Serilda turned away to examine their progress. Though time seemed to pass in staggers and blinks, she was pleased to see that they were more than a third of the way through their task, and the bobbins full of golden thread were beginning to pile up beside him. At least Gild was efficient.
For that alone, Mother Weber would have liked him.
Serilda picked up one of the spools of thread to study it. The golden thread was thick, like yarn, but hard and pliant, like a chain. She wondered how much one of these gold-covered bobbins would be worth. Probably more than her father made from his miller’s toll in an entire season.
“You had to say straw?” Gild asked, breaking the silence. He shook his head, even as he gathered the next bundle of stalks. “You couldn’t have told him you could spin gold from silk, or even wool?” He opened his palms and Serilda could see that they were covered in scratches from the brittle material.
She grinned apologetically. “I may not have fully considered the repercussions.”
He grunted.
“Do you mean to tell me that you can spin gold from anything?”
“Anything that can be spun. My favorite material to work with is the fur of a dahut.”
“A dahut? What is that?”
“Similar to a mountain goat,” he said. “Except the legs on one side of their body are shorter than the other. Helpful for climbing steep mountainsides. Trouble is, it means they can only go around the mountain in one direction.”
Serilda stared at him. He seemed serious, and yet?…?
It was awfully like something that she would have made up. She would sooner believe in a tatzelwurm.
Of course, given the creatures she’d seen hung up on the Erlking’s walls, she could no longer be sure that anything was mere myth.
Still.
A dahut?
A bark of laughter escaped her. “Now I know you’re teasing.”
His eyes glimmered, but he did not respond either way.
Serilda lit up, struck with sudden inspiration. “Would you care to hear a story?”
He frowned, surprised. “Like a fairy tale?”
“Exactly. I always like hearing a story when I work. Or … in my case, making one up. Time slips away and before you know it, you’re finished. And all the while, you’ve been transported somewhere vibrant and exciting and wonderful.”
He didn’t sayno,exactly, but his expression made it clear he thought this was a bizarre suggestion.
But Serilda had created stories at far less passionate invitations.
She paused in her work just long enough to think, to let the first threads of a tale begin to wind themselves through her imagination.
Then she began.
It has long been known that when the wild hunt rides beneath a full moon, they often claim for themselves lost and unhappy souls, coaxing them along on their destructive path. Oftentimes, those poor souls are never seen again. Drunkards get lost on their way home from the tavern. Sailors docked for the week will wander off, unnoticed by their peers. It is said that anyone who dares step into the moonlight during the witching hour could find themselves the next morning alone and shivering, covered in blood and gristle from whatever beast the hunt captured in the night, though they have no memory of the events that transpired. It’s a seduction of sorts, the call of the hunt. Some men and women long for the chance to be feral themselves. Vicious and brutal. Where bloodlust sings a raucous ballad in their veins. There was a time, even, when it was thought to be a gift, to be taken for one night by the hunt, so long as you lived through to see the sun rise and did not lose yourself in the night. If you did not become one of the phantoms destined for eternal servitude to the Erlking’s court.
But even those who once believed that to join the hunt was its own sort of dark honor knew that there was one type of soul who had no business being among the ghouls and hounds.
The innocent souls of children.
But every decade or so, it was this very prize that the hunt sought. For the Erlking had made it his duty to bring a new child to his love, the cruel huntress Perchta, whenever she should grow bored of the last gift he’d presented. Which was, of course, when that child should grow to be too old for her liking.
At first, the Erlking claimed whatever lost babe might be wandering in the Aschen Wood. But over time he prided himself on securing for his love not just any child—but the best child. The most beautiful. The most clever. The most amusing, if you will.
It once so happened that the Erlking heard rumors of a young princess who was proclaimed far and wide to be the most lovely girl the world had ever known. She had golden, bouncy curls and laughing sky-blue eyes, and all who met her were charmed by her exuberance. As soon as he heard tell of the child, the Erlking was determined to claim her and bring her to his mistress.