"Do you really think it would?" he asked hopefully. He was getting rather tired of running from his fate. He'd had to flee at least six Kingdoms in the last year, six times he'd been wandering about a perfectly nice forest, looking for evil to conquer, and suddenly — bang — there would be a clearing in front of him, with a stone slab in the middle of it, adorned with a beautiful sleeping woman dressed in armor of the gods, surrounded by rings of magic fire and flowers. He was beginning to wonder if it was the same woman every time, and The Tradition just kept moving her.
"I'd say it's worth a try. I think the wench with the bronze bosoms is stalking you." The bird was very cheerful about it. Then again, the bird wasn't going to share his Doom if he accidentally woke the woman up. "And you know, you could always give up the heroics and be a blacksmith. You'd be quite good at it. You've had the best teachers."
He had; Dwarves. They were about the best blacksmiths in the entire world, barring gods. And given what his fate was, he would really rather avoid gods. He'd forged his own sword from the remains of the one that his father had carried, in fact, the same year he slew the dragon. But —
"I don't know the first thing about horseshoes, or plowshares, or all those things farmers need," he replied, sadly. "I'd be a middling blacksmith for those purposes, and I really don't like it much. I like being a Hero and I'm good at it."
The bird chuckled. "And modest, too, just like a real proper Hero. No wonder Cast-Iron Cleavage is trying to get you to wake her up."
Siegfried shuddered. That last escape had been a very narrow one. "Where are we, anyway?"
The bird cocked her head to one side. "A rather nice little place," she said. "I believe it's called Eltaria."
Rosa had never thought of herself as being weak — in fact, she had taken a great deal of pride in being able to keep up with the most enthusiastic of the hunters, the most energetic of games players, in the Court. When her mother had given her all those lessons in commonplace tasks, nothing had ever been beyond her strength or endurance.
The few times she had given the idea any thought, she had been quite certain that she would have no difficulty whatsoever in being able to work side by side with any of the servants in the Palace, do their work, and be no more worn out at the end of the day than they were.
By her second day with the Dwarves she knew how wrong she was.
Even though she was doing the barest minimum that she could get away with, the work she was doing was hard, backbreakingly hard. It had never looked that hard when the servants were doing it. She was exhausted by the time the Dwarves went to their beds, and fell asleep immediately. She was tired within a few hours of getting up in the morning, and everything ached.
The Dwarves had produced more clothing for her to clean and mend today, hauling it out of chests where it had been so long that the folds were actually stiff, She was listlessly spreading the boiled shirts out on bushes to dry, when something entirely unexpected made her look up, startled.
"Hello the house!" called a cheerful, slightly cracked voice. "Anyone here?"
For a moment, she didn't know what to do. Then she answered. "In the back garden?" Her own voice was hoarse, and sounded strange to her; it was so rough and full of fear it sounded as if it belonged to someone else. Around the corner of the cottage came a perfectly ordinary-looking old woman, one with a sweet and kindly face. She wore the sort of clothing peasants did: patched and worn, but very clean. She carried a basket over one arm — and Rosa could not for a single moment imagine where she had come from. But when she spotted Rosa, her hand flew to her mouth, and her eyes widened in consternation. "Oh deary me!" she exclaimed, hurrying over to where Rosa was standing, dumbfounded. "Those wretched, wretched Dwarves! Wicked things! What have they done to you, poor child?"
"I — ah — "
The woman put her basket down, words pouring out of her in a perfect torrent. "I talk to my bees you know, bees, terrible gossips they are, but usually accurate, and today they told me, yes they did, that the Dwarves had a new servant girl, and I couldn't imagine anyone serving the likes of them on her own, or at least not without being tricked into it, and they wouldn't part with a groat so they couldn't havehired a girl, so I hurriedright over to see what I could see, knowing that she'd be all alone during the day, and I said to myself, 'Maggie, you must see what they're doing to the girl, if there even is a girl, and see if it's a Dwarf girl or a human one, and how she managed to get tangled up withthose Dwarves,' so I did, you see, and here you are and here I am and goodgracious look at you, you poor thing!"
As she spoke she was fussing over Rosa, looking at her cut, bruised, and now-burned hands, patting her hair away from her face, tugging at her dirty clothing. "I...was running away and they grabbed me," Rosa managed, finally, a certain alarm rising in her, for she thought she recognized this situation as a Traditional Path — but how could anything be worse than the situation she was already in? "I asked them for help, and told them I'd do anything — "
"Ah, and the horrible things called it a bargain, did they?" The old woman frowned. "They would, and they'll use that to hold you here as long as they like. Well! I'm Old Maggie the bee lady. Aren't I, my sweets? And good little things you were to tell me about this poor, poor little wench!"
While she had been speaking every bee in the garden had left what it was doing to come circle about her as if the old woman was some kind of enormous, fragrant flower. She held up her index finger, and one of the bees landed on it, vibrating its wings to make a buzzing that almost sounded like speech.
"You are my brave little workers, so you are," she said tenderly. The bee flew toward the old woman's face, making Rosa flinch, and touched its head to the tip of the old woman's nose before flying off. The rest of the bees went back to their business.
And a thought managed to make its way up out of the depths of Rosa's exhaustion-fogged mind. No bee will abide in the presence of evil.
So whoever, whatever she was — this "Old Maggie" was a friend.
Rosa burst into tears.
About an hour later, for the first time in days, Rosa was feeling better. Old Maggie chattered nonstop, making it almost impossible to get a word in, but that wasn't so bad, because it meant Rosa didn't have to say anything herself.