The Spinner and the Slipper

by Camryn Lockhart

  Her fingers played with her mother’s gold chain.

  “Eliana, when I come to you tomorrow night, you have only to speak my name. Then I will be yours forever.”

  The memory of the oak-leaf man’s urgent words pressed upon her mind. And with them another memory . . . She rubbed the chain even harder, and it warmed to her touch. The gold band about her finger warmed as well, though not so warm as to be painful. At its warming, she felt as though some icy block in her mind slowly melted away.

  “To remember me by . . . to remember me by . . .”

  What was she supposed to remember? A . . . a promise? But what promise—

  The door to her room burst open. Eliana, still in bed, startled up with a small scream, staring into the angry face of King Hendry, who stood in the doorway.

  The king—possibly a little ashamed at catching her in her bed and nightgown—did not enter the room. But he pointed one imperious finger at her, and his hand quivered with the passion of his words: “You! What do you think you are here for, you peasant girl? Do you think you can come to Craigbarr and dance and make merry without a thought?”

  “Your Majesty!” Eliana cried, clutching her blankets up to her chin and wondering desperately if she should rise and curtsy.

  Before she could come to a decision, Hendry continued: “You are here for one purpose and one purpose only—to marry my son!” He threw up his hands then, cursing roundly in a most un-kingly fashion. “What is wrong with you anyway? Don’t you want to be a princess? Has all of this attention gone to your head? Do you think yourself too good for my Ellis?”

  “Your Majesty,” Eliana protested, “I . . . I simply have not had opportunity to meet him—”

  “Opportunity?” roared the king, his face going red with fury. “What have these last two nights been to you if not opportunity?” He made a desperate effort to steady himself, one hand grasping the doorpost. “Listen, girl, and listen well. Tonight you will dance with the prince. And when he asks you, you will agree to marry him. Do we understand one another?”

  Eliana gazed into that beet-red face with the long, imperious mustache, the clenched jaw. She saw there the shadow of the gallows and knew suddenly, down to her very core, that the threat of death had not yet lifted from her life. This king who would kill her for not spinning straw into gold would just as happily kill her for refusing this new whim of his.

  “I—I understand, Your Majesty,” Eliana whispered. Her hand clenched her gold necklace hard, but it had gone cold under her touch. “I understand.”

  King Hendry’s jaw worked as though he wanted to spew more angry words. But instead he turned away and slammed the door behind him. The whole room shook with the force of that slam. Eliana felt the reverberations down into her bones.

  A sob welled up in her throat, and she struggled to choke it back down. What did it matter if the oak-leaf man came back tonight? What did it matter if she called him by name?

  No one could thwart the will of a king.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  A Bargain

  “Do you still think you can thwart my will?”

  The faerie stood at attention on the walls of King Oberon’s palace, his farseeing gaze watching the wild country for any sign of goblins. But his mind, if he was honest with himself, had been off in another world entirely—a world of mortal music and mortal dancing, where the smile of a certain mortal maiden could cause the whole universe to light up as though with purest, sunlit gold.

  The roaring boom of Oberon’s voice cut through this happy daydream, sending a chill of terror into the quick of the faerie captain’s spirit. Still holding himself at attention, he turned and saluted, but his cheeks paled to gray.

  King Oberon face was a writhing mass of storm clouds. He flew along the wall walk, trailing darkness in his wake, his fists clenched as though ready for battle. “My loyal Puck has told me all!” he declared, looming huge above his captain, for his wrath made him swell to twice his normal, towering height. “He has told me all about your sneaky doings with that mortal girl whom I forbade you from ever seeing again! Do you want to spend more time in my dungeons, captain? Is that your secret wish? Because I can most readily grant you this desire, and this time I’ll leave you there for a century!”

  The faerie captain was no coward, and he did not back down in the face of his king’s wrath. Maintaining a most respectful tone, he offered a bow and said, “I ask forgiveness for any offense my actions have caused. But I will not ask forgiveness for the actions themselves, born as they are from the truest love any heart ever knew.”

  Oberon could not speak for the burning anger on his tongue. Instead, he drew back his mighty fist and would have knocked his captain clean off the wall, down onto the jagged rocks below . . .

  Only suddenly, standing between him and his prey was the gloriously golden image of his wife smiling sweetly up at him.

  “Really, darling, such a display. And so public too!” she said, laughing like the ringing of a bell chorus. “What will all the little ones think?”

  “Out of my way, Titania!” Oberon bellowed. “Puck has told me of your part in all this nonsense, and I’ll be dealing with you next!”

  But Titania had seen too many of her husband’s tempers over the long centuries of their marriage to mind him much now. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said lightly, tapping him on the nose with one long, elegant finger. “Do you really want to stand in the way of true love? When you start meddling with people’s hearts, things never go well, as everyone knows.”

  At this, some of the dark clouds in Oberon’s face dispersed, giving way to a slight smile. Memory played in his mind, memory of the last time he had bested his wife in one of their battles of wills . . . memory of a donkey-headed man and a quartet of young lovers who dared run amok in his forest at night . . .

  Titania, seeing that smile, knew she had scored a point. “There now, don’t you see? It’s always best to let true love take its own course.”

  Oberon shrank back down to his ordinary height and crossed his powerful arms over his chest. “So you say, my pretty queen. But tell me . . . do you know for sure that this mortal wench is really in love with my captain?”

  His gaze swiveled to the nameless faerie as he spoke. The faerie bowed again, his pale face beginning to regain color. “I do not know my dear Eliana’s feelings for certain, great king,” he said. “But I do have hope, indeed.”

  “Hope, hope!” Oberon scoffed. “What good is hope in matters of female affection?” A sly expression spread across his face, almost more terrible than his scowling wrath. “I’ll tell you what, good captain and wicked queen . . . I’ll make a bargain with the pair of you. Puck tells me that there is yet one night left of this mortal ball. Is this true?”

  “It is true, my king,” said the nameless faerie.

  “And he tells me that you, my lady love, have prevented the mortal lass from meeting and dancing with the handsome mortal prince. Is this true as well?”

  Titania shrugged prettily. “It was easy enough to manage.”

  “So how then do we know that she would not love him, one of her own kind, better than a faerie man if given the chance?”

  To this, neither Titania nor the captain could give a ready answer. Oberon laughed at the glance the two of them exchanged.

  “So this is my bargain,” the king said. “If you, Titania, will agree not to interfere at the ball—and by this I mean none of your magic, not of any variety—then I will let my captain attend this one last night. If his mortal lass does indeed choose him over a prince of her own kind, then I will allow him to bring the wench back here to my court.” His smile was as proud and dangerous as a wild horse, and his eye gleamed with eager mischief. “Does everyone agree?”

  “Most readily, my king!” answered the captain at once.

  But Titania did not speak up so quickly. She eyed her husband, trying to discern what cleverness he had up his sleeve. She had played more than a few games against him in he
r time, and she knew better than to trust him. And the restriction upon her magic, well! That was a hard bargain indeed.

  Then suddenly she began to smile to herself once more . . . such a smile as to send a hollow worry plunging in Oberon’s gut.

  “I agree, dearest king,” she said and, standing on tiptoe, planted a kiss on his hard cheek. “I agree to your terms most heartily.”

  “Harrumph!” The king pushed her away, one eyebrow upraised. Addressing himself to his captain he said, “What are you waiting for then, man? Be off with you!”

  The nameless faerie did not wait to be ordered twice.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Glass Slippers

  The gold-spun gown was complete.

  As the team of seamstresses unrolled it on the fine rug in her bedchamber, Eliana wanted to shut her eyes. It was too much! Too rich, too gloriously gleaming! The tireless seamstress had sewn rubies and carbuncles into the sleeves and the many flounces and tucks of the skirt. The skirt opened in the front to reveal layer upon layer of frothy cream ruffles, their edges embroidered in intricate designs of flowers and birds, also done in gold thread. The fabric itself was richer, more gleaming than the finest silk—for this was faerie fabric woven of faerie thread.

  And she—the miller’s daughter—was expected to wear this?

  “Let’s get to work,” said the head lady-in-waiting. Her sister ladies nodded, their faces grim, and they pulled Eliana into their midst. Somehow they had to make this peasant into a princess before the ball began! Eliana cast one last desperate glance over her shoulder at Martha—who offered her an encouraging smile—then succumbed to the ladies and their ministrations.

  In the mayhem of strange, structured undergarments, scented bath waters, perfumes, combs, pins, stockings, and the like, no one noticed the lady in the dark hood who appeared in the corner of the room. She gazed out from underneath that hood, smiling at what she saw taking place, then looked around, searching for something, something important . . .

  Ah! There they were.

  Gliding like a shadow, she made her way to the little table where a pair of gold be-ribboned slippers waited to ornament the feet of the miller’s daughter. They were pretty things, worthy of the fantastic gown they were designed to match.

  But they were nothing compared to the pair of slippers the hooded lady pulled from beneath her cloak.

  “None of my magic,” Titania whispered even as she exchanged the glittering shoes in her hand for the golden shoes on the table. “But he said nothing of others’ magic, now did he? Such a careless oversight!”

  Feeling much like a proper faerie godmother from the old stories, Titania slipped away, leaving behind the work so carefully crafted at her command by the nameless captain:

  A pair of delicate glass slippers sculpted from the tears of a mortal maid and a faerie man combined.

  “Oh, heavens above! Where did these come from?”

  Eliana, sucking in a deep breath as the ladies laced her gown as tight as some instrument of torture, turned at the sound of Martha’s exclamation. She saw her maid lift two shining objects from the table.

  “Put those down, girl,” one of the ladies snapped with only a hasty half-glance. “They are fine shoes and . . . Where did you get those?” The lady dropped her hold of Eliana’s laces and turned upon Martha, her sharp expression melting away in wonder at the sight of the slippers. If anything in that room could rival the beauty of the gold-spun gown, it was those two dainty objects held in Martha’s work-roughened hands.

  But where the dress was garish in its design, these were exquisitely simple. No adornments, no jewels or laces marred the exquisite purity of their shape. Formed of the clearest, brightest crystalline glass, they seemed to glow with some inner light.

  The ladies-in-waiting clustered around Martha, leaving Eliana momentarily alone. Then they turned to her, to Lady Gold-Spinner, with wonder shining in their eyes. After all, she had, according to common knowledge, spun full rooms of straw into mounds of gold. Could she also, somehow, by her strange magic, create such beautiful things as these slippers?

  They did not question her, for which Eliana was grateful. Her own mind was suddenly filled with a whirl of uncomfortable thoughts plucking and poking but not quite solidly forming. She gazed upon those shoes as Martha carried them to her, and they seemed so . . . so . . . familiar?

  An image flashed across her mind’s eye—the image of a man seated on a low stool, his finger held up to catch her falling tear. And that tear crystallized on the end of his finger . . .

  The memory—if such it was—vanished almost before she had time to recognize it. But this time no searing pain replaced it.

  With one hand Eliana touched her mother’s gold necklace draped unobtrusively about her throat, half hidden by the ruffles and jewels on the gown’s bodice. With the other hand she rubbed her thumb against her mother’s gold ring. Both warmed at her touch.

  “Will they fit, my lady?” Martha whispered, kneeling down with the slippers before the enormous bounty of Eliana’s skirts. “They seem so small.”

  Eliana wondered the same herself, for she did not think her feet that tiny. But, with an effort, she pulled back the ruffles and flounces and lifted a newly scrubbed and cleaned foot to Martha, who slid the slipper into place.

  It fit perfectly. As did the second. Though they were made of glass and Eliana expected them to be hard and uncomfortable, she found that suddenly she could move with grace and ease, even in the vast skirts and petticoats that so imprisoned her.

  “Your mask, Lady Gold-Spinner,” said the head lady-in-waiting, holding out not the moon-and-sun mask Eliana had worn the previous two nights but a mask made of gold and shaped in the rays of a blazing sun.

  Eliana took it uneasily. Would her oak-leaf man recognize her now? But there could be no arguing, so she slipped the mask into place.

  “You are beautiful beyond words!” Martha breathed, twisting her apron in her hands with nervous delight. The ladies-in-waiting, rather than shushing the lowly maid, merely echoed her words with approving murmurs of their own. They had done their work well. Eliana, the miller’s daughter, truly looked the part of a princess.

  Now if she claimed the heart of the prince, she would become a princess indeed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Nameless

  “What a glorious dress!” exclaimed King Hendry’s queen. Her eyes widened hugely behind her mask and, when it seemed she could not look fully enough, she slipped the mask up onto her forehead—despite the fact that the Reveal was not due for another several hours—and openly gaped at Eliana. “Oh, it’s more beautiful than I could possibly have imagined!”

  Eliana flushed under the queen’s stare . . . then paled under the king’s equally potent glare. She sank into a deep curtsy, once more finding herself blessed with an unexpected grace. Ordinarily the enormous skirts would have pulled her off balance, and she would have landed in a heap of gold flounces right there on the step before her monarchs!

  “Oh, darling!” the queen said without so much as acknowledging the girl. She grabbed her husband by the sleeve. “Darling, we simply must have my ladies make me a dress like that!”

  “Whatever you wish, lovebird,” Hendry growled. Then he reached out and took hold of Eliana’s elbow, dragging her back to her feet. “All right, Lady Gold-Spinner,” he said, his long mustache puffing with the force of his words, “you’re not getting away so easily tonight!”

  With that, he pulled her down the steps. Eliana felt the eyes of all the guests in the enormous ballroom fixed upon her. Even the musicians had stopped playing, their pipes and woodwinds dropping from their lips as they gazed up at the shimmering vision on the steps. A halo of gold light seemed to radiate from that faerie-spun dress, and the more everyone admired the gown, the more it gleamed, as though soaking in the admiration to increase its own splendor.

  Eliana wished she could melt into the floor and vanish forever! Only the glass slippers on her feet ga
ve her courage.

  King Hendry, entirely unaware of the spectacle Eliana’s entrance had created, focused his eye upon his son standing at the bottom of the steps. He dragged Eliana down so hastily, she would have fallen on her face were it not for the power of the slippers she wore in secret under those cumbersome skirts.

  Prince Ellis, like everyone else in that room, stood transfixed by the incredible vision dragged before him. He had heard tell of Lady Gold-Spinner and her talents—heavens above, his mother had spent all this last week telling him over and over and over again how lucky he would be to marry this girl!—but he had never expected something like . . . like this! He couldn’t even say that he had any impression of the girl herself, so lost as she was in that powerful haze of golden glory!

  “Here she is,” King Hendry said without preamble, and pushed Eliana right up against his son, so that Prince Ellis was obliged to take several steps back or be enveloped in vast skirts. “Girl, meet my boy. Boy, meet the gold-spinning girl. Now dance with her, devils take you! Dance!”

  Prince Ellis shut his jaw with an audible clunk. Then, bowing with courtly courtesy, he extended a hand to Eliana. “May I have the honor of this dance, Lady Gold-Spinner?”

  Eliana cast about quickly, her eyes searching from behind her golden-sun mask for some glimpse of bronzed oak leaves. But her companion of the last two nights was nowhere to be seen. Even if he were near, how could she refuse the invitation of the prince himself? Particularly with King Hendry standing just behind her, glaring daggers into her spine.

  “It . . . it would be my honor, Your Highness,” Eliana whispered, and placed her fingers lightly in the prince’s hand.

  So she found herself led once more out into the center of the dance floor. But she felt none of the confidence and joy she had experienced while held in the arms of her oak-leaf man. She felt only terror at many, many eyes fixed so intently upon her. No one else joined her and Prince Ellis on the floor, so she could not hope to hide behind other dancers—as if it were possible to hide when clad in such a gown!