Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde #3)

11th January

Well! I have poured myself a glass of wine to celebrate, for I have completed my work here, and sooner than I thought I would, thanks in large part to Farris and Ariadne. A light rain, mixed with sleet, is falling beyond the window, but I have not drawn the curtains, for my view of the lantern-lit campus is charming in the winter night’s gloom. I must be concise, for my train departs Dublin early on the morrow. I would return to Faerie tonight if I could, but the trains do not line up, and I would just end up spending the night in Limerick.

Ariadne and I spent most of the last two days in the library, while Farris came and went; he was of more use in leveraging his connections among the Trinity dryadologists, of which he has a fair few.

From one Professor O’Connell he managed to obtain a rare book so obscure there is no record of it in any academic library, an authorless volume of folklore from Counties Leane and Clare, likely dating to the early eighteenth century, which is merely called Village Tales . It contains another version of “King Macan’s Bees,” overly concise ( Village Tales seems to have been written for children) but more complete than other iterations.

Farris even succeeded in identifying several scholars who are familiar with the tale, or have heard similar versions of it. The celebrated Professor Malik, who has been active in the field of Irish dryadology for the last half-century and is now semi-retired, was particularly helpful. Despite her age, her memory is impeccable, and she informed Farris that she had heard the tale some decades ago from an aged grandmother in a little village called Fenrow on the Leane coast. She had recorded it at the time, having thought perhaps to include it in one of her books, but the tale being so obscure—and, she suspected, invented by the grandmother in question, who according to her children had a habit of such things—she had culled it. Malik was able to provide Farris with the journal in which she had written the tale as it had been told to her by that now long-dead matriarch.

Ariadne, meanwhile, managed to win over the obstreperous head librarian with her unique combination of unconscious charm and youthful enthusiasm. Not only did he inform her that several relevant volumes of Irish tales were in the process of being re-bound, but he allowed her to peruse these at her leisure, provided she was careful to wear gloves and put everything back where she had found it (this last statement being delivered with a pointed look in my direction). In one of those volumes, we found another version of “King Macan’s Bees,” enigmatically titled “The King’s Revenge . ”

And thus, in fits and starts, and after having been met with various dead ends and false signposts, we have managed to stitch the tale together, to the extent possible. Missing pieces remain: What motivated Macan’s wife to betray him? Was she mistreated, as mortals in Faerie so often are? What is the nature of the bees, and are they symbolic of anything in particular?

I could go on. But in any case, here is the fruit of our research, such as it is.

King Macan’s Bees

There was once a minor faerie lord who dwelt in a mound known locally as King Macan’s tomb for reasons no one could remember. The mound was a natural feature long inhabited by the Folk, who also used the flat top for their summer revels, not an ancient, mortal-made monument to some dead king. Over the generations, the faerie lord came to be referred to as King Macan by the mortal inhabitants of the nearest village, which pleased him greatly. The faerie was not a king, and his castle within the mound was strange and dilapidated, but like all Folk, he saw himself as perfectly deserving of mortal veneration.

King Macan, being even more vain than the average faerie, had a great love of guests, for they gave him the opportunity to show off both his castle (which he thought very fine, despite its topsy-turvy architecture) and his appropriated title, which he had inscribed upon every lintel. This would prove his undoing, for one winter’s night a wandering peddler came to his door. This peddler, despite his humble appearance, was in fact a faerie prince who had unsuccessfully challenged his older sister for her throne and been chased out of the kingdom in disgrace. Though he had fallen on hard times, even being forced to make his living peddling trinkets to puffed-up nobodies like King Macan (so the prince regarded him), this had not made him humble. The prince, in fact, still wanted a throne, and he decided that an imaginary one was better than none at all.

After welcoming the peddler prince into the castle and giving him a tour, King Macan invited him to dine at his table and sleep a night beneath his roof. The prince acquiesced happily, and after all had retired for the night, he snuck out of his room and into the king’s chamber. With the help of King Macan’s wife, a mortal woman called Mona, the prince tied King Macan to his bed and bludgeoned him with his crown, which the king had made himself and inscribed with his false title. Thinking the man was dead, the prince threw his body into the river that flowed past the castle, placed the bloodied crown upon his head, and declared himself King Macan the Second. Then he announced his marriage to Mona [*1] and they retired together without so much as changing the bedding.

Unfortunately for Macan the Second, Macan the First had not been killed, only grievously wounded. He crawled up onto the riverbank, and there he cast a powerful curse upon the mound and all who dwelt there, fed with his heart’s blood and tears. For as long as the old Macan lived, the river in which he had nearly drowned would eat away at the foundations of the castle, making it teeter and shake ominously, while the bed in which he had been beaten, along with every other bed in the castle, would fill their occupants with nightmares so foul that some were driven insane.

Mona and her new husband knew they had to find the old Macan and kill him properly, for until they did, his curse could not be undone—his bitterness and hatred only fed the magic. Yet they could not work out where the old king was hiding; they found his blood upon the riverbank downstream, but after that he appeared to have slipped back into the river and drifted away. They began by questioning the servants, who were at first loath to be involved in the dispute, having love for neither of the Macans, the first being vain and stingy, the second bloodthirsty and rapacious. But, eventually, they convinced the man who prepared the king’s baths to talk. This servant informed them that Macan the First had a secret castle that he disappeared to when he wished to be alone with his books, for the old king was a great reader, though preoccupied primarily with histories of his family and race. This castle was smaller, and hidden by magic—the servant knew not where it was, but he said that whenever the old king returned thence, he had bees tangled in his hair, which the servant found drowned at the bottom of the bath.

Next, the conspirators questioned the kitchen hands. Finally, one of the servants that stocked the larder confessed that whenever Macan the First returned from his hideaway, he would bring with him a handful of snail’s head mushrooms to cook for his supper.

Mona and her new husband were certain they were close to tracking the old king down, but none of the other household servants could be convinced to speak with them. It was Mona who realized they had not yet questioned the gardeners. These Folk were as disinclined to cooperate as the rest, but one eventually directed them to a boggart [*2] who was living in a folly beside the vegetable patch. The boggart agreed to help, but on one condition: that he be allowed to take up residence in the castle, a request that Macan the First had long denied. To this the conspirators agreed without much thought, for the castle was large and had plenty of space for a boggart, who in any event spends most of its life asleep, like a cat.

The boggart then gave them the final clue they needed: long years ago, an age before Macan the First had married Mona, he had ordered a bridge built over a stream, which was now hidden by overgrowth. The boggart led the pair to this bridge, and once they crossed it they found a winding little path. This they followed, but still they would not have found Macan’s secret castle had they not noticed the patch of snail’s head mushrooms at the edge of the path and followed it into the forest. And still they might have missed the castle had they not seen an immense tangle of honeysuckle filled with drowsy, overfed bees, for once they pushed their way through the vines they found King Macan’s other castle.

Macan the Second told his bride to await him outside, and then he went into the castle and slew Macan the First without a great deal of trouble, for the man was weak from his injuries and the effort of maintaining the curse.

As soon as his life’s blood finally ran dry, the river waters subsided and the castle stopped its ominous shaking, and all who slept within its beds dreamed of gentler things, or as gentle as they had dreamed before. And that is how Macan the Second lifted the curse upon his kingdom.

But, alas—once Macan the Second exited the castle, he was swarmed by the bees, who had formed a friendship with Macan the First. Macan the Second was stung so many times that he died of the venom later that night.

After the death of the Macans, the boggart took up residence in the castle, as was his right under his bargain with Macan the Second. It is doubtful, though, that the man had guessed the boggart’s true aim; boggarts are cunning and cruel, which the old Macan had known well. There being no claimants for the title of King Macan left alive, an event the boggart had doubtless foreseen, he declared himself the owner of the name as well as the castle. Mona continued to reside there with him, fuming over her misfortunes, but after a few years had passed her practical nature reasserted itself, and she agreed to the boggart’s offer of marriage. She and King Macan the Third lived together in relative harmony through the passage of two ages in the world of mortals, and had many children, each more unsettling than the last, for they were half boggart and half human, an unfortunate combination.

This is as much as we have been able to piece together. The story grows entirely fragmentary beyond this point, seeming to turn its attention to the deeds of one of the halfblood children, who likely will be made to suffer for her parents’ sins in some way—I see hints of that familiar pattern. But this is the material concatenation of events, and it is what I will bring to Wendell.

I know how to find the queen.

Skip Notes

*1 An ancient faerie custom first documented among the pine dryads of Greece in the early 1700s. While many Folk marry in elaborate ceremonies, not unlike mortals, some of the older tales depict such unions occurring via a simple declaration of mutual regard.

*2 While originating in Scotland, boggarts are the ultimate wanderers and have appeared in faerie stories throughout the British Isles and France, and in several disputed tales from Spain. Yet, as is to be expected with the Folk, they are also full of contradictions; once a boggart has found a home it likes, it rarely stirs therefrom, and many stories depict the bodiless creatures as bound to crumbling ruins, either unwilling or unable to part from their homes.