I did what I could to push against it, to feel about for cracks. I could not stop myself from donning my boots, but I was able to slow the process by fumbling with the laces. Yet eventually, the laces were fastened, and then I was opening the door and stepping into the night.

I managed a single glance over my shoulder, and what did my gaze fall upon but my encyclopaedia, pages stacked tidily beneath my paperweight, little bookmarks sticking out the sides indicating sections requiring revision. That pinnacle of faerie scholarship, which I had only weeks ago likened to a museum exhibit of the Folk, neatly pinned down and labelled by the foremost expert on the subject—that is, me—brimming with meticulously documented accounts of foolish mortals who bumbled into faerie plots and games. The irony was rather too keen to appreciate.

Trying to shout for Wendell was, of course, ineffective. It made sense, the rational, freethinking part of my mind noted, that this would be the case. My feet were being led somewhere—to the king in the tree; the destination burned in my mind like a brand—and naturally the enchantment would not wish me to do anything that placed obstacles in my path.

And yet, it did not want me to be uncomfortable en route—it had compelled me to dress warmly, to don boots to prevent frostbite. And perhaps that aspect of the enchantment could be manipulated to my own purpose.

I focused on my bare hands. They were cold, and would grow colder, the farther I walked. I imagined the tips turning white, the fingers numbing so that I could no longer lift them. I did not try to move my hands—instead, I pushed the desire into the enchantment.

And it worked. As I descended the cottage steps, I reached into my pocket, where yesterday I had tucked my gloves, and pulled them on. I say I, but really, it was the enchantment making me do it, just as it had dressed me like a puppet. What I had done was less like reaching out to pull the strings myself and more like reasoning with the puppeteer.

My exultation was dulled by the realization of what I would have to do next. I was able to slow my steps across the lawn in an effort to fortify myself, though I suspect the additional seconds of delay had the opposite effect. I wondered if the enchantment was controlling my stomach too, or if it would be within my abilities to throw up.

And then there before me was the axe, still wedged into the stump. I had left it there myself the previous day—it felt like a very long time ago. I was no longer as pathetic a woodcutter as I had been upon my arrival, thanks to Lilja’s patient lessons, though to say that I was skilled would be overstating things.

“Shit,” I said, or rather mouthed—so the enchantment would allow me to mouth curses: what a comfort.

I was able to bend my path to take me to the stump, again by convincing the enchantment that this was the easier course, down the slope rather than up it. It was a gentlemanly sort, this enchantment. But I would not so easily convince it of the merits of my next decision.

I began by imagining wolves. Yes, there were wolves in the forest—how frightening. And here I was, a defenseless woman, wandering into their depths alone and unprotected. Would it not make sense to carry a weapon, as much sense as it made to don my gloves? Yes, of course it would.

Slowly, dreamily, I lifted the axe. The blade—oh, God. The blade was sharp. This was a good thing, from a practical standpoint, but it was not possible for me to see it as such in that moment.

The enchantment was already compelling me to tuck the axe beneath my arm and carry on like a well-behaved little puppet, which it still thought I was. Silly, really, to think of the enchantment as a person—but it felt like one.

I placed my hand upon the stump and lifted the axe—oh, only to check that the blade hadn’t dulled, of course. Better lift it a little higher to catch the moonlight.

I carried on this way until the last moment, at which point I threw my will against the enchantment with all my might.

For the briefest of seconds, I was free. I thought the enchantment was surprised, but probably that was only my fancy. I knew I would not have more than that single second—certainly it would not allow me a second chance—and drove the axe towards my finger.

I did it the way Lilja had taught me—fixing my eyes on the target, letting the weight of the axe do the work. My other fingers I folded against the side of the stump, to keep them out of the way. I was half convinced I would miss and drive the axe into my hand—it was not at all the same as aiming for a crack in a log, no matter what I tried to tell myself—but I heard Lilja’s voice in my head, her offhanded good cheer, as if there was nothing in the world more ordinary than what I was doing, and I didn’t hesitate. My aim was true, and suddenly I was gazing at my finger, and it was not at the end of my hand.

It was the most curious sensation. At first, I was conscious only of the enchantment leaving me—it felt like falling, that dream sensation in which there is no ground to hit, only wakefulness. I awoke, and then immediately after that, the pain rolled over me in a red wave.

I staggered about, fading in and out of consciousness. I threw up at one point, I think. But somehow, when I fully returned to my senses, I found that I had wrenched off my glove and pressed my scarf against the hollow where my third finger had been.

I sobbed there in the snow for a moment or two, from relief as much as from the pain. When I’d got that out of my system, I returned to the cottage and bandaged my hand.

Then I set off again for the white tree.

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I just read over that again. It sounds irrational, if not insane—but I assure you, my mind was quite clear.

Of course I considered waking Wendell. But that would have given me away—the king in the tree would have known I wasn’t enchanted if I arrived with Wendell in tow. As a general rule, the Folk do not take kindly to mortals who find ways to break their enchantments—they see it as an affront to their craftsmanship—and so to travel there in an unenchanted state would have been a risky prospect indeed.

I suppose most would ask why I wished to go to the king at all. I cannot answer that adequately, other than by posing more questions. If you give an astronomer a telescope through which he can view an undiscovered galaxy, but allow him only a glimpse of a single star, will he be content? By freeing the king in the tree, I would witness not only the ascension of a faerie king, but the ending of a story I have heard told many times, in many ways. Stories, after all, are so fundamental to their world; one cannot hope to understand the Folk without understanding their stories.

As for a secondary motivation, I admit that it pleased me to think that I could release Aud and Thora and all the others from their fear of the tall ones—for if the king had forbade the taking of mortal youths before, and been overthrown for it, I had no doubt he would do so again once he was freed, if only out of spite. The Folk are, by and large, blinded by pride and incapable of learning from their errors, and even if a mode of thought or behaviour lands them in trouble again and again, each time worse than the one before, they will simply carry on as they always did, which perhaps explains a little of the chaos and absurdity that typifies many faerie stories, and indeed their realms.