The Spinner and the Slipper by Camryn Lockhart

Author:Camryn Lockhart [Lockhart, Camryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-06-26T23:00:00+00:00

“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.

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