Emily M’s Reviews > Spinning Silver > Status Update

"Hush, sweetheart...Listen. Stepon told us what happened in your house. There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That is what was in your house with you...But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away. That is all we can do for each other in the world"

“I was pouring out magic by the bucketful, turning silver into shining gold with my very fingers, but it quickly stopped being magical. I would have liked to turn some of it into birds, or just set it on fire. It stopped even being a fortune, the way you could say a word too many times in a row and turn it into nonsense.”

Hey, and the three storylines come together! (Even if they don’t fully know it)

OK, the idea of a fae lord getting stuck with a moneylender IS very funny to me! Because once Miryem figures out the Staryk all about exchanges and literally-worded contracts, she knows exactly how to handle him!

“I had never felt sorry for the miller’s daughter before, in the story the villagers told…But who would really like it, after all, to be married to a king who’d as cheerfully have cut off your head if you didn’t spin his straw into gold?”

“But my mother’s face was full of misery… ‘My darling, my darling, I’m sorry’… ‘Sorry? I said. ‘To be warm instead of cold? To be rich and comfortable? To have a daughter who can turn silver into gold?’ I pushed away from her. ‘To see you harden yourself to ice, to make it so,’ she said.”

This may be Rumpelstilzken inspired, but this bit with Wanda talking to the tree above her mother’s grave is very Cinderella!