They moved into a small promenade, and he tossed her into the air for a graceful flip and caught her neatly at the waist. Light as she was, it was easy to do the motions, and he enjoyed it. He felt more and more like the giant he never had been, and privately he reveled in it. When the demonstration was through, the Sidhe spectators applauded gleefully. “Thou hast danced before!” Thistlepuff exclaimed, her bosom heaving with even more abandon. “Yet thou dost claim to be human!”
“Human beings can dance,” Stile said. “The Lady I serve could do as well.” He hoped that was the case; it occurred to him as he spoke that though he had seen the Lady Blue ride marvelously well, he had never seen her dance. Yet of course she could do it!
Neysa blew a note of caution. But it was too late. Stile, in his inexperience with the Faerie-folk had made another blunder. Thistlepuff was frowning mischievously at the Lady Blue.
“So thou sayest?” the Sidhe inquired, as sharply as the sound of the wood of a tree-limb snapping under too great a burden of snow. “Thou art of the Elven kind, surely; but she is as surely mundane. We shall see how she can dance.” And the Sidhe recentered their ring on the lady. He had gotten her into this; he would have to get her out. Stile crossed to the Lady as she dismounted. He could not even apologize; that would betray the situation to the Faerie-folk. He had to bluff it through—and he hoped that she could and would go along.
The Lady Blue smiled enigmatically and took his proffered hand. Good; at least she accepted him as a partner. It would have been disaster with a mischievous four-and-a-half-foot-tall Sidhe male for a dancing partner! At least Stile would keep his feet mainly on the ground. It would have to be impromptu free-form, for they had had no rehearsal. Stile hoped the Lady had analyzed the dancing patterns as he had. But he let her lead, so that she could show him what she wanted.
Suddenly they were in it. The Lady was taller than he and as heavy—but also as lithe and light on her feet as a woman could be. When he swung her, she was solid, not at all like Thistlepuff, yet she moved precisely. He did not try to toss her in air, but she was so well balanced he could hold her up readily, and whirl her freely. When he moved, she matched him; when he stepped, she stepped; when he leaped, she was with him. In fact, she was the best dancer he had encountered.
It was a fragment of heaven, being with her like this. For the moment he could almost believe she was his. When they danced apart, she was a marvel of motion and symmetry; when they danced together, she was absolute de-light. Now he wished this dance could go on forever, keeping his dream alive.
But then Neysa brought her harmonica melody to a close, and the dance ended. The Sidhe applauded. “Aye, she can dance!” Thistlepuff agreed ruefully. “Mayhap she has some inkling of Faerie blood in her ancestry after all. Thou hast shamed us, and we must make amend. Come to our village this night.”
“We dare not decline their hospitality,” the Lady Blue murmured in his ear. She was glowing with her effort of the dance, and he wished he could embrace her and kiss her. But this was one blunder he knew better than to make.
Now the steep bank of a ridge opened in a door. There was light inside, and warmth. The passage into the hill was broad enough for the steeds, and these were of course welcome. They walked into the Faerie village. Inside it was amazingly large. This was technically a cave, but it seemed more like a clearing in a deep wood at night, the walls invisible in their blackness. A cheery fire blazed in the center. Already a feast was being laid out: a keg of liqueur, many delicious-smelling breadstuffs, fresh vegetables, pots of roasted potatoes and buckets of milk and honey and dew. For the animals there was copious grain and fragrant hay and a sparkling stream. Then Stile remembered something from his childhood readings. “If a human being partakes of Faerie food, is he not doomed to live among them forever? We have business elsewhere—“
Thistlepuff laughed with the sound of rain spattering into a quiet pond. “Thou really art not of our kind, then! How canst thou believe that myth? Thou hast it backwards: if ever one of the Sidhe forsakes his own and consumes mundane food, he is doomed to become mortal. That is the true tragedy.”
