“There is nothing green in this place,” he said in a complaining tone. “Even the forest is rendered in black-and-white; I feel as if I am in a movie. I must have something to rest my eyes upon.”
I gazed at the forest a little longer, the sway and glimmer of it. It was—well, mesmerizing. It had a powerful resemblance to my favourite wood in the south of Cambridgeshire, where Shadow and I were wont to escape on fine summer days. Beyond the familiar curving oak at the edge of the frame should be a little stream. “Is it a faerie forest?”
“Oh—I don’t know,” he said. “It is leaf and bole and the scent of pine. That’s all I care about.”
Indeed, I did catch the faintest aroma of needles, now that I was thinking about it. Summer needles on a forest floor, warmly fragrant as they snapped underfoot.
I settled beside the fire, even though I was exhausted; in truth, I felt a little giddy. The snowy ride through that wild country; the conversation with the faerie woman—in and of itself a greater triumph than most dryadologists could hope for in their entire career. The things I had learned in a single night would give me material for a year’s worth of papers. I downed the wine and sank back into my chair, my mind already dancing through the additions I would make in my encyclopaedia.
He sat with me, chattering away about our triumphant return to Cambridge and ICODEF, and myriad other things, and not expecting anything substantial in reply, which is one of my favourite qualities about him. It sounds odd to admit that I find the company of such a boisterous person restful, but perhaps it is always restful to be around someone who does not expect anything from you beyond what is in your nature.
After a while, though, I felt an unexpected guilt. “You don’t have to stay with me,” I said. “You can go down to the tavern and regale the villagers with the tale of our success.”
“Why would I do that? I prefer your company, Em.”
He said it as if it were obvious. I snorted again, assuming he was teasing me. “Over the company of a tavern filled with a rapt and grateful audience? I’m sure you do.”
“Over anyone else’s company.” Again, he said it with some amusement, as if wondering what I was doing speculating about something so evident.
“You are drunk,” I said.
“Shall I prove it to you?”
“No, you shan’t,” I said, alarmed, but he was already sweeping to the floor, bending his knee and taking my hand between his.
“What in God’s name are you doing?” I said between my teeth. “And why are you doing it now?”
“Shall I make an appointment?” he said, then laughed. “Yes, I believe you would like that. Well, name the time when it would be convenient for you to receive a declaration of love.”
“Oh, get up,” I said, furious now. “What sort of jest is this, Wendell?”
“You don’t believe me?” He smiled, all mischief, a look I’d seen from other Folk, enough to know not to trust him one inch. “Ask for my true name, and I’ll give it to you.”
“Why on earth would you do that?” I demanded, yanking my hand back.
“Oh, Em,” he said forlornly. “You are the cleverest dolt I have ever met.”
I stared at him, my heart thundering. Of course, I am not a dolt in any sense; I had supposed he felt something for me and had only hoped he would keep it to himself. Forever. Not that a part of me didn’t wish for the opposite. But that was when I assumed his feelings in that respect were equivalent to what he felt for any of the nameless women who passed in and out of his bed. And why would I lower myself to that, when he and I already had something that was vastly more valuable?
But he was offering me his name?
Once, while following a trail of blue foxberries in the woods east of Novosibirsk, I had tripped over a root and gone tumbling end-over-end down the side of a gully, landing with a great splash in the little stream at the bottom. Luckily, I fell into a pile of sodden leaves trapped in a side channel by the current, and not upon the sharp rocks only inches to my left. But the breath was knocked out of me entirely, and I simply lay there aching from innumerable bruises for several minutes—and yet even then, I hadn’t been stunned like this.
He sighed. “Well, I don’t expect you to do anything with this information. I have grown rather used to pining, so it won’t put me out to keep at it, I suppose.”
“I would order you to do all sorts of terrible things,” I managed, though my voice sounded very far away.
“You seem to have a talent for that already.”
“I would have you accompany me on every field study,” I said. “I would have you rising at six and carrying my cameras and equipment everywhere. You would never escape a day of hard work again. And you would certainly have to retract all of the studies you faked.”
He glared at me. “Yes, you would do all that, wouldn’t you? Well then, instead, why don’t you just marry me?”
I said nothing for several minutes. The only sounds were the crackle of the fire and the pit-pat of snow upon the windows. “That’s a more sensible suggestion,” I said.
He burst out laughing. By the time he finished, he was wiping at his eyes. “Sensible, she says. Sensible.”
“Well, it is,” I snapped. “I didn’t say we would marry. But why would I want your name? I don’t wish to order you about like a servant. You may keep it, and your mad faerie logic, to yourself.”
“Very well,” he said. “Is that it, then? Your answer is no?”
“I didn’t say that,” I snapped, irritated and hopelessly flustered. I thought inanely that this sort of thing would never have happened with Leopold. Leopold had been predictable in every way, and as transparent as spring water. “I’m going to leave,” he would announce at a dinner party he wasn’t enjoying, and then he would. “I have stopped listening,” he would say to a longwinded colleague, and then go back to his book. I was aware that people found him peculiar because of this, but it suited me very well. A kiss would always be preceded by “I’m going to kiss you.” I don’t know why anyone would mind this—it’s very relaxing to know what other people are about to do. I suppose that’s why we got on so well. Of course, Wendell has as much in common with Leopold as a rock has with a rooster.
The fire was suddenly far too hot, so hot I’d nearly sweated through my shirt. “Well—I—how on earth am I supposed to answer?”
He threw his hands up in exasperation. “Do you want to marry me?”
“That’s—that’s beside the point.” A nonsensical reply, but it came the closest to expressing how I felt. I had never even considered marrying Wendell—why on earth would I? Wendell Bambleby! Certainly I’d imagined being with him in other ways, particularly since I’d grown used to having him around—travelling with him across the continent, no doubt arguing half the time; conducting research; scouring woodland and heath for lost doors to the faerie realms. And yes, I liked the prospect of being with him often, or even all the time, and felt a sort of hollowness fill me when I thought about us parting ways. But I couldn’t marry one of the Folk, particularly not a faerie king, even if he was Wendell.
“It’s the point in its entirety, you madwoman,” he said. “Do you not find me handsome? I can change my appearance to suit whatever direction your tastes run.”
“Oh, God.” I pressed my face into my hands. “You are not helping.”
I said nothing for a while, and he let me think without interruption. Part of the problem, I realized, was that I was not accustomed to thinking about him in such a way. And so I took his hand—tentatively, as one might reach for a ladle they thought might be hot. Then I lowered myself onto the flagstones by the fire so that we were next to each other, our knees touching.
“What are you doing?” he said, half hopeful and half alarmed. Well, I was glad that I’d unsettled him—served him right, after throwing all that at me out of nowhere.
“I am only conducting a test.”
He sighed. “Of course. I should have guessed you’d want to be bloodless about this.”
“I am not trying to be!”
“You’ve done nothing but talk at me since I told you I loved you.”
“Is that a problem?” For he hadn’t said it as if it were. “Were you expecting me to throw myself at you? Would you have then said a dozen pretty things about my eyes or hair?”
“No, it would have been, ‘Get off me, you imposter, and tell me what you did with Emily.’?”