As I left, Aud entreated me to confer with Bambleby. I could tell from the look she gave me that she was not foolish enough to hope for disinterested aid from one of the Folk, but was willing to offer in exchange whatever was within her power. The loss of two youths, both barely turned twenty, weighed that heavily upon the village.
Indeed, when I returned to the cottage, I found Bambleby dressed and breakfasted (victuals having been delivered by one of Krystjan’s farmhands) but far from raring to join the search. I recounted what I had learned at the tavern, and he listened politely (a result, I suspect, of my earlier mood rather than some newfound benevolence on his part).
“Aud is willing to pay for your assistance,” I said bluntly.
“Oh?” He looked amused. “Am I to take this as an offer of monetary value, or will she deliver to my door a sheep born of a cow whose wool turns to silver in the moonlight, or some such thing?”
“I think she will give you whatever you want, if it is hers to offer and will not endanger herself or others.” I spoke in the careful style in which I am given to negotiate with the Folk, which he seemed to recognize with a kind of weary amusement. He gave a dismissive lift of his eyebrows and turned his gaze back to the fire.
I abandoned caution and spoke to him in my usual manner. “Wendell, be more forthcoming, please. Are you barred somehow from interfering in the sport of your kind?”
“No,” he said thoughtfully. “And they are not my kind, Em, particularly; all these silly categorizations devised by mortal minds are about as useful as names given to the wind. If you want the truth, I don’t know if it’s in my power to rescue our young lovers, and I have no desire to risk my neck trying. Why do you wish to risk yours? You don’t care about these people.” Surprise dawned in his face. “Or do you? You feel something for Mord and Aslaug, I think. Can it be my cold-blooded friend has come to value the society of these people?”
I opened my mouth to give him the retort he expected, to say that I was motivated by scholarship, pure and simple, that the opportunity to investigate this bizarre ritual was of a magnitude greater than any I had been presented with before, in terms of the ramifications for our understanding of the Folk. It was entirely true, but for some reason, it made me feel unaccountably lonesome.
I looked out over the yard. I could see the axe where Lilja had left it, impaled in the stump—she had taken to coming by nearly every day to restock our supplies. It was such a bleak sight that I quickly looked away.
Yes, I felt something—I am no monster. But would I go after them for their sakes alone, if there were no scientific discoveries to be had?
No. No, I wouldn’t.
My life has been one long succession of moments in which I have chosen rationality over empathy, to shut away my feelings and strike off on some intellectual quest, and I have never regretted these choices, but rarely have they stared me in the face as bluntly as they did then.
“Why don’t we just pretend?” he said, sparing me from articulating any of this.
I blinked at him. He went on, “We would not have to go anywhere. Let us take a sled a little distance into this godforsaken wilderness, camp out for a night or two, and return with tales of fantastical revelry. Together we could invent a convincing narrative, I’ve no doubt. The villagers will not sorrow much over our failure—surely they’ve already guessed that their daughters are lost. We will accept their gratitude for trying, and then we shall go to ICODEF and be showered with praise for being the first scholars to empirically document an encounter with the courtly fae of Ljosland. I shall get my funding. You will make a name for yourself—your cherished tenure will follow soon thereafter. Do you know who was recently appointed to the hiring committee?” He folded his hands and smiled at me.
I held his gaze. I will not lie and say I was not tempted by his suggestion. It would be an easy scheme to carry out, an exceptionally easy one to get away with. I was too practical not to talk through my concerns before ruling the idea out. “You have already earned a reputation for falsifying research,” I said. “Would such dramatic claims not fall under suspicion?”
“Ah, that’s where you come in, my dear Em. Your reputation is spotless. No one would believe you would participate in a ruse of this magnitude. Of any magnitude. You will launder my reputation most efficiently.”
I believed him. But it did not take me more than a moment to make my decision. Perhaps I did not care—could not care—as much as I should for the fate of two youths. But I was also not someone who would put glory before discovery, empty praise before enlightenment. This was about the encyclopaedia, but it was also about something greater than that—the thing that drove me to create the encyclopaedia in the first place.
“We don’t know for certain that Lilja and Margret are lost,” I said.
He gave a groan and pressed his hands to his face. I waited.
“If you wish it,” he said from between his fingers, “I will help you.”
I examined him carefully, for I am used to dealing in faerie bargains, and could recognize one in his voice. Yet it was a faerie bargain with only one side, a singular thing indeed. I could not comprehend his motivations.
“I wish it,” I said. “Shall I say it three times?”
“I suppose you might as well, you infernal creature.”
I did.
“Wonderful,” he replied sourly. “Well, don’t expect me to help with the packing. I am doing this against my own better judgment. And if the provisions prove inadequate, I am turning the whole mad expedition around.”
Skip Notes
* Of course, I refer here to de Grey’s disappearance whilst investigating the sinister goat-footed mountain faeries of Austria in 1861, and Eichorn’s subsequent vanishing act a year later during one of his many rescue attempts. (Eichorn was convinced de Grey was abducted into Faerie, discounting the commonly accepted narrative of her having taken a fall during a nasty storm.) Decades later, villagers throughout the Berchtesgaden Alps claim to hear Eichorn’s voice calling “Dani! Dani!” during winter tempests, though whether this amounts to evidence that one or both remain trapped in some liminal alpine realm is the subject of much conjecture. See When Folklorists Become Folklore: Ethnographic Accounts of the Eichorn/de Grey Saga by Ernst Graf.
18th November
The provisions were more than adequate.
The entire village came together in a towering display of generosity and efficiency. By nine o’clock this morning, we had two horses and a sleigh stocked with enough food, firewood, blankets, and assorted comforts to last us days. Somehow, one of the women found time to knit a jacket for Shadow which, combined with the other gifts, left me unaccountably flustered—given my companion’s size, it would have taken her hours. Bambleby and I entertained ourselves at the cottage by coaxing a recalcitrant Shadow into his new raiment, which was patterned with flowers and equipped with a jaunty hood. The dog hung his head in abject embarrassment until his tormentors deigned to relieve him of this woollen pillory, and he spent the next hour pointedly ignoring me.
Fortunately, the path taken by Lilja and Margret into the wilderness was clear, for it had not snowed since their abduction, and sailors believed the skies would remain fair for another day or so. As the villagers readied our provisions, Bambleby and I hiked up to the spring one last time.
Poe had made little progress with his tree, though the snow was scattered with soot he had shovelled from the interior. Bambleby exclaimed in displeasure at the sight of the venerable old tree reduced to a husk.
“Frost-blasted,” he muttered. “Disrespectful bloody bogles.” Before Poe or I could speak, he touched the tree, and it was healed—ruddy with health and radiant with greenery against the winter pallor. Poe gave a cry and fell upon his sharp knees before Bambleby, trembling, which the latter took no notice of whatsoever. When Poe brought him a magnificent loaf as a thank-you present, Bambleby said rudely, “I am sick to death of bread. Bring me something that will keep me warm in this hellish place.”
“Can he do that?” I said after Poe went scrambling back into his tree home, from which arose a queer chorus of clanging and scraping and a sort of bubbling noise. Bambleby only waved his hand and went back to his sulking.
Poe reappeared within the hour with a basket woven from willow boughs, covered with a coarse wool blanket. Bambleby accepted it ungraciously and without even glancing at the contents, even though whatever was beneath the wool steamed intriguingly. I had to take the basket away from him, and found within half a dozen glazed cakes, not unlike those I have seen Ljoslanders consume on special occasions. These would continue steaming until eaten.