“What do you mean, ‘no?’” I said. “We have a deal. I kept my end, now you have to keep yours.”

She showed me the face of a willful child. “I’m not doing it.”

Then she turned her back and summoned the royal guards. Their halberds were iron. Just the nearness of the cold metal weakened me. I left, but from the doorway I said, “This is not over.”

She actually stuck her tongue out at me.

• • • •

Well, what do you expect from an uneducated peasant trull who finds herself, through no accomplishment of her own, made up into a queen? Indeed, if it hadn’t been for all my hard labors, the king would have chopped off her empty head. And probably that of the braggadocious miller who started the whole imbroglio by claiming his lumpish daughter could work wonders.

“She can spin straw into gold,” he said, after several pints of sour ale in his village’s tavern, before passing out on his way to the jakes.

Unfortunately for him, his boasting was overheard by one of the listeners the king sends out to catch a whiff of any republican sentiments. The agent reported back, and word went up the chain to the royal ears.

Now, the king likes gold. And he isn’t too bright. It never occurred to him to ask why a man whose daughter could transform straw into gold was operating a run-down mill in a village whose net worth was two pigs and a blind cow.

He called in the miller, the man pale and shaking from his hangover and the king’s reputation for taking off heads for the slightest of reasons. Like telling lies that inconvenienced His Majesty.

The upshot: Miss Galumpha was put in a room with a spinning wheel and plenty of straw. The chamberlain made it clear that if the room was not filled with gold when he returned, she and dear papa would find themselves observing traffic through the town gate from the vantage of their heads on spikes.

• • • •

It was just the opportunity I had been waiting for, had been building up power for. When the palace was silent except for her quiet sobbing, I fiddled the brass lock on the chamber and entered.

I got right to the point. “I can spin that straw into gold for you.”

She gawped at me, speechless.

“No, really,” I said. “But I’ll want something in return.”

“All right,” she said. She lay back on the straw and began to pull her skirt up.

“Not that,” I said. “I will want your first-born child.”

“What for?” she said. I saw a surmise form in her doughy face. “You’re not going to eat it?”

“No, I’m not. You wouldn’t understand.”

She didn’t think about it too long. I doubt she’d ever thought about anything much more complicated than whether to put lard on her supper bread. “All right,” she said.

“Move out the way,” I said and when she went off into a corner, I started the wheel spinning and addressed myself to the task, establishing a flow of mana from me to the straw. When the connection was made, I poured almost everything I had into the transmogrification. When I finished, I was drained. But a gleaming pile of gold ingots stood where the straw had been.

“I’ll be back for the child when it’s time,” I said. She was gawping at the gold and just nodded as I left.

• • • •

Almost a year passed. I worked at rebuilding my store of mana, but otherwise kept to my little cottage deep in the forest. I prepared for the child’s arrival, painting a room light blue, with images of flowers and friendly beasts, a rainbow and a unicorn. I’d asked some sparrows to keep an eye on the miller’s daughter, now Queen, to let me know when she delivered.

A boy, they twittered.

“Excellent.” I set out for the palace. Of course, you know what happened. The refusal. The tongue.

“I’ll give you three days,” I said. “If you can’t tell me my name by then, I’ll bring the roof down on you.”

If I could have, I would have done it there and then. But I was still underpowered from the gold spinning. I would need the three days to build myself up.

I went back to my cottage and carefully laid out the inducing mandala before my doorstep. Then I began to dance the paths of mystic power.

My mistake: I had been in such a flather about her tongue-sticking rudeness that I went straight to my hideaway. And she came right behind me.

Again, you probably know what happened: my power was in my name, and as I danced along the mandala, my feet striking sparks from its arcane symbols, I chanted the mantra, which included my name.

Three days (and nights) of dancing are not easy, even for one like me. I kept thinking about the boy, the son I could never father, and all that we would do together. I would teach him and guide him, show him the ways of power, give him all that I had to give. He would enrich my lonely life.

At the end, I was staggering with fatigue when I stepped out of the endless path. But I spoke the congealing ergophones and the strength that had suffused the mandala flowed into me.

“Right,” I said. “Now we’ll see.”

But the Queen smiled her mean-girl smile at me and spoke my name. She didn’t know it shielded her from my power and I didn’t bother to explain.

• • • •

Nor did I explain how it takes less mana to undo than to do. I would have liked to have seen the king’s face when he found his strongroom filled with straw.

But I did see two fresh heads on the city gate.

The king disowned the child, gave him to a woodcutter.

I stole him. He loves the painted unicorn.

And I love him.