Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3)(59)

The faerie’s creamery was not too deep, happily, or at least it did not feel so; a chimneylike skylight cut into the stone roof admitted the warm gold-green light of the forest. Given the faerie’s size, the workspace was expansive—even Wendell, the tallest among us, did not need to duck—with a hard-packed earthen floor and an array of shelves, some of which held blocks of butter wrapped in paper and twine. In the middle of the workshop was the butter churn, beside which was a tin bucket of milk with condensation forming on the side—which I think is what the faerie had been worrying about, for she immediately rushed over to it and carried it into her cellar. The air was cool, on the edge of cold, and the smell of the place made my mouth water. Not only of butter, but thyme and lavender, strawberries and honey, which the faerie used to flavour some of the blocks. Those on the nearest shelf had leaves tucked beneath the twine—basil, I think.

“What do you see?” Niamh asked eagerly.

I attempted to describe it as best I could, conscious that this was the sort of discovery that would make a dryadologist’s career, even if they were to accomplish nothing else. I felt another wave of dizziness.

“Now what?” Callum said. Wendell was tapping the toe of his pointed boot against the floor.

“Give her a moment to settle in,” I said. “She’s had a fright. She probably thought you were going to torture her. Is that not what your father would have done, Wendell?”

Now that the milk was returned to its proper place, the little faerie seemed much calmer. She went over to a cupboard with a lock upon it, fishing about in her pockets until she located a key. From within she drew out another block of butter wrapped in cloth, which looked to me like all the others on the shelves, only the faerie handled it as tenderly as if it were her child. She went to Wendell and held it out, bowing deeply.

Wendell’s mood had shifted, as it was wont to do, or perhaps he had taken my admonishment to heart. He knelt before the faerie and said in a light voice, “Thank you, little one, but I will not deprive you of your prize handiwork. I need only one thing, which you know. You need not fear the wrath of the old queen, for I shall protect you. Will you help me?”

It was an image that made me wish for my notebook and sketching pencils. Wendell wore only a few silvered leaves in his golden hair, his tunic was cut simply and his cloak was an ordinary aristocratic-looking thing—not the one with the beast living in it—yet any who beheld him would have known him as a monarch of Faerie. It had been happening gradually after he returned to his realm, and now that we had been apart a few days, I could see it clearly: not only was he more at ease in himself, to an extent that was not remotely human, but there was a sense that everything around him, the air included, seemed to bend in his direction. I suppose that, if Barrister is correct,[*2] it had something to do with Wendell no longer being entirely Wendell—or not only Wendell—but the source of every enchantment that held his realm together. And there he was, kneeling before a trembling, dirt-stained faerie barely as tall as my knee, who was clutching a block of butter.

The faerie seemed to feel some of this as well, for her entire attitude towards Wendell changed. Her red face became even redder, and she bowed many times, looking suddenly more eager than afraid. She put away her butter first, then rummaged about on one of her overcrowded shelves, shoving aside several glass jars of honeycomb. Shyly, she moved back towards Wendell, head lowered, and placed a small tin in his hand. She muttered something in a rapid patter of Faie and Irish.

He stood and handed the tin to me. Nervously, I lifted the lid, and found within a handful of empty snail shells about the length of my thumb. They were highly distinct, leaf-green with pointed domes that made them look almost aquatic. Each whorl included a stripe of pure silver.

“She says they were my stepmother’s favourite,” Wendell said. “She would deliver them to the little one to be cooked in butter.”

I nodded slowly. “Have you seen this species before?”

“As a child, yes. They have long been considered a delicacy by the nobility, and for this reason they have gone extinct—or so I thought. They are cousins of the snails we have around here, in the forest, and can be just as vengeful, in their way.”

I shuddered. “Where are they found?”

“They are island-dwellers exclusively. The little one knows not how my stepmother came by them.”

“Islands,” I repeated. A little shiver went down my back, as if a ghost stood just behind me. “But there are no islands nearby.”

Wendell shook his head slightly. “My realm extends to the edge of the land and the shallows of the sea. There we have a scatter of many islands—hundreds of them, if one counts the shoals and rocks. The trouble is, I know little of the coast, other than that it stretches for miles.”

Wendell went back to speak to the butter faerie, and Niamh pulled me aside.

“There is one thing in all this that concerns me,” she said in a low voice.

I knew what she was about to say, but affected not to. “Yes?”

“King Macan’s successor,” she said. “The new king, the one who defeats the curse upon his kingdom and marries the mortal woman. He dies in the end.”

“Yes,” I said. “But there is no reason to suppose every detail will be repeated in our situation—for it is not so, is it? The curses are different; the setting. Besides, I discovered an iteration of the tale in which Macan the Second lives. There is no consistency on that point.”