The Sleeper and the Spindle

“It varies,” said the queen. “In our kingdom, no more than twenty, perhaps thirty thousand people. This seems bigger than our cities. I would think fifty thousand people. Or more. Why?”

“Because,” said the dwarf, “they appear to all be coming after us.”

Sleeping people are not fast. They stumble, they stagger; they move like children wading through rivers of treacle, like old people whose feet are weighed down by thick, wet mud.

The sleepers moved towards the dwarfs and the queen. They were easy for the dwarfs to outrun, easy for the queen to outwalk. And yet, and yet, there were so many of them. Each street they came to was filled with sleepers, cobweb-shrouded, eyes tight closed or eyes open and rolled back in their heads showing only the whites, all of them shuffling sleepily forwards.

The queen turned and ran down an alleyway and the dwarfs ran with her.

“This is not honourable,” said a dwarf. “We should stay and fight.”

“There is no honour,” gasped the queen, “in fighting an opponent who has no idea that you are even there. No honour in fighting someone who is dreaming of fishing or of gardens or of long-dead lovers.”

“What would they do if they caught us?” asked the dwarf beside her.

“Do you wish to find out?” asked the queen.

“No,” admitted the dwarf.

They ran, and they ran, and they did not stop from running until they had left the city by the far gates, and had crossed the bridge that spanned the river.