Free Ill Met by Moonlight by Sarah A. Hoyt

ruled anymore. If her father had never managed to rule her, no, nor her stepmother either, no matter how many times the switch was deployed or pious sermons preached to her, she’d not be ruled by these creatures, either, who were neither living nor dead, natural nor magic. Nor would she remain forever a prisoner in their nowhere realm under the hill. She meant to show them they had not, as perhaps they thought, kidnapped a hapless peasant, a willing heifer to do their bidding.
    Ariel still stared at her, and still held the green, pearl-speckled dress, her mouth open in wonderment.
    Funny creature, Nan thought. Did it shock her so much, then, that Nan refused to obey Sylvanus’s will? She studied the reflection of Ariel’s face. Did Ariel think Sylvanus that wonderful? An elf, Ariel might be, inconstant and mutable as all her kind. But she appeared concerned for Nan, and her features, bruised and tired, looked a mirror of Nan’s own grief, the face of a fellow sufferer.
    But Ariel was the sort who would suffer with patience, and Nan had no intention of doing likewise.
    “Tell the king,” she said, “that I am too tired, from feeding the babes in the night. Surely he’ll grant me leave, then.”
    Like that, Ariel’s face unclouded, and a little smile twisted her pink mouth. “Oh, certainly. That he will.”
    Nan smiled at Ariel in turn. Well, well. The little maid didn’t seem squeamish about telling lies. And Ariel had known it was a lie, as rested as Nan looked and—Nan spared a glance at herself in the mirror, proud of her ruddy cheeks and clear eyes—as healthy. How far would the maid’s complaisance go? “Ariel, I miss my husband,” Nan said. “I’ve been married to him but a short time. You seem my friend true. If you would hide me and . . . and help me make my way out of the hill, to my home . . . then could I be with my husband, and . . .”
    Before she finished asking, Nan knew the answer. Ariel dropped the dress and cast a shocked look all about as if she expected the magnificent walls to sprout ears or perhaps the golden oak door, on the far side, to open and allow an armed guard into Nan’s peaceful chamber. “Oh no, milady,” she said quickly. “You must stay here. Stay here and nurse our princess.”
    So decisive an answer, Nan hadn’t expected. The maid condoned lying to the king, but not escaping him. Why not? Absently, Nan lifted the crystal-handled brush and ran its soft bristles down her silken wheat-colored hair. Too late, she remembered the banquet food she’d eaten the night before, and the injunctions found in every fairy tale against eating in Fairyland. Was it possible she wouldn’t be able to leave even if she were to try?
    “The food I ate last night,” Nan said, looking out of the corner of her eye at Ariel, without fully turning to face the elf maiden. “Will it make me one of you?”
    The girl started. “Oh, no, milady.” Ariel took in a deep, startled breath. “No, milady. Never. We cannot give our food to mortals and bind them to the hill without the mortal’s consent. That food you ate was charmed, true, but only charmed with transport spells to bring it from the tables of rich men around the country, to serve to you at our banquet. It was transported by magic from their tables, from beneath their very gazes. Our king himself . . .” And here, for no reason that Nan could imagine, Ariel’s voice dwindled and diminished, and lapsed into speechlessness, like a brook that flows into the Earth and disappears. “The food, human food, was brought here expressly for you, and only the choicest.”
    Not trusting the mirror, Nan dared a sideways look at Ariel’s face. She marked how wan Ariel had gone, how colorless her lips had turned at the word that had escaped them. The king. Was this maiden somehow grieved at her king? Perhaps, just perhaps, Ariel loved her king and resented his advances to Nan. So, she would agree with Nan’s lying and avoiding his