Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde, #1)(7)
He did not appear put off. “If you’re wearied, Ulfar’s beer will put you right. Some folk say it’s an acquired taste, but it’ll warm your belly and grease your tongue better than anything the world over.”
I forced a thin smile. I expected him to depart, but he only stood there, gazing at me. I recognized his expression, for I’ve seen it before: that of a man trying unsuccessfully to slot me into one of the categories of womanhood with which he is familiar.
“Where are you from, Professor?” he said with a hint of his former friendliness. I think he is the type who can never keep someone at a distance for long.
“I live at Cambridge.”
“Yes. But where are your folk?”
I suppressed a sigh. “I grew up in London. My brother lives there still.”
“Oh.” His expression cleared. “You’re an orphan?”
“No.” This was not the first time someone has assumed that about me. I suppose people are often looking for a way to explain me, and a childhood of neglect or deprivation is as good as any. In truth, my parents are perfectly ordinary and perfectly alive, though we are not close. They have never known what to make of me. When I read every book in my grandfather’s library—I must have been eight or so—and came to them with certain thorny passages memorized, I had expected my mother and father to offer clarity—instead, they had stared at me as if I had suddenly become very far away. I never knew my grandfather—he had no interest in children, nor anything else besides his society of amateur folklorists—but after he died, and we inherited his house and possessions, his books became my best friends. There was something about the stories bound between those covers, and the myriad species of Folk weaving in and out of them, each one a mystery begging to be solved. I suppose most children fall in love with faeries at some point, but my fascination was never about magic or the granting of wishes. The Folk were of another world, with its own rules and customs—and to a child who always felt ill-suited to her own world, the lure was irresistible.
“I have been at Cambridge since I was fifteen,” I said. “That is when I began my studies. It is home to me, more than any other.”
“I see,” he said, though I could tell that he didn’t at all.
After Finn departed, I unpacked the rest of my things, which, as I had expected, took but a moment—I brought only four dresses and some books. The familiar smell of Cambridge’s Library of Dryadology wafted out with them, and I felt a shiver of yearning for that musty, ancient place, a haven of quiet and solitude in which I have whiled away many hours.
I glanced around the little cottage, which still smelled of sheep and was a home to many a cobweb-laying spider, but I’ve little patience for housework and soon gave up the idea. A house is merely a roof over one’s head, and this one would serve me adequately as it was.
Shadow and I finished our breakfast (I gave him most of the goose egg), and I filled my canteen with stream water and tucked it into my backpack along with the rest of the bread, my box camera, a measuring tape, and my notebook. Thus prepared for a day in the field, I turned my attention to banking the fire per Finn’s instructions.
I raked the poker through the embers, then stopped. I pushed aside the husk of a log, reached within, and drew out Bambleby’s letter. I blew at the ash and skimmed the elegant cursive. It was entirely unscathed.
I added wood to the fire, stoking the flames, and tossed the letter back in. It did not catch. The fire coughed smoke, as if the letter were an unpleasant obstacle lodged in its throat.
“Damn you,” I muttered, narrowing my eyes at the heavy stationery staring insouciantly back at me from the flames. “Am I supposed to keep the bloody thing under my pillow?”
I should, I suppose, mention here that I am perhaps ninety-five percent certain that Wendell Bambleby is not human.
This is not the product of mere professional disdain; Bambleby’s impossible letter is not my first piece of evidence regarding his true nature. My suspicions were aroused at our initial meeting some years ago, when I noticed the sundry ways in which he avoided the metal objects in the room, including by feigning righthandedness so as to avoid contact with wedding rings (the Folk are, to a one, left-handed). Yet he could not avoid metal entirely, the event including a dinner, which invariably involved cutlery, sauce boats, and the like, and he mastered the discomfort well enough, which indicated that either my suspicions were unfounded or that he is of royal ancestry—they are the only Folk able to bear the touch of such human workings.
Lest I appear credulous, I can attest that this was not enough to convince me. Upon subsequent encounters, I noted sundry suspect qualities, among them his manner of speaking. Bambleby is supposedly born in County Leane and raised in Dublin, and while I am no scholar of the Irish accents, I am expert in the tongue of the Folk, which is but one with many dialects, yet possessing a certain resonance and timbre that is universal, and which I hear whispers of in Bambleby’s voice in occasional, unguarded moments. We have spent a significant amount of time in each other’s company.
If he is Folk, he likely lives among us in exile, a not uncommon fate to befall the aristocracy of the Irish fae—their kind rarely goes without a murderous uncle or power-mad regent for long. There are plenty of tales of exiled Folk; their powers are sometimes said to be restricted by an enchantment cast by the exiling monarch, which would explain Bambleby’s need to resign himself to an existence among us lowly mortals. His choice of profession may be part of some fae design I cannot guess at, or it may be a natural expression of Bambleby’s nature, that he should set his sights upon acquiring external affirmations of self-expertise.