Wendell gave the room a good sweep with a broom he found somewhere or perhaps conjured up himself, knocking icicles and frost from the walls, which he later explained to me were the remnants of enchantments woven by the changeling, left behind like cobwebs. I had little idea of what to do, so I simply gave Mord an awkward pat on the shoulder and made to leave. At that, he suddenly rose to his feet and wrapped me in a very strange hug （my back was to him, my arm somehow trapped between us—I have no instinct for this sort of thing） and then, still without speaking a word, he released me and went to his son’s bedside.
“Well!” Wendell said after we had returned to the cottage. “What a heartwarming scene! I could get a taste for this philanthropy nonsense.”
I snorted. “You will get a taste for it on rare occasions, when it suits your whims, and if you needn’t exert yourself too greatly.”
He shook his head, smiling. “We are not all alike, Em. You cannot simply compare me against what you know of the Folk.”
“I was comparing you against you.”
He laughed and handed me a glass of wine. I froze, my gaze falling on the mirror behind him.
“You’ve enchanted it!” I exclaimed, stepping forward. The mirror was filled with trees, a twilight forest that bent in the wind, tossing its branches. Leaves flickered across the glass like bright birds, and lights flashed here and there amongst the shadows. I could have been looking through a windowpane, and for a moment my head swam with the dissonance of it.
“There is nothing green in this place,” he said in a complaining tone. “Even the forest is rendered in black-and-white; I feel as if I am in a movie. I must have something to rest my eyes upon.”
I gazed at the forest a little longer, the sway and glimmer of it. It was—well, mesmerizing. It had a powerful resemblance to my favourite wood in the south of Cambridgeshire, where Shadow and I were wont to escape on fine summer days. Beyond the familiar curving oak at the edge of the frame should be a little stream. “Is it a faerie forest?”
“Oh—I don’t know,” he said. “It is leaf and bole and the scent of pine. That’s all I care about.”
Indeed, I did catch the faintest aroma of needles, now that I was thinking about it. Summer needles on a forest floor, warmly fragrant as they snapped underfoot.
I settled beside the fire, even though I was exhausted; in truth, I felt a little giddy. The snowy ride through that wild country; the conversation with the faerie woman—in and of itself a greater triumph than most dryadologists could hope for in their entire career. The things I had learned in a single night would give me material for a year’s worth of papers. I downed the wine and sank back into my chair, my mind already dancing through the additions I would make in my encyclopaedia.
He sat with me, chattering away about our triumphant return to Cambridge and ICODEF, and myriad other things, and not expecting anything substantial in reply, which is one of my favourite qualities about him. It sounds odd to admit that I find the company of such a boisterous person restful, but perhaps it is always restful to be around someone who does not expect anything from you beyond what is in your nature.
After a while, though, I felt an unexpected guilt. “You don’t have to stay with me,” I said. “You can go down to the tavern and regale the villagers with the tale of our success.”
“Why would I do that? I prefer your company, Em.”
He said it as if it were obvious. I snorted again, assuming he was teasing me. “Over the company of a tavern filled with a rapt and grateful audience? I’m sure you do.”
“Over anyone else’s company.” Again, he said it with some amusement, as if wondering what I was doing speculating about something so evident.
“You are drunk,” I said.
“Shall I prove it to you?”
“No, you shan’t,” I said, alarmed, but he was already sweeping to the floor, bending his knee and taking my hand between his.
“What in God’s name are you doing?” I said between my teeth. “And why are you doing it now?”
“Shall I make an appointment?” he said, then laughed. “Yes, I believe you would like that. Well, name the time when it would be convenient for you to receive a declaration of love.”
“Oh, get up,” I said, furious now. “What sort of jest is this, Wendell?”
“You don’t believe me?” He smiled, all mischief, a look I’d seen from other Folk, enough to know not to trust him one inch. “Ask for my true name, and I’ll give it to you.”
“Why on earth would you do that?” I demanded, yanking my hand back.
“Oh, Em,” he said forlornly. “You are the cleverest dolt I have ever met.”
I stared at him, my heart thundering. Of course, I am not a dolt in any sense; I had supposed he felt something for me and had only hoped he would keep it to himself. Forever. Not that a part of me didn’t wish for the opposite. But that was when I assumed his feelings in that respect were equivalent to what he felt for any of the nameless women who passed in and out of his bed. And why would I lower myself to that, when he and I already had something that was vastly more valuable?
But he was offering me his name?
Once, while following a trail of blue foxberries in the woods east of Novosibirsk, I had tripped over a root and gone tumbling end-over-end down the side of a gully, landing with a great splash in the little stream at the bottom. Luckily, I fell into a pile of sodden leaves trapped in a side channel by the current, and not upon the sharp rocks only inches to my left. But the breath was knocked out of me entirely, and I simply lay there aching from innumerable bruises for several minutes—and yet even then, I hadn’t been stunned like this.
He sighed. “Well, I don’t expect you to do anything with this information. I have grown rather used to pining, so it won’t put me out to keep at it, I suppose.”
“I would order you to do all sorts of terrible things,” I managed, though my voice sounded very far away.
“You seem to have a talent for that already.”
“I would have you accompany me on every field study,” I said. “I would have you rising at six and carrying my cameras and equipment everywhere. You would never escape a day of hard work again. And you would certainly have to retract all of the studies you faked.”
He glared at me. “Yes, you would do all that, wouldn’t you? Well then, instead, why don’t you just marry me?”
I said nothing for several minutes. The only sounds were the crackle of the fire and the pit-pat of snow upon the windows. “That’s a more sensible suggestion,” I said.
He burst out laughing. By the time he finished, he was wiping at his eyes. “Sensible, she says. Sensible.”
“Well, it is,” I snapped. “I didn’t say we would marry. But why would I want your name? I don’t wish to order you about like a servant. You may keep it, and your mad faerie logic, to yourself.”
“Very well,” he said. “Is that it, then? Your answer is no?”
“I didn’t say that,” I snapped, irritated and hopelessly flustered. I thought inanely that this sort of thing would never have happened with Leopold. Leopold had been predictable in every way, and as transparent as spring water. “I’m going to leave,” he would announce at a dinner party he wasn’t enjoying, and then he would. “I have stopped listening,” he would say to a longwinded colleague, and then go back to his book. I was aware that people found him peculiar because of this, but it suited me very well. A kiss would always be preceded by “I’m going to kiss you.” I don’t know why anyone would mind this—it’s very relaxing to know what other people are about to do. I suppose that’s why we got on so well. Of course, Wendell has as much in common with Leopold as a rock has with a rooster.