Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3)(42)

Lord Taran sheathed his sword and came towards me, which sent me scuttling backwards on my hands in instinctive terror before I forced myself to stop. He helped me to my feet, catching me with unexpected gentleness as my legs wobbled. And then I was dragged away.

SKIP NOTES

* Wentworth Morrison’s FolkLore of Scotland, Volume III: Thrones of Faerie (1852) remains the definitive resource on this topic, but Farris Rose’s exhaustive investigation of Cornish faerie stories (in particular his Atlas of Tales, 1900) provides additional insight. Cornwall holds the record for the sheer number of interactions between mortals and monarchs of Faerie (Rose’s “Comparative Analysis of the Faerie Markets of Bodmin Moor,” published in Dryadological Fieldnotes in 1902, offers several intriguing theories as to why this might be so). In many of the tales recorded by Morrison and Rose, a faerie monarch’s power is also their Achilles’ heel: while they control the landscape and weather, they can be defeated by being trapped and removed from their homes, as a flower dies when uprooted from its soil.





9th January




It has been too long since I’ve written. Several times after our journey to the yew grove I have picked up my journal, readied my pen, and then simply stared at the blank page—a symptom of a condition with which I have intimate familiarity by now: namely, stupefaction brought on by some manner of faerie misadventure. In addition, I had only a page or two left in my old journal, hardly enough space to recount anything in detail.

Eventually, I visited the bookbinders, still hard at work filling the shelves in my journal room, and selected this ridiculous paper confection. It has pages enough, but also an enchanted lock—which I do not bother with—and intricate silver engravings of overlapping circles of fern fronds, which I am beginning to recognize as a common artistic motif in Where the Trees Have Eyes. The top of every page is illustrated with a little landscape sketch, a gentle brook or a moorland vista, and if one stares at these long enough, they become a tiny window to the place where the artist must have stood. It is all completely frivolous and unnecessary.

But. I am writing again.

I reached Dublin’s Trinity College three days ago via a carriage from Corbann to the train station one village over, then two additional trains. Since then I have been ensconced in their Natural Sciences Library—in which is housed their considerable collection of dryadological journals and folklore—from dawn to dusk. I would sleep here if the librarians would allow it, but while most of them have received me with kindness and welcome, the head librarian is a tyrannical sort, and seems already to disapprove of me and my many requests, even seeing fit to lecture me for leaving the special collections room in disarray, so I doubt such a request would be well received. One would think books existed simply to be looked at and occasionally dusted, the way that man carries on. And if the filing system differs from Cambridge’s, is it my fault if this occasionally leads me to misplace things?

I have been dreadfully scattered of late. I sat down to provide an account of my doings since the grove, and here I am, griping about librarians.

Wendell has written me three letters already, despite the short period of my absence. I had the below waiting for me when I arrived at my rented lodgings.

To: Dr. Emily Wilde

11 Scholars’ Square, Trinity College

Dublin

From: Wendell Bambleby

Faerie via Corbann

Dearest Emily,

I do not like this promise I made to you, that I would match the passage of time in my realm to that of the mortal world. Surely you would not object to me speeding things along a little, so that I should only have to wait another hour or two for your return. And anyway I am half convinced that the enchantment has gone awry somehow, for surely it has not merely been a day since you left. How dull it is without you! At least I have Niamh to talk to, and I have even taken to summoning my uncle every so often to keep me company, which he does not seem to appreciate, surly old recluse that he is. I have had some good conversations with Callum, and I seem to be making progress in convincing him that he need not be afraid of me. My dreadful sister has been following me about, but I do not count her as company, for all she does is mope. And what reason does she have to carry on so? I have endured a great deal more hardship than she, and yet here I am, engaging in all sorts of industry and enduring tedious demands upon my time; nor have I had one word of sympathy from her. I don’t know why she has suddenly chosen to inflict her presence upon me; I even woke this morning to find her curled up outside my door under a blanket, asleep. I attempted to talk to her kindly, which I knew you would appreciate, as you seem to have some sympathy for the wretch, but she only spat insults at me. Is this situation better or worse than when she was trying to kill me? Worse, I think. I could throw her back into the dungeons if she were up to no good. You will only be angry with me if I do so otherwise.

Anyway, Em, I am sure you are happily ensconced in your native habitat, that dreary monument to mortal rumination that is the library, no doubt thinking of me hardly at all. Well, why would you give a thought to romance or the faerie kingdom that now belongs to you as much as to me when you have a limitless supply of dusty old tomes to mutter and scowl at? I see now that my downfall as a suitor lies in my ability to offer you only a castle, great quantities of faerie silver, and various enchantments to dazzle and provoke you, instead of the full bound collection of Dryadological Fieldnotes.