“What,” I said fuzzily. A hundred thoughts swam through my addled mind, and I grasped at the one that felt most familiar. “What about the paper?”
“I’m just fine,” he said, relaxing into the nearest armchair with his hands folded. “A little weary, from dragging you all down from that mountain, but beyond that I am simply glad to be leaving this land of ice. Aud, Aslaug, and Finn are all well.”
I glared at him. “I was about to—”
“I’m sure you were.” He didn’t seem annoyed, though; there was a quality to his smile, as he gazed at me, that I couldn’t interpret.
“Aud’s gone back to the palace to request a favour from the king,” he said. “She should be back by nightfall, all going well.”
“A favour,” I repeated in disbelief. Then I thought about it. “Oh! Of course. She will ask him to put an end to this snow.”
He nodded. “He owes her, so I suspect he’ll give her whatever she wishes, though one can never be certain. Perhaps he’ll shove her onto the throne in your stead.”
“That’s very nice,” I said. “And I’m the hardhearted one?”
He shrugged. “I did advise her against it. Anyway! I’ll get you some tea.”
I was thirsty, I realized, and hungry. He brought me a steaming cup and a plate of Poe’s bread, soft and fresh and slathered with marmalade. After I’d devoured the lot, he rose again, and I heard rustling, then he tossed something onto my lap. A stack of pages, neatly clipped together and covered in his elegant handwriting.
“We’ll pay someone to type it out when we reach Paris,” he said, waving his hand.
“You cannot work a typewriter?” I murmured distantly, staring at the title.
“There are limits, Em.”
The title read:
Of Frost and Fire: An Empirical Study of the Folk of Ljosland
Emily Wilde, PhD, MPhil, BSc, DDe, and Wendell Bambleby, PhD, MSc. Hons.
“You finished it,” I said once I had regained the use of my voice.
“Read it over,” he said, somehow managing to look even more smug.
“I certainly will,” I said, so emphatically that he laughed.
“The bibliography is a bit of hodgepodge, but that’s your strong suit, isn’t it? And the whole middle section on the habits of the common fae is cribbed almost verbatim from your notes. But you might say,” he added, examining his hands, “that I did most of the work.”
“I would certainly not say that.”
He ignored me and began a long dissertation on his efforts while I was away as I skimmed the pages, only half listening. He had been honest in confessing his reliance on my notes—the majority of the paper was comprised of them. But he’d spun everything together in an unexpected way, filled with lively speculation and effortlessly clever phrasings that I could not have hoped to achieve. The effect was scholarly yet glamourous, weightier than Bambleby’s usual fare yet much more engaging than my own writing.
“I must remain like this for the present, it seems,” he said heavily, rubbing his hand over his face. “It’s a long and tiring process, changing shape, and I’m not sure I have the patience to start today. But I will be myself again in time for the conference.”
“What?” I said, giving him a blank look. Then I blinked, taking in his plain appearance, unchanged from before. “Oh, yes, of course.”
He stared at me. “You didn’t notice?”
I said that I hadn’t, and he stomped off to the kitchen in high dudgeon. In fact I had noticed, in a drowsy sort of way, when I’d first awakened, that his hair hadn’t returned to its golden waves, and felt a pinch of disappointment. But why would I tell him that?
My encyclopaedia was exactly where I had left it, neatly arranged on the table beneath the faerie stone paperweight, as if it too had spent the last weeks in a separate pocket of time. I rested my hand upon the stack, pressing slightly, relishing the familiar rustle of the paper. Then I noticed something.
I removed the paperweight. There in the margin of page one was Wendell’s familiar scrawl. I flipped through the rest of the manuscript, mouth hanging open slightly. He had not added his opinions to every page, but he had clearly read it front to back. He had even taken the liberty of rearranging certain sections and crossing others out.
I opened my mouth to call him back to the room, intending to register my displeasure—for I did not require a co-author for something I had spent much of my adult life compiling. But then I closed it again as I flipped through the notes. Some of his ideas were quite good. Well—I supposed that there was nothing wrong with a little feedback, even if it was of the heavy-handed variety.
A knock came, and I shuffled over to answer it, one of the blankets wrapped around me. Lilja and Margret stood on the threshold, and on the path below were Mord, Aslaug, and Finn. I blinked, startled by so many faces on my doorstep.
Lilja gave me a brief, light hug. “I know you leave in the morning, and haven’t the time for farewell parties,” she said. “So we thought we’d just come round with some baking and help you pack.”
“Marvellous,” Wendell said, flopping back into his chair with a cup of tea. “I despise packing. Do come in.”
I realized that I should have said this by now, and stepped back to let them all tromp inside, banging the snow off their boots. Mord and Aslaug had brought an almond cake called a hvitkag, while Finn had a loaf of the dark Ljoslander bread, baked in the hot earth, as well as some salted chocolates.
Mord looked around the cottage. “Krystjan’s fixed the place up since I last saw it. Calling it a shack would have been generous, then.”
He paused before the forest mirror, gazing open-mouthed into the swaying greenery. “This looks like the forest I used to play in as a boy, just outside Loab?r. Look! There is the willow with the face in the trunk.”
“Where are the tea things, Wendell?” Aslaug asked. “I’ve brought a bottle of red, too, in case anyone cares for something stronger.”
“I’ll start with the books,” Finn said.
And that was that; suddenly the place was as noisy and bustling as a train station. Finn went back to the main house to fetch spare luggage, returning with Krystjan and several wooden crates. Wendell and I had accumulated a variety of things over the course of our stay, from Aud’s gifts to the faerie cloak, which prompted a great deal of curiosity and discussion. Wendell floated about the room, chatting with this person and that, giving off the impression of contributing while doing no actual work at all.
The whole time, I worried that Aslaug or Mord would burst into tears of gratitude or offer some extravagant thank-you gift, and tried to come up with a strategy for how I might respond. Fortunately, they did no such thing, only cheerfully stormed around with the others, folding and packing and calling out questions to me and to Wendell. Eventually I began to worry if perhaps I should be the one making some grand gesture of thanks. They had all saved me, after all, as surely as Wendell and I had saved little Ari.
“What’s with you?” Lilja hissed at me as we manoeuvred the enchanted mirror into a crate stuffed with wool. “Didn’t Wendell heal you?”