Faint Heart, Foul Lady: A Novelette: & Bonus Story: Night Life by Hoffman Nina Kiriki

Author:Hoffman, Nina Kiriki [Hoffman, Nina Kiriki]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2014-12-25T16:00:00+00:00

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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.

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