20th November
Well, what an absolute nightmare of a country this is— even worse than I previously supposed, which is quite the feat; little more than ice and darkness and nasty, hungry things gnashing their teeth. Trust you to have dragged me into it.
I have no doubt, my dear Em, that you will be beside yourself with gratitude when you find that I have filled in the next entry in your journal.
When I informed you of my intentions, I believe you glared in your sleep, another superpower of yours. You are snoring now in the sleigh, and Margret and Lilja are similarly wearied, and so with no other options for occupying myself beyond admiring the scenery as the horses bear us back to Hrafnsvik, a dubious prospect at best, I will do you this good turn. You may thank me when you wake.
Naturally, I thought about glancing through what you have written, at least to look for my name, but something stopped me. No doubt it was my chivalrous nature; I certainly can’t imagine what else it would be. Ah, you’re stirring a little. Strange how you always keep your left hand stuffed into your pocket, even in sleep; I tried to see if you had injured it, and you elbowed me in the face.
Anyway. I suppose I should pick up where you left off, yes? Though let us backtrack a little to set the stage.
It was close to noon when I awoke to find you vanished, and Shadow too. Oh, how I hate this place. Usually upon awakening I experience a few blissful seconds in which I think that I am home again, that at any moment I will hear the rustle of the weeping rowan as it murmurs to itself by my window or the pitter-patter of my cat’s feet as she comes to greet me. (Did
you know I had a cat back in Faerie? She is not the sort you would like to meet. I would tell you more, but you would only write a bloody paper about her.) But in this foul place, it is so cold that I cannot ever fool myself into thinking I am home, and so I am denied even that brief moment of peace.
You’ll no doubt be happy to hear that I didn’t rush after you immediately. Of course I guessed that you had concocted some scheme in the night, which you would no doubt carry out with your usual reptilian efficiency, no help needed from the faerie king you have dragged along with you like a half-forgotten doll. I don’t mean to say that I was insulted; I was more than happy to have been left behind with the fire and the blankets.
But I soon grew bored of waiting, and of worrying that your plans had gone awry, as even the plans of fire-breathing dragons are wont to do sometimes, Em.
And so I took one of the horses and followed your tracks, and very interesting tracks they were, leading me to a frozen lake where there was absolutely nothing to see at all, but of course I knew that I stood outside the door to what I’m sure is a very charming faerie realm, no doubt filled with Folk with icicles for hair or something equally grotesque. I did not bother looking for a way in to exchange pleasantries with the locals, for I could see from your tracks that you had been and gone, sort of, for the tracks led in and out of Faerie, and in and out again, as if you had wandered for some time without being able to extricate yourself from the borderlands of their realm. When I saw that I became very worried indeed, for there was no way of knowing how long you’d been wandering, though only a few hours had passed in the mortal world. I was finally alerted to your presence when that fiendish dog of yours came charging out of nowhere, howling his head off.
From the sound he was making, you were dead or dying or frozen into a dessert for some bogle, and so rather than looking for a proper door into their realm, I simply ripped a hole through it, and kept ripping until I found you in that cave.
Yes, yes. It was perhaps not the wisest choice, particularly given what came after. You can delight me with your lectures when we are home again.
I shook you awake, and you said, “Wendell!” in a way that I quite liked, nothing at all like your usual tone. But of course, instead of thanking me for pulling you out of some desperately unpleasant otherworld, you began immediately to harry me with demands, namely that I heal young Margret.
“I can heal her,” I told you, “but I can’t make her whole again,” to which you only gave me a look as if to say, that’s good enough, get on with it.
Perhaps it was good enough for you, but Lilja was watching me with shadows like bruises under her eyes, and I could tell by her expression that she would give me anything for my assistance, even her own soul, if I meant to be petty and make demands of her, which I did not. As she told me later, she had not slept a wink, but had spent the hours chafing her beloved’s arms and blowing warmth into her hands. I spoke to her quietly, and she gave her assent, and then I touched Margret’s forehead and melted the crown that the Hidden Ones had placed there. It left behind a rather pretty scar across her forehead and cheekbones, a pattern of jagged snowflakes that gleams like ice when the moonlight shines upon it.
Now, I thought this exceedingly gracious of me, healing the lover of the only woman who has ever spurned me, but I was not foolhardy enough to expect praise from your direction. Lilja, however, pressed my hand hard enough to bruise it as Margret buried her teary face in Lilja’s neck, and the charming picture they made was thanks enough for me.
“How?” I enquired, and you must have known from the disbelief in my face that I was helplessly amazed by your feat, marching into some ice faerie realm and making off with two captives, and all that without sustaining a scratch. But you looked away, and seemed to be avoiding looking at Shadow too, so that I immediately began to think about how it had been him who had led me to you, and then about all of his uncanny ways, not least of which is his choice of a creature like you for a master. I patted his head, feeling about for the glamour, as I have never bothered to do before—and why should I; I do not make a habit of looking beneath people’s pets to see if there is a monster hiding there—and sure enough, there it was, and when I moved the magic aside, a bloody Black Hound stared back at me, all glowing eyes and glistening fangs.
You looked worried, for some reason, but you calmed down when I started laughing. “Where did you get him?” I said.
“In Scotland,” you replied. “He’s a Grim. I rescued him from a boggart, who was tormenting him for sport.”
Then you told me how you had tricked the boggart into thinking you a long-lost relative of his last master—a feat which had required extensive research into local lore—then bribed him with exotic seashells, for you remembered some obscure story about a boggart whose secret fantasy was to travel the world, boggarts being bound to their crumbling ruins, while I half listened in astonishment. I say half, because I was mostly just watching you, observing the way your mind clicks and whirrs like some fantastical clock. Truly, I have never met anyone with a better understanding of our nature, and that anyone includes the Folk. I suppose that’s partly why— Ah, but you really would kill me if I desecrated your scientific vessel with the end of that sentence.
Anyway. We strolled out of the cave into the purpling light; it was getting on for evening by that time, and I was thinking longingly of supper.
In truth, I was also thinking longingly of my apartments back at Cambridge: the fire crackling in the hearth, my servants hard at work preparing my repast, and one of my mistresses, fetchingly attired, to share it all with— everything as it should be, in other words. You said something in a sharp voice about the blasted aurora, which seemed to be falling to the ground right in front of us, and then I was suddenly on my back with an arrow through my chest.
Now, I have never been shot before, so we will have to add it to the list of pleasures I have experienced since making your acquaintance. You screamed, which I appreciated, and Shadow went berserk, also kind but not much more helpful, but fortunately, Lilja had her wits about her and yanked the arrow out, then threw herself and Margret to the ground.
It was a faerie-made arrow, of course, a shard of pure ice and magic, and with it removed I was able to use my own magic again. Fortunately, the edge of the Hidden Ones’ realm was rolling over us again as the wind picked up—I suppose it’s intriguing, this travelling faerie realm, as little as
it is to my taste—and like all monarchs, I can bend the rules when I am in Faerie, if only a little. Through the agony, I managed to pull at the pocket of time I was in and unravel a few threads. I’m not explaining it well enough for you to understand, I’m sure, but essentially I turned back time, returning to the moment the arrow flew towards me, where I caught it. It’s a talent of limited compass, I’m afraid; I can affect time only within a small area— anyone standing much more than an arm’s length away is unaffected—and I’ve only ever managed to undo a handful of seconds. Quite helpful, though, in this instance.
The faerie who had shot the arrow soon made his presence known, striding arrogantly out of the wind to smirk at me. I could tell right away that he hadn’t seen my little trick; he’d only seen me catch the arrow. He had eyes like the dawn, and he was wearing some sort of dreadful grey thing that hung from him like a sheet—very much your style—and a cloak made of dead animals of some sort—hideous but perfectly practical attire, I suppose, for an icicle like him.
“You’re a long way from home, child,” he said to me in Faie, with a condescending tone that I did not appreciate. Unfortunately, he was very old, older even than some of my court’s most tedious councillors, so I suppose he had reason to condescend to me. No reason at all to put an arrow in my chest, though.
You were at my elbow then, rapidly recounting the whole story of the cloak and the Hidden Ones’ interest in me—unnecessary, really, for I had already gathered that the man had been drawn to the great hole I’d put in his realm, and that he meant to make a meal out of me, hollowing me out like an orange, as he’d done to Auður. My, what an ignominious fate that would have been! I can imagine my stepmother’s reaction; I think she would have injured herself laughing. It would not have surprised her.
Anyway, I did not much want to fight him—he looked a mean sort, and I was resentful that after all the effort I’d expended, here was yet another trial to keep me from my supper—so I simply explained to him who I was and gave him a little demonstration of my power to put him off, summoning a
very pretty rose garden in the middle of his desolate winter, complete with a handful of bees.
“You were cast out?” he said with distaste, and looked me up and down.
“Yes, we have children like you at our court. Indolent peacocks, strutting about with their jewels and their perfumes, teasing one another with vacuous enchantments. Your stepmother did your realm a great favour.”
I did not have any time to be angry at that, for before he’d even ended his sentence, he was charging at me with his sword.
I shoved you out of the way first, which cost me; a slash through the arm of my cloak. Then I had to vanish into the landscape, a trick I hate very much here, because even the trees feel like ice when I step into them. He shadowed me everywhere I went, so that I was endlessly spinning and leaping and dodging his sword, and generally making myself ridiculous. I tried to throw my own magic at him, but the sword swallowed it. Of course it was no ordinary enchanted sword—it was enchantment, a powerful one at that, probably honed through all the years he’d been alive, just my luck.
“Wendell!” you were yelling, trying for some ungodly reason to get my attention as I dodged and weaved, as if I needed another thing to think about. “Wendell, what do you need?”
I think I replied something ungracious about shutting up; it’s all a bit hazy. I managed to get an ordinary blow in when the faerie was looking for me in a hazel tree I’d summoned—I was summoning all sorts of trees and shrubberies, more to distract him than anything else, and the icy mountainside was beginning to look like the domain of some mad hedgewitch. My hand still stings from that blow as I write this; it was like punching solid ice.
You just kept yelling, though. “Think of the stories, Wendell—there’s always a loophole, a door! I can find it, if you’d just tell me what you need!”
“A sword!” I shouted back, half hysterical at this point and not thinking for a second that you’d actually pull a sword out of the snow. I was beginning to wonder if I’d have to blast a hole in time itself to get rid of this bloody iceman; and oh, what a mess that would be to clean up. It’s not
something I’ve done before, so who knows, I might’ve blasted myself to pieces in the process, leaving you to put me together again, which I’ve no doubt you would have managed with perfect detachment.
The next time I took notice of you, you were sobbing all over the snow.
Well, I thought, finally she’s being sensible. Then I realized that you were sobbing because you’d stabbed yourself in the arm, and not out of concern for my imminent demise. I noticed that your tears were freezing as they hit the icy ground and collecting into the shape of a sword.
Well, that almost killed me. I mean that—I froze for a full second, during which our yeti friend nearly skewered me through. I dodged, barely, my head whirling. One day I would like for you to explain to me how you heard of the story of Deirdre and her faerie husband, a long-ago king, which is one of the oldest tales in my realm. Do mortals tell it as we do? When the king’s murderous sons schemed to steal his kingdom by starving it into torpor with endless winter, Deirdre collected the tears of his dying people and froze them into a sword, with which he was finally able to slay his children. It is a tale many of my own people have forgotten—I know it only because that poor, witless king is my ancestor.
I felt the story in my blood and let my magic flow into the sword you were fashioning. Unfortunately, our enemy noticed there was trickery afoot and lunged towards you, so you dropped the sword in the snow. Lilja, though, was once again firing on all cylinders—she snatched up the sword before the faerie could crush it, and threw it to me.
I caught it, of course, and in the same instant I interposed myself between you and him, catching the blade of his sword with my own. From that moment on, things were much more enjoyable. I do like swordplay—I began my lessons when I was virtually still in the cradle, as do all royals in my realm. I didn’t kill the man straight away, but made him dance a while first, running through several of my favourite patterns, forcing him back, and then back again. He wasn’t bad, though he wasn’t much of a challenge, either—few Folk are. It’s a pity sword fighting isn’t de rigueur in the mortal world anymore. I could end every tedious argument with the department head by challenging him to a contest in the quadrangle.
Anyway. Eventually I grew bored of the whole thing and knocked the sword out of his hand. Then I knocked his head off with one well-aimed stroke, nice and clean and hugely satisfying. In fact, I liked it so much that I wound back time and did it again, just to hear the lovely thunk of his head hitting the snow. I had just decided to have a third go at it—for we Folk like things that come in threes, you know—when you roared at me to stop. I turned, and saw that Lilja was being sick in the snow, which distressed me, as I’ve decided that I quite like her. I’m not sure if it was due to the general mess that accompanies decapitation or the fact that mortals are not used to seeing time moved back and forth like the pages in a book, but I felt sorry anyway. I will have to make amends to her when we return to Hrafnsvik— perhaps she would like a tree that fruits year-round, or a dress that changes colour at her will, which neither stains nor wrinkles? I’ll think on it.
I suppose this is as good a place as any to leave things, as I see that you are stirring—I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t dislodge you when you slumped against me in sleep, your head coming to rest on my shoulder. No, silly me; of course you’ll mind, but perhaps I don’t care.
