The whaler gave a cry. Hanging from the branches was a gruesome assembly of corpses—the skeletons of other travellers, as well as animals and birds. The wolves threw off their wolf skins, revealing themselves as Folk, and commanded the whaler to bring them the bones of his next catch.

The whaler went away weeping. He knew that the faeries must have some terrible reason for what they were doing, but without his fjolskylda, he was powerless to deny them.

The next month, he brought them the bones of three whales. The faeries strung them up in the tree beside the other bones. The whaler noticed that the faeries hung the bones on one side of the tree only. When the whale bones had been hung, the tree gave a tremendous groan and leaned a little to the north. The faeries ordered the whaler to bring them the bones of his next catch.

The next month, the whaler brought the faeries the bones of four whales. These they hung from the tree, and when they did, the tree gave another groan, and leaned farther to the north. The whaler grew afraid. He realized that this tree must be the gaol of the faerie king, who had gone mad many years ago and been locked away by his subjects. The faeries ordered the whaler to bring them the bones of his next catch.

The whaler begged his fjolskylda for help, but none would heed him—none except the most elderly among them, a faerie woman whose head came up only to the whaler’s belt, who had grizzled hair so long it trailed behind her and gathered all manner of leaves and mud. The faerie promised to help him only if he agreed to marry her. The whaler shuddered in disgust, but he gave his word nevertheless, for he feared the mad faerie king above all else, and knew there would be great woe throughout Ljosland if he were allowed to escape.

The faerie took the whaler to her family graveyard, where they dug up the bones of the dead. Then they snuck through the forest to the white tree and buried the bones under the boughs. The next month, the whaler brought the faeries the bones of seven whales. As before, they hung them from the white tree, but this time, the tree gave no groan, nor did it move. Furious, the faeries ordered the whaler to bring them the bones of his next catch, as well as the bones of the whaler’s horse.

The next month, the whaler brought them the bones of ten whales, as well as the bones of one of the faerie horses buried in the graveyard. The faeries hung them from the tree, but again, the tree neither moved nor spoke. The faeries turned on the whaler, convinced that trickery was afoot, but before they could reach him, the bones of the dead horse gave a whinny. The skeletal hands of the dead faeries rose up out of the dirt and strangled the servants of the wicked king. They had been holding on to the roots of the white tree, preventing it from falling over and releasing the king from his prison. The whaler, much relieved, hung the dead bodies of the king’s servants from the south side of the tree.

The whaler married his faerie bride, and though she remained as shrivelled and unlovely as ever, the whaler never broke his vow to his wife, and she rewarded him with three strong children who drew whales out of the deeps with their beautiful singing. And the whaler died an old, rich man, quite content.

The Ivory Tree

(NB: I include this particular story in part because it falls outside the usual patterns. I hypothesize that it has either been purposely truncated or is so new that it has not yet been worn and smoothed into a more pleasing shape.)

There was once a young girl of such surpassing beauty that all her neighbours whispered she had faerie ancestry. Her golden hair turned white when the winter sun touched it, and she sang so sweetly that even the wind upon the mountaintops quieted its howls to listen. Her mother had been just as lovely, and when she died in childbirth, the midwife swore that half her body had simply melted away, leaving only the skeleton behind. And so she must have been half fae through her father, for his identity was unknown.

The girl wished to marry a carpenter, a handsome young man much respected in the village, but he was afraid of her. The young man was also afraid of offending her, given her faerie ancestry, and so he gave her an excuse, saying that his wife must have a sizeable dowry. He knew that the girl, an orphan dependent on her uncle’s charity, was penniless.

The girl was a friend to all the simple Folk, and often ran with them in the woods, particularly after fresh snow had fallen, for her feet left no prints in fresh snow, only that which had breathed the air of the mortal world. One day, she came across a faerie she had never seen before. He had no body, only two black eyes and a swirl of frost where his cloak should have been. The other Folk warned her not to speak to him, but the girl did not heed them. The bodiless faerie led her deep into the woods, where they came upon a beautiful white tree with bark smooth as bone. The faerie told her that such a dowry would greatly please her beloved, who could surely hew wondrous treasures from bole and bough alike.

The girl hesitated, for she knew it was a great crime to cut down a faerie tree—which surely the white tree was—but she was too in love to resist. She took up an axe and began to chop. But before her third stroke fell, a great wind went up, and the tree’s leaves dropped upon her. The moment they touched her, she went mad. She returned home, donned her uncle’s sealskin cloak, and packed a bag as if for a journey into the mountains. The carpenter, a vain young man who enjoyed revelling in the affection of one so beautiful as she, though he had no intention of marrying her, came to pay a visit and caught her in the act of fleeing. He tried to stop her, but she killed him with a touch that froze his heart.

When the townsfolk found the carpenter’s body, they pursued the girl with dogs and horses and sleighs. They found her eventually, still marching doggedly into the wilderness, her eyes alight with madness, and shot her dead.

—

Now, I have paired these last two stories because it is a common belief in Hrafnsvik that the white tree that drove the girl mad is the same tree from the tale of the whaler, which held a faerie king. What’s more, some of the older villagers are convinced the tree can be found in the Karrðarskogur. Thora swears she stumbled across it once, in her youthful trapping days, and has offered to provide directions.

When I informed Bambleby of my intention to search for the tree, as I desperately wish to photograph it for my encyclopaedia, he was full of arguments. Naturally, he assumed I would drag him along, which was indeed my intention, as nothing could amuse me more than watching Bambleby slog through miles of snow with nary a nap in sight, though I had little interest in arguing with him about it. I left him to his blustering in the cottage, where he was supposed to be drafting our abstract but kept wandering off to make tea or stand by the window and expostulate about the cold. I grow increasingly convinced that he obtained his doctorate by means of faerie enchantment, so difficult is it to imagine him applying himself to anything resembling work.

Skip Notes

* A charming Ljosland term that can be loosely translated as “family,” used to describe a bond formed between mortals and brownies. Brownies in Ljosland, as in other countries, sometimes attach themselves to one household, and exclusively provide magical services to its inhabitants. Often they dwell in a rock feature somewhere on the property. The bond seems to be generational, though further research is needed to determine whether this is a variable thing, as it often is on the continent (cf. Northern Italy, where the brownies choose a favoured mortal with whom to bond, but often abandon any offspring upon his/her death).