Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3)(15)

His confidence in me was heartening, though later I found my confidence in myself on the verge of shattering as we made our way up the promenade with the castle looming ahead.

It was not just Taran’s rumpled little scholar remark—though I will admit that stung—but rather the overall pattern into which it fitted. Perhaps if the majority of my life had not been spent failing to fit in to most environments; perhaps if I were a little less well-read when it came to folklore, and thus a little less aware of how far I deviated from the type of mortal who ordinarily draws the attention of faerie royalty—yes, perhaps then I could have felt some of Wendell’s triumph in that moment, which was, after all, also my triumph. But I was too focused on keeping my head up, and walking with something that I hoped approximated elegance, and, above all, praying that I would not stumble or otherwise embarrass myself. I had decided that I would try, as much as I was able, to make myself into the sort of mortal who would play this role in a story. To that end, I had asked Wendell to place a glamour on my dress—it was now black, to match with him, layers of silk with silver brocade in a pattern of bluebells.

Over the glamoured dress I wore my tailored cloak, the train unfurled so that it stretched behind me as a vast, rippling darkness, as if my shadow had been swapped for that of a giant. I had been reluctant to allow Wendell to alter it further, as I like it the way it is, but I knew I had to cut an impressive figure somehow, ridiculous as that is to imagine. And so he had swapped out my old sturdy hood for one with stars woven into it.

I wish I could say that was metaphorical, but Wendell informed me—in as matter-of-fact a manner as he tends to use in such circumstances—that he had gathered up the starlight reflected in a forest pool and stitched it into the fabric. The lights framed my face like a ghostly crown, some constant, others flickering; every few moments, one would blaze across the hood and disappear among the trees, sometimes to a chorus of squeals from the brownie spectators we had accumulated as we went. I tried not to jump when this happened.

Wendell had also insisted that Shadow dress for our arrival.

“Orga will not have it,” he said. “But at least one of them must be appropriately outfitted. They are to be familiars of the king and queen, after all.”

Now, Shadow has never been fond of clothing, but he seemed to sense the importance of this particular imposition on his dignity, and held still while Wendell measured and draped him in iterations of what became a fine coat. It was a soft, velvety black, embroidered with a kingly amount of silver, which Wendell somehow made from a handful of the silver buttons I had found. He had decided to make Shadow intimidating—to which I did not object, knowing this would lessen the dog’s embarrassment—and so he had taken tendrils of fog and attached them to the cloak like billowing ribbons, so that Shadow seemed to carry a mist with him everywhere like the spectral beast that he is. Together with the glitter of the silver, the effect was—well, mythic.

And as for Wendell? I wish I could adequately describe it.

Though I watched much of its construction, I could not say how he made his cloak. At times he seemed to reach down and gather a shadow from beneath a tree, at which point it became a solid thing, or solider, an undulating darkness not unlike my own cloak. Sometimes he would stride into the forest and come back with an armful of pine boughs or birch bark, which would, from one moment to the next, turn into something like fabric. Occasionally he would dip the cloak into the lake as he worked, and when he removed it, it would have taken on a subtly different shape.

The resulting garment was black, of course. But it was like no fabric I’d ever seen before, liquid and faintly glimmering. He had ordered each of his guardians to donate several of their feathers, and these he had woven into the material. They were not visible exactly, except as a suggestion of wings when the cloak caught the wind. It was a garment that needed no adornment, for it was like something snipped out of a dream, and he gave it none, apart from the row of buttons. I would have expected him to pick the finest of those I had gathered, but instead he chose a selection that would represent all the regions of his realm: silver from the Weeping Mines and the lower tributary of the Tromlu River; carved oak from a dozen different corners of the forest; rare bone from the antlers of one of the hag-headed deer; coloured marble from the Blue Hooks. The effect was more impressive than if he had adorned himself in jewels, for together the buttons possessed an enchantment that made strange images flit through my mind when I looked upon them, memories of places I’d never seen. A shadowy grove around a narrow standing stone; a flash of mist-shrouded water tumbling down a sheer cliff.

The train of the cloak was where things became—unsettling.

I had not known he could do this, of course. I had merely said that whatever he created should be frightening. I had thought that perhaps he would weave another fragment of the Veil into it, but instead he had put in something alive. The cloak grumbled and growled, a guttural noise so resonant I felt it beneath my feet. It also had an appetite—according to Snowbell, it had devoured two of his kindred when we weren’t minding it; Wendell had to command it not to eat anybody else. I had no idea what the creature was, and even more disturbingly, neither did Wendell.

“I found it in a hollow log,” he said with the self-satisfaction of a shopper who unearths a hidden gem at a flea market.

I am going to be honest: I tried to avoid looking at it.

Behind us trailed our miscellaneous little army. The trolls were at their most intimidating, stocky and muscular, marching along with their hatchets and scythes over their shoulders—and while I knew these were implements used for their industry, still the picture they presented together made me shudder. Snowbell and his brethren came next, snapping and snarling at anything that moved, a red river made of teeth and claws. And, last but certainly not least, the hideous fauns crept silently in our wake, their dogs, which were closer to dog-sized rats, leashed at their sides.