Page 13 of Rumpelstilzchen

“Your Majesty?” The gruff voice belonged to one of her guards and came from somewhere behind him.

Boy hadn’t dared to turn his head when the clanking of a guard’s armoured foot tapped against the side of the upturned wooden bucket, causing it to scrape dully over the wet stones.

“Ah,” came the Queen’s soft voice. “I see.”

There was a loaded pause, promptly followed by the guard’s forced laughter.

“Good one, Your Majesty,” he responded with strained joviality. “That was funny, ’cause of course you can see that once the wick’d burned down, he couldn’t have seen in ’ere at all. Very funny, Your Majesty.”

She clapped her hands once. Loudly. And the guard was immediately silent. Boy wondered if he was even breathing.

“Then I think the best solution is the most simple one, don’t you?” she asked.

Boy didn’t know if she was addressing him or the guard, so he stayed quiet.

So did the guard.

“See the boy moved to the Merchant’s Quarters within the walls of the Royal City. The window there will provide him with enough natural light during the day. And make sure he has at least two lamps this time.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Boy didn’t know what was happening. For all the sense her words made, the Queen may as well have been speaking another language, because it sounded like, instead of asking the guard to escort him to the gallows, he was being escorted to an actual room inside the city walls. But why would she do that? It made little sense, unless…

He turned his head to the side, his eyes having adjusted to the brightness of the guards’ lamps, and where yesterday the old spinning wheel had been covered in cobwebs, it was now gleaming as if polished. His jaw dropped involuntarily.

With his heart firmly in his throat, Boy risked looking back over his shoulder at where the sack of dried straw had been. There, arranged neatly upon the hessian, were seven spools of glittering golden thread. Boy couldn’t stifle the strangled sound of surprise that spilled from him.

“I think what you mean to say is, ‘Thank you, Your Majesty.’” With that, those golden shoes spun on their heels and stepped out of view, but not before she added, “Don’t get too comfortable. Your new accommodation will come with even more sacks of straw, and I expect it all transformed into golden thread before the next sunrise. There will be no more excuses.”

Ever-quietening footsteps announced her retreat down the passageway as she called out, “Else you will be dead before I’ve eaten my morn meal.”

Boy’s gaze fixed fast upon the spools. He hadn’t done that; he knew he hadn’t. He was a human and possessed no magick, so how…?

His spiralling thoughts were cut off by the rough hands of the Royal Guard, who caught him—one armpit each—and hauled him to his feet. Holding their lamps aloft, they pushed him through the cell doorway and escorted him back down the narrow passageway in the opposite direction from which he had been brought in the day before.

Why did it require two of them to manhandle him? Boy’s mind was too scattered to coordinate the effort needed to escape them, besides which, he had no idea where in this stone labyrinth he might find an exit.

As if coming to that realisation for themselves, the guards released him so suddenly that his legs didn’t have time to take his weight, and he stumbled. The guard on his left laughed and pushed in front, lighting the way but at too-brisk a pace. Boy’s feet were treacherous beneath him, especially when they reached a narrow stone staircase. This one, at least, was dry—unlike the one they had entered from the Royal District—but the renewed threat of death had done nothing to steady him, and he staggered against the wall with a thud.

This time, the guard behind laughed at Boy and gave him a forceful shove when they breached the top step. He half fell through the wooden doorway that led out onto a gravel path, and was immediately assaulted by the bright morning sun. Boy raised his arm to shield his eyes from the harsh rays, but it was the sounds that held his attention.

He’d expected more savage guards and barking dogs, but the people here chatted animatedly. He’d braced for lewd comments and vicious threats, as there had been upon his arrival yesterday, but found the Royal City resembled more closely the trader’s market from back home.

Distracted, he lost track of the lead guard.

Boy was used to stalls that traded in livestock, grains, wool, and linens, not small and colourful glass vials that held fragrances so potent that he could smell them from several paces away. Nor had he ever seen birds of prey in leather hoods tethered to perches as patrons haggled over the price. For a moment he wondered why they would spend precious coin on such an item, until he realised they were trained to retrieve rodents and other small creatures—an ingenious solution to the kingdom’s current meat shortage.

Before he could inspect another stall, one with shallow wooden troughs filled to the brim with salt-smothered fish that had attracted thick swarms of flies, he found himself once again caught roughly by the arm. What was it with the people here manhandling him? Boy had never been touched so much in his life.

The guard all but dragged Boy along the gravelled path, which rose at a steady incline, until they reached a long, timber-framed farmhouse. It reminded him of the Fachhallenhaus nearby his home market, which allowed traders to overnight with their animals and wares all under one roof. He wasn’t surprised at all that this was the direction they were heading—the Queen had stated for him to be housed in the Merchant’s Quarters, and this building couldn’t be anything else.

The entrance beam was set so low that Boy had to duck, else he risked hitting his head when the guard—yet again—shoved him through. A small stone that had worked its way inside the gaping sole of Boy’s shoe dug into the heel of his foot as he regained his balance, and Boy bit his tongue as he swallowed down the pain. A different guard pushed passed Boy, turning him bodily and forcing him to step to the side lest he be continuously jostled about, and Boy took in the great, if not run-down, space.

Based on what little experience he had of the inside of a Fachhallenhaus, he’d expected other merchants to be here, but it was deathly silent. A sure sign that he was very much still the Queen’s prisoner. The entire quarters had been emptied of people and animals alike, and Boy wondered where they might all have moved to. The only sign that remained of the simple cots and basic amenities that had surely been there before his arrival were the freshly exposed darker patches of wooden flooring where the rays from the single window hadn’t yet reached.

Another guard part-nudged and part-threw Boy towards the far end of the large room, from where he watched in morbid silence as guard after guard brought in hessian sacks filled to overflowing with dry straw and field mice. They piled them high in the empty bays that Boy could now see ran the full length along the outer wall, and each time a sack was set down, his mood sank along with it.

He wrapped his arms tightly around his torso and edged closer to the one remaining cot pushed deep into the end bay—it had been a very trying morning.