Serilda yelped, jumping away from the unexpected, feather-soft touch along her wrist.
“I’m sorry!” said Gild, launching himself backward. His leg hit the spinning wheel and sent it toppling onto its side.
Serilda grimaced from the crash, her hands flying to her mouth.
The wheel spun half a turn before coming to a stop.
Gild looked from the fallen wheel, back up to Serilda, grimacing. “I’m sorry,” he said again. His face pinched—with an apology, and maybe embarrassment. “I shouldn’t have. I know. I couldn’t resist, and you were so lost in the story, and I…”
Serilda’s hand went to cover the bare skin of her wrist, still tingling from his barely-there caress.
Gild followed the movement. His face fell into something like despair. “You’re so … so soft,” he whispered.
A clipped barking laugh escaped her. “Soft! What are you—” She stopped short, her gaze falling on the wall behind the toppled spinning wheel, and all the bobbins that had been empty when her story had begun. They now gleamed with spun gold, like gems in a jewelry case.
She looked down at the floor, completely bare, but for her traveling cloak and the candlestick, still burning strong. “You’re finished.” She returned her focus to Gild. “When did you finish?”
He considered for a moment. “Just now when Shrub Grandmother showed up. It is Shrub Grandmother, isn’t it?”
His voice was serious, almost as though the wizened old woman really had appeared before them.
Serilda pressed her lips against a smile. “Don’t spoil the story for yourself.”
His smirk turned knowing. “It’s definitely her.”
Serilda frowned. “I didn’t realize you’d stopped. I suppose I could have been helping more.”
“You were quite engrossed. As was I—” His last word broke off into something strangled. Again his gaze dipped to her bare arm and suddenly he was turning away, his cheeks flaring red.
Serilda thought of how often he seemed to find reasons to touch her, even when he didn’t have to. Brushing her fingers when she handed him the straw. Or the way he had nuzzled her hand the last time, and how the memory sent an unexpected thrill through her even now.
She knew it was only because she was alive. She was not a dark one, cold as ice in the dead of winter. She was not a ghost, who felt like they would dissolve if you so much as breathed on them. She knew it was only because—to this boy who had not touched a mortal human in ages, if ever—she was a novelty.
But that didn’t keep her nerves from shivering at every bit of unexpected contact.
Gild cleared his throat. “I would say we have, maybe, half an hour before sunrise. Is there … more to the story?”
“There’s always more to the story,” Serilda said automatically.
A grin like the thaw of spring came over his face. Gild plopped himself down on the floor, crossing his legs and cupping his chin. He reminded her of her charges at the school, attentive and eager.
“Go on, then,” he said.
She laughed, then shook her head. “Not until you answer some of my questions.”
He frowned. “What questions?”
Serilda sat against the wall opposite him. “For starters, why are you dressed like you’re getting ready for bed?”
He sat up straighter, then looked down at his clothes. He raised his arms, his sleeves billowing. “What are you talking about? It’s a perfectly respectable shirt.”
“No, it isn’t. Respectable men wear tunics. Or doublets. Or jerkins. Not just a poufy blouse. You look like a peasant. Or a lord who’s lost his valet.”
He guffawed. “A lord! That’s a fine idea. Don’t you see?” He stretched out his legs in front of him, crossing his ankles. “I’m the lord of this whole castle. What else could I possibly want?”
“I’m being serious,” she said.
“So am I.”
“You make gold. You could be a king! Or at least a duke or an earl or something.”
“Is that what you think? Dearest Serilda, the moment the Erlking learned of your supposed talent, he brought you here and locked you in the dungeon, demanding that you use your skill to benefit him. When people know that you can do this”—he gestured at the pile of gold-filled bobbins—“then that is all they care about. Gold and wealth and riches and what you can do for them. It is not a gift, but a curse.” He scratched behind his ear, taking the momentary pause to work a kink from his shoulders, before sighing. It sounded sad. “Besides. Nothing that I want can be purchased with gold.”
“Then why do you keep taking my jewelry?”
His smile returned, a little impish. “Magic requires payment. How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not making it up just to steal from you.”
“But what does that mean, exactly?”
“Just what it says. No payment, no magic. No magic, no gold.”
“Where did you learn that? And how did you come to have this gift? Or curse?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Like I said before, it might be a blessing from Hulda. Or maybe I was born with this magic? I haven’t the faintest idea. And learning to take payment for it…” He shrugged. “It’s just something that I know. That I’ve always known. At least as far as I can remember.”
“And how does he not notice you?”
His look turned questioning.
“The Erlking is going through all this trouble to bring me here to spin this gold, when he has a gold-spinner living in his own castle. Does he not know about you?”
Unexpected panic flared in Gild’s eyes. “No, he doesn’t. And he can’t. If you tell him…” He fumbled for words. “I’m trapped enough as it is. I won’t be enslaved to him as well.”
“Of course I won’t say anything. He would kill me if he found out the truth, anyway.”
Gild considered this, his momentary alarm fading.
“But that doesn’t really answer my question. How can he not notice you? You’re … you’re not like the other ghosts.”
“Oh, he notices me plenty.” This was said with a fair bit of smugness. “But I’m just the resident poltergeist, remember? He notices what I want him to notice, and I want him to notice that I am a complete and utter nuisance. I doubt it’s ever crossed his mind that I could be something more, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
Serilda frowned. It still struck her as unlikely that the king would be so ignorant about a gold-spinning ghost in his court, even a meddlesome one.
Seeing her suspicion, Gild scooted closer. “It’s a big, crowded castle, and he avoids me whenever possible. The feeling is mutual.”
“I suppose,” she said, sensing that there was more to their history, but that Gild didn’t care to reveal it. “And you’re sure you’re a ghost?”
“A poltergeist,” he clarified. “It’s a particularly obnoxious kind of ghost.”
She hummed, unconvinced.
“Why? What do you think I am?”
“I’m not sure, but I’ve already concocted a dozen stories in my head about you, if not more.”
“Stories? About me?” His expression brightened.
“That can’t be a surprise. A mysterious stranger who appears magically whenever a fair damsel is in need of rescuing? Who dresses like a drunken earl, but can create gold at his fingertips. Who is flippant and aggravating, but somehow charming, too, when he wants to be.”
He snickered. “It was a convincing start, but now I know you’re only mocking me.”
Serilda’s pulse had started to flutter. Never had she been so candid with a boy before. A handsome boy, whose touches, no matter how faint, brought her whole body sparking to life. It would be easiest, she knew, to laugh her comment away. Of course she was making it up.
But he could be charming. When he wanted to be.
And she would never forget the feel of his arms around her, comforting her when she needed it most.
“You’re right,” she said. “The evidence suggests that a maiden needn’t be fair at all in order for you to come to her rescue. Which, most confounding, only adds to the mystery.”
The silence that followed was suffocating, and Serilda knew that she waited a heartbeat too long, hoping for what? She wouldn’t admit it even to herself.
She shook off her disappointment and met Gild’s eye again. He was staring at her, but she could not read the look. Confusion? Pity?
Enough of that.
Sitting straighter, she declared, “I think you’re a sorcerer.”
His eyebrows shot upward in surprise. Then he started to laugh, a great, bellowing sound that warmed her to her toes.
“I am not a sorcerer.”
“That you know of,” she said, lifting one finger toward him. “You’re under some dark spell that’s caused you to forget a sacred oath you once made to always come to the aid of a fa—of a worthy maiden when she calls on you.”
He fixed her with a look and repeated, “I am not a sorcerer.”
Serilda mirrored his expression. “I’ve watched you spin straw into gold. You are a sorcerer. You cannot convince me otherwise.”
His smile broke through again. “Maybe I’m one of the old gods. Maybe I am Hulda.”
“Don’t think the idea didn’t occur to me. But no. Gods are pompous and distant and in love with their own brilliance. You’re none of those things.”
“Thank you?”
She smirked. “Well, you might be a little in love with your own brilliance.”
Gild shrugged, not disagreeing.
She tapped her fingers against her mouth, watching him. He truly was a mystery, and one she felt compelled to figure out—if it was only because she needed the distraction from every horrible thing that wanted to crowd into her thoughts.
He was like no fairy or kobold she had ever heard of, and she did not think he was a zwerge or a land wight or any of the forest folk. True, many stories revolved around the magic ones assisting lost travelers or poor fishermen or desperate maidens—for a price. Always for a price. And in that regard, Gild did seem to fit the description. But he had no wings, no tall ears, no pointed teeth, no devil’s tail. He did have a subtle mischief, she had to admit. A teasing smile. An eye for trouble. Yet his mannerisms were thoughtful and precise.
He was magical. A gold-spinner.
A witch?
Maybe.
A godchild of Hulda?
Perhaps.
But nothing felt quite right.
Again, she found herself inspecting his edges. They were as solid as any boy she’d ever met in the village. There was no haziness about him, as though he were about to dissolve into the air. No transparent limbs, no foggy silhouettes. He seemed real. He seemed alive.
Gild held her gaze while she studied him, never flinching, never breaking eye contact, never turning away in embarrassment. A small smile clung to his lips while he waited for her proclamation.
Finally, she declared, “I have made up my mind. Whatever you might be, you are definitely not a ghost.”