Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde, #1)(82)

30th January—later (presumably)


It was some time before I was able to escape from visitors and their interminable questions about my nuptials—which I do not recall answering, though I suppose I must have done. Then I banished my servants to the doorway of my bedroom and settled by the window in an overstuffed white chair that looked like a frozen cake to read Wendell’s journal.

The journal had a silk ribbon attached to the spine, naturally, with which he had marked the page. Though I had promised to confine my reading to the relevant passages, I could not help flipping back through his earlier writings. I had not underestimated him—there was little there to speak of: a few desultory descriptions of Poe’s tree home and various rock formations the villagers must have pointed out to him and which he probably only wrote down because said villagers were standing there watching him expectantly; a few passages he’d copied from my field notes, perhaps to remind himself to put them in our paper; a handful of local faerie stories I recalled him collecting from Thora. He’d only bothered to describe a few of his days towards the beginning of our stay, and I half expected to find these full of complaints about my tyrannical demands or the deprivations of our lodging, but I suppose he considered written expostulations a pointless effort, for these entries were factual if extremely abbreviated. He had a habit of doodling, marginalia I was inclined to ignore given that a full half of these sketches were of me, including one that made me still. In it, I was bent over my notebook, hair tumbling over my shoulders as it usually does in the evening, my chin on my hand and a small smile on my face. It was very detailed work, each stroke carefully chosen. I could see the places where he’d smudged the ink with a thumb to create shadow—the curve of my neck; the hollow between my collarbones.

I flipped the page—my face was hot, and little shivers ran over me like the strokes of a pen. I focused on the other sketches, some of which were of ghastly trees, huge and grasping yet drawn with a loving hand, and others were of a creature that I eventually understood to be a cat. This was not an easy deduction; he’d only ever drawn it in hints, a few slashes of black ink, as if it was not wholly a material being. Yet there was something about those hints that unsettled me. I could not tell if he was terrible at drawing cats or if he simply had a terrible cat.

I turned at last to the entry he had marked, the day he would have discovered me missing. To my astonishment (self-doubt not being a quality I had ever attributed to Wendell Bambleby), it began with a great many crossings-out, the words illegible now, though I saw the shape of my name beneath the scorings several times.





27/11/09


All right. I shall simply begin. You would want me to be academic about this, wouldn’t you? To treat your disappearance like some bloody appendix.

I will skip over my discovery of your letter. Suffice it to say that I will not be letting Krystjan in until I have cleaned up. Things are looking a bit warped, as if in my fury I put a crease in the veil between Faerie and the mortal realm. Poor Shadow! He was so affrighted he fled to the tavern. Never fear, I have given him plenty of pats, as well as an entire bowl of Ulfar’s gravy, and I believe he has forgiven me.



(At this point, he seemed to have stabbed the page several times).

    Anyway. That was not terribly academic, was it? Only I cannot stop picturing you reading this. I think that I have to picture you reading this, otherwise I will go mad. But let me try again.

Once I finished reading your letter—thank you for being so matter-of-fact about this suicidal mission of yours; it’s not as if I had just begged you to marry me and might thus be inclined to some emotion about the whole thing—and once I had calmed down afterwards, I naturally set out for the tavern to petition the locals for assistance. Rather, I tried to set out; when I opened the cottage door a little avalanche of snow came tumbling in, sending me reeling backwards. Lovely: it had blizzarded in the night, so much that a drift was piled halfway up the door. I collected myself and went hurrying down the stairs too fast, tripped, and plunged face-first onto the snow-shrouded lawn. The wind was vicious—it was cold like I’d never felt before, not even in Ljosland. It took me a quarter of an hour just to wade down the lane, and by the time I reached the tavern, there was such a quantity of snow in my boots and sleeves that I was soaked through and shuddering. Such an enchanting place this is.

Fortunately, Aud and Thora were both in attendance, as well as sundry village youths, having been bestirred from their beds to dig out the village. Aud seemed concerned by my appearance, saying something about my colouring, and it was only then that I noticed I’d forgotten to don my cloak before stepping out into the arctic chill. Aud and Thora kept trying to herd me to the fire, talking endlessly about tea and breakfast, ignoring my protestations, which were rather garbled on account of my lips being turned to ice, until finally I took up the breakfast tray and hurled it against the wall, whereupon it shattered into a plume of leaves and pine cones (I did not mean to do this, only my magic was flaring erratically). I feel rather badly about that now—I believe I scared them, though Aud didn’t show it, merely shoved me into a fireside chair with more force than necessary.

“I don’t want tea,” I informed her when she pressed a mug into my hand.

“Either drink it or have it emptied over your head, you mad faerie,” she replied, flinging a blanket in my face.