The Sleeper and the Spindle

id it work?” asked a dwarf.

“I do not know,” said the queen. “But I feel for her, poor thing. Sleeping her life away.”

“You slept for a year in the same witch-sleep,” said the dwarf. “You did not starve. You did not rot.”

The figure on the bed stirred, as if she were having a bad dream from which she was fighting to wake herself.

The queen ignored her. She had noticed something on the floor beside the bed. She reached down and picked it up. “Now this,” she said. “This smells of magic.”

“There’s magic all through this,” said the smallest dwarf.

“No, this,” said the queen. She showed him the wooden spindle, the base half wound around with yarn. “This smells of magic.”

“It was here, in this room,” said the old woman, suddenly. “And I was little more than a girl. I had never gone so far before, but I climbed all the steps, and I went up and up and round and round until I came to the topmost room. I saw that bed, the one you see, although there was nobody in it. There was only an old woman, sitting on the stool, spinning wool into yarn with her spindle. I had never seen a spindle before. She asked if I would like a go. She took the wool in her hand and gave me the spindle to hold. She held my thumb and pressed it against the point of the spindle until blood flowed, and she touched the blood to the thread. And then she said –”

Another voice interrupted her. A young voice it was, a girl’s voice, but still sleep-thickened. “I said, now I take your sleep from you, girl, just as I take from you your ability to harm me in my sleep, for someone needs to be awake while I sleep. Your family, your friends, your world will sleep too. And then I lay down on the bed, and I slept, and they slept, and as each of them slept I stole a little of their life, a little of their dreams, and as I slept I took back my youth and my beauty and my power. I slept and I grew strong. I undid the ravages of time and I built myself a world of sleeping slaves.”