Enchanted by Alethea Kontis Page A

and walked back into the kitchen to further antagonize Mama.
    Next to planting beans, spinning was the most boring job in the world. Even Friday thought so. Sunday leaned over and pulled a handful of wool out of the bag; it was already carded. Thank the gods for small favors. She wound a leader of waste wool around the spindle and began.
    Sunday turned the wheel with her right hand and let the wool pull through the fingers of her left.
Gold,
she thought.
Be gold.
She said it out loud. She closed her eyes and chanted it in her head.
Be gold.
She opened her eyes. No gold. Just old grayish yarn from old grayish sheep.
    Some teacher Aunt Joy had turned out to be. Lessons were generally
taught.
How was Sunday supposed to learn with no guidance? And Joy had the gall to call Mama lazy!
    Sunday sighed and kept spinning. Well, it was a chore Friday wouldn’t have to do later. She was on her third handful of wool when Trix came along and sat down beside her. His bare hands and feet were covered in dirt and crusted under the nails with black. His trousers were muddy at the knees and his hair was mussed. Not unusual for Trix. Not much was unusual for Trix.
    Sunday was desperate for conversation. “I’m spinning wool into gold,” she said.
    “You’re not doing a very good job.”
    “I know.” She tugged on the wool. “You look slightly grubbier than normal.”
    “Thank you! Papa left me his bag of seeds from Thursday. He told me to dig a trench and plant them all the way around the house.”
    “You can’t be finished already.”
    “I asked the moles and worms to help me,” he said, the same way Sunday would have said, “Well, of course the sun rose this morning.”
    “Moles and worms?”
    “They were most obliging, but then, they always are. They’ll talk your ear off if you lend them one. It wouldn’t have taken half as long if I hadn’t asked in passing about one’s family. Moles have pretty extensive families. Is that sharp?”
    Trix’s finger edged closer to the wickedly tipped spindle. It was a silly question, but one she was much better equipped to discuss than moles and their numerous relations. She smiled a mischievous smile. “Don’t touch it!” she yelled.
    Trix jumped and snatched his finger back. “Why not?”
    “It might be cursed,” said Sunday.
    Trix played along. “Do you think so?”
    “One can’t be too careful,” warned Sunday. “There is a cursed spinning wheel somewhere in Arilland, but there’s no way to know for sure if it’s this one.” She leaned in to Trix as if telling him a secret, much the same way Papa did. “No one can.”
    “What happened to make it cursed?”
    Sunday looked into the sky dreamily as she spun, telling the story as if she were reading it off the clouds. “Long ago there lived a young girl who hated spinning more than anything else in the whole wide world.”
    “Like you,” Trix interjected.
    “Very like me,” Sunday agreed, “only more so, if you can believe it. She hated it so much that one day she declared she would rather sleep her life away than ever touch a spinning wheel again.”
    “Silly girl.”
    “Indeed. For in saying so she charmed the spinning wheel. And when she pricked her finger on the spindle, her blood sealed the charm forever.”
    “And she fell asleep?”
    “She did! She slept for a hundred years. When she finally woke again, she was a frail, brittle old woman with no friends or family left in the world. Realizing her folly, she demanded that the spinning wheel be brought to her and destroyed.”
    “But it wasn’t.”
    “No. When she fell asleep, they thought she was very, very sick or under a spell. They had no idea that the spinning wheel was the cause, so it was lost.”
    “What happened to it?”
    Sunday absent-mindedly pulled more wool out of the bag as she spoke. “It fell into the hands of a vengeful fairy who had been wronged by a selfish king. On the king’s granddaughter’s nameday, the fairy gave the child