Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3)
Heather Fawcett
29th December 1910—cont’d
If there is one subject upon which Wendell and I will never agree, it is the wisdom of attempting to drag a cat into Faerie. Even if said animal is a faerie cat; even if we are merely returning her to the world whence she came, still it is the most frustrating process. Wendell and I had lost Orga twice already while navigating the rocky Greek coastline, as she went charging off after mice or gulls, and now, as we stood at long last at the threshold of Wendell’s door, she had vanished again.
“Bloody thing needs to be leashed,” I said, out of spite more than anything. I strongly suspected that if I approached Orga with anything resembling a harness, it would end with me wearing the cat on my head, likely with unfavourable results where my facial features were concerned.
Shadow was at my side, as usual, his snout buried in the fragrant coastal grasses, snuffling busily. He would never abandon me as Orga is so often abandoning Wendell. Dogs are proper companions, not the physical manifestation of caprice.
Wendell made no reply. He had gone still upon first sight of the door, so much so that he might have been some gilded illustration in a storybook, except that his cloak billowed at the hem, stirred by the salt breeze, which also tugged at the golden hair falling into his eyes.
I touched his arm, and he came back to himself, turning to smile at me.
“Em,” he said, “she is a cat. You might as well expect Shadow to disregard your will as assume Orga to be governed by it. Remember her nature.”
“Her malicious, untrustworthy nature,” I said. Naturally the cat reappeared a heartbeat later, as if to spite us both, golden eyes glittering against her black fur, which rippled strangely, like smoke trapped within cat-shaped glass. Shadow, seated by my feet, gave her a weary sort of look and made his usual overture of friendship, nudging Orga gently with his nose. She arched her back and hissed.
“You should give up, dear,” I told him, but the poor dog only looked at me blankly. Shadow’s world was one in which all and sundry either fawned over him or kept a respectful distance from his intimidating bulk. Each time Orga hissed at him, Shadow seemed to assume it a misunderstanding, which grew increasingly improbable as these incidents accumulated, but still less improbable, in his view, than being disliked.
Wendell had gone back to staring at the door—savouring the moment, I suppose. I wondered if he would give a speech or something—after all, he’d spent more than a decade searching for the thing, and now here it was, folded snugly against the hillside like the bow on a Christmas gift.
I tapped my foot against a rock, feeling rather smug. Well, it had taken me only a handful of months to track the door down, hadn’t it? I’d learned Wendell was looking for a door to his realm in November of last year when we were in Ljosland, and I’d begun researching the question in earnest in March, not long after we returned to Cambridge. And now—after a few twists and turns in Austria—here we were.
I considered and discarded several quips to this effect before deciding it would not be very magnanimous of me, and merely noted, “It’s a pair with the one in St. Liesl.”
Indeed, the door before us was nearly identical in shape and style—it blended into the Greek countryside perfectly, its wooden boards painted with a scene of pale, pebbly stone and sun-dried vegetation. A little patch of rock roses to the left continued into the painting, and these two-dimensional blooms tossed their heads in the breeze in time with their tangible brethren. Even more impossible, to my mortal eyes, was the doorknob, a square of glass enclosing a splash of turquoise sea. This nexus is truly the most peculiar variety of faerie door I have encountered in my career.[*1]
Though I’d expected to find it here, one can never be certain of faerie doors, and there was relief mixed into my self-satisfaction.
I turned to scan the landscape, shading my eyes against the sun. It was my preference not to suddenly vanish from sight in view of observers, simply because it was easier that way—Wendell and I did not need any well-intentioned search parties following us into Faerie. Beyond a little salt-stained grove of cypress trees, the land stretched out in a series of pale commas that embraced a sea so blue it made my eyes water. A pair of two-legged specks moved across a bend of sand in the distance—that was all. The countryside was empty but for us and the wind.
“How will they follow us?” I said, trying to hide my trepidation.
“Oh—easily enough,” Wendell said absently. And he reached out with uncharacteristic hesitation and turned the knob.
We stepped through together, Wendell’s hand closing around mine. I did not need his help, as I’d ventured through a few such impossible doors in my day without faerie aid, but I knew this was not his reason. His hand trembled lightly. I laced our fingers together and tightened my grip.
The little cottage beyond the door was empty, thank God—the winter faerie who owned it was now roaming the countryside, revelling in the delights of his season, as Wendell said such Folk were wont to do. The floor had been swept and the dishes in the washbasin put away, and overall everything had a very tucked-in, tidy look about it, as one might leave a home before a prolonged absence. I kept my gaze away from the mantel and the faerie’s gruesome “art.”
Orga and Shadow had followed behind us, Shadow giving the door a curious sniff before entering, but otherwise showing no sign he viewed this as any different from stepping through the door of my office at Cambridge. Wendell allowed it to close behind us, and we gazed at the row of six doorknobs on the inner side.