“In exchange for?”
“Nearly nothing,” he said. “Only clear a path from my tree to the spring when the snows come.”
“And which is your tree?” I enquired, though I had already guessed. The faerie pointed to a lovely white aspen, clad in moss like himself, the only one I had noticed in that part of the forest. Thinking back to the loaf Finn had served me with breakfast, all yeast and salt, I had no choice but to agree.
I hurried back to the cottage, intending to spend the rest of the day adding to my notes. That morning, Finn had pointed out several faerie rocks scattered about the farmstead, and I had a mind to map and investigate each one.
The rain started up again as I walked. My boots sank into mud up to the ankles, and I was quickly soaked through and shivering. I nearly ran back to the cottage, an ill-advised decision, for the slope was treacherous even in fair weather. I slipped and ended up on my back in the mud.
Once I finally slogged my way up the cottage steps like some ungainly monster of the mountains, I almost failed to notice that the door was ajar. I thought first of Finn, and then I thought, strangely, of the pale face and the bloody hand. Breath coming fast, I pushed on the door.
A sheep stared back at me.
No—two sheep. One stood upon the carpet, enjoying the heat of the coals, while another roamed to and fro, chewing at something green.
Green. My cabbages!
The table where I had left my groceries was askew, the pitcher of milk shattered on the floor and Groa’s svortkag smashed into bits that seemed to be scattered everywhere there wasn’t milk. The sheep had also overturned a pile of my books, and half-chewed pages decorated the flagstones with hoofprints on them—not my book, thank God; I had put that carefully back into my trunk. Shadow sat in the bedroom doorway, politely puzzled as he watched the baggy field-dwellers bulldoze their way through his home. Good dog that he was, he’d given no thought to obstructing the sheep’s rampage, having been admonished many times against menacing them.
I erupted into shouts, a mixture of commands in English and Ljoslander alongside various garbled ejaculations of no meaning at all. I lunged at the nearest sheep, intending to pry the remnants of the cabbage—worth more than the sheep itself—from its maw, but the creatures only took fright and stampeded round and round the cottage. No sooner had I managed to force one towards the door than its companion got it into its head to run in the opposite direction. More books were trampled, the frying pan and various pots tumbled off their hooks with a clang, the wood box tipped onto its side, and the armchair fell atop one of the sheep, setting off a storm of horrified bleats quickly echoed by its accomplice. Shadow, noting my distress, leapt into the fray, but as he could do nothing to the sheep, he merely ran aimlessly amok, howling, which had a predictable effect upon the interlopers. Amidst the chaos, I did not hear the knocking at the door, which grew louder by the second, nor the creak when it opened.
“God’s grace, Em,” came a lilting voice from the threshold. “I’ve never heard such— Ah! Away with you, woollen rat!”
This last was directed at the sheep, which, having had quite enough of the screaming madwoman in the cottage, now sought the relative peace of their rain-soaked abode. Together they hurtled at the tall, black-clad figure obstructing their egress, sending him sailing back down the stairs.
Shadow followed them out the door, still barking (for he had established that he was allowed to bark at the sheep, at least), and plowed into the figure who had been collecting himself from his tumble onto the grass, knocking him over once more.
The figure lifted his head, revealing himself as none other than Wendell Bambleby.
“Any more?” he called from his sprawl at the foot of the stairs.
“What?” I shouted. I believe I had gone slightly deaf.
“Any more of your demented beasts lurking within? Should I simply lie here until they take their leave?”
“They’re not mine,” I felt it necessary to say. “Well, one of them is.”
Bambleby was not alone. In his wake trailed two young persons whom I recognized as his students, though I could not recall either of their names—Bambleby is regularly trailing students, you see. The young woman—red-haired and wide-eyed in a way that gave her a perpetually bewildered look—reached down and helped him to his feet.
As he brushed himself off, I began to comprehend that Wendell Bambleby was standing outside my cottage. You would think this would have happened before, but there hadn’t been space for it amidst the pandemonium.
“Dear Emily,” Bambleby said as he tugged a leaf from his hair. The hair was golden and entirely perfect, like the rest of him. “Always one for the unexpected.”
He gave the girl who had helped him a smile so thoughtlessly beautiful that she seemed momentarily incapable of movement, before turning his amused black eyes upon me again. His slender frame was clad in its customary blacks, all immaculately tailored from the line of his cloak—which had an upturned collar—to the folds of his scarf. You would not think a scarf could be tailored, until you met Bambleby. His age was difficult to place, though I knew it to be twenty-nine, for he had told me.
“I, unexpected?” I managed finally. “What the bloody hell are you doing here, Wendell?”
“What am I doing here?” he repeated with a breath of laughter. “Well, I thought to myself, why take a first-class carriage to the south of France for sabbatical when only five days of seasickness can grant you the luxury of a fishing village in an icebound wasteland? What do you think I’m doing here, Em?”
He motioned to the students and then swept up the stairs and past me into the cottage. The students bent to collect a large quantity of luggage—several bags each, and a trunk. They too tromped into the cottage.
“Oh, God,” I said to no one in particular. And I had thought I had been at my wit’s end with the sheep.
“This place looks as if it’s being tenanted by raccoons,” Bambleby noted, looking about him. His graceful Irish brogue formed a bizarre contrast with the recent din, which still rang in my ears. “And why isn’t the fire lit? Enjoy the cold, do we, Em?”
Now, I have never once suggested he call me Em, and am in fact accustomed to greeting the sobriquet with a stony glare. “The fire isn’t lit because I am nearly out of firewood,” I said. I settled myself in the chair in an attempt to collect my scattered wits. “Perhaps you’d care to rectify that?”
He frowned at the fireplace. He was such a picture in his splendid blacks (collar upturned), framed against the dusty dishabille of the cottage, that I had to laugh; it was as probable a sight as a prince in a cowshed. I know Bambleby has been in the field, and I suspect he was somewhere else entirely before that, but I only know him set against his oak-panelled Cambridge office, the warm cathedral of the library, the manicured leafiness of the university grounds with their stone fountains and statuary.
“Henry will take care of all that—won’t you, dear?” Bambleby said. The faintest alarm had come upon his face at my suggestion—either he hadn’t any idea of how a fire came to be or he was in terror of dirtying his sleeves.
The hapless Henry, who had the sharp-edged proportions of a man not a day over twenty, nodded eagerly and set to prodding the sullen wet logs with one of the candlesticks. Now, I was no enemy of poor Henry’s and should not have been amused by his ineptitude, but I will admit that I watched this performance for several minutes without comment. Wendell drifted off down the hall with his unnamed and equally hapless admirer, clearly viewing his duty as complete.
“There are only two additional bedrooms,” he informed Henry upon his return. “I shall give you two the larger of them. See to all that later,” he instructed Lady Hapless, who had begun to lift the trunk again. “We must first make this place liveable. Emily, I must warn you away from your own bedroom temporarily. If you hadn’t already noticed, the sheep have been in there too, and they’ve given it rather a smell. Em?”
He seemed to look at me properly. “What have you done to yourself? Is this some sort of camouflage, to fool the Folk into thinking you’re one of the flock? Oh, don’t look at me like that, you’re the one who turned our cottage into a byre.”
“Our cottage!”