"You let my daughter fall into the talons of a dragon?"
    The High King's voice was as smooth as satin. Dagda smiled and picked up one of the gilded peaches from the arrangement on the nearest pedestal. Any other Fae would have fallen to his knees, but Dagda was not Dagda for nothing. He took a bite of peach, wiping the dripping juice from his chin before he answered.
    "She's your daughter, sire, and must prove her blood's worth. I will pay for her if she fails the test. That is my task, is it not?" asked Dagda, grinning.
    Finvarra said nothing more. Giselle was eight years old, after all.

*****

    Giselle watched the dragon puttering through its hoard with clear blue eyes. The hoard that now included herself. She knew her uncle the Dagda too well to think her predicament was an accident. 'Bring me a little water from that cave' indeed. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she scolded herself, but… my first test. There was a little thrill. Her first real test. She couldn't have refused. Giselle sat down and made a mental list of her assets. One belt knife, not nearly long enough to do real damage to a dragon, not even sharp enough to pierce the tough scale over its eye, but a knife. One comb, and a thread spindle. She had dropped her flax fiber somewhere. One dress, somewhat worse for the wear. One canteen of clear, cold water that no sun had ever touched. Dagda, you fat old faker, you're going to get this water if it kills me. Giselle clambered forward over a heap of miscellaneous jewelry to sit down on a chest.
    The dragon rumbled and came to look at her some more. It was not a greater wyrm, and not very smart as dragons went. It liked pretty things, and to it, Giselle was simply the newest addition to its hoard. It would look at her until it was tired of her and ate her, or until she starved to death. The girl took the pins from her pale hair and shook it loose, picking apart the battered braids. She began to comb out her hair, singing a little song. The dragon made a rumble of pleased discovery. It settled comfortably into its collection of shiny rocks, carefully laying it's body across the entrance.
    Giselle sang a simple circular lay, something that there was no end to so that she wouldn't have to distract herself thinking of what to sing. She combed her mussed hair smooth, and, still singing, cleaned the hair from her comb. She sang on as she twisted the hair between her fingers, and then spun it on the spindle into a long, golden thread. On and on and round and round the song wandered as her child's fingers worked. The dragon's inner eyelids slid closed beneath the scale protection.
    The dragon woke with a snort.
    "Run, run, the dragon is awake!" shrieked the girl.
    The dragon darted out the entrance to do battle with the interloper. The golden thread snapped taught, and there was a deep crunch as the dragon's neck snapped under the hurtling momentum of its massive weight. Propelled by sheer motor nerve and instinct the dragon managed to turn and stagger back toward Giselle, but died at her feet before it could revenge its death. Giselle kicked some sand on it's dead nose, retrieved her bloody hair string, and marched out with the canteen of water jouncing and bouncing from the strap clutched in her fist.

*****

    "You don't want anything?" her father asked her. "There are some very pretty things in the hoard."
    Giselle shook her head. "No, thank you Daddy. Pick something nice for Mother. I'll choose something later."
    "Well you can choose anything that's left. Don't wait too long, all the best bits will be gone. By the way, Weyland has offered a handsome price for the hide if you'll sell it to him."
    "I don't want it. Tell him he can have it."
    A small smile crossed Finvarra's face, and he stroked his daughter's hair. "Collecting favors already, golden girl?"
    "Is it too early?" she asked seriously.
    "No, no, never too early."
    He didn't say it, but she could hear the pride in her father's voice.

*****

    It was here. Somewhere it was here, she could feel it. Giselle went forward carefully in the darkness, so much cooler than the burning desert sun that she shivered. The handfire lit a circle perhaps ten feet, and when she found what she sought it seemed to loom up so suddenly that she jumped. Lying sprawled in the cave was a gigantic skeleton. Giselle set down her pack in the sand. She went forward and laid reverent hands on the skull of the dragon. The bones were colored like ivory with a deeper silvery shimmer. Slowly Giselle examined the bone, noting where she could cut pieces with the least disruption of their natural shape.
    Giselle worked quickly, hacking the bone into the pieces of her harp. There was no time to be lost. They would miss her soon. From the shoulder blades she cut pieces for the staved back and sides. For the pillar she took from a piece of the sternum, and she chose the thin nasal bone from which to make the soundboard; stripping off a fine length of a hollow wing to be the string rib. A cheekbone yielded a graceful harmonic curve. The thick occipital bone from the base of the creature's skull was to become the base for the instrument.
    She worked with care, but with pleasure too; for working with her hands always yielded to her a great sense of well being, even working in this draconian grave. She could feel someone watching her from the darkness, but she never saw who it was. All she knew was that it was the same someone who wore soft boots came and sat down just out of the lantern light. The being did not speak or disturb her, so Giselle kept working. Paying attention to things doing you no disservice only gave them power. She wrapped the pieces of dragon bone in wool and put them in a case of stiffened boar's hide to protect them on the journey back to her father's hall.

    Ailill had felt her reality the moment she had crossed his border, and had gone to investigate. He remembered her vaguely, a colty girl child all knees and blue eyes. She had slipped her keepers, somehow. The haste of her work spoke for itself. Her pale golden hair gleamed like sunset and candle flames in the cool light of the magical lantern. Her slender hands used chisel and hammer, saw and hatchet surely. Ailill pressed his thin lips together in irritation. If she came to harm in his realm he would be the one to answer to her father. He could have chastised her. It would have been his right, but the dragon had been her kill, after all. She had a right to any piece of it that she wanted. He stayed where he was, shrouded in darkness, watching her.

    In a corner of her father's shop she worked by moonlight, joining the pieces together one night at a time, the only time when her ladies, her so-careful watchers, were themselves asleep. Words came to her lips easily, and she muttered and whispered over her worktable. They drew strength from her as they flowed from her to the harp. Once she began each night's work, no disturbance short of actually striking her could have halted the task she had begun. Giselle loved the feeling of the bone shaping under her hands. The finest sand was her file and buffing, rubbed lovingly by hand, each piece flowed into the other like water.
    Waiting for the moon to string the completed instrument was the hardest waiting she had ever done. On a night when the moon was hugely round in the night sky she fitted the steel tuning pegs into their holes. She had made the pegs and levers herself, and the thirty-six strings were of silver wire that she had drawn and wound. The harp muttered to itself as she tapped the pegs home. She finished stringing the harp only a little before dawn. Even as she tuned it, the instrument had a sweet, haunting voice. Giselle laid her cheek against the sound box, struck a single chord and smiled.
    "Play something."
    She looked up to see a Fae Lord setting down a lamp. She had not even heard him come in, so absorbed had she been in her work. His straight, steel gray hair was caught back from a pale face hewn out of angles and planes. Square jawed, aquiline nosed, he might have been handsome in an austere sort way if he had ever learned to smile. He wore black so complete that it seemed to absorb the light. Metallic blue threads glittered in his cloak like stars. Giselle didn't need anyone to tell her who he was. A small fear fluttered beneath her heart like a trapped sparrow. This was Lord Ailill, a Keeper of the Ways between Arden and the Fae. Tall, forbidding, Ailill rode a nightmare that some said ate flesh and drank blood. Ailill the Hunter, who had a heart of ice and a soul of sorcery. She had taken the bone for this harp from his lands. Ailill had been watching her.
    "What shall I play for you, Lord?" she asked softly.
    "Play what the harp gives you."
    Taking a deep breath, Giselle raised her hands to the strings. She played slowly at first, and then more quickly as the music sang through the harp frame. It was a song of awakening. It flowed and cascaded, then flared like dragon fire. Soothing, it soared into flight with whisperings like the wind and then swooped to hum as if she had sounded the very bones of the earth. Haunting and beautiful, the voice of the harp filled the workshop effortlessly. Giselle's hands wound the music to an end.
    She looked up to find that a number of people had come in to listen to her. Her Uncle Dagda and her father, Dagda's latest sleepy bedfellow and Caiolte with his bright red hair. Ailill was very still. He held out his hand in inquiry toward the instrument. Giselle rose and gave her stool to him.
    "Ingenious," he murmured half to himself as he sat to examine it in the first rays of sunlight.
    Its form was as the bone had dictated, with a double harmonic curve and the sound box five sided on the outside and round on the inside. His long hands stroked the harp, caressing the harmonic curve and down the soundboard, his fingers never going near the strings. Wordlessly he rose, bowed briefly to his liege, and strode out of the workshop.
    "Rude bastard," muttered Caiolte when Ailill was safely out of earshot. "How long was he here, Giselle?" the young knight demanded as he tossed his hair back from his face.
    Giselle didn't much care for the tone of Caiolte's question. He had paid far too much attention to her of late. "I did not note him enough to care," she said in her most quiet way.
    Caiolte hesitated faintly, under the king's mild gaze, and Dagda's laughing one. He forced a smile. "I am glad he has so little importance for you. I was afraid he might have upset you."
    "I am quite well, thank you," she said politely.
    Caiolte bowed and went out. Her father kissed her hair, wordlessly wandering back toward his rooms.
    "What did Lord Ailill want, Uncle Dagda?" asked Giselle.
    Dagda patted his lady friend on the rump, shooing her out. "Find me some breakfast, sweetling," he told her.
The lady made a tsking sound and went obediently, yawning.
    "So, let us have a look at your work," said Dagda, sitting down and tipping the harp back against his shoulder. His heavy fingers ran nimbly up the strings in a complicated double scale. "You've spaced the strings too wide, duckling. Your slender little digits could've used another five strings on it."
    "But I made it for you Uncle."
    Dagda raised his eyebrows. "For me?"
    "You always complain that the court luthier puts the strings too close together for your fingers."
    Dagda stroked the neck of the instrument as he might a horse's neck. "Bone," he said thoughtfully, then tipped his head in realization. "Dragon bone."
    "Yes Uncle."
    The Dagda smiled. "That dragon's bones?"
    "Yes Uncle."
    Dagda laughed and wrapped a brawny arm around her waist. Giselle let herself be squeezed. She put her cheek down on top of her uncle's sleep rumpled brown hair.
    "Happy Solstice, Uncle." Giselle couldn't help noticing that Dagda hadn't answered her question.

*****

    Giselle ran, fleeing out of her rooms, through the carefully kept garden. Her anger faded into frustrated tears as she staggered to a stop in the reaches of the far orchard. Panting and weeping she leaned against a pear tree, then sank to the ground. She wanted to scream and hit the tree, the mossy ground, the air itself. She sat, pulling her knees up to her chest, wrapping herself around her hurt.
    "She's almost ready to come live with me." Her mother's words echoed in her ears. Almost ready to go with Flora; almost ready be her tool, her perfect little fae princess to be shown off like an exotic pet, and Father would let her do it. Apparently it was part of the bargain.
    The night chill began to sink into her through the thin gauze of her gown, and Giselle shivered. A cloak draped around her shoulders, still warm with the heat of its owner's body. Blue threads glittered in the blackness of it like stars.
    Hastily Giselle wiped her face with her hand. "Lord Ailill, I didn't know anyone was here."
    "I just arrived."
    "Thank you for your cloak, but I would like to be alo…"
    The cloak wrapped itself more closely around her, enveloping her gently. Giselle tried to shrug it off, but it didn't fall aside. It abruptly tightened around her like a serpent. She was so securely caught that she couldn't even struggle beyond squirming. Ailill crouched, picking her up easily in his arms.
    "What do you think you're doing?" hissed Giselle, trying to throw herself out of his grip without success.
    "I should think that was obvious."
    Giselle strained to twist free and succeeded only in making him hold her more tightly. What business did a sorcerer have to be so strong, anyway. Ailill's tall, ebon steed stepped out of the gathering mist like the nightmare she was. As black as her master's cloak, with a crimson muzzle as if she'd been drinking blood. Ailill tossed Giselle up on the saddle pommel and sprang easily into his seat behind her.
    "I will have your heart in my hands for this!" she cried.
    The nightmare lifted herself from a standstill to a gallop in a simple uncoiling of her body. Giselle gave a last twist of her body.
    "FATHER, HELP ME!" Her scream carried across the orchard, dissolving impotently in the mist.
    The world rushed past in the early silence of the nightmare's gallop. The cloak settled into a deep, contented purring.
    "Get this thing off of me!" she cried.
    Everything stopped. Abruptly she was standing on the ground, the cloak a midnight pool at her feet. Giselle snatched the riding crop out of Ailill's hand and swung at him with it. She leaped back. Ailill made no move to come after her. He lifted his hand and touched the oozing weal on his neck, then looked at the blood on his fingers with detached interest.
    "You… let me go…?" she managed in surprise. "Why would you do that?"
    His voice was a whisper. "You asked me to."
    "And I suppose if I asked you'd just take me home again?" she scoffed.
    "If you ask me to do it, I will even take you back to your father. Is that what you wish?"
    She's almost ready to come live with me… Giselle looked down, saw that she was still holding his crop, and passed it back to him. "No thank you," she admitted, ashamed. She shivered, and the cloak rubbed around her ankles, purring. Giselle stepped away from it.
    Ailill crouched, and put out his hand. The cloak crawled up his arm to fasten itself around his neck again. Once it was in place over his shoulders it went limp, like any other cape. He stood, looking at Giselle. Then, slowly, as if he were afraid of frightening her, he put out his hand.
    "Let me help you," he whispered.
    Giselle looked up into his face. Something like hope stirred behind his cold, hammered-iron eyes. She slipped her soft, white hand into his strong, callused one. Ailill wrapped his fingers gently around hers. Giselle risked a smile, and his eyes warmed.
    "They will send trackers after me," she warned him. "I do not want you to come to grief because of me."
    Ailill's thin lips turned up in a faintly frightening smile. He took the saddle from the horse, and when he took off the bridal the mare changed into a very confused squirrel that leaped up the nearest tree. Bridal and saddle dissolved into water vapor that the night wind quickly dispersed. Ailill swept her up in his arms. "It ought to look like a proper abduction, after all."
    Perhaps it was only an excuse to hold her in his arms, but Giselle was almost chattering with cold, and she was only too glad to have the warmth of his body and of his unnatural cloak as it enfolded her with Ailill. Giselle's 'kidnapper' turned left, and they vanished together into thin air.