Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3)(45)

I could tell that Farris was holding back questions. The lines in his face—scholars’ lines, mostly between the brows and around the eyes, from frowning down at books—were sharper with suppressed tension, and suddenly I wanted nothing more than to tell him everything. And so I did.

Farris listened intently at first, then held up a hand with an “If you don’t mind?” He rummaged around in his pockets until he unearthed his glasses, settled them on the bridge of his nose, and opened the little notebook he’d placed beside him on the table.

“Please continue,” he said.

He did not attempt to steer the direction of my tale, though I went off course several times, providing far too much detail on extraneous matters (the ghastly oaks being one of these); he merely listened, jotting notes in his shorthand. Occasionally he would ask me to clarify something, but that was all. He might have been taking notes at a conference. I felt oddly comforted by the whole thing.

“This curse,” he said when I came to the end of the story. “It is worsening, then?”

“Every day it spreads to a new grove or moor,” I said. “Those that are not promptly burnt only grow larger. If we cannot put a stop to it, the realm will become a wasteland.”

Saying it out loud had an effect upon me that was like hearing Queen Arna’s name for the first time; it was a destabilizing feeling, like standing on the precipice of a great height. I realized that I had not said it before, the potential consequence of our failure, not even to myself. It did not feel real. Wendell and I had worked so hard to find a way back to his world—that all our efforts should have brought us to this!

I wished Wendell were with me, which was completely irrational, of course—he would not be of any practical help, and was needed in Faerie.

“The central problem,” I said, “is that the realm has two monarchs. Queen Arna has not formally abdicated the throne, nor has she been killed. As a half-mortal woman, she is no match for Wendell, but as a monarch of Faerie, she has access to magics other Folk might not even comprehend. Thus the strength of her curse.”

“Fascinating,” Farris said. I did not take offence to the excitement in his voice, recognizing it for scholarly enthusiasm and nothing more. “Other realms have fallen into states of decay due to curses and suchlike, but this situation strikes me as unique.”

I frowned as a thought occurred to me. “You must have left Cambridge directly after reading my letter.”

“Naturally!” he said, becoming preoccupied with the sugar. “What could be of greater scholarly interest than the inner workings of the Silva Lupi?”

If I hadn’t known him better, I would have thought he was being dismissive; but Farris, I know now, often gives off an impression of rudeness when he is flustered. I looked down at my own cup, blushing a little and feeling dreadfully awkward. He had abandoned his own research, as well as the graduate seminar he was teaching on Renaissance faerie art, and come all this way in the hopes of assisting me, and he had done so at the drop of a hat. And here I’d been worried about whether I would be taking liberties in writing him a letter.

“It is—an intriguing conundrum,” I finally said lamely.

Farris affected not to notice. “Indeed! Your travails in the Silva Lupi are rivalled only by Blake’s wanderings in Orkney.”

And just like that, we were back on ground more comfortable to the both of us. “Poor Blake,” I said. “It is a pity he never finished his book.”[*1]

“We should locate Ariadne,” Farris said. “She would be disappointed to be left out of this conversation.”

“She’s here?”

“Naturally. Since your foray into the Silva Lupi, she has become something of an expert on the subject—reads everything she can get her hands on. She is talking of specializing in Irish dryadology, though I have warned her against deciding on such things so early in her career…Anyhow, I could not very well leave her behind, all things considered.”

He made a dismissive gesture at the end of this vague statement, and I understood. Ariadne too had been eager to help me! Here I had thought that Wendell and I were navigating this path alone, with his magic and my ingenuity our only defences against a realm teeming with monsters. Yet here were two people who had crossed a sea to assist us.

I took a swallow of tea. “Where is the girl, anyway?” I said in a gruff voice.

“The museum,” Farris replied. “They have a fine collection of faerie stones and other artefacts—she had an idea that the stones might function as weapons against this Queen Arna. Several stories from that part of the country feature them, and why leave any stone unturned, pun intended. Let us go and seek her out.”



* * *



—

It took only a quarter hour or so to locate Ariadne—Trinity’s Museum of the Good Folk is a tall, narrow building[*2] of stone and ivy a short walk from the library, with an entire floor dedicated to the realms of the country’s southwest. The girl was hunched over a notebook on a flat bench across from the faerie stone display, a pensive look on her round, freckled face. She gave a cry of delight and astonishment when she saw me, and needed several reassurances that I had arrived by train, in the human fashion, and had not stepped out of one of the dozen or so faerie doors on display in the museum.

“Come,” Farris said, “let us go somewhere more private before we continue our discussion.”