I don’t remember much of the walk back to the cottage. I recall Aud holding my arm and murmuring, “He’ll be all right, don’t worry. He will.” Then we were at Wendell’s bedside, and the sheets were soaked in blood. His skin was the colour of old ashes, and his eyes were closed, his golden hair flame-bright against the pallor.
Ulfar tossed herbs into the water, and Aud washed Wendell’s arm. She sewed up the wound with the same steadiness and was done before Thora stomped up to the door. The old woman laid her hand on Wendell’s forehead and clucked her tongue.
“What?” I demanded, overloud. There was a ringing in my ears.
“Nothing,” Thora said. “You must have nicked a vein. He’s lost plenty of blood, but that’s no death sentence. He should recover once he gets some food in him.” She gave me a wink. “He’s prettier when he’s asleep, eh? You don’t notice that big mouth of his.”
She shuffled into the kitchen and began banging pots and pans. Someone must have summoned Groa, for she appeared shortly after with a basket of meats, vegetables, and cheeses, greeting me with her customary cheerful indifference. The kitchen din intensified, but still Bambleby did not stir.
My mind had begun to work again by this point, and I remembered the tale of a prince of the Irish Folk, held captive at the bottom of a lake by a water sprite, and the faerie princess who had liberated him with—with—
With a token of the world above. I dashed out the door, even as I mentally cross-referenced the tale with others concerned with faerie potions. Yes—it could work. Nobody even noticed my going, apart from Lilja, who was in the yard making short work of the woodpile. She slung the axe over her broad shoulder and called something after me, but I was already halfway up the mountainside.
The forest was silent as I ducked beneath the boughs, holding its breath in that curious way the wilds do after a snowfall. I floundered about for a time, for the drifts were deep in places, filling my boots with snow.
There it was. A red willow, scrawny and malcontent, the only tree that I was certain grew also in Ireland. I wrenched free a handful of browned leaves and ran back to the cottage. Bambleby was alone in his room, still asleep, still pale, while the women filled the kitchen with noise.
I stared from Bambleby to the leaves in my hand, suddenly unsure. Perhaps there was no need for my desperate remedy? But there was something in Wendell’s face that made the terror churn within me again. When looked at from certain angles, he seemed to lose substance, as the changeling had done. My tangled thoughts drifted into place, and I recalled that the faerie princess had brewed a tea—yes, a tea. For the prince’s weakness had come not from drowning, but being severed from his own green world. I filled a cup with hot water from the pot and took it back to Bambleby’s bedside, where I crumbled the leaves into it and held it to his lips.
There was a noise in the doorway. I turned and found that Aud was watching what I was doing with a queer expression on her face.
“Why—” she began, and as her gaze strayed to Bambleby, fading in and out against the pillow, as if his edges had been subtly blurred, I stepped between them to block her view.
I don’t know why I did this; surely his secret is nothing to me. But I wasn’t quick enough, in any case, and Aud went very still, like a deer noticing the snap of a twig. We stood frozen like that for a moment, and then her face grew hard. I felt certain she would flee, or perhaps knock the cup from my hand, but it was only her inborn decisiveness reasserting itself.
“Here,” she said, stepping forward. “Not like that.”
She tilted Wendell’s head back, spilling his hair across the pillows. Her hand shook ever so slightly, then stilled. A mouthful of the tea passed his lips, and he swallowed.
I was staring at her. “It’s not—I mean—”
“You’re clearly mortal.” She didn’t look up from her task. “And he hasn’t harmed you. That’s something, I suppose.”
“He wouldn’t,” I said, then stopped. Then, “He doesn’t know. That I know, I mean.”
She pursed her lips and said nothing for a moment. “Well, isn’t that perfect?”
I blinked, astonished to see a smile playing on her lips.
“They’re so full of themselves, the lot of them,” she said. “They love their games and their tricks. This may be the funniest thing I’ve heard all year. I hardly know the man, but I’ve no doubt it serves him right.”
A burble of laughter escaped me. Wendell muttered something. Aud handed the cup back to me and returned to the kitchen without another word, leaving me staring after her.
I got another mouthful of the tea into him before his eyes drifted open and he shoved my arm away. He grimaced and pressed his sleeve to his mouth. “Good God, what is that? Couldn’t axe me to death so you’ve turned to poison, is that it?”
To my horror, I burst into tears.
Bambleby stared at me, and I have never seen him more astonished. “Em! I was only—”
I fled the room, too embarrassed to stay a second longer. I leaned against the fireplace and tried to control myself, while Shadow pawed at my leg, distressed.
“What on earth is the matter, child?” Thora called at me from the kitchen.
“Nothing, nothing,” I choked out, then went outside. I lost my inclination to cry in the bitter cold, and so gave Lilja a hand hauling the chopped wood. In the space of minutes, she’d filled our wood box twice over. Bambleby was up and looking himself again by my third trip, in the kitchen laughing with Aud and Thora about something.
“Where is Ulfar?” I said, though I didn’t care.
“Out back, patching up a hole in the wall,” Aud said. “I must speak to Krystjan—he should not be accommodating guests in a hovel. It’s a wonder you haven’t frozen before now.”
“No lodging is a hovel after you’ve been put up in a Swiss crypt advertised as a slice of Alpine serenity,” said Bambleby, all charm as he elicited another round of laughs while neatly sidestepping Aud’s insult of our host. We sat down and had a meal of lamb stew, mussels, and a delicate pancake made from ground moss, and if Aud’s gaze kept drifting to Bambleby more often than necessary, he seemed to think nothing strange about it, surprising me not one whit.
“Now, there’ll be no talk of payment,” Aud said to me after, a flintiness coming into her voice. I stammered out my assurances on that point, and something in my voice—or perhaps my bedraggled state—seemed to soften her, and she gave my hand a squeeze.
“Be careful,” she said, and there were several layers of meaning in it, none of which I was in a state to parse.
Then they were all gone, leaving behind the echoes of their voices and merriment.
Bambleby turned to me, puzzlement all over his face, but before he could say a word I announced my intention to visit Poe at the spring—for I had not yet fulfilled my vow to clear the snow from his home, and in truth it was much on my mind—and hurried outside with Shadow at my heels.
I find myself cringing as I read this over; ordinarily, I try to keep these journals professional, yet on this expedition I find myself continually struggling to meet this standard. I blame Bambleby, of course. I suppose one must expect some blurring of boundaries when one works with the Folk.