Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde, #1)(54)

“Is there anything else in there?” she said.

I dug around in the pockets again, but my hands were empty when I withdrew them. She swallowed and turned back to the compass.

I made us keep going, even as hours passed and it became clearer and clearer that we were still tangled up in the faerie world, like a fly struggling in a web. Shadow felt it too. He growled and paced ahead of us and then back again, his nose snuffling at the snow, searching for a way out, like a fold in a stage curtain he might slide beneath.

We had to rest after a while, if only out of sheer exhaustion. I drew Lilja and Margret into my ridiculous cloak, which had an itchy, prickly sort of warmth, as if the garment were irritated by the use I made of it. It made me yearn all the more for my old cloak, even though Bambleby had made it ostentatious. But at least I found a flask of water in the pocket of the faerie cloak, which we shared among the three of us. It seems clear that the cloak was indeed enchanted to supply its owner with whatever he or she requires, though it doles out those gifts in a most miserly way—some food would have been nice, along with the water, or a lantern and some flint. Perhaps it is only miserly when forced to serve mortals.

Margret was stumbling more and more, and we could walk only another hour or two before we had to stop again. And here we are, tucked into a cave in the mountainside. Lilja and Margret are huddled in the cloak, Lilja furiously rubbing at poor Margret’s arms, while Shadow continues his search outside for a door to the mortal realm. I have faith in him, my oldest, most loyal friend—if there is a way out, he will find it. I have had to force myself to consider the alternative—that we may need to go crawling back to the Hidden Ones merely to stay alive; how many hours of life that will buy us is not something I wish to contemplate. I will put the pen aside for now and rest briefly.




Skip Notes

*1 Outside of Russia, almost all known species of courtly fae, and many common fae also, are fond of fairs and markets; indeed, such gatherings appear in stories as the interstitial spaces between their worlds and ours, and thus it is not particularly surprising that they feature in so many encounters with the Folk. The character of such markets, however, varies widely, from sinister to benign. The following features are universal: 1) Dancing, which the mortal visitor may be invited to partake in; 2) A variety of vendors selling food and goods which the visitor is unable to recall afterwards. More often than not, the markets take place at night. Numerous scholars have attempted to document these gatherings; the most widely referenced accounts are by Baltasar Lenz, who successfully visited two fairs in Bavaria before his disappearance in 1899.



*2 While it is considered settled fact that the common fae are strengthened by mortal gifts, whether the more powerful courtly fae experience the same benefit is a matter of much conjecture. For my part, I have never seen any reason why this should not be so; that it defies human logic is not a sufficient counterargument where the Folk are concerned.





20th November


Well, what an absolute nightmare of a country this is—even worse than I previously supposed, which is quite the feat; little more than ice and darkness and nasty, hungry things gnashing their teeth. Trust you to have dragged me into it.

I have no doubt, my dear Em, that you will be beside yourself with gratitude when you find that I have filled in the next entry in your journal. When I informed you of my intentions, I believe you glared in your sleep, another superpower of yours. You are snoring now in the sleigh, and Margret and Lilja are similarly wearied, and so with no other options for occupying myself beyond admiring the scenery as the horses bear us back to Hrafnsvik, a dubious prospect at best, I will do you this good turn. You may thank me when you wake.

Naturally, I thought about glancing through what you have written, at least to look for my name, but something stopped me. No doubt it was my chivalrous nature; I certainly can’t imagine what else it would be. Ah, you’re stirring a little. Strange how you always keep your left hand stuffed into your pocket, even in sleep; I tried to see if you had injured it, and you elbowed me in the face.

Anyway. I suppose I should pick up where you left off, yes? Though let us backtrack a little to set the stage.

It was close to noon when I awoke to find you vanished, and Shadow too. Oh, how I hate this place. Usually upon awakening I experience a few blissful seconds in which I think that I am home again, that at any moment I will hear the rustle of the weeping rowan as it murmurs to itself by my window or the pitter-patter of my cat’s feet as she comes to greet me. (Did you know I had a cat back in Faerie? She is not the sort you would like to meet. I would tell you more, but you would only write a bloody paper about her.) But in this foul place, it is so cold that I cannot ever fool myself into thinking I am home, and so I am denied even that brief moment of peace.

You’ll no doubt be happy to hear that I didn’t rush after you immediately. Of course I guessed that you had concocted some scheme in the night, which you would no doubt carry out with your usual reptilian efficiency, no help needed from the faerie king you have dragged along with you like a half-forgotten doll. I don’t mean to say that I was insulted; I was more than happy to have been left behind with the fire and the blankets. But I soon grew bored of waiting, and of worrying that your plans had gone awry, as even the plans of fire-breathing dragons are wont to do sometimes, Em.

And so I took one of the horses and followed your tracks, and very interesting tracks they were, leading me to a frozen lake where there was absolutely nothing to see at all, but of course I knew that I stood outside the door to what I’m sure is a very charming faerie realm, no doubt filled with Folk with icicles for hair or something equally grotesque. I did not bother looking for a way in to exchange pleasantries with the locals, for I could see from your tracks that you had been and gone, sort of, for the tracks led in and out of Faerie, and in and out again, as if you had wandered for some time without being able to extricate yourself from the borderlands of their realm. When I saw that I became very worried indeed, for there was no way of knowing how long you’d been wandering, though only a few hours had passed in the mortal world. I was finally alerted to your presence when that fiendish dog of yours came charging out of nowhere, howling his head off. From the sound he was making, you were dead or dying or frozen into a dessert for some bogle, and so rather than looking for a proper door into their realm, I simply ripped a hole through it, and kept ripping until I found you in that cave.