Robots vs. Fairies(20)
Sela sighed. “Ah, well, it was a long shot. The Folk don’t produce much art, and don’t often share what they do. I thought Mellifera’s vanity might have led her to include the book in the collection, but it seems not. Too bad. Good-bye, mortal.”
“Stop. What is going on? What’s happened to Mellifera?”
“She’s under a powerful enchantment, and I need to save her.”
“Who enchanted her? I thought the Folk were immune to that kind of thing! And what does it have to do with this poetry collection?”
The fairy leaned against the door frame. She looked almost amused. “It’s not just poetry. It’s love poetry. Long ago Mellie fell in love with a mortal, wrote poems to him—in her own hand!—and had them bound, intending the poems as a gift.” Sela shook her head. “One night several centuries ago, during the new moon in October, she opened a passage from our world to the mortal’s house and read her poems to him. She wanted to lure him through, to stay with her forevermore. There is magic in such an act, you know—for a princess of the Folk to murmur such things under the moon. The man refused her, though, choosing his own mortal family instead. He must have had tremendous strength of will, because when Mellie wants to charm someone, they are generally well charmed.” Sela sighed. “Unfortunately, his refusal created a sort of . . . unresolved spell, deeply embedded in the pages of the book. Someone in possession of those poems, with the right knowledge, at the right time, can use it to reopen that passage between worlds and charm Mellie as she tried to charm her would-be lover—by symbolically becoming that lover.”
“Someone got the book and cast that spell?”
“A mortal student of the occult named Rudolph . . . something, I forget. We haven’t had time to gather much information on him. The new moon was two days ago. Mellifera left our realm without explanation, and then directed her subjects to loot our precious works of art and volumes of lore. Obviously, having a princess of the Folk in thrall to a mortal isn’t ideal. I have . . . certain skills, and was tasked with solving this problem. Destroying the book will destroy the enchantment, but since you can’t summon the poems, I’ll have to use other means.”
“I can help,” Emily said. “I have certain skills too.”
“Hmm.” Sela looked Emily up and down. “There could be advantages to having a mortal along. This enchanter may have protections against the Folk that you could more easily circumvent. Very well.” She rose and strode down the hall. Emily went after her, but Sela walked fast, and soon the familiar hallway was gone, the plaster walls becoming dark wood, the hardwood floor turning to stone. The corridor took many sharp right-angle turns, and though Emily moved along quickly, she kept losing sight of Sela, finally calling, “Wait!”
“Hurry!” came the call back. Emily gritted her teeth and ran. When she rounded the last corner she almost slammed into Sela, who stood on a tiny wooden platform in what looked like a cave, with train tracks running out of one tunnel and into another. “Just in time,” Sela said, as a vehicle slid smoothly from the tunnel and stopped before them.
Emily had seen Mellifera’s private train before, a sort of jeweled steampunk Fabergé egg on wheels, but this was something different: Sela’s train looked like an old-fashioned horse-drawn carriage with a closed coach, made of black wood with silver trim. The door swung open, and a folding set of steps spilled downward. Sela climbed inside, and after a moment’s hesitation, Emily followed.
The door closed after her, and the interior was totally dark, revealing that the sparkles in Sela’s hair did cast their own light. Emily groped her way to a sumptuously padded bench and sat down across from the fairy woman just as the car lurched forward. “Why is it so dark in here?”
“We’re going to a place in the mortal world, but it’s faster to take shortcuts through my realm. On the way, we will pass through tunnels where there are things that covet light. Our lands border . . . less pleasant countries. There are safer routes, but I want to get to Mellifera as quickly as possible.”
“You said you and Mellifera are friends?”
“We’re . . . sisters, or close enough. We spent our formative years together, anyway, but when we were done forming, we turned out rather differently. I choose to live outside the court of the Folk and dwell largely outside our lands. Occasionally I am called upon to render services in exchange for the freedoms I enjoy. This is one such occasion. The court can’t tolerate a mortal holding one of us in thrall.”
Emily’s grasp of fairy culture outside the boundaries of the library was tenuous at best. There were books about the subject, but they were wildly contradictory, and the Folk she spoke to about the subject were maddeningly oblique. “The court. Like, royalty? Is Mellifera some kind of queen?”
“Mmm. Perhaps a princess. We have a queen, but she sleeps, most of the time, and lets her daughters oversee things, with the work divided among them according to their inclinations and capabilities. Mellifera says it’s more like a board of directors than a proper court. Dull, really. Mellifera is sort of . . . minister of cultural affairs, you could say? She has ultimate authority over the libraries, museums, concert halls, and other such things. The Folk value the arts greatly—Mellifera’s position is one of great power and prestige.”
“Which she’s abusing, or being forced to abuse. Can’t she be replaced, before this enchanter steals everything?”