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I shook off my dark thoughts. “In any case, I can think better here, without distractions. And Wendell—well, he will only argue with me. We do not see eye to eye on this.”

“Are you certain you cannot convince him?” Margret said.

I didn’t need to think about it. “Yes.”

Lilja nodded, frowning. “I would not want to be on his bad side,” she said slowly. “I know you believe he is different from the king of our tall ones. But there have been moments—only a few, mind—when I am not so certain.”

I had no answer to this, and we drank our tea in silence. Shadow, stretched out by the fire, grunted and bared his teeth in his sleep, likely dreaming of rabbits.

“Can we help?” Margret said. “I am slow at reading English, especially the writings of scholars. But perhaps we will notice details you miss.”

I looked at them, both smiling at me encouragingly, and felt the knots inside me loosen, just a little. “Thank you,” I said. “I—I would be very grateful to have your help.”

—

When I was at Trinity in January, I collected several dozen iterations of “King Macan’s Bees,” all of which I brought with me to Corbann. Most I had copied myself, which meant that Lilja and Margret were frequently asking me to translate my inelegant scrawl.

After two or three hours, I rose to pace by a window, scowling down at my notes. Lilja stretched and stood. Margret was in the kitchen, attending to the bread she was baking for lunch.

“I need to rest my eyes,” Lilja said. “Would you care to see my progress on the carving?”

I would have preferred to continue my work, but felt it would be boorish to say no, so I followed her to her workshop.

“Wonderful!” I cried. She had nearly finished the carving of Poe—only his feet remained. His fingers were perhaps not quite as long and sharp as they are in reality, but then it is difficult to do justice to such a thing without the aid of enchantment. I looked up to find Lilja regarding me.

“It is good to see you in your old clothes,” she said, smiling. “I did not wish to criticize, for you looked lovely in those faerie dresses. But I had the sense that they were not very comfortable.”

I gave a short laugh. “That is an understatement. Though I should note that the dresses were quite comfortable in the ordinary sense. It is more that I was not comfortable in them.”

She tilted her head. “Then why bother? Are you not a queen of Faerie, to dress as you please?”

I toyed with Poe’s needle-fingers, wondering how to respond. Yes, I was a queen of Faerie—and I wished to appear so. To match. For where had I ever matched before? At Cambridge, yes—I matched with the old stones, and the dusty libraries. I suppose that, in Faerie, I had wished to match with the Folk. A foolish aim indeed! I wondered at myself now. Yet I suppose that one cannot spend one’s life half in love with Faerie without wishing to be part of it, to wonder if it might feel like home in a way no mortal place ever had.

Instead of burdening Lilja with all this, I simply said, “The Folk love glamour and beauty.”

Lilja nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose. Although in our stories, they love—what is the word in English? Misfits? Yes, they love misfits just as well. Hermits and tinkers, wanderers and poets—more tales revolve around such people than the glamourous ones. Is this only in Ljosland?”

“Misfits?” I echoed, smiling slightly. “No—it is not only there.”

Lilja shrugged. “Well—you know the Folk best.” She turned to show me another carving, and then Margret called from the kitchen that lunch was ready, sparing me from further rumination.

As the afternoon advanced, I was startled out of my perusal of a story fragment by a knock at the door. To my astonishment, it was Niamh. At her side was a strange little grinning woman I recognized as her spriggan attendant, under a glamour.

“He sent you to spy on me,” I said.

Niamh shrugged. “Of course.”

I groaned. Lilja came to the door then, followed by Margret, and gave a delighted cry to find Niamh there, whom I had told them so much about. This was followed by a round of introductions, as well as the usual commiserations about the weather and offers of refreshments, and together we retreated inside to the kitchen.

“You needn’t have bothered to close that faerie door,” Niamh said once we were settled with coffee and some of Margret’s spiced bread in front of us. “There is another not far from the castle that opens onto a village on the coast called Dunmare. The journey to Corbann took me two hours.”

“I surmised as much,” I said. “But I did not want to make it easy for him to follow me. I wished to emphasize my desire to be left alone.”

“Oh, he has well understood that!” she said with one of her heartiest laughs. “I have never known him in such a state. He alternates between declarations that he will set forth after you without delay—armed with numerous silly presents to convince you to return—and moaning that you will only burn him to cinders for his presumption. I believe he has worn several grooves in the castle floor from all the pacing he does, and he routinely terrifies the servants by snatching dustcloths and scrubbing at things himself, or refusing to let the tailors mend his clothes—he is up half the night, hunched over those sewing needles of his.”

I put my head in my hands. “I feel terrible,” I said honestly. “I did not realize that I would be away so long, by his reckoning. He must think I am furious with him.”

Niamh waved this away. “The Folk, most especially the nobility, can endure a little disappointment in love now and then. It is good for them, for they are far too used to getting their way on that front. Anyway! He told me to pretend that I wanted to aid in your scholarly research—which is, in fact, very much my desire; I have no intention of sending back any reports about you.”