She left, then, with the dwarfs. None of the people in that room or on the steps dared to stop them or would ever understand what had happened.
mile or so from the castle, in a clearing in the Forest of Acaire, the queen and the dwarfs lit a fire of dry twigs, and in it they burned the thread and the fibre. The smallest dwarf chopped the spindle into fragments of black wood with his axe, and they burned them too. The wood chips gave off a noxious smoke as they burned, which made the queen cough, and the smell of old magic was heavy in the air.
Afterwards, they buried the charred wooden fragments beneath a rowan tree.
By evening they were on the outskirts of the forest, and had reached a cleared track. They could see a village across the hill, and smoke rising from the village chimneys.
“So,” said the dwarf with the brown beard. “If we head due west, we can be at the mountains by the end of the week, and we’ll have you back in your palace in Kanselaire within ten days.”
“Yes,” said the queen.
“And your wedding will be late, but it will happen soon after your return, and the people will celebrate, and there will be joy unbounded through the kingdom.”
“Yes,” said the queen. She said nothing, but sat on the moss beneath an oak tree and tasted the stillness, heartbeat by heartbeat.
There are choices, she thought, when she had sat long enough. There are always choices.
She made one.
The queen began to walk, and the dwarfs followed her.
“You do know we’re heading east, don’t you?” said one of the dwarfs.
“Oh yes,” said the queen.
“Well, that’s all right then,” said the dwarf.
They walked to the east, all four of them, away from the sunset and the lands they knew, and into the night.
Books By Neil Gaiman from Bloomsbury
Novels
Illustrated by Chris Riddell
Fortunately, the Milk . . .
The Graveyard Book
Coraline
Odd and the Frost Giants
Short Stories
M is for Magic
Picture Books
Illustrated by Dave McKean
Crazy Hair
The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish
The Wolves in the Walls
Illustrated by Charles Vess
Instructions
Blueberry Girl
Illustrated by Gris Grimly
The Dangerous Alphabet
Illustrated by Adam Rex
Chu’s Day
Chu’s First Day at School
Graphic Novels
Illustrated by Dave McKean
Signal to Noise
The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr Punch
MirrorMask
Illustrated by P. Craig Russell
Coraline
The Graveyard Book: Volume One
The Graveyard Book: Volume Two
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney
This story first appeared in Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales,
published in 2013 by Little, Brown
First published in Great Britain in October 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
This eBook edition first published in Great Britain in 2015
www.bloomsbury.com
www.gaimanbooks.com
Bloomsbury is a registered trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Text copyright © Neil Gaiman 2013, 2014
Illustrations copyright © Chris Riddell 2014
The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asserted
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying
or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4088 5964 3 (Print)
ISBN 978 1 4088 6853 9 (eBook)