Notes From The R - I

You do not know me. You may know my name, noised about the countryside as it has been of late, but even so you do not know me. This places us in a rather uncomfortable position, wouldn't you say? For myself of course it has a discomfiting effect, perhaps even a dangerous one - a name is a valuable piece of information after all (though it counts for little in the broad scheme of things when considering the question of knowing someone, on which point I will assume you agree since it is the driving purpose behind my entire statement). On your side of things, however, it is a subtler sensation. You have the advantage of me and seem to suffer no ill effect. Where's the discomfort in being advantaged, you ask? Well, there's curiosity, which might claw away at your mind, wondering, "Who really is this R? Why do I know his name?" A mild affliction, granted. But there might be a more insidious worming in your conscience, a sort of guilt, which of course is none of your doing, but comes from an unbalanced sharing of information. You know a name is a powerful weapon against the named. You assume this R doesn't have yours since you've kept yours close and shut away like all sensible people, and therefore he is completely helpless against you should you decide to use the name to your uh, let us say, your more active advantage. The temptation may be slight or great, depending on your personal moral compass and life circumstance and perhaps even on your knowledge on the subject, but the struggle against temptation (won or lost) could be said to be disgruntling. And this I am sorry for. I take complete responsibility for it. Unfortunately I can offer very little aside from this apology. While I cannot take back the offending knowledge, I can add to it - give you an explanation for our current position. It might do nothing for balancing our relationship, but at least I'll feel heard and you might gain some understanding. Maybe your curiosity will be alleviated. Maybe the struggle against temptation will be pushed one way or the other. Deal?

A few notes ere we begin: I am not a delicate man - I like to consider myself sensitive and intelligent (yes, almost too intelligent, hmm, maybe overly sensitive too) but I am not delicate, and I beg your forgiveness for my coarseness in relating these events to you, but I feel without complete candor on these occurrences our aim would not be met. Another warning to you, dear reader: I follow my own path through Time as it comes to me so if it appears my tale falls out of order and tangles thoughtlessly, have patience knowing I have written it with care and the best of my abilities for your optimal understanding. (Although I am aware that you most likely won't understand me anyway, I wish it to be expressed as my goal all the same.)

Part I: The First Meeting (Actually the Fourth...)

When the Queen saw me nearly a year after our first encounter, the sight did not please her. Startlement swiftly followed by resentment and no little fear was quite evident upon her face. It goes without saying the value of her opinion of me was neither here nor there for me anymore given the nature of our previous interaction and (ah, Spirit!) our present circumstances, yet I still felt stung by her reaction. The Queen's strength of character is something formidable; I do not believe there is any mortal who can withstand her.

"I'm pleased to see you recognize me," I said, truly relieved. My dread of having to refresh her memory was at least half the cause for the wobble in my knees.

"No," she said simply with a look of fierce determination about her.

"Your Majesty, I'm afraid the Time has come. We must conclude our bargain."

Her eyes flashed and she threatened to summon the guards.

I began to pace the room - we were in the Royal sitting room - trying to work the wobble from my legs. "We have unfinished business that must be settled, Your Majesty. This you cannot deny. As unpleasant as it may be to own up to your side of the agreement, a contract is a contract. You gave your word and now, as agreed, I have come to collect."

"No! You have no right to demand anything of me-"

"On the contrary, the terms were very clear and you owe me what you promised," I stated calmly.

"Terms! Contract! None of that was real, you tricked me," she cried in angry desperation.

"Pardon?" I interrupted, halting my pacing to turn to her. "Not real? Are you not Queen now? Did not the King wed you? Did not this wondrous destiny befall you directly as a result of my service, for which you made the promise to me?"

"The promise was extracted without full knowledge - I did not know - no one could have known it would come to pass as it did!"

I brushed aside this idiotic outburst. Frankly, I was embarrassed for her. "Have you no gratitude for what I did for you?"

"Yes, of course I am grateful..."

"I was beginning to wonder, I mean I never really got to know the King. He did seem a bit off. As a matter of fact, I did feel some concern for you, leaving you to him. I for one wouldn't have wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. But there's no accounting for tastes. Oh, yes, and then there's the kingdom and riches to consider," I said nastily, pacing again.

"You know nothing of the King or the true circumstances of that situation," she said imperiously, flushing.

"Oh, of that I have no doubt, ha-ha!"

She drew herself up, taking command. "Nothing would please me more than to repay you for the service you rendered me a year ago and to that affect I offer you any and all of my earthly possessions. But I refuse to be insulted. I also would fain mention of the promise I made under duress and intolerable conditions never be made again."

"Perhaps I was rude and I apologize for that, but the rest of what you propose is simply impossible. Even if I were at all of the inclination for material indulgence, which I am not (one marked distinction between the King and myself), the terms cannot just be thrown aside. I requested what I did for a reason -" here I stumbled, choking on my words. Oh, how stupid it all was! The wobble in my knees had spread to a tremble in my fingers. I clenched my hands together to hide it and paced furiously around the room. My composure was deteriorating badly. "Anyway," I struggled on, "I cannot accept anything ... other ... than what was agreed upon a year ago."

"I urge you to consider seriously the extent of what I am offering you in place of what was promised. I am Queen of the entire kingdom - anything you ask for I can retrieve. This I am willing, nay, eager to do."

I made a sound of disgust. "You are far too intelligent a woman not to know such enticements will not move me. Give me what is mine!" I suddenly burst out. What had come over me? This bothersome meeting was proving much more torturous than I had even feared. Why did she have to make this more painful than it already was?

The Queen darted to an opening on the other side of the room and planted herself there as if to make of her slender form a closed door. "You shall never have him!" she cried dramatically - tragically even, the futility of her position perhaps finally catching up to her. That note of defeat struck a cord in me.

"You gave your word - the child is mine!" I raged, trembling all over. My heart had leapt to my throat the moment she began to move. I could not tear my eyes from the passage partially obscured by her person.

Was she giving up already? I thought to myself, an elation that was despair welling up in me.

Smiling, almost laughing, I approached her and whispered, "Bring him to me."

"No! Oh, no! God! I beg you, I'll give you anything, do anything - please!" Tears were coursing from her eyes. "Don't take my baby from me - I won't let you do this!"

She had grown hysterical - so had I.

It shames me even now to recall those next insane moments. Driven by the words of her promise and my own fevered visions, I sprang passed her in a flash and tore into the room she had vainly tried to shield from me - the nursery. That was when I was truly stripped of my senses.

There in the middle of the room was the cradle where the newborn child lay. In an instant I was beside the cradle, looking down at the tiny, delicious creature-

A moment, please, while I explain something. It occurs to me that you, dear reader, may have a mistaken idea of the cause for my shame in this particular episode. It was not my longing for the child that humiliated me. No, I am what I am and the promise was what it was and while disgusting (I freely admit that! You may suppose I'm just saying that, but I'm not. Well, there might be many reasons for why I say it, but I assure you one of them is because it's true) there is no real shame in it. Why be ashamed of nature? And it wasn't because I offended the Queen - oh, no! Think you I have any reason to respect a human title? You forget I am not a thread of the human fabric, but even if I were it would still be meaningless to me. I knew her before she was Queen, you know, when she was just a humble miller's daughter.

No, what shames me is how easily I slipped into my own trap. I knew it was coming yet I flew straight into it!

Part II: The Very First Meeting

I know I am leaving you hanging at the edge of that cradle, so to speak, but I will get to that in a moment. First, I'd like to take you back a year when I met the Queen, who was just a miller's daughter then, for the actual first time.

Something had drawn me to the King's palace that day - ha! "Something" indeed! I know very well what it was: the self same compulsion that had brought me to the Queen's Royal Sitting Room in the episode I just related to you. It is difficult to describe, but it's not quite as vague as "something" - I won't be so lazy as to let that by. Hmmm, how to explain it to you? It was, let's say, the tugging of my path, or rather the current taking me to my next installment in time. In my private thoughts I simply refer to it as "Time," though I know very well it is quite separate from the ordinary plodding tyrant that most folk must be yoked to their entire lives, pacing out the days one after the next at the fixed length until they've spent their allotment and are liberated from its rigid grasp by death. This "Time" I experience is, I believe, unique to my kind, and it rules me as thoroughly as the ordinary folks' time rules them, pulling me this way and that as its whimsy so directs it, but has none of the measured pacing. Oh, there is purpose and reason behind it, don't mistake it, but of a very different sort from mortal understanding. Nothing is set in this Time - my very being is subject to its capricious discretion; at points I find myself split into two halves, each in its own Time. I will describe this in more detail momentarily.

So my personal Time had taken me to the King's palace, not a place I make a point of frequenting. A veritable anthill of human activity, the palace. Luckily, I had been deposited in one of the less trafficked areas and there was not a soul to be seen in either direction of the darkened hallway. However, I soon heard evidences of one; the faint sound of sobbing was coming from a door only a few paces from me. I took in the empty hall, the deeply shadowed corners, the many doors leading off into small locked rooms, and suppressed a shiver. Was I in the dungeons? The sobbing swelled to a wail, penetrating the door clearly, and I knew the person locked inside was a girl.

I also knew she was the reason I was here. I entered the locked room and laid my eyes on the source of the sobbing. She was a young woman, perhaps just shy of sixteen, and huddled on the floor next to a spinning wheel. The latter made me question my conclusion that this was a dungeon. The straw packing the room to the corners made me discard it completely. But the room was tiny and as unfurnished as a prison cell, aside from the wheel and straw, and located some distance from the stables, if I read the air currents aright. Very curious.

The girl naturally had not noticed my entrance and was carrying on with her weeping, arms folded atop her knees, face concealed. It was shameless, really. She was completely and disgustingly unrestrained. Her shoulders shook with every sob, her voice pealed out in ugly starts between gasps of breath, and I had no doubt her nose was runny. I stood in the corner of the room enduring it, at a loss at how to induce her to stop so we could commence our acquaintanceship (for we would be spending some while together, I felt certain). Suddenly the girl heaved a great sigh and her weeping abated to a sort of hiccupping sniffling that set me on edge. I was intensely uncomfortable. Soon she would lift her head and spot me - yes, even now her head bent as she wiped her face with her hands. I was standing in the shadowed portion of the room, but she would undoubtedly see me and there I'd be, caught skulking in the shadows like an inept burglar. Instead of suffering this petty humiliation and awkward beginning I shuffled forward (I hadn't taken into account the difficulty of moving through piles of straw) and fumbled a greeting:

"Good morrow, what are you crying for?"

I winced as she started badly, her whole body convulsing in startlement. Her arms flew outward and her head whirled around in my direction. Upon sighting me, she leapt to her feet and demanded to know who I was.

Struck by the force of her attention suddenly centered on me, I gaped for a moment. Her piercing eyes were astoundingly intelligent and aware; I was pinned beneath that gaze like a bug under a magnifying glass.

"Who are you?" she demanded again. "How did you come here?"

Recovering myself I said, "No one of consequence, but me thinks Chance's Fate brought me here to some purpose."

"Who are you?" Same question but spoken in a different voice.

Smothering a smile, I performed a bow. "Time's own minion, at your service. Now, be so kind as to answer my question in return. And please be seated so we may begin."

"Begin? What - what question?"

Patiently I inquired again about her weeping, noting the strangeness of her current surroundings.

"But how did you - the door is locked," she said uncooperatively.

"Quite the observant one," I said, annoyed.

Her eyes narrowed. "Did the King send you?"

"I retract my statement; apparently your faculty of observation is severely limited. I direct you to recall that I have already informed you who sent me: Chance's Fate, Destiny, the current, or Time itself, call it what you will. And because I prefer to believe there is some if incomprehensible meaning to existence, I assume my presence here has a reason, which I would like to know as soon as possible. To that aim, please," I gestured for her to sit down again.

She ignored the gesture and said pitifully and yet somehow also haughtily, "If Fate has sent you, then surely no good is meant for me from it, for Fate has chosen my life for disaster."

I stifled my irritation with difficulty. "You know what Fate chooses, now, do you? You know why Time has brought me here better than I do, hmmm?" I decided to share with her a glimmer of my wisdom. "Fate has many paths and flows in ways mortals cannot know. Men deceive themselves with the thought that Fate is an exchange of logical actions and can be controlled accordingly. Pfft! Blasphemous folly! Fate cannot be controlled, least of all by mere human beings, who cannot even see it! Even I, who travel the paths of Time itself, cannot predict where Fate will turn."

She studied me with narrowed eyes. "The fact that Fate is unpredictable is hardly a revelation. My current situation has given me taste enough of that! But there is rhyme and reason to the flow of time, the Lord assures it."

"Of course there is a pattern, but it is far beyond the scope of the mortal brain, girl. Just as you failed to perceive beforehand the twist that carried you here, whatever that may be, you cannot know what waits in store for you." Her mouth tightened as she refused to see my point; I pressed forward. "You assume certain actions produce certain reactions, when in fact it may very well be those actions produce other reactions you cannot see or have no effect whatsoever and the supposed 'reaction' is nothing more than a previously ordained occurrence. The point is you do not know the flow of Time. All that is left to you is how you take each new turn. It is your choice: are you going to stubbornly and stupidly insist Fate has written you off and ignore the new opportunity before you or are you going to answer my question?"

She was silent for a long moment. Then she said, "You speak wisely, fey dwarf, that I think perhaps Fate has sent you personally to me for some other purpose than misery."

Misery to whom? I thought, abruptly deeply annoyed, but smiled when she gracefully seated herself and motioned for me to do the same.

At long last she began to tell me of her troubles.

To make a long and dull story short, it seemed her father, a miller, had come to the palace on business and told the King - her face held a remarkably proud expression though a blush moved up her throat into her cheeks as she related this - his daughter could spin straw into gold.

"His daughter, meaning you?" I asked, suddenly gripped by intense interest. "And can you?"

She flared up angrily, thinking I mocked her, I imagine. I tried to assure her of the sincerity of my question and explain my genuine curiosity, for I had never met a human who could grasp the magical properties of straw. She, I think, presumed I was only jabbing at her father for making "such a ridiculous claim." And as a matter of fact, by the time it became clear she couldn't spin straw into gold, my thoughts were beginning to run along those lines.

But she had realized the innocence of my question and grown sorrowful again. Her sad eyes cast about on the floor as she said bitterly, "I should not be angered by your question, nay, I should thank you for your kind thought. Why else should a man make such an absurd boast if not for truth? Ah, fey one, my father boasted a lie to the King. But not out of wickedness - out of foolishness, his foolish love for me. Oh, dear loving Father!" She went on to explain her father's garrulous and exuberant character and his tremendous love for her, and so on and so forth.

I was still unclear as to why precisely her father had made the claim in the first place, let alone to the King, but I decided not to press the point. Whether or not there was an actual reason beyond madness, it was abundantly clear his daughter loved him dearly and such devotion gave credence to her story. I know well that humans are quite capable of the most absurd behaviors, particularly when love enters the equation.

"The King did not see the silly man for what he was and in all seriousness ordered me brought before him." Where another girl might have cringed at mention of her monarch, this miller's daughter lifted her chin. "Though I wonder now - did he not see? Perhaps His Majesty exercises his justice in punishing an outrageous lie, but if he does so I call it ill-justice indeed, that the daughter should be slain for an unwise father's love!"

Her eyes flashed dangerously and I felt the first shiverings of alarm creep over me.

"Slain?" Though I have little reason to be amazed at any human goings-on, I was taken aback. Perhaps Fate had resolved to visit devastation upon her.

"Yes, slain. After I was brought before His Excellency and the truth was likewise exposed - that I possess no magical power to spin straw into gold - and I begged the court's mercy for my foolish, foolish father, the King seemed to understand. It was strange." Her expression wavered for an instant as if she relived those crucial moments and saw the King again but through a different lens that offered new and disturbing insight. Then her brows swept back down in angry despair. "But then he ordered a room filled with straw and a spinning-wheel placed in it and he said to me, 'All this straw must be spun into gold before morning; if it is not you will surely be put to death.' My poor father fainted - I know not what has become of him now - and here I was locked up..."

Suddenly my consciousness was swept away on Time's whimsy whirl and whatever else the Miller's Daughter said was lost to me. The room slipped from my awareness and I rushed through the Realms at electric speed. From experience I knew my actual physical self remained still and safe in the straw-filled room and it was only my mental substance that flew, as it were, through Time - this was one of the splittings I mentioned earlier, unlike the space-Time pathway "tuggings" in which the whole of me travels in this unique manner.

We come to a point in my tale that is rather difficult for me to impart. But it is too critical to be omitted and so I regretfully continue:

What I saw during this particular vision was a child, a tiny human babe only recently born into the world. My soul at once alit - it was beautiful, of course, being what it was - and I was consumed with longing, completely enraptured by its charms. The moist gems of its eyes gazed up at me out of a little face swollen with life and potential and seemed to comprehend who I was. Unable to resist, I reached down and laid my hands upon the babe - what ecstasy! The pliant sponge-like flesh of the child set me aflame. I brought the small plump body to my breast and touched my lips to its smooth fragrant skin - what delight! What mindless sensuous pleasure!

Then my dream-self somehow uprooted my captured gaze and looked up to see the Miller's Daughter and I knew the child I held in my arms was hers and what's more - oh! I dare not utter it, yet on this point I cannot conceal the truth for either of our sakes! - the child was mine!

I know the outrage you must feel, dear reader (think of mine!) but I swore to uphold the truth in my statement and so I must, though it pains us dearly, tell all. I held that child in my vision-hands and felt that somehow the Miller's Daughter and I had created it together. Under the delirium of infantile enchantment I believed love, great indescribable love sprang up between us and an eternal bond connected our souls.

Again you are outraged, as you have every right to be, but know it is exceedingly difficult for me to reveal all this to you. If it were at all possible to avoid this humiliating indignity, I would spare us all, believe me. The sordidness of this whole affair renders it nearly unspeakable. But I must carry on - or at least not leave off at such a turn, for you still do not know the main point, not yet! You must read a little further!

When my senses were restored to me, I found myself stretched full length upon the floor with the Miller's Daughter kneeling above me. My heart beat unnaturally hard against my chest, almost pulsing out my throat, and I gasped. She was so close to me - she was touching my face! I leapt to the other end of the room nearly in a panic, for I was as horrified as you must be, reader!

She was saying something. Finally the blood rushing in my ears receded so I could hear her say, "...tender heart, it shocked you as hard as it shocked my father. I'm terribly sorry. Are you recovered?"

I suddenly realized, with a horrible flush of humiliation, that she had taken my Time-vision for a fainting spell such as her father had succumbed to upon hearing of the King's terrible verdict. She had been tending to me like she would to a child - or her father. I was mortified. But my heart gave a flutter at her kindness, her sweetness. What a lovely girl she was! Little wonder we would soon be united in the most glorious and intimate way possible for two beings on earth to be!

My heart was beating rapidly, pumping the intoxicant of love through my veins. Oh, my foolishness! I was inebriated from the mere thought like a silly smitten boy. It amazes me now to think of that moment: it was as if a madness had suddenly seized me, robbed me of my wits, and flooded my heart with burning, exhilarating joy. My brain was awhirl with absurd (and vain! oh how painfully vain) imaginings of our tender, as-yet-non-existent romance and the future we would have together, and (of course!) the child, the embodiment of a dreamer's fantasy.

But another part of me shrank within myself. Who was this woman and what did she know of me? She seemed wonderful, yes, but we had only known each other for all of ten minutes. And she had already been so bold as to touch me; she had seen my infirmity, not knowing what it was - I felt violated. Could I survive that kind of contact? The sensation was far from blissful. And yet I was the one that knew the truth of our relationship, the happy inevitability of the blossoming of love between us, of which she had no inkling!

I was bursting with the knowledge till I felt sure my skull would explode.

She was looking at me with great sympathy and seemed moved by my display of extreme sensitivity. I recoiled from that gaze but felt my heart enkindled simultaneously. Ah, the torment of love! My body would soon fall to pieces, being the battleground for the transcendent conflict of emotions!

What a marvel that I did not appear a madman to her during those moments. Perhaps she truly thought me an unnatural sensitive, a "tender heart," moved to fainting at her story. But I now believe she thought me wonderfully strange, an oddity so beyond her world that the standard of madness was suspended or rendered meaningless altogether.

"Ah well," she said, her gaze turning inward once again. "Though this night is the bitterest and last of my life, your compassionate company eases it muchly, friend. I wish I could take hold of this 'turn' the Lord has given me and make it good; I fear my temper was never one for easy acceptance."

My infected heart broke as a single tear fell from her eye. Outrage suddenly suffused my being as her position took on new dimensions for me. How could the King be so senselessly cruel? And how worthless a man her father must be! What ailed these men? They must have lacked hearts and brains and even souls!

"No, my lady," I said as steadily as I could, drawing myself up. "Fate has summoned me here to perform a service greater than that of an ear - I shall spin this straw into gold before sunrise!"

She was surprised, as well she might be, but as she watched me install myself at the spinning wheel and prepare the first handful of straw a smile like a beam of joy broke out on her face. My soul almost lifted from my body. I laughed, dissipating the urge to kiss her - an alien and not entirely uncomfortable sensation, I might add.

Something critical happened just at that moment, however, and the blissful certainty of love was cracked: as I began the work, I saw a strange look suddenly cross her features, marring her perfect beam of joy. It was there and gone in the briefest of moments, but it sent chills straight through me. I could not expressly define the look or what about it that set me shuddering; it communicated something indescribably vague that I'm sure ordinarily I would not have given much substance (or even noticed maybe) but which rang out against my keyed-up nerves. In that sickening instant all my feelings of happiness and love drained out of my swollen heart, leaving in their wake a dreadful sense of shame and (progressively) huge affront and self-righteous thirst for vengeance. I lurched to my feet, resolved to exact my revenge there and then, when I was confronted by her - her, with her sweet deceiving eyes, innocently questioning me.

I faltered and felt to my profoundest horror tears spring from my eyes. Oh, how the Spirit tortures us all! I was broken; she looked to me as to a savior and yet - and yet - she despised me! And worse yet - I loved her!

But do I love her? I asked myself. Gird up your pride! I ordered myself. I needed to change this; I needed her to give.

She waited silent and expectant. I smiled though my eyes still shone with unshed tears.

"What will you give me," I asked, "to spin it for you?"

She pulled away from me - not physically, mind you, but I could sense her soul cool toward me. I smiled wider as my anger mounted.

"You claim Fate itself brought you here ... to help me," she said quietly. "You know the whole of my dire circumstances, the injustice inflicted upon me by my own monarch and my total helplessness. You know what faces me if this task remains undone; you say you have the ability to perform this impossible task and now you ask for payment from me?"

I forced a worldly laugh. "Well, lass, you can't really expect something for nothing, can you? Oh, I'll spin the gold of course, but I need something of yours - anything, just give it to me and I'll spin."

"What of mine could possibly interest you? If you truly can spin gold out of straw, I fail to see..."

"You think I should just do it because Fate placed me here at the right time? That is what you think, isn't it? Well, this might come as a shock, but while I freely admit Time is my master, I do not serve selflessly. As for gold, I care not for it and in fact there are quite a few things of yours that do interest me - precisely because gold means nothing to me. Just give me something you have with you right now." In spite of myself, I felt a greedy eagerness rise inside me, incited by my own words; suddenly I wanted something from her very badly.

She considered for a moment. She was feeling distant from me and probably debated whether or not she should (or could allow herself to) tell me to remove myself and hope never to see me again. It hurt, but I also felt a kind of triumphant relief. I suppose I felt released from her spell, though of course she hadn't cast the enchantment or even known of its existence and now it was she who was disenchanted with me, not the other way around. I was not exercising much sense at the time, much to my later regret.

The Miller's Daughter decided to give me her necklace. An unhealthy thrill went through me as I took it, but I kept it a business transaction. I set to work. It is not difficult, spinning straw into gold, if you get the lighting right, achieved easily enough using the lamp, but it is a bit more taxing than spinning ordinary wool. And though the room was small, let me tell you, there was a fair amount of straw in there.

Three handfuls of straw, whir, whir, whir, three times spun and three reels of gold produced, three handfuls, whir, whir, whir.... It was tedious work!

At first the girl watched me, attentive and fascinated (you can well imagine my pleasurable discomfit at this), but her ordeal had taxed her strength a great deal and by the time I had managed to spin a third of the room, sleep claimed her. I continued through the night and finished the last third three hours before sunrise.

Part III: (End of the Fourth Meeting and) the Fifth Meeting

I held the child in my arms, enveloped in its delicate fragrance, feeling its little body move against my chest, and looked up to see the Queen-

So you now realize, gentle reader, I had crossed over to the point in Time I had glimpsed before, that terrible delusion-inducing glimpse that started all this madness. The cursed child was sweet and torturous, a succulent reminder of crushed dreams, and the bitter taste of gall in my throat at the fact the child was mine only through contract (oh my clever rebellion my own petard!) was all that kept me from gladly giving over to my desire.

I said to the Queen:

"You truly want to keep this child? You would rather have it than everything else you have gained from my service to you? Of course we cannot turn back Time and undo what has been done, no, we cannot do that, can we? But there is something else that might be done. If you have no qualms dissolving your word of honor."

"Please," was all she could manage. She was reduced to quite a pitiful state.

I am actually at a loss to say what precisely possessed me to utter what I did next; perhaps it was lingering feelings for her after all this time, a sort of perverse compassion. More likely it was a sudden bout of self-loathing (though of course there was some loathing for her as well). It was a move calculated for the maximum cruelty - to both of us. But I think it might have been something else altogether, something that rose above my feelings for the Queen or myself; I believe it was an act of will against Fate.

I said, "I will give you three days' grace; if within that time you learn my name, I will let you keep the child."

Neither relief nor anger registered on her features - not that I was anticipating either - as she took the babe from me. Somehow I let her gently pry it from my grasp and then I was at the door, my back to her, hearing her sobs. I left.

Needless to say, that night was agony for me. To think the child could have - should have been in my clutches finally, after an unbearable year's length of waiting! My frustration knew no bounds. I cursed myself for a fool and wrung my brain in a vain attempt to understand why I had done it to myself. If I had wanted to break from this sick obsession, why did I not just give up the bargain and truly rid myself of the whole business once and for all? It was my revenge, at least; the Queen's agony that night surly must have surpassed my own.

The next day I returned to the palace in a bitter humor. My ease (or lack thereof) at entering the palace was not as improved as I'd hoped since overcoming the hellish interview of the previous day. I thought of all the things she did not and would not know about me. Would she know my name already? More likely she'd beg and command again, which I did not feel up to suffering. But would I get to see the child? (I cursed my weakness but could not quell the leap of my pulse.) My worst dread was a chance ("chance" ha-ha!) meeting with the King - not from fear of his imperial power, mind (that would be laughable if it weren't so idiotic) but rather the personal awkwardness that would make any interaction between us quite painful. Furthermore, I suspected his face would be abhorrent to my senses.

The Queen met me in the sitting room again. She seemed perfectly composed and in possession of the situation. I was immediately annoyed.

Thankfully she was alone. I remarked upon the fact (sourly of course) and expressed my surprise at not finding the kingdom's entire army poised to effect my execution.

"I have no doubt military tactics would achieve nothing against you," she said, expression stern.

I smiled. "This is true." Sweat stood on my brow, but I was proud my eyes did not stray to the nursery door.

"I wonder that you should test my intelligence with such a comment. Do you seek to insult me or are your own faculties failing you?"

My smiled turned smirking. "It was not your intelligence I was uncertain of, my Queen, but rather your King's. But I do not spy his Honorable Personage here." I made a show of looking around then turned a look of disappointment on the Queen. "I was anticipating making his acquaintance. Oh," I said, as if a thought had just occurred to me, "Could it be that he was uninformed of the grave matters concerning the future of his little heir?"

She colored and arched her neck angrily. "It is not your place to know or even entertain thoughts on what passes between my husband and myself, mannikin."

I shook my head. "Wouldn't dream of it, I assure you, though I have a harder time answering for my nightmares. But you know secrets ill-become any relationship, far less the one that blossoms between a man and his wife, especially in connection with the fruit of their joining. Is it too difficult for you to break the habit of secrecy, after maintaining it for a year?" I did not voice my suspicion that the King's learning of my existence would destroy anything they had together, exercising a vast strength of character I had not known I possessed.

Her eyes flashed, as I knew they would, and she said coldly, "I do not believe you are one to know what becomes anything, especially when love and children are involved, child-eater. Now, if you would permit me, I shall proceed to break free of your villainous strings in the manner you yourself prescribed: I shall name you."

There upon she listed an impressively lengthy number of names. Not one was mine, of course. I paced and every third step I said, "That is not my name," until the hundredth name when I grew weary of the chant and merely said, "No." By the time the third hundredth name was reached I had collapsed in one of the opulent chairs and was thoroughly fed up with the whole business. For once I actually wished Time would fold upon itself and carry me away.

"Are you done yet?" I burst out. "You obviously don't know it; these names were clearly garnered from your own poor memory - and what little experience you've had in the world has offered it meager opportunity to exercise itself in the first place. You won't find it out simply by guessing." I emphasized my words by bringing my fist down on the armchair.

She was silent for a moment. Then she whispered, "That was the last one."

Suddenly a wave of tremendous sorrow swept over me. I looked at her and I felt tears spring to my eyes. It was more than the frustration of the past half hour, more than the pressure of the knowledge that an infant lay within just a dozen yards of me, more than the defeated image of the Queen. It was as if the whole of the entire year condensed into that single moment in Time. I was suddenly devastatingly aware of how absolutely, eternally alone I was. The impression was too strong for my weak soul.

I looked away, blinking back my tears, and said unthinkingly, as if by reflex, "Well, you have two more days."

The Queen gasped, startling me. Just as I leapt to my feet, I realized it had been a single sob, after which she regained complete control of herself and looked at me in my alarmed state with convincing puzzlement. Then she glared.

Anticipating her scathing order, I took my leave.