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

21st January

I have burnt the pages that followed that. They are little more than gibberish—lists of stories that I intended to consult, half-baked theories. Crossings-out and ink blots from where I drifted in a state of half-sleep.

When I awoke, I was hunched over my journal, and it was the wee hours of the morning, still dark. My legs were nearly numb and my neck was sore, as I’d fallen asleep in a slump in a chair by the bedroom window. A little over a day had passed since Wendell’s death. I hadn’t slept at all the night before—at least I don’t think I had. My memory of that day and night is as blurred as my time in the snow king’s court.

Someone was knocking at the door. It was a gentle, hesitant sound, as if the gesture required effort. I stood, still half asleep, trying not to look at the bed where Shadow and Orga were curled up together. They watched me as I passed on unsteady feet, and I realized they had been there all day, sometimes napping and sometimes not, but aware of me at all times. Once Orga had assured herself that I was not going to keel over, she put her head back down and closed her eyes.

I expected Niamh or Callum—perhaps even Lord Taran. Instead, the hall beyond the door was darkened and empty.

I stood there for a moment, blinking. A little shiver went through me—I’d been reading my grandfather’s disturbing journal entries late into the night, putting the book aside in favour of some academic tome only to pick it up again, irresistibly drawn back to the tragedy of it. For companionship, perhaps, in my own tragedy. I could hear my grandfather’s voice in the text.

I closed the door. Likely I’d imagined the knock, groggy as I’d been, or it had been Niamh or Callum again; each had come by multiple times. I had locked them out, and had heard them muttering together outside the door, sometimes with one or more councillors, until Lord Taran’s voice had ordered them all away. Taran, at least, had understood the importance of the work I was doing.

At some point I’d dropped my grandfather’s journal, and it lay facedown on the floor by my chair, pages bent. I picked it up.

Oddly, though, as I glanced down at my grandfather’s writing, I wasn’t thinking of him. I was thinking of the butter faerie, and that sensation I’d felt when I’d learned she had come from Somerset, where once there had been a door to Wendell’s kingdom. It had been a feeling akin to hunting for a word on the tip of my tongue. I had it now—perhaps my sleeping mind had solved the mystery.

Exmoor was in Somerset.

Did that mean the now-broken door in the Silva Lupi had led to Exmoor, to the very landscape where my grandfather had met his doom? Possibly. Not likely, my rational mind replied. But still—it was an odd coincidence.

At that, I felt another tremor. Coincidence is not a word to be taken lightly in Faerie.

I turned back to my grandfather’s journal, fingers trembling against the pages. My interest had been reframed, and now I reread each word of his sojourn in Exmoor, stopping each time I could not make out his shorthand until I’d untangled it, rather than skipping over these parts as I’d done before. This was no longer merely a family heirloom, a tragic story no more relevant to my plight than one of Wendell’s novels.

When I’d finished, I sat and stared out the window for a long moment. The weeping rowan tapped its dark berries against the pane.

Then I stood. I opened the door again and listened—Wendell’s apartments seemed abandoned. But then I heard the faintest of noises in the bathroom. When I made my way there, I found it empty.

Empty—but very clean. A mop leaned against the wall by the bath, and half the floor was damp, as if the mopper had been interrupted in the middle of his task.

“Are you there?” I said. “I need to speak with you. Will you show yourself?”

There came a rustling noise behind me. I turned and found myself facing one of the oíche sidhe.

We gazed blankly at each other. Or, rather, I was blank—his face was inscrutable.

“Are you the one I spoke with before?” I demanded—I did not intend to sound rude, but I’ve no doubt that’s how it came across. Ordinarily, I attempt to sand down my bluntness, but it did not even occur to me then.

The creature gave no sign of offence. “I am he.”

I gazed at him. The faerie looked so much like Wendell had, back in Ljosland, that I felt an inexplicable surge of fury, and I wanted to scream at him, to strike him with my fists. The feeling vanished as abruptly as it came, leaving me breathless and sick.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

I don’t know what he thought I was apologizing for. “Does Her Highness have need of me?” he said.

“Yes,” I said, trying to put myself back together. I don’t know why I’d thought of this creature first. There were others who could help me.

No—I knew why. He made me think of Wendell.

“You know all the rooms in the castle,” I said. “You know where the nobility dwell.”

He nodded with the faintest of frowns, knitting his many-jointed fingers together in front of him.

“I wish to speak with the Lady in the Crimson Cloak,” I said. “Will you take me to her?”

—

The housekeeper not only knew the way to theLady’s room, which was located at the other end of the castle and down a staircase, then up another staircase, but he knew that it had a back door. We went through a storage room crammed with silken cloaks and gowns that seemed to be in varying states of decay, some only a little musty, others furred with layers of dust, then through a vast and echoing bathing room that seemed designed for communal washing, off of which was a narrow door to the Lady’s bedchamber.

This was empty, shadowed, and spare, with only a wardrobe, dressing table, and bed clothed in blacks and whites. Naturally, the floorboards were covered in many dark stains.

“She does not like us to clean those,” the oíche sidhe said, and for once I could read the emotion in his face—pure disapproval.

“Hmm,” I said. I had taken the Lady’s theatrically gruesome appearance for glamour, but now I wondered if this was entirely the truth. She has at times put me in mind of the gallows-goblins; I wonder if she counts one or more of the creatures among her ancestors. [*] Wendell’s kingdom is not known as a realm of monsters for nothing, and why would his stepmother have cared if one of her courtiers had a morbid hobby, so long as it did not affect her own interests?

Stepping gingerly over the stains, I sat in the chair at the dressing table. “Thank you,” I said to the housekeeper. “You may go.”

“May,” he repeated, a faint question in his voice. “I may also remain, but in such a way that she will not notice me.”

“Do as you wish,” I said. Perhaps I should have responded better to his kindness, but I had no capacity to think of anything but the revelation contained within my grandfather’s journal, and the desperate hope now lodged in my throat like a splinter of bone that might twist and choke me at any moment. The oíche sidhe went to stand against the wall, and when I looked back, I could barely see him. If I focused, it was just possible to make out his greyish outline against the darkness; if I did not, my gaze slid across the wall as if he were nothing but a stray hook or nail.

I waited. After perhaps half an hour, the Lady entered the room.

She stilled at the sight of me sitting there in the shadows, but she did not flee, as I’d half feared she would. Instead she removed her cloak in one smooth gesture and hung it from a hook, where it began to drip on the floor.

“Well,” she said, brushing her bloody hands over her black gown. “You’ve worked it out, then.”

“I have.”

“What do you wish to know?” As she spoke, she moved towards a tea trolley beside the main entrance that must have been set out for her by a servant; it held a pot, its spout lightly steaming, and a single cup. Into this she poured the tea, adding sugar and cream, her movements unhurried.

“You wish to know why I was exiled?” she went on. “ That is a long story—or perhaps you only care about why I came here, to this court? There was once a door that connected my realm with this one—ah, but I can see from your face that you knew that already. I destroyed the door after I came through, so that my enemies could not follow me.”

She handed me the cup. The handle was bloody now, and the tea smelled of smoke. I held it without drinking. Curiously, my hand did not tremble at all, and I realized that I was not afraid of her. I felt—nothing. Or nothing where she was concerned, at any rate. All my focus had attenuated upon one thing, and surrounding this was a vast, wintry stillness that was not quite the same as calm, but which I could put to the same purpose.

“I have not come to speak of the past,” I said. “My grandfather’s journal said you communed with ghosts and had seen the door to Death. Is that true? Take me to it.”

She settled herself upon the edge of the bed and folded her hands in her lap. Her lips were very red, and she watched me in a way that was distinctly predatory. Yet still I felt nothing under her regard.

“You do not wish to speak of Edgar?” she said. “Why I left him?” Her eyes were too large for her face, and without her cloak I saw she was slim—unnaturally slim; I felt she might turn sideways and slip from my sight.

“No,” I said. “Only tell me if what he wrote was correct. Have you truly seen so much of Death that you have learned how to travel there without dying yourself? Or was this empty poetry?”

“He bored me,” she said.

At this, my hand clenched slightly on my knee. “Is there a door?”

“Will you have me killed?” she said. “Have you already ordered it? If I flee now, shall I be hunted for the rest of my days?”

“Yes,” I said, “if you do not help me.”

She seemed to consider this. While she did, I sipped my tea.

“You have his journal,” she said slowly. “Yes—I remember him scribbling in it. Then that is how you knew who I was?”

I nodded. “I did not realize it on my first reading, because the possibility that his mysterious captor might be in my midst did not occur to me—for one thing, the courtly fae do not generally travel between realms as the common fae do. And for another, I did not know there had been a door between Exmoor and this world. Once I did, I began to wonder…I examined my grandfather’s descriptions of his beloved more closely. They accord perfectly with yourself. He referred to your apparel only once, when he noted you liked to dress in red.”

She smiled and brushed her hair back from her face. It was indeed golden, though the ends were stained with red. “He doted on me so,” she said. “More so than most of the others. How I miss him! I always do, after they are gone, no matter how they tired me in the end.”

She had accepted my explanation, and so I did not feel it necessary to clarify that I had not been certain she was the faerie who had so bewitched my grandfather—it had been a theory, supported by their similarity in appearance as well as nature. She had given me the proof when she had entered the room and understood why I was there.

“If you do not help me,” I said, “Lord Taran will see that your victims are properly avenged. You have slain many Folk, but I wonder if you see yourself as a match for him.”

Her response to this, a slight stiffening, was answer enough. It was an empty bluff on my part—I’d spoken to no one except the housekeeper before coming here; entirely ill-advised, I can see that now, but I was then possessed by a single-mindedness so complete I think I could have traversed a field of embers without flinching if it brought me closer to my goal.

“Killing is why I exist,” she said finally. “It is my only love. I used to struggle with my temper, but now I embrace it. You cannot fathom how many I have slain, both mortal and Folk. Why should a little nothing like you be the end of me?”

“You know why,” I said. “Because it would be a fitting conclusion.”

She gave me the sort of look that reminded me of Razkarden when he sizes up a potential meal. The shadow in the room seemed to deepen, redden, and grow damp, a slippery damp I felt through my shoes. I only waited. “Well?” I said.

She seemed to deflate slightly, and the illusion vanished. “You wish to find the door to Death?” she said, a slyness entering her voice. “Very well. I will tell you how. But I must be allowed to depart this realm unharmed.”

I could see she expected me to protest or bargain with her. “Done,” I said.

Her lip curled. “Such a dull little thing,” she said. “You have no spirit worth breaking, I see. You are not like your grandfather at all.”

“And you are not as frightening as you think you are,” I said. “Tell me.”

She did. I listened carefully, asking for clarification as often as necessary. I had not brought my notebook with me, but it did not matter—every word I committed to memory.

When she drew to the end, she asked in a mocking tone, “Is there anything else I can do for you, Your Highness?”

I stood and placed my empty teacup back on its tray. “Run,” I said.

Skip Notes

* In some stories, gallows-goblins haunt those jails where condemned prisoners are held before execution; they take pleasure in killing the miscreants themselves, usually in some bloody fashion, unless the prisoner can prove his or her innocence, after which the gallows-goblin will whisk them to safety by magic. In most tales, however, gallows-goblins are less arbiters of justice and more generalized terrors; they delight in murder and bloodshed, often lurking at lonely crossroads in the wilderness, where they choose their victims based on a shared characteristic (for example, farmhands with red hair). The former type is found primarily in France and its border regions, while the latter is widespread throughout Western Europe and the British Isles, leading some scholars to speculate these are separate entities entirely. Both varieties of gallows-goblin, though, are described as having blood upon their hands and feet at all times.