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“Good God” was all I could say in response.

Hsssssshaaaa, said the thing in the tree.

“That,” I said, when at last my heart had slowed somewhat, “is your mother?”

Poe handed me the basket of cakes and tugged at the hem of my cloak, his small face alight with happiness. “How wonderful! All my family is here together. Almost all. Where is the golden prince? He is not ill again?”

It was just like the little brownie to accept my sudden appearance as perfectly expected; it has been some months since we have seen each other, and yet to him it is ever as if a mere day has passed. The cakes smelled of apple and peppery spices, and I took one without eating it; my stomach was still unsettled from my fright.

“Wendell is quite well,” I said unsteadily. “But he is busy with his kingdom. He sends his regrets that he could not be here.”

Poe looked simultaneously relieved and astonished. “Really? Oh, but he does not need to visit—though of course I would be honoured,” he added hastily. “As would Mother! She could hardly believe it when I told her that we could count a lord of Faerie among our fjolskylda.”

What Poe’s mother truly thought of her royal family member, I never knew, for the only reply from the tree was a tetchy sort of growl. I looked up, and found that she had vanished.

“She likes to stand guard over my home,” Poe said contentedly. “For she agrees that my tree is the finest in the forest, even finer than the lovely willow in whose bole I was born and raised, and she fears that some jealous enemy may vandalize it. I do not think this likely, do you? For even if I had enemies—and I hope I do not, for I always go away and hide when someone wants to argue with me—they would only fall in love with my tree straightaway, and be unable to put even one scratch on it.”

I suppressed an urge to look about to determine where exactly his mother had got to. “She has—very long fingers.”

“Oh, yes,” Poe said. He glanced down at his own needle-fingers, which were also lengthy, though nowhere near the size of his dam’s. “Mother is old. I hope one day that mine will be as bountiful as hers, but Mother says I should not wish for things that may never come to pass, but be content with what I have today. She can spear a seal with one thumb, which would be useful, wouldn’t it?”

I could not begin to formulate a reply to this, so instead I said, “I have come on an errand for Wendell. An urgent one. I would appreciate your assistance, as would he.”

Poe looked suddenly terrified. “Yes—yes. Oh, is he wondering about my tree? I watered it all summer, and I have collected any leaves that fell—I keep them in a very safe place!”

“Wendell is confident in your skills as the tree’s custodian,” I assured him. “I have come—” I could not get it out at first. “I have come to speak with the king.”

Poe’s eyes had gone perfectly round. “Oh, but—” He fell back a step, vanishing abruptly into the snow, then reappearing closer to his tree. “But you must not,” he said in a low, desperate voice. “He is worse, far worse than the golden prince. I mean—” Terror filled his face again. “I did not mean that! The prince is so very noble and kind, and his attentions to my tree have—”

“Shh, it’s all right,” I said soothingly. “It’s all right. You need not worry about Wendell. And as for the snow king, I will go alone to beg an audience; you need not accompany me. I only wish to learn his whereabouts.”

Poe was shivering. “I don’t know,” he said in an unhappy voice. “The high ones travel hither and thither in their carriages, and at night I have heard their voices singing from the deep places of the forest and upon the mountain peaks. But the king and his court come only rarely to the coast. They prefer the glaciers and snowfields.”

I felt a stab of disappointment, but tried to conceal it. I should not have expected Poe to know the whereabouts of the Hidden king. Perhaps the villagers of Hrafnsvik could help me—I owed a visit to Aud, in any case.

“They leave offerings at the king’s tree,” Poe said, after a moment’s silence. “The mortals do. They leave them, and someone takes them away.”

“The tree,” I said.

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 Kyrrðarskogur 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.