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either.”
    “I won’t.”
    “Promise?”
    “Promise.” Even if I dared to walk this far into The Woods alone, I wouldn’t be able to get the honeycomb like she did, not without getting stung a thousand times.
    We sucked all the honey off and chewed the waxy comb. Then we licked our fingers. It was so sweet I almost forgot why we had come here until Red pointed at the bundle tied to my waist and asked, “What did you want to show me?”
    I untied the bobbin and held it out for her to see. She glanced at it, then stared blankly at me. “It was my mother’s,” I said.
    Red raised her eyebrows, suddenly interested. “She was a spinner. From Yonder.”
    I looked at her, confused. “Yonder?” Gran never told me my mother was from Yonder, and she didn’t tell me about the spinning until I found the wheel. It made me mad that Red knew these things and I didn’t. “How do you know that? How did you know she was a spinner?”
    “Some people know,” she said, not looking at me, and I could tell she was hiding something.
    “What people?”
    “ Some people,” she said, and her nostrils flared.
    “The bobbin,” I said. “I think it’s special.” I didn’t want to say “magic.” I knew how Red felt about that.
    “It’s just a bobbin,” she said.
    “But special, maybe.”
    “How’s it special? What does it do?”
    I chose my words carefully. “I think it spins things different. Makes things change.”
    “Bobbins don’t spin. They just catch whatever you’re spinning.” Then her eyes widened as though she suddenly realized something. “What did you spin?”
    “Nothing,” I said quickly. “I just … What if you could spin one thing into something different, not just wool into yarn?”
    “Such as?”
    “Such as … What if you could take some … straw and spin … uh … gold?”
    Red stared at me. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
    “We need gold. Wouldn’t that be great?”
    “Maybe.”
    She didn’t believe me. “If a cow can give milk andchickens can lay eggs and dragons can make fire, then why can’t a magic bobbin make gold?”
    “Because this bobbin isn’t magic,” she said. “But you might be.”
    “Me? Magic? No, I’m not.” Using magic was one thing. Being magic sounded like a mountain of disaster.
    “If anything changes to gold when you spin, it’s coming from inside of you, not the bobbin.”
    “How do you know?”
    “I’m just guessing.”
    “Well, maybe you’re guessing wrong .”
    Red sighed. “It doesn’t really matter where the magic is coming from. What matters is that it’s magic, and magic makes trouble. Your mother used magic to spin and she got into a lot of trouble because of it. There’s always a consequence for using magic.”
    “But this would be a good consequence,” I said. “Gold.”
    “Yes, but—”
    “And gold would solve a lot of problems.” Stomach problems, for sure.
    “Maybe, but—”
    “And it’s not like I want it all for myself—”
    Red hit me on the head so I would stop talking. “Those are just the natural, regular consequences, Rump. There will be magical consequences too. Magic has its own rules.”
    “How do you know? Don’t tell me it’s just a guess.”
    Red gritted her teeth. “Didn’t you learn anything when you watched Kessler get chased by every mouse on The Mountain?”
    “But nothing happened when I spun! I didn’t catch on fire or get attacked by mice! I just made gold! Fat skeins of gold that could feed the whole village!” I clapped my hands over my mouth, but Red didn’t look surprised.
    “Rump,” she said in a soft voice, “does anyone else know about this?”
    I sighed. “Frederick and Bruno were looking through my window this morning, right after I spun the gold.”
    Red frowned.
    “But,” I went on, if only to make myself feel better, “they probably didn’t know what they were seeing. Probably just looked like a pile of yarn to them.”
    Red’s frown deepened.
    And