Spindle (Two Monarchies Sequence Book 1) (21 page)

Briar thorne and spindle’s end

Spin a cage of sleep and time.

Now is lost, the past is teind.

Deathless sleep with endless night

Lay you here until love’s kiss

Ends the curse and breaks the light.

Two powers gathered, harnessed,

Caught; within the will of state

On the monarch’s shoulders rest.

“The rest of the spellpaper is just legal nonsense: hereintofore as such and such is referred to as such and such, the crown wishes it to be understood that...and so on.”

Michael leaned perilously over the tea things to look at the paper.

“Disappointing of you, Poly! I was hoping for something more helpful. Look, how did Luck manage to kiss you awake in the first place? According to the curse, anyone kissing you awake is supposed to already be in love with you: hence the sobriquet ‘love curse’.”

“Knowing Luck, he managed to wriggle around it somehow,” said Poly. “He told me that he slipped around a tricky bit of wording, but he’s still trying to break it properly.”

“What I want to know is
why
,” said Michael, absentmindedly tapping the spellpaper with a half-eaten biscuit. “Why you, and why
then
? And what’s all this about the monarch’s shoulders? What has it got to do with your parents?”

“And why are you only just now being woken up?” put in Annie. “I don’t want to seem harsh on your parents, my dear, but it does seem a little remiss of them not to have found their own Luck. Or Luck himself: I’m sure he was around then.”

Poly opened her mouth to protest the culpability of Persephone’s parents, and closed it again under Michael’s curious eyes. After all, she didn’t owe the old king and queen anything.

“Do you know, I always have the feeling that you’re about to say something and then think better of it,” said Michael. “If it was a compliment you can feel free to express it: I promise to blush becomingly.”

Poly gave an involuntary laugh, but she had begun to feel the danger of discussing her previous life, and she changed the subject as adroitly as she knew how, crumbling a biscuit into her saucer with suddenly restless fingers.

Michael and Annie took it without a blink or a question, much to Poly’s relief. The three-verse curse, which at first had seemed laughable, was now growing in importance at the back of her mind and making it difficult to converse sensibly. It suggested that Mordion had cursed her under orders from the Crown, and that the Crown had been under the impression that she possessed magic strong enough to be worth claiming under right of Monarchy.

Annie, noticing her distraction, kindly led everyone out to play with the baby chicks, and Poly left not long after that, tugging a reluctant Onepiece behind her. She felt, by and large, that she was escaping from an increasingly perilous situation.

The only question was, Poly thought ruefully, whether it was any less perilous with Luck?

Chapter Eleven

Poly reminded Luck about Annie’s dilemma at breakfast the next morning. Luck gave her a blank look and continued to mutter beneath his breath in a suspiciously magical manner while the breakfast glowed briefly and then quite simply disappeared before they could eat so much as a bite of it.

Luck said: “Huh,” in a surprised tone, and likewise vanished into his study.

Margaret said: “Well, of all the–!” in indignant tones, and got up again to make more toast.

Poly reminded him again at lunch, when he gave her a prolonged look with his head tilted back and two of his chair legs off the floor, and then said: “Where’s my spellpaper, Poly?”

“It’s not yours, it’s mine. And
don’t
change the subject.”

“I’m not,” said Luck unblinkingly; and when Poly went to look at her spellpaper later, it had disappeared as completely as breakfast had.

She was still annoyed at the loss of the spellpaper that evening, when she reminded Luck again at last bell that Annie’s jinxed field needed seeing to.

“There’s something different about you today, Poly,” complained Luck. “Something picky and bothersome and annoying.”

“I’ve probably been living with you too long,” Poly told him, irritably. “It’s probably catching.”

Luck gave her another long, narrow look with a gold tint to the edges of his eyes that warned Poly she’d better not push things too far, and went back to studying what she was fairly certain was her own spellpaper. Trusting to Luck’s tendency to forget everything and everyone once they were out of sight, Poly wandered the library for a few, quiet minutes before silently leaning over his shoulder to read it. It
was
her spellpaper. Luck must have done something fiddly and strongly magical to it, because it was glittering with a spiderweb of sharp golden tracery that looked as though it could possibly cut the air.

Poly found herself holding her breath as she studied it, fascinated at the power, the intricacy, the
Luck
ness of the spell. With his spell lifting the edges of the legality in the spellpaper, she could see the curse itself, words curled tightly in a coil of blackness that was slightly looser here and there. It looked intent and determined. But as determined as it was, Luck’s magic was still more determined and insidious, and Poly could see where two battered words had been nudged so far out of their place that they were no longer part of it.

She wasn’t aware that she’d reached out a finger to touch one of the words until she saw the iridescent
something
that rippled across her arm in a seamless coating from finger to shoulder, and felt the static fizz that stung her finger as it met the word.

“Yow!” said Poly frantically, snatching the finger back and instinctively putting it in her mouth.

Luck jumped, knocking over his chair, and said with a sharp snap of magic that made the iridescence disappear: “You can’t do that! Poly! How did you do that?”

“What did you do to me!” demanded Poly, at the same time. She was watching more of the iridescence disappear from the rest of her body with wide eyes, but she didn’t miss the covert flick of Luck’s fingers that made the spellpaper vanish from his desk.

“Nobody listens to me anymore,” he said plaintively. “Three types of magic, I said. You have one and two, and you can’t have three, but you do. I need peace and quiet to work it out. And the village is still sideways.”

Perfectly well aware that he was only trying to change the subject, Poly said crossly: “I wish you wouldn’t do things to me without asking! And it’s
my
spellpaper, after all!”

“I should start talking to the gremlins. At least
they
listen to me.”

A muted
yik
followed by a shower of woodchips suggested otherwise, but Luck ignored them grandly.

“Why are you sneaking around in my library? Where did you get an Invisibility spell? And how did you get it to do
that
?”

Poly, all at sea, sat down on the desk with her ankles crossed and tried to decide if it was worth making any of the protestations or asking any of the questions she wanted to ask. Finally, she decided on a single question.

“What are you talking about?”

“Unmagic. I
told
you, Poly. Three kinds of magic.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Well, then; you should understand.”

“Luck, I want my spellpaper back.”

“Three kinds of magic that all work together but aren’t ever found together. It’s impossible. Except sometimes when it’s not.”

“Yes, I understand that,” said Poly wearily. “But I want–”

“No you don’t,” contradicted Luck. “You can’t. Otherwise you wouldn’t keep bleating about not having magic. Or doing spells that are impossible.”

Bewildered all over again, Poly was betrayed into repeating the oft-repeated mantra: “But I
haven’t
got
magic!”

“Huh. I thought you’d stopped saying that. You didn’t lose more of your memory when you woke up, did you, Poly?”

“Well, like you said before, I wouldn’t know, would I?” said Poly, beginning to feel distinctly sulky. “What did you do to me?”

“It was an Invisibility spell with a Soundless clause, three kinds of dampers, and worked in unmagic.” Luck sat back down in his chair, lounging at ease but with a sharper-than-usual gaze directed at her beneath his lashes. “A beautiful, impossible spell. And I didn’t do it. But while you’re
here
, Poly–”

“No!” said Poly hurriedly, careless of whether it was one of Luck’s misdirections or an actual threat. “I’m going out. Please don’t forget Annie’s field! There’s only a little planting time left now.”

She left while Luck was still muttering something about flirting in the moonlight and negligent pet owners, which fortunately reminded her to look in on Onepiece before she left the house. Michael and Margaret had come by just after noon, while Michael was supposed to be eating his lunch, and had entertained Poly through the kitchen window while Luck did something fiddly with one of Norris’ inventions. Before leaving they’d told her about a moonlight walk that was to stealthily occur tonight when the village was asleep; and between Michael’s ridiculous pleading and Margaret’s rather alarming prognostications of a great many stolen moonlight kisses, Poly hadn’t found herself able to say no. It was too entrancing to be a part of the revels instead of an onlooker.

Onepiece was in his little boy form when Poly tucked the sheets securely around him, much to her satisfaction. He was uneasily asleep, but her instinctive pat on the head made him suck in a quick, sniffy little breath and open his eyes.

“Pretty magic!” he said, smiling up at her. “Not sneezy.”

“Yes, darling. Go to sleep, now.”

“Poly sleep, too?”

“Not right now. I’m going for a walk.”

“
Onepiece
wants walks, too!” said Onepiece indignantly, pawing the sleep from his eyes.

“I know, darling. But you have to sleep now”

“Poly
sleep
. Not leave Onepiece alone!”

Fortunately for Poly’s slender parenting skills, the puppy was still only half awake; and by the time she’d reiterated in a soft voice that he was staying in
bed
, and Onepiece had muttered sulkily into his sheets, he was all but fast asleep once more. Poly stroked his hair for some time after in spite of this, feeling a little bit sorry, and a little bit fond, and suddenly a little bit terrified, because all of Onepiece’s sleeping thoughts said:
Mum.

The night was a pleasant one. Poly found herself dizzily talking to more young men than she could ever recall knowing before, and being ignored by nearly as many of the village girls, who tended to eye her in somewhat gloomy resentment and ask leading questions about Luck, his schedule, and even (from one bold, sparkling redhead) his preferences as to hair colour.

Poly gave the redhead a fascinated look and truthfully said that she didn’t know, to which the redhead replied with another barrage of questions, each more personal than the last, until Poly was rescued by Ronin. His requests after her–nephew, is it, Miss Poly? Ah,
brother
, of
course
–made the redhead chuckle in a manner that she didn’t quite like, but when Poly informed them both quite calmly that Onepiece was in bed and asleep she seemed to lose interest in the subject. Much to Poly’s relief, the young lady was caught up in a sudden rush of young men who were determined to show off their magical prowess by levitating a select few ladies over the tiny stream they’d come upon, and was soon to be seen bobbing merrily over the foot-wide trickle with her ankles primly crossed.

“Lovely girl!” said Ronin with a cutting edge of sarcasm in his voice. He swept Poly across the stream in one fluid motion, and she thanked him with some amusement. She could have stepped across it without breaking stride. How different it was from walking with Luck, who was more likely to plough into the middle of a stream without noticing it than he was to bethink himself to help her over it. Two village lads on the other side reached out eagerly to receive her on the other side, and Poly couldn’t help laughing at their unashamed interest: they reminded her of Onepiece in possession of a new toy.

Ronin gave her up with a wry smile, but said teasingly: “Miss Margaret won’t be happy if you purloin
all
her beaux, Poly!”

Since she remembered these particular boys waiting impatiently for a dance from Margaret at the ‘happening’ not long since, Poly felt a twinge of unease that only intensified when she caught Margaret watching her thoughtfully as the evening progressed. After that, she stayed determinedly with Michael, who was outspokenly willing to have her with him; and, moreover, was quick to cook her sausages and provide her with chocolates.

Poly arrived back home in the wee hours of the morning, shutting the front door behind her and guiltily tiptoeing across the obstacle-strewn main room. Luck was still awake, his figure vaguely visible through the library wall. There were two gremlins on his desk, one
yik-yiking
in a vehement fashion as it pointed at a section of Poly’s spellpaper and another, younger one attempting to make a meal of the topmost corner with its sharp teeth. To Poly’s surprise, Luck did little more than poke the hungry gremlin away from the paper with one finger, producing a scrap of cheese for it to eat instead; and as she passed the library he said to the other gremlin: “Yes, I can see that. But there’s nothing in there that deals with antimagic. It only mentions two powers.”

She called out a sleepy good morning in passing, grinning when she heard the startled “Morning?” from the library, and climbed into bed too early to catch Margaret sneaking in from the other side of the room.

Poly slept heavily and woke with difficulty to find that her hair was ominously long once again. Fortunately, Onepiece had prodded her in the ribs until she woke, and he trotted gleefully behind her with handfuls of hair as she wandered drowsily down the hall to find Luck. The halls were fuzzy, and though Poly was awake enough to be alarmed at it, she couldn’t work up the will to do anything more than yawn and avoid the worst of the obstacles that littered Luck’s floor. That some of the obstacles seemed to be people, she was dimly aware, and she was likewise aware that Onepiece’s odd magic had gone very prickly.

He said: “No touch!” in a tight little voice to the fuzzy figures, defensively huddling her hair closer to his chest, and scowled at them all until he and Poly had passed through to the library.

The blurry swirl of green and gold that was Luck said: “Huh. Having trouble again? You may as well sit down in here: there’s nothing I can do about it that your hair isn’t already doing.”

Poly did so, instinctively finding a comfortably stacked pile of books close to the reassuring presence that was Luck, and felt Onepiece climb into her lap.

“Poly should come to bed
earlier
,” he said crossly, and Poly smiled faintly. It was oddly comforting to watch Luck wandering the library with blue and white streamers of an unknown magic trailing after him. She let herself fall back into a half-doze, sleepily entranced actually feel the curse pushing and her hair growing, cancelling each other out.

Luck came and checked on her periodically, muttering unintelligible things beneath his breath, but once she heard him say: “
That’s
right, Poly. Let it push at you: I won’t let it get too strong.”

She became more and more awake by degrees; first to feel the growth of her hair slowing while the push of the curse became less irresistible, and then to feel the thin little arms that were wrapped around her waist. Onepiece’s head, she discovered, was lying on her chest: he was fast asleep and snoring occasionally. She hadn’t fallen over, much to her own surprise, but when she woke a little more thoroughly Poly found that this was because Luck had piled more books around her, effectively hemming her into her own little corner. She couldn’t help feeling that this was uncharacteristically thoughtful of him, and when he wandered past again with a patchily spelled cloak dangling from one arm, Poly gave him the warm smile she usually reserved for Michael. This made Luck stop in his tracks and gaze warily at her, his head tilted back, and Poly wondered with a faint sense of shock if she smiled at him so little that it was an occasion for surprise when she did so.