Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales Quiz: 20 Questions to Test Your Knowledge
Quiz: Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales
How well do you remember the twists, bargains, and scholarly deductions in Heather Fawcett's third Emily Wilde novel? This 20-question quiz mixes multiple-choice and short-answer formats, drawing from the entire story. Find the complete answer key with explanations after the questions.
Part I: Plot and Sequence (Questions 1–8)
1. Multiple Choice. What does Wendell smash during the New Year's Eve procession to erase the former queen's image?
A) A crown of woven thorns
B) A mirror presented by Lord Taran
C) The palace gate with his bare hands
D) An enchanted hourglass from the court treasury
2. Multiple Choice. In the corrupted grove, Lord Taran kills Lord Wherry for what reason?
A) Wherry was plotting against Wendell
B) To test whether the curse can corrupt faerie nobility
C) Wherry insulted Emily in open court
D) To claim Wherry's lands for himself
3. Short Answer. What three clues from the "King Macan's Bees" tale lead Emily and Wendell to Queen Arna's hiding place? Name at least two.
4. Multiple Choice. Where does Emily discover the portal door to the mortal cottage in Ireland?
A) Hidden in the Monarchs' Grove
B) Behind a tapestry in Wendell's apartments
C) Beneath the roots of an attentive oak
D) Inside the boggart's ruined tower
5. Short Answer. What object does the butter faerie give Emily, and what crucial information does it provide?
6. Multiple Choice. How does Emily gain the boggart's cooperation in the Gap of Wick?
A) She defeats him in a riddling contest
B) She fabricates shared interests and promises a grand banquet
C) She threatens him with a fragment of the Veil
D) Wendell compels him through a royal command
7. Short Answer. After Queen Arna dies by suicide, what action does Wendell immediately take, and what happens to Emily as a result?
8. Multiple Choice. What does the oíche sidhe housekeeper do after the Lady in the Crimson Cloak reveals the door to Death?
A) Flees the castle and vanishes into the forest
B) Bargains for triple wages before departing
C) Steps through Wendell's shadow door, declaring "He is one of ours"
D) Guides Emily through the door herself
Part II: Character Motivation (Questions 9–13)
9. Short Answer. Why does Emily secretly plan to write a book on faerie governance early in the novel?
10. Multiple Choice. Lilja warns Emily that loving a powerful faerie king is dangerous. What specific harm does Lilja fear most?
A) That Wendell will physically harm Emily when angered
B) That a mortal queen will be hunted by the Folk
C) That Emily will one day no longer recognize him
D) That Wendell will banish Emily back to Cambridge
11. Short Answer. Why does Farris Rose confess his friendship with Emily's grandfather, and what object does he give her?
12. Multiple Choice. What motivates Emily to leave Faerie alone on 5th February, despite Wendell's resurrection and her love for him?
A) She wishes to return to Cambridge and resume her academic career
B) She believes the story demands a different outcome for the stepmother's punishment
C) Lilja and Margret summon her urgently back to Ireland
D) Lord Taran warns her that her mortal presence weakens the realm
13. Short Answer. Why does Emily ultimately decide to rescue Queen Arna from the Veil, and whose help does she enlist to accomplish this?
Part III: Theme and Symbol (Questions 14–17)
14. Multiple Choice. The recurring motif of "stories shaping reality" in Faerie is most directly represented by which element?
A) Wendell's enchanted cloak
B) The mirror-shattering rite
C) The "King Macan's Bees" tale predicting events
D) Emily's button-summoning spell
15. Short Answer. In the cursed grove, Wendell's spilled blood revives the grass and repels the blight. What does this suggest thematically about his connection to the realm?
16. Multiple Choice. Emily's unopened journal from her grandfather serves primarily as a symbol of:
A) Her scholarly ambition to surpass previous dryadologists
B) The unexamined family entanglements with the Folk that she must reckon with
C) Farris Rose's manipulative nature
D) The lost folklore of Exmoor
17. Short Answer. What does Niamh Proudfit argue about the broader pattern of mortal heroism in Irish faerie tales, and how does this argument redirect Emily's quest?
Part IV: Synthesis (Questions 18–20)
18. Short Answer. Compare the fates of Macan the Second in the dark conclusion of the tale and Wendell's potential path. How does Emily's understanding of this parallel shape her final decisions?
19. Multiple Choice. The novel presents monarch-realm bonds, sacrificial curses, and the power of stories. Which statement best synthesizes the relationship between these elements?
A) Faerie stories are merely entertaining folklore with no bearing on actual politics
B) A monarch's body and the realm are intertwined, and only story-logic can guide mortal intervention in faerie crises
C) Mortal scholarship proves utterly useless, and only faerie magic resolves the central conflict
D) Kingship in Faerie operates on fixed laws that no story can alter
20. Short Answer. Emily begins the novel taking scholarly notes from a safe distance and ends by walking into the Veil itself. How does this arc reflect the novel's central thesis about the relationship between academic knowledge and lived experience in Faerie?
Answer Key
1. B) A mirror presented by Lord Taran. In the New Year's Eve procession, Wendell smashes the mirror as part of a ritual to erase the old queen's image, and the shards transform into fireflies.
2. B) To test whether the curse can corrupt faerie nobility. Taran deliberately breaks Wherry's legs and throws him into the corrupted mist, then watches with grim satisfaction as Wherry rises as a wraith, confirming that even faerie nobles are not immune.
3. Possible answers include: (a) Empty snail shells from island-dwelling snails, obtained from the butter faerie, indicating the queen is on a coastal island. (b) Double-barbed, horn-like thorns found in the queen's hair after her secret absences, reported by her hairdresser. (c) A scrap of sailcloth from a wound the queen once bandaged, provided by the boggart, revealing her hideaway is on Silverlily lake. Any two are acceptable.
4. B) Behind a tapestry in Wendell's apartments. Wendell reveals a portal door leading to a cottage in Corbann, Ireland, where Emily discovers her mother Margret and friend Lilja—a wedding gift designed as a refuge.
5. The butter faerie gifts Emily a tin of empty snail shells. These are the queen's favourite, obtained from island-dwelling snails, providing the first concrete clue that Queen Arna may be hiding among coastal islands.
6. B) She fabricates shared interests and promises a grand banquet. Emily exploits the boggart's yearning for kinship by inventing common ground—iced pears and music—and negotiates his return to the castle for a feast in exchange for information.
7. Wendell uses the same dagger to stab himself, attempting to complete the sacrificial pattern to lift the curse. Something hurls Emily backward, and she loses consciousness, later awakening on the mainland after being thrown through a tree portal.
8. C) Steps through Wendell's shadow door, declaring "He is one of ours." The housekeeper, revealed to have deep loyalty to Wendell, uses the shadow door to enter the limbo between life and death in an attempt to retrieve his spirit.
9. Emily overhears Wendell admit he has no idea how to rule and possesses little sense of direction regarding kingship. His political ignorance spurs her scholarly instinct to secretly plan a book on faerie governance.
10. C) That Emily will one day no longer recognize him. Lilja explains that in her experience, the great Folk are like nature—power, not malice, changes them until they become unrecognizable to those who love them.
11. Farris confesses he was a close friend of Emily's grandfather, Edgar Wilde, and that his death from "heart failure" was actually caused by the Folk. He gives Emily Edgar's journal, which contains his professional investigations and final days.
12. B) She believes the story demands a different outcome for the stepmother's punishment. Emily cannot shake the feeling that imprisoning Arna in a doorless cell within the Veil is narratively wrong and that the story pattern will doom Wendell unless she intervenes.
13. Niamh argues that a broader pattern of mortal heroism in Irish faerie tales demands a mortal rescue Arna from the Veil. Since only a faerie monarch can open the Veil, Emily enlists the Hidden King—the faerie king she previously deceived and escaped.
14. C) The "King Macan's Bees" tale predicting events. Throughout the novel, the fragmented folktale provides a structural blueprint that repeatedly mirrors and foretells Wendell and Emily's circumstances—from the three servant-clues to the sacrificial logic of the realm.
15. The blood-revival suggests a symbiotic, almost physiological bond between the monarch and the land. Wendell's sovereignty is not merely political; his very body is tied to the realm's health, so his blood acts as a counter-agent to the poison.
16. B) The unexamined family entanglements with the Folk that she must reckon with. The journal mirrors Emily's own obsessive scholarly nature while revealing her grandfather's fatal infatuation with a faerie woman, forcing Emily to confront how deeply her family history is intertwined with Faerie.
17. Niamh argues that a recurring pattern in Irish faerie tales features ordinary mortals travelling to foul realms to rescue imprisoned faerie lords or ladies. This redirects Emily from accepting Wendell's vengeful imprisonment of Arna toward the far more dangerous task of rescuing the stepmother herself.
18. In the dark conclusion of the Macan tale, the second king succumbs to paranoia and cruelty after his initial act of vengeance, killing guests and destroying his realm. Emily recognizes that Wendell's imprisonment of Arna parallels this beginning, and she fears the same descent into madness. This understanding drives her solitary quest to rescue Arna from the Veil, hoping to break the narrative before Wendell follows Macan the Second's path.
19. B) A monarch's body and the realm are intertwined, and only story-logic can guide mortal intervention in faerie crises. The novel demonstrates repeatedly that Faerie does not operate on mortal logic or fixed laws; instead, stories provide the only reliable map for navigating its dangers, and the physical bond between ruler and realm makes sacrifice—or its subversion—the central mechanism of resolution.
20. Emily's journey from detached academic observer to active participant in Faerie's darkest spaces embodies the novel's argument that true understanding requires immersion, not distance. Her scholarly knowledge equips her with the tools—recognition of story patterns, research skills, folktale analysis—but she must cross the boundary between cataloguing and living within the narrative to save Wendell and reshape the story's ending.
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