“Is that usual?” I said. “For a prince to have common fae ancestry?”
He gave me a puzzled look. “How did— Ah, I see. Poe told you. If you are not careful, Em, that creature will come to love you so that he will not let you leave.” He went back to his sewing. “No, it is not.”
“And is that why you were forced into exile?”
He raised his eyebrows at me, looking amused. “Do you want the whole story?”
“Obviously,” I said, unable to keep the eagerness from my voice. “Every sordid detail, in fact.”
“Well, I am very sorry to tell you that there is little of that,” he said. “Ten years ago, my father’s third wife—my mother was his second; the first was barren—decided that she would prefer the sight of her own flesh and blood on the throne. You know how it goes.”
I nodded. This sort of ruthlessness is a common occurrence with many of the courtly fae. “Have you siblings?”
“Five, in fact. All older. These she had executed. She sent me alone into exile.”
I frowned. “Because you were a youth?”
“No,” he said. “It is simply what is done.”
I understood. In the tales of the Folk, regardless of origin, no victory or loss is ever certain. There is always a loophole, a door that you may find, if you are clever enough, to lead you out. To twist the story. Wendell’s wicked stepmother could not kill him because doing so would close the last door to her own defeat.
“Then you wish to kill your stepmother,” I said. “And take your rightful place on the throne. That’s why you are looking for a back door into your own world, one she will not be guarding.”
He gazed at me in astonishment, then gave a short laugh. “That little rat. I should have guessed he would tell you all.”
“Don’t be angry with him,” I said, alarmed. But Bambleby only shrugged and dismissed Poe with a flick of his fingers.
“Yes, I wish to kill her,” he said. “The throne is irrelevant, except as a means to an end.”
He rubbed his eyes—they were wet, which alarmed me greatly, as I haven’t the slightest idea of what to do when confronted with tears. I nearly threw my handkerchief at him.
“I don’t entirely know if you will understand this, Em,” he said, wiping his nose. “My cold-blooded friend. But I confess that I miss my home very much. I cannot return while my stepmother lives, obviously. She won’t have it, nor will her allies at court. So my only way back is by taking the throne, by making myself so powerful that they cannot be rid of me again.”
I leaned back in my chair, mulling it over. My hair was once again coming out of its bun, so I gave up, taking it down and letting it fall over my shoulders. “And you have thus far been unsuccessful.”
“I’m well aware you mortals have various theories about how the faerie realms work,” he said. “In truth, most Folk don’t know much more than you do, because we don’t care. Why would we? The laws of nature are too easily altered by those with magic enough to do so. Nothing stays the same. Worlds may drift apart or dissolve or become the same place, like overlapping shadows…But we know there are secret ways, forgotten ways, into our worlds. As you say, back doors. I have travelled the mortal realm looking for such a door. No, I haven’t found one yet.” He rested his head against his fist and gazed into the fire. “You see why it is so important for me to be impressive at ICODEF. I need money to continue my search. That little tempest in Germany has put a damper on investor interest in my expeditions. Our paper can repair my career and fill my pockets enough to search the rest of the continent.”
My mind whirred, the pages of my inner library flick-flicking again. I asked him question after question, had him recount every country and village and forest he had visited. I could not help taking notes as we spoke—old habits, etc.—until he exclaimed, “What on earth are you doing?”
“If I am to help you, I require notes,” I said.
He blinked at me. “If you are what?”
I gave him an irritated look. “Do you know anyone, mortal or otherwise, with a deeper understanding of the Folk than I?”
He didn’t need to think about it. “No.”
“There,” I said. “I think I can find your door. At the very least, I would like to try. I’m certain I can do a better job than you. Good grief! Ten years.” I couldn’t suppress a snort. There was something darkly amusing about a faerie lord—one of those same creatures who delight in leading hapless mortals astray in dark wildernesses—being unable to find his way home.
He watched me, his face unreadable again. I no longer think he means to be opaque when he does this; only sometimes what he is feeling is so alien that I cannot intuit it. “Why?”
I paused for the first time to think about the question. “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Intellectual curiosity. I am an explorer, Wendell. I might call myself a scientist, but that is the heart of it. I wish to know the unknowable. To see what no mortal has seen, to—how does Lebel put it? To peel back the carpeting of the world and tumble into the stars.”
He smiled. “I suppose I should have guessed as much.”
He sounded sad. I suppose he was still imagining his green faerie world. I focused on the scratching of my pen.
“For a time, I thought you must have faerie blood,” he said. “You understand us so well. That was only when I first met you. I soon realized you are just as oafish as any other mortal.”
I nodded. “My blood is as earthly as anyone’s. But you are wrong to say that I understand the Folk.”
“Am I?”
“The Folk cannot be understood. They live in accordance to whims and fancies and are little more than a series of contradictions. They have traditions, jealously guarded, but they follow them erratically. We can catalogue them and document their doings, but most scholars agree that true understanding is impossible.”
“Mortals are not impossible. Mortals are easy.” He rested his head on the chair and regarded me aslant. “And yet you prefer our company to theirs.”
“If something is impossible, you cannot be terrible at it.” My hand tightened briefly on my pen.
He smiled again. “You are not so terrible, Em. You merely need friends who are dragons like you.”
I flipped to a clean page, glad the firelight concealed the warmth in my face. “Which of the Irish kingdoms is yours?”
“Oh—it’s the one you scholars call Silva Lupi,” he said. “In the southwest.”
“Wonderful,” I murmured. Faerie realms are named for their dominant feature—statistically, the largest category is silva, woodland, followed by montibus, mountains—and an adjective chosen by the first documenting scholar. Ireland has seven realms, including the better-known Silva Rosis. But Silva Lupi—the forest of wolves—is a realm of shadow and monsters. It is the only one of the Irish realms to exist solely in story—not for lack of interest, of course; a number of scholars have disappeared into its depths.
“Only you would say that,” he said. “Don’t worry. I am not as vicious as the rest of them—you may have noticed. I did not see my stepmother’s plot coming. I’m afraid I was not much used to doing things for myself back then, and that included thinking. My stepmother encouraged this—she ensured I was never without a host of servants to see to my every desire, nor without a party at which to amuse myself.” He slouched down in his seat in a long-limbed sprawl, scowling into the fire.
“Tell me about your world,” I said, leaning hungrily forward.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you will only write a paper about it, and I don’t wish to be an entry in the bibliography. Ask me something else.”
I huffed, tapping my pen against the paper. “Very well. If you turn your clothes inside out, do you disappear? I have always wondered.”
The dark mood vanished like smoke, and he gave me a youthful grin. “Shall we try it?”
“Oh, yes,” I said, an unlikely giggle escaping me. I seized his cloak and reversed it, and he pulled it on.
“Oh,” he said, his face blank.
“What is it?” I gripped his arm. “Wendell? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t—I feel most unwell.”
He let me strip the cloak from him, and then he collapsed into the chair. Only after I had made him another mug of chocolate and built the fire up for him again did he start to laugh at me.
“Bastard,” I said, which only made him laugh harder. I stomped off to my room, having had quite enough of him for one night.
17th November
I woke some hours before dawn in the quiet of a winter night, snow pattering against the window. Shadow was curled against my back, his favourite position, nose whistling.