Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde, #1)(37)

“The clever ones.” He rubbed his nose. “Just don’t ask me to pay my respects again, please. I can’t abide children, mortal or Folk.”





15th November


We have found it. We have found the tree. When we set out on our expedition, I was expecting either a scientific triumph or utter catastrophe.

Well, I should have expected both.

The morning was dark, the wind clawed with frost crystals. I was unsurprised to find Bambleby still asleep at the appointed hour. He was near impossible to wake, and I began to fear I would have to drag him from the bed. I could not determine if he was wearing anything, that was the problem.

“I see now why you faked the Schwarzwald study,” I said. “And here I thought it was ruthlessness!”

“Laziness, Em,” he intoned from his pile of blankets. “Do you know how dense that bloody forest is? And you’re well aware what sort of ground trooping faeries can cover in a single afternoon. Horrid, self-involved Folk.”

“You would know,” I said blandly. He roused himself eventually amidst a volcanic cloud of grumbles and remonstrances, and we set out.

In the end, it was easy.

In my earlier rambles, I had stumbled across the river that the tree grew beside, and as Thora had said it could be found downstream, past an elbow-bend, downstream we went, albeit slowly. The snow was too shallow to warrant snowshoes, but the partial melt had created unpleasant little ice streams atop which the snow sat like a bridge made of feathers. Our feet remained dry, courtesy of the furred Ljoslander boots we had purchased prior to departure, but the going was awkward over such cumbersome terrain.

It was Bambleby who saw the tree first.

He came to a sharp halt, his brow furrowing. I caught a gleam of white through the trees ahead, different in quality to the surrounding snow. Shadow began to whine.

“Is that it?” I marched onward, cursing as my boot broke through another rind of ice. I pushed a branch aside and drew in a sharp breath.

There was no doubt that the tree before us was the tree; it could have stepped from the tales into the forest. It was centred in an oddly round clearing, as if the other trees had all felt inclined to back away, and was towering but skeletal, its trunk only a little wider than I was and its many, many branches arching and tangling overhead, like a small person propping up a tremendous, many-layered umbrella.

But the strangest thing about the tree was its foliage. There were leaves of summer-green mixed in with the fire and gold of autumn; tidy buds just opening their pink mouths, and, here and there, red fruits dangling in clusters, heavy with ripeness. These fruits could not be easily identified; they were roughly the size of apples, but furred like peaches.

I felt a happy little glow start in my chest, for the tree—though utterly terrifying, when viewed from an objective standpoint—was so evidently, obviously Folk, while at the same time it was like nothing I had seen before. Oh, I wished to learn everything about it.

“What in God’s name are you doing?” I called to Bambleby, who had not moved from the riverbank. “Come and tell me if you think there really is a king trapped in here.”

I could see him only in parts, through the forest: a smear of gold; a hand on one of the trees; the edge of his black cloak. “Emily,” he said, “come away from there.”

A dreaminess fell over me, and I almost took a step. But then my hand clenched reflexively on the copper coin I carried in my pocket—it’s something I’ve practiced many times whenever a faerie has tried to bewitch me.

He had never done that to me before. It was him doing it, not the tree—I could hear it in his voice. I was suddenly filled with a fury of such force my vision swam, and which drove away the last vestiges of his enchantment.

“I will not,” I replied, a dagger in each word.

He seemed to start back. “Please, Em,” he said in his ordinary voice. “Please come here.”

“Why?”

He seemed to think. “Don’t you trust me?”

That threw me. But only for a moment. “Of course not.”

He fell to irritated muttering, chafing his arms and pacing back and forth. I turned back to the tree, keeping a hold on my coin. Despite my anger at Wendell, his reaction made me cautious. I paced slowly around the circumference, taking photos. I did not touch the tree, and I kept an eye out for errant leaves that might fall upon me, bewitching me in some ghastly way. When the branches moved against each other, an odd, high sound was produced, like someone whistling out of tune.

“Well, that’s a perfectly ordinary sound for a tree to make,” Bambleby called. “Nothing at all to worry about.”

“Have you ever considered,” I said, removing my measuring tape from my bag, “that I might be more capable than you think? I have written dozens of papers, read hundreds of analyses. I’ve also had numerous firsthand dealings with the Folk, from hobs to bogles to an extremely self-entitled aristocrat.”

“I don’t doubt that most of your success to date is the result of cleverness. But have you ever considered how much you owe to luck?”

My hand clenched. I finished the measurements without replying—base and canopy. Then I withdrew my field book and began taking notes. I scraped at the snow and found, trapped beneath it, a thin carpet of leaves. As I worked, Bambleby’s grumbling and stomping reached a volume one normally associates with teams of horses.