Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3)(65)
I had to suppress a scream when we stepped outside, for there was an oak not five feet from the door now, glaring at me, and three more beyond it in the garden. Oh, how I had hoped I had mistaken that rumbling noise.
Lord Taran, behind me, was muttering curses under his breath. He drew his hood over his hair and gave the oak a black look. “Hurry up,” he muttered at me, and together we made haste to pass beneath the overhanging branches and regain the sunlight.
SKIP NOTES
* The scientific debate over the classification of boggarts has raged for decades. At present, the most widely accepted systems place them with the common fae, though many among the younger and more forward-thinking generation of dryadologists contest this, with Louis Meyers proposing an alternative system that classes both boggarts and Faeroese hessefolk with the courtly fae. Consider that the primary distinction between courtly and common is one of appearance: courtly fae can pass for mortals, while brownies and trooping faeries cannot. Yet most dryadologists also accept that the courtly fae possess magics the small Folk lack, and here we arrive at the crux of the debate, for boggarts are immensely powerful. Though the true limits of their magics are unknown, the Balfour boggart once relocated an entire village, while the rival boggarts in the medieval Falkirk tale “The Blind Hens” performed various escalating feats, including making a forest burst into song, the sound of which could be heard all the way to Glasgow. I know of not one bogle or brownie who has ever cast an enchantment of a similar scale. Indeed, Meyers argues that a boggart’s powers may equal those of some faerie kings and queens, and that they should be considered “free-ranging monarchs.” Given this, and the fact that boggarts may assume mortal guises when they choose, and often do, it seems self-evident to place them among the courtly fae. And yet! They are in nature very close to household brownies, given their attachment to mortal (or, in some cases, faerie) families, which they hold very dear and will protect with their lives. In this I am reminded of Poe and the Ljosland brownie concept of fjolskylda.
Amidst these complexities, our classification systems begin to feel outdated and parochial. Thus boggarts are another example of the blurred boundaries that exist between the Folk, much as we scholars try to herd them into tidy categories.
19th January
I must write it down. For it is in writing that I will discover a way out. A door within the story. There is one. It cannot end here.
Yet some stories do.
19th January, again
Enough of this. I will force my hand to move, and my mind to think.
We awoke early this morning in our makeshift campsite a few miles from the boggart’s lair, whereupon Wendell wasted no time in tracing a path back to the castle grounds. I suspect he reshaped geography itself, as he reshaped the boggart’s hill, for we reached the castle in less time than it had taken us to travel to the boggart’s tower even with Orga’s shortcuts. When we stood upon the lakeshore only a few hours later, Wendell was pale and trembling lightly, as if he had run a great distance on little sustenance.
“What now?” Lord Taran said.
“Take a boat out and look around, I suppose,” I said, still dubious about the whole thing. I did not believe we would find Queen Arna on the lake, though a part of me also hoped we would not, and I could not be certain where the first began and the other ended. At some point, it felt as if the story had galloped away from me, or perhaps it had galloped away with me, and I was barely holding on. Wendell had led us on a path that ended at the eastern edge of the lake, where a dock lined with glass lanterns—extinguished now, in the afternoon light—stretched out into the water. Alongside it were ten little boats large enough for four passengers each, perhaps, with wooden frames over which had been stretched the skins of animals I didn’t recognize—something with short black fur. Each had two sails, stowed now.
No islands had materialized in the time we had been away. The weather was out of humour, the sky a miscellany of patchy white and hulking grey clouds, all hurrying along as if late for an appointment, and the skin of the lake was wrinkled with tiny waves, which plashed against the shore and set the boats rocking.
“We will go alone,” Wendell said.
“Naturally you will,” Lord Taran said, exasperated. “I do not like this. I do not think it will end well.”
“It will end,” Wendell said, “one way or another.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, I will not have any of that portentous faerie nonsense. We are not going.”
He stared at me. “Emily! It was you who found me a path to my stepmother. Now, perhaps the boggart has led us astray and perhaps he has not; either way, we must search the lake.”
“I do not want—” I stopped, not knowing what I was saying. I did not want to follow the Macan story anymore, that was certain. It was proving too helpful, and now I did not trust it—as Niamh had pointed out, the end was not a happy one. But what could I say? That Wendell should allow his realm to be consumed by his stepmother’s curse? Yet I found myself framing the idea into an argument—we could return to Cambridge, look for another way to rid the realm of his stepmother. The memory of the soft light and leather-and-parchment smell of the dryadology library filled me like hunger. And truly, what on earth was I doing here in these ridiculous clothes, acting the part of a faerie queen in one of their stories?