Free Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales by Melissa Marr and Tim Pratt Page A

and then she rode out of the palace, toward the east.
    It was a full day’s ride before she saw, ghostly and distant, like clouds against the sky,the shape of the mountains that bordered the edge of her kingdom.
    The dwarfs were waiting for her, at the last inn in the foothillsof the mountains, and they led her down deep into the tunnels, the way that the dwarfs travel. She had lived with them, when she was little more than a child, and she was not afraid.
    The dwarfs did not speak to her as they walked the deep paths, except, on morethan one occasion, to say, “Mind your head.”
    “Have you noticed,” asked the shortest of the dwarfs, “something unusual?” They had names, the dwarfs, but human beings were not permitted to know what they were, such things being sacred.
    The queen had once a name, but nowadays people only ever called her Your Majesty. Names are in short supply in this telling.
    “I have noticed many unusual things,”said the tallest of the dwarfs.
    They were in Goodmaster Foxen’s inn.
    “Have you noticed, that even among all the sleepers, there is something that does not sleep?”
    “I have not,” said the second tallest, scratching his beard. “For each of them is just as we left him or her. Head down, drowsing, scarcely breathing enough to disturb the cobwebs that now festoon them … ”
    “The cobweb spinners donot sleep,” said the tallest dwarf.
    It was the truth. Industrious spiders had threaded their webs from finger to face, from beard to table. There was a modest web between the deep cleavage of the pot-girl’s breasts. There was a thick cobweb that stained the sot’s beard gray. The webs shook and swayed in the draft of air from the open door.
    “I wonder,” said one of the dwarfs, “whether they willstarve and die, or whether there is some magical source of energy that gives them the ability to sleep for a long time.”
    “I would presume the latter,” said the queen. “If, as you say, the original spell was cast by a witch, seventy years ago, and those who were there sleep even now, like Red-beard beneath his hill, then obviously they have not starved or aged or died.”
    The dwarfs nodded. “Youare very wise,” said a dwarf. “You always were wise.”
    The queen made a sound of horror and of surprise.
    “That man,” she said, pointing. “He looked at me.”
    It was the fat-faced man. He had moved slowly, tearing the webbing and moving his face so that he was facing her. He had turned toward her, yes, but he had not opened his eyes.
    “People move in their sleep,” said the smallest dwarf.
    “Yes,”said the queen. “They do. But not like that. That was too slow, too stretched, too
meant
.”
    “Or perhaps you imagined it,” said a dwarf.
    The rest of the sleeping heads in that place moved slowly, in a stretched way, as if they meant to move. Now each of the sleeping faces was facing the queen.
    “You did not imagine it,” said the same dwarf. He was the one with the red-brown beard. “But they areonly looking at you with their eyes closed. That is not a bad thing.”
    The lips of the sleepers moved in unison. No voices, only the whisper of breath through sleeping lips.
    “Did they just say what I thought they said?” asked the shortest dwarf.
    “They said, ‘Mama. It is my birthday,’ ” said the queen, and she shivered.
    They rode no horses. The horses they passed all slept, standing in fields,and could not be woken.
    The queen walked fast. The dwarfs walked twice as fast as she did, in order to keep up.
    The queen found herself yawning.
    “Bend over, toward me,” said the tallest dwarf. She did so. The dwarf slapped her around the face. “Best to stay awake,” he said, cheerfully.
    “I only yawned,” said the queen.
    “How long, do you think, to the castle?” asked the smallest dwarf.
    “IfI remember my tales and my maps correctly,” said the queen, “the Forest of Acaire is about seventy miles from here. Three days’ march.” And then