Ill Met by Moonlight by Sarah A. Hoyt Page B

back to the first hall he’d crossed, and tried to climb a spiral staircase to the floor above.
    Instead of making progress, he ran deep into the marble of the staircase, and felt not even a tingle as he did so.
    Encased in stone, his lungs still drew breath from the cool vegetation-scented air of Arden Forest. Fine lords and ladies walked up the staircase, not noticing him.
    He heard a fine titter, a musical giggle.
    The dark lady stood next to the staircase, and bid him come, with a gentle wave of the hand.
    If any of the other courtiers saw her, they gave no sign. They didn’t see Will. That was quite plain.
    Reluctantly, Will came to the wave of the lady’s hand. He’d gone back to thinking it was all a mad dream. Only in dreams did people walk through walls. Only in dreams did people run unnoticed amid the high and mighty. Only in dreams.
    Yet, if this was a dream, Will would control it. He would do what he’d set out to do.
    “I’m going to Shottery,” he said, loud and clear, as he came near the lady Silver.
    She smiled and kicked up her skirt with the tip of her silvery, pointed shoes, as if mocking him with a martial step. “To Shottery, then,” she said. “And I’ll talk to you along the way and tell you how you might rescue your wife and daughter.”
    She slipped her arm in his, and led him quietly out of the hall, through the wall, which she, too, crossed, as though it didn’t exist. “It is no use,” she said. “You cannot reach your Nan this way. She is in the world of the elves, in Fairyland, and you’re in the world of humans. The two do no more touch than two leaves in a pair of tables, wax to wax, right next to each other, but unable to mingle the figures that the merchant has scrawled upon each. Credit and debit remain thus separate.” Silver smiled.
    “She is of my world, Nan is,” Will said. Even in dreams, there should be some rationality preserved. “And Susannah.”
    Silver sighed. “Yes, but they were taken to ours, as I am in yours. This is a magic possible only to elves, not to humans. Humans must do something particular to acquire magic and gain admittance to Elvenland.”
    She’d led him by the arm onto his accustomed path through the forest and walked him along it.
    The palace, with its lights and glimmering dancers, vanished from view, leaving the forest all the darker in its absence.
    “So, what must I do to get Nan back?” Will asked, defeated. Even if this were only a dream, if it turned out that Nan had truly vanished, perhaps it was a prophetic dream and perhaps by following its instructions, Will could recover Nan nonetheless. “And is Susannah with her?”
    “Well, Susannah is with her mother, and, should you recover your wife, the babe will be given to you. But first you must tell me your name, sir. And who you are.”
    “William Shakespeare. Will, son of John Shakespeare, the glover of Henley Street, in Stratford.” He hoped, incongruously, that this fair lady wouldn’t know the state of his father’s business, as if it mattered what a dream, a chimera, thought or knew.
    “Ah. And you’re . . . a butcher’s apprentice?”
    Will tugged away the arm the lady held. Did he look like a butcher, and born to such low calling? An insulting dream, this was, that he dreamed. “No. I’m a schoolmaster. A petty-schoolmaster. I teach in the petty school in Wincot.”
    The lady smiled, and her hand retrieved Will’s arm and grasped it tighter. “A worthy calling, and you must be a man of learning. So it will not surprise you to know that in the sphere of elves and fairies, as in that of men, there can be treachery and base deceit. Nor, knowing as no doubt you do that all spheres are linked, the stars arrayed around the sun just like all worthy men are arrayed around your most high sovereign, you cannot fail to know that injustice in the world of fairies will lead to injustice in the world of men. And my own tribulations have thus led to your losing your