Spindle's End

by Robin McKinley

Peony had long golden curls—although of a softer shade than Rosie’s short defiant hair—and limpid blue eyes that smiled even when her face was solemn. Grown-ups had never patronised her; she was too graceful and too self-possessed, even as a baby, and as she grew older she was too sweet-natured.

Is Pernicia going to mistake Peony for the princess?

Peony said drearily, “They don’t love me. Not the way Aunt and Katriona and Barder love you.”

Oh. That's it. In the end Peony us going to go live at the palace as the princess and they will love her, and Rosie is going to stay with the family who loves her. Got it.

The merrel also knew its wing had not healed. But I could reach a great height once more before it failed me, it said. And from there I would fold my wings and plummet to the earth as if a hare or a fawn had caught my eye; but it would be myself I stooped toward. It would be a good flight and a good death. And so I eat their dead things cut up on a pole, dreaming of my last flight.

This was so unexpected she almost put her hand on his arm, almost said to him, What is it? Can I help? I would do anything for you—when she realised, first, that he would not want her to have seen what she had seen, and second, that what she had barely stopped herself from saying was the truth.

Nope, not sure i like that.

And Rosie had just learnt she was in love with him.

NOPE. DEFINITELY DON'T LIKE THAT. He was a grown-ass adult when she was born wtf

“No. He’s pledged to—to someone else. Someone he’s never met. She—she has a curse on her, and it makes her very lonely and sad.”

Welp i was right in that prediction, then.

Hroslinga, musingly, as she accepted the bundle, said, “It is a great relief to me now, to know that she isn’t my own kin. I was never as fond of her as I knew I should be; and this has troubled me all her life.”

She never told anyone what Hroslinga had said, not even Aunt or Barder, and, contrary to all her usual scruples, laid a mild enchantment on Hroslinga, that she might never say it again.

Oh, why does compassion weaken us?” “It doesn’t really,” said Rosie, not because she had any idea about it, but because she refused to let it be true. “It doesn’t really. Somewhere where it all balances out—don’t the philosophers have a name for it, the perfect place, the place where the answers live?—if we could go there, you could see it doesn’t. It only looks, a little bit, like it does, from here,

“Those are fairy tales,” said Narl. “I’m real.” “Just like me,” said Rosie sadly. “I’m real, too. I just don’t know, real what.”

It had called her by name and asked for her help, she suddenly recalled—and as suddenly recalled a day almost twenty-one years before when another fox had asked if she would come to the rescue of a fox who called her by name.

Rosie leaned forward, round the globe of hands, and kissed Peony on the lips.

All will be well. Some day the queen would remember the young fairy who had sat on her bed and held her hand, and told her about her four-year-old daughter. Some day the queen would remember that she had looked over Peony’s shoulder at their first meeting in Woodwold’s park, had looked into Rosie’s eyes. Magic can’t do everything. All will be well.