“Ow!”
She pulled her thumb away from the offending spindle and, without thinking, sucked on the wound.
“Tsk! Tsk!” said a voice that came from somewhere near her knee. “Haven’t you outgrown that habit yet? It looked cute when you were a toddler, but it looks pathetic now that you’re an eighteen-year-old Princess.”
She looked down, surprised that someone was speaking to her. She had made sure that she had stolen away to her secret hideout unnoticed. It had become necessary to be wary since her father had gotten it into his head to ban throughout the kingdom ownership of all spinning wheels, under pain of death. That had happened a long time ago, when she was only a year old. Since then, the kingdom had needed to buy its cloth from other kingdoms, depleting the royal treasury significantly. Yet, after she had acquired a spinning wheel and learned its secrets—thanks to a kindly old woman whom she had met by chance—she realized that the kingdom could save a fortune in gold by spinning its own thread and weaving its own cloth. So, breaking her father’s ridiculous law, she had hidden the spinning wheel in her secret hiding place and had made sure that no one was with her whenever she practiced her weaving. Well, she always made sure to bring her cat, Tybalt, for company but…
She blinked.
There was no one else with her except the cat, which meant…
“Yes, yes! The cat can talk!” The voice at her knee piped up again, carrying with it an odd mix of impatience and smugness.
She leaned over and took a long, deliberate look.