Spinning Silver

Miryem celebrates Shabbat as best she can in this strange new world, longing for the normalcy of home and warmth of her parents. Her husband returns, pleased by the new snowfall. Miryem soon learns that the snow means that there is also snow falling in the “sunlit world,” despite the fact it is spring there. Miryem is furious at the Staryk king’s glib dismissal of what will inevitably cost lives to starvation and cold, but he has no care for such matters and considers the mountain’s repair to be worth the cost of mortal lives. The Staryk king surprises her by stating that he will honor her status as a “vessel of high magic” by giving her the comfort and attendants she is due, but she would rather keep her current servants and have them answer her questions (188). To her surprise, he explains that it is not his doing that prevents them from answering, but hers:

“It was you who chose to desire answers out of me, when you might have asked nearly any other gift instead. What voice should give them to you now for nothing, when you have put so high a value on them? And how can any low servant dare set you a price?” (188).

Miryem worries about her parents, who must still be waiting for her to return. She realizes that even if she sent them a letter lying about how happy she is, surely even this would break their hearts. She knows her mother wouldn’t believe that Miryem chose “to leave them and be a queen to a murderous Staryk, a king who would freeze the world just to make his mountain fortress strong” (189).

Desperate for a change of scenery, Miryem goes driving and learns that what she had called the Staryk road was really her Staryk’s road, the only way to the sunlit world, which appears by his will alone. Deep in the woods, she sees two people on the bank of the river: “two people wrapped in heavy furs, and one of them a queen” (192).

Irina proves herself to be a shrewd tactician, making memorable impressions on everyone she can and stirring up gossip surrounding her seemingly happy and passionate marriage to make it difficult for Mirnatius to dispose of her quietly. She prepares for their journey to Koron by wearing her necklace and ring and carrying her crown so that she can jump from the sleigh and travel through the nearest reflection at a moment’s notice. After confirming that she knows about the demon—she tells Mirnatius, “I made my vows to you, but someone else keeps coming to the bedroom in your place. Squirrels run on instinct when a hunter comes too close” (195)—Irina uses her political know-how to impress the importance of her continued existence upon her husband (195). Irina points out the developing political intrigue in Lithvas and how Mirnatius’s assumptions that his magic will save him from any upcoming coups is incorrect. She informs him that with his line unestablished, many politically minded upstarts would be pleased to kill him and take his throne. While his magic might protect him from attacks in his presence, it cannot prevent his enemies from plotting against him from afar. Irina also points out that her death would be a convenient excuse for some of the dukes to overthrow him. When they make it to Koron, she is reunited with Magreta and takes her through the mirror to her new rooms in the forest.

Stepon is concerned that he can no longer remember Miryem’s name. His ability to remember other names is clear, so he tries to do the collecting in Wanda’s stead. Wanda and Sergey become increasingly wary of the house they are staying in. They decide to fix up the broken chair and bed as payment for their lodging and leave as soon as possible, but heavy snowfall keeps them there. Suspiciously, food and tools appear spontaneously to make their chores easier. One morning they notice that someone has moved a chair and eaten some of their porridge using a spoon that hadn’t been in the house before.

The figures Miryem saw by the riverbank prove to be Irina and Magreta, who is unwell from the cold. Miryem gives them her name, shocking Shofer, who she orders to take them to the nearest shelter. He is noticeably uncomfortable about them using the house and eating the hot porridge, but he does not answer any questions. As the young women catch up, Miryem jokes, “So the fairy silver brought you a monster of fire for a husband, and me a monster of ice. We should put them in a room together and let them make us both widows” (214). The joke suddenly seems like a reasonable idea as Irina explains that the demon in her husband wants her for her Staryk blood, prompting Miryem to ask whether the demon would bargain for a chance to eat a Staryk king instead. They agree to try to get their respective husbands to Vysnia in three days in the hopes that they will kill one another.

Miryem returns to find her husband angrily awaiting her questions so they may forgo consummation another night. She asks who lives in the house; when he says “no one,” she declares that he owes her more than that. He tries to frighten her, but Miryem stands firm, refusing to cower for her life: “I wouldn’t make that bargain. I was going to try and kill him, even if I was almost certain to fail, and I wouldn’t be afraid of him now, either” (218). He explains that a powerful witch once lived there, on the edge of the sunlit world, so that people could not find her when she did not wish to be found, but she left long ago and never returned. To incite her plot, Miryem informs her husband that she has promised to dance at her cousin Basia’s wedding. She asks what it will take for him to bring her to Vysnia. He gleefully informs her that she will have to turn his three increasingly large storerooms of silver to gold before then. If she does not finish in time, she will be considered forsworn, which Miryem suspects would be a crime punishable by death. Her Staryk husband is surprised when she forgoes negotiations, blindly agreeing. She sets off for the storerooms.

Irina returns and tells her husband that the worsening winters are why he receives fewer and fewer taxes each year. She offers him a bargain: He can kill the Staryk king instead of her, saving his kingdom and freeing his demon all at once. If the plan succeeds, she will still be a widowed tsarina with her father’s men to support her—or at least keep her alive. When Mirnatius asks why she even cares about the kingdom, she furiously shouts about all the peasants who will die. She schemes to prevent his political rivals from gaining power and realizes that Mirnatius is not stupid, only unambitious. Though he has never thought about politics a day in his life, Irina is ready to make up for it. She plans to marry Prince Casimir after Mirnatius is dead and her marriage is annulled. Of Casimir, she says, “I was reasonably sure he wasn’t going to try to devour my soul. My expectations for a husband had lowered” (230).

Stepon does not want to plant the nut his mother gave him until he is somewhere Sergey and Wanda can visit so they can all be together. In trying to determine where they are, he shares their plans to go to Vysnia with the Mandelstams, who suddenly remember Miryem and plan to go to Basia’s wedding and see her again.

Miryem works to change the vast quantities of silver in the storerooms to gold. She finishes the first, smallest storeroom but is exhausted by the effort. She worries she will not finish in time and will lose her life in the bargain in accordance with the Staryks’ rules. Their merciless law doesn’t “seem to allow for mistakes, and if you couldn’t make what you said true, they’d repair the fault in the world by putting you out of it” (239). Realizing that the agreement was about the items in the storerooms, she orders her servants to load the silver from the largest storeroom into a sledge then dump it into a nearby tunnel to lessen her workload. After asking her husband how to succeed and receiving no useful answers, she asks what is beyond his lands. She learns the darkness beyond the Staryk’s lands is the dwarrowrealms. He warns that she cannot escape her broken oath there or anywhere else.

Magreta considers her life as she spins wool in the witch’s house in the Staryk lands. She notices with alarm that the door has mysteriously been fixed. Meanwhile, Sergey and Wanda fix the door and their objects and tools disappear, only to be replaced by food they had not prepared. They silently consider staying but fear it would be unfair, as the house is not theirs, and their lives no longer depend on it. They agree to leave in three days, wary of the continued inexplicable changes. Meanwhile, Stepon and the Mandelstams get lost in the woods when their driver takes a wrong turn.

Miryem is hard at work trying to finish turning the silver to gold. Flek, Tsop, and Shofer remove as much silver as they can. In thanks, Miryem says that she will turn their silver to gold if they live. Shocked and vaguely horrified, Shofer addresses her as “Open-Handed” and states that though she is ignorant of her actions, he accepts the offered promise. The others follow suit, though Flek noticeably hesitates.

When the Staryk king returns for his nightly questions, Miryem asks how gifts work in Staryk culture. Horrified and disgusted by the idea, he explains that “a return must be made” (262). She learns that if a gift cannot be repaid, the exchange involves the gifted becoming a bondsman/bondswoman to the giver, with the bondsman’s fate tied to his lord’s. In offering something the servants could not repay, Miryem has accepted them as bondsmen, tying their fates to hers. If she cannot complete the bargain and dies, they will too, as will their children. Miryem confirms the source of Flek’s hesitation: She has a daughter who will also now die if Miryem fails.