1st January 1911 #2
“Flakes, flakes, flakes!” the older faerie was snarling.
“You pay no mind to allowing the glue to set, do you? Look at this! We cannot present it to Her Highness in this state. It will sully her hands whenever she writes in it—and your thread is far too large; look how the spine bulges. This is the last time I hire family, mark my words. You are every bit as incompetent as my daughter and—”
I must have made some noise, for they both turned to gawp at me. The elder one sprang to the floor and bowed low, crying “Your Highness!” in a voice that creaked like an old hinge.
The faerie had the look of a book goblin, which I have encountered only once before.
She was small—the top of her head just reached my waist—with a hunchback and a severe, squinting look, black eyes nearly obscured by heavy wrinkles and the curtains of bristly hair that fell over her face.
Dangling from a chain on her neck was an odd glass sphere that Itook for a monocle.
“Please allow us to give you a tour, O Exalted One,” the faerie said, clasping her ink-stained hands together in excitement.
“I— Thank you,” I said, blankly staring. “But I will be late for breakfast.”
And I hurried out, pulling the door closed behind me and leaning against it, as if the little faeries might give chase.
Good Lord! How had this room come to be? Wendell had ordered it, because of course he had—but when?
I blundered off, too discombobulated to pay much heed to where I was going.
My thoughts kept returning to O Exalted One, as if it were a sharp seed caught in my throat, driving me to distraction.
I thought I had chosen the door that led back to the bedroom, but instead I found myself in a narrow hallway ending in a closed door, sunlight streaming through a row of windows.
Orga—I hadn’t realized she had followed us—gave a trill of satisfaction and flopped onto her side in the sunbeam.
Naturally, the view out the windows was of the lake, painted with tree reflections and morning sunlight, even though, according to my senses, this should be an interior section of the castle. I paused and tried to catch my breath. As I did, I became aware of a breeze.
The breeze came not from the windows, which were shut— it meandered out from the crack below the door at the end of the hall, smelling of rain.
It was not raining outside.
Now, I knew full well that the wiser course would be to wake Wendell and investigate this together.
But how often have I thrown wisdom aside in the face of faerie mysteries?
I was flummoxed and full of half-formed anxieties, but I also felt like a hungry child who, presented with a cake, cannot stop herself from devouring it whole.
I went to the door and pushed it open.
Morning light spilled into the hall at an angle that contradicted the light of Faerie.
I was presented with a view of a green hillock at the edge of a forest. A little whitewashed cottage perched atop the hillock, which was strewn with mossy rocks and purple with heather.
Behind the cottage, a fine waterfall tumbled down a rise in the wooded landscape, and this gave off a mist that, coupled with the drizzling rain, gave the scene a spectral atmosphere.
Impossible as it was, what I saw relaxed me a little.
Here at least was a simple faerie door to an otherland—it was, of course, madness that an otherland should be found just off my bedchamber, and I would certainly be speaking with Wendell about it—but at least it did not contain hordes of Folk desperate to oblige my whims.
I closed the door—after grabbing Shadow by the scruff and hauling him back, for he had shoved his snout into the otherworld and was sniffing voraciously—and went back the way I had come.
But I’d become turned around once more, not by enchantment but my own blundering, and while I was correct in intuiting the direction of the bedchamber, I ended up—to my dismay—in the dining room once more.
I could not stop myself from swearing. At least the servants had left, and for a blessed moment I thought I was alone with the platters of lightly steaming food. But then I heard the creak of a chair against the wall behind me.
“Your Highness?” a woman said. To my infinite relief, she was mortal, a tall, pretty woman with dark brown skin and black hair cropped close to her scalp.
She seemed to be blind, and held a simple cane made from willow reeds, but I caught the flash of silver woven into the construction.
Her dress was of plain dark silks, but there too was a subtle silver stitchery along the cuffs.
I understood from this that the woman possessed some status among these Folk.
“How did you know me?” I said.
She smiled. “I have lived among Folk for thirty years, by the mortal reckoning. I am used to the sound of their footfalls. Your tread is different.”
I let out my breath and sank into a chair. “One of the common fae is fond of referring to me as a blundering mortal oaf.” I gave a shaky laugh that perhaps went on too long.
She had stopped smiling and now looked concerned. “Are you all right?”
I rubbed a hand over my face. “Who were those Folk with—with the papers and awls?”
“The bookbinders? The king summoned them to court last night. They have been hard at it ever since. Does their work not please you, Your Highness?”
I made an inarticulate sound and poured myself a cup of tea. “Please don’t call me that.”
“Oh, thank God.” My words—or perhaps the raggedness of them—seemed to break the tension between us, and she sank into a chair across from me with a sigh of relief.
“I had to be certain you weren’t one of those mortals who had grown big-headed from finding favour with faerie royalty, and would toss me into the dungeons for presumption. Do you know me, Professor Wilde?”
I examined her—I saw nothing familiar in her face, but it did not take me long to work it out.
“You’ve spent thirty years in Faerie,” I murmured, mentally thumbing through the list of scholars who had vanished into the Silva Lupi.
“You are not Dr. Proudfit? Niamh Proudfit, of the University of Connacht?”
She grinned. “Steady on. You would think I was queen of this realm. You need not be impressed by me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to get my emotions in hand. “I have never seized the throne of a faerie kingdom before. I’m afraid I find the experience somewhat trying.”
She laughed—it was a rich, warm sound, which, coupled with her boisterous manner of speaking, gave an impression of conviviality and open-heartedness.
I recognized in her a particular variety of professor, the sort most likely to receive glowing student reviews, who displays an infectious enthusiasm for her chosen subject and an easy command of a podium.
Now, as this sort is furthest from my own type—my reviews are decidedly mixed—I tend to view such individuals with a touch of resentment, but I felt none of this now.
My relief at meeting a fellow scholar was too great.
“You were a friend of Farris Rose’s, were you not?” I found myself asking, though we had more important things to talk about.
Her face brightened, and I sensed that she was just as pleased as I to speak of academic matters. “We co-authored an article on the Black Hounds of Cumbria! How is he getting on? Has he grown dignified and venerable with age? When I knew Farris, he was still stammering during speaking events.”
We spent several minutes discussing Rose; I gave Niamh an account of his career since her disappearance, and she told me a story of how he had once locked himself outside his boardinghouse before a conference and had to deliver his presentation in his slippers.
She was also fascinated to hear of our association with Danielle de Grey and Bran Eichorn, two other famously vanished scholars.
Both have returned to academia—to fanfare I doubt I need describe, other than to say that they are, unsurprisingly, now the most talked about dryadologists in all of Europe—with Eichorn following de Grey to her old alma mater, the University of Edinburgh.
I confess I am not disappointed that they decided against remaining at Cambridge; our relations at present could best be described as polite but frosty.
With Eichorn, this can be explained as being in harmony with his nature, but regarding de Grey, I have at times had the impression that she resents how intertwined our names have become, given that I am the one being credited with her rescue (Wendell asked that his role in the whole business be omitted).
She seems the sort who prefers being at the centre of things.
“Most of academia has given you up for dead,” I told Niamh. “This is the Silva Lupi, after all. But what are you doing here, in their court? You are not a prisoner?”
“Not at all,” she said. We had tucked in to breakfast, and Niamh paused to wash down her toast with some tea. Several of the red-faced servants had returned, unobtrusively keeping our plates and cups filled. I felt more comfortable with them now that I was not the only person being waited on.
“I was the old king’s scribe,” she said. “That means right hand, here; the head of his Council and general fixer. The queen sacked me, of course, when she had the royal family murdered and took Prince Liath’s throne—King Liath, I mean.”
I was impressed; not only by her position, but that she had survived the queen’s purge. “How did you—”
“Keep my head?” She laughed again, though there was a brittleness about it that undercut the irreverence.
“The queen always liked talented mortals. She appreciated my intellect—she said so, anyhow. She continued to consult me occasionally on political matters, but by and large she let me be, which suited me well enough. I have been able to focus on my research these last few years.”