Free The Wilful Eye by Isobelle Carmody

pleasure, said, ‘Goodbye father. You do not need to wait for me.’ She kept her voice serene and there was a flash of wild hope in his eyes.
    â€˜My dearest daughter,’ he said tremulously. ‘Your majesty, I give my greatest treasure into your keeping.’
    The king said suavely, ‘Be assured that I will cherish your treasure even as you have done, Master Miller. And if your daughter does what I ask of her, she will have her reward.’ He was looking at Moth, who stayed resolutely silent as she watched her father leave. The terror nipping at his heels would soon give way to self-congratulation, she knew. He would tell himself that his daughter would wed a king, that she had flown very high, his little moth. And if she did not return, he would learn not to think of her.
    The king led her down a hall behind his throne to a small painted chamber. Here at last was a window, though it was very high and she could see only the sky through it, darkening as the day drew to a close. A page who had gone before them hastened here and there lighting candles from one he had carried with him.
    The king glanced at the window as if to let her know that he had seen her eyes fly there first, betraying her. A dark hilarity bloomed in his own eyes. ‘Your wings will not save you, little Moth,’ he said. ‘See there,’ he gestured with his free hand to an alcove against the far wall where a spinning wheel, a three-legged stool and three bales of straw stood, ‘there is your freedom, if your magic will allow you to spin the straw to gold thread. If not, then you will forfeit your life.’
    Moth could not speak.
    The king released her hand and turned to face her. Reaching out to put his fingers against her lips he pried them open. He forced her teeth apart and touched her tongue with his forefinger and all the while his eager eyes bored into her. There was a salty bitterness to his skin. He felt the thickness of her tongue with his thumb and forefinger as Moth tried not to gag, tried not to feel.
    The king took his fingers from her mouth and looked at them for a moment before he said, ‘Until dawn, little Moth, then we will see what we will see.’
    He left and she heard the sound of a key turning in a lock. Moth sat down on the couch. The smell of straw was sweet and reminded her painfully of the barn and of Lavender, to whom she had forgotten to bid farewell. She thought with helpless love of her foolish pompous father and silly frivolous mother, of dear old Dougal and his bees. Her eyes took in the room more explicitly. There was a bed and a couch and a table; there was an embroidered chair drawn up to the table, tapestries on the wall and a tall mother-of-pearl screen on clawed feet beside a large trunk. In the hearth a neat fire had been lit and before it, stretched out and midnight black, was an animal pelt. It was the skin of a panther she saw with a little shock, the head still left grotesquely attached to it. Moth went to the pelt and knelt to touch the head in pity and shame and her tears fell into its lustrous fur.
    â€˜This room has seen many tears,’ whispered the panther. ‘But never were they shed for me before.’
    Moth had never heard a dead animal speak before. She saw then that the beast’s eyes were open and they were looking at her.
    â€˜My tears are no help to either of us, I am afraid,’ she said.
    But the panther whispered, ‘Your tears are full of compassion. Such tears have great value.’
    â€˜Are they magic? Will they turn straw to gold?’ Moth asked. Then when the panther did not answer, she asked, ‘How did you come here?’
    â€˜I dreamed of the sea. That is not such a rare thing, for those of us who dwell in the Mountain Kingdom can travel in our dreams. That is how our magic manifests. But I made the mistake of leaving my wife and my son to seek out my dream in the real world. So did I enter the Middle Kingdom where