Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3)(50)
My train was due to depart Dublin at ten, which gave me time for breakfast with Farris and Ariadne. But when Shadow and I arrived at the café, I found Farris seated alone at a table, looking grim.
“Oh dear,” I said, pushing my hood back. It was one of those still winter mornings when the world is all shades of white—the sky like eggshell; the vines creeping up the stone buildings limned with frost. “Has something happened? Where is Ariadne?”
“Nothing has happened,” Farris said. “I asked Ariadne to join us in half an hour. I wanted a few moments to—confess something.”
I was not much heartened by this, given the seriousness of his expression. He drummed his fingers on the table and then said abruptly, “How is your book progressing? The politics of Faerie—an excellent topic.”
“Yes,” I said, a little annoyed, but deciding to allow him to come to the point in his own time. He looked almost ill. “Though I have had a change of heart about it—I wished to focus on politics because I wanted to get at the structure of Faerie. What makes it tick, in other words. Yet I have realized that I am going about it wrong. The politics of Faerie—indeed, everything about the place—revolves around stories. Stories shape the realms and the actions of those who dwell there. Some of those stories are known to mortals, but many others have been lost, both to us and the Folk.”
Farris nodded. “Then your book will be about the Macan tale?”
“That will be a piece of it,” I said, leaning forward as I warmed to the topic. “I thought I would create a compendium of tales told by the Folk of the Silva Lupi. I mentioned that crow woman, bound by an ancient curse laid upon her by Wendell’s father. I have met a dozen such creatures in Wendell’s realm, enmeshed in stories every bit as fascinating as hers. If I can gather enough of them together, I believe we scholars might come close to grasping the true essence of the Silva Lupi—which is, like all of Faerie, an intricately woven tapestry of story.”
He smiled. “It is a most intriguing idea. Brilliant, even—no scholar has ever had the sort of access to the Folk that you have.”
“It is partly inspired by you,” I said. “Your Sandstone Theory. You have always argued we should pay more attention to the stories the Folk tell of themselves if we wish to understand Faerie.”
He murmured agreement. I noticed that his ear—the human one; the other was a strange, silver construction that he attempted to hide behind his lionlike white fringe—was now slightly pink. He seemed to steel himself for something, then opened his briefcase and took out a book. After a brief hesitation, he passed it to me.
The book was old and battered, the leather cover so worn it had become floppy. I flipped through it and found that it was not a book, but a journal, filled with someone’s small, precise hand. The writing was legible, but even at a cursory glance I noted many instances of shorthand abbreviations that I suspected would prove troublesome. There was something oddly familiar about it.
I flipped to the first page and was astonished to find, tucked in the corner of the inside cover, the letters E.W. They were of so similar a character to how I write my own initials—the same matter-of-fact crossed W, the same slight lean to the E—that for a moment I wondered if I wasn’t looking at one of my journals, which someone had taken and filled with their own writing. And yet—the hand was similar to mine. Neater, perhaps; it is more accurate to say that it was like mine when I take the time to make my writing legible to others, which I do only on rare occasions.
That was when I understood.
“This belonged to my grandfather,” I said, simultaneously baffled and intrigued. My grandfather Edgar Wilde, while not a dryadologist himself, had been fascinated by the Folk, and had amassed a small library of folklore over his lifetime that had been, in part, what had inspired me to pursue this field of study. “But how on earth did you come by it?”
Farris grimaced. “I should have told you this a long time ago, Emily: I knew your grandfather. I was concerned that this fact might affect our professional relationship.”
“You knew him? But why would that have any effect upon our relationship?” When he did not immediately reply, I thought over what he had said, and my memory of our conversations, searching for connections. Once I understood, my mouth fell open.
“He was your friend,” I murmured. “The one you told me about in St. Liesl, who died from exposure in Exmoor. The Folk killed him.”
“Yes.” Farris gazed absently into the fire. “Not just a friend; Edgar and I were like brothers. We grew up together, and remained close through many of life’s vicissitudes. It was he who held me together after Catherine passed—my wife.”
“But—” I was still struggling with the revelation. “I was told my grandfather died from heart failure.”
“I believe that was the medical explanation,” Farris said. “Yes, he did have trouble with his heart, but he could have lived many years longer than he did. I’m not surprised your family kept the full story hidden, given that it was somewhat—indelicate. Not only because Edgar was still married to your grandmother when he ran off with that faerie woman, but—well. The circumstances.”
I did not need clarification. Farris’s childhood friend—my grandfather—had been cruelly abandoned by the wandering group of Folk who had taken him in. When he had pursued them, still desperately in love, they had tied him to a tree by his beard, and there he had hung for hours before he was found.