Something was different.
Something had changed.
In that cold, silent tower, time had stopped.
And the Witch did not spin alone.
XXVII
The light behind my eyelids was golden.
I was warm, like a cat curled in a patch of sunshine, like a winter’s night beside a roaring fire.
I felt strong.
Unthinking, I stretched out my arms, my legs, cracking my knuckles and rolling my head – and found the Witch curled cold around me.
Something important had happened and I didn’t quite remember what.
But my Witch was there, her brows knitted together in an expression of such sadness it seemed obvious that I should kiss her. So I did.
She stirred, making a soft mewling sound, then roused at the press of my lips, eyes flying open wide.
There was something important and I couldn’t grasp my stiff fingers around its threads.
The Witch was slower to rise, reaching for my hand and studying it, turning it over. ‘You’re not dead,’ she said in wonder.
That was it.
I had sacrificed myself to the wheel. I wouldn’t let my Witch bear the weight of another death at her hands, so I had offered myself willingly.
Together, we turned to look at the wheel. Something golden was snagged around the distaff, but into it was woven silver threads, and copper, and white and pale blue and rosy pink – it was like sun on water, light refracting into its thousand component parts.
A little me, a little her. The love we had for each other, the life we had built together.
Still gripping my hand tight, she looked at me with such emotion, such wonder, I thought she was going to cry again.
‘I could not bear to use your life on the wheel, so I let time stop. It was theend of time,’ she whispered. ‘And I didn’t spin alone. I had you.’
Tentatively, she rose and began to work the wheel again, feeling the fibres of this strange new fleece, its radiant, cool glow. Thread built on the spindle at a steady pace, even and strong.
I looked at my hands, still half expecting to see a haze of gold rising from them again, my life being drained.
But they were just hands, calloused from work and dirt caught under the nails.
Love made a life rich, I thought, a little given could build into something strong and new. Enough to grow on its own.
Beyond the window, wispy clouds scudded across the blue July sky and the chatter of birdsong was raucous. In the distance: voices, the strike of hammer on anvil. The river thundered past and the treetops danced in the breeze. Summer was warm and bountiful and in the earth things grew.
When enough new thread had been wound around the spindle, the Witch drew back, eyes prickled with tears. I drew her to sit with me, stroked her face, tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear and it struck me how easily I did it. The gap between us seemed shrunk to nothing.
I knew it would take work to keep it that way, but it was work I was willing to do, and I saw she would do it too.
She rested her head against my shoulder and I twined our hands together.
‘You saved me,’ she said. Her voice was so soft I barely caught the words.
I thought about it for a while. I thought about the first time I had met her in the stables, then in my father’s study when we had been formally bound. The cold winter months when she was sharp and I was brittle. Our tentative truce, and the ember of something that had grown between us that had led me to come back to her from visiting my father in Blumwald. To choose to believe her over Frieda.
