The fire was suddenly far too hot, so hot I’d nearly sweated through my shirt. “Well—I—how on earth am I supposed to answer?”
He threw his hands up in exasperation. “Do you want to marry me?”
“That’s—that’s beside the point.” A nonsensical reply, but it came the closest to expressing how I felt. I had never even considered marrying Wendell—why on earth would I? Wendell Bambleby! Certainly I’d imagined being with him in other ways, particularly since I’d grown used to having him around—travelling with him across the continent, no doubt arguing half the time; conducting research; scouring woodland and heath for lost doors to the faerie realms. And yes, I liked the prospect of being with him often, or even all the time, and felt a sort of hollowness fill me when I thought about us parting ways. But I couldn’t marry one of the Folk, particularly not a faerie king, even if he was Wendell.
“It’s the point in its entirety, you madwoman,” he said. “Do you not find me handsome? I can change my appearance to suit whatever direction your tastes run.”
“Oh, God.” I pressed my face into my hands. “You are not helping.”
I said nothing for a while, and he let me think without interruption. Part of the problem, I realized, was that I was not accustomed to thinking about him in such a way. And so I took his hand—tentatively, as one might reach for a ladle they thought might be hot. Then I lowered myself onto the flagstones by the fire so that we were next to each other, our knees touching.
“What are you doing?” he said, half hopeful and half alarmed. Well, I was glad that I’d unsettled him—served him right, after throwing all that at me out of nowhere.
“I am only conducting a test.”
He sighed. “Of course. I should have guessed you’d want to be bloodless about this.”
“I am not trying to be!”
“You’ve done nothing but talk at me since I told you I loved you.”
“Is that a problem?” For he hadn’t said it as if it were. “Were you expecting me to throw myself at you? Would you have then said a dozen pretty things about my eyes or hair?”
“No, it would have been, ‘Get off me, you imposter, and tell me what you did with Emily.’？”
“All right, be quiet.” The bloody fire hissed and crackled away, and a bead of sweat trickled down my neck. Wanting to be through with this quickly, I leaned forward and kissed him.
Almost. I lost my nerve halfway there, somewhere around the moment I noticed he had a freckle next to his eye and wondered ridiculously if that was something he would remove if I asked it of him, and instead of a proper kiss, I merely brushed my lips against his. It was a shadow of a kiss, cool and insubstantial, and I almost wish I could be romantic and say it was somehow transformative, but in truth, I barely felt it. But then his eyes came open, and he smiled at me with such innocent happiness that my ridiculous heart gave a leap and would have answered him instantly, if it was the organ in charge of my decision-making.
“Choose whenever you wish,” he said. “No doubt you will first need to draw up a list of pros and cons, or perhaps a series of bar plots. If you like, I will help you organize them into categories.”
I cleared my throat. “It strikes me that this is all pointless speculation. You cannot marry me. I am not going to be left behind, pining for you, when you return to your kingdom. I have no time for pining.”
He gave me an astonished look. “Leave you behind! As if you would consent to that. I would expect to be burnt alive when next I returned to visit. No, Em, you will come with me, and we will rule my kingdom together. You will scheme and strategize until you have all my councillors eating out of your hand as easily as you do Poe, and I will show you everything—everything. We will travel to the darkest parts of my realm and back again, and you will find answers to questions you have never even thought to ask, and enough material to fill every journal and library with your discoveries.”
And that is where we left things. I don’t even know why I am including this, for God knows I do not wish to preserve the details of my romantic life for posterity （and a very short footnote that would be）， only I find that writing it all out has made me somewhat calmer. Perhaps I will tear up this entry later.
I know that if I put this notebook aside and attempt to sleep, I will simply run over every argument and counterargument in my head, but what else can I do? Shadow is gazing up at me from his forepaws in a woebegone sort of way, as if I have somehow disappointed him. Traitor.
Skip Notes
* Such tokens are a motif of changeling folklore. In the stories, they are commonly found in the possession of the changeling; if wrested away, he or she weakens or vanishes entirely, but they can also be used to threaten or cajole the creature into good behaviour. It was commonplace in early-to mid-nineteenth century Britain for museums to maintain collections of supposed “changeling tokens,” most of which were of questionable provenance; Danielle de Grey wrote a scathing paper on the subject. Unfortunately, to make her point, she also stole a number of tokens from the University of Edinburgh and replaced each with a cap and bells. The rector was unamused, and the result was a short stay in Edinburgh Prison for de Grey, her second but, sadly, not her last brush with incarceration.
2nd December （？）
I haven’t any idea what the date is, and so I have decided to guess. I believe it may help me stay sane here, if anything can. Everything blends together now, but I vividly remember writing that last entry, how angry I was, as if it were only a day or two gone—perhaps it was.
I must have tossed and turned for an hour at least. How on earth was I supposed to concentrate on research now, with a marriage proposal from one of the Folk dangling over my head? I could almost imagine myself a maiden in one of the stories, but stories didn’t leave dirty teacups scattered throughout the cottage, or underline passages in my books—in ink—no matter how many times I ordered them not to.
Of course I wanted to marry Wendell. That was the most infuriating thing about the whole business—my feelings conspired against my reason. I will not lie and say my desire was purely romantic, for I couldn’t stop myself from imagining the picture we would make back at Cambridge—despite his controversies, Wendell Bambleby was still a celebrated scholar, and yes, we would be a fearsome team indeed. I doubted I would have to worry ever again about securing funding for future fieldwork, nor being overlooked when it came to conference invitations.
It was the thought of invitations—yes, that thought—that made me rise from my bed. I yanked open my door, intending to stomp down the hall and—well, throw myself at him. I wanted to see what he would do, but more important, I needed to know if it was something I would enjoy. I was not going to marry someone without making sure of that.
But before I could take a step in his direction, a calm settled over me like a dream. Instead of going to Wendell’s door, I returned to my own room and dressed in warm clothes. Shadow remained asleep at the foot of my bed, though it was a strange sleep—he twitched and whined, his huge paws batting at invisible foes. I left my room and pulled on my cloak.
As I did, I happened to glance down at my hand. The ring was there, but it was no longer a ring of shadow. It was a ring of ice, polished smooth and patterned with tiny blue crystals.