Faint Heart, Foul Lady: A Novelette: & Bonus Story: Night Life

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  “Once upon a time,” I replied. They still sang some of my songs at court, though no one remembered where they had come from. I had given up tunesmithing when I put all my heart into practicing the arts of war.

  “This is the service I want from you,” she said. “You’ll follow me everywhere, and watch my deeds, and make them into songs for the bards to sing. We will have many adventures. You’ll write many songs. My reputation will precede me. When we have done enough great things, we’ll return to court. How then can the king do other than make me a knight?” She smiled and gnawed on the wing of a fowl.

  Of all the possible futures no soothsayer had ever told me, how came Nix to pick the one closest to my heart’s desire? I felt warm clear through. Already words shaped themselves in my head around Nix’s fight with the dragon.

  Eudo tapped my shoulder. “How came you to be his squire?” he whispered.

  “I’m not a squire. I’m a bard,” I said.

  “Or something more and less,” said the damsel Tegwen, who stared at a couple of Nix’s braids that had escaped her helm while I was tending her wounds, “but withal, still a lunatic.”

  =End=

  Night Life

  Nothing above ground tastes so good as fairy food, and no human man is as beautiful as those who dwell below. No daytime music sounds so sweet as the music of the fairy ball.

  Every night I and my eleven sisters snuck down the secret tunnel beneath my oldest sister’s bed. We passed through the grove of silver-leafed trees, and the grove of golden-leafed trees, and the grove of diamond-leafed trees, and then we came to the dance hall, all light and color and music unimaginably beautiful, where our cavaliers waited for us.

  I, Marzia, am the youngest, and first went to the dance when I was twelve. I began sleeping in the big room with my sisters when I was eight, and every night my sisters gave me a sleeping posset until they judged me old enough to join them.

  For those four years, I, like everyone else in the castle, only knew my sisters did something every night that wore out their slippers. The mystery of it maddened our father.

  My first time underground, four different fairy men led me out to dance, each teaching me more than any of my father’s dancing masters ever had. Like my sisters, I wore through the leather soles of my dancing slippers and had to commission a new pair the next morning.

  After I had been going belowground four years, I found the one of all of them I wished to dance with. His name was Fern, and I found him among the musicians, which is odd when you think about it; every dancing man I met there was wonderful to talk to, beautiful to look at, excellent to dance with. Yet my eye was drawn to Fern, though he never danced, but always played his lap harp.

  Some of the musicians were aboveground folk the fairies had heard and desired because of their skill with instruments, and enticed or kidnapped into the kingdom. Some few were fairies themselves. It seemed the fairy folk lived for pleasure and delight; music-making was too much like work for most of them. I heard it whispered that Fern was half mortal, but that did not dim his beauty a whit.

  I watched Fern, and saw that he watched me, even though he never came out from behind his instrument those four years. Finally in a lady’s choice dance, I chose him, and he could not refuse me, though his fingers clung to his instrument until I pried him loose.

  His feet did not know the dance. I took him away from the main chamber to one of the side halls, the one with the crystal stream running through it, and the ice statues along the walls. The glazed windows looked out onto winter landscapes. We could still hear the music, but few others saw us. There I taught Fern the steps to riddle the rose and the leader follows.

  At first Fern was angry with me for pulling him away from making music, but later, when we had several nights’ practice behind us and could dance together, he said, “This is good. This is another way of knowing the music.” He pressed a kiss to my forehead.

  I thought then that I knew my future. Foolish as I was, I did not watch my sisters, who changed partners a dozen times a night.

  Foolish I was not to remember that however dull daytime life was, it still had the power to invade the nights.

  We were all twelve nodding over our embroidery frames the next afternoon when my sister Aprilla poked me with her needle hard enough to draw blood.

  I jerked awake and looked at her, my needle raised, ready to cross needles with her, but she said, “Hist! I have it from the cobbler’s boy that Father has been searching for a spy again, inviting anyone to come and catch us in our journey. He promises marriage to one of us and half the kingdom to the man who discovers where we go at night.”

  I tapped Maya on my other side, and whispered the news to her, and she tapped Junia, until we all knew the same thing. Yarnmistress Teazel was sleeping and noticed nothing.

  My father had recruited spies before, but we had always defeated them. Usually it was as simple as having whichever of us caught the spy’s eye offer him a sleeping posset before we went to bed.

  Once or twice a spy resisted, and then Septima practiced an art she had learned from one of her cavaliers, casting confusion or fairy sleep over the spy, and then we went belowground as usual.

  At supper that night we were not surprised to see that a strange man sat at our father’s right hand. He wore dirt-colored cotton clothes instead of velvet and silk, and his skin was dark with sun. He kept his head down over his food, nodded when Father addressed him, and hesitated over his answers. Unused to speaking with royalty, I thought.

  He glanced at me and I saw silver in his eyes.

  Fern had just such silvery glints in his eyes.

  I trembled and clasped Maya’s hand under the table. I feared this spy would not be easy to evade.

  After supper and entertainment, my sisters and I, as usual, retreated to our room upstairs.

  “His eyes were for you,” Febria told me as we brewed the posset. “So you shall give this to him.”

  “He will not be tricked,” I said. “He is different from the others.”

  Septima gathered the powdered pearl, fern seed, and pieces of nutshell she would need for her art. “If he will not be tricked, he will be bespelled,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

  Presently the stranger came up to the little room beside ours, the one where our father always stationed his spies. It had a door that led to our room, and the lock was on the stranger’s side.

  I took the posset in a white porcelain cup. Febria sprinkled nutmeg on top. It smelled so lovely I wanted to drink it myself, and remembered the days when I had such a drink every night.

  I knocked on the door, and the stranger opened it to me. Ill-mannered, he stared and stared at me, as he had not at supper earlier. “S-something to ease your night,” I whispered, holding out the cup to him. What if he found our secret? What if he chose one of us in marriage? Would he choose me? Febria, who knew how to watch for such signs, thought he would.

  So I studied this stranger too, in smaller glances. Hard-handed, coarse-haired, narrow-mouthed, I found him. But silver in the eyes, and a smile, when he gave it, that made him beautiful.

  “Thank you,” he said, taking the cup from me. Finally he stopped staring. He lifted the cup to his lips.

  Something clattered to the floor. I glanced toward it. A small knife, sheathed in leather, with an ebony handle. Why had it fallen, and where had it come from?

  I looked back at the stranger. “Aah,” he said. “Thank you. That was delicious.” He held the empty cup out to me and stooped to pick up his knife.

  “Sleep well,” I whispered. I backed into our bedroom and handed the cup to my waiting sister, listened as the stranger closed and locked the door.

  “Did he drink it?” Febria murmured.

  “I don’t know. It is gone, anyway.”

  We waited an hour and a half in silence. At the end of that time, Septima worked a charm on the lock and opened the door to the stranger's room. We saw him lying there asleep, snoring. Septima sealed t
he door again.

  “Let's not go tonight,” I whispered to the others.

  “He sleeps,” said Febria. “Where’s the harm?”

  “He makes fools of us.”

  But my sisters laughed at my apprehensions, and we all tugged Febria’s bed aside. She sketched the sign on the floor that opened our door to the belowground world. I could hear the far-off music already, flute, harp, fiddle, and drum, and smell the fruits that hung always ripe from the trees in the metal- and jewel-leafed orchards, sweeter and juicier than any earthly fruit. The light that shone from the tunnel was the color of sun through spring leaves.

  We ran down the steps, laughing. My heart yearned for Fern.

  And yet, as I reached the bottom stair, something held up the hem of my skirt, as though it were caught in a crack. I tugged it loose but could see no trap.

  As we crossed the silver-leafed orchard, I heard a tiny crackle behind me, as of a twig breaking.

  As we traveled the gold-leafed grove, I heard such a sound again.

  As we passed through the diamond-leafed grove, I heard it again.

  I looked behind each time, and saw nothing but a waving branch. Since we had all plucked fruit as we passed, there was nothing significant about that.

  Then we reached the dance hall and were swept into the heart of the dance. Joy fueled my feet through the figures, and I loved looking at the beautiful and graceful people all around me. I forgot my fears.

  Not until I had been at the dance an hour did I approach Fern and coax him away from the musicians’ dais. He came more easily that night. We went to the hall of flowers and I taught him face the future, and laugh lies bleeding, and over and under.

  The music stopped and he held me closer and whispered in my ear, “Who is the shadow that follows you?”

  All my joy fled. “It is my father’s spy. He will tell my father where we go every night, and then he can claim me in marriage, and they will close the door to this world.” All the bright fire of music, color, dance, laughter, our cavaliers and their ladies, all I knew of wonder, fell to ash in my mind.

  “No,” Fern murmured, and kissed me on the lips for the first time. He tasted of sweet grass and sage. “Now I will teach you a dance,” he said in a louder voice, “Catch the rabbit’s toe,” and he put his arms around me. We whirled together, arms about each other’s waists, and then he loosed me and lunged. A moment later he gripped a black cap in his hands, and my father’s spy stood unveiled before us.

  “Who are you?” Fern asked him.

  “Prewitt, a huntsman, my lord,” said the spy in a shaking voice.

  Fern studied the cap he had taken from the spy. “A cap of invisibility, such as only Mist makes. Where did you get it?”

  The spy had leafy twigs from the orchard trees sticking out of the wallet on the belt at his waist. He looked confused and frightened. “An old woman in the marketplace gave it to me,” he said. “She vowed ’t’would help me catch the princesses and earn my fortune.”

  “What did she ask in return?”

  “She asked nothing, but gave it to me in thanks for three coppers I gave her. She was begging.”

  “So it is rightfully bought,” Fern said. He sighed. “Someone did this mischief a-purpose, then. Is it my Marzia whose hand you would ask in marriage?”

  A small thrill went through me then. My heart had already claimed Fern, but this was the first I knew that he claimed me in return.

  Prewitt said, “I find her most comely, my lord, but all of the princesses are beautiful; I would be happy with any. Though I know them not.”

  Fern thought for a moment, silver flashing in his eyes. At last he turned to my father’s spy and said, “Let us contrive.”

  * * *

  The following morning our father summoned us before him and confronted us with his spy.

  “My daughters, where do you go each night?” our father asked us, and we all answered, “Nowhere, father, but to our room and our rest.”

  “That is not true, is it, my spy?” our father asked.

  “It is not true. I have seen where they go,” said the spy. “They go to the underground kingdom.”

  All my sisters gasped at this.

  “They pass through a grove of silver-leafed trees.” He took leaves of silver from his wallet. “They pass through a grove of gold-leafed trees.” He brought out leaves of gold. “They pass through a grove of diamond-leafed trees.” He added leaves of diamond to the bouquet he held. “And then they come to the fairy ballroom, and there they dance their slippers through each night.”

  All my sisters paled as he spoke. Only Maya looked at me and noticed I was not surprised.

  “At last a man who can do as I ask,” the king said. “Thank you for unearthing this mystery. Now at last we can put a stop to this wild behavior and teach these girls to be fit wives for mortal men. Choose any of my daughters as your wife, and I will grant you half my kingdom.”

  “Marzia is the one I want,” said the spy.

  I went to him and we were wed then and there. It was Fern’s walnut-stained hand I held, Fern who wore Prewitt’s coarse clothes in front of my father, Fern who gave me my second kiss, my first as a married woman.

  Fern it was who told my father’s workmen how to close the tunnel under Febria’s bed that led to the underground, and Fern it was before we left the castle who opened another tunnel under Maya’s bed and gave all my sisters fairy shoes that would never wear through no matter how hard they danced.

  Prewitt stayed belowground and learned to dance from the fairy women. Each night he danced with a different one of my sisters, and each day he ran with the fairy huntsmen after beasts beyond legend. After a while he married my sister Maya, and by that time he had learned all he needed to know of courtliness; they spent half their time aboveground and half below.

  Fern built me a castle on a hill in our half of the kingdom, and opened a door to underground there too. I saw my sisters every night, except on nights we entertained. Fern invited wandering bards and harpers to our great hall and played with the best of them. Some of them went willingly underground. Others taught him new music to take there. I learned to play the lute, and taught Fern tickle the baby and patch the roof, and we were very happy.

  End

  About the Author

  Over the past thirty years, Nina Kiriki Hoffman has sold adult and YA novels and more than 250 short stories. Her works have been finalists for the World Fantasy, Mythopoeic, Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick, and Endeavour awards. Her fiction has won a Stoker and a Nebula Award.

  A collection of her short stories, Permeable Borders, was published in 2012 by Fairwood Press.

  Nina does production work for the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She teaches through Lane Community College. She lives in Eugene, Oregon.

  For a list of Nina's publications, go to: http://ofearna.us/books/hoffman.html.

  Connect with the Author

  You can connect directly with the Nina Kiriki Hoffman through Facebook.

  Other Nina Kiriki Hoffman Titles

  You can find the following titles online. The links below will allow you to purchase directly from Amazon or read free fiction online.

  Short Fiction:

  "Trophy Wives," by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Family Tree" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Escapes" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "The Ghosts of Strangers" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Ghost Hedgehog" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "How I Came to Marry a Herpetologist" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "The Weight of Wishes" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Key Signatures" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Haunted Humans" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Zombies for Jesus" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Fast Wedded to the Ground" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "A Wolf in Holy Places" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "The Dangers of Touch" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Airborn" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman


  "Surreal Estate" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman