Spinning Out
By Fiona McKay
Listen to Fiona reading her story:
The women spin straw into gold. Straw into gold, straw into gold, over and over. They’re not doing it for the king – that’s a myth. Partly, they’re doing it because they want to, because they recognise the quality of gold that is within the straw, the quality that they can draw out, spin, spin, spin. And of course the other reason they do it is that is has to be done, and they know no one else will do it if they don’t – or will do it so badly that it mostly remains straw and there will be arguments about it. Easier, always, to just do the damn thing themselves.
Some of the women like to work alone. They bring the straw home in bright, small bales tucked under their arms. They work through the day, through the night. Spinning, spinning, spinning. There’s a belief that this kind of spinning is better, somehow, and that they produce better quality gold this way, without help. Performative spinning, some of the other women say behind their backs. Just showing off. Just showing off, or just struggling to keep up? The gold doesn’t care.
Other women work together. They work in each other’s houses, taking turns at the spindle. Spinning, spinning, spinning. They bring their own spindles, line them up and sing together as they work, their harmonies a pretty yellow. Is our gold quite gold enough? they sometimes ask each other. And stop then, for tea in china mugs, plates of dense brown bread thick with butter and cheese, lemon cake. Feasting together, replenishing each other. Our gold is good enough, they tell each other, and believe.
And what of the woman, spinning, spinning, spinning, in her white cottage by the sea? Her tears fall as tiny pearls of gold, so much value in them. They fall to the floor at her feet, turn the carpet bright, bouncing the light from the window into her eyes. She pricks her finger on the spindle, her bright red blood turns the straw to music, sad and piercing. It floats up the chimney and the wind from the sea catches it, spreads it across the town. The women look up from their spinning, tears of their own falling from their eyes. They stop spinning, follow the sound to the pretty white cottage with its garden of thorny red roses. They file to the door, each giving a knock, until the woman opens it and they pull her into their arms, hold her, spin her straw, plait her hair.
And she joins them, the other women, in their homes, in the halls, where they all spin together. Where they take turns. Where they catch each other’s golden tears before they fall. Where they cast a quick eye over each other’s gold, put an arm around each other and say Your gold is wonderful, really wonderful. Because any gold is good enough gold. Any spinner is a good enough spinner. Any is enough.
Fiona McKay is the author of the Novella-in-Flash The Top Road, AdHoc Fiction (2023), and the Flash Fiction collection Drawn and Quartered, Alien Buddha Press (2023). The Lives of the Dead, a Novella-in-Flash, is forthcoming from AdHoc Fiction (2025). Her Flash Fiction is in Bath Flash, Lost Balloon, Gone Lawn, New Flash Fiction Review, Pithead Chapel, The Forge, Ghost Parachute, trampset, Bending Genres and others. Her work is included in Best Small Fictions 2024. She lives in Dublin, Ireland.
She is on X (formerly Twitter) @fionaemckayryan and Bluesky @fionamckay.bsky.social