The Price
(1999)*
Patricia Briggs
Molly couldn't recall just when the first time she'd seen him had been. Never before this summer certainly.
She did know that it wasn't until the fourth market of the season that she'd begun to watch for him. It was then the market steadied to a trickling flow of people rather than the flood that came initially. Sitting at her booth, she had time to observe things that on busier days escaped her notice.
He would wait until she was occupied with a customer before coming to her small booth and touching the weaving on the tables. If she stopped to talk to him, he turned away and melted into the crowd as if he were uninterested.
Her first thought was that he was a thief, but nothing was ever missing. The next explanation that occurred to her was that he was too abashed by her looks to approach. She knew that many men, even ones she'd known in childhood, were intimidated by her looks.
Being beautiful was better than being ugly, she supposed, but it caused quite as many problems as it solved. For instance, it cost her several weeks before the idea that he might be worried that she would find him frightening crossed her mind.
It wasn't that he was ugly, but he didn't look like anyone she'd ever seen either. Small and slight—he moved oddly, as if his joints didn't work quite the way hers did. He reminded her of the stories about the fauns with human torsos on goat's feet that ran through the hills. She'd even stolen a quick glance at his feet once, when he thought she was haggling with a customer—but his soft leather boots flexed just as hers did.
If she'd been certain that he was frightened of her, she would have let him choose his own time to approach her. But she had watched him closely last market day, and he didn't seem the sort to be easily intimidated. So she brought her small loom with her, the one she used for linen napkins, though usually she preferred to work with wool since wool caught her dyes better. The loom made her appear to be busy when there were no customers about—and so she hoped to lure him to the booth.
He wandered over casually, and she pretended not to notice him. She waited to speak until he became engrossed in a particularly bright orange-patterned blanket before she spoke.
"It's my own dye," she said without looking up. "There's a plant in the swamp that a marsher collects for me each spring. I've never seen a color that can match it—rumpelstiltskin, they call it."
He laughed, before he caught himself; it sounded rusty and surprised, as if he didn't do it often. She wasn't certain what the joke was, but she liked the sound of his laughter, so she smiled into her weaving.
"I know it," he said finally, when she thought that he'd decided to leave. "A wretched-looking plant to be responsible for such beauty."
She looked at him then, seeing his face clearly for the first time. His features were normal enough, though his nose was a bit long for the almost delicate mouth and eyes. His skin was mottled and roughened, as though someone had carved him from old oak and forgotten to sand the wood smooth. The effect was odd and unsettling.
He stood still under her regard, waiting for her judgment. She smiled, turning her attention back to her weaving. "Beauty is as beauty does, sir. A blanket will keep you warm whether it is orange or dust-colored."
"But you made it beautiful."
She nodded. "That I did, for I must sell it, and most people look for pretty things. My face calls more people to my booth than might otherwise come here, and I am glad of it. But the blanket I sleep with is plain brown, because I find that it suits me so. Your face, sir, would not cause me to cross the street to look at you, but the way you touch my weavings led me to tease you into this conversation."
He laughed again. "Plain-spoken miss, eh?"
She nodded, then inquired mildly, "You are a weaver as well, sir?"
"And you are a witch?" His voice imitated hers.
It was her turn to laugh as she showed him the calluses on her fingers. "Your hands have the same marks as mine."
He looked at her hands, then at his own. "Yes," he said. "I am a weaver."
They talked for some time, until he relaxed with her. He knew far more than she about weaving in general, but he knew hardly anything about dyeing. When she asked him about it, he shrugged and said that his teacher hadn't used many colors. Then he made some excuse and left.
She wondered what it was that had bothered him so as she packed the merchandise that hadn't sold in the back of the pony cart with the tables she used to display her goods.
"Patches," she said to the patient little pony as he started back to the mill, "he never even told me his name."
On the next market day, a week later, she brought some of her dyes with her in a basket, making certain that she included some of the orange he had admired so much. She left it out in the open, and it wasn't long before he approached.
She kept her gaze turned to the loom on her lap as she spoke. "I brought some dyes for you to try. If you like any of them, I'll tell you how to make them."
"A gift?" he said. He knelt in front of the little basket and touched a covered pot gently. "Thank you."
There was something in his voice that caused her to look at his face. When she saw his expression, she turned her attention back to her weaving so that he would not know she had been watching him: there were some things not meant for public viewing. When she looked up again, he was gone.
She didn't see him at all the next time she set up her booth, but when she started to place her weavings in the back of the cart, there was already something in it. She pushed her things aside and unfolded the piece he'd left for her.
Her fingers told her it was wool, but her eyes would have called it linen, for the yarn was so finely spun. The pattern was done in natural colors of wool, ivory, white, and rich brown. It was obviously meant for a tablecloth, but it was finer than any she'd ever seen. Her breath caught in her chest at the skill necessary to weave such a cloth.
Slowly she refolded it and nestled it among her own things. Stepping to the seat, she sent Patches toward home; her fingers could still feel the wool.
The cloth was worth a small fortune, more than her weavings would bring her in a year—obviously a courting gift. To accept such a thing from a stranger was unthinkable . . . but he didn't seem like a stranger.
She thought about his odd appearance, but could find no revulsion in her heart—perhaps only someone who was very ugly or very beautiful could understand how little beauty mattered. The man who had created the table cover had beauty in his soul. She thought of the clever fingers caressing her weaving when he thought she wasn't looking, of the man who had been so afraid to frighten her, of the man who had bared his ugliness so that she would not be deceived into thinking he was something other than what he was. She thought of the man who gave her a courting gift and the gift of time to go with it. Molly smiled.
The path she took approached the old mill from behind, where the pony's field was. With an ease that was half skill and half habit for both of them, Molly backed the pony until the cart was sheltered by an overhang. She unharnessed him and turned him loose to graze in his paddock. She covered the wagon with a canvas that fastened down tightly enough to protect her goods from rain or mice until the next market day. She left his gift there until she knew what to do about it—but she was still smiling as she walked through the narrow way between the mill and the cottage where she lived with her father.
The millpond's rushing water was so loud that she had no warning of the crowd that was assembled in front of the mill. Half a dozen young nobles gathered laughing and joking with each other while her father stood still among them with an expression on his face she hadn't seen since the day her mother died.
Fear knotted her stomach, and she took a step back, intending to go for help. Two things brought her to an abrupt stop. The first was that she finally recognized the colors that one of the young men was wearing—royal purple. There was no help to be had against the king. The second was that one of the young men had seen her and was even now tugging on the king's shirt.
She'd never seen him herself, though he had a hunting cottage nearby, for he seldom bothered to approach the village, generally bringing his own amusements with him. She'd heard that he was beautiful, and he was. His clothing showed both the cost of his tailor and the obsession with hunting that kept him fit. His hair was the shade of deepest honey and his eyes were limpid pools of chocolate. Despite the warm color, his eyes were the coldest that she had ever seen.
"Ah," he announced. "Here she is, the fair damsel for whom we have waited. But she starts like a frightened doe. I weary of speech. Kemlin, I pray you, remind us of why we are here."
Molly saw the boy for the first time. A page, she thought, though she really knew nothing of court rankings. He looked frightened, but he spoke clearly enough.
"Sire, you asked me to wander about the town and tell you something amusing. So I walked the streets from cockcrow to sunset and returned to your lodge."
"And what did you report?" asked the king.
"I saw a spotted dog run off with a chicken from--;"
The king held up a hand, smiling sweetly. "About the miller's daughter, I pray you."
The rebuke was mild enough, but the boy flinched.
"I am sorry, sire. I came upon three men eating bread near the fountain at the center of town. Each apparently had a daughter who was passing fair. Each father tried to outdo the other as he spoke of his daughter, until at last the miller--"
"How did you know it was the miller?" The king's voice was soft, but the titters of the other aristocrats told her that he was baiting the poor boy.
"I knew him because you sent me to the mill last week to find some fresh flour to powder my hair with, sire."
"Ah, yes. Continue."
"The miller, sire, stood and said that not only was his daughter the most beautiful woman in the kingdom, but that she was such a weaver as might spin flax into silk, wool into silver fit to bedeck a queen's neck—nay, she might even spin straw into gold if she so chose."
Molly couldn't help glancing at her father, who stood so silently in the courtyard. His gaze when it met hers was full of sorrow. She smiled at him, a small smile, just to tell him that she knew it was not his fault that the bored nobles had decided to prey on something other than deer.
"After you told me your story this morning, what was it I said?" asked the king in a faintly puzzling tone, as if he couldn't quite recall.
"Sire, you said that if the paragon of maidenly virtues existed so fair, and so skilled: that she must be your bride." The boy looked at her now, with a wealth of guilt in his eyes.
Poor baited lamb, she thought, so tormented himself, but still able to feel compassion for another victim.
When the laughter died down, the king turned to her. "Fair maiden, I see that the first claim was not exaggerated. You have hair the color of mink and eyes like the sky." He paused, but she did not respond, so he continued. "Therefore, you and your father will come to my lodge as my guests. Tonight, after we dine, you will be shown a room full of flax that you may spin into fine silk thread. If you do not . . . what was it I said, Kemlin?"
Molly knew, and she was certain the boy did, too, that the king remembered perfectly well what it was he had said.
"Sire," said the page reluctantly, "you said that if she did not, you would have the mill torn to the ground, her father's tongue put out for lying, and the girl herself beheaded in the town square."
The king smiled, revealing a pair of dimples. "Yes. I remember now. You will come with us now."
Though the king offered her a seat pillion behind one of his nobles, Molly asked to walk with her father. The king seemed ill-inclined to press the matter, so she clasped her father's hand in hers and he returned her grasp until her hand hurt—though nothing of his torment showed on his face.
The king's hunting cottage was a castle in its own right, filled with assorted young men and women. Molly and her father sat together at the dining table, two ducks in a room of swans. Swans are vicious animals for all their beauty.
After the meal, she was taken to a room as big as her father's cottage filled waist-high with flax, with a small spinning wheel in the corner. She was given a small, closed lantern to light the chamber. She nodded goodbye to her father and waited until the door shut before she allowed her shoulders to droop.
The flax was high quality, and there was more of it than she would ever be able to afford if she saved for the rest of her life. But it was flax, and no matter how good the yam she spun, it would make fine linen cloth, but not silk. Even if fine linen thread would have been acceptable, she would never be able to spin so much in a single night.
Despair clogged her throat and misted her eyes and she kicked a pile of flax and watched it drift to the top of another pile. Wiping her arm across her eyes, she waded through flax to the spinning wheel and sat down to spin. Hours passed, and weariness slowed her quick fingers.
"Miss?"
She cried out in surprise.
The man from the marketplace shrank back as if to fade to wherever it was he'd come from.
"No," she said quickly, reaching out to him. She didn't know how he could have entered this room, but it was good to see a friendly face. "Please don't go, I was only startled. How did you get in here?"
"I heard . . ." he said hesitantly, watching her as if he expected her to scream again, "that you were here and why. It sounded as if you might need help."
She laughed; it sounded forlorn, so she stopped.
Shaking her head, she said, "There is only one wheel here—and even if you can spin faster than I, you cannot spin flax into silk."
"You might be surprised," he said, pulling back his hood, revealing funny tufts of red hair. "Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a boy, not a bad boy, but not particularly good either. In a mountain near his village were caves that all of the village children had been warned against, but, as he wasn't as smart as he thought himself, the boy decided to go exploring in the caves. He got lost, of course, and spent a long time wandering through the caves until his candle burned to nothing. He tried to continue and fell down a hole, breaking any number of bones."
Molly thought about the odd way that he moved and winced in sympathy. "How did you survive?"
"Ah," he said, "that is the crux of this story. I was saved by a dwarf, an outcast from his own people, who was very lonely indeed to want the company of a human. He used magic to save me, to let me walk and speak normally and to repair my addled wits. He taught me how to weave, an odd talent for a dwarf, I know, but he was quite good at it. I stayed with him until he died, several years ago—of old age, I should add, in case you suspect me of any foul deeds."
She hadn't, but it was nice to know.
He was quiet for a moment; then he said, "He taught me magic as well. If you like, I can spin your flax into silk, but magic always has a price. The price for my life was to live it as you see, something not quite human, but clearly nothing else."
"What would be the price of spinning all of this to silk?"
"Something you value," he replied.
She bowed her head in thought and removed a copper ring from her finger. "This belonged to a young man I loved, who loved me in return. He was called to fight in the king's army. Last year his brother brought back his body. Will ...
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