“Here.” I hardly recognized Aslaug’s voice. She pulled off my cloak, turned it inside out, and put it back on me again. “He’s a great lord, I know, but perhaps this will help a little.”
Wendell nodded approvingly. He paced back and forth in front of the door, examining it as if it were—well, something other than an empty stretch of air. I watched Aslaug.
“I suppose you’re wishing you hadn’t come along now,” I said.
She snorted. “I’ve been wishing it ever since I saw that horribly beautiful creature on his throne. How did you keep your hands off him?” She gave me a sly look that I never could have imagined on her face before. “Or did you?”
“Please,” Wendell said. “I ask to be excused from any descriptions of marital intimacy. This whole thing is unfair: I asked you to marry me first.”
“Oh, that’s rich!” I exclaimed, and was about to remind him of his many dalliances, which he’d never hesitated to make me aware of, but he seemed to sense the storm coming, and said, “Mustn’t tarry. Come, I think I’ve found a door.”
He dragged me from the room, the others following close behind. We came out in a vast cavern full of little hot spring pools where the courtiers liked to bathe. Wendell muttered to himself, and we ran on, until we left the cavern behind and came to a room I’d never seen before, filled with ice statuary.
“I thought you found the door!” I called, panting.
“I have,” he said over his shoulder. “But it’s a very narrow one, a gap between many layers of enchantment, and it requires some manoeuvring. Come on!”
We came next to a side door that led us back to the courtyard, where the ice now ran red with blood, then he made us all leap through a window that brought us to a winter garden, filled with flowers the colour of twilight punctuated with violent hedges, their leaves black and spiky and their berries bright with poison. Another door brought us to the banquet hall, which had a dozen more doors leading off it. Wendell hesitated only briefly, then made a run for the third door to our left. It looked to be a servants’ egress, but once we were through, I tripped over a snowdrift and would have tumbled all the way down the mountainside had not Wendell been holding on to me.
“There,” he said, smug and satisfied. “Now shall I explain your gift?”
I wanted to tell him to hang his gift, for we were standing on a narrow ledge with only the raging wind and the fall of the mountainside all around us, and I could see no way down, but my teeth were chattering too hard to force any words through them.
He smiled and lifted the hem of my skirt. The shoes he’d given me had transformed—now they were boots going all the way up to my knees, the fur so thick and warm they doubled the diameter of my calves, ending in sturdy wooden snowshoes.
He looked so smug now that I wanted to send him over the side of the mountain, but instead I said, “Thank you,” and kissed his lopsided mouth. It had the effect of stunning him into silence, which I enjoyed almost as much.
“This way,” he said, looking flustered for the first time since I have known him, and then he led us down into the valley.
4th February
I have read over my last entry, contemplating scratching it out and starting anew, out of some misguided desire to make it all sound more plausible. But Wendell and I will reach London tomorrow, and a day is insufficient time to accomplish that—a year would be insufficient, I suspect.
My memory of the journey back to Hrafnsvik is hazy. The snow, stirred up from the mountainside as we descended to form an icy fog, seemed somehow to mingle with the enchantments that bound me to the king. In one corner of my memory, the journey was one of hours; in another, we were trapped in those mountains for days, wandering haphazardly. I recall Wendell swearing in Irish and Faie as he tried to disentangle me; though we’d made it out of the palace, scraps of enchantment still clung to me like the broken filaments of a spiderweb. I don’t remember the others being there at all, and later Aslaug told me that Wendell would appear and disappear, leading them through the mortal realm as he gradually drew me out of the faerie one. I suppose they walked alongside me the whole time, a world away.
My first clear memory is awakening in the cottage—I was lying by the fire in a soft pool of blankets. I was confused by this at first, for my bed would have been more comfortable, until I realized that despite the blazing fire and the layers of furs, I was still shivering lightly. It was a chill that would not leave me for several days, and which I still feel at times when the sea wind picks its slippery way through the cracks in my cabin.
Shadow lay curled at my side and rolled upright with a delighted snort when he sensed I was awake. He shoved his huge muzzle into my face and licked me, while I half patted, half swatted him away. I’m afraid his breath is immune to glamour and smells exactly as you’d expect a Black Hound’s breath to smell—rather deathly.
“There you are,” Wendell said, his head appearing above my little blanket nest. He looked cheerful and supremely smug. “And how are we feeling?”
“Like I could sleep until spring.”
“No time for that, I’m afraid. We leave tomorrow morning—early—for Loab?r.”
“Tomorrow?”
“You wish to hang about for the aftermath of what happened at the palace yesterday?” Wendell shook his head. “No, much safer to make ourselves scarce. In Loab?r, we will seek passage on a merchant ship to London captained by Ulfar’s brother—not ordinarily a passenger vessel, I’m afraid, so accommodations will be spartan, but it is our only option, as we have missed the freighter. Ulfar will accompany us to Loab?r to arrange things.”
“What,” I said fuzzily. A hundred thoughts swam through my addled mind, and I grasped at the one that felt most familiar. “What about the paper?”
“I’m just fine,” he said, relaxing into the nearest armchair with his hands folded. “A little weary, from dragging you all down from that mountain, but beyond that I am simply glad to be leaving this land of ice. Aud, Aslaug, and Finn are all well.”
I glared at him. “I was about to—”
“I’m sure you were.” He didn’t seem annoyed, though; there was a quality to his smile, as he gazed at me, that I couldn’t interpret.
“Aud’s gone back to the palace to request a favour from the king,” he said. “She should be back by nightfall, all going well.”
“A favour,” I repeated in disbelief. Then I thought about it. “Oh! Of course. She will ask him to put an end to this snow.”
He nodded. “He owes her, so I suspect he’ll give her whatever she wishes, though one can never be certain. Perhaps he’ll shove her onto the throne in your stead.”
“That’s very nice,” I said. “And I’m the hardhearted one?”
He shrugged. “I did advise her against it. Anyway! I’ll get you some tea.”
I was thirsty, I realized, and hungry. He brought me a steaming cup and a plate of Poe’s bread, soft and fresh and slathered with marmalade. After I’d devoured the lot, he rose again, and I heard rustling, then he tossed something onto my lap. A stack of pages, neatly clipped together and covered in his elegant handwriting.
“We’ll pay someone to type it out when we reach Paris,” he said, waving his hand.
“You cannot work a typewriter?” I murmured distantly, staring at the title.
“There are limits, Em.”
The title read:
Of Frost and Fire: An Empirical Study of the Folk of Ljosland
Emily Wilde, PhD, MPhil, BSc, DDe, and Wendell Bambleby, PhD, MSc. Hons.
“You finished it,” I said once I had regained the use of my voice.
“Read it over,” he said, somehow managing to look even more smug.
“I certainly will,” I said, so emphatically that he laughed.
“The bibliography is a bit of hodgepodge, but that’s your strong suit, isn’t it? And the whole middle section on the habits of the common fae is cribbed almost verbatim from your notes. But you might say,” he added, examining his hands, “that I did most of the work.”
“I would certainly not say that.”
He ignored me and began a long dissertation on his efforts while I was away as I skimmed the pages, only half listening. He had been honest in confessing his reliance on my notes—the majority of the paper was comprised of them. But he’d spun everything together in an unexpected way, filled with lively speculation and effortlessly clever phrasings that I could not have hoped to achieve. The effect was scholarly yet glamourous, weightier than Bambleby’s usual fare yet much more engaging than my own writing.
“I must remain like this for the present, it seems,” he said heavily, rubbing his hand over his face. “It’s a long and tiring process, changing shape, and I’m not sure I have the patience to start today. But I will be myself again in time for the conference.”
“What?” I said, giving him a blank look. Then I blinked, taking in his plain appearance, unchanged from before. “Oh, yes, of course.”