Ill Met by Moonlight Read Free Page B

through Will’s worn-out soles. His legs ached with a dull fatigue. He should have had his supper and he should be going to bed. He should be lying beside his Nan. But Nan was gone.
    What if she hadn’t gone to the Hathaways? What if she’d run away? She used to escape from her father’s strict household, he remembered. She’d dressed in her brother Bartholomew’s old clothes and gone tramping about the forest of Arden for whole afternoons. Will wondered if she missed that freedom.
    After Susannah’s birth Nan had turned so silent. She no longer laughed at his jests. Waking up in the night to tend the baby made her look perpetually tired. And there wasn’t ever enough food, either, only the meager white meat of egg and cheese, with the occasional bit of mutton. With her feeding the babe besides, Nan had grown thin and wraithlike. She didn’t seek Will’s pleasure as before, nor did her sight inflame him as it once had.
    The trees whispered ominously around him, disturbed by wind.
    Will sighed.
    Things scurried and chattered in the undergrowth on either side of the path.
    Ahead, some creature cried like a wounded child.
    Could a gentleman really have been courting Nan? One of the richer merchants who came for the Stratford market, perhaps?
    Will thought that Nan—Nan who labored nonstop, cooking and washing, mending and weaving and tending the garden—might well have taken the promise of a better life, had a gentleman offered it to her. What fool wouldn’t?
    Yet Nan was a fool in love. Nan loved him. Will was sure of this. He remembered the soft look that veiled Nan’s deep blue eyes when she gazed on him. Yes, she loved him, too much and too well.
    In the distance, a dog, or perhaps a wolf, howled at the moon.
    Moonlight scarcely penetrated the deep darkness of the timeless forest, where each tree cast a whispering shadow, each bush resembled a skittering, squirming monster.
    Sweet music sounded out of nowhere, rising like a river current, surrounding and enveloping Will.
    He stopped, startled, at the sounds that were soothing, cool and harmonious and rousing all at once, gripping him in the tide of their smooth, sweet emotion.
    Ahead of him, on his right-hand side, a great flash of light surged, like a flame that suddenly catches.
    Fire. He flinched in panic, and put up his hand to cover his face. Fire, now. Fire come out of nothing. The forest, dry with midsummer heat, would catch easily. Will was too close to run from it.
    But, as his dazzled eyes adapted to the light, he realized the blaze shone too pale, too mild, to be a conflagration. He lowered the hand that had shielded his eyes.
    The flash of light solidified into a tall, white castle. Because its walls had an uneven transparency like clotted milk, Will saw rooms within it and glittering servants and courtiers in velvet and jewels walking up and down white marble staircases. At the center of the castle, a vast salon sprawled, furnished only with a red carpet and a massive gilded throne.
    Noblemen and fine ladies, wearing jewels that sparkled like rival stars, stood in groups on either side of the throne. Brightly garbed minstrels played sweet music on strange instruments.
    In front of the throne, on the red carpet, stood Nan, her fair hair arranged in heavy coils braided through with pearls, her slim body garbed in fine cloth that gave off the sheen of silk.
    Around her, lights sparkled and twinkled, like the blinking beacon of the firefly.

Scene 2

    A palace in the air, sparkling with white walls and spacious marble floors. Columns like those in ancient Greek buildings support the far-distant ceiling, but these columns rise lighter and thinner than ever the gravity-bound laws of human architecture could permit. The ceiling itself shimmers in deep tones of pure gold, as does the throne. On the throne sits a creature who looks like a bearded man in his middle years. But his dark hair is smoother, his features more perfect than man ever possessed. He