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.

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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.

As usual, I had no idea what to do with this sort of insight—would questioning him lighten the sadness or make it worse? Should I (oh, God) attempt to hug him? In the end, I merely asked him to draw up additional fencing to keep off the worst of the wind, as I knew he enjoyed using his power thus, and he summoned a hedge so laden with bright berries that it put me in mind of a Christmas tree, as well as an entirely unnecessary carpet of snowdrops at my feet, which I suffered in silence.

I kept my hand carefully hidden in my glove—not that I wished to. I wanted to yank it off and wave in Bambleby’s face the band of shadow that swirled there on my third finger, distinct enough now that I knew it for what it was—a ring. It filled me with a terror the likes of which I’ve never felt before, but I couldn’t tell him about it, nor give him any sign that might arouse his suspicion. The enchantment, whatever it was, had me firmly in its grip. Even more worryingly, I sometimes forgot all about it myself. I could only hope that it would not interfere with our expedition.

I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he frowned at the fire, a crease between his beautiful dark eyebrows. Would that he would only grab me and—and—

A flush rose up my neck. What reason would he have to do that?

As usual, Wendell laughed at me when I announced my intention of visiting the restroom, but I didn’t care; in the wilderness, one should cling to what dignity one can, I’ve always thought. Leaving him and Shadow to enjoy the fire, I strode a distance from camp and found a tree large enough to crouch behind (we had left the forest, and all that remained of it were sad, mangy stands of birch here and there). I did my business quickly and hastened back over the snow.

Looking back now, I wonder if I was observant enough. Certainly I was alert—I always am, during fieldwork—but I suspect that the unfamiliarity of the landscape, the high, dark mountains swaddled in snow, lulled me into a belief that no living thing could accost me here, certainly nothing fae, creatures I have spent my career associating with greenery and water and life.

Fortunately, my reflexes are sharp. The instant the light flared through the trees, I halted and gripped my coin. It was a greyish light with no warmth in it, like a star. A wind moved through the trees, and there came a whisper of bells. Had I not been touching metal, I might have been bespelled, and as it was my head still spun a little, but I am used to brushing against faerie enchantments and stood my ground.

They were trooping faeries, and when I did not fall under the spell of their music and move towards them, they grew intrigued and surrounded me. I knew instantly that I was in danger, for they were faeries of the bogle variety, a disputed categorization given to all those common fae with a deathly appearance, low intellect, and malevolent disposition. Bogles are universally and perpetually ravenous, yet they delight in desolate places, leading to theories that they enjoy the sensation of hunger. When they do encounter living beings, they have every manner of unpleasant means to devour them, usually by roasting them part by part in the little cook fires they carry with them everywhere.

They were tall for common fae, though some are of human height, the tops of their heads nearing my shoulders. They were little more than bone with something resembling skin draped overtop, but everything about them was planed and angular like ice chipped into faerie shape. They did not let me see them clearly, melting in and out of the snowdrifts as easily as Poe did with his tree, but what I saw was pale and hoary with frost, with cloaks woven from moonlight, and they had Poe’s needle-fingers and matching teeth. Some carried bells, others carried their cook fires in little pots, grey-blue flames fed by the twigs they snapped from the trees as they passed. They circled me a few times, getting my measure as they whispered to one another. Their voices were like the wind stirring the snow, and I could make no sense of them. It is not known if bogles have speech in the human sense; they are very close to animals.