...I span the last of it today. There is only a scrap of thread around the spindle now and no way to make more. Edgar is gone, his life used up like so much fleece become yarn. Now we wait and see what time will do with nothing to spin...
I dropped the book with trembling hands.
The companions who left no trace. The bones at the foot of the tower. The wheel that span something golden and vital.
The kaleidoscope shifted, the pattern coming into shape.
Edgar’slife.
‘What are you looking at?’
The Witch came yawning from the bedroom wearing only a black silk dressing gown, lightly tied so a strip of ice-like skin showed from navel to throat.
‘What do you spin on the wheel?’ I asked. My voice was something alien to me. Cold, distant.
‘I told you: time.’
‘But what is the material? The act is to spin the thread of time, but what is that thread made of?’ I had stood up, I didn’t know when, putting space between myself and the words I could not ignore.
The Witch glanced to the book open before me, a horrified look spreading across her face. ‘What were you reading?’
‘Your diary. Or maybe your records? I don’t know what you call this.’
I expected her to snap at me, but she said nothing, only stood as still and lifeless as a statue.
‘I think it is made of a life.’ I snatched at my thoughts like darting fish in a pond. ‘I found bones in the garden at the bottom of your Tower.’
‘Mina.’ She said my name, but didn’t know what to say next. I saw she was crying.
I paced the room as though I could outrun my thoughts. I didn’t want to look at what was right in front of me. It was too horrifying. I had too much to lose.
I loved her too much.
‘Is that what I am to you?’ I asked. ‘A life for the wheel?’
‘No.’ The Witch shut her eyes, face crumpled in pain and fear and a deep, crushing despair.
‘That is why you take someone every fifty years. Their life only lasts you so long, and then you must replace it. I am such a fool that it took me so long to see it.’
The problems with time, the diminishing fleece on the wheel. It all felt so obvious. I had been summoned to the castle as the wheel’s next meal; it was only love that had blinded me from the truth.
I was a fool for love.
‘Stop it. Please stop,’ said the Witch.
‘You don’t deny it.’
She slid to the floor, covering her hands with her face.
I didn’t know what to do. Even though all the pieces were there, some part of me still refused to believe it was true. I didn’t want to lose what I’d thought I had with her.
Beyond the windows, a flush of autumn leaves had swept through the forest canopy. I thought of the wheel in its Tower, the last scraps of thread on the spindle.
‘What will you do now?’ I asked. ‘Were you going to tell me the truth? Or feed me to your Wheel unknowing?’ In a flare of anger I picked up the book from her desk and threw it. ‘Tell me!’
A darkness gathered in the room like the snow had returned, all scent and sight of spring seeping away and a relentless pressure ringed my head.
The truth was out. Her options had narrowed to one.
