Aud blinked. “How will you find his court?”
“It’s easily done.” Indeed, I already had a sense of where it was, pressing against the mortal landscape like a seed stuck between two teeth.
They exchanged looks but did not press me for any more tedious elaborations. “We should first try to speak with the king in the—with the king,” Aud said. “Perhaps he does not intend to hold her long.”
I laughed at that, bitterly. “He intends to make her his wife.”
Aud flinched back. “How do you know?”
I felt suddenly weary. “It’s only right. She freed him. What other reward would he give her? What else could be sufficient recompense?”
“Madness,” Ulfar muttered.
Aud held up her hand, for the villagers had started muttering among themselves. “And you believe you can free her from the king yourself?”
“I can try,” I answered.
They looked at me dubiously. I suppose I was not cutting an impressive figure seated there by the fire with my blanket and my tea like an aged grandfather, and my nose constantly in need of blowing. I’d gone through two of Aud’s handkerchiefs already.
“We will help however we can,” Aud said. I suppose she thought she was sparing my feelings. She needn’t have worried. As I said, I am not optimistic about my odds of success. I need these villagers rather desperately.
Aud began assigning tasks, all cool efficiency. Brambleberries were to be gathered and burned in every hearth, and several youths were sent to the next village to consult with their bard, for they have a bard there, and he has collected many stories that may give us some ideas for dealing with this king. I was assigned to show a handful of the men the way to the snow king’s court, but not, Aud said, until I had turned a normal colour again—my fingertips still looked a bit blue. She tried to force toast and smoked fish on me, but I couldn’t eat a thing.
In part to warm myself, and mostly for a distraction, I paced the length of the tavern a few times, even ducking into the back where Ulfar was preparing an enormous quantity of stew for our strategy session. Oh, God, that kitchen. I’ve never seen such a mess. I paced back to the fire whilst everyone stared at me and likely worried I’d gone mad, but I couldn’t stop picturing that kitchen. It was pleasant to think of something other than you being made to dance until you collapsed or clothed in a gown of icicles, so I began rearranging the pots and generally setting everything in order. By the time Ulfar returned to give the stew a stir, I’d cleaned the majority of the space, though it remained far from satisfactory. Certainly a long way off my father’s standards.
“How does one manage to affix toast to the ceiling?” I demanded. This had not been the most offensive example of the kitchen’s disorder, but it was the most perplexing.
Ulfar didn’t seem to hear me. He stared at his kitchen, those blond eyebrows of his nearly disappearing down the back of his bald scalp. My fingers itched to have a go at his apron, which was filthy and torn, one of the straps fastened to the body with a pin, but I restrained myself. Aud followed a moment later, and she stopped too, staring. You’d think neither of them recognized their own kitchen.
Eventually, Aud seemed to remember herself. “You’re looking well enough now,” she said a little nervously, as if I’d truly scared her, which was utterly ridiculous. If ever you want to frighten a person, Aud, show them your kitchen.
Anyway. She helped me bundle up in some of Ulfar’s things, and I braced myself for another ghastly expedition, this time to show the villagers how to reach the king’s court. At least it had stopped snowing.
I was skimming by this point, flipping slowly through the pages. Each day, it seemed, the villagers had tried something else. After their brambleberry fires had come to naught, they had made a sacrifice of a dozen lambs, and then several women had woven a quilt from polar bear hair, which, according to an ancient tale, the king had once accepted as a fair exchange for a stolen village girl. After that had come a series of attempts to sneak into the king’s court with Wendell, an elaborate scheme to capture one of the courtly fae in the hopes of some sort of prisoner exchange—this inspired by a similar tale shared by the bard—and then, when that ended in disaster, several parlays with various common fae to elicit information that might be used to set me free. It went on and on.
A drop landed on the back of my hand, and I realized to my dismay that I was crying. Never in my adult life had I had someone looking out for me. Everything that I have wanted or needed doing, I have done myself.
And why not? I have never needed rescuing before. I suppose I always assumed that if I ever did, I would have two options: rescue myself or perish.
The whole village, working for weeks. Setting aside their own lives and interests to help me. At first I was horribly embarrassed. But underneath that was something that warmed me to the core, even in a palace of ice.
They are coming to rescue me.
I am not alone.
3rd February
I have spent the last quarter hour simply staring at this page. I must write down what happened that day in the king’s palace, but it is all such a tangle of horrors and impossibilities that it feels almost futile to try.
For the scene of a bloody assassination, the king’s gift-giving ceremony was a remarkably dull affair. I wonder if this is the context in which all such events unfold, whether all the great murders and intrigues of history were preceded by a series of moments in which dull grey men talked at length about nothing or large groups of people simply waited around, fiddling with their hair or picking lint off their clothes.
I sat fidgeting in my throne beside the king while a long procession of people approached one by one to lay their gifts at our feet, then went to join the crowd of spectators. The throne was made of delicate blades of ice, slotted together to resemble the rib cage of some enormous beast, and piled with furs to keep me comfortable. The king sat in an identical throne, though without the furs, his hands folded politely in his lap. We were in a throne room that wasn’t a room, but the vast courtyard in the heart of the palace, where sometimes there were two thrones, a dais, and a long avenue lined with ice statues of glowering Folk, and sometimes there were not.
The weather was a strange and lovely mixture of snow clouds and winter sky; whenever the clouds parted, still spilling their flakes, rainbows alighted upon the mountain peaks. The sunlight turned everything to silver and pearl.
I wore the green dress Wendell had made; he had sent it to me that morning with a note saying that he’d decided it was inappropriate for a wedding, and so why didn’t I wear it today? There had been other things in the note, of course, and I had torn it to shreds and tossed it down the mountainside after I’d finished reading. The dress was perfect, every inch of it, covering me in emerald green drapery that flowed like the boughs of a weeping willow, the bodice embellished with crushed pearls that made a whispery sound when I moved. And with it was a matching veil which I wore pushed back from my face. My hair had been swept up by my servants and woven with jewels, but several pieces were already falling into my eyes, proving once again that even magic is not enough to keep me neat. The pearls lining the veil brushed against my forehead, cold and hard.
A faerie woman as tall and slender as evening shadow placed a cage at the king’s feet. He motioned to a servant, who opened the cage door, and out sprang a white raven.
“An albino!” the king exclaimed, leaning forward onto his hand, his elbows on his knees. He had a childlike manner about him in such moments that made me wonder at Wendell’s description of him—older than the mountains. But I never wondered for long. These moments were only flashes, the drops of sunlight winnowed through the deepest and darkest woods. He settled back in his throne, growing far too still again, his magic enveloping us all like wind. He is more magic than person, that is the truth of it. Is this what happens to all the Folk as they age, their power hollowing them out like the fissures in an ancient glacier?