Bambleby knelt to scratch Shadow’s ears. “Why not give your map to Lizzie and Henry? Let them go tramping through the wastes, they’re quite good at it. As for this Au?ur, I understand from your field notes that she is a mute. What do you expect to get out of her?”
I blinked. “You read my notes?”
“Last night. How would you characterize the brownie you saw in the house?”
“I suspect it to be a wight of some sort,” I replied.[*2]
“How dull,” he said. “I hate wights—such tedious creatures. Perhaps we should divide our efforts. You go poking about the haunted house whilst I introduce myself to our headwoman. If we’re to be interviewing the locals, etiquette would suggest we start with the one in charge.”
“Let’s leave the tavern for this evening, shall we?” I said, knowing that if he went there now, he would not come out again till midnight, and not because Bambleby is much of a drinker, but because he would encounter so many targets for his conversation.
He smiled. “As you wish. I approve of your plan, Em. This field study was your initiative, after all.”
“I take that to mean that my name will go first in the paper we present at the conference?”
“Of course,” he said calmly, as if there had never been any doubt in his mind. Perhaps there hadn’t. His expression was perfectly open in that disconcerting way he has of moving from mischief to guilelessness in the space of a heartbeat. Bambleby never attempts to charm me in the way he did Krystjan. It would not work if he did, and I suspect that he knows this.
He swallowed the last of his tea, gave Shadow another pat, and wandered out the door.
“Where are you going?” I demanded.
“I told you. I won’t be long. Take the time to scribble in that journal of yours.”
“And you’re just going to go wandering about the countryside like that?” I said, waving a hand at his robe.
The amusement returned. “You needn’t worry about me, Em.”
“Worry!” I scoffed, but the hem of his robe had already vanished through the door.
Skip Notes
*1 Bran Eichorn, whose mother was a Ljoslander, wrote one of the few papers on the subject of the Ljosland Folk, though his research is based entirely on oral accounts—it is unclear if he visited Ljosland himself. I will not name the paper here as it is a poor example of scholarship, being mostly a screed disguised as a rebuttal against Danielle de Grey’s “The Importance of Hearth Faeries in the Northern Latitudes” （Modern Dryadology, Spring 1848）。 Eichorn spent much of his early career obsessed with de Grey.
*2 Over the last two or three decades, the word “wight” has evolved in academic discourse to refer to all those household brownies whose behaviour towards their host has become centred around malevolence.
29th October—evening
He was lying, of course. After I finished the morning’s journal entry, he still hadn’t returned, so I decided to set out on my own as originally intended. Henry and Lizzie I sent off with my map to investigate a series of volcanic features, as Wendell had suggested. They seemed to understand my directives, though I couldn’t help missing my own students. I trusted them, for they were chosen on the basis of their qualifications and diligence, not their ability to put up with nonsense.
The sky was that peculiarly rich shade of blue it assumes in the autumn, and the sea was studded with little fishing boats. Groa waved cheerily at me as I passed the shop—as well she should, given that I’d likely doubled her month’s earnings. Suffice it to say that I did not stop by for a chat.
Nobody answered when I knocked upon the door of the blue house. The two goats kept an eye on me, bleating their disapproval from behind the fence.
“Hello?” I called in Ljoslander, knocking again.
I thought I glimpsed one of the curtains twitch. Seconds later, the house filled with screams.
My hands flew to my ears. This was ineffectual in deadening the screams, which went on and on. It was impossible to place whether the voice was male or female—what was certain was the desperation and torment. The screams had the cadence of a winter gale, and I could feel the cold radiating from the cracks round the door.
Wonderful, I thought. The wight was toying with me.
I lowered my hands. As the screams rolled over me, I politely knocked again.
Gradually, as I showed no evidence of being terrorized, the screaming subsided. I had no interest in whatever gruesome trick the wight would devise next, so I motioned to Shadow—who had not heard anything amiss—and we wandered around the side of the house.
There I saw in the distance two figures: a man milking a goat and, much farther away, where the land sloped towards the beach, a woman walking alone. She was framed against the sharp blue waves and looked very lonesome. The goat gave a worried bleat, and the man turned and saw me. He finished his task and approached.
“You’re the professor, I suppose.” He was a small, dark man with a weathered face overwhelmed by a thick beard. “Aud told you about our son.”
Instantly, I understood. The creature I had seen in the window had not been a wight at all. It had been a changeling. I have never known a changeling in manner so like a wight, neither in the course of my own research nor in the literature. Changelings are monstrous offspring produced by the courtly fae, weak and sickly creatures who bring misfortune upon a household for as long as they remain there, but they are not vicious or malevolent. My interest in this place grew by the moment, and I was pleased that I had brought my notebook.
I held out a hand. “My name is Emily Wilde. When was your son taken?”
He paused, then took my hand. “Mord Samson. My wife is Aslaug—she’s on one of her walks. I thought Aud would have told you?”
“Aud told me nothing. It was simple inference.”
“I see.” He gazed at me for a moment. “She doesn’t like you.”
Something about this man, the grim lines of his face, perhaps, which had the opacity of a windowpane, prompted me to agree, “She doesn’t like me.”
He smiled at that, barely. I had the impression that even such a smile was a rare occurrence. “It was five winters ago. Ari was a baby. Barely a year old.”
Now I was very interested indeed. Already, the behaviour of the Ljosland Folk was diverging from what I knew. “A year is quite unusual. The Folk abduct newborns—I’ve never heard of one taking interest in older children. Apart from the boggarts of Scotland, of course, but they do not leave a boggart-child in place of the one stolen away.”
I realized that I sounded excited, and that Mord was watching me with raised eyebrows. “I’m sorry,” I said, and it sounded perfunctory to my own ears, yet for some reason, Mord smiled again.
“It doesn’t matter a whit to me,” he said. “That is, whether you’re sorry or not, whether you will put us in your prayers. We had plenty of prayers and sorries when Ari was stolen away, and we’ve had plenty since. Can you help us?”
“That’s—” I stopped. But something about him made me unafraid to be honest. “That’s not why I’m here. I’ve come to catalogue your Folk for the purpose of science.”