Then you told me how you had tricked the boggart into thinking you a long-lost relative of his last master—a feat which had required extensive research into local lore—then bribed him with exotic seashells, for you remembered some obscure story about a boggart whose secret fantasy was to travel the world, boggarts being bound to their crumbling ruins, while I half listened in astonishment. I say half, because I was mostly just watching you, observing the way your mind clicks and whirrs like some fantastical clock. Truly, I have never met anyone with a better understanding of our nature, and that anyone includes the Folk. I suppose that’s partly why—
Ah, but you really would kill me if I desecrated your scientific vessel with the end of that sentence.
Anyway. We strolled out of the cave into the purpling light; it was getting on for evening by that time, and I was thinking longingly of supper. In truth, I was also thinking longingly of my apartments back at Cambridge: the fire crackling in the hearth, my servants hard at work preparing my repast, and one of my mistresses, fetchingly attired, to share it all with—everything as it should be, in other words. You said something in a sharp voice about the blasted aurora, which seemed to be falling to the ground right in front of us, and then I was suddenly on my back with an arrow through my chest.
Now, I have never been shot before, so we will have to add it to the list of pleasures I have experienced since making your acquaintance. You screamed, which I appreciated, and Shadow went berserk, also kind but not much more helpful, but fortunately, Lilja had her wits about her and yanked the arrow out, then threw herself and Margret to the ground.
It was a faerie-made arrow, of course, a shard of pure ice and magic, and with it removed I was able to use my own magic again. Fortunately, the edge of the Hidden Ones’ realm was rolling over us again as the wind picked up—I suppose it’s intriguing, this travelling faerie realm, as little as it is to my taste—and like all monarchs, I can bend the rules when I am in Faerie, if only a little. Through the agony, I managed to pull at the pocket of time I was in and unravel a few threads. I’m not explaining it well enough for you to understand, I’m sure, but essentially I turned back time, returning to the moment the arrow flew towards me, where I caught it. It’s a talent of limited compass, I’m afraid; I can affect time only within a small area—anyone standing much more than an arm’s length away is unaffected—and I’ve only ever managed to undo a handful of seconds. Quite helpful, though, in this instance.
The faerie who had shot the arrow soon made his presence known, striding arrogantly out of the wind to smirk at me. I could tell right away that he hadn’t seen my little trick; he’d only seen me catch the arrow. He had eyes like the dawn, and he was wearing some sort of dreadful grey thing that hung from him like a sheet—very much your style—and a cloak made of dead animals of some sort—hideous but perfectly practical attire, I suppose, for an icicle like him.
“You’re a long way from home, child,” he said to me in Faie, with a condescending tone that I did not appreciate. Unfortunately, he was very old, older even than some of my court’s most tedious councillors, so I suppose he had reason to condescend to me. No reason at all to put an arrow in my chest, though.
You were at my elbow then, rapidly recounting the whole story of the cloak and the Hidden Ones’ interest in me—unnecessary, really, for I had already gathered that the man had been drawn to the great hole I’d put in his realm, and that he meant to make a meal out of me, hollowing me out like an orange, as he’d done to Au?ur. My, what an ignominious fate that would have been! I can imagine my stepmother’s reaction; I think she would have injured herself laughing. It would not have surprised her.
Anyway, I did not much want to fight him—he looked a mean sort, and I was resentful that after all the effort I’d expended, here was yet another trial to keep me from my supper—so I simply explained to him who I was and gave him a little demonstration of my power to put him off, summoning a very pretty rose garden in the middle of his desolate winter, complete with a handful of bees.
“You were cast out?” he said with distaste, and looked me up and down. “Yes, we have children like you at our court. Indolent peacocks, strutting about with their jewels and their perfumes, teasing one another with vacuous enchantments. Your stepmother did your realm a great favour.”
I did not have any time to be angry at that, for before he’d even ended his sentence, he was charging at me with his sword.
I shoved you out of the way first, which cost me; a slash through the arm of my cloak. Then I had to vanish into the landscape, a trick I hate very much here, because even the trees feel like ice when I step into them. He shadowed me everywhere I went, so that I was endlessly spinning and leaping and dodging his sword, and generally making myself ridiculous. I tried to throw my own magic at him, but the sword swallowed it. Of course it was no ordinary enchanted sword—it was enchantment, a powerful one at that, probably honed through all the years he’d been alive, just my luck.
“Wendell!” you were yelling, trying for some ungodly reason to get my attention as I dodged and weaved, as if I needed another thing to think about. “Wendell, what do you need?”
I think I replied something ungracious about shutting up; it’s all a bit hazy. I managed to get an ordinary blow in when the faerie was looking for me in a hazel tree I’d summoned—I was summoning all sorts of trees and shrubberies, more to distract him than anything else, and the icy mountainside was beginning to look like the domain of some mad hedgewitch. My hand still stings from that blow as I write this; it was like punching solid ice.
You just kept yelling, though. “Think of the stories, Wendell—there’s always a loophole, a door! I can find it, if you’d just tell me what you need!”
“A sword!” I shouted back, half hysterical at this point and not thinking for a second that you’d actually pull a sword out of the snow. I was beginning to wonder if I’d have to blast a hole in time itself to get rid of this bloody iceman; and oh, what a mess that would be to clean up. It’s not something I’ve done before, so who knows, I might’ve blasted myself to pieces in the process, leaving you to put me together again, which I’ve no doubt you would have managed with perfect detachment.
The next time I took notice of you, you were sobbing all over the snow. Well, I thought, finally she’s being sensible. Then I realized that you were sobbing because you’d stabbed yourself in the arm, and not out of concern for my imminent demise. I noticed that your tears were freezing as they hit the icy ground and collecting into the shape of a sword.
Well, that almost killed me. I mean that—I froze for a full second, during which our yeti friend nearly skewered me through. I dodged, barely, my head whirling. One day I would like for you to explain to me how you heard of the story of Deirdre and her faerie husband, a long-ago king, which is one of the oldest tales in my realm. Do mortals tell it as we do? When the king’s murderous sons schemed to steal his kingdom by starving it into torpor with endless winter, Deirdre collected the tears of his dying people and froze them into a sword, with which he was finally able to slay his children. It is a tale many of my own people have forgotten—I know it only because that poor, witless king is my ancestor.