29th October—evening
He was lying, of course. After I finished the morning’s journal entry, he still hadn’t returned, so I decided to set out on my own as originally intended. Henry and Lizzie I sent off with my map to investigate a series of volcanic features, as Wendell had suggested. They seemed to understand my directives, though I couldn’t help missing my own students. I trusted them, for they were chosen on the basis of their qualifications and diligence, not their ability to put up with nonsense.
The sky was that peculiarly rich shade of blue it assumes in the autumn, and the sea was studded with little fishing boats. Groa waved cheerily at me as I passed the shop—as well she should, given that I’d likely doubled her month’s earnings. Suffice it to say that I did not stop by for a chat.
Nobody answered when I knocked upon the door of the blue house. The two goats kept an eye on me, bleating their disapproval from behind the fence.
“Hello?” I called in Ljoslander, knocking again.
I thought I glimpsed one of the curtains twitch. Seconds later, the house filled with screams.
My hands flew to my ears. This was ineffectual in deadening the screams, which went on and on. It was impossible to place whether the voice was male or female—what was certain was the desperation and torment. The screams had the cadence of a winter gale, and I could feel the cold radiating from the cracks round the door.
Wonderful, I thought. The wight was toying with me.
I lowered my hands. As the screams rolled over me, I politely knocked again.
Gradually, as I showed no evidence of being terrorized, the screaming subsided. I had no interest in whatever gruesome trick the wight would devise next, so I motioned to Shadow—who had not heard anything amiss —and we wandered around the side of the house.
There I saw in the distance two figures: a man milking a goat and, much farther away, where the land sloped towards the beach, a woman walking alone. She was framed against the sharp blue waves and looked very lonesome. The goat gave a worried bleat, and the man turned and saw me.
He finished his task and approached.
“You’re the professor, I suppose.” He was a small, dark man with a weathered face overwhelmed by a thick beard. “Aud told you about our son.”
Instantly, I understood. The creature I had seen in the window had not been a wight at all. It had been a changeling. I have never known a changeling in manner so like a wight, neither in the course of my own research nor in the literature. Changelings are monstrous offspring produced by the courtly fae, weak and sickly creatures who bring misfortune upon a household for as long as they remain there, but they are not vicious or malevolent. My interest in this place grew by the moment, and I was pleased that I had brought my notebook.
I held out a hand. “My name is Emily Wilde. When was your son taken?”
He paused, then took my hand. “Mord Samson. My wife is Aslaug— she’s on one of her walks. I thought Aud would have told you?”
“Aud told me nothing. It was simple inference.”
“I see.” He gazed at me for a moment. “She doesn’t like you.”
Something about this man, the grim lines of his face, perhaps, which had the opacity of a windowpane, prompted me to agree, “She doesn’t like me.”
He smiled at that, barely. I had the impression that even such a smile was a rare occurrence. “It was five winters ago. Ari was a baby. Barely a year old.”
Now I was very interested indeed. Already, the behaviour of the Ljosland Folk was diverging from what I knew. “A year is quite unusual.
The Folk abduct newborns—I’ve never heard of one taking interest in older children. Apart from the boggarts of Scotland, of course, but they do not leave a boggart-child in place of the one stolen away.”
I realized that I sounded excited, and that Mord was watching me with raised eyebrows. “I’m sorry,” I said, and it sounded perfunctory to my own ears, yet for some reason, Mord smiled again.
“It doesn’t matter a whit to me,” he said. “That is, whether you’re sorry or not, whether you will put us in your prayers. We had plenty of prayers and sorries when Ari was stolen away, and we’ve had plenty since. Can you help us?”
“That’s—” I stopped. But something about him made me unafraid to be honest. “That’s not why I’m here. I’ve come to catalogue your Folk for the purpose of science.”
He merely nodded. “And yet you are here, and it’s clear you are more canny as to the ways of the Folk than any priest, and that gives me hope. I would invite you in, but I’m afraid that the hospitality you will find under my roof will not be to your liking. And I would not wish to frighten your handsome companion.”
He gave Shadow a pat on the head, and the dog sniffed him approvingly.
“That’s fine, Mr. Samson,” I said. “He’s used to the Folk. As am I.”
Mord looked dubious, but he did not stop me as I let myself into his house.
Nothing was amiss. A humble reception room and hearth gave way to an even sparser kitchen with iron pans hung upon the wall. The screams did not recommence, nor did I observe any bloody handprints. Shadow, however, sniffed the air and emitted a grunt.
“Yes,” I said. “Stay close to me, dear.” To Mord, I said, “Will your wife be gone long?”
“A while. Walking eases her mind. She does it every day, until the snows come.” He looked out the window, and written plainly on his face
was the weary certainty that the snows would not be long in arriving. “I suspect Aslaug will like you. She and Aud have never gotten on.”
I was startled into a smile. Mord motioned with his hand. “Ari’s in the attic.”
“I see,” I said, wincing a little as I remembered Bambleby’s comment about haunted houses. “Are you cold, Mr. Samson?”
He glanced down at himself. He had removed his coat, revealing another beneath it. “Aslaug and I are always cold. It never leaves us, not even in midsummer.”
I had my notebook out, and was scribbling my initial observations. Part of me was aware of how hard-hearted I must have seemed, but I was too caught up in my scientific interest to worry over it, and in any case, Mord did not appear offended by me.
I took a step towards the stairs. Immediately, they transformed. Each stair became a gaping mouth, glittering with teeth and furred with a wolf’s dense pelt. A bitter wind funnelled into the room, smelling of snow and pines. The wolves snarled and snapped at the hem of my coat.
I turned to Mord. He had started back in horror, but there was a dullness
to it, and he did not cower long.
“You see such visions often?” I said.
He blinked. Annoyance came into his eyes, and he frowned at me as if expecting pity. His face softened when he encountered only dispassionate interest. “I know they aren’t real,” he said.
“I see.” I thought about living in such a place, beset by such violent illusions. I thought about days following days, and years following years.
“Mr. Samson,” I said, “would you bring me an iron nail and a little salt?”
He blinked but went to fetch what I had requested. When he returned, I asked him if the small coat I had spied hanging on a hook on the door was his son’s. He nodded.
“Thank you,” I said, and I placed the coat in my backpack. “I’ll return it, I promise.”
I mounted the stairs. Mord drew in a sharp breath. He did not follow me, which was just as well. I would have stopped him.
Shadow padded alongside me as wolves champed at my ankles. I could see the stairs through the illusion, and Shadow could not see the illusion at all—at least, I think he cannot see fae illusions. I suppose it is possible that he sees them but is indifferent.
In the attic I found a little bed and a cosy rug of undyed wool. Upon the bed sat a boy, pale as moonlight on new snow. I stopped short, for the creature was nothing like the changelings I have encountered before—ugly, spindly things to a one, with the brains of animals. The boy’s long hair was bluish and translucent, and upon his skin was a glimmer like frost. He was beautiful, with an uncanny grace, his eyes sharp with intelligence.
A distant part of me was struck by how much he reminded me of Bambleby. Though they looked nothing alike, there was a kinship that I could not put my finger on, which was perhaps more absence than feature, a lack of something coarse and mundane that characterizes all mortals.
My stomach twisted at the realization that this creature was the first of the courtly fae I had ever questioned. I was uncertain if the feeling was excitement or terror.
“You tricked me,” the changeling said crossly.
“You have it backwards,” I said, adjusting the sleeves of my coat. I had turned it inside out before entering the house, enabling me to see through any illusion the faerie chose to show me. “I merely sidestepped your own attempt at trickery. Would your true mother be pleased to know how you welcome a guest?”
“Go away.” He was angry, and not just at my evasion of his enchantment. He had not liked me mentioning his faerie dam.
“I am going to ask you a few questions,” I said. “I would recommend ready answers. I am aware of the cruelty you are inflicting upon your foster parents, and it has not inclined me to be generous with you.”
Another blast of winter wind greeted this statement. The beams rattled in the ceiling.
“Are you happy to be the cause of suffering?”
“I don’t care,” the child snapped. For he was a child, for all his power, and he glared at me with a child’s stubbornness. “I don’t want to be here. I want my forest. I want my family.”
“And what has become of your family, that they should send you to live among mortals?” I was particularly interested in the answer to this question, for most of what we know of changelings is guesswork. It is the habit of courtly fae to leave changelings in the hands of mortal parents for a period of months or years, and then swap them again without ceremony (if the changeling has not died in the interim, which is not uncommon), but no one knows precisely why they engage in this behaviour. The leading theory suggests a motive of idle amusement.
The changeling’s lovely face twisted. He leaned forward. “If you do not go away, I will fill Mord’s thoughts with such horrors that he will wish he was dead. I will give Aslaug dreams of burning and rending and the screams of everyone she cares for echoing in the night.”
A shudder ran through me, but I maintained my bland demeanour.
Wordlessly, I withdrew the handful of salt and began scattering it about the room.
“What’s that?” he said, interest replacing fury in the space of a breath.
He pinched some between his fingers, smelled it. “Salt? Why are you doing that?”
I stopped, silently cursing. Salt binds faeries, but perhaps in Ljosland it works only on the common fae, or not at all. I withdrew the iron nail.
“You can’t kill me,” he said.
“No,” I agreed. To kill a changeling is to kill the child it has replaced.
They are always bound together by a powerful enchantment that neither time nor distance can dispel. “I can hurt you, though.”
I gave Shadow a signal, and he snapped at the child’s foot, distracting him. I thrust the nail into the changeling’s chest.
Almost into his chest. The faerie moved, and the nail ended up in his side. The screams that followed were worse than those before, like winter given voice. The faerie seemed to dissolve, becoming a creature of shadow and frost, with eyes that shone like the blue heart of a flame. It is thought
that all courtly fae are like this underneath; their humanlike forms are only a guise they assume. While killing them is a tricky business, a wound wrought with metal may force them into their weaker, insubstantial selves.
I knew all this, but only as theory. Seeing the faerie’s true face, for all my determination, froze me entirely. It was a moment before I regained my senses.
As the faerie continued to wail, I withdrew his coat from my pack. “I shall give you this if you answer me.” I was pleased that, while my hand shook, my voice did not.
“Give!” the changeling shrieked. He was cowering in the corner. He could still have hurt me, I think, but was too upset to think of it. Of course, if he had, I could have withheld the coat.
The Folk are bound by many ancient laws, some of which give mortals a great deal of power over their well-being. Mortal gifts strengthen faeries, be they food or jewels, but clothes have a particular power, in that they help the Folk bind themselves to the mortal world, and, in the case of the courtly fae, their mortal guises.
“I have your attention then,” I said, as the changeling’s shrieks diminished to sobs. “Let us start with your parents.”
—
In the end, the faerie told me little. He would only moan about his forest and his beloved willow tree, and the many paths the Folk built underground and through the deep snows, lit somehow with moonlight.
This was all interesting enough, but quickly grew tiresome; by the end of an hour I knew the number of the willow’s branches and how many stars the faerie could see from his window, but little else. It was a myopic view of the courtly fae, filtered through the eyes of a self-absorbed child, and thus not particularly helpful.
Either the changeling did not know or he could not remember why he had been brought to Hrafnsvik, though he did believe that he would be
taken away again, and swore a great many dire revenges upon me when this occurred. Once I had tired of his moaning, I handed him his coat. He drew this around his body and huddled in the corner, shuddering, as slowly he gained weight and substance again.
I did not leave Mord and Aslaug wholly unprotected, of course. I told them about the inside-out trick I had used with my clothing—this would not prevent the visions, of course, but it would lessen their hold over them.
Aslaug, returned from her walk, welcomed me with a warmth I did not expect, but she was an unsettling sight—far too thin, her eyes shadowed, and her hair lank. She hummed almost constantly, and at times seemed to become lost in herself, oblivious to conversation until Mord went to her side and squeezed her shoulder. While I am first and foremost a scientist and value my objectivity, I would have helped them if I could. But I saw no way of doing so.
I returned to the cottage to compile my notes. It was empty, though I could see two tiny specks upon a distant mountainside that I recognized by the colour of their cloaks as Lizzie and Henry. I caught the flicker of a spyglass and guessed they were observing the rock formations below. As for Bambleby, I had no idea. Perhaps he had drowned in the spring.
I decided to venture thither myself. I wished to pay my respects to my new friend; one can never predict the effects of being kind to the common fae, and I still hoped to earn his confidences.
The spring was deserted, but I was content to remove my boots and wait.
I splashed my face with water, and then, after a quick glance over my shoulder, plunged my head under.
I scrubbed my hair for the first time since arriving in Hrafnsvik, dislodging dirt and leaves that I hadn’t even realized were there. When I finished, I squeezed it out and tied it back up, feeling infinitely better. It was as if I had washed off some of the darkness from the farmhouse.
The afternoon held the sort of borrowed, ephemeral warmth that interrupts the advance of winter sometimes, and I found myself wondering what summer was like in this place. With the sun filtering through the trees, I was feeling quite content. I ate my lunch while I waited, after first
restocking the faerie’s candy. He had not liked the caramels one bit, complaining that they stuck in his teeth. The chocolates, though, he had instantly taken to. I would have to write to my brother for more; no doubt sweets at Groa’s shop would cost me their weight in gold.
The brownie—whom I have taken to calling Poe in my head, in honour of the tattered ravenskin he once wore—took longer to show himself than usual. When he appeared, it was on the opposite bank of the spring, and his form so blended with the forest floor that I could see him only when he moved.
“Good day,” I said politely. “Is something the matter?”
“Your friend was here,” he said hesitantly.
“Bambleby? Was he rude to you?” Damn him to Hell if he was. I had not spent days building trust with this creature only to have him ruin it.
Poe shook his head. “He brought me peppermints. I like peppermints.”
“What, then?”
Poe kept shooting me anxious looks. His needle-fingers went tappity-tap like rain upon the damp grass. Finally he burst out, “I don’t wish to see him again!”
“Then you shan’t,” I said. “I shall instruct him to stay away.” Oh, would I.
The faerie’s eyes grew huge. “You can command a prince?” He rushed on before I could speak. “I don’t wish to make him angry. He was kind, but I fear him. My mother always said to keep out of their way. The high ones, the queens and kings and great lords. They will trample you under their boots like mushrooms, little one, she always told me. Keep your head down. Keep to your tree. When he asks me questions, I have to answer them. I don’t like his questions.”
I had gone very still. The brownie had used a word in the faerie tongue that has several definitions—it can mean lord or sir, or another simple mark of respect. But I knew, said in that manner, with a slight lilt down the middle like a fold, it meant only one thing.
“You say he is a prince,” I repeated, clearly enunciating. “You’re certain of this?”
The faerie nodded. He came very close, close enough for me to smell the sap on his skin, which mingled strangely with the familiar smell of my old beaver hat—this he had torn apart and woven into a lumpy coat. Quietly, he said, “He wanted to know about the doors.”
Little shivers were scudding down my back. “The faerie doors? That [*]lead into your world?”
He nodded. I sat back, my mind wheeling. I have long suspected that Bambleby is part of the faerie aristocracy. That he is—or was—in line for one of their thrones is something I had not guessed, though that was not what alarmed me.
What does he want with faerie doors? Are his questions mere academic
curiosity?
“Did he ask you anything else?”
Poe shook his head, and my suspicion grew. “What did you tell him?”
The faerie was almost sitting in my lap now, his long fingers curled possessively about my cloak. “That there are no doors here, in this forest.
I’ve never seen one. Maybe the doors move with the snows, with the high ones. Maybe they carry them hither and thither as the wind blows down from the north.” He frowned. “They will be here soon.”
My hands tightened on the grass. “How did my friend react to this information?”
“I don’t know. He left after. I am glad he’s gone.”
As the brownie seemed distressed, I reminded him of the chocolates I had given him. In truth, my kindness was partly out of concern for my cloak —now striped with holes from Poe’s touch—as well as the leg underneath it. He hastened to check on his little hoard and then disappeared into the forest, returning with a loaf of bread still warm to the touch. He seemed calmed by the ritual, and by my appreciation of him. I promised to return on the morrow—alone.
I spent the next hour wandering the forest. I told myself that I was conducting a survey of the possible faerie paths I had noted during a previous wandering; but in truth, I needed the walk. What on earth was I to make of this revelation regarding Bambleby? Not all Folk have grand
designs in their interactions with mortals, and I had come to think of him as an aristocratic dilettante. Yet did he have other reasons for cultivating a career chasing stories of his kindred?
More important, did it matter? I had my book to worry about, a book that could make my career, and why should I care about Bambleby’s intentions, provided he did not get in my way?
I was distantly aware that most people would have a different reaction to the discovery of a faerie prince in their midst, but I paid this little heed.
Shadow was before me, his head down as he sniffed at a jumble of mushrooms. Upon consulting my map, I noted these seemed to have moved from their previous location some yards away. Now, it is possible they were formed during the most recent deluge, but I thought not. They had a shape about them that my trained eye recognized, something twisted from its natural pattern and purpose. Perhaps it was a gathering place.
I grew calmer as I sank into my work, and the next few miles passed pleasantly enough. If anyone were to claim greater happiness in their careers than I do in poking about sunlit wildwoods for faerie footprints, I should not believe it.
Shadow suddenly surged ahead, his tail flashing among the thinning undergrowth. I followed him to a clearing, where I found, slumped against a tree in the sunshine with his long legs stretched out before him and his hat drawn over his face, none other than Bambleby. He seemed to have found the greenest part of the forest, which had little greenery left—a small grove of conifers.
He did not awaken from his nap when Shadow flopped down beside him, but he did when I kicked the tree, which showered him with a rain of
needles.
“Is that all you ever do?” I demanded.
“Dear Emily,” he said, stretching like a cat and rubbing Shadow’s ears.
“How was your day?”
“Delightful.” As he showed no evidence of bestirring himself, I grudgingly seated myself on the grass. “Our friend in the village was no
wight, but a changeling of the courtly fae. I had to interrogate the creature with iron. Unassisted.”
“I’m sure you held your own, as you always do.” The hat slid back down his forehead. I took it from him, and he blinked in the sudden sunlight.
“Oh dear. What have I done to earn that basilisk stare?”
“We have agreed to work together. Yet now I hear that you have seen fit to trample on my research. The brownie by the spring, whose trust I have spent days in cultivating, would barely speak to me after your visit.”
“What?” He looked genuinely baffled. “I brought the little one peppermints and asked a few questions. Nothing more.”
“He seemed frightened of you.” I added quickly, “Though he would not say why. In any case, you cannot go there again.”
“Your wish is my command, Em.” He regarded me with amusement. “Is that all that has upset you? Surely there are other brownies in this wood for you to pester if that one has soured on you.”
I thought quickly, hiding it behind a frown. It had become clear to me, in a way that it never had before, that it would be wise for me to be frightened of Bambleby. And if I could not muster fear—a dubious proposition, to be sure—I should at least attempt wariness, if for no reason other than that he is Folk. My suspicion is suspicion no more, but fact.
“You have done nothing since your arrival but laze about,” I told him.
“As well as jeopardize the only meaningful connection I have established with the Hidden Ones. You don’t realize how hard I have been working, Wendell, or how important this is to me.”
“I do, though,” he said, and I was alarmed by how earnest he became.
“And I’m sorry, Em, if I’ve given you reason to think otherwise. I assure you that I have been working quite hard today.” He looked down at his sprawled self. “More or less. I walked a great deal of the Karrðarskogur. I even discovered a small lake high upon the mountain with evidence of kelpie habitation. Well, whatever they call such creatures in this blasted cold country.”
“Kelpie?” My mouth fell open. “What lake? I saw no lakes.”
He looked far too pleased with himself. “That’s because you missed it, my dear. It was about half a mile beyond the extent of your map.”
“Show me.”
He groaned. “But I just came from there. You are far too vigorous for a scholar. Another day, please. Why don’t you tell me about your interview with our new changeling friend?”
He was changing the subject, but I admit I had little energy for climbing up into the peaks after the day I’d had, and so gave him a summary of my interrogation at the farmhouse.
“He is terrorizing them, Wendell,” I concluded.
“So it seems,” he said, though he did not appear particularly interested.
“And he would tell you nothing of his parents?”
I shook my head. “The motives of the courtly fae in stealing children have never left the realm of academic speculation. If only we could ask one of them.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” he said blandly.
I gritted my teeth. “Otherwise, I don’t know how we’ll ever figure out their purpose in this instance.”
“Purpose? Or purposes? The Folk are diverse in many ways; no doubt this is one of them.”
I could detect no hidden meaning in his words, and so decided to take them at face value. Perhaps he truly had no idea why the Folk of Ljosland stole children. Indeed, he was so detached about the whole thing that I felt a sliver of doubt enter me. Yet what reason would Poe have had to lie about
Bambleby’s identity?
“I would like to at least try to help.”
“Help whom?”
I wanted to shake him. “Mord and Aslaug!”
“Ah. How do you propose to do that? Their son will die if the changeling is killed. If we somehow chase it from its abode, it will die, and thus the outcome is the same.” He leaned back against the tree, his eyes drifting shut again. “Besides, it would hardly be professional. We’re here to observe, not interfere.”
I watched him carefully. “Perhaps you could visit them.”
His eyes opened to slits. “And what will that accomplish?”
His voice was as bored as ever, but there was an undercurrent of something that made me feel as if I was edging onto dangerous ground.
Only I didn’t care. I knew that if I left Mord and Aslaug with the changeling without making every effort to free them from its poisons, I would regret it until the end of my days.
“I don’t know,” I said, meeting his gaze levelly. It was true enough. I don’t know what powers he has or what he is capable of. “Perhaps you can get more information out of the creature than I could. The Folk of Ljosland clearly find you disagreeable company, for reasons unimaginable to myself.”
He laughed. His eyes become very green when he laughs; you wonder if the colour will spill from them like sap. “I hardly recognize you, Em. I never would have thought that you of all people would come to care for any of these villagers. Are they not mere variables in your research?”
“It’s not that I care for them,” I said heatedly, before realizing that my offence rather made his point for him. I could tell by his smile that he knew it too.
“I’ll pay your afflicted horticulturalists a visit tomorrow,” he said. “Will that suit?”
“Thank you.” I stood, feeling off-balance and wishing to escape the conversation. “Perhaps we can return to the cottage. I would like to review your notes, and hear what your students have discovered.”
“Very well.” He looked at me woefully, as if expecting me to help him up. I folded my arms. With a dramatic groan, he pulled himself to his feet with his customary grace, and we departed the Karrðarskogur.
SKIP NOTES * All dryadologists accept the existence of those doors that lead to individual faerie homes and villages, such as those inhabited by the common fae. Theories about a second class of door are more controversial, but I myself believe highly credible, given the stories we have of the courtly fae.
These are thought to be doors that lead deep into Faerie, into a world wholly separate from our own.
