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

9th February

I slept surprisingly well in my tent after my arrival at my new campsite, despite the unwholesome atmosphere. Now, with the morning sunlight falling upon these pages, veined with birch-shadow, I feel I can continue my account of the journey, even as every rustle of the wind through the branches makes me start and whirl around, my pulse leaping in my throat.

He will come. Won’t he?

Despite my weariness after my trek up the mountain, I wished to depart Poe’s grove immediately, but he first insisted on showing me several adornments he had added to his tree. His visitors have included a variety of migratory birds, and so he has taken the finest of their fallen feathers and hung them from the boughs with a bit of twine, sometimes adding small rocks and jewels left as offerings for him by the villagers, which together make a pleasant clinking sound when the wind moves through them. He then gifted me a fine loaf of bread woven through with the Ljosland sheep’s cheese of which I am so fond, in addition to the cakes. Thus supplied, I donned my snowshoes and ventured forth into the darkening woods.

I worried I would not remember the way to the Hidden king’s tree. After all, I had ventured there only twice during my stay in Ljosland. But my scholarship saved me, for I had drawn a map to accompany a recent paper I wrote on the subject, and the memory was still fresh in my mind. I first located the river upon whose bank the tree could be found, which I followed downstream for several hours until I spied the elbow bend.

I did not recall the forest of Kyrrearskogur being such an eerie place—perhaps it was because the first time I’d come this way, I had been with Wendell, who had kept up such a steady stream of complaints it had deadened any otherworldly atmosphere, and the second time I had been in such a state of dread and pain that I’d paid no heed to anything else. The river whispered beneath its prison of ice, and the violet glow of twilight painted unexpected shadows upon the snow. The forest had the same brooding quality all forests possess in winter, and was alive with small noises—some fae, some not—but when night fell and the green aurora began to ripple behind the boughs like the spectral twin of the river I was tracking, it assumed a distinctly unwelcoming quality. I was an interloper in this inhuman landscape, and were I less learned, and not in possession of an enchanted cloak, it would not have taken some faerie beast to end me, merely the fact of the place itself.

And then we came to the tree.

It looked as I’d last seen it, its trunk white as bone and split open in a long seam, the edges folded slightly like the lapels of a cloak. Not one leaf remained to hide the twisted branches, which were immensely tall and wide, encompassing a far greater share of the canopy than seemed correct, given the narrowness of the hollow trunk, which was only large enough to encompass a single person. As before, I had the sense that the other trees had shuffled backwards to get away from the thing, for a ring of starry, emerald-smudged sky was visible beyond the tips of its branches.

Shadow sniffed the air, looking alert, but he did not whine or show any other sign of distress, as he’d done during our first visit to this place. I saw no evidence of faerie activity, nor of the offerings Poe had mentioned. I saw no footprints, either, though perhaps the inhabitants of Hrafnsvik and the neighbouring villages had not left anything for the Hidden king since the last snowfall.

I did not step inside the tree, which struck me as more likely to end badly than not, but I did venture a wan “Hello there!” or two in the hopes of drawing out any faerie observers. I received no answer. The place was still and silent.

I removed my cloak and shook it until it transformed into a tent again, then rummaged about in the folds, wondering if Wendell had thought to supply it with other camping essentials, and naturally I was not disappointed. I found several pegs for securing the structure to the ground in high winds, yet more pillows of different shapes and sizes (good grief), a small cookpot, and, at last, tucked into a fold I was certain I’d searched before, a piece of flint.

I gathered a few fallen branches and built a fire that I hoped was a respectful distance from the king’s tree. Shadow’s dinner was dried meat and melted snow, while for my own repast I toasted some of Poe’s bread over the flames, pairing it with the last apple I had brought with me from Lilja and Margret’s cottage. And then, the winter king showing no sign of materializing in my midst, I went to bed.