Ill Met by Moonlight by Sarah A. Hoyt Page A

lacked the old religion’s accustomed patience toward the ancient beliefs of the people.
    From what Will had gathered when—a child of small years and tender imagination—he had listened to stories obviously not meant for him, the people below the hill must be the same as the beings who’d consorted with the druids. Magical beings, of unhallowed magic. His adult mind told him it was all nonsense, but dreams often were, so he thought on.
    Some of his aunts and their neighbors had said these supernatural beings were a few of the fallen angels, the less guilty ones, who’d never been cast all the way to the depths. Others believed that they were the ancient, dethroned gods of the mistaken faiths. Others, yet, that they were the souls of the dead.
    Will looked at the palace, and his heart turned within him. Nan amid the dead? No, it couldn’t be. When she’d given birth he’d feared for her and the baby but nothing had come of it, and Nan lived, and Susannah with her.
    He frowned at the beautiful lady in front of him, at her silver eyes that gazed into his.
    Will’s mother held with the papist belief in which she’d been raised, and even kept—well-concealed in the attic—an image of the Virgin Mary amid the angels, a painted cloth given to her by her prosperous father. But Will had heard the preachers say often enough that those apparitions of the Virgin, hailed by mystics of the past had been no more than deceptions of the devil.
    Were these devils, then? Had Nan been captured by their deceptions, and had Will, with her, unwittingly fallen into their trap? And where was Susannah?
    The lady smiled quizzically at him, while Will, uneasy, looked at the translucent palace, the dancing company. He remembered stories of the fairy people dancing, cursed dances that could hold those who joined in them captive for years or centuries. When the dancer emerged, he would crumble into the dust of the centuries he’d ignored while dancing.
    Nan.
    Will muttered the words of the Our Father under his breath, fully expecting the lady, the palace, and all to dissolve and leave him and Nan alone in the forest.
    The dark lady laughed at his whisper. “We’re not afraid of the divine. I’m sorry. Those are only legends. We are, it is true, bound by certain rules, as all creation is. But because we’re different from you, doesn’t mean we’re unhallowed. We’ve respected the religions of men, and their beliefs, through the centuries, but they have no more power over us than we over them.” Her laugh damped down to a muffled giggle. “No, my dear. If you want your wife back, you’ll have to try another way.” She wrapped her hands around his arm. “My way.”
    Will fought free of Silver’s grasp and, half-maddened, ran to the immense staircase that led to the translucent palace’s arched doorway.
    He would rush in and grab Nan and pull her back. He seemed to remember, from the legends he’d half-listened to, that this was the way to reclaim a loved one stolen by the hill people for their unholy merriment.
    Only, instead of climbing the staircase, as he intended, he ran through it—through the stone, and the walls, and the people, and the high columns, and through a series of crowded halls beyond. Guards and maids—all of them too pretty to be mortals—gathered in groups, or went about inscrutable errands.
    He tripped on twigs and stubbed his toes on stones obscured by translucent courtiers, and he cried out the holy name in vain as he ran headlong into a translucent kitchen where fire that didn’t burn him flamed in the hearth, maids and women tended pots that swung right through him, and roasts that he could neither smell nor touch turned on crystal-bright spits.
    Above him, in the throne room, couples danced on and on, in indefatigable merriment. Looking straight up, Will saw, through the translucent marble floor, the length of his Nan’s legs, encased in white stockings, moving beneath her green silk dress.
    He ran