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July 15 - July 16, 2025
“The path is eternal,” he said. “But you mustn’t sleep—I made that mistake. Turn left at the ghosts with ash in their hair, then left at the evergreen wood, and straight through the vale where my brother will die. If you lose your way, you will lose only yourself, but if you lose the path, you will lose everything you never knew you had.”
What sort of place, I wondered, is Wendell’s kingdom?
“Are you certain you wish to go with us?” Wendell said. She stared at him in disbelief. “Of course I’m certain! I’ve been reading stories of the Folk since I was a little girl. This is everything I’ve ever hoped for.” “Everything you ever hoped,” he repeated thoughtfully. “But if you come with us, you will also find everything you ever feared.”
“Well, my love,” I said. “Here we go again.” Shadow gazed up at me with the perfect contentment known only by dogs, and I massaged his enormous forehead.
“The problem is not the packing, I admit; I simply dislike travelling. Why people wish to wander to and fro when they could simply remain at home is something I will never understand. Everything is the way I like it here.”
“Left,” he repeated, “and then left again. Do you remember nothing, girl?”
“Directions? You think me capable of giving directions, you silly girl? I am lost, long lost, though I may yet find my way out again.” He held up his ribbons. “But you—you are so deep in wilderness you do not even know it surrounds you.” “That’s a bit rude,” I said. “Lost is a kingdom with many paths, but they all end at the same place. Do you know where?”
“Do you have any idea who he is?” “Several. And I think it would be best if we assume the worst is true: that he is another assassin sent by Wendell’s stepmother.” Ariadne worried her lip between her teeth. “If so, he doesn’t seem very good at his job, does he? He’s more interested in you than Professor Bambleby. And are the ribbons supposed to be a weapon?”
“I believe he’s human,” I said. “He could be a captive of Wendell’s stepmother, someone she sent back into the mortal realm under an enchantment. Perhaps it drove him mad, or perhaps his behaviour is part of some faerie ritual not yet documented by scholars.”
Bambleby’s quest is his own business, and if his presence places us in danger, we will ask him to leave. You must act like a scholar, Emily, not some silly mortal in a story whose head was turned by one of the Folk.”
“Oh, we’d be happy to help however we can—we’ve had scholars stay here before,” Julia said. “None for some years, though. They were mostly interested in the story of that Scottish woman, de Grey—and that man as disappeared the next year searching for her, Eichorn. Less him, though.” She smiled. “Always felt a bit sorry for the fellow—most folks were all ‘de Grey this, de Grey that’—well, he vanished into Faerie just as completely as she did, but then she did have that touch of the glamourous about her, from what I heard.” She paused, her gaze drifting to Wendell in an absent sort of way.
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“We’d love to,” the woman said apologetically, “but we don’t leave our houses after dark if we can avoid it.”
He looked dubious. “You were lucky with Poe. Your luck will run out if you aren’t careful.”
“I hope I will be able to introduce you. You will like each other, I think.” I considered this dubiously. Not only because every time I learn something new about Wendell’s cat, it makes me less inclined to make her acquaintance, but because, in my experience, cats in general exist in a state of perpetual resentment and dissatisfaction. Or perhaps that is merely the aspect of their nature distilled by my presence, I don’t know. I am not a cat person.
“It will be dark in an hour or two,” he said. “We should turn back.” I raised my eyebrows. “Don’t tell me you’re frightened of these mysterious nocturnal Folk.” “Terrified. You shouldn’t take the danger so lightly, Em—there are Folk in this world so vicious the mortal mind cannot fathom it, so ghastly you would spend a lifetime yearning to forget a single glimpse of their countenance.” “You just want to put your feet up by the fire and drink chocolate.”
Another characteristic of Ariadne’s, I’ve noticed, is that her good humour is so complete that it often forms a kind of armour, off which the foul moods of others ricochet without leaving so much as a dent.
I let out my breath. “You think I’m making the same mistake. That I have come to trust Wendell too much, and that one day he will leave me dangling from a tree somewhere.” Rose didn’t answer immediately, but placed a surprisingly gentle hand upon my knee. “One day, Emily. One day, you will see him for what he is. I only hope it doesn’t destroy you, as it did my friend.”
Several more of the little vulpine Folk perched upon a log on the bank—for naturally they were Folk, like the one I’d observed briefly by the cottage; I felt irritated at myself for not realizing it before. Even at close range, they looked a great deal like foxes in all but their faces, which reminded me of a human infant, all overlarge eyes and small rosebud mouths. They might have been small children wearing costumes, but for the unnerving glint of very small, but very sharp teeth, and the wet, all-black of their eyes.
Shadow chased the faeries all the way to the forest, howling self-righteously—I believe he’d convinced himself that they’d at last comprehended his intimidating nature—then came trotting back with his tail held high.
“You are very lucky Emily considers you a friend,” Wendell said darkly. “You don’t know the first thing about my realm, and I will thank you to refrain from mentioning it if you have nothing positive to say.”
“I had hoped she escaped the Otherlands at last,” he said, using an antiquated word for Faerie. “It gave me a kind of comfort to think of her growing old somewhere in the mortal world even as I endlessly paced the borderlands of their realms, searching for her. You see, Professor Wilde, I have been chasing after Dani in one way or another for most of my adult life.”
The locals seem to take little notice of the weather, and many dine al fresco even in the worst of the wind. I mentioned this to Wendell in the context of some remark about the hardiness of rural folk, and he replied, “Almost all of these villagers have faerie blood,” in the offhand way he sometimes dispenses such revelations.
“Were the villagers of Hrafnsvik of a similar lineage?” “Lord, no. Most hadn’t a drop of faerie blood. Why do you suppose we found them so rational and even-tempered?” “I’ve never heard such self-awareness from you,” I said with some amusement, though I admit I was also genuinely surprised. “Emily,” he said, “I’m quite capable of recognizing faults in other Folk,” quashing my surprise entirely.
I do not have the sense that any of the villagers warmed to me, with my inept small talk and persistent questions, but they were charmed by Wendell and Ariadne and impressed by Rose, and thus they seem willing to accept the small amount of water in their wine that my addition to the party represents.
When Eberhard asked if she required help, she demanded that he inform Bran Eichorn of Cambridge of her whereabouts. When told by an astonished Eberhard that Bran had disappeared in search of her some years ago, she launched into a volley of curses and stormed back into the woods, ranting, “I must do everything, mustn’t I? I put his shoes away, I remind him to brush that hair of his, and now I must fetch him and myself out of Faerie.”
I put my work aside in order to give Shadow his daily salve, which I rub into his toes and the joints in his legs. I’ve had occasion to worry about him these last few months, as his ordinary lumbering gait has grown stiffer, particularly in cold weather. He rests his head on my knee as I work, his eyes closing.
Eventually, I had to rouse Wendell myself—he is sleeping a great deal these days, which is concerning, as I can only assume this is another symptom of poisoning. He is no help whatsoever in easing my concerns, merely repeating his refrain that he has no idea what the symptoms are, and why should he as he has never in his life been poisoned before, and on his birthday too.
Wendell took my hand, steadying me, then led me sharply to the left. “Another door,” he explained. “In the fog. I haven’t the patience to investigate after enduring that tantrum up there.” “I think you just want to hold hands,” I muttered, though I did not mind. “That wouldn’t be very gentlemanly.” “You aren’t a gentleman.” “In fact, plenty of Folk are gentlemen. And plenty of mortal men are not.”
I knelt at his side and wrapped my arm around his shoulders. “Is there anything I can do?” “Yes,” he murmured. “Say that you’ll marry me.” “God.” So he was well enough to tease me, at least—that was some relief. “Perhaps I will refuse you here and now. Disappointment in love may provide a welcome distraction from the poison.” “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would receive a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”
Poe shook his head. “Wickedness! He has enemies then. The high ones always have enemies. I am glad that I am small.”
Poe knitted his fingers together and pressed them to his mouth. “Oh!” he breathed. “If Mother could see me now!”
“Thank you,” I said, swallowing to clear the obstruction in my throat. For a moment I thought I might cry, but I mastered myself, partly because I did not wish to distress the little creature, who gazed at me with his black eyes luminous with anticipation. “Wendell and I are proud to have such clever fjolskylda as yourself. Would you do one other thing for us?” Poe swelled. “Anything.”
“Oh, Em,” he said, laughing softly against my neck. I had my hands in his hair, which was now quite mussed, something that made me absurdly happy. “I’m sorry,” I said, self-conscious now. “Perhaps I shouldn’t talk.” “Whyever not?” He drew back, examining me with a perplexed smile. “I like the way you talk. And everything else about you, in fact. Is that not clear by now?”
“What would be the point?” he said with a shrug. “I’ve never understood this addiction to vengeance many Folk have. I think it must be my grandmother’s blood. The oíche sidhe may not have the most patient tempers, but they do not concern themselves with revenge quests, for what do they have to do with the practicalities of running a household? No, Em—if I am killed, I give you permission to write a paper about it. I know you will find that a more satisfying endeavour.”
He put his elbow over his eyes and gave a breath of laughter. The morning light pooled in the hollow between his collarbones and picked out the gold in his hair. “Well, I knew it was too much to hope for cuddling,” he said, “but I expected to be allowed to sleep in at least.” “Don’t you want to find your door?” “No,” he said, reaching for me. “At this precise moment, I can genuinely say that my only wish is to remain here with you.
Shadow’s collar would protect us, but it would also protect him. Given his age, I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of taking my loyal beast into danger without offering him some form of armour.
She gave a little nod. And with that, she and Eichorn left us. Shadow did not go so easily, but I spoke to him quietly, reminding him of his duty to Wendell, and he eventually slipped away, tail lowered. He stopped every few paces and looked over his shoulder, clearly hoping that I would change my mind and call him back. It was such a depressing sight that I had to turn away.
We were in Wendell’s kingdom—every way I looked, every shade and colour and detail, convinced me. How? I cannot say. True, the landscape accorded with the longing speeches Wendell was always making about his home. But there was also something strangely familiar about the place that I could not put my finger on—did my closeness with Wendell somehow also imbue in me a closeness with his realm?
Ariadne was on her back, kicking and flailing, her hands clutched around her hair, by which she was being dragged into the shadows by an astonishingly hideous faerie. It was perhaps the size of a small man, with the slippery dark skin and rounded head of a frog, and it moved like one, too, its limbs splayed and ending in enormous toes that gripped tight to the huge roots of the forest floor.
“They did not capture us,” I said. “We didn’t even see them.” “They saw you,” Snowbell said. I went still. “What do you mean?” “I followed you all along,” he said. “I saw them watching you from the treetops as you went into the forest. I do not know why they did not attack. They watched and watched, and then they soared into the sky, and seemed to talk together.”
The guardians were owls, more or less—less, I suppose. Twice as large at least as any owl I’d seen, they had an ancient, cronelike appearance, all sinew and mange with sparse, mottled grey feathers, hunched upon their perches. This was not the worst of it. It was that their lower halves ended in six limbs—long, spiderish things that extended far beyond the central framework of their bodies and gripped the stones like pincers. “Why spiders?” Ariadne moaned. “I hate spiders. It could have been anything else.”
She was Wendell’s stepmother, the queen. She was also of mortal blood.
First off, I have to say that the greatest mystery to me in all this is Lord Taran’s motive in helping you.
Assassins are a monstrous breed. Either they attack when you are at your worst, or they are having a go at you on your birthday. I have never known a more dishonourable profession.
As soon as I opened my eyes, my vision was obscured by a large quantity of black fur, a cold, wet nose, and an enormous tongue. I was not offended at all—quite the contrary—and let Shadow lick my cheeks before burying my face in his neck. “Poor dear,” I murmured. “There, there—you needn’t worry about me leaving you again!” He has been like this each morning since my return, but I can scarcely object. I missed him as much as he missed me, and have vowed never again to venture anywhere he cannot follow.
Shadow was at my side, as usual, his snout buried in the fragrant coastal grasses, snuffling busily. He would never abandon me as Orga is so often abandoning Wendell. Dogs are proper companions, not the physical manifestation of caprice.
“You should give up, dear,” I told him, but the poor dog only looked at me blankly. Shadow’s world was one in which all and sundry either fawned over him or kept a respectful distance from his intimidating bulk. Each time Orga hissed at him, Shadow seemed to assume it a misunderstanding, which grew increasingly improbable as these incidents accumulated, but still less improbable, in his view, than being disliked.
Telling the fox-faeries apart remains difficult, but Snowbell is easy to identify, for he is always bragging about his role in my last adventure.
