Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3)(78)

The dog took no note of me. His world was that of smells, not theories. And while he had never demonstrated any particular aptitude for locating faerie doors in the past, perhaps because he saw them as unexceptional features within the shifting tapestry of scent, his nostrils were twitching now. He stood.

“Shadow,” I said warningly.

He stood there for a moment, simply looking at nothing, and I thought that was the end of it and he would lie back down again, as he did whenever he sighted a rabbit on the campus lawn, remembering the effort it would require to catch it. Then the dog made a motion with his snout that was like lifting up the hem of a curtain. And then he stepped into the shadow, and was gone.

“Shadow!” I lunged forward, but caught only a few hairs of the dog’s tail. He could move quickly when he wanted to, which was not often.

I am not proud of this, but my immediate reaction was not to send for help, or to charge after him. Instead, I slumped against the dais and burst into tears.

I was crying like a child, heedless of the noise I was making. I heard the murmur of Folk around me, and felt small hands patting my face, my hands, caught the flicker of wet black eyes and leaf-woven hats. I ignored them.

After a few moments, someone pulled me into their arms—not at all gently—and held me in a tight grip. Too tight. It was a faerie, which I knew from the way she smelled. Many people assume the Folk, the courtly fae in particular, will smell like roses, but in truth they smell like mortals, at least on the surface. I suspect it is a part of their glamour, for beneath this is the smell of rainforests and river reeds, moss and algae and leaves decaying into humus. A green smell, not always pleasant, noticeable only when one is very close.

The faerie held me so tight it was almost a wrestling match to get away. This was surprisingly effective at calming my sobs, for my misery was eclipsed by irritation. It was Deilah—but I had guessed that by her golden hair, which she had shoved my face into.

“Poor thing!” she cried. “I should have stayed to comfort you—we could have comforted each other.”

I made no response to this—she was still gripping my arms too hard and gazing at me with an excited sort of despair that I found more exhausting than pitiable. Deilah wore a mourning cloak, which for the Folk of this realm meant a cloak woven with thorns that pricked at your arms and throat, and her dress was a torn and filthy mess. Her hair, too, had pinecones and bits of mud stuck in it, as if she had hurled herself down on the forest floor multiple times. She was, on the whole, a pathetic sight, her eyes painfully swollen, as if she had not left off sobbing for days, though she would have been more pathetic if she did not give off the impression of having taken part in her dishevelment. The mud on her cheek, for instance, looked as if it had been smeared on by a finger, and as someone who had traversed the forests of Wendell’s realm several times now, I did not quite understand how one would come by so many tears in one’s dress, unless they went looking for blackberry bushes to fall into.

Still, she was here, and so I babbled what had happened. Her eyes grew wider and wider as I spoke.

“Where is the door?” she demanded, whipping around to scan the room. Her instantaneous belief in me did not inspire confidence—quite the opposite, in fact; I felt a shadowy premonition that Lord Taran’s skepticism would soon be proven right. With their only ally a querulous ragamuffin, anyone would doubt their cause.

“Somewhere here,” I said, pointing to the dark place where Shadow had vanished.

She patted the dais, then pounded on it, as if she might tear the stone apart. Finally she sagged back, panting. “Call him,” she demanded.

“What?”

“Call your dog!” she cried, looking at me as if I were the stupidest person on earth. “Perhaps he cannot find his way back! Have you just been sitting there?”

Much as I wished to, I did not bother pointing out that I had been far more occupied in saving Wendell than someone who had spent the last day staggering about in the forest, wailing. I saw no reason not to follow her advice, other than the fact that it was rather mad—a largely immaterial detail in Faerie.

“Shadow!” I cried.

“Louder!” she urged.

I called louder. I called until my throat was hoarse. I nearly fell over when I heard a distant, warbling howl.

Shadow.

“Here!” I yelled. “Shadow, here! Come!”

The howl came again—closer? I did not know. I could not tell exactly where the howl was coming from. Eerily, it seemed as if it were beneath us, reverberating through the floor.

“What does he like to eat?” the girl demanded, crouching at my side with her knees up in the lithe manner of a small child. We were both staring hard at the blank stone, and if that were not enough to make me feel I was going mad, the girl’s inane question was.

“I thought you were supposed to be clever,” she snapped in response to my expression. “Or is that just in comparison with my brother? Nobody thinks he’s smart, that’s for sure. Dogs see by smell.”

Of course they did—of course. No sooner had I told her about Shadow’s preference for raw meat—of any variety, but the smellier the better—than she was snapping her fingers imperiously at the servants, who ran off in disorderly haste, some crashing into each other. I became aware that a crowd had gathered behind us, common and courtly fae craning to see what we were fussing about. I don’t think they had any clue what was going on, but they were muttering excitedly among themselves nonetheless. The brownie selling nuts was back, which did not help my growing feeling of hysteria.