“All right, be quiet.” The bloody fire hissed and crackled away, and a bead of sweat trickled down my neck. Wanting to be through with this quickly, I leaned forward and kissed him.
Almost. I lost my nerve halfway there, somewhere around the moment I noticed he had a freckle next to his eye and wondered ridiculously if that was something he would remove if I asked it of him, and instead of a proper kiss, I merely brushed my lips against his. It was a shadow of a kiss, cool and insubstantial, and I almost wish I could be romantic and say it was somehow transformative, but in truth, I barely felt it. But then his eyes came open, and he smiled at me with such innocent happiness that my ridiculous heart gave a leap and would have answered him instantly, if it was the organ in charge of my decision-making.
“Choose whenever you wish,” he said. “No doubt you will first need to draw up a list of pros and cons, or perhaps a series of bar plots. If you like, I will help you organize them into categories.”
I cleared my throat. “It strikes me that this is all pointless speculation. You cannot marry me. I am not going to be left behind, pining for you, when you return to your kingdom. I have no time for pining.”
He gave me an astonished look. “Leave you behind! As if you would consent to that. I would expect to be burnt alive when next I returned to visit. No, Em, you will come with me, and we will rule my kingdom together. You will scheme and strategize until you have all my councillors eating out of your hand as easily as you do Poe, and I will show you everything—everything. We will travel to the darkest parts of my realm and back again, and you will find answers to questions you have never even thought to ask, and enough material to fill every journal and library with your discoveries.”
And that is where we left things. I don’t even know why I am including this, for God knows I do not wish to preserve the details of my romantic life for posterity (and a very short footnote that would be), only I find that writing it all out has made me somewhat calmer. Perhaps I will tear up this entry later.
I know that if I put this notebook aside and attempt to sleep, I will simply run over every argument and counterargument in my head, but what else can I do? Shadow is gazing up at me from his forepaws in a woebegone sort of way, as if I have somehow disappointed him. Traitor.
Skip Notes
* Such tokens are a motif of changeling folklore. In the stories, they are commonly found in the possession of the changeling; if wrested away, he or she weakens or vanishes entirely, but they can also be used to threaten or cajole the creature into good behaviour. It was commonplace in early-to mid-nineteenth century Britain for museums to maintain collections of supposed “changeling tokens,” most of which were of questionable provenance; Danielle de Grey wrote a scathing paper on the subject. Unfortunately, to make her point, she also stole a number of tokens from the University of Edinburgh and replaced each with a cap and bells. The rector was unamused, and the result was a short stay in Edinburgh Prison for de Grey, her second but, sadly, not her last brush with incarceration.
2nd December (?)
I haven’t any idea what the date is, and so I have decided to guess. I believe it may help me stay sane here, if anything can. Everything blends together now, but I vividly remember writing that last entry, how angry I was, as if it were only a day or two gone—perhaps it was.
I must have tossed and turned for an hour at least. How on earth was I supposed to concentrate on research now, with a marriage proposal from one of the Folk dangling over my head? I could almost imagine myself a maiden in one of the stories, but stories didn’t leave dirty teacups scattered throughout the cottage, or underline passages in my books—in ink—no matter how many times I ordered them not to.
Of course I wanted to marry Wendell. That was the most infuriating thing about the whole business—my feelings conspired against my reason. I will not lie and say my desire was purely romantic, for I couldn’t stop myself from imagining the picture we would make back at Cambridge—despite his controversies, Wendell Bambleby was still a celebrated scholar, and yes, we would be a fearsome team indeed. I doubted I would have to worry ever again about securing funding for future fieldwork, nor being overlooked when it came to conference invitations.
It was the thought of invitations—yes, that thought—that made me rise from my bed. I yanked open my door, intending to stomp down the hall and—well, throw myself at him. I wanted to see what he would do, but more important, I needed to know if it was something I would enjoy. I was not going to marry someone without making sure of that.
But before I could take a step in his direction, a calm settled over me like a dream. Instead of going to Wendell’s door, I returned to my own room and dressed in warm clothes. Shadow remained asleep at the foot of my bed, though it was a strange sleep—he twitched and whined, his huge paws batting at invisible foes. I left my room and pulled on my cloak.
As I did, I happened to glance down at my hand. The ring was there, but it was no longer a ring of shadow. It was a ring of ice, polished smooth and patterned with tiny blue crystals.
I knew exactly what was happening, of course. I have had enough faerie magic thrown at me over the years that I believe I have become somewhat inured to it—at the very least, I have trained myself to recognize when enchantment is affecting me; the absence of such recognition is what dooms most mortals. The truth is that it is not impossible to throw off faerie spells if you have a focused mind. But most people don’t try, because they fail to recognize that it is enchantment pushing them to dance until their feet bleed, or murder their families, or any other number of horrors inflicted upon hapless mortals by the Folk.
Unfortunately, in this case, the knowledge of my own enchantment was of little use, for it was uncommonly strong magic, and held me like an iron vise.
I did what I could to push against it, to feel about for cracks. I could not stop myself from donning my boots, but I was able to slow the process by fumbling with the laces. Yet eventually, the laces were fastened, and then I was opening the door and stepping into the night.
I managed a single glance over my shoulder, and what did my gaze fall upon but my encyclopaedia, pages stacked tidily beneath my paperweight, little bookmarks sticking out the sides indicating sections requiring revision. That pinnacle of faerie scholarship, which I had only weeks ago likened to a museum exhibit of the Folk, neatly pinned down and labelled by the foremost expert on the subject—that is, me—brimming with meticulously documented accounts of foolish mortals who bumbled into faerie plots and games. The irony was rather too keen to appreciate.
Trying to shout for Wendell was, of course, ineffective. It made sense, the rational, freethinking part of my mind noted, that this would be the case. My feet were being led somewhere—to the king in the tree; the destination burned in my mind like a brand—and naturally the enchantment would not wish me to do anything that placed obstacles in my path.
And yet, it did not want me to be uncomfortable en route—it had compelled me to dress warmly, to don boots to prevent frostbite. And perhaps that aspect of the enchantment could be manipulated to my own purpose.
I focused on my bare hands. They were cold, and would grow colder, the farther I walked. I imagined the tips turning white, the fingers numbing so that I could no longer lift them. I did not try to move my hands—instead, I pushed the desire into the enchantment.
And it worked. As I descended the cottage steps, I reached into my pocket, where yesterday I had tucked my gloves, and pulled them on. I say I, but really, it was the enchantment making me do it, just as it had dressed me like a puppet. What I had done was less like reaching out to pull the strings myself and more like reasoning with the puppeteer.
My exultation was dulled by the realization of what I would have to do next. I was able to slow my steps across the lawn in an effort to fortify myself, though I suspect the additional seconds of delay had the opposite effect. I wondered if the enchantment was controlling my stomach too, or if it would be within my abilities to throw up.
And then there before me was the axe, still wedged into the stump. I had left it there myself the previous day—it felt like a very long time ago. I was no longer as pathetic a woodcutter as I had been upon my arrival, thanks to Lilja’s patient lessons, though to say that I was skilled would be overstating things.
“Shit,” I said, or rather mouthed—so the enchantment would allow me to mouth curses: what a comfort.