19th November
I spent today alternating between scholarly excitement at this uncharted scientific territory we were entering and dread that we would be too late—or worse, that we had never had a chance to start with. Lilja and Margret would have travelled more swiftly than us, unladen as they were, but still I worried that perhaps we had stumbled into a faerie trap without realizing it and were now doomed to wander the wilderness, chasing shadows and accomplishing exactly nothing.
“This is no trap,” Bambleby said, with such certainty in his green gaze that much of my dread melted away. “Only godforsaken cold, and miles and miles of uninhabitable wastes.”
He seemed unable to enjoy the stark beauty of it all, the wild terror of the mountains, the towering glaciers, the little ribbons of time that clung to the rock in the form of frozen cataracts. The aurora danced above us both nights, green and blue and white undulating together, a cold ocean up there in the sky, and even that he barely glanced at. On the second night, he used his magic to summon a thick green hedge of prickly holly and a trio of willow saplings that enfolded our tent in drapery like bed curtains to keep out the chill wind.
“Will you look at that!” I couldn’t help but exclaiming as I sat by the fire, gazing up at the riot of light. I will admit, I wished for him to share the sight with me and was disappointed when he only sighed.
“Give me hills round as apples and forests of such green you could bathe in it,” he said. “None of these hyperborean baubles.”
“Baubles!” I exclaimed, and would have snapped at him, but his face as he gazed into the fire was open and forlorn, and I realized that he wasn’t trying to be irksome—he missed his home. He had been longing for it all along, and this place, so alien and unfriendly, had sharpened the longing into a blade.
As usual, I had no idea what to do with this sort of insight—would questioning him lighten the sadness or make it worse? Should I (oh, God) attempt to hug him? In the end, I merely asked him to draw up additional fencing to keep off the worst of the wind, as I knew he enjoyed using his power thus, and he summoned a hedge so laden with bright berries that it put me in mind of a Christmas tree, as well as an entirely unnecessary carpet of snowdrops at my feet, which I suffered in silence.
I kept my hand carefully hidden in my glove—not that I wished to. I wanted to yank it off and wave in Bambleby’s face the band of shadow that swirled there on my third finger, distinct enough now that I knew it for what it was—a ring. It filled me with a terror the likes of which I’ve never felt before, but I couldn’t tell him about it, nor give him any sign that might arouse his suspicion. The enchantment, whatever it was, had me firmly in its grip. Even more worryingly, I sometimes forgot all about it myself. I could only hope that it would not interfere with our expedition.
I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he frowned at the fire, a crease between his beautiful dark eyebrows. Would that he would only grab me and—and— A flush rose up my neck. What reason would he have to do that?
As usual, Wendell laughed at me when I announced my intention of visiting the restroom, but I didn’t care; in the wilderness, one should cling to what dignity one can, I’ve always thought. Leaving him and Shadow to enjoy the fire, I strode a distance from camp and found a tree large enough to crouch behind (we had left the forest, and all that remained of it were sad, mangy stands of birch here and there). I did my business quickly and hastened back over the snow.
Looking back now, I wonder if I was observant enough. Certainly I was alert—I always am, during fieldwork—but I suspect that the unfamiliarity
of the landscape, the high, dark mountains swaddled in snow, lulled me into a belief that no living thing could accost me here, certainly nothing fae, creatures I have spent my career associating with greenery and water and life.
Fortunately, my reflexes are sharp. The instant the light flared through the trees, I halted and gripped my coin. It was a greyish light with no warmth in it, like a star. A wind moved through the trees, and there came a whisper of bells. Had I not been touching metal, I might have been bespelled, and as it was my head still spun a little, but I am used to brushing against faerie enchantments and stood my ground.
They were trooping faeries, and when I did not fall under the spell of their music and move towards them, they grew intrigued and surrounded me. I knew instantly that I was in danger, for they were faeries of the bogle variety, a disputed categorization given to all those common fae with a deathly appearance, low intellect, and malevolent disposition. Bogles are universally and perpetually ravenous, yet they delight in desolate places, leading to theories that they enjoy the sensation of hunger. When they do encounter living beings, they have every manner of unpleasant means to devour them, usually by roasting them part by part in the little cook fires they carry with them everywhere.
They were tall for common fae, though some are of human height, the tops of their heads nearing my shoulders. They were little more than bone with something resembling skin draped overtop, but everything about them was planed and angular like ice chipped into faerie shape. They did not let me see them clearly, melting in and out of the snowdrifts as easily as Poe did with his tree, but what I saw was pale and hoary with frost, with cloaks woven from moonlight, and they had Poe’s needle-fingers and matching teeth. Some carried bells, others carried their cook fires in little pots, grey- blue flames fed by the twigs they snapped from the trees as they passed.
They circled me a few times, getting my measure as they whispered to one another. Their voices were like the wind stirring the snow, and I could make no sense of them. It is not known if bogles have speech in the human sense; they are very close to animals.
The scholar in me was already formulating questions in Faie; I wished to learn if they could understand me, and not only that, I wanted to draw out the encounter in order to study them. But then one of the bogles was suddenly at my shoulder, its frigid, sharp hand squeezing my neck as it leaned in to take a bite of my ear.
I caught only a whiff of its breath, which smelled of pine smoke and [*] blood, before I jerked aside, spitting out one of the Words of Power.I have learned two of them, extracted through bribery from ancient Folk who inhabit forlorn corners of wilderness.
One of the Words is utterly useless. I stumbled across it while pursuing tales of a hag-type faerie in the Shetland Islands—locals were uncertain if it was a banshee or some sort of disgraced runaway courtier of the courtly fae.
I never did determine which was true. I came across her at twilight in a huddle of pale rags upon the beach, where she was nearly indistinguishable from a pile of driftwood. She asked me for shelter, which I gave her, of course, leading her back to the inn where I was staying and offering her my bed, whilst I slept on the floor. I even washed her feet when she asked me to —they were very small and curved, like seashells. She was so ensconced in her rags, several layers of gowns that may or may not have been fine once, and a hooded cloak and several shawls, that I never did get a good look at her. When she asked me what favour I would like in return, I said I was currently searching for Words of Power, particularly those that would be useful to me—not really expecting her to know any (few Folk do). To my astonishment, she gave me one without argument—though after she went away and I worked out what it did, I was disappointed. The Word has a single use, and that is retrieving lost buttons. Suffice it to say, I have rarely bothered with it, and I’m at a loss to explain why anybody would go to the trouble of devising such an enchantment. My conclusion: that is faeries for you.
There was little use in summoning buttons in my present predicament, but fortunately, the second Word I’d learnt lends the speaker a temporary invisibility—much more practical. Naturally, it had been far easier to track
down than the one for buttons—a few judicious bribes led me to the tree of a wizened kobold, who gave me the Word in exchange for a yearling calf.
In any event, when I spoke this Word, the bogles fumbled for me, shrieking in outrage. Unfortunately, the effect of the Word is not long in duration.
Now, I have my pride. I believe I could have dealt with the creatures myself—reasoned with them, offered a fair exchange for my safety, given time. I have done so before. But beliefs and coulds are not much comfort in such situations, and I am not arrogant enough to risk my life for pride with assistance so close at hand. And so I opened my mouth and shouted, “Wendell!”
The faeries took no notice of my cry. No doubt they were used to lost travellers screaming for help. One of them grabbed me by my cloak and wrenched me painfully back and forth, like an animal wishing to drag me to the ground. But I did not need to call for Wendell again.
He stepped out from behind a tree—or perhaps from the tree; I didn’t see. He reached a hand out and snapped the neck of the faerie gripping me, which I had not expected, and I staggered back from both him and the crumpling body. He saw the mark on my neck, and his entire face darkened with something that seemed to go beyond fury and made him look like some feral creature. The faeries scattered like leaves, though they were too
intrigued and too stupid to run.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.” I don’t know how I made myself speak. I have seen Wendell angry before, but this was something that seemed to surge through him like lightning, threatening to burn everything in its path.
He moved his hand, and a hideous tree rose up from the snow, dark and terrifying, all thorns and knife-sharp branches. The boughs darted out, and he skewered the faeries on them. Once they were all immobilized, held squirming and screaming above the ground, he moved from one to the other, tearing them apart with perfect, calm brutality. Limbs, hearts, other organs I did not recognize scattered the snow. He did not rush, but killed them methodically while the others howled and writhed.
I couldn’t move. It wasn’t like watching people die, of course—when these snow faeries breathed their last, they melted away like witches in a story—but it was bad enough. Like a cat faced with an overabundance of wounded birds, he didn’t bother to finish them all, but left some to flutter and bleed while he dealt with the others. When one broke away, the branch that spitted it snapping under the weight, he actually laughed, a sound with nothing human in it whatsoever, and let the faerie think it had escaped before he calmly magicked himself into its path and tore it in two.
The mad, focused fury left him almost as soon as he’d finished the last faerie to his satisfaction, and then he was shrugging off his cloak and exclaiming over bloodstains that I couldn’t see, for to my eyes, they had turned to water. He stomped off to the nearby spring in high dudgeon, leaving me staring at the last few twitching bodies. Then I realized that I could not sit there anymore, nor could I face him when he returned, and so I staggered off into the wilderness.
I paced around for perhaps half an hour, bile in my throat and tears I could not explain stinging my eyes. Slowly—very slowly—the shudders ceased. I grew calm, and was able to see the situation rationally.
My problem was clear—I had not yet learned to see Bambleby as Folk, not truly. Had I done, his display would not have shocked me so. For the sake of my sanity, not to mention both our safety, I had best reconcile my understandings of him, and soon.
When I got back, he was in the tent, mending his cloak yet again. I could not see that there was anything wrong with it and wondered if this obsessive turn his habit had taken was symptomatic of his inability to indulge his nature by making our present existence tidier and more homelike in other respects.
“There you are!” he said, looking up at me in relief when I entered. His voice was ordinary, as if the appalling, violent frenzy of an hour before had been little more than a sneezing fit, something that would have surely terrified me to my bones had I not already been accustomed to his mercurial moods and anticipated it.
That is not to say that it wasn’t terrifying at all.
“I was only out walking,” I replied, removing my boots and settling myself in my blankets. “You needn’t have worried.”
He continued to watch me. “Are you certain? When I returned and you were gone, I wondered if I had scared you. I lost my temper, and I’m sorry for it.”
I blinked, positively astonished by this display of self-reflection, generally a thing that Bambleby seems to repel. “You have nothing to apologize for. You were protecting me—overzealously, it’s true, but I would be foolish to fault you for that.” I’m pleased to say that my voice shook only a little, and that a few deep breaths were enough to settle it.
He gave me an odd look; impressed, I think, but at the same time, there was something sorrowful about it. Really, had he wanted me to run screaming from him in horror? Good grief.
“Em,” he said. “My dear dragon. Here I thought I would have to make amends somehow. I’ve made a start, I’m afraid.”
I followed his gaze to my pillow, upon which rested a thing I did not recognize, woollen and oddly shaped.
I seized it abruptly, indignant. It was my jumper! “How—what have you —”
“I’m sorry,” he said, not looking up from the flicker and flash of the needle. “But you cannot expect me to live in close proximity to clothing that barely deserves the word. It is inhumane.”
I shook out the jumper, gaping. I could hardly tell it was the same garment. Yes, it was the same colour, but the wool itself seemed altered, becoming softer, finer, without losing any of its warmth. And it was not a baggy square anymore; it would hang only a little loose on me now, while clearly communicating the lines of my figure.
“From now on, you will keep your damned hands off my clothes!” I snapped, then flushed, realizing how that sounded. Bambleby took no notice of any of it.
“Do you know that there are men and women who would hand over their firstborns to have their wardrobes tended by a king of Faerie?” he said,
calmly snipping a thread. “Back home, every courtier wanted a few moments of my time.”
“King?” I repeated, staring at him. And yet I was not hugely surprised— it would explain his magic. A king or queen of Faerie, the stories say, can tap into the power of their realm. Yet that power, while vast, is not thought to be limitless; there are tales of kings and queens falling for human trickery. And Bambleby’s exile is of course additional testimony.
“Oh.” He tucked his needle and thread back into his sewing box. “That.
Well, it only lasted a day. My coronation was promptly followed by an assassination attempt—and then, you see, my dear stepmother forced me to flee to the mortal world.” He lay down and closed his eyes. “It was an eventful day. I did your other cloak, too.”
“God.” But he was already asleep, so I could not harangue him further, allowing me the relief—I suddenly wondered if that had not been his intention all along—of being too angry with him to be frightened anymore.
SKIP NOTES * First described by Annabelle Levasseur. Exceptionally powerful fae enchantments that, uniquely, can be cast not only by the courtly fae but also the common fae and mortals (though their power is greatly diminished in this latter form). No one knows the origin of the Words of Power. At some point, some powerful faerie enchanter (an awkward term, for the Folk have magic to a one, but I simply refer to a faerie particularly skilled at enchantment), possibly the Ivy Smith who forms a prominent motif in the faerie art of southern England, created the Words, telling them to only a few favoured friends and allies. The oddest thing about the Words (as Levasseur discovered in her interview with a dying member of the courtly fae) is that they can be forgotten by the Folk who learn them, if they are not cast often enough. This is likely why they remain so obscure, even to the Folk—otherwise, why would every power-hungry monarch not know them by now and deploy them against their enemies? (Not that all the Words have an obvious utility.)
