Free Twelve Days of Faery by W. R. Gingell

of bricks in front of them.
    “Oh,” said Althea. She sounded disappointed. “How did you know which one it was?”
    “I went searching for these passages when I was a boy,” said Markon. “I never found this one, but Parrin did. It was one summer while he was recovering from a lingering chest infection. He was wrapped up in shawls and scarves, waddling around the castle with one of the younger upper maids and trying to find all the passages. He was so proud of himself for finding it. We made the rhyme so we’d remember.”
    “Warp and weft?” Althea said quizzically.
    “Maker’s mark,” Markon told her. “This part of the castle was restored about thirty years ago after a bit of a nasty incident with a dragon– secret passage and all. The iron sconces were sourced from a local consortium of blacksmiths here in the capital known as The Metal Loom. All of their work was stamped with the sign of the Metal Loom.”
    “Now, that’s interesting,” said Althea thoughtfully.
    “I asked them about it when Parrin found the passage and I recognised the maker’s mark. They said the passage had been caved in before the dragon incident, filled with half a century’s rubble, but my father had them clear it out and make it new. He was a great one for tradition, my father. Why do you suppose the Door was opened here? I didn’t think anyone else knew about it.”
    “That’s what so interesting,” said Althea, and opened the Door.
                  The first impression Markon had was one of brilliant moonshine. It gleamed along marble flagstones and marble colonnades, sparkled in the depths of decorative pools, and glided gently on wafting leaves through the high arches of a foreign courtyard. The breeze was soft, intimate, and delicately scented.
    “Unseelie,” said Althea. “This bit of magic is particularly strong, so we can’t count on an easy excursion this time.”
    Markon, who hadn’t thought their last venture into Faery had gone particularly well, nodded and tried not to look as wary as he felt. “Is that music I hear?”
    “Most likely,” Althea said, drawing him through the Door and into Faery once again.
    Markon stumbled slightly on the threshold, suspended for a brief moment between Here and There, and then the suspicion of music jumped in intensity as he found himself in the moonlit courtyard. It was a high, mad skirling of pipes and violins that tugged at his feet and made him smile instinctively. He looked at Althea and saw a gleam of sable in her eyes that suddenly made her seem fae again. Already she was floating rather than walking; and Markon, feeling that she might possibly float away into the wild revels he could hear through the colonnades, instinctively held onto her hand though they were safely through the Door.
    “It must be a feast night,” said Althea. She wafted over to the arches at the end of the courtyard, trailing Markon behind her.
    Much to Markon’s surprise, the courtyard wasn’t really a courtyard: it was more of a vast balcony, left open to the stars and overlooking another courtyard below. The lower courtyard was paved in black and white marble like the upper was, but only small, shifting bits of it could be seen through the whirling throng. The music was louder here, too: it felt as though it was making its way, living and wild, into his very blood.
    “We’re not fine enough to go down there,” Althea said regretfully. “If I’d known ...never mind, we’ll just have to steal some clothes.”
    “ Steal clothes?” Markon repeated numbly. He found himself being led by the hand back across the courtyard without being able to summon up the words to express how little he wanted to steal clothes from the fae.
    With an air of reason, Althea said: “We’ll give them back, of course.”
    “Of course!” echoed Markon. He let Althea drag him through another of the interminable arches and halfway down a silvery hall before it occurred to him to ask: “Where