31st December
We reached the castle at dusk.
We had tarried another day in the forest—partly because Wendell needed the time to work, and partly on account of Shadow, whom Wendell and I felt the need to fuss over.
Wendell located another standing stone with some helpful brownies living in it, who came racing out with a plate of dog biscuits this time.
Shadow devoured the lot and collapsed upon a patch of moss, falling into a deep slumber.
When he awoke in the morning, there was a spring in his step I have not seen in years.
We approached the castle from the east rather than the route I had taken in October, through the gardens.
Here the path around the lake widened into a broad promenade used by lords and ladies arriving by carriage, as well as the monarchy when they wished to make a grand return from some battle or hunting expedition.
In other words, it was perfect.
When I had explained my idea to Wendell, he began to laugh. “Well?” I said as he wiped his eyes. “Is it that ridiculous?”
“No, Em,” he said, taking my hand. “It is better than anything I could have come up with. And much less work than bursting in on everyone with my sword flashing.”
“You don’t have your needles, though,” I said.
“Of course I do. You thought I would leave them behind?” He snapped his fingers, and one of the guardians alighted on his shoulder, making me start back with my heart thundering.
Slung across its back was a leather satchel, and within that was the collection of silver sewing needles that Aud, the headwoman of Hrafnsvik, had gifted Wendell a year ago.
I was not idle as he worked, though my contribution was necessarily limited. Few scholars know any Words of Power, and I have acquired two, one of which—the more ridiculous of the pair, naturally—was well-suited to our circumstances.
I wandered a little way into the forest and spoke the Word. At first, nothing happened. I recalled there had been a similar pause the previous time I had invoked its magic, beside the Hidden king’s tree amidst the snow of a Ljosland winter.
Then something came sailing out of the forest gloom and smacked me in the forehead.
I staggered back a little, more out of surprise than pain. I stooped and picked up the button from where it had fallen among a clump of ivy.
It was a lovely little thing, made from some sort of pale blue crystal that flashed even in the leafy shadow, carved in the shape of a rose.
Emboldened, I spoke the button-summoning Word again.
This time, I managed to catch the button before it hit me in the face, though I fumbled it immediately, and almost lost it in a hollow.
This button was of silver, unadorned but so delicately made that I feared it would break if I held it too tightly.
Snowbell, who had followed me into the trees, watched with interest. “How can a mortal oaf work our magics?” he said.
“Anyone can use the Words of Power,” I replied. “The difficult thing is tracking them down, as many have been forgotten.” I glanced at him, suppressing a smile. “It is true, though; I am only a mortal, and my eyesight is poor. I fear I may lose the buttons as soon as I find them.”
“Hum!” Snowbell’s tail twitched in excitement. “ My eyesight is excellent!”
And so, I spoke the Word more than a hundred times, and after each utterance a different button would come sailing out of the forest. They came from all directions, and some took longer to arrive than others, as if they had crossed a great distance.
I managed to catch a few, but most hit me in the head and bounced off somewhere, at which point Snowbell or one of the other fuchszwerge would give a yip of delight and chase them down, snarling at one another as they fought to be first.
“Good Lord!” Wendell cried when I showed him my eclectic little hoard, which I had collected in my skirt. He was leaning over a strange pile of dark fabric that rippled in the breeze, his sewing needle flashing. “Where on earth did you find them?”
“People are always losing buttons,” I said. “The Folk are no different. Of course there would be a quantity of them scattered throughout the forest like dropped coins. I had only to call for them. The question is, are they useful?”
Wendell stuck his needle into the mushroom he seemed to be using for a pin cushion and ran his long fingers over the buttons.
“Oh, Em,” he said quietly. “They’re perfect.”
His confidence in me was heartening, though later I found my confidence in myself on the verge of shattering as we made our way up the promenade with the castle looming ahead.
It was not just Taran’s rumpled little scholar remark—though I will admit that stung—but rather the overall pattern into which it fitted.
Perhaps if the majority of my life had not been spent failing to fit in to most environments; perhaps if I were a little less well-read when it came to folklore, and thus a little less aware of how far I deviated from the type of mortal who ordinarily draws the attention of faerie royalty—yes, perhaps then I could have felt some of Wendell’s triumph in that moment, which was, after all, also my triumph.
But I was too focused on keeping my head up, and walking with something that I hoped approximated elegance, and, above all, praying that I would not stumble or otherwise embarrass myself.
I had decided that I would try, as much as I was able, to make myself into the sort of mortal who would play this role in a story.
To that end, I had asked Wendell to place a glamour on my dress—it was now black, to match with him, layers of silk with silver brocade in a pattern of bluebells.
Over the glamoured dress I wore my tailored cloak, the train unfurled so that it stretched behind me as a vast, rippling darkness, as if my shadow had been swapped for that of a giant.
I had been reluctant to allow Wendell to alter it further, as I like it the way it is, but I knew I had to cut an impressive figure somehow, ridiculous as that is to imagine.
And so he had swapped out my old sturdy hood for one with stars woven into it.
I wish I could say that was metaphorical, but Wendell informed me—in as matter-of-fact a manner as he tends to use in such circumstances—that he had gathered up the starlight reflected in a forest pool and stitched it into the fabric.
The lights framed my face like a ghostly crown, some constant, others flickering; every few moments, one would blaze across the hood and disappear among the trees, sometimes to a chorus of squeals from the brownie spectators we had accumulated as we went. I tried not to jump when this happened.
Wendell had also insisted that Shadow dress for our arrival.
“Orga will not have it,” he said. “But at least one of them must be appropriately outfitted. They are to be familiars of the king and queen, after all.”
Now, Shadow has never been fond of clothing, but he seemed to sense the importance of this particular imposition on his dignity, and held still while Wendell measured and draped him in iterations of what became a fine coat.
It was a soft, velvety black, embroidered with a kingly amount of silver, which Wendell somehow made from a handful of the silver buttons I had found.
He had decided to make Shadow intimidating—to which I did not object, knowing this would lessen the dog’s embarrassment—and so he had taken tendrils of fog and attached them to the cloak like billowing ribbons, so that Shadow seemed to carry a mist with him everywhere like the spectral beast that he is.
Together with the glitter of the silver, the effect was—well, mythic.
And as for Wendell? I wish I could adequately describe it.
Though I watched much of its construction, I could not say how he made his cloak.
At times he seemed to reach down and gather a shadow from beneath a tree, at which point it became a solid thing, or solider, an undulating darkness not unlike my own cloak.
Sometimes he would stride into the forest and come back with an armful of pine boughs or birch bark, which would, from one moment to the next, turn into something like fabric.
Occasionally he would dip the cloak into the lake as he worked, and when he removed it, it would have taken on a subtly different shape.
The resulting garment was black, of course.
But it was like no fabric I’d ever seen before, liquid and faintly glimmering.
He had ordered each of his guardians to donate several of their feathers, and these he had woven into the material.
They were not visible exactly, except as a suggestion of wings when the cloak caught the wind.
It was a garment that needed no adornment, for it was like something snipped out of a dream, and he gave it none, apart from the row of buttons.
I would have expected him to pick the finest of those I had gathered, but instead he chose a selection that would represent all the regions of his realm: silver from the Weeping Mines and the lower tributary of the Tromlu River; carved oak from a dozen different corners of the forest; rare bone from the antlers of one of the hag-headed deer; coloured marble from the Blue Hooks.
The effect was more impressive than if he had adorned himself in jewels, for together the buttons possessed an enchantment that made strange images flit through my mind when I looked upon them, memories of places I’d never seen.
A shadowy grove around a narrow standing stone; a flash of mist-shrouded water tumbling down a sheer cliff.
The train of the cloak was where things became—unsettling.