“Oh, and this arrived for you two days ago,” he said, withdrawing an envelope from his pocket. “We get mail deliveries every week.”

From the way he said it, he saw this as a source of local pride, so I forced a smile as I thanked him. He smiled back and departed, murmuring something about the chickens.

I glanced at the letter, and found myself confronted with a florid script that read The Office of Dr. Wendell Bambleby, Cambridge in the upper left corner, and in the middle, Dr. Emily Wilde, Abode of Krystjan Egilson, Farmer, Village of Hrafnsvik, Ljosland.

“Bloody Bambleby,” I said.

I set the letter aside, too hungry to be vexed just then. Before I tucked into my own refreshments, I took the time to prepare Shadow’s, as was our custom. I collected a mutton steak from the outdoor cellar—to which I had been directed by Finn—and set it on a plate beside a bowl of water. My dear beast devoured his meal without complaint, while I sat by the crackling fire with my tea, which was strong and smoky, but good.

I felt some regret at having poorly repaid Finn’s kindness, but I didn’t mourn the absence of his company—I had not been expecting it.

I gazed out the window. The forest was visible, starting a little higher up the slope and giving off the inauspicious impression of a dark wave about to come cresting down on me. Ljosland has little in the way of trees, as its mortal inhabitants denuded much of the sub-Arctic landscape. However, a few forests remain—those claimed, or believed to be claimed, by their Hidden Ones. These are largely comprised of the humble downy birch, along with a few rowans and shrub willows. Nothing grows to a great height in such a cold place, and what trees I could see were stunted, tucking themselves ominously into the shadow of the mountainside. Their appearance was mesmerizing. The Folk are as embedded in their environments[*3] as the deepest of taproots, and I was all the more eager to meet the creatures who called such an inhospitable place home.

Bambleby’s letter sat upon the table, somehow conspiring to give off a kind of negligent ease, and so finally, once I had finished the bread (good, tasting of smoke) as well as the cheese (also good, also tasting of smoke), I took it up and slid my nail through the seam.

My dear Emily, it began. I hope you’re settled comfortably in your snowbound fastness, and that you are merry as you pore over your books and collect a variety of inkstains upon your person, or as close to merry as you can come, my friend. Though you’ve been gone only a few days, I confess that I miss the sound of your typewriter clack-clacking away across the hall while you hunch there with the drapes drawn like a troll mulling some dire vengeance under a bridge. So woebegone have I been without your company that I drew you a small portrait—enclosed.

I glared at the sketch. It showed what I considered a highly unfaithful rendering of me in my Cambridge office, my dark hair pinned atop my head but terribly dishevelled (that part, I admit, is true—I have a bad habit of playing with my hair whilst I work), and a fiendish expression on my face as I scowled at my typewriter. Bambleby had even had the gall to make me pretty, enlarging my deep-set eyes and giving my round face a look of focused intelligence that sharpened its unexceptional profile. No doubt he lacked the ability to imagine a woman he would find unattractive, even if he had seen said woman before.

I was certainly not amused by the caricature. No, I was not.

Bambleby then went on at length about the most recent meeting of the dryadology department faculty, to which I would not have been invited, being only an adjunct professor and not a tenured one, including many entertaining observations about how prettily the light caught at Professor Thornthwaite’s new hairpiece and asking whether I would agree with his theory that Professor Eddington’s relative silence at such convocations suggested a mastery of the open-eyed nap. I did find myself smirking a little as he rambled on—it is hard not to be entertained by Bambleby. It is one of the things I resent most about him. That and the fact that he considers himself my dearest friend, which is only true in the sense that he is my sole friend.

Part of my reason in writing, my dear, is to remind you I am worried for your safety. I speak not of whatever unusual species of ice-encrusted faerie you may encounter, as I know you can handle yourself in that regard, but of the harshness of the climate. Though I must confess a secondary motive in writing—a fascination with the legends you’ve uncovered about these Hidden Ones. I urge you to write to me with your findings—although, if certain plans I’ve set in motion come to fruition, this may prove redundant.

I sat frozen in my chair. Good God! Surely he was not thinking of joining me here? Yet what else could he have meant by such a remark?

My fear ebbed somewhat, though, as I sat back and imagined Bambleby actually venturing to such a place as this. Oh, Bambleby has done extensive work in the field, to be sure, most recently organizing an expedition to investigate reports of a miniature species of Folk in the Caucasus, but Bambleby’s method of fieldwork is one of delegation more than anything else; he settles himself at the nearest thing that passes for a hotel and from there provides directives to the small army of graduate students constantly trailing in his wake. He is much praised at Cambridge for deigning to provide co-author credit to his students in his many publications, but I know what those students put up with, and the truth is that it would be monstrous if he did not.

I was unable to convince even one of my students to accompany me to Hrafnsvik, and I very much doubt that Bambleby, despite his charms, would have much better luck. And so, he will not come.

The remainder of the letter consisted of assurances of his intention to provide the foreword to my book. I felt a little ill at this—a combination of relief and resentment—for though I do not want his assistance, particularly after he scooped me on the gean-cannah changeling discovery, I cannot deny its value. Wendell Bambleby is one of the foremost dryadologists at Cambridge, which is to say that he is one of the foremost dryadologists in the world. The one paper we co-authored, a straightforward but comprehensive meta-analysis of the diet of Baltic river fae, earned me invitations to two national conferences and remains my most cited work.

I tossed the letter into the fire, determined to think no more of Bambleby until the arrival of his next letter, which would no doubt be swift if I did not reply with a haste sufficient to his self-regard.

I turned to Shadow, curled at my feet. The beast had been watching me with solemn dark eyes, concerned for my well-being in the wake of my panic. I discovered another chilblain upon his paw and fetched the salve I had purchased specially for him. I also took the time to comb through his long fur until his eyes drooped with pleasure.

I removed my manuscript from my suitcase, carefully unfolding the protective wrapping, then laid it upon the table. I flicked through the pages, savouring the crisp sound of the heavily inked paper, ensuring they were still in order.

It is a heavy thing, presently totalling some five hundred pages, not inclusive of the appendices, which will likely be extensive. Yet within these pages, like specimens threaded with pins and trapped behind glass in a museum display, is every species of faerie yet encountered by Man, from the mist-dwelling bogban of the Orkneys to the ghoulish thief known as l’hibou noir by those inhabiting the Mediterranean country of Miarelle. They have been alphabetized, cross-referenced, and paired with figures where available as well as a phonetic guide to pronunciation.