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

18th January

After having located our first two clues so quickly, I was certain we would soon find the third. But this has not been the case; though we have interviewed dozens of servants, none have had any information to offer. All served the old queen at one point or another, but none were her particular favourites.

“That is the problem,” I told Niamh this morning. We were seated in the banquet hall, Wendell pacing once again by the windows. “In the Macan story, it is his personal attendants who are key to unravelling the mystery of his hiding place. But so few of Queen Arna’s personal attendants are left. And the gardeners know nothing.”

“This is why we should consider the soldiers,” Niamh said. It was an argument we had been having for days. Niamh thought the scope of our search unnecessarily narrow, and that others in the queen’s employ—soldiers included—should be questioned.

Wendell finally stopped pacing to gaze out the window. His hand was bandaged again, his face pale, for he has used his blood to hold back the tide of the queen’s curse. He has not been sleeping enough, either, to make up for it, but insists upon prowling the edges of the curse until the small hours of the morning, hurling enchantments at it. All of which have proven useless.

“Read us the story again, Em,” he said tiredly. Orga tapped his leg with her paw, and he knelt to scoop her into his arms.

I saw little point in it, but I did not argue, merely opened my notebook to the page where I’d recorded the cobbled-together tale. I confess I am growing thoroughly sick of “King Macan’s Bees.” As an artefact of dryadology, it has its merits, but I keep encountering new, sinister bits of subtext. Macan the Second’s betrayal of the First’s hospitality, for instance—respect for hospitality is important to the Folk, to the extent that violations are seen as monstrous; no doubt this was meant to be interpreted as a reason for the second Macan’s downfall. Just deserts, in other words. I cannot help remembering how I poisoned Queen Arna at her table.

Wendell gazed into the forest, stroking Orga absently. “What about the boggart?”

“What about him?” I said.

“Well, why not ask if he knows anything?”

“Ask—a character in a story,” I said slowly, wondering if the effects of little sleep had done him more harm than I had thought.

“ Our boggart,” Wendell said. “We have one in my realm. He dwells—”

“In the Gap of Wick,” I murmured. I had known that—Snowbell had mentioned it once, the first time I visited the Silva Lupi.

“Good Lord,” Niamh said. She had been flicking through the book before her, and now she slammed it shut with a laugh. “How did I not think of that? But he was your father’s servant, was he not?”

Wendell shrugged. “Why not turn over every stone? He continued to serve my father—if one can call a boggart’s allegiance service —after he married my stepmother, so he was hers too, for a time. At least until she had my father murdered. I assume that put him off her, though I know little about the creature—he was asleep for much of my childhood. I have no idea if he can help us; perhaps it was after he left that my stepmother began constructing this hideaway of hers. Likely we would be wasting our time in seeking him out.”

Niamh rubbed her hands over her face, still chuckling to herself. “No, Liath, I think you may have solved it. For it is just like the story, is it not? The third clue does not actually come from the gardener; he points the way to the boggart, who shows them the bridge. The third clue.”

My thoughts mirrored Niamh’s, but what I felt was not entirely relief. “It is—very like the story,” I agreed.

“Then let us depart immediately,” Wendell said. He lifted Orga to his shoulder and motioned to one of the servants. “Ready our mounts.”