifted basket. Tag shooed at it with a word and a wave and a puff from his cheeks. The fly landed, out of sight, and rested its wings. Tag went back to work. It wasn’t long until the whine of wingbeats returned, however, and this time when Tag looked up there were two of the creatures.

“Get off,” said Tag. The Flies were not keen to oblige. Tag tried to bend again to his work, but he found he could not concentrate without silence. The insects were singing a chorus to themselves, oblivious to their ungrateful audience, in two-part harmony.

No! Tag realized, glaring over. There were four, now, or maybe five — it was to focus on their ballistic bodies.

Curiosity got the better of Tag. He reached across the table and flipped open Joff’s basket, dislodging one of the flies. A stench rose immediately and settled into every crevice of the room. Tag fought the urge to vomit. There was a note. It read: This is what you’re used to, right? Love, Joff. This meat had not been good for a long time; had it been, the urchin would have eaten it.

A fly settled on Tag’s nose. “God’s own! Get off!“ he yelled. The startled beast and her mates settled on the basket, licking their forearms with what looked for all the world like glee. “I’ll be damned if I suffer you a moment more; damned or crazy,” said Tag, and with that he slid his simple hide belt from his trousers and,bip, brought it back, and, bop, smacked it down on the main body of the flies’ disgusting congregation. Those not squished beneath took to the air and disappeared through secret holes. Tag gently lifted his belt and counted the bodies. There were seven. Seven! And that hadn’t even been all of them.

The dreadful buzzing thus stymied, Tag returned to work, feeling rather pleased with himself. A rather tedious darning awaited him but, after a moment’s thought, he set it aside and drew his belt from where it lay by the basket. He wiped the fly guts from its surface and gave it a careful examination. He had yet to test his skill at embroidery — it had not been as popular as his father had expected — and this seemed an appropriate time and place to deploy that skill. After all, he thought, don’t the butchers take meat to their tables? don’t candlemakers light their homes with tallow from their shops? The design for his belt came at once to his imagination; he only paused once in his needlework, and that was to wish that he could write, so that no man — no literate man — could mistake the legend he was setting to thread.

When he was finished, he slipped the belt through his trousers and stood in front of the small looking glass he had installed for customers. The design on the belt was of seven death’s heads in gold thread, one for each of the crushed flies. They glinted when he turned, appearing as though they were made of precious metals, hard won. It was a pleasing effect.

“I shall show my belt to Joff,” said Tag. “So that he will see how much I appreciated his gift!“

The pile of mending could afford to be put off for the remainder of the afternoon, Tag decided. He simply would have to take advantage of the candlemaker’s wares that night.

The footpath from the village to the city where the university had its campus wound up from the quiet green valley and through a thick, sudden forest. It was mid-afternoon when Joff set out, having stopped at the market for a wedge of cheese for his supper, rather than trying to find a wholesome meal in the squalor of the city. He whistled as he went, thumbs hooked in his belt, glancing down every so often to admire how the sunlight glinted off the seven death’s heads.

As he slipped under the first thick branches of the forest’s fringe, he heard a pitiful sound, like a baby’s wail, but higher pitched. He carefully parted the branches of a clump of thistles and saw a small blackbird with its wings spread out like a cape. It saw him and fluttered, trying to take to the air. As it did, Tag saw that the bird’s legs both were broken like twigs. It cried every time it moved, and it moved every time Tag did.

“Don’t move too quick,” said a deep voice from behind. “Else your skull be punctured, here.”

Tag straightened, leaving the bird where it lay. “I have no money,” he said. He turned. Before him stood the largest man he had ever seen. Not only tall was he, but wide as a redwood. He was bald, but the top of his skull was so dense with seaman’s tattoos that he seemed to have a thin fuzz of pale blue. As Tag was taking this in, the man cocked his head and squinted at Tag’s belt. He moved his lips, then said, “Seven? Seven dead, huh.” He grinned.

“With a single blow,” said Tag, hooking his thumbs in the belt.

The giant blew out a cheekful of air. “With a single blow, you say? Oughtn’t your muscles be thicker?”

“They are no thicker than they need to be, so’s I do not take up more space than a man ought.”

The giant grinned, or at least bared his yellow teeth. “Oughtn’t your feet be quicker?”

“They are quick enough,” said Tag, a bit short in his tone. The giant nodded, pressing his lips together in an expression that seemed to indicate that he once had seen a thoughtful man. Then he folded himself over and scooped a stone from the ground. He weighed it in his hand and brought his fingers together, vanishing it. He squeezed. The tendons of his wrist grew through the matted black hair like fish brushing the surface of a stream. Small beads of what Tag at first took for sweat began to run along the underside of the giants hand, pooling and joining before snapping to the ground with soft bip bip bop sounds. It was flowing too freely to be sweat, especially from a creature as obviously fit as the giant was. With a start, Tag realized that it was water, and it was leaking from the stone itself! The giant smirked and unfolded his hand, letting Tag get a good look at the granite lump.

“Are these muscles wasted, little man?”

Tag nodded, realized what he was doing, and shook his head. He was thinking about how useful it would be to summon water from stone, but, even in the desert, a man needs more than water. The thought of food made his stomach churn in anticipation; he patted his pouch with the lump of cheese inside, and had an idea.

“Well done,” he said. “Water from granite. But I shall produce milk from marble.” With that, he reached into his pouch and drew out the lump of cheese. His closed his fist swiftly around it, giving the giant the barest of glimpses, and squeezed. In the slow blink of the giant’s eye, thick whey seeped from between Tag’s fingers and fell to the forest floor, bip bip bop. When the cheese was dry, Tag tossed it over his shoulder into the brush, ignoring the whimper his stomach made at being so deprived. The giant made no effort to hide his astonishment. “I never have seen such a thing!“ he cried, looking Tag head to toe again, as if he had missed something the first time. “But then, I never have seen a man take seven in one blow. Tell me, can you do this?” Up came another stone in his meaty hand. He hefted it, the whirled on his heels and threw the stone in one easy movement. His aim was almost perfect, threading a path between the sparse tree trunks for a hundred yards or better before colliding with an oak with a meaty thunk that took several seconds to reach Tag’s ears.

“Very good,” said Tag, eyeing the pale gash left in the tree’s flesh by the impact. A raven had been perching in the oak and now it took to scolding the men as loudly as it could. Tag had another idea. He scooped up the broken-legged bird from the brush behind him and hurled it too quickly, he hoped, for the giant to see that this “stone“ was bleeding. Unused the flying, the bird fluttered crazily around branches but heading in a more-or-less straight path, past the wounded oak and out of sight.

“Well, now,” said the giant. “Never have I seen a thing like that.” As Tag turned to face him, his proud grin came into contest with the giant’s cudgel on an arc of collision. Bip bop.

#

Tag was woken by his own groaning. He found himself in a dark room, on a dirt floor, which smelled strongly of onion and copper. He was unbound, though kept still by the pounding in his head. There were voices coming through the wall; they all sounded like the giant’s.

“I don’t believe it,” said one.

“You think I did? So he’s in the pantry,” said another.

“Captain Quail is out for Vineland on the morning tide yeah?” asked another.

“Yeah, let him decide if the runt can handle three months on the oar,” said another. A veritable chorus of laughter answered.

None of this sounded promising to Tag, who had abandoned the question How did I get into this mess? with its associated implications for How can I get out of it? He tested his arms and legs. They seemed to be functioning without complaint, though the same couldn’t be said of his head, which had dulled its throb to a tidal swell.

He was beginning to put it to use assembling escape routes from the gloom when the voices beyond the door burst through again. “He’ll sleep up to a bucket to the face.”

“Yeah?”

“I tell you — I know my own strength.”

“You’re in your cups.”

“Not me.”

“Not alone, anyway.”

The voices faded. Tag lay still, a throbbing in the bones of his face reminding him what just one of the giants could do when sober, and his imagination conjuring up whole seas of pain that all might cause when drunk. He didn’t know how long he stayed unmoving; the next thing to mark the progress of time was a crawling shaft of dusty moonlight through a crack in the wall, and after that the sound of snoring. One single man, no matter how large, could not be making that much racket, he told himself. They must all be asleep. He crept to the door and gripped the latch, thankful for the silence of the packed earth floor. He gave the door a light tug and, to his surprise, it opened a fraction. It wasn’t locked, which, on retrospect, wasn’t surprising, as the walls looked to have been built out of planed driftwood with no effort made to make the joints airtight. It clearly wasn’t a structure meant to last.

The hinges on the pantry door were sticky and took a good deal of Tag’s strength to budge. He finally made a gash wide enough to slip through, and he did so. The room on the other side was long, and thin, and completely bare save for the mountainous bodies of the giant and his men, which Tag took at first for furniture. He made a quick count — there were seven, strewn about every which way. The air reeked of alcohol and halitosis.

Tag stood frozen for what seemed like minutes, but none of the giants seemed to be moving, apart from the labored rise and fall of their chests. At the opposite end of the room was a hole to the outside, a frame without a door. Tag began moving toward it, quiet as a dead mouse. He happened to glance to his side once as he was passing the first sleeping brute and something caught his eye: the giant’s cudgel. An idea sprang into Tag’s mind. He sidled over to where the cudgel rested against the wall and gripped it. It was heavy, as heavy as his father’s casket had been, but he managed to shift it to his shoulder.

He was just testing its heft to swing it at the giant’s bearish head when he thought better of it. After all, if he missed, or if his strength was not enough to crunch the giant’s skull, he would have one angry giant in front of him and, more than likely, six more behind him. So, cradling the cudgel like a basket of clothing, he made his way to the door where, if he failed, he at least could drop the weapon and run. The giant by the door was sleeping on his back with his arms resting on his gut. Tag wrestled with the cudgel, got it positioned, and froze. The giant’s lips were moving, a slash of deeper black opening and closing. Something gleamed at the side of his mouth — a river of saliva. It slid down his cheek and, bip bip, onto the ground.

Tag brought the cudgel down, bop.

It made less of a sound than he was expecting. He was ready to drop and run, but he barely heard the impact himself. The head of the cudgel passed through the head of the giant like a needle through burlap. None of the other giants even stirred.

Tag realized he had been holding his breath; he caught it and then, not wanting to waste a good thing, moved on to the next brute.

By the end, his arms were fit to drop from their sockets. He let the cudgel drop from his grip and roll on the floor. The air still smelt of alcohol, but now it was mixed with a thick wind of coppery blood. Flies already were buzzing around the corpses. Tag waved at the air to scatter them. “Seven blows,” he said.

He stumbled out into the night and looked around. The giants’ cottage were on a cliff. Tag moved to the edge; the ocean crashed below and there, off in the direction of the moon, were the docks of the city, and beyond them the city itself making the air orange with firelight on a smoky backdrop. He started walking.

It was dawn by the time he reached the city gates. The guards posted there glanced him once up and down and let him pass with a warning to “Watch out.” There was a buzzing a few twisted streets down, in the general direction of the university. Tag made his way down the block, politely refusing fish and fruit from the mongers who set their stalls close to the gate. The commotion reached its highest pitch when Tag emerged into Small Square, a cramped, unclassifiable shape which was, at the moment, filled with braying citizens whose attention was focused wholly on a limbless figure on the dirty marble dais at the rough center of the square. Tag wondered for a second where the torso’s arms and legs were, then he saw them being waved like flags by certain members of the mob, or being fought over as chicken bones by the family dog.

True to mob form, there was no consensus as to what to chant, so Tag was having a hard time figuring out what was going on. He ambled over to a large woman, flung out to the fringe of the square because the space she would have taken up at the center would have been too highly prized by three — maybe four — full grown men. Tag hooked his fingers in his belt and made a simple bow to her. “Good morning!“ he yelled. “What’s going on?”

“Hope he burns in hell, gods’ mercy on his soul!“ replied the woman.

“Um,” said Tag. “What did he do?”

“That? That was Captain Quail of the Daroga!“ She spoke the name as though it encompassed whole firesides of stories. Tag tried to remember where he had heard it before. “That bastard stole my son and sold him to those murderers in Vineland!“ the woman screeched. She waved her fist. At the center of the square, two large men were taking hold of the body. One grabbed the bloody stump of a waist, the other the chin and neck. They began straining away from each other, and now the mob as a whole decided on a cheer.

Tag looked at the body; even with arms and legs, Captain Quail couldn’t have stood much over five feet, and his gut wasn’t more than genteelly wide. Tag looked at the woman, her pachyderm legs and good Northern stature. “By himself?” Tag wondered aloud. The woman looked at him as though he were a child. “I’m from the village,” he offered, as explanation.

“Him and his band of giants!“ the woman yelled. “They steal our children and he buys ’em up and takes ’em away!“ What was left of Captain Quail suddenly split at neck height. The men who had been playing tug-of-war each stumbled back with their respective trophies.

“Giants,” said Tag. “Seven of them?”

“That’s right!“

Well, good, Tag thought and nodded. He watched a squabble break out over Captain Quail’s head. As this was going on, the woman finally turned away from the mayhem and sized him up. The lateral sun glinted off the seven death’s heads on his belt.

“Seven,” she said.

“With a single blow,” said Tag, grinning. He thought that she might get the joke, having herself fought no foe more worthy than a fly, or perhaps a husband.

The woman’s jaw went slack. Tag didn’t notice; he was trying to figure how best to fit another seven death’s heads on his modest belt. The next thing he knew, hands were shoving him back to the gates, bodies were pressed tight against us, and voices were echoing, “Show us! Show us!“ in alternate anger and disbelief.

In a daze, Tag gulped out the specifics of his meeting with the giant and his brothers, trailing off at the end. Some of the mob were disbelieving, others in awe — both sides were struck dumb as they reached the giants’ cottage and a flock of scavengers scuttled away. Every last citizen, mothers and urchins, mongers and footpads, filed past the open doorframe, taking in the grisly scene. Tag stood to one side, smiling faintly. “Seven at one blow!“ shrieked the large woman from before. “Seven at one blow!“ the mob crowed back, loud enough to drown the grumbles of the skeptics around the edges. Tag was lifted to someone’s shoulders and remained there all the way back to the city. The mob grew like a stain a it spread through the streets, and before long Tag found himself at the steps of the lord’s keep.

The lord himself, having been alerted by the commotion, was waiting on a wide seat at the top of the stairs. He looked bored, as though the mob had committed a terrible breach of etiquette by arriving late. Beside him stood a vision in a red silk skirt and black velvet shawl to keep off the morning. Her hair was black and curled loosely, like frozen peatsmoke. Tag was stunned, and rightfully so. He was set down on the first step and the cheering quieted. He didn’t know how to do much more than a simple bow, so he did that. The lord raised an eyebrow and then a hand to beckon Tag forward.

“I understand that the Quail gang has been dealt with,” said the lord. “I am impressed.”

“So are we,” said someone in the crowd. Tag wondered if Joff was somewhere close, listening. Wouldn’t he be jealous!

“I set a bounty on the giants’ heads, though I am told that their heads are no longer in suitable shape to be piked on the wall. Pity. Nevertheless, the bounty stands, when the realm is safe.” Tag didn’t know what to see. He thrust out his chest and was about to expound on the generosity, yea the infinite godlike qualities of his lordship when the regal voice continued. “Your belt shows seven deaths. I wonder who they were?” There was a pause, just long enough for the more clever in the mob to think, Hey, wait — and then the lord went on. “No matter. The bounty shall be paid when the realm is safe, which, I am grieved to say, has yet to happen.” There were one or two hisses from the assembled. “There was an elf marauder in the forest, short weeks ago. Our good watchmen were able to dispense with this beast, but not with his mount. He rode upon one of the horned creatures fit only for his kids on his side of the veil. This creature, like unto the stature of a horse but several hands taller, or so I am told, is loose in the forest.” Was it Tag’s imagination, or did the lord smile?

“Forgive me, my liege,” said Tag. “But I came here on an errand to visit my brother, and I—“

“The bounty is five hundred sovereigns,” said the lord. That was enough for Tag to retire himself and whatever children he might choose to sire in the future. Still, he had heard stories of these one-horns, and the stories always ended red. “I meant to speak with—“ he began.

“And the hand of my daughter,” said the lord. The woman by his side inclined her head toward Tag. Her eyes were needle-gray. Tag felt a redness of his own swell at his throat. He bowed to the lord’s daughter; she sniffed once, loudly, and Tag hoped she couldn’t smell him.

“I—“ said Tag with what must have been enough of a tone to prompt the crowd behind him to erupt in shouts of Hurrah! Once again he was lifted onto the shoulders of stronger men and hauled to the gates. The lord and his daughter strode into the keep without a second glance.

The crowd set him down at the gates and wished him good luck, offering such advice as They smell fear, and Play dead, if you can’t run. The large woman whose son had been taken by the Quail gang gave him a hearty hug and kiss that covered half his face. He set off down the path, looking over his shoulder every few steps, and every time he did the crowd would shout Hurrah again, though each time with somewhat less fervor. Eventually, the city disappeared behind a hill.

Tag had not slept in some time, discounting the restless unconsciousness in the giants’ pantry, but cold blood was pumping through his brain and limbs and keeping him at least awake, if not alert. It was late afternoon when he reached the forest. Before entering, he kicked around beside the path for a large rock to wield. He found one that fit his palm like the lump of cheese had. His stomach growled.

The path pelted through the underbrush and twisted around tamaracks so tall they waved like blades of grass in even the slightest breeze. Eventually it came to a thin stream and followed its course. Tag stopped for a drink. As he was bent to the water’s surface, he saw a scattered reflection of something on the opposite bank. He looked up. Mushrooms! A colony of puffballs that looked ripe for eating.

He splashed through the stream and fell face first into the ground, dropping his stone, and rooting amongst the fungi like a hog. His mouth filled with the taste of soil and growth and his stomach burbled its pleasure. Something else breathed its anger. Tag froze from the waist up — his legs twitched to keep from sliding into the stream. A sick smell wafted over him, counter to the water’s current, a scent of grease and feces. The ground shook. Tag levered himself off the ground and turned. Broadside to him was the one-horn, head bent to the stream, but not drinking. It was staring at him with its one facing, dipping its knotted horn as though stitching the air. It snorted, flared its nostrils as if it were Tag’s odor weighing the air. Tag fumbled for his stone, but knocked it with his knuckles, sending it rolling into the stream. The resulting splash startled the one-horn straight. It turned its thin face toward Tag, then past, fixing him with the other eye. Then it opened its mouth and screamed. Horses, in Tag’s experience, generally whinnied or snorted; they never tore such a sound from the bottom of their lungs as the one-horn did, a thick, bubbling wail, like motherless child.

Tag didn’t have a chance to protest. The one-horn sprang into motion, rotating on one muscled leg and leveling its driftwood horn. Tag scrambled to his feet and immediately tripped over the root of a mammoth pine. He regained his feet, but had nowhere to go, his back up against the tree’s trunk. Foam dripped from the one-horn’s mouth. Its eyes rolled crazily away from each other. At the last second, Tag’s legs gave way and he sank to the ground. He felt — and more than that smelled the breath of the one-horn pass over his shoulder and heard the deep thunk as the horn itself pegged the tree. There were splintering noises that Tag at first feared were made by his own weak bones.

But he looked up and saw the one-horn, buried to its forehead in the living wood. Its hooves flailed, forcing Tag to scramble backwards over the ground, flattening what was left of the mushrooms. His arms slipped and he slid down the bank into the stream, his head going under. When he sputtered to the surface, the one-horn greeted him with another terrifying scream, but this one was born of frustration, rather than anger. No matter how the creature’s hooves flashed and pounded, it couldn’t budge from its place. Tag slowly regained his feet, fighting back the urge to splash away home, maybe have a scribe write a simple letter to Joff.

What would he write? Say, did you hear about the man who killed the Quail Gang? That was me! And Joff would write back, I heard that man then was beaten by the one-horn. Don’t worry. whoreson, I took care of it. The realm is safe.

It wasn’t much, but it was enough to urge Tag to fish another stone from the streambed. It froze his joints and nearly slipped from his grasp several times. He approached the one-horn’s head, keeping well clear of the frantically pumping hooves. He found the right grip on the stone and swung his arm like a windmill. The stone caught the one-horn right above the eye. The creature’s skull caved in and something sticky spurted onto his fingers. The legs kept twitching, so, repulsed, Tag took another swing, then another, and another. Finally, the one-horn slumped, held up by its caught horn.

Tag caught his breath, expecting at any moment the creature would find a reserve of life to flail its limbs once more. He thought he might have to call this whole heroism thing off if it kept to its current trend of growing more difficult with each victory. A cooling breeze snuck low to the ground, but it was unequal to the task of carrying away the one-horn’s stench. Tag’s stomach heaved. He lost his mushrooms.

He wasn’t hungry on the way back to the city, but he was exhausted. Night was washing in like a high tide when he tripped on his own feet in sight of the gates and hit the ground like a sack of wet laundry.

Later, he didn’t know how much, a flurry of lightning bugs resolved into torches being carried by a score of guardsmen. Their voices came softly to Tag’s ear:

“Is that him?”

“Gods alive!“

“He did it?”

“Damn.”

“But the bounty was ours!“

It may have been part of a dream, but Tag could have sworn that a fight broke out above him between a man who wanted to air his lungs and the remaining good souls who wanted to bring him to a bed and tuck him in with lullabies.

The good guys one and, through fluttering eyes and an equally flighty mind, Tag found himself in the lord’s receiving chambers being talked to in a voice that reminded Tag of the tone his father would take when lecturing his sons, though the voice’s words were about honor, and duty, and thanksgiving, and other things that meant Tag couldn’t go to bed, yet.

Then he found himself in bed. It was smelled like women’s powder, and something tugged the sheets whenever he moved, but it was warm, and soon he was fully in dream. He awoke to a blast of cold air and the buzzing of a mob and feared for a moment he had imagined the victories of the previous day. He rolled out of bed before he knew exactly why and got his bearings. He was in an ornate, if small, bedroom. The bones of a dead fire lay in an open bit at the center of the room, a brass hood settled overtop to catch the fumes. The stone floor was cold on his bare feet. He wondered where his shoes had gone. He looked down, and then wondered where the rest of his clothes had gone.

Behind him came the clearing of a throat. He turned to the doorway. The lord’s daughter stood there in the same red dress she had worn yesterday, the same needling scowl darkening her brows and eyes.

“You talk in your sleep, husband,” she said. The door was open and in the hallway beyond Tag could see two large men in scale and half-helms, visors down to mask their expressions. “Seven flies?” the lord’s daughter scoffed. She crossed behind the fume hood, during which time Tag thought to preserve what he could of his modesty with a pillow from the bed. The lord’s daughter paused a moment at the open window, the source of both the cold air and the angry amalgamate voice of the crowd. She looked out, surveying her domain, and then closed the shutters.

“You should hear my brother,” said Tag, unsticking his tongue from the roof of his mouth.

The lord’s daughter grinned at that, but it wasn’t a warming expression. “Yes. Your lies now are common knowledge,” she said. She adopted a hurt frown. “I’m afraid our marriage is over.”

“I’m… sorry?” said Tag. He wondered how long he had been sleeping.

“Guards,” said the lord’s daughter. She turned away from Tag as the guards entered, peering out through a slit in the shutters.

“Um,” said Tag. The guards each took a shoulder and led him out of the room, kindly allowing him to take his pillow with him. They went down what seemed to be the back way, passing through a room of red-hot pot-bellied stoves, circumventing a bustling kitchen, and edging down several thin, dark spiral stairways. They arrived, at last, at a corridor of cold blue stone, a row of small rooms chopped out of each side. Tag was escorted into one of these cells, urged to sit on a straw pallet, and, finally, ordered to relinquish his pillow. An iron grate was slid out of the wall and fastened with a small loop of chain. Without a word, the guards clanked away. Tag looked around his new accommodations in the faint hope that there would be something to hit. That’s when he realized that they, whoever had taken his clothes during the night, had also taken his belt.

“You are such a whoreson,” said a voice. From the corridor came a figure, shrouded in long black robes. A pair of hands emerged from the sleeves and lifted back a heavy hood, revealing a head of golden hair made silver in the filtered light.

“Joff,” said Tag. “Gods, what are you doing here?”

“Picking up the salt you sowed across my plans, grain by infuriating grain. What are you doing here?”

“I… wanted to show you my belt,” said Tag. Then, as Joff snorted, he added, “And to tell you I saw your mother in an alley.”

“Giving last rites to yours?”

Tag got up from the pallet and wrapped his fingers around the cold iron door. “Can you get me out here, Joff?”

Joff never used to belly-laugh. Even when Tag tripped that one time and fell into a dry well, he just chuckled, like dust sifting down into Tag’s lungs. Now, he threw back his head and shook cobwebs from the corners. He had been learning. “No. I can not get you out of here, no more than I can order my hands to turn against me. I put you here, and, until I recover from your interference, here you’ll remain. Besides,” he added. “It’s for your own safety. The citizens were merely smoldering yesterday, when they got ahold of captain Quail, compared to the rage they feel toward Tag the Tailor.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It has come to their attention, through a number of rather elegantly-written broadsides, that the Quail gang were actually killed by each other, if you can believe that of such good and moral men, after a night of drunken revelry. Some had their skulls smashed, some bled to death.”

“But that’s not—“

“And, also, the body of the one-horn in the forest has disappeared which, the author of these broadsides dares suggests, may mean that the one-horn was not, in fact, executed as Tag the Tale-Teller would have us all believe.”

“Now, wait—“

“And the belt? The death’s heads mark seven pillbugs, squished beneath mighty Tag’s rather overlarge feet.”

“Flies,” said Tag. “They were flies.” He slumped back into the shadows. The difference in distance was made up by Joff, who pressed close to the bars.

“You see, dear brother,” he said. “Your storied lies are bare! mere skeletons to drape a notion over. You haven’t the imagination to mortar the spaces with detail. You trust your audience will take the task up for you. I, on the other hand, have reservoirs of imagination and very little trust at all.” Tag had nothing to say, but Joff seemed more than happy to fill the silence. “Your divorce now to my dear Vivianne should be complete. As the man who exposed Tag the Thief to his lordship, I find myself in good favor. Perhaps I should thank you. I had meant to collect on the bounty myself, through the use of several ingenious devices of my own, but all seems well, and I am more than pleased to let it end well.” Several days later, as Tag judged it from his dim cell, a guard came by with a platter full of steaming meat. Tag had been hearing cheers all day long — a pleasant change from the mob’s grumbling.

“Your share of the wedding feast,” said the guard, sliding the platter under the door. Tag went over to it and picked up a scrap of parchment that had come with it. On the parchment was a picture of a one-horn, and beneath the picture a number of what Tag recognized were words, though he didn’t know what meaning they carried. They spiked and dipped over the page like a row of men with pitchforks, taunting him. He tore the paper and picked at the meat, though it was mostly gristle, and bits of the hide had been left attached.

A week later, Tag was awoken in the night by a voice hissing, “All clear!“ and the whine of his cell door being pulled aside. A pair of rough-built men shouldered their way in and grabbed Tag by the elbows.

“Your brother says remember this,” said one, and then they were out the door. Tag was bundled onto an empty liquor cart and covered over with a burlap sack. He kept his head down. The cart took the weight of his rescuers and then a whip snapped and they rumbled off.

Tag dozed off; he awoke halfway upright, the wide hand of one of the roughs gripping him by the neck.

“Your brother said remember this,” said the rough. The hand around Tag’s neck vanished only to return, with more force, on his solar plexus. He fell down gasping as the cart executed a ragged turn and drove back the way it had come.

Tag got to his feet. The cart had dropped him practically on his doorstep, had his tailor’s shack had a doorstep. Wincing when he breathed, he went inside to greet the hills of mending that had risen during his absence.

News from the city tended to come only occasionally to the village, more from lack of bother than anything else. So, the men and women there were unconcerned with Tag the Tale-Teller, as long as he was still Tag the Tailor. Things returned to the way they had been before Tag ever made his belt; he took to capturing flies in jam jars and releasing them outside.

One day in summer, news from the city did reach the village: the lord was dead, and his son-in-law would be assuming the regency after a week of mourning and celebration. A number of men from the village planned to attend the festival; they invited Tag to come along, but he politely declined.

The men returned at the end of the week hungover and exuberant. Tag, they said, had missed the greatest festival of all time: the lord’s daughter, lady Vivianne, had appeared in on the third day in the somber company of her husband, the new lord Joffrey; on the fifth day, she came alone, but silent and tearful; on the sixth day she told her secrets, and all were made aware that lord Joffrey had poisoned lady Vivianne’s father so that he might ascend the swifter. Before the seventh day dawned, the mob had beaten down the doors to the university, where lord Joffrey still maintained his private quarters, and set the dormitories ablaze. On the seventh day, with no sign of Joff the Pretender, lady Vivianne declared she would rebuild the university better than it had been before.

Tag was ready, therefore, for the knock that came at his door the night after the revelers returned. He greeted the visitor with a swung fist. The man was wearing a homespun sack and fell as though it were full of potatoes.

“Gods damn it, Tag!“ Joff whirled to his feet, trying to look regal, but, in his current attire, he just came off silly. “Let me inside!“

“All right,” said Tag, an impulse from childhood overtaking his desire to crow victory in case it would goad Joff into stealing it from him. He stepped aside.

Joff darted in and slammed the door behind him, leaning on it to catch his breath and dab at his new split lip. “She—“ he said, and spit blood like venom “—had some stories of her own to tell.”

“So I heard,” said Tag. He returned to his sewing.

After a while, Joff ventured further into the room. “Have you anything to eat?” he asked.

“Out back,” said Tag. “I saved some of your generous gift.” Joff, forgetting for the moment what gift Tag was speaking of, headed for the back door. He reappeared a moment later.

“We have to go,” he said. A torch cartwheeled through the old glass window behind him. “I may have been seen,” he conceded.

Tag got to his feet and gave Joff another good fist in the mouth. Then he poked his head out the front door while the torch sputtered uselessly on the bare floor. A knot of men were plugging the path toward the center of town.

“They’re out back, too,” said Joff.

“Can we make it to the forest?” asked Tag.

“Not alive,” said Joff. Tag crept to the back door and peered out, careful not to show too much of the whites of his eyes. He had an idea. “On the count of two,” he said to Joff.

“What do you—“

“One, two,” said Tag, then shoved open the back door. Bip, bop, two arrows slammed into the wall. Tag ran, Joff hot on his heels, at an angle away from both groups of toughs. The shadows hid them a bit, but not enough.

“Where are we—“ Joff began, but he was interrupted by Tag coming to a halt and throwing himself down a well. An arrow hissed over Joff’s shoulder and took with it all his reservation. He leapt in after his brother.

“Remember this?” asked Tag when all the dust had settled.

“We can’t stay here,” said Joff.

“Well, obviously,” said Tag.

“No, I mean we can’t stay here. We need to find another place to live. It’s not safe for us here.”

“It’s not safe for you.”

“You’ll recall I made things somewhat difficult for you, as well.”

A pounding of feet shook dust from the sides of the well; it sifted down like silver shavings. Tag chewed his bottom lip.

“Fine,” he said. “You win.”

#

This city smelled of incense and monkey feces, rope and sweat. The streets were long strands, connected only loosely and occasionally. Women carried baskets of fruit on their heads and wore garments so loose, so filmy that their stitches had to be made of spider’s webs. No one had need of a tailor of his skill.

Tag had found an intersection to set up his table, a rough plank on two empty casks. He saw new people every day, which was good for a man in his line of work.

He dealt the cards out on the table and watched with one eye a beggar down the street. The beggar had found a mark, a younger woman with a bowl of tubers in the crook of her arm. The girl was blushing. She beckoned to the beggar and he followed her around a bend and out of sight.

Tag focused on the task at hand, sliding the cards, shiny with grease, around on the tabletop for the fat, sleepy-eyed woman in front of him. The woman stroked her chin and pointed at a card. Tag flipped it over.

“I’m so sorry,” said Tag, pocketing the woman’s coin. The woman laughed, shrugged, said something in her own language and went on her way. Tag shuffled the deck of cards to pass the time.

The beggar appeared from a doorway and ambled over, shaking dust from his golden hair.

“Good business, brother?” asked Tag. Joff shook the pocket of his loose trousers. The fabric jingled.

“I told her I was a ruined king. I have to purchase my noble steed back from the shah. I think that’s what I said. You?” asked Joff.

Tag spotted a likely mark. He spread his cards out on the table, face-up. “I’ll tell you in a bit,” he said. He raised his voice and switched to what he knew of the local tongue. “Hello! hello! Would you like some easy money? Yes, you would! Just watch the seven.” He flipped the cards. “Watch the seven.”