Page 56 of Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde #3)

I allowed myself a rest at that point, for I was sweating despite the cold gusts that swept across the height, and my legs protested the haste with which I had made the climb.

Shadow had matched my pace throughout the day, hobbling along determinedly at my heels, and now he lay at my side with his paws on my leg, panting but still alert, as if determined to prove me right in bringing him along.

I drank from my flask and ate a little bread, and slowly the pounding in my head subsided.

I would have liked to admire the view, for I was half encircled by mountains, the land in the other direction tumbling down to green heathland and the village of Corbann, shrunk to tiny squares of white.

However, there was something particularly precarious about the place, the mountain flank steep and slippery with scree that made me quake imagining the return journey.

I had the sense that few ramblers ever came this way, and I wondered if this was owing to the pitiless wind, which nearly knocked me over when I tried to stand, or some faerie beast that haunted the place.

Either way, I had little desire to linger.

My fingers trembled lightly as I withdrew the pendant I always wore from beneath my collar. It was a small coil of bone as far from key-shaped as possible, and yet that was precisely what it was.

I had no idea if my plan would work. I had to be in the winterlands to use Poe’s door—did this place count?

It certainly had more winter in it than anyplace else in the vicinity of Wendell’s realm, and was far less hospitable, a characteristic shared by all places called winterland I’d yet encountered.

I held the key before me, pressed between my thumb and forefinger, and made my way up the snowy slope, feeling alternately hopeful and extremely foolish, particularly whenever my foot slipped and I was nearly sent tumbling back down the mountain.

I wondered dolefully if anybody in the village would see me, a tiny speck, if I was to fall to my death, or if I would simply become another mysterious disappearance to add to the dryadology annals.

What an inconvenient time to meet my end, given all that I was in the middle of!

But then, what person who meets an untimely end is not in the middle of their own to-do list, all of which simply turns to dust after, whether the items consist of mundane errands or the preservation of a faerie kingdom.

I was wrapped up in morose thoughts of this nature when my foot slipped—not on ice; it felt as if the mountain slope itself shifted by a fraction of a degree. I stumbled forward, catching myself just in time, and when I looked up, I was no longer in Ireland.

There was the familiar spring, bubbling away, plumes of sulphurous mist dancing over the surface. There was the grove of trees at the edge of the forest, stunted by their northerly latitude, there the view of the winter-dark sea choked with ice.

I allowed my lightheadedness to overtake me, and sank to my knees upon the snow.

Shadow, who had been close at my heels, sat beside me with a huff.

For some reason, perhaps because I had been hunched forward for the last several hours, fighting the pull of gravity at my back, I still felt I could at any moment go tumbling down from a height.

I began to laugh. I was as lighthearted, in that moment, as if my quest were over, when in fact it had only begun.

I looked about for Poe. His aspen was as fine as ever, its bark as pure a white as if someone had polished away any imperfections, and it was in leaf despite the season.

A thin wisp of smoke drifted from one of the knotholes, and the winter glade smelled of baking bread.

One of the villagers—Finn, I guessed—had cleared a little path in the snow from Poe’s tree to the spring.

Something made my gaze drift upwards, and I realized there was a face directly above me, peering down, belonging to a creature who sat perfectly still upon a bare bough.

It was perhaps two foot in height, the grey face of a skeleton with an overlarge mouth and glistening needle-teeth, which were bared in my direction.

In spite of its face, its body was quite fat, and was wrapped in something that resembled several stitched-together owl carcasses, poorly cleaned.

Its fingers dangled from either side of the branch like thin black rapiers, ending in deadly points, twice as long as the faerie was tall.

I stared.

The thing stared back.

When it began to emit a horrifying hissing sound, like a rusted-out kettle boiling over, I screamed—most unlike me.

Ordinarily I am better at controlling my nerves around the Folk, even such Folk as this, but the thing’s appearance was so hideous and so unexpected in this place where I had thought to find only an old friend.

I staggered back and nearly fell into the hot spring, my hands slamming painfully against the warm, wet stones that lined the perimeter.

The creature swayed in the boughs as if gathering itself to pounce, and I drew in my breath to shout the Word—the one that granted a temporary invisibility, that is, not the one for lost buttons.

I did not know if it would save me, but it would confuse the thing, and perhaps that would give me time to come up with something else.

Shadow placed himself in front of me, growling—I’m not sure he could make out the beast in the tree, nearsighted as he is, but he readied himself nevertheless to challenge whatever had alarmed me.

Into this charged tableau came Poe, emerging from his tree-home with a teetering basket of iced cakes in his arms. He gave me a wide grin of welcome, looking pleased and not at all surprised by my arrival.

“I saw you from the window,” he said, taking no notice of the hissing monstrosity above us. “Fortunately, I just finished the day’s baking, so everything is still warm.”

“There,” I said, unable to be more articulate as I pointed with a shaking hand.

He glanced up. “Oh, yes!” he exclaimed happily. “Mother is visiting!”

“Good God” was all I could say in response.

Hsssssshaaaa, said the thing in the tree.

“That,” I said, when at last my heart had slowed somewhat, “is your mother?”

Poe handed me the basket of cakes and tugged at the hem of my cloak, his small face alight with happiness. “How wonderful! All my family is here together. Almost all. Where is the golden prince? He is not ill again?”

It was just like the little brownie to accept my sudden appearance as perfectly expected; it has been some months since we have seen each other, and yet to him it is ever as if a mere day has passed.

The cakes smelled of apple and peppery spices, and I took one without eating it; my stomach was still unsettled from my fright.

“Wendell is quite well,” I said unsteadily. “But he is busy with his kingdom. He sends his regrets that he could not be here.”

Poe looked simultaneously relieved and astonished. “Really? Oh, but he does not need to visit—though of course I would be honoured,” he added hastily. “As would Mother! She could hardly believe it when I told her that we could count a lord of Faerie among our fjolskylda. ”

What Poe’s mother truly thought of her royal family member, I never knew, for the only reply from the tree was a tetchy sort of growl. I looked up, and found that she had vanished.

“She likes to stand guard over my home,” Poe said contentedly.

“For she agrees that my tree is the finest in the forest, even finer than the lovely willow in whose bole I was born and raised, and she fears that some jealous enemy may vandalize it. I do not think this likely, do you? For even if I had enemies—and I hope I do not, for I always go away and hide when someone wants to argue with me—they would only fall in love with my tree straightaway, and be unable to put even one scratch on it.”

I suppressed an urge to look about to determine where exactly his mother had got to. “She has—very long fingers.”

“Oh, yes,” Poe said. He glanced down at his own needle-fingers, which were also lengthy, though nowhere near the size of his dam’s.

“Mother is old. I hope one day that mine will be as bountiful as hers, but Mother says I should not wish for things that may never come to pass, but be content with what I have today. She can spear a seal with one thumb, which would be useful, wouldn’t it? ”

I could not begin to formulate a reply to this, so instead I said, “I have come on an errand for Wendell. An urgent one. I would appreciate your assistance, as would he.”

Poe looked suddenly terrified. “Yes—yes. Oh, is he wondering about my tree? I watered it all summer, and I have collected any leaves that fell—I keep them in a very safe place!”

“Wendell is confident in your skills as the tree’s custodian,” I assured him. “I have come—” I could not get it out at first. “I have come to speak with the king.”

Poe’s eyes had gone perfectly round. “Oh, but—” He fell back a step, vanishing abruptly into the snow, then reappearing closer to his tree.

“But you must not,” he said in a low, desperate voice.

“He is worse, far worse than the golden prince. I mean—” Terror filled his face again.

“I did not mean that! The prince is so very noble and kind, and his attentions to my tree have—”

“Shh, it’s all right,” I said soothingly. “It’s all right. You need not worry about Wendell. And as for the snow king, I will go alone to beg an audience; you need not accompany me. I only wish to learn his whereabouts.”

Poe was shivering. “I don’t know,” he said in an unhappy voice.

“The high ones travel hither and thither in their carriages, and at night I have heard their voices singing from the deep places of the forest and upon the mountain peaks. But the king and his court come only rarely to the coast. They prefer the glaciers and snowfields.”

I felt a stab of disappointment, but tried to conceal it. I should not have expected Poe to know the whereabouts of the Hidden king. Perhaps the villagers of Hrafnsvik could help me—I owed a visit to Aud, in any case.

“They leave offerings at the king’s tree,” Poe said, after a moment’s silence. “The mortals do. They leave them, and someone takes them away.”

“The tree,” I said.