Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries Plot Summary

Introduction

# Whispers from the Frost: A Scholar's Dance with Hidden Realms The cottage door swung open to reveal a sheep standing in the parlor, chewing thoughtfully while snow drifted through broken windows. Dr. Emily Wilde had traveled to the edge of the world—a forgotten village called Hrafnsvik on the island of Ljosland—to complete her life's work: an encyclopaedia of the Folk. What she found instead was a place where academic theory collided with deadly reality, where the faeries she'd studied in dusty Cambridge libraries walked among mortals and stole children on the longest nights. The villagers watched her with the particular wariness reserved for outsiders who asked too many questions about the Hidden Ones. They had reason to be cautious. When winter deepened and the aurora bled white light onto the snow, beautiful creatures emerged from the forest to dance mortals to death. Emily had come seeking knowledge, but in this place where ancient magic still pulsed beneath the ice, she would discover that some stories demanded participation rather than observation. And her charming colleague Wendell Bambleby, whose golden hair and green eyes seemed almost too perfect for any mortal man, carried secrets that would transform her understanding of everything she thought she knew about the Folk.

Chapter 1: Arrival in the Winter-Bound Village

The fishing boat scraped against ice-crusted planks as Emily stepped onto the dock, her massive black dog Shadow padding silently beside her. Hrafnsvik huddled against the mountainside like a collection of red-roofed bones, its few dozen houses connected by paths already disappearing under fresh snow. The villagers who gathered wore expressions of polite skepticism—another scholar come to study their Folk, another outsider who didn't understand that some knowledge carried a price steeper than academic curiosity could pay. Krystjan Egilson, her gruff landlord, arrived at the cottage like a bear shambling through the door without invitation. His broken nose and suspicious manner suggested a man accustomed to disappointment, particularly regarding scholars who looked like mice and claimed to study faeries. The cottage itself was a testament to Ljosland practicality—thick stone walls, small windows, and a fireplace large enough to roast a sheep. Which, given the sheep currently occupying the parlor, seemed a reasonable possibility. Emily began arranging her research materials with methodical precision while Shadow explored the cottage with the patient thoroughness of a creature accustomed to strange places. Her notebooks contained years of careful documentation, interviews with supposed witnesses, analysis of folklore patterns across cultures. All of it suddenly felt inadequate in this place where the wind carried music that made mortal hearts race with inexplicable longing. The first visitors came that evening—Lilja, a young woman whose calloused hands spoke of hard labor in the forests, and her delicate companion Margret. They brought bread and cautious curiosity, their eyes darting between Emily's academic paraphernalia and the growing darkness outside. As they spoke of children who vanished on winter nights, their voices carried a weight that no scholarly paper could capture. This wasn't folklore. This was grief made manifest in empty chairs around family tables. When the women left, Emily stood at her grimy window watching their lantern bob through the snow. Somewhere in the forest beyond, bells chimed with an otherworldly melody that seemed to call directly to something deep in her chest. She had come to Hrafnsvik to study the Folk. She was beginning to suspect they intended to study her in return.

Chapter 2: Encounters with the Hidden Folk

The forest beyond Hrafnsvik breathed with its own rhythm, ancient spruces standing sentinel over secrets that predated human memory. Emily's first expedition led her to a natural hot spring where steam rose like incense, and there she made contact with her first subject. Poe emerged from a tree that shouldn't have been able to house anything larger than a squirrel, yet somehow contained what appeared to be a complete dwelling. The brownie was no larger than her hand, with needle-sharp fingers and eyes like black stars. He spoke in riddles and half-truths, offering Emily bread that tasted of pine needles and winter mornings in exchange for small favors. Through careful negotiation—for one never simply asked the Folk for anything—she learned fragments of their world. The tall ones who came with the aurora. The dancing that never ended until mortal hearts burst from exhaustion. The prices paid in youth and memory and love. Wendell Bambleby arrived three days later with two graduate students and an insufferable amount of charm. Emily's colleague from Cambridge swept into her cottage like a force of nature, somehow transforming the dreary space with mysterious furnishings and an inexplicable talent for making everyone adore him. Within hours, he'd charmed Krystjan into smiles, convinced the village children to bring him flowers, and made the cottage feel like something approaching a home. But Poe's reaction to Bambleby was immediate and violent. The brownie cowered in his tree, speaking in whispers of power that tasted like summer lightning and magic that sang in languages older than human speech. Emily watched her colleague's interactions with growing unease, noting how dying plants bloomed at his touch, how his words carried weight beyond their meaning, how his beauty seemed almost calculated to entrance mortal minds. When Wendell spoke to the Folk, he used their own tongue with an accent that made the words sing. His gifts to them were perfectly chosen, his mannerisms familiar in ways that suggested long practice rather than academic study. Emily had spent her career documenting the patterns of faerie tales, and she recognized the signs. The beautiful stranger whose gifts came with hidden prices. The charming visitor who transformed everything he touched. The too-perfect features that caught light like scattered stars.

Chapter 3: Revelation of the Exiled Prince

The white tree stood in the deepest part of the Karrðarskogur forest, massive as a cathedral and pale as bone. Its branches carried fruit and flowers that should never bloom in winter's grip, and its presence emanated malevolence like heat from a forge. Emily had heard whispers of it from the villagers, always spoken in hushed tones with glances toward the mountains. When she finally convinced Wendell to accompany her there, his reaction told her everything she needed to know about her colleague's true nature. Wendell's usual composure shattered the moment he saw the tree. He dragged Emily away with a desperation that bordered on panic, his careful mask slipping to reveal something wild and afraid beneath. As they fled across the frozen river, Emily felt the tree's influence seeping into her mind like poison through water. The imprisoned king within whispered promises of knowledge and power, offering her secrets that would make her the greatest scholar of her generation. That night, Wendell's confession came in fragments, each revelation more stunning than the last. He was no mortal man but one of the Folk himself, an exiled prince from the courts of Silva Lupi. His crime had been falling in love with a mortal woman, his punishment banishment to the human world where his magic slowly faded like color from old cloth. The tree contained his stepfather, the king who had ordered his exile, imprisoned by his own people for crimes that had split their court in two. Emily listened with the fascination of a scholar and the growing dread of someone who realized she was no longer simply studying the Folk. She had become entangled in their stories, their politics, their ancient hungers. Wendell's green eyes held centuries of pain as he described the loneliness of exile, the slow erosion of his true self as he played at being human. His charm, his beauty, his inexplicable ability to make everyone love him—all of it was faerie magic, as natural to him as breathing. The revelation should have changed everything between them. Instead, Emily found herself oddly unsurprised, as if some part of her had always known that her insufferable colleague harbored depths no mortal man could possess. The real shock was the tenderness in his voice when he spoke of his exile, the vulnerability that his centuries of practiced charm couldn't quite conceal. For the first time since arriving in Hrafnsvik, Emily wondered if she was studying the Folk or if they were studying her.

Chapter 4: When Mortals Vanish in Winter's Embrace

The bells came in the night, silver-sweet and terrible, calling to mortal hearts with promises of beauty beyond imagining. Emily woke to chaos in the village—Lilja and Margret had vanished, their horse returning riderless and foam-flecked with terror. The search party found tracks leading into the mountains, but no mortal could follow where those tracks led without losing themselves to the music that danced on the winter wind. Aud, the village's unofficial leader, stood in Emily's cottage with tears freezing on her weathered cheeks. The tall ones had taken the girls, she explained, the courtly fae who moved with the snows and fed on youth and love. They would dance the mortals to death in their winter court, draining their lives like wine from a cup. It had happened before, would happen again, and there was nothing human strength could do to prevent it. But Emily was no ordinary mortal, and Wendell was no mortal at all. As the village prepared for mourning, they prepared for war. Wendell's magic blazed to life as he crafted protections and weapons from moonlight and shadow, while Emily armed herself with knowledge gleaned from a lifetime of studying faerie lore. Shadow, her enormous black dog, revealed his true nature as a Grim bound by golden chains, his presence a shield against the hypnotic music that enslaved mortal minds. The plan was desperate and likely suicidal. Emily would enter the faerie realm alone, following ribbons of aurora that bled white to the ground. Wendell would remain behind, his exile making him vulnerable to the tall ones' justice, but ready to tear reality apart if she failed to return. As Emily prepared to cross the threshold between worlds, she felt the weight of every story she'd ever studied pressing down upon her. The scholar was about to become the protagonist of her own faerie tale. The forest transformed around her as she walked, paths shifting like dreams while the aurora overhead pulsed with alien rhythm. Behind her, the mortal world grew distant as memory. Ahead lay the winter court of the tall ones, beautiful and deadly as a blade made of ice. Emily had spent her career documenting the patterns of such stories. Now she would discover if knowledge alone could save her from becoming another cautionary tale whispered around village fires.

Chapter 5: Into the Realm of Ice and Starlight

The winter fair materialized around Emily like a beautiful trap, ice-skating courtiers with fox-fur hair gliding across a lake that reflected not their forms but their hungers. Merchants sold foods that melted to nothing on mortal tongues, musicians played instruments carved from frozen tears, and at the center of it all, Lilja and Margret danced with blank smiles and empty eyes. The faerie lord who ruled this frozen court was beautiful and terrible, his face catching starlight like scattered ice. He welcomed Emily with the courtesy due a distinguished guest, offering her wine that sparkled like liquid diamonds and delicacies that promised to satisfy hungers she didn't know she possessed. Shadow's presence protected her from the worst of the enchantments, but she could feel the court's influence seeping into her mind like cold water through cracked stone. Emily moved among the Folk like a scholar navigating a particularly dangerous library, using her knowledge of their customs and Shadow's protective presence to avoid the snares that had claimed so many mortals before her. She observed their rituals with academic fascination even as her heart broke watching Lilja and Margret spin in endless circles, their youth draining away with each step of the dance. The faerie lord bargained for Emily's enchanted cloak, the one Wendell had secretly mended with his brownie magic, offering safe passage in return. But escape proved more difficult than entry. The faerie realm folded around them like a maze, and Emily found herself trapped with the two girls in a cave of ice, slowly freezing while Shadow searched desperately for a door back to the mortal world. As hypothermia began to claim her, Emily understood with crystalline clarity that knowledge without power was merely an elaborate form of helplessness. All her years of study, all her careful documentation of faerie lore, meant nothing if she couldn't save two young women from a fate worse than death. The scholar who had always observed from a safe distance was about to become another victim of the stories she'd spent her life collecting.

Chapter 6: Captive in a Palace of Frozen Dreams

Wendell's rescue came with violence that revealed his true nature in all its terrible glory. When the dawn-eyed faerie lord attacked, seeking to claim the exiled prince as a prize for his winter court, magic blazed between them like summer lightning in the heart of winter. Emily watched her colleague transform from charming academic into something wild and dangerous, his power unleashed after years of careful restraint. The battle that followed was brutal and decisive, faerie magic clashing against faerie magic while the winter court looked on with the detached interest of immortals watching mortals play at war. Wendell fought with the desperate fury of someone protecting what he loved most, his exile forgotten in the face of immediate danger. When he finally stood victorious over his fallen opponent, his green eyes blazed with power that made Emily's mortal vision blur. But victory came with its own complications. The winter court's magic was ancient and deep, woven into the very fabric of the realm itself. As they fled through a rent in reality, Emily felt the cold seeping into her bones, the faerie realm's influence following them like a tide of ice and starlight. Lilja bore scars like frozen snowflakes across her face, healed but forever marked by her encounter with the Folk. The journey back to Hrafnsvik brought revelations and reckonings. Emily's own hand carried a shadow-ring, a binding placed by powers she barely understood, marking her as someone who had walked between worlds and returned changed. The village welcomed them as heroes, but Emily knew the truth—they had merely survived an encounter with forces beyond human comprehension. As they stumbled through the cottage door, Emily realized that her academic detachment had been forever shattered. She had saved two lives and gained the friendship of creatures both mortal and fae, but she carried within her a piece of the very darkness she studied. The scholar who had come to document the Folk had become part of their stories, her own tale woven into the great tapestry of mortal and faerie interaction that stretched back to the beginning of time itself.

Chapter 7: Escape and the Price of Knowledge

The white tree's influence struck Emily like a serpent in the night, swift and sure, wrapping around her will until she could no longer distinguish her own desires from those imposed upon her. She woke to find herself walking through the snow toward the imprisoned king, her movements controlled by a compulsion she couldn't break. In desperation, she did the only thing she could think of—she severed her own finger with an axe, using shock and pain to shatter the spell's hold. But freedom came at a price. The king had marked her, and she knew that eventually, she would have to face him on his own terms. When she finally approached the tree of her own free will, it was with the knowledge that she was walking into a trap from which there might be no escape. The imprisoned king emerged like winter given form, beautiful and terrible in equal measure, declaring Emily his destined bride before transporting her to a palace of ice that materialized from the mountainside like a frozen dream. The palace existed in a realm between worlds, where time flowed like honey and reality bent to the king's will. Emily was dressed in gowns of ice and starlight, attended by servants who moved like shadows, presented with gifts that melted at her touch. Days blurred into weeks as she struggled to maintain her sense of self against the palace's enchantments, writing in her journal with desperate determination. Rescue came from the villagers she had studied like specimens in her academic pursuit. Led by Aud's practical determination and Wendell's desperate love, they infiltrated the palace during a grand celebration. The plan required Emily to play her part in a deadly masquerade, pretending to remain under the king's spell while secretly working to bring about his downfall. As the moment of truth arrived, Emily hesitated, her lifetime of studying faerie tales whispering warnings about the consequences of direct action. Her hesitation saved them all. The spilled poison revealed not just their plot but the true villain—the deposed queen who had orchestrated the king's imprisonment and now sought to reclaim her throne through treachery. In the chaos that followed, Wendell's magic blazed like summer lightning as he fought to protect Emily, his true nature finally revealed in all its terrible glory.

Summary

Emily Wilde's journey to Hrafnsvik began as an academic expedition and ended as a transformation of the soul. The scholar who had spent her career cataloguing the Folk from a safe distance found herself living within their stories, subject to their laws, and ultimately changed by their touch. Her encyclopaedia would be complete, her academic reputation secured, but the cold scholarly distance she had maintained from her subjects lay in ruins like ice in spring. The true revelation was not the existence of the Folk—Emily had never doubted that—but the realization that some knowledge could only be gained through participation rather than observation. The villagers of Hrafnsvik, whom she had initially viewed as sources of data, became the family she had never known she needed. And Wendell, whose true nature as an exiled faerie prince might have made him merely another subject of study, instead became the mirror in which she saw her own capacity for love and transformation. In the frozen wastes of the far north, Emily discovered that the most dangerous magic of all was the kind that made you care, binding scholar and subject together in stories that would echo through both mortal and faerie realms for generations to come.

About Author

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Heather Fawcett

Fawcett reframes fantasy literature by blending mythical elements with intellectual curiosity, creating richly atmospheric narratives that captivate a diverse readership. Her books often feature academic protagonists, such as scholars and researchers, who navigate worlds inhabited by dragons and faeries. This approach not only enriches the reader's experience with vivid, fantastical settings but also delves into themes of isolation, discovery, and connection. Fawcett's Emily Wilde series exemplifies this style, blending elements of historical fiction, adventure, and romance to create a unique "light academia" feel. Meanwhile, her work in middle-grade fiction, like "Ember and the Ice Dragons", offers younger audiences tales filled with whimsy and adventure.\n\nHeather Fawcett's multifaceted background in archaeology and English literature informs her intricate world-building and thematic depth, allowing her to craft stories that appeal to both young adults and adults. Before becoming a full-time writer, she explored various fields, including technical writing and photography, which contributes to the authenticity and richness of her narratives. Fawcett's books have gained international acclaim, appearing on bestseller lists and being translated into more than twenty languages. This widespread recognition underscores her impact in the literary world, where her exploration of adventure and self-discovery resonates with readers seeking both escapism and intellectual engagement.\n\nFor readers interested in fantasy that challenges the boundaries between reality and the mythical, Fawcett's body of work offers a unique blend of imagination and scholarship. Her commitment to creating deeply immersive worlds ensures that her stories are not just entertaining but also thought-provoking, offering a fresh perspective on the transformative power of adventure. Whether exploring her young adult series or delving into her middle-grade fantasies, readers can expect to find narratives that are both enchanting and intellectually stimulating, providing an enriching experience for fans of the genre.

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