Free Straw Into Gold by Gary D. Schmidt

he about to start on the furniture, or has he left some stew for me?" said Innes, rising on an elbow.
    "Should someone wounded be eating?" I asked.
    "Should someone wounded be eating!" he yelled back.
    "Though it was just a nick, hardly anything to talk about at all."
    "Hardly anything to talk about?"
    "At all."
    Innes sighed deeply. "Daggers, arrows, horses. And now to die of starvation, when the food is so close by that I can smell it."
    "Then here," I said, and I filled my own trencher up and sat beside him on the bed, holding the bowl for him as he spooned the meaty stuff into his mouth, feeding himself so quickly that he almost forgot to breathe, and gasping at the pleasure of the taste.
    The miller and his wife stood by the fire quietly, hand in hand, watching us both. They fitted into each other, as if the curves and bumps of their bodies had grown accustomed. They stared at us, stared as though amazed. "He's so like," she said."The way he holds his head, the way he speaks, the corners of his smiles. They are all the same."
    But the miller shook his head. "We've hoped a thousand times, and a thousand times learned the better of it."
    "But this one time."
    "No, wife. No. Now, these are the boys the Grip wants, and they'll be needing to get away. And no later than morning." He turned to us."He'll watch at the main road, so you'll need another way. A fistful of gold and we'd put an ocean between you and the king, but there is none to be had here."
    "If we had the gift of it, we could spin some out," I said.
    The miller and his wife stared at me.
    "Spin some out?" he said.
    "Yes, spin some out. Da does it often enough, just for the pleasure of the spinning. Afterward we leave it outside for the birds."
    The miller and his wife were very still. Then, slowly, the miller's wife reached out her hand and touched my shoulder. Her eyes welled. "Boy, what is your name?"
    "Tousle."
    She turned back to Innes, then to me, then back to Innes again, her hands up to her face."He is so like..." she said to herself again, and paused as the miller took her hand in his.
    "No, wife. The water has flowed too far and too long, and it does not flow upstream again."
    "How many times have you heard of a man who can spin straw into gold?" she asked, then turned again to me. "Your mother. Tell us about her."
    "I never knew her."
    "You know nothing about her?"
    "Nothing."
    "And you," she asked, turning to Innes. "What of your mother?"
    Innes spread his hands wide and said nothing.
    "You too know nothing about her? Not a thing? Isn't there some small part of her that stays with you?"
    "Nothing," said Innes. It was the emptiest word I had ever heard.
    "And your father?" she asked, turning back to me eagerly, leaning forward, holding hard to my hand now.
    "Da? Da is Da."
    "Are you much like him? The look of you, I mean."
    "No. Not at all."
    At this the miller's wife stepped back and again put her hand to her mouth. She turned again from me to Innes, then back again.
    "Wife, this cannot be. He is long dead." But she only shook her head and watched me, unblinkingly."Wife, even if it was him, he still must be away. Perhaps even tonight. Perhaps in the hay cart."
    "If we were to be found in your hay cart, the king would hear of it," said Innes.
    "Then the king would hear of it," answered the miller gruffly. "There is no cause to love the king in this house. And there is great cause to help those who will not bow the knee to his whims, as I once did."
    "The king set us a riddle," I said. "A riddle we need to answer within the next six days."
    The miller nodded. "The king was ever a lover of riddling."
    I wondered how it was that a miller would know this, but I did not ask."If we can solve it, he will free all the prisoners he has condemned."
    "His promises are always vast," said the miller's wife. "Tell us the riddle."
    "
What fills a hand fuller than a skein of gold?
"
    "Two skeins,"the miller said immediately."The answer is two skeins. More than anything