Any Man So Daring by Sarah A. Hoyt

looked like dim sunset in fairyland. He’d left her when the horse of her adopted father loomed in the horizon and the barking of his dogs could be heard over the eerie, still landscape of frozen waves of rock and millenary trees.
    Proteus had come again the next elf-day and the next and the next.  
    His beauty assured Miranda of his truth when he spoke to her of his love for her and of the just war he and his father, Vargmar, waged against the evil tyrant, her uncle.
    For Miranda knew, from legend and tale — all that had kept her company through her lonely childhood — that the good were always beautiful, while the evil carried some obvious deformity upon themselves.
    There was nothing deformed in Proteus, and so he was her true and gallant knight.
    When they won the war — Proteus had told her -- Miranda would be Queen of fairyland, and Proteus her trusty husband.
    At such prospect, Miranda grew giddy, even as, in the Hunter’s library, she waited for the hoofbeats of her adopted father’s horse to vanish into the thunderclouds that announced the sunset of mortals, the dawn of fairykind.
    She wished her errand could have waited longer, till she was sure he was gone for the night and would not return.
    But outside the wood, Proteus would already be waiting her, and he’d told her their errand was likely to need all the time in the day of fairy, the night of mortals.
    Proteus had asked Miranda to search for one of the Hunter’s books from these shelves. He’d shown her the symbols that should be on the cover, and he’d told her it was a book of arcane and powerful spells.
    For Proteus’s side had lost the war and his father would soon be executed by the tyrant, Quicksilver.
    Nothing remained for Proteus but one more desperate spell, one last magical attempt.
    At which Miranda must help, for his magic was tied to the hill, and any magic he used would be noticed by the evil king, Quicksilver, or his spies.
    She felt her heart hammer within her chest, part excitement and part fear, for what if Proteus failed...what if he died?
    But no, she would not think on it. Nay, she would refuse.
    On such decision, she shook her head and drew a deep breath and, hearing Caliban moan a complaint behind her, she snapped, “To it, Caliban. Here, here are the symbols that will be on the cover.” She withdrew from her bosom and displayed to him the piece of paper upon which Proteus had traced the figures. “This is what it will look like, and you’ll help me look.”
    “But mistress--” Caliban started.
    “Don’t 'mistress' me. Just search for it.”
    Well she understood his reluctance, for Miranda knew in her inner heart that the Hunter would not be pleased if he caught her here. And he would punish Caliban doubly were he to find the brute here.
    The Hunter had taught her magic — some magic — and he’d told her that barring the eternal creatures, creatures like the Hunter himself, she had more power than any man or elf.
    But he’d never told her to look into the arcane books, never taught her to read the strange language they spoke. He’d forbidden it, indeed, professing himself afraid for her safety, her sanity.
    A treacherous thought crossed Miranda’s mind, that perhaps the Hunter had kept her from the books to thus seal her away from discovering her true origin.
    She stamped down the thought.
    The truth was that her adopted father had never been less than kind to her. The innocent devilry of her childhood, the temper tantrums of adolescence, all had met with a bemused affection, a gentle joy in her presence.
    She thought, as she looked through the volumes, and climbed a ladder to reach the upper ones, that the Hunter might be hurt. Just that. He wouldn’t blame her and he wouldn’t turn on her. But his eyes might acquire a wounded look, and she might know that she’d hurt this immortal creature who’d never done her aught but good.
    She would know she had returned kindness with ill-will.
    Could she bear