Free The Spinner and the Slipper by Camryn Lockhart Page A

meet his gaze. “Have you nothing else of rare value that you might offer me? Willingly?”
    Eliana stared deep into those eyes, seeing there a longing she hardly dared name. A longing that reflected her own? Could it possibly be that in those eyes she saw the home she had lacked all these years? Could it possibly be that in her eyes he saw the same?
    She spoke before realizing she intended to. “I will give you a name,” she said. “Before dawn. I promise, I will name you.”
    His face lit up with an internal glow much brighter than all the gold he could ever spin. “Do you . . . do you realize what that means?” he asked her, his voice tight with hope and no little fear. “For faeries?”
    As he spoke, realization struck Eliana. Deep inside, she knew then what she had promised—to name him was to claim him as her own. Forever. Such was the way of the Faerie Realm, the magic and beauty.
    “Eliana,” said he, “are you sure?”
    She did not hesitate, not even for a moment. Even as another hot flush flamed in her cheeks, she smiled across the spinning wheel at him. “Yes,” she said with absolute confidence. “I am sure.”
    For a moment she thought he would spring over the wheel and catch her in his arms. She rather hoped he would! But instead, with that brilliant light still shining like the sun in his face, out from his inmost being, he took a seat at the spinning stool. “Then let us get to work, my dearest one!” he cried. “In exchange for such a gift, I can spin whole mountains of gold!”
    This time Eliana stayed up with him through the night. She handed him handful after handful of straw and dragged spools of thread away to another corner when they were full. The faerie sang loudly as he worked, and Eliana joined in the song, tentatively at first, and then with more vim:
     
    “Round about, round about,
    Lo and behold!
    Reel away, reel away,
    Straw into gold!”
     
    Eliana stood close to the faerie now, kneeling beside the minuscule mound of straw left. She handed him a small handful, and he fed it in slowly. All the while, her mind busied itself with thinking of his name. It had to be the right name, the name that would truly claim him. Not just anything would do. Somehow it had to be a name that expressed all he had come to mean to her in so short a time, a name that expressed all he would come to mean to her as time went on.
    “That’s done!” the faerie declared at last. The sky outside the window was just beginning to lighten as he turned to Eliana and took her hands in his. Mounds of gleaming gold surrounded them both, but she could hardly see this for the bright glow of his eyes. “Now, my sweetest Eliana, may I claim that gift you promised?”
    She smiled up at him, so full of joy in that moment. The name came to her then, the perfect name. His name. “Yes,” she declared. “From this day forward, you will be called—”
    A noise like a thunderclap filled the room, drowning out her voice. The sound itself was so powerful, it knocked Eliana to the ground. She thought she heard her faerie captain cry out in horror, but even that sound was lost in a powerful whirlwind that sent the gold thread flying from its neat piles and spools in a terrible maelstrom of light and darkness.
    Suddenly Eliana’s eyes fixed upon two sandal-clad feet. She looked up slowly into the most beautiful, most frightening face she could ever have imagined. Fear struck her mute, and she could not find the will even to scream.
    King Oberon stared down at her. “What,” he demanded, in a mountainous voice, “is the meaning of this?”
    He lifted his gaze from her to the faerie, who had been blown across the room in the whirlwind, striking the wall hard. He picked himself up bravely, throwing back his shoulders as he faced his king.
    “Master!” he cried, extending both hands. “Allow me to explain—”
    “Don’t bother!” Oberon roared. He flung out an arm, and suddenly enormous chains fastened themselves