The Spinner and the Slipper
Read The Spinner and the Slipper Online
Authors: Camryn Lockhart
© 2016 by Rooglewood Press
Published by Rooglewood Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
This volume contains works of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of each author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover and book design by A.E. de Silva
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One: A Promise and a Vow
Chapter Three: A Different Kind of Life
Chapter Eight: Rising Tensions
Chapter Nine: Tears into Glass
Chapter Eleven: The Power of a Name
Chapter Thirteen: Feigned Pleasantries
Chapter Fourteen: Mischief Making
Chapter Fifteen: Forgotten Memories
Chapter Sixteen: Of Dancing and Games
Chapter Seventeen: Lingering Threats
To my lovely mother
who makes books come alive with her accents
and taught me to love a story well told.
Pronunciation guide:
Dienw
(dee-en-oo) – Nameless
Diwedd y Stori
(dih-weth ih stori) – the end of a story
CHAPTER ONE
A Promise and a Vow
The gentle light of sunset fell through the open window to gleam upon her mother’s golden head.
Spun gold
, Eliana thought, as she often did when she saw her mother’s hair down and loose. Ordinarily the miller’s wife kept it carefully tucked away under a cap, so the sight of it was a rare treat enjoyed only by the miller himself and his sweet young daughter.
Now Mother’s hair spread across her pillow in a fan of shimmering gold. Yet while those locks gleamed with the very light of life, the pretty face they framed was gray and faded.
“She’s not sick,” the local physician had whispered to the miller only a few short hours ago. “She has no fever, no sickness or consumption that I can detect. She is simply… fading.”
Eliana sat at her mother’s side, holding tight to one limp hand. Occasionally she reached out to stroke either one of those lustrous curls or one of those sunken cheeks. Tears stained her face, though she did not cry. She had wept enough, she decided; and if her mother woke just once more before the end, Eliana wanted her to see a cheerful, smiling face, not one red and puffy and full of sorrow.
Mother stirred. Eliana’s breath caught in her throat. Father was not here; he had wandered out into the yard, his grief so great that it sent him fleeing from the deathbed of his beloved. Should she call him back? Eliana could not decide, and she feared to leave her mother’s side for even a moment. Her grip unconsciously tightened on the thin, wasted fingers she held. “Mother?” she breathed.
A slight line puckered the dying woman’s brow. Then, her paper-thin eyelids fluttering gently, she gazed up into the face of her only child.
They were very alike, this mother and daughter, or had been up until now. Oncoming death had robbed the miller’s wife of her beauty, sparing only her spun-gold hair. Her features were pinched and strained and gray. But Eliana was blooming into what her mother once had been—lovely and round-eyed, with a dainty mouth eager to smile. Eliana lacked her mother’s crowning glory, however; for her hair was an ordinary brown and straight.
Yet, to the miller’s wife, this girl was the most beautiful creature in all the worlds.
“My darling,” she said, her voice raw in her throat. “I am so sorry to leave you.”
“Don’t say that, Mother,” Eliana replied, scarcely able to force the words around the lump in her throat. “You’ll feel better soon, you’ll see. The doctor says you aren’t even sick!”
“No, I am not sick,” her mother replied. “I have never been sick a day in my life. But I cannot live in this world any longer. I must go on to heaven, where I will wait for you. I promise.”
Eliana tried to answer, but the tears were rising thick and fast, and she feared they would escape if she spoke. She turned her head away, fighting for control. When she looked at her mother again, she smiled a valiant, determined sort of smile.
The miller’s wife, not fooled in the slightest, wished she could do something, anything at all, to ease her daughter’s pain. There was little enough she could do now. Except . . . except . . .
“Here, Eliana,” she said, and with more strength than she had demonstrated in many days, pulled her hand from the girl’s grasp. She held it up so that the simple gold ring shining on her finger momentarily gleamed as brightly as her own hair. “Here, I want you to take this. And my necklace,” she added, putting up her other hand to touch the gold chain that lay upon her gaunt chest.
“No, Mother,” Eliana replied, shaking her head quickly. “They look so pretty on you. You will want them when you get well again.”
“They will look better on you,” her mother insisted. “And . . . and they will remind you of me. Please, my darling. Please take them. I want to see you wear them, before . . . before . . .”
She could not find the strength to finish the sentence. Tears welled in Eliana’s eyes again, but she forced another brilliant smile and, to please her mother, took both the ring and the necklace and put them on. “There,” she said. “See? Do you like how they look on me?”
“Yes,” said the miller’s wife. “I like them very much on you.”
“Then I will never take them off,” Eliana assured her. “Never.”
But her mother slowly shook her head. “You must not say that, my dear. They are made of
real
gold. Real gold loses its luster if those who own it cling to it too tightly. You must promise me, if someone asks you for either this ring or this necklace, you will give them what they ask right away, without question. And you will only take them back if they are returned to you just as willingly.”
Eliana scarcely heard what her mother said. Why should she care for jewelry now, whether or not it was real gold? The only gold she loved was her mother’s spun-gold hair. But the light was fading from it even as the sun set lower beyond the horizon and darkness fell.
“Will you promise me, Eliana?” her mother asked, her voice a faint, whispering breath.
“I promise, Mother,” Eliana answered. “Anything you ask. I promise. Only, please . . .”
She did not finish. She saw that, as soon as her promise was spoken, her mother’s spirit slipped away from her body, never to return.
Eliana bowed her head and wept now without comfort. But the simple ring on her finger and the delicate chain around her neck glowed bright with the warmth of a mother’s love, which lingers on long after death.
Beyond the miller’s yard, across the mill stream, safely hidden in the woods, a tall figure stood beneath an oak tree. No one saw him, for no one looked to see him. Even someone looking would spy no more than a flickering shadow and think nothing of it.
He stood still, like a stag scenting the breeze. As the sun set and his own shadow lengthened across the forest floor, his bright green eyes watched the window of the miller’s house as though waiting to see something appear there.
Suddenly his gaze quickened with interest. He blinked and seemed to follow the flight of a swift little bird, which darted out of that window and off into the twilit sky. But there was no bird to be seen, at least not by mortal eyes.
The man whispered in a voice like the gentle stirring of leaves, “She’s gone. Poor, dear lady.”
A single tear trembled in his eye before falling down his cheek. He was quick to catch it—for it would not do to leave something so priceless lying around in the mortal world. He caught it on his handkerchief, which he tucked away in the breast pocket of his tunic.
Then, on silent feet he glided out from among the trees and over the stream. He navigated around the miller easily enough. The man sat on the bank of the stream, weeping quietly, unaware of his surroundings. The poor mortal had lost his wife, after all. The silent stranger spared him a brief moment of pity.
He slipped across the yard like the shadow of a cloud until he came to the window of the miller’s house. He peered inside and saw the body of the miller’s wife. How strange she looked to him! So hollow. So empty.
But beside her sat her very likeness in living, human flesh! Dark-haired, certainly, and younger by far. Nevertheless, the resemblance between mother and child was unmistakable, especially now that the daughter stood upon the threshold of womanhood.
The shadow-man’s heart went out to the girl as he saw how desolately she cried. He wished he might catch and save her tears even as he had caught his own. But he dared not approach her for fear he might frighten her. And he did not want her to fear him—not in the least.
He spotted the gold ring on her finger and the gold chain about her neck. The sight made him smile, albeit with some sorrow.
“I’ll watch over you,” he whispered to the maiden, though her ears heard nothing more than the sighing of a breeze through the tall grasses. “I will protect you in honor of your lady mother.”
With this promise, he vanished. But not for long.