Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

Emily struggles to start a fire in the hearth. Krystjan’s son, Finn, arrives with hot tea and promptly lights the fire for her. Finn is interested in Emily’s work; she reveals she’s been compiling her comprehensive encyclopedia for nine years, and the Ljosland Hidden Ones are the last entry. Finn leaves Emily with dinner and a letter from Wendell Bambleby, a Cambridge professor and irksome coworker of Emily’s. His letter is charming and friendly as he updates Emily on recent department meetings and staff gossip. He expresses concern over her safety and hints at joining her in Ljosland before ending the letter by offering to write the foreword of her book. While she is annoyed by this, she also faintly feels relief, as his fame is sure to bolster her own success. Emily tosses the letter into the fire and goes to bed.

In the morning, Finn visits. He brings her food, and after an awkward conversation, Emily learns that his mother passed away years prior and his father dislikes Finn’s passion for baking.

After Finn leaves, Emily finds Wendell’s letter in the hearth, entirely unscathed. While this frustrates her, it does not surprise her. This seemingly magic letter is not the first sign leading her to suspect Wendell is a courtly fae, exiled from the Folk and forced to live among humans; he avoids metals as most fae do, feigns right-handedness as all fae are left-handed, and Emily sometimes detects a fae dialect in his speech. Her colleagues do not agree with her, however, which makes her question her theory.

Emily traverses the mountainside behind her cottage and finds a hot spring. As she’s dipping her feet in, she hears the telltale sound of a curious nearby faerie. She leaves a diamond and a tin of Turkish sweets behind as an offering of friendship, hoping the gifts will not offend the fae of the region and incite their wrath. She notes that offerings of sweets are typically welcome universally across fae species.

Emily balks at socializing with the locals, but is exhausted and hungry after conducting her research, and thus visits the town tavern. There, she first meets Lilja Johannasdottir, a woodcutter and a young woman who has a door to the faerie world in her backyard in which “the little ones” have passed in and out. When Emily mentions her desire to see this backyard “door,” Lilja is first reticent, then hesitantly welcoming.

Emily meets Aud Hallasdottir, the village headwoman, who asks her to dine at her home when she is able. During their conversation, Aud becomes closed off, and Emily is unsure why. Emily also meets Thora Gudridsdottir—a blunt old woman who reveals there’s a town bet going on how long Emily will last before fleeing the region.

Emily encounters Auðor—Aud’s niece, a young woman in her twenties who’s been unresponsive since being kidnapped and returned by the local faeries. She only eats and drinks when commanded to, a shell of her former self. When Emily returns to her cabin, she’s nearly out of firewood. She attempts, unsuccessfully, to cut wood for herself and goes to bed cold.

Finn brings burned bread for breakfast the following morning. When Emily asks about the bread, Finn mentions that Emily has somehow offended Aud and by association, Krystjan and the rest of the town. Emily worries that offending the village headwoman will negatively impact her ability to gather research. She plans to make amends with Aud.

Emily records her first interaction with the local fae. She returns to the same spring she dipped her feet into two days prior and notices her offerings are gone. When the small, childlike faerie approaches Emily and digs around in her pockets, she offers to make a bargain. In exchange for a beaver skin, the faerie will make Emily fresh bread. The faerie actually wants a bear skin, and Emily promises to try and obtain one, later writing to her brother and providing payment if he will send it (there are no bears in this region of the world). The faerie refuses to share any information about itself, but Emily believes he will eventually open up if she continues to visit.

The weather worsens, becoming gloomier and more miserable. Krystjan continues to purposefully burn Emily’s breakfast, despite her continued efforts to apologize to Aud. Aud assures her there’s nothing to apologize for, but when visiting the local grocer, Emily discovers Aud has told the locals to charge her the tourist price—significantly higher than the guest price. On her walk through town, Emily discovers a dangerous faerie lurking in the windows of a family home, likely causing mayhem and feeding on their fear. In the window, she sees the faerie leave a bloody handprint as it stares back at her, reaching out. The handprint is gone when she looks back at the window moments later.

Back at her research site, Emily meets her faerie and they exchange her beaver skin for his fresh-made bread. He offers to continue providing bread in exchange for keeping the path from his tree-home to the spring clear when snow falls. When she returns to her cottage—which has been broken into by wild sheep—she discovers Wendell Bambleby has arrived unannounced with two students, Henry and Lizzie, in tow. Wendell promptly moves in, delegating tasks to Henry and Lizzie to tidy up the cottage they’ll all be sharing. Emily fears he has arrived to take credit for her research, but Wendell claims only to want to assist. Wendell invites Emily to the International Conference of Dryadology and Experimental Folklore (ICODEF), “the most prestigious conference in [their] field […] to which [Emily] had not once been invited” (57), where he hopes to share their joint findings. Wendell swiftly charms the surly Krystjan into making dinner, which Emily notes may be related to his persuasive abilities as a faerie.

The following day, Emily and Wendell disagree on their methods of research. Emily prefers rigid, high-intensity research, while Wendell’s preferences are more meandering and flexible. Emily decides to check out the creature she assumes to be a wight—a malevolent household Brownie—who she saw in the window in town. Wendell introduces himself to Aud and interviews the locals.

Emily visits the haunted home—inhabited by Mord Samson, his wife Aslaug, and their son Ari—and discovers the faerie is not a wight, but a changeling child. Emily is intrigued by this information because while “changelings are monstrous offspring produced by the courtly fae, weak and sickly creatures who bring misfortune upon a household for as long as they remain there” (72), they are not known for being vicious or malevolent. Emily learns the real Ari was stolen five years ago, at the age of one. Ari’s body is now possessed by a faerie. This is even more of a departure from the faeries elsewhere in the world, who only abduct newborns. Mord seems hopeful that Emily’s knowledge of the Folk will help their family and invites her and Shadow inside to investigate. She is confronted with gruesome and terrifying mental hallucinations as she approaches his room but remains unphased because of her knowledge of a changeling’s tendency to manipulate. Shadow likewise appears to be either unbothered or unaware of the changeling’s actions. The changeling is the first courtly fae Emily has ever spoken to, but she manages to get very little information out of him—only wailing about the forest and a beloved willow tree. He makes numerous threats, but she manages to subdue him and leave unharmed.

Afterward, Emily visits her friendly faerie at the hot spring, whom she’s named Poe. Poe appears anxious, claims Wendell visited earlier in the day, and asks that he not return. Emily agrees to this request, to Poe’s surprise, who says: “You can command a prince?” (80). This is news to Emily, but she cannot inquire further before Poe mentions Wendell’s interest in asking about their local faerie doors. This interest is suspicious, but Poe believes there are no doors in his forest—though they might move with the winter storms, which are coming to the region soon. Emily makes Wendell promise not to visit Poe again but doesn’t tell him what she learned about his identity.