I was happy to reach the spring. I’m afraid to say that I have abandoned propriety and taken to bathing in it, a necessity given the awkwardness of heating water in the cottage. After having a scrub, I dried myself quickly with the towel I had brought along and dressed again, balancing myself on one of the heated rocks.
Usually, I waited for Poe to appear before clearing the snow from his tree, as is only polite, but he was unusually tardy. I donned my snowshoes and trudged to his tree, where I stopped. The tree had been scorched. Not from without, but within, as if struck by lightning. Several of the boughs lay broken upon the snow.
I was surprised by the grief that came over me, scattering my thoughts. Yet there was hope. If Poe had run into the woods, he may have become lost. It was a theory supported by anecdotal evidence of the Spanish anjana, a tree-dwelling species of the common fae, who rarely stray beyond the land compassed by their roots, and may never find their way home if need drives them from their territory. And so I plunged into the woods, calling for my small, needle-fingered friend. No easy feat, not knowing Poe’s true name and being unable to use his language, for fear of what else might hear me. But happily, he showed himself within a few moments of hearing my voice, creeping out from under a root.
“I am lost,” he said, wringing his sharp hands. My old hat, now a cloak that he took much pride in brushing and steaming over the spring, was bedraggled and grimed with soot. “They came in the night. I tried to hide from them, for I did not wish to dance. They did not like that, and burned my tree.”
Fortunately, I did not have to ask him whom he meant—it was clear from his look that he meant the tall ones.
“There, there,” I said. “I will show you the way home.”
He hesitated. “For what price?”
I understood his fear; I had to name a price, of course, and he expected it to be great, given his need. This is often how the Folk operate. I had already prepared a reply, however.
“You will answer three questions about the tall ones,” I said.
He winced. I knew he hated to tell a “noser” such as myself his secrets, but as this was not concerning him specifically, but his world, it was not a crushing burden. He agreed, and I guided him through the woods. He was perfectly silent at my back, and a very strange Eurydice he made to my Orpheus, or de Grey to my Eichorn.[*]
He exclaimed over his poor tree, disappearing through a little door I have glimpsed but once, and only then out of the corner of my eye. Soon the snow was darkened with the soot he was scooping from the interior.
“I have broken our bargain,” he said glumly, handing me a burnt loaf. “Mother would be very disappointed.”
I assured him that our bargain was intact, for the bread was not so burnt that a little scraping would not render it edible. He brightened visibly and settled himself beside me.
“They did not harm my cloak,” he said proudly, his long fingers stroking the beaverskin. “It is only a little dirty.”
I assured him that the cloak was still most magnificent, and he began the process of steaming it over the spring, hanging it upon a branch that dangled low. Then he turned to his tree, fetching a little shovel from some cranny I couldn’t perceive, and began scraping the soot from within. He talked as he worked, an irritated and fearful muttering, and from this I perceived all I needed to know. Promising to return for my three questions, I took my leave of him.
* * *
—
I ran full tilt down the mountainside, slipping and sliding all the way. By the time I wrenched open the door I was red-faced and panting, my nose running horribly.
I nearly collided with Bambleby, who stood by the table in his dressing gown, looking forlorn. “Finn hasn’t been by with breakfast,” he told me. Rumpled golden hair completed the picture of indolence as his gaze swept over my pack. “Oh! Our sylvan p?tissier has made bread. Have you seen the marmalade?”
“They’ve taken someone,” I said, somehow managing not to beat him over the head with Poe’s concoction. “Someone from the village.”
“Yes, I rather thought so,” he said.
That brought me up short. I did not waste breath asking how he knew, as I would not waste it questioning Poe as to why he wanted a mortal to shovel his lawn, when I have seen him tiptoeing nimbly over the snows. “When?”
“In the night,” he said unhelpfully. “And before you ask, no, I don’t know who it was. God, but I do hate singing Folk. Did you not hear it? Hm, perhaps Aud’s fiendish candles work after all. Bloody caterwauling racket. Give me the bells and lutes of my own halls, and hang any pompous minstrels who open their mouths to sully them.” He looked at me. “The marmalade, Em.”
Something of my feelings must have shown in my face, for he fell back a step, hands raised in a warding motion. Abandoning the bread, I turned and ran back into the winter.
When I crashed through the doors of the tavern, I found nearly half the village gathered there, with Aud fielding questions in Ljoslander. None of them had any interest in foreign bystanders in a moment of crisis, and my arrival was largely ignored. Cursing my lack of fluency, I managed to find Finn in the crowd, and he pulled me aside to translate the situation.
It was Lilja. But of course it was Lilja, the village beauty who could fell trees and cleave firewood as easily as draw breath. They said she had been travelling back to Hrafnsvik with her beloved, a milliner’s daughter named Margret who lived in the town of Selab?r. They had been taken together, the horse they rode wandering back to its yard before dawn, saddle empty and askew. The other horses had been sent into a frothing panic when it had been stabled among them, a telltale sign of a brush with the tall ones. A search party was being organized, grimly. Lilja’s mother, Johanna, who had lost her husband to drowning only a year previous, was being looked after by Thora and her helpers, being near insensible with grief.
Finn then asked me, quietly, if there was anything I could do, given my vast knowledge of the Folk. Unfortunately, Aud chose that moment to conclude her address and join us by the fire, and with the two of them gazing at me with a desperate shadow of hope, I could only promise to think about it.
As I left, Aud entreated me to confer with Bambleby. I could tell from the look she gave me that she was not foolish enough to hope for disinterested aid from one of the Folk, but was willing to offer in exchange whatever was within her power. The loss of two youths, both barely turned twenty, weighed that heavily upon the village.
Indeed, when I returned to the cottage, I found Bambleby dressed and breakfasted （victuals having been delivered by one of Krystjan’s farmhands） but far from raring to join the search. I recounted what I had learned at the tavern, and he listened politely （a result, I suspect, of my earlier mood rather than some newfound benevolence on his part）。
“Aud is willing to pay for your assistance,” I said bluntly.
“Oh?” He looked amused. “Am I to take this as an offer of monetary value, or will she deliver to my door a sheep born of a cow whose wool turns to silver in the moonlight, or some such thing?”
“I think she will give you whatever you want, if it is hers to offer and will not endanger herself or others.” I spoke in the careful style in which I am given to negotiate with the Folk, which he seemed to recognize with a kind of weary amusement. He gave a dismissive lift of his eyebrows and turned his gaze back to the fire.