“I—I desire to remain unmarried,” I stammered. “As I said, Highness, I freed you out of respect, not because I wished for anything in return. I have a betrothed, you see.”
“Oh, well, that’s no concern,” he said, waving one ringed hand. “I’ll see that we adequately replace his dowry. He won’t sorrow, then, for it will free him up to marry someone prettier than you.”
I could see that the idea that I might prefer not to marry him was completely incomprehensible to him. There was some logic in it, I suppose, given what he had been told by the seer; though I know enough of the self-obsession of the Folk to guess that he would have assumed my devotion either way. So I abandoned that approach.
“As you say, I’m not beautiful.” It was a solid objection, for the Folk never marry mortals who aren’t beautiful unless they have been forced into it by trickery （and even then, the mortals are often revealed to be beautiful in the end, having been enchanted to look ugly）。 He could find nothing appealing in my ordinariness, especially now, with my plain shift stained with blood and sweat and my hair in exceptional disarray, even for me, most of it hanging loose down my back.
“That’s true enough,” he said, looking me up and down with a pained expression. He looked down at himself after, as if he needed to soothe his eyes with his own beauty. “But let’s see what we can do.”
Before I could say anything, my clothing gave a rustle, and a new gown and cloak spilled from my shoulders like water. It was all in dark blue to match with him, the cloak the darker of the two, patterned with the same iced lace and opals like swirling constellations. My boots grew up past my knees and became a pure white lambskin with jet buckles.
I immediately began to shiver—he hadn’t bothered to make anything warm; the cloak was fur, but it was thin and better suited to a spring day than a winter night. He took his time with it, wandering around to see me from the back and place additional pearls in my cloak, or add another pair of earrings—I wore two, one pair a long dangle of emeralds and the other a cluster of pearls shaped like a dove.
He declared himself finished, looking pleased. “There—you are almost pretty now.”
“Almost isn’t good enough, though, is it?” I said through chattering teeth, my mind racing. “A king as beautiful as yourself should not be marrying the likes of me.”
“Oh, no! You see, beauty of mind and spirit is what is most important to me in a wife,” he said. “I adore poetry, and the poets say this is the sort of beauty that matters most. Kindness. Generosity. Forgiveness.” He winced. “I admit, I struggle with these things myself. Even now, I am filled with a desire to visit many vengeances upon the ones who put me in that tree, including my first wife, whose blood I would very much like to feed to my wolves, cup by cup. But—” He gave me a smile that lit up his entire face. “—I will resist. For I hate cruelty and all other forms of ugliness, and will not abide them in myself.”
Behind him, one of the ravens he’d reanimated had begun worrying a rabbit, which shrieked alarmingly—the raven seemed to have little interest in killing it and merely amused itself by tearing at the rabbit’s fur. I’ve never seen a bird behave that way, but the king took no notice.
“What sort of palace would you like, my love?” he said, taking my hand. “We must have somewhere to greet our courtiers. They will know I am free, and will be on their way to pay their respects.”
I don’t think I could have responded if he had held a sword to my throat. I had imagined many possibilities after freeing him from his prison—this had not been one of them. I felt terror, but mixed into it was something that felt ridiculously like exultation. It wasn’t that I wanted to be a queen, or any of the rest of it. But try devoting your life to a field of study so elusive it is almost entirely made up of hearsay and speculation, and then have someone say to you casually, all right, I will now give you a book that will answer every question you ever had, and see if you don’t feel the same.
I felt ill. I was beginning to wonder if getting myself into danger had become something of an addiction.
The Hidden king patted my hand indulgently, thinking me either too humble or too stupid to answer. He turned towards the mountains, which peeked their snow-streaked faces through the winter trees, and tilted his head to one side.
A great rumbling started, and then came a series of cracks so loud I nearly threw myself to the ground, fearing lightning. A mist of ice crystals had descended upon the nearest mountain, and within it, a castle had appeared. It looked like a ghost for a moment, a huge, sprawling ghost made of glittering ice, built in levels to fit the slope, and then the mist split open, and it was real.
It took up almost half the mountainside. The king made a dissatisfied noise, squinting at it, and several of the turrets rearranged themselves and a row of outbuildings appeared where there had been none. Another squint, and suddenly there was a road leading up to the castle, broad and paved in huge cobblestones of ice, each with a different flower trapped inside it. I could see the flowers, because he brought the road all the way to our feet, sending trees crashing to the forest floor. The impact shook the ground so that I almost fell over, and I was soon coughing on the swirl of snow the fallen trees had raised. The avenue was lined with lanterns all gleaming with the same moonlight glow as those of the winter fair.
I didn’t watch only the castle as it reared up out of nothing—I also watched the king, terrified and fascinated. When he is not speaking or moving, he becomes perfectly still. I mean that—perfectly. I speculate that, in those moments, he returns to what he is, a piece of winter given form. It is the same stillness one finds in a frozen lake or trees weighted by heavy snow.
In one last gesture of extravagance, he lifted his hand and, with a sort of brushing motion, moved aside the smattering of clouds in the sky. The aurora shone through, mostly green tonight, or perhaps he summoned it along with everything else, I don’t know.
“Yes,” he said, examining the monstrous spectacle before us. “Yes, it’s a start, I suppose.”
His voice seemed far away; my hearing had been deadened by the tumult of
Skip Notes
* What an intriguing comment this was. Initially I took it as a win for Blythe, to hear one of the common fae link his existence to the natural world （in this case, an icicle）。 Upon reflection, however, I believe this interpretation to be a tenuous one. The Folk often speak in metaphor. In fact, several years ago I had a conversation with one of the German kobolds in which she referred to herself as a “bud,” meaning a child. Yet I know that she did not originate from this form, as I met her parents several days later. And, indeed, Poe has referenced his own mother numerous times during our conversations.
4th December （？）
Somehow, I drifted away from my journal without finishing that last sentence—it’s unlike me. I have no recollection of deciding to stop. I am so terrified I might one day forget about my journal altogether that I’ve decided to carry it with me wherever I go.
Any inclination I felt to revel in the excitement of my situation faded quickly. For I soon realized that the castle summoned by the Hidden king had caused an avalanche that buried several far-flung farmsteads at the edge of one of the neighbouring villages.