Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3)(79)
Several servants returned, thrusting plates of meat into our hands. I stacked them beside the dais like a gory offering at a sacrifice, and suddenly the howling was much louder. I shouted until my voice broke, and then I was toppling over backwards, knocked flat by the large and hairy shape that had plowed into my chest.
I made a strangled sound, half sob and half shriek, burying my face in his fur. The dog was pulling something large and grey behind him, which turned out to be the housekeeper faerie, whom Shadow had been dragging along by the ankle. The dog dropped him as unceremoniously as he would a bone he’d tired of and leapt on me again, his tongue swiping at my face. Something strange happened next, and it is only by looking back at the memory that I am able to smooth it out, to see the details. The oíche sidhe had been pulling something, too—I thought it was a lantern, in the moment, or nothing at all, just a reflection off one of the room’s silver mirrors. But whatever it was, it vanished when the faerie came spilling out of Wendell’s shadow and tumbling across the room.
“What happened?” I demanded of the housekeeper when Shadow had calmed somewhat and noticed the vast pile of his favourite victuals, to which he delightedly applied himself. The faerie was moaning—no wonder, for Shadow had not been gentle, and his leg seemed to be bleeding.
“The king,” the faerie murmured. “Where—? I lost him—”
I knew I should have been paying more attention to his injury, but I could not help demanding, “What do you mean? Did you see Wendell?”
Deilah screamed. She surged to her feet and threw herself upon the dais, where Wendell—
Where Wendell was sitting up.
He had pulled the ivy from his face—there was still a great deal in his hair, along with a small flock of butterflies and moths—and was looking very cross. He shoved Deilah away with a cry of “Ah! You’re filthy!” and began yanking at the vegetation at his chest, vines that speared his cloak and twined round his fingers.
“Look at this!” he exclaimed to no one in particular. “My poor cloak! Bloody thorns have ruined it. I cannot mend what has been reduced to threads.”
He gave up with a curse and looked around, blinking confusedly at the crowd staring at him in frozen awe, before his gaze finally landed on me, whereupon his face lit up. “Em! What on earth has happened?”
I leapt on him then, babbling nonsensically, and a roar arose among the gathered Folk—mostly positive, I believe, though as before, some were less than pleased by Wendell’s return, for a few went stampeding down the steps, shrieking. The forest erupted in lantern light and a cacophony of melody that hurt my ears, as various musicians began jostling with one another for the right to celebrate Wendell’s return the loudest.
Wendell did not ask any more questions, merely held me in his arms as I babbled and cried—perhaps I was making more sense than I thought, or, more likely, his memory was returning to him. Several of the moths were crushed between us, their dry wings leaving streaks of dust against my cheek. At some point, Shadow managed to hop up on the dais, slobbering all over us both, and then he sprinted from the room like a pup. He returned moments later with Orga dangling from his mouth by her scruff, hissing and spitting and generally promising imminent pain to her captor. She managed to get in a slash across Shadow’s face, and the poor dog dropped her.
“Orga!” Wendell exclaimed. “Leave him be, dear.”
She started comically at the sound of his voice, and I expected her to leap at him as Shadow had done, but naturally she had to express her fury and indignation first, and circled the dais, yowling at her master at the top of her lungs. Wendell reached for her, but she only swiped at him with a hiss.
“You miserable brute!” I exclaimed in disgust, but Wendell only laughed. I could not stop myself from touching him, as if from one moment to the next he might vanish—his face, his chest, where now there was no wound, only a greenish discolouration, like a grass stain upon a piece of cloth.
Razkarden alighted soundlessly at Wendell’s side, making me jump, and rested one of his hideous legs upon Wendell’s knee. Wendell smiled and rubbed the creature’s beak. “Happy to see me again, old friend?”
I examined him, looking for some sign of difference, but he seemed entirely himself, and as fresh as if he’d awoken from a nap. And if there was a certain enigmatical quality to his gaze, it was no more pronounced than before, and I was used to it anyway.
“What happened?” I murmured.
He tossed another piece of ivy aside. “I barely remember! It seemed as if I were in the forest. But it was odd. It was dark as a winter’s night, and cold—worse than that bloody ice court. I kept wandering, but nothing was familiar. I passed Folk, but it was as if they did not see me. And then—” His gaze fell upon the oíche sidhe, whom one of the servants had helped into an upright position. “You sent him, didn’t you? He said you had.”
“Yes,” I said. “In a way. Mostly he sent himself.”
The oíche sidhe staggered to his feet. He bowed to Wendell and myself, then brushed the wrinkles from his clothes before saying, “Forgive me, Your Highnesses. I failed. I found the king, but I could not find the way back out. I thought we would wander for eternity, until the beast arrived.”
“Was that Shadow?” Wendell gazed in astonishment at the dog, who was contentedly gnawing at a bit of gristle, slobber pooling below him. “Good Lord! I thought it was some eldritch monster come to feast upon my soul. When he pounced on us, I thought it was the end.”