Fairly Wicked Tales (40 page)

When he finished weaving his magic, he turned back to her and gave her the lock of golden stands. She almost dropped it. “This is gold!”

“It is yours. None can deny its value. Use it to buy a place at the inn.”

Ricka swallowed. “I could buy an inn with this!”

“Then save it.” This simple solution pleased Rum greatly. “Keep it hidden. Spend the gold only as you need food or lodging until you can find a new home, one that won’t accuse you of stealing pies.”

She nodded and clutched the hair to her shallow chest. “Thank you. Thank you so much. Please, tell me your name.”

Rum grimaced. “I cannot.”

“But why?” Her lips parted in dismay.

Rum dared not tell her that a fairy’s true name gave mortals power of them, no matter how innocent she might seem. “I would not trouble you with a hermit’s simple name.”

“Oh please. I must know you!” She beseeched him with joined hands outstretched. “Who will I thank when I sleep in a warm bed, eating a warm meal?”

Rum smiled. “Thank the forest. Thank Toroia.” Then he turned himself into butterflies.

Such a blatant demonstration was foolish, even reckless, but the artistry and theater reminded Rum of all the games he and Glitta had played together. This was a trick, a fairy trick like those of old, but a kind one. Ricka would tell her children of the kind old butterfly man when she was old and gray.

The forest called to him, anxious with pain, and he soon forgot the girl and her plaintive cries. So many wounds marred the wood. At nightfall he returned to the graves of his family and slept, his grief still fresh, his tears still real, but the thrill of a single life saved tempered the raw pain of their passing.

The girl did not return for many days. She came to the wood again the day Rum tended an injured fox, calling for him. The poor fox had gnawed its own leg off, desperate to escape a cruel metal trap, and it hurt. At Ricka’s call he worked more urgently, focusing his anima with more force than he intended. A new leg spat out of the bloody stump and the fox yelped.

Rum mumbled a dozen apologies as the fox darted off, bushy tail between its legs, but he had returned its leg. How could it complain? He rushed toward the cries.

“Toroia!” Ricka called into the trees. “I must see you!”

Rum found her. He floated about her as air. Talking to her again was foolish—it would only encourage her—yet her name continued to tug at his heart. Ricka, like his Bricka. Against his better judgment, he showed himself once more.

“Toroia!” Her mouth opened wide as she ran to him. “You came!” She threw her arms around him and warmed him like the morning sun. Would his daughter have run to him like this if she had lived three more seasons? Joyous at his return?

“Ricka, I am here.” He brushed her brown hair almost without thinking. “What is it? What is so urgent?”

“The king!” she gushed. “He wants me back!”

Rum dared not believe that. “Rosella revealed her lie?”

“Oh no, not that!” Ricka hugged him tight. “It’s the hair! He saw the hair! He wants me to return to the castle!”

Rum’s anima grew chill as coldest winter. Greed filled the human king, as did avarice and spite. Ricka had run from him, exiled forever. He had never imagined she could go back.

“What did you tell him?”

She pulled away. “Nothing about you. I wouldn’t. I told him I made it.”

“The hair?”

“The gold.” She chewed her lower lip. “I told him I spun my hair into gold. I thought that if he saw it, if he believed I had done it out of devotion to him, he would welcome me back.”

“And he believed you?”

“Oh, yes!” Ricka recovered her earlier exuberance. “I’m headed to the castle now! He’s going to let me live in a tower!”

“No.” Rum stepped forward. “You cannot go to him.”

Ricka just frowned. “Why?”

“He will want more gold.” Rum put steel into his voice. “He will always want more gold.”

Ricka pondered that. “Then, why not make him more?”

More, of course. With these humans, it was always more.

“What I gave you was special,” Rum told her patiently, “a rare gift with a high price. I cannot make such gifts so often as your king will demand.”

Ricka trembled at that. “You can’t? But, Toroia—”

In the distance, frothing horses carried men. Rum sensed them closing. He hushed her with a raised hand. “Run.”

She glanced behind her. “Why? I don’t—”

Rum sensed the arrow before it flew from the trees. He turned himself to air. It thunked into the dirt as a king cursed from the woods, and then men and horses bore down on them. They surrounded Ricka, four of them, three wearing boiled cow. King Harold, the one who had fired the arrow, wore glittering steel. He was a thick, meaty human with a cruel, sharp face. His short brown hair clutched his silver crown like dead, twisted branches.

Ricka cowered from the frothing horses. King Harold forced his enslaved beast around. The weary horse cried as it chewed at the bit.

“Ricka.” Harold fixed her with hard wet pits of brown. “You are mine now.”

“Toroia?” Ricka looked this way and that. “Toroia, help me!”

Rum hated every moment he hid within the air, but he dared not reveal himself. King Harold knew of the fairies of Toroia Wood, as did his soldiers. Dozens had died before they learned that. The humans believed ground up fairy bones offered cures for dozens of ills, and so they did—for all but the fairy. A boiled cow man dragged Ricka onto his horse.

“Toroia!” she called again. “Please!”

Rum cursed himself as they rode away. He could not stop these men, but he could follow them. Soon the great pile of crushing stone rose ahead, dead rocks and tree bones. Rum watched them shove Ricka through the halls. He watched them drag her up the steps and into the tower. He watched King Harold grip her hair so hard he might twist her head off.

When he was done with her, threats made, he locked her in the tower with a dozen bushels of straw. Rum made himself seen again.

“Toroia!” She leapt up and hugged him tight. “The king. He asked me—”

“I heard.” Rum grimaced. “We must get you out of here.”

Rum knelt to open the manacle around her ankle. His hand erupted in fire. He fell into the straw, losing his hollow form and becoming himself. A shriveled body with backward legs.

Ricka gasped. “What is it?”

“Iron.” Rum pushed himself up and spit, angry as a nettled bear. King Harold had consulted the Witchmen of the Ranarok. He had learned the bane of fairies.

“What are you?” Ricka gazed at him with wide eyes.

“Am I hideous?” Rum grinned at her with long white teeth, still reeling from the sting of the iron. “Frightening?”

“No.” Ricka shook her head. “Of course not. But you are not the man you showed yourself to be.”

Rum settled his wrinkled legs beneath his quivering, hairless body. “No.” He sighed. “I suppose not.”

Ricka swallowed. “You heard him. All this straw, gold, all in one night. Or else—”

“Your head is his.” Rum repeated the king’s brutal threat. “A plaything for his daughter.”

“I’m sorry I showed him the hair. This is my fault.”

“I do not blame you.” Rum wiped his brow. “But I cannot free you.”

Her eyes grew wide and wet. “Then am I to die?”

“No.” He had lost Glitta, lost Bricka. He would not lose her. “You will not die.” He meant it before. He meant it now.

The tower held a massive amount of straw, more than he had ever seen. Spinning it all would consume a great deal of his anima, far more than healing a fox or mending a sapling. Yet what did he have to live for save her? Ricka? Bricka?

“Rest tonight, my child.” Rum turned his voice soft and soothing. He touched her lightly with his anima to muddle her mind and ease her fear. “Close your eyes.”

She did. It was easy. Just like that she was asleep.

Rum spent the rest of the night spinning straw into gold, throwing his anima into the work. The grueling task hurt him greatly, but on the morrow the tower swelled with human greed. The effort left him forever diminished, half what he had been before, and he would never recover—but Ricka would live.

Boots sounded on the tower stairs. Rum made himself air and stepped to the wall. The tower door crashed open.

“You did it.” King Harold gaped at the tower filled with gold. His steel had vanished. Now, he wore a dozen murdered wolves. “Up, you slattern!”

He shook Ricka. She stirred. She scrambled away from his clutching arms and greedy grin. “What do you want?”

Harold threw his arms out and spun, taking in the glory of his golden tower. “You did it! You made all this straw gold!”

Ricka looked about, mouth agape. “I did!”

Rum prayed his plan would work. Harold would never let Ricka go—he knew that—but once the king opened the iron manacle he could spirit them both away.

Ricka stood. “It’s done? I’m free?” She trembled and clutched herself.

Harold stared about the tower with a familiar gleam in his eye. The tower held enough wealth to buy King Harold’s subjects five hundred harvest festivals, but Rum knew the gold would not be spent for such. It would buy the king’s horses and Princess Rosella’s gilded toys.

Harold walked to the metal peg still locked into the floor. He produced a key. Rum readied himself and then choked on dismay. Harold simply turned the key, removed the peg, and picked up the iron chain. The manacle remained on Ricka’s ankle.

“You’re coming with me,” he said.

Ricka looked beaten. “To where?”

“The western tower.” Her brutally jerked on the iron chain.

Ricka followed him meekly and Rum thought no worse of her. Harold had trained her, abused her, broken her like all the other animals in his castle. Rum evaluated Harold and the manacle at every step. He would save his daughter, but how?

The next tower held twice as much straw as the first. Harold locked the peg into the floor and then took Ricka’s chin in one thick hand. He squeezed her face hard enough to turn her red.

“All gold, by tomorrow.” He devoured her with his eyes. “Or I’ll let my guards have you, and then I’ll take your head.”

Rum almost cut him down right then and there. A single lick of anima would poison Harold’s blood or boil his skin, yet he restrained himself with a great effort. Toroia, his mother, taught that murder was sin. Disappointing her would be more painful than chewing off his own hand. He would die first.

After Harold left, Rum made himself seen again.

“I’ll never be free.” Ricka wept. “We’re doomed.”

“Don’t despair.” Rum marched around the straw-filled tower, backward legs bending slightly lower than usual. He felt sick. He had spent too much of himself in the prior night.

“If we spin this tower, he will only ask for more.” Rum grimaced. “I cannot spin forever.”

“What will happen to you?”

“I will end, as all things must end.”

Ricka scrambled toward him and then tripped at the length of her chain. “No. You can’t die.”

“I do not plan too,” he assured her, though he feared this an idle boast. “Test the manacle. Can you open it?”

Ricka sat, and tugged, and pulled with all her might. She shook her head and despaired.

Rum sighed. “Then I must spin this straw.”

“No! You cannot!”

“I will not let his guards have you.” A seething disgust filled Rum as he imagined men doing to Ricka as they lusted to do, always. Brutal, carnal, evil.

Ricka sniffled. “Why are you so concerned with me?”

“Because I had a daughter, days ago.” Rum’s muddy eyes grew wet. “Now she’s gone.”

Ricka cast about for any hope. “There must be another way.”

“There’s not.” Rum put her to sleep.

The night’s work taxed him even more than the last. By the morning Rum barely had enough anima to make himself air. His throat bled, his stomach churned, and his brittle bones swelled, hollow and sore. His skin peeled like bark on a dead tree.

King Harold opened his tower and chortled. “My golden slattern! My treasure trove!” He pulled Ricka to her feet and hugged her. “You’ve done it, you wonderful little whore!”

“Now let me go,” Ricka pleaded.

“No.” King Harold shoved her to the ground with a grand smile. “I have other towers. You will spin for me until your fingers bleed, or I’ll feed you to my dogs.”

Rum pulled himself from the air. “King Harold.”

King Harold’s eyes widened with delight. He pulled a heavy sword from his belt and raised it. Iron. Of course.

“Rather puny, aren’t you?” Harold frowned.

“It is I who spun this straw to gold, I who made all you see here.” Rum kept himself up through sheer willpower, trembling like a leaf. “It is I who you must imprison, not Ricka.”

King Harold licked his lips. “I know this, of course. I am not a foolish man.”

“Fool or not, I cannot spin unless you let me rest.” Rum kept his tone even. “When I am rested I will make more gold.”

“No.” King Harold’s eyes hardened. “You will flee as soon as I show my back. I know how you fairies work. I have read all the Witchman scrolls. You are free to come and go as you wish, so long as I don’t speak your true name.”

“Correct.”

“So give it.” Harold’s brown pits glittered with greed and lust. “Give me your true name, so I may bind you to me. Do this, and I will release your slattern.”

Ricka just stared at him, eyes brimming with tears. She said nothing, and Rum did not expect she would. He was old, spent, lost. She had so much to live for.

“Agreed,” Rum said. “When she is gone from your palace three days, I will give you my name. My true name.”

Harold snapped his fingers to someone outside the door, and a cowering servant rushed in with another manacle. “You will wear this.”

“Iron hurts me. It will not compel me.”

“I know that. Now know this. I will wait your three days, but only if you wear this manacle. Now.”

Rum sighed. “As you wish.” He did not scream when the servant fixed the manacle on his ankle, though he wished too.

Satisfied, Harold kicked the servant. “Unlock her pin.”

The servant did so. Ricka watched Rum as she stood, free once more. “Please. Toroia--”

“That’s not my name,” he reminded her gently.