Skip Notes
*1 Outside of Russia, almost all known species of courtly fae, and many common fae also, are fond of fairs and markets; indeed, such gatherings appear in stories as the interstitial spaces between their worlds and ours, and thus it is not particularly surprising that they feature in so many encounters with the Folk. The character of such markets, however, varies widely, from sinister to benign. The following features are universal: 1） Dancing, which the mortal visitor may be invited to partake in; 2） A variety of vendors selling food and goods which the visitor is unable to recall afterwards. More often than not, the markets take place at night. Numerous scholars have attempted to document these gatherings; the most widely referenced accounts are by Baltasar Lenz, who successfully visited two fairs in Bavaria before his disappearance in 1899.
*2 While it is considered settled fact that the common fae are strengthened by mortal gifts, whether the more powerful courtly fae experience the same benefit is a matter of much conjecture. For my part, I have never seen any reason why this should not be so; that it defies human logic is not a sufficient counterargument where the Folk are concerned.
20th November
Well, what an absolute nightmare of a country this is—even worse than I previously supposed, which is quite the feat; little more than ice and darkness and nasty, hungry things gnashing their teeth. Trust you to have dragged me into it.
I have no doubt, my dear Em, that you will be beside yourself with gratitude when you find that I have filled in the next entry in your journal. When I informed you of my intentions, I believe you glared in your sleep, another superpower of yours. You are snoring now in the sleigh, and Margret and Lilja are similarly wearied, and so with no other options for occupying myself beyond admiring the scenery as the horses bear us back to Hrafnsvik, a dubious prospect at best, I will do you this good turn. You may thank me when you wake.
Naturally, I thought about glancing through what you have written, at least to look for my name, but something stopped me. No doubt it was my chivalrous nature; I certainly can’t imagine what else it would be. Ah, you’re stirring a little. Strange how you always keep your left hand stuffed into your pocket, even in sleep; I tried to see if you had injured it, and you elbowed me in the face.
Anyway. I suppose I should pick up where you left off, yes? Though let us backtrack a little to set the stage.
It was close to noon when I awoke to find you vanished, and Shadow too. Oh, how I hate this place. Usually upon awakening I experience a few blissful seconds in which I think that I am home again, that at any moment I will hear the rustle of the weeping rowan as it murmurs to itself by my window or the pitter-patter of my cat’s feet as she comes to greet me. （Did you know I had a cat back in Faerie? She is not the sort you would like to meet. I would tell you more, but you would only write a bloody paper about her.） But in this foul place, it is so cold that I cannot ever fool myself into thinking I am home, and so I am denied even that brief moment of peace.
You’ll no doubt be happy to hear that I didn’t rush after you immediately. Of course I guessed that you had concocted some scheme in the night, which you would no doubt carry out with your usual reptilian efficiency, no help needed from the faerie king you have dragged along with you like a half-forgotten doll. I don’t mean to say that I was insulted; I was more than happy to have been left behind with the fire and the blankets. But I soon grew bored of waiting, and of worrying that your plans had gone awry, as even the plans of fire-breathing dragons are wont to do sometimes, Em.
And so I took one of the horses and followed your tracks, and very interesting tracks they were, leading me to a frozen lake where there was absolutely nothing to see at all, but of course I knew that I stood outside the door to what I’m sure is a very charming faerie realm, no doubt filled with Folk with icicles for hair or something equally grotesque. I did not bother looking for a way in to exchange pleasantries with the locals, for I could see from your tracks that you had been and gone, sort of, for the tracks led in and out of Faerie, and in and out again, as if you had wandered for some time without being able to extricate yourself from the borderlands of their realm. When I saw that I became very worried indeed, for there was no way of knowing how long you’d been wandering, though only a few hours had passed in the mortal world. I was finally alerted to your presence when that fiendish dog of yours came charging out of nowhere, howling his head off. From the sound he was making, you were dead or dying or frozen into a dessert for some bogle, and so rather than looking for a proper door into their realm, I simply ripped a hole through it, and kept ripping until I found you in that cave.
Yes, yes. It was perhaps not the wisest choice, particularly given what came after. You can delight me with your lectures when we are home again.
I shook you awake, and you said, “Wendell!” in a way that I quite liked, nothing at all like your usual tone. But of course, instead of thanking me for pulling you out of some desperately unpleasant otherworld, you began immediately to harry me with demands, namely that I heal young Margret.
“I can heal her,” I told you, “but I can’t make her whole again,” to which you only gave me a look as if to say, that’s good enough, get on with it. Perhaps it was good enough for you, but Lilja was watching me with shadows like bruises under her eyes, and I could tell by her expression that she would give me anything for my assistance, even her own soul, if I meant to be petty and make demands of her, which I did not. As she told me later, she had not slept a wink, but had spent the hours chafing her beloved’s arms and blowing warmth into her hands. I spoke to her quietly, and she gave her assent, and then I touched Margret’s forehead and melted the crown that the Hidden Ones had placed there. It left behind a rather pretty scar across her forehead and cheekbones, a pattern of jagged snowflakes that gleams like ice when the moonlight shines upon it.
Now, I thought this exceedingly gracious of me, healing the lover of the only woman who has ever spurned me, but I was not foolhardy enough to expect praise from your direction. Lilja, however, pressed my hand hard enough to bruise it as Margret buried her teary face in Lilja’s neck, and the charming picture they made was thanks enough for me.
“How?” I enquired, and you must have known from the disbelief in my face that I was helplessly amazed by your feat, marching into some ice faerie realm and making off with two captives, and all that without sustaining a scratch. But you looked away, and seemed to be avoiding looking at Shadow too, so that I immediately began to think about how it had been him who had led me to you, and then about all of his uncanny ways, not least of which is his choice of a creature like you for a master. I patted his head, feeling about for the glamour, as I have never bothered to do before—and why should I; I do not make a habit of looking beneath people’s pets to see if there is a monster hiding there—and sure enough, there it was, and when I moved the magic aside, a bloody Black Hound stared back at me, all glowing eyes and glistening fangs.
You looked worried, for some reason, but you calmed down when I started laughing. “Where did you get him?” I said.
“In Scotland,” you replied. “He’s a Grim. I rescued him from a boggart, who was tormenting him for sport.”