Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands (Emily Wilde, #2)

by Heather Fawcett

They are married and spend several years in peace and contentment until the princess begins to observe something peculiar about her husband’s chest while he lies in sleep: it seems to house six dark and shadowy birds, which beat against his skin as if trying to escape.

The shadowy birds are, quite clearly, an omen of death.

I suppose I should have a name for the fox faerie as well. A variety of unkind appellations spring to mind, each appropriate for a murderous little beast. But then I think of the snowbells that dot the shore of the Grünesauge—Snowbell it is.

He tapped the coil of bone with one needle-finger. “To find me, you need only this.” I turned this over a few times in my mind. And then I had it. “The key is the door,” I murmured. “But how?” “My home needs only one door, which you see there,” Poe said, growing enthusiastic now that he was speaking of his tree home again.

“Am I in Faerie now?” “Yes,” Poe said, after an astonished pause. Clearly he had thought I knew all this already. “And no. This is a borderland, where Faerie mixes with your world.” I nodded slowly. I thought of the path I had followed with Snowbell, past the faerie homes and into the glacier. “Then in order to use your door, I must be in Faerie myself?” “In the winterlands,” Poe said. “The summerlands are too warm and wet—the door will crack and fall apart there.” “But—” I stopped and shook my head. I was still not convinced I understood, but for the time being, the mechanics of the gift Poe had given me were immaterial. I replaced the key around my neck.

“He wishes this?” he breathed. “To—to be our fjolskylda?” I had not anticipated this, though upon reflection I can see why Poe would have made such an assumption. It is the nature of many household brownies—which Poe is, after a fashion, despite making his home away from human settlement—to tend to their mortal families when they are ill. But this attentiveness never extends beyond the members of the household. Asking for this degree of assistance for Wendell would be the height of strangeness, unless—

“Wendell and I are proud to have such clever fjolskylda as yourself. Would you do one other thing for us?” Poe swelled. “Anything.”

I sat among the saxifrage, pressing my head against my knees. I would wait five minutes, I decided. Hopefully, the fog would sweep through again, and the landscape would rearrange itself once more. I simply had to keep going, and eventually I would find a way back to the mortal world. I had done so before. I tried not to wonder how many times Eichorn and de Grey had told themselves the same thing.

Leave it to Emily to get herself lost in faerie world again lol

You weren’t actually in Faerie, merely the borderlands. There are so many realms in these mountains that many of them overlap, so that a mortal who stumbles in the wrong direction may end up several worlds away from home—what a mess!”

“How many enchantments did you put upon my poor cloak?” I grumbled. “You will never reach the end of them,” he said with satisfaction, running his hand over the fabric to straighten the creases. “That many.”

I kissed him matter-of-factly. He drew back, and at last he seemed to understand the significance of my interest in spending the night in a tent, as well as my joke about the wine.

In answer, he kissed me—much more slowly than the kiss I had given him, and more skilfully too, I’m afraid. Afterwards he didn’t lean back as I’d expected, but trailed his lips down my neck, sending a shiver skittering through me.

“Don’t you want to find your door?” “No,” he said, reaching for me. “At this precise moment, I can genuinely say that my only wish is to remain here with you.

“What are you going to do?” I said. “He’s trapped in Faerie. So I must pull him out, of course.” And that was what he did. It is not something I can adequately describe, for I did not see it. He reached out a hand to Eichorn—which the man took, frowning—and pulled him forwards. But I felt it—a sudden dislocation, akin to falling. A shiver went through the grasses, and for a brief moment, all was still.

I expected him to ask the year, or perhaps where he was, to demonstrate some awareness that, at long last, he was free. Instead he looked at us both in turn and said, “I must find Dani. She is still out here, I know it.” “Professor,” I said slowly, “we are going to find her together.”

How did it happen? The scene is a blur of noise and movement, to my memory. I believe I was laughing at the time—yes, laughing. The image of those nightmarish beasts appeased by a hail of carrots was too much for my frayed composure, and for a moment it seemed this would become another story I told at conferences or to rouse a laugh from my students. For the Folk are terrible indeed, monsters or tyrants or both, but are they not also ridiculous?