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.)
—? November
Much as I hate to sully these pages with melodrama, the reality is that these may be the last words I write. I don’t know how much time I have, nor how much longer I shall be able to hold this pen, so I will attempt to be concise.
Last night (if last night it was; the movement of time is impossible to gauge in Faerie), I woke to the sound of the accursed tree Bambleby summoned scraping at the fabric of the tent, and the echoes of the bogles in their death throes, as if the tree had gathered up their screams and kept them like souvenirs. Well, try sleeping after that.
I fumbled for my pocket watch, and found it was not yet six. Dawn was a long, long way off.
I looked round for Shadow, and found the turncoat curled up against Bambleby. The dog lifted his head, though, at the sound of my stirring. Wendell was little more than a pile of blankets—he had the lion’s share of them, and still awoke complaining of the cold. I could just make out a tuft of gold sticking out from a crack between two quilts.
I went outside, thinking that I might rouse the fire and have an early breakfast. The horses were pressed up against each other, their rumps facing the banked coals.
Above us, the aurora was bleeding.
I stood frozen. The long ribbons of white unfurled all the way to the ground, growing filmier as they went. The green and blue of the aurora was unaffected. It was as if something were drawing the silvery whiteness to earth, like fingers pulling paint down a canvas, to a place just beyond the curve of the mountain—less than a mile away.
For several minutes, I did nothing, merely stood there, carding through possibilities and plans. Once I had chosen a course, I thought on it for several minutes more. Then I ducked back into the tent and dressed, tucking my notebook into my pocket out of habit. I took out the golden chain I kept tucked at the bottom of my book bag, which I had managed to keep hidden from Bambleby this whole time. It has long been a source of amusement to me that he’s never had any suspicions about Shadow.
I placed the collar end of the chain around Shadow’s neck. He sat up, perfectly silent, understanding my intention in that uncanny way of his.