12th January
I had the most unexpected conversation with Farris this morning. I am grateful to have this time on the train, which bears me back towards County Leane and the cottage where Lilja and Margret are residing, to mull it over. At present I am unsure what to make of it.
My train was due to depart Dublin at ten, which gave me time for breakfast with Farris and Ariadne. But when Shadow and I arrived at the café, I found Farris seated alone at a table, looking grim.
“Oh dear,” I said, pushing my hood back. It was one of those still winter mornings when the world is all shades of white—the sky like eggshell; the vines creeping up the stone buildings limned with frost. “Has something happened? Where is Ariadne?”
“Nothing has happened,” Farris said. “I asked Ariadne to join us in half an hour. I wanted a few moments to—confess something.”
I was not much heartened by this, given the seriousness of his expression. He drummed his fingers on the table and then said abruptly, “How is your book progressing? The politics of Faerie—an excellent topic.”
“Yes,” I said, a little annoyed, but deciding to allow him to come to the point in his own time. He looked almost ill. “Though I have had a change of heart about it—I wished to focus on politics because I wanted to get at the structure of Faerie. What makes it tick, in other words. Yet I have realized that I am going about it wrong. The politics of Faerie—indeed, everything about the place—revolves around stories. Stories shape the realms and the actions of those who dwell there. Some of those stories are known to mortals, but many others have been lost, both to us and the Folk.”
Farris nodded. “Then your book will be about the Macan tale?”
“That will be a piece of it,” I said, leaning forward as I warmed to the topic. “I thought I would create a compendium of tales told by the Folk of the Silva Lupi. I mentioned that crow woman, bound by an ancient curse laid upon her by Wendell’s father. I have met a dozen such creatures in Wendell’s realm, enmeshed in stories every bit as fascinating as hers. If I can gather enough of them together, I believe we scholars might come close to grasping the true essence of the Silva Lupi—which is, like all of Faerie, an intricately woven tapestry of story.”
He smiled. “It is a most intriguing idea. Brilliant, even—no scholar has ever had the sort of access to the Folk that you have.”
“It is partly inspired by you,” I said. “Your Sandstone Theory. You have always argued we should pay more attention to the stories the Folk tell of themselves if we wish to understand Faerie.”
He murmured agreement. I noticed that his ear—the human one; the other was a strange, silver construction that he attempted to hide behind his lionlike white fringe—was now slightly pink. He seemed to steel himself for something, then opened his briefcase and took out a book. After a brief hesitation, he passed it to me.
The book was old and battered, the leather cover so worn it had become floppy. I flipped through it and found that it was not a book, but a journal, filled with someone’s small, precise hand. The writing was legible, but even at a cursory glance I noted many instances of shorthand abbreviations that I suspected would prove troublesome. There was something oddly familiar about it.
I flipped to the first page and was astonished to find, tucked in the corner of the inside cover, the letters E.W. They were of so similar a character to how I write my own initials—the same matter-of-fact crossed W, the same slight lean to the E—that for a moment I wondered if I wasn’t looking at one of my journals, which someone had taken and filled with their own writing. And yet—the hand was similar to mine. Neater, perhaps; it is more accurate to say that it was like mine when I take the time to make my writing legible to others, which I do only on rare occasions.
That was when I understood.
“This belonged to my grandfather,” I said, simultaneously baffled and intrigued. My grandfather Edgar Wilde, while not a dryadologist himself, had been fascinated by the Folk, and had amassed a small library of folklore over his lifetime that had been, in part, what had inspired me to pursue this field of study. “But how on earth did you come by it?”
Farris grimaced. “I should have told you this a long time ago, Emily: I knew your grandfather. I was concerned that this fact might affect our professional relationship.”
“You knew him? But why would that have any effect upon our relationship?” When he did not immediately reply, I thought over what he had said, and my memory of our conversations, searching for connections. Once I understood, my mouth fell open.
“He was your friend,” I murmured. “The one you told me about in St. Liesl, who died from exposure in Exmoor. The Folk killed him.”
“Yes.” Farris gazed absently into the fire. “Not just a friend; Edgar and I were like brothers. We grew up together, and remained close through many of life’s vicissitudes. It was he who held me together after Catherine passed—my wife.”
“But—” I was still struggling with the revelation. “I was told my grandfather died from heart failure.”
“I believe that was the medical explanation,” Farris said. “Yes, he did have trouble with his heart, but he could have lived many years longer than he did. I’m not surprised your family kept the full story hidden, given that it was somewhat—indelicate. Not only because Edgar was still married to your grandmother when he ran off with that faerie woman, but—well. The circumstances.”
I did not need clarification. Farris’s childhood friend—my grandfather —had been cruelly abandoned by the wandering group of Folk who had taken him in. When he had pursued them, still desperately in love, they had tied him to a tree by his beard, and there he had hung for hours before he was found.
“Good Lord,” I said, staring down at the book in my hands. I tried to recall my grandfather—I’d been only thirteen when he died, and the few memories I had of him were in relation to his fantastical library, as I’d seen it. He’d never cared much for children, and I have no recollection of conversing with him, though he did tolerate me looking at his books, because I was careful with them.
An image rose in my mind: an old man—so he had seemed to me then, though he would have been only in his fifties—with his back to me, shirtsleeves rolled up as he hunched over a book at a desk. The man himself was blurred; I had the vague impression of a lanky frame and jutting ears, but no other details. Around him rose shelf upon shelf of books; those near the desk were brightly lit, while the rest faded into shadow.
“I did not know he journalled,” I said. “I take it these are not his law notes?”
Farris shook his head. “As you know, Edgar was something of an amateur enthusiast of the Folk, yet one who attempted to maintain professional records whenever he investigated a barrow or other rumoured faerie site. He prided himself on it, in fact; he wanted to leave accurate records for any dryadologists who might wish to further investigate his findings.”
I nodded. While some dryadologists take a snobbish attitude towards hobbyists, the latter have been instrumental in a number of significant discoveries. [*]
“Unfortunately, your family had his other journals destroyed,” Farris said. “But this—” He looked sheepish. “Well, I took it. It was among his belongings when he was found in Exmoor and brought with him to the hospital. I intended to return it to your grandmother, but when I learned what your family had done to the rest of his writings—”
“I understand.” I set the journal down on the table, for abruptly I did not wish to be touching it. “Then it is a record of his last days.”
“Not quite,” Farris said. “He appears to have given up on journalling at some point during his stay with the Folk. Perhaps a few weeks before they abandoned him? It is difficult to be certain. And the first half of the journal is preoccupied primarily with a separate investigation he undertook earlier that year. But it is indeed a record of his final adventures.”
I sighed. At that moment, the waiter brought us a fresh pot of tea—I hadn’t touched mine, but Farris had polished off the lot. I waited until he was gone before saying, “This is another one of your warnings, then.”
“No,” Farris said firmly. But then he amended, again a little sheepish, “Not entirely.”
“I thought you did not wish to play the gloomy sage.”
“I will not tell you how to live, Emily,” he said. “I would not do you the disrespect.”
I gave a short laugh. “Then what is this?”
“The journal belongs to your family by right,” he said. “Your grandmother has passed, so why should you not be the one to decide what is to be done with it? You might donate it to the Library of Dryadology, or put it to some other purpose. Or destroy it, for that matter.”
“We are in accord on the matter of ownership,” I said. “It is more the timing of this revelation that I question. You know that Wendell and I will soon be married.”
“I believe you should have all the relevant information before you commit yourself to one of the Folk. Or accept one of their thrones .”
“Relevant,” I repeated. “My grandfather did not fall in love with Wendell. It was not Wendell’s people who murdered him on that Exmoor heath. Your definition of relevance seems somewhat loose, Farris.”
He gave a small shrug. “Then you can have no objection to reading it.”
“Very well.” I felt he had gotten the better of me somehow, and it put me out of humour. And did not Farris recognize that I had more pressing concerns than this decades-old family secret? Nevertheless, I slid the journal into my briefcase. Whereupon it largely left my thoughts; Ariadne arrived shortly after, and together we finished our breakfast. They walked me to the train station and we said our goodbyes.
Since boarding the train, however, I have not been so incurious and have found my thoughts straying repeatedly to the journal. I have removed it from my briefcase and placed it on the seat beside me, where it now sits unopened, putting a damper on my sense of triumph at having come up with a plan to find Queen Arna. But why should this be so? I meant what I said to Farris—I am fully aware of the danger involved in marrying one of the Folk and do not need him to rescueme.
I keep feeling as if the bloody journal is glaring at me. Or not glaring precisely, but brooding in a sullen and self-righteous way, as if it knows as well as I that I should not be ignoring my grandfather’s last testament. I think I will put it away again.
Skip Notes
* Ursula Waldron is perhaps the best-known of these. In the late eighteenth century, Waldron questioned the efficacy of a protective practice dating to the medieval period, namely that of stuffing one’s pockets with day-old bread before venturing into regions frequented by the Folk. The method was once thought as efficacious as salt circles or turning one’s clothes inside out in warding off unfriendly faeries, and was particularly popular in the post-plague generations, a period of greater mobility in rural regions. Perhaps this is why so many peasants were abducted during this era, as Waldron proved, through a series of interviews with the trooping faeries of Wiltshire, that the Folk are not only unharmed by stale bread, but have been known to approach mortals with especially fat pockets to see what they’re about. Waldron, a retired blacksmith who taught herself to read and write in her later years, was eventually appointed to the post of Honourary Lecturer at Cambridge, despite the grumblings of the traditionalist set.