Chapter 2: 29th December 1910—Cont’d
Warning: This page contains plot spoilers for Chapter 2. Read on only after you have finished the chapter.
Summary
The chapter opens with Emily, Wendell, Orga the cat, and Shadow the dog on a Greek hillside, having finally located the faerie door that will lead them back to Wendell’s kingdom. Orga proves stubbornly uncooperative, vanishing again until she reappears as if to mock them. Wendell hesitates at the threshold, visibly shaken by the prospect of returning after a decade in exile. Emily, though privately smug that she found the door in mere months, gives him a moment before playfully tugging him through.
They pass through the empty winter faerie’s cottage, where Wendell unlocks the Alpine door, then selects the moss-covered doorknob. Stepping into sunlight, they enter the realm known as Where the Trees Have Eyes. A small common fae stirs under a standing stone. Wendell, overwhelmed, weeps briefly, then recovers and spins Emily in delight. The door opens again and their allied Folk pour through—the owl-like guardians (shedding glamours to reveal spider-limbed horrors), trolls, tree fauns with feral hounds, and a river of fuchszwerge led by the boastful Snowbell.
Wendell switches seamlessly to Faie and begins to create a path merely by walking, the forest parting before him. He leads the group on a scenic, magic-lavish tour, shielding Emily from the realm’s darker corners. Emily records observations: three lakes (Muckle, Silverlily, Lower Lake), the contrary Blue Hooks mountains, the snail-like Folk who nurse eternal grudges, and the nightmarish attentive oaks whose every leaf bears an eye. During a tea break conjured from a faerie stone, Emily confronts Wendell about their route and his lack of a concrete plan; he admits he knows only “roughly” where the castle lies and has little grasp of rulership.
A flashback to October reveals Emily pressing Wendell on the line of succession and potential usurpers. He describes his father’s reign, his slain siblings, and his half-sister Deilah, but concedes he was never trained to govern—his father considered him a party-prone youth far from the throne. Emily, horrified, realizes he knows nothing about kingship, yet Wendell places absolute faith in her scholarly mind. She begins secretly taking notes for a groundbreaking treatise on faerie politics, banking on her unprecedented access to an actual court.
Back in the present, Wendell plucks a terrified brownie from a branch. Through the creature’s tangled dialect, they learn the realm is in chaos: warfare has trampled burrows, Folk are fleeing, and the stepmother has “fled” in a manner the brownie describes with a word meaning a leaf decaying into soil. They follow the brownie to a nearby battlefield, hoping to gather more intelligence before reaching the castle.