Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde, #1)(47)
Bambleby stayed put in the sleigh, wrapped in two blankets and speaking only to complain about the cold. His nose turned a brilliant red from blowing it, the sound of which always seemed to coincide with moments when I was spellbound by the quiet loveliness of the snowy wood. Finally I demanded that he eat one of Poe’s cakes, and was relieved by his acquiescence, which spared me the effort of shoving it down his throat.
The cake was warm to the touch, so soft it might have just emerged from the oven, and it transformed Bambleby’s mood. He strode alongside the sleigh for the rest of the afternoon without his blankets or scarf, face flushed with warmth, absently brushing his hands through the boughs of this tree or that. Whatever he touched burst into bloom, scattering the snow with leaves like beaten emeralds, red berries, pussy willows and seed cones, a riot of colour and texture crackling through that white world. Soon enough our little wilderness path could have been a grand avenue decked out for a returning general’s triumphant procession. Birds hunkered down for the long winter crept out of their burrows, chirruping their alarmed delight as they grew drunk on berries. A narrow fox darted across our path, a starling clutched in its mouth, sparing us a dismissive glance as it slunk back into the velvet shadow.
I tried very hard not to be awed by this flamboyant display of Wendell’s. It was the first time I’d seen him be free with his magic, and it left me feeling unsteady and on edge; I realized that I was used to ignoring that part of him, or at least looking past it. As we crested a rise, I turned to see all that colour unfurled across the sleeping landscape, trees jaunty and defiant even as the chill winds snatched at their leaves like nipping wolves.
Towards evening, we came to a mountain pass. The first search party had stopped here—we could tell by the perturbation in the snow, a confusion of hoofprints and boot treads. We carried on a little farther, following the ominous outline of a single set of hooves. The mountains on either side were volcanic-sharp and larger than any earthbound thing should have a right to be, their iced peaks surely closer to the stars than they were to us trudging specks.
“Were they alone at this point?” I wondered aloud.
Bambleby shrugged, perfectly unconcerned. He had donned his scarf and gloves again, but some of the ruddy warmth lingered in his face. “Shall we stop for the night? I’m famished.”
I made him continue for another hour, until we came to the heart of the pass. Bambleby sighed heavily, but helped me unload the tent and tuck it into a fold in the mountain’s skirts, where we would be protected from the weather. More sighing ensued as we made our fire and our supper, a mix of dried meat, spices, and vegetables that we were to boil with melted snow. He stood staring at the pot as if he had never seen one before until I enquired whether he had ever once in his life cooked his own food—for certainly he would have been waited on even more ostentatiously in his faerie kingdom than he was used to in the mortal realm—and he snapped that he didn’t see what difference it made, which was enough of an answer for me. I left him to it, and the burned taste of the stew was worth the enjoyment I derived in watching him flounder about, alternately burning and spattering himself. Afterwards, he retreated in a moody huff to the tent to shroud himself in the blankets Aud had provided, where he withdrew needle and thread and proceeded to mend minute tears in his cloak, muttering to himself and generally making a picture that was like some bizarre inversion of one of the hags of Fate, weaving the future into their tapestries. His seemed like pointless industry to me, with nobody to see us but the foxes and the birds, but the task appeared to lift his spirits, or at least shut him up, so I refrained from commentary.
19th November
I spent today alternating between scholarly excitement at this uncharted scientific territory we were entering and dread that we would be too late—or worse, that we had never had a chance to start with. Lilja and Margret would have travelled more swiftly than us, unladen as they were, but still I worried that perhaps we had stumbled into a faerie trap without realizing it and were now doomed to wander the wilderness, chasing shadows and accomplishing exactly nothing.
“This is no trap,” Bambleby said, with such certainty in his green gaze that much of my dread melted away. “Only godforsaken cold, and miles and miles of uninhabitable wastes.”
He seemed unable to enjoy the stark beauty of it all, the wild terror of the mountains, the towering glaciers, the little ribbons of time that clung to the rock in the form of frozen cataracts. The aurora danced above us both nights, green and blue and white undulating together, a cold ocean up there in the sky, and even that he barely glanced at. On the second night, he used his magic to summon a thick green hedge of prickly holly and a trio of willow saplings that enfolded our tent in drapery like bed curtains to keep out the chill wind.
“Will you look at that!” I couldn’t help but exclaiming as I sat by the fire, gazing up at the riot of light. I will admit, I wished for him to share the sight with me and was disappointed when he only sighed.
“Give me hills round as apples and forests of such green you could bathe in it,” he said. “None of these hyperborean baubles.”
“Baubles!” I exclaimed, and would have snapped at him, but his face as he gazed into the fire was open and forlorn, and I realized that he wasn’t trying to be irksome—he missed his home. He had been longing for it all along, and this place, so alien and unfriendly, had sharpened the longing into a blade.