After escaping a stream of intrusive questions about her coming marriage, Emily dismisses her servants and sits by the window to read Wendell’s journal. Before turning to the marked entry, Emily flips through earlier pages and finds sparse notes, copied field observations, collected stories, and numerous doodles. One careful sketch of Emily studying unsettles her more than anything else in the book, because it reveals unexpected tenderness from Wendell.

Emily then reads the entry Wendell wrote on the day he discovered her disappearance. His first attempt is full of crossed-out lines and visible anger, but he eventually forces himself into a more orderly account. Wendell describes reading Emily’s letter, losing control of his temper badly enough to disturb the boundary between Faerie and the mortal world, and then rushing into a brutal blizzard without even putting on his cloak. By the time he reaches the tavern, he is half-frozen, magically unstable, and so incoherent that Aud and Thora must force him to sit by the fire and drink tea.

Once Wendell can speak clearly, he tells the villagers what Emily has done. Instead of hesitation, Aud immediately says they must bring Emily back, and the village begins mobilizing around that decision. Finn goes to gather brambleberries for an old summoning rite, Aud proposes trying both ancient customs and information-gathering, and Wendell explains that the winter king intends to marry Emily. Wendell also admits, directly or indirectly, that he is too weakened in the mortal winter landscape to rely on his own power alone.

Aud organizes the response with practical efficiency. The villagers burn brambleberries, send messengers to consult a neighboring bard, and prepare to follow Wendell toward the king’s court once he has recovered enough to travel. While waiting, Wendell paces the tavern in agitation and eventually distracts himself by cleaning Ulfar’s disastrous kitchen, a comic but revealing sign of his anxiety and need for control. Once Aud judges that Wendell has regained enough strength, she bundles him up and prepares the next stage of the rescue effort.

Emily then skims through later journal entries and sees that the rescue effort continued for weeks. Wendell and the villagers tried repeated strategies: ritual offerings, sacrificed lambs, a polar-bear-hair quilt based on an old tale, covert entries into the king’s court, a failed attempt to seize a court faerie for exchange, and negotiations with lesser fae. Overcome, Emily realizes she is crying. The chapter ends with a major emotional shift for Emily, as she understands that Wendell and the whole village have been working tirelessly to save her, and that she is not facing her captivity alone.