I did leave Wendell a note, at least, informing him that I had gone to release the king in the tree, that I had broken the enchantment I had fallen under （I provided no details as to how, in case he flew into one of his homicidal rages and began decapitating the sheep or something）， but that I was pretending that I hadn’t, and if I was still gone when he awoke, he had better not do anything to give the game away.
First, I went to see Poe. I walked quickly, or as quickly as I could through the knee-deep snow, with a parcel that had recently arrived at the cottage tucked under my arm.
He crept cautiously out of his tree, puzzlement written all over his sharp little face—I had never come to see him at night before. The spring and the grove were a different place now, full of little lights that might have been stars, reflected in the running water or the ice gilding the snow. But I didn’t think so, for as I approached the spring, they winked out and then reappeared much deeper in the woods.
“I’ve come for my third question,” I said.
He nodded, though his eyes kept drifting to the package under my arm. To spare him the suspense, I placed it before him. He puzzled a little over the wrapping paper until I told him that it was meant to be torn open—which he did with one sharp and silent finger. He cried out at the sight of the black bearskin which my brother had finally—grudgingly and with many expressions of dismay at whatever faerie nonsense I had mixed myself up in this time, for it’s not as if he would believe I would want such an adornment for my personal use—sent from one of the furrier’s shops in London.
“This will delight my lady, for it will set off her beauty and dignity to great effect,” Poe said. And then he added, in the typical fashion of the Folk, who dole out information like a miser does his coin excepting the occasions when they provide more enlightenment than one would care for, “Though she prefers the skins of mortals.”
I chose to withhold my thoughts on the latter half of this characterisation. “Your lady?”
He blushed and lowered his eyes. “His Highness blessed me with a marvellous home. I have had Folk banging upon my door night and day, demanding to marry me. I chose the loveliest, of course.”
“Congratulations,” I said, genuinely pleased. “May I meet her?”
There came a whisper of movement at the edge of the spring. Poe’s sweetheart had been there all along, watching me. There was nothing to distinguish her from Poe, though she was perhaps a little taller, and she wore an odd, pale, filmy garment that I did not care to examine closely. She edged around me to Poe’s side, where she ran her fingers over the bearskin. The two held a muttered converse.
“What do you want for such a gift?” Poe said.
“Nothing now,” I said. “I will claim my payment at a later date.”
Poe’s wife regarded me uneasily, no doubt fearing that I would come knocking at their door again with burdensome demands, but Poe murmured something to her, and she seemed to relax.
“I told her that you are my fjolskylda,” he said. “She understands this. She too had fjolskylda in another village, before she came here, and they always made fair exchanges with her and her kin. You will be fair too.”
He said all this without any particular warmth, merely as if he were stating something self-evident. I felt tears spring to my eyes nevertheless. I’ve made bargains with the Folk before, and I can’t say why his words affected me so, but they did.
“I will depart these shores before the winter is out,” I said. “Wouldn’t it be best for you to find a—fjolskylda among the Ljoslanders?”
“It doesn’t matter where you are,” he said simply.
I closed my fist around the bearskin, and then I let the brownie woman take it away. It melted into the forest as easily as a living bear.
“How was the king imprisoned in the tree?” I said.
Poe went still. “It was a long time ago,” he said in a hushed voice, “I was only an icicle on a bough[*] then.”
“Ah,” I said, disappointed. “So you don’t remember.”
“Oh yes, I remember—why wouldn’t I? And even if I didn’t, it’s not as if the forest keeps quiet about it, nor the snows. They were quite upset when His Majesty was locked away—of course, snow has a terrible memory, and forgot almost everything by the following year apart from the fact that it was angry, and so it covered everything in a nasty sleet instead of proper flakes. Everything was all turned to mud and grey sludge; it was horrid.”
Poe talked quite a lot more to me now than he had when we first met, and as informative as I found his ramblings typically, right now I didn’t have time. There would be no way to convince the king I was still enchanted if I tarried too long.
“How was it done?” I pressed. “Some complicated enchantment, I suppose.” Because of course, I needed to know how to trap him again if he proved entirely mad and wicked, not merely mad and wicked by the standards of the Folk.
“Not really,” Poe said thoughtfully. “The first queen gave him a cloak woven from all the seasons, and then when he fell asleep in it one night by the Lake of Dancing Stars, as he often did, she snipped out the winter and stitched the whole thing back together. Then she wrapped him up tight in the cloak and fastened all the buttons. That trapped him, you see—well, no one could escape a year without winter, not even the king. She planted the king’s feet in the woods and turned the silk and wool and gold thread she’d used to weave the cloak into bark and leaf. Since then the tree has grown very tall, and he is still inside it, trapped forevermore.”
“Oh,” I said faintly. “Is that all.”
* * *
—
My hand was throbbing ferociously by the time I reached the tree, every step sending a jolt of fire up my arm. My bandage was bloody, but there wasn’t anything I could do about that, other than keep my hand stuffed into my glove and pray that the king didn’t notice.
I stood before the tree, which rustled and hummed musically to itself. I wasn’t enchanted anymore, but that didn’t much matter, for the tree was positively brimming with enchantment—I had noted that before, with Wendell. I think the king was asleep—probably he’d been asleep the whole time, but I’ve no doubt he was still aware of me, in his dreaming.
I shivered with excitement and terror. I kept my hand firmly wrapped around my coin, but I allowed a little of the enchantment to seep into my mind—merely by relaxing my focus, which wasn’t easy, as I was accustomed to fending off faerie enchantments, not inviting them in. Yet it was necessary, for I hadn’t the slightest idea how I was supposed to get the king out. The enchanted ring hadn’t cared whether or not I brought the axe, so there must be some other way.
The magic murmured at me to move my legs. I did so. It had me stride about the grove, making a pile of snow and then shaping it with my hands. I went down to the stream, broke the ice, then found a curl of bark and filled it with water. This I poured over the snowman—yes, the king had me building a snowman, which perhaps I will laugh over later, but was quite disturbing in the moment, twisting carefree childhood memories up with some huge and terrifying magic—and watched as it froze into silvery ribbons like the indication of hair.