Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3)(83)

“It’s like that apple tree he gave us, isn’t it?” she said. “It flowers and gives fruit all year long, even when the snow is deep enough to touch the boughs. I can appreciate the apples, but only if I don’t think about them too much. If I start, I fear I will never stop thinking, if you know what I mean.”

I put the letters down. I was too unsettled to focus on them now, anyway. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I am ruining your holiday with all my melodrama.”

Margret laughed. “You would not be our Emily if you were not trying to solve some faerie mystery. We expected something of this nature.”

“Yes,” Lilja said. “Well, perhaps not quite of this nature. I still don’t understand why Wendell is not dead. It is said in our stories that is one thing their magic cannot overcome.”

“As far as I understand it, he wasn’t truly dead,” I said. “Not by our mortal definition, anyway. The spirits of the Folk do not depart immediately, but linger for a time in some in-between realm. It is only for that reason that the housekeeper was able to recover him.”

Lilja nodded peaceably—I don’t think she found this particularly helpful. “A good subject for one of your papers,” she said.

I gave a soft laugh. “Yes.”

Lilja poured me another cup of tea. “How long will you stay?”

“As long as it takes me to solve this,” I said.

They exchanged another look. “What do you need to solve?” Margret said. “This Queen Arna is dead. I agree with Wendell on that—she deserved no better fate, and perhaps a worse one.”

“No,” I said. “Something is wrong. In every version of ‘King Macan’s Bees,’ the second king is punished for murdering the first. It has become more and more clear to me that Wendell is caught in that same pattern—too many details parallel the Macan story. Our plan to murder the queen was always the wrong one, much as I cannot see what else we could have done. Stories are the architecture of Faerie, more powerful than magic, more powerful than kings.”

“I thought you said there was one with a happy ending,” Lilja said.

I rubbed my eyes. “Yes. There is one version of ‘King Macan’s Bees’ wherein the first king dies and the second king and his mortal wife live happily ever after. But even that—I don’t know. There is something off about it. I wonder if perhaps it was mistranslated.”

Lilja was nodding. “Or someone’s grandfather decided it needed a better ending. That’s what my afi would do. He loved all the old tales of the tall ones, but if it ended in misery and suffering, he would change it. That drove my mother mad—‘disrespectful,’ she called him. Yet we mortals can change those old stories, can’t we?”

I thought of my own grandfather, left to die upon a lonely heath by his faerie love. “Sometimes we can,” I said. “If we are not ensnared ourselves.”

I shook off my dark thoughts. “In any case, I can think better here, without distractions. And Wendell—well, he will only argue with me. We do not see eye to eye on this.”

“Are you certain you cannot convince him?” Margret said.

I didn’t need to think about it. “Yes.”

Lilja nodded, frowning. “I would not want to be on his bad side,” she said slowly. “I know you believe he is different from the king of our tall ones. But there have been moments—only a few, mind—when I am not so certain.”

I had no answer to this, and we drank our tea in silence. Shadow, stretched out by the fire, grunted and bared his teeth in his sleep, likely dreaming of rabbits.

“Can we help?” Margret said. “I am slow at reading English, especially the writings of scholars. But perhaps we will notice details you miss.”

I looked at them, both smiling at me encouragingly, and felt the knots inside me loosen, just a little. “Thank you,” I said. “I—I would be very grateful to have your help.”



* * *



—

When I was at Trinity in January, I collected several dozen iterations of “King Macan’s Bees,” all of which I brought with me to Corbann. Most I had copied myself, which meant that Lilja and Margret were frequently asking me to translate my inelegant scrawl.

After two or three hours, I rose to pace by a window, scowling down at my notes. Lilja stretched and stood. Margret was in the kitchen, attending to the bread she was baking for lunch.

“I need to rest my eyes,” Lilja said. “Would you care to see my progress on the carving?”

I would have preferred to continue my work, but felt it would be boorish to say no, so I followed her to her workshop.

“Wonderful!” I cried. She had nearly finished the carving of Poe—only his feet remained. His fingers were perhaps not quite as long and sharp as they are in reality, but then it is difficult to do justice to such a thing without the aid of enchantment. I looked up to find Lilja regarding me.

“It is good to see you in your old clothes,” she said, smiling. “I did not wish to criticize, for you looked lovely in those faerie dresses. But I had the sense that they were not very comfortable.”

I gave a short laugh. “That is an understatement. Though I should note that the dresses were quite comfortable in the ordinary sense. It is more that I was not comfortable in them.”