Fairy Realm Quotes

“Wanting to be through with this quickly, I leaned forward and kissed him.
Almost. I lost my nerve halfway there, somewhere around the moment I noticed he had a freckle next to his eye and wondered ridiculously if that was something he would remove if I asked it of him, and instead of a proper kiss, I merely brushed my lips against his. It was a shadow of a kiss, cool and insubstantial, and I almost wish I could be romantic and say it was somehow transformative, but in truth, I barely felt it. But then his eyes came open, and he smiled at me with such innocent happiness that my ridiculous heart gave a leap and would have answered him instantly, if it was the organ in charge of my decision-making.
"Choose whenever you wish," he said. "No doubt you will first need to draw up a list of pros and cons, or perhaps a series of bar plots. If you like, I will help you organize them into categories."
I cleared my throat. "It strikes me that this is all pointless speculation. You cannot marry me. I am not going to be left behind, pining for you, when you return to your kingdom. I have no time for pining."
He gave me an astonished look. "Leave you behind! As if you would consent to that. I would expect to be burnt alive when next I returned to visit. No, Em, you will come with me, and we will rule my kingdom together. You will scheme and strategize until you have all my councillors eating out of your hand as easily as you do Poe, and I will show you everything---everything. We will travel to the darkest parts of my realm and back again, and you will find answers to questions you have never even thought to ask, and enough material to fill every journal and library with your discoveries.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

“Wendell was no sooner gazing at the silver sewing needles than he was brushing away a tear.
"They are like my father's," he said wonderingly. "I remember the flicker of them in the darkness as we all sat together by the ghealach fire, with the trees surrounding us. He would bring them everywhere, even the Hunt of the Frostveiling---that is the first hunt of autumn, the largest of the year, when even the queen and her children roam through the wilds with spears and swords, riding our best---oh, I don't know what you would call them in your language. They are a kind of faerie fox, black and golden together, which grow larger than horses. My brothers and sisters and I would crowd round the fire to watch him weave nets from brambles and spidersilk. And all the moorbeasts and hag-headed deer would cower at the sight of those nets, though they barely blinked at the whistle of our arrows." He fell silent, gazing at them with his eyes gone very green.
"Well," I said, predictably at a loss for an answer to this, "I hope they are of use to you. Only keep them away from any garments of mine."
He took my hand, and then, before I knew what he was doing, lifted it to his mouth. I felt the briefest brush of his lips against my skin, and then he had released me and was back to exclaiming over his gifts. I turned and went into the kitchen in an aimless haste, looking for something to do, anything that might distract me from the warmth that had trailed up my arm like an errant summer breeze”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

“Wendell and I would spend the next several months traveling his realm. Our realm. I must get used to that. I would take copious notes all the while, no doubt filling several of the ridiculous journals the bookbinders kept churning out, and stumbling across so many research questions it would take me ten lifetimes to tackle them all. And after that, who knows? I have my compendium of tales to finish--- I plan to gather stories as Wendell and I travel, adding them to the small hoard I've already collected. My presence is not required in the mortal world until October, when I will be delivering a presentation on several key findings in my map-book, which shall be published in a month's time. When the Berlin Academy of Folklorists sends you an invitation to their annual conference, you cannot say no.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales

“As a girl, the fairies came to me; they whispered in my dreams and left songs in my head. I went to the glen and found them there. We danced and played. They took me into the fairy realm and showed me their life of joy. A life with no possessions and no want. They lived in harmony with the earth. Never again would I know such happiness.”
― Ellie O'Neill, Reluctantly Charmed

“Her feet touched upon ground, and a cloud of silvery dust blossomed up to her waist. Her clothes shimmered, and the checkered cotton dress she was wearing became an elegant white gown with a silver cord around the waist.
"Your apprentice gown," explained Agata. She gestured ahead. "Welcome to the Wishing Star."
Before her was a village not unlike Pariva, only every cottage was a different color: rose, violet, mahogany, marigold. Burgundy, magenta, and pearl. Even the flowers in the gardens matched the colors of the houses, and trees made of gold and copper and silver lined the shimmering streets. In the center was a house made of crystal, its windows stained with hearts of every color in the town.
As soon as her gaze fell upon the house, its door opened, and over a dozen fairies filed outside, each wearing a warm smile.”
― Elizabeth Lim, When You Wish Upon a Star

“A strange landscape stared back at her. Delphine gasped and let the tree support her weight as she slowly took in the sight of of the forest drawn tight around the ring of moss surrounding the linden. The trees were skeletal and pale as bone, branches gnarled and twining in complicated knotwork that might have been intentionally woven or might have been the wild striving of trees reaching for the sky. There were no leaves, but a thick hoarfrost of silver coated every branch, every twig, every barren bud. Bracken grew tangled at the roots of the trees; it, too, was layered in sparkling pale beauty.
The ground was covered in the same thick silver, which Delphine slowly appreciated was not cold at all, but still as fragile and sharp as frost. No grass grew on the ground, only a thick carpet of the same moss surrounding the tree. The silver didn't pass through the circle, fading to a film near the green encircling the linden tree.”
― Rowenna Miller, The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill

“Faintly rattled, Delphine rounded a curve in the path and found herself at the edge of clearing, the trees pulling back from a carpet of verdigris grass. They gave up the wildness of the wood here, tamed into symmetrically intertwined branches whose openings revealed more pale paths into the forest. The diffuse light of the forest concentrated here, as though emanating from hidden gas lamps. Delphine toed the boundary of what she now saw was an enormous fairy ring.
A structure of pure white rose from the center of the ring, the beams arching like the bones of a cathedral, the space between filled with delicate filigree of brittle white. Windows like translucent dragonfly wings shone under cornices carved like birds and flowers and trailing vines. A castle, Delphine thought, or a church--- all the same emphasis and gravitas translated here, and something stranger and deeper.”
― Rowenna Miller, The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill

“She stepped inside a vestibule with a silver bowl of pure, clear water set on a pedestal made of what Delphine could only assume was a very large, very sturdy zinnia. Was she supposed to wash in it, or was she firmly barred from touching it? She glanced in its shallow depth, and it began to pulse and swirl with pale light. She stepped away quickly. A filmy veil of light separated the interior; she held out a tentative finger, and the light brushed it like organza and separated for her. She stepped through into the Court, sprawling and open to the sky above, yet bound by the pale walls on all sides.
Inside, the Court looked back at her.
Dozens of Fae, gathered in twos and threes, beneath trees of gold and silver and around pools of deep azure blue, inside pavilions made of sheer flower petals and on carpets that must have been woven bird feathers. They all watched her, silently, unmoving. Each was almost painful to look at, beautiful and yet sharp and cold. All of them were arrayed in the spoils of their bargains, with sheer gowns of watercolor silk and robes of pliable silver, elaborate braids adorned with finely wrought metal and tautly bound silk, and even, on a few, wings and horns and talons refashioned from wood and bone and glass. Delphine was terrified of them, and yet also drawn to them. A great and terrible power hummed among them, just below the surface, a nearly tangible potential for change, for creation, for more than anything the world on her own side of the veil could offer.”
― Rowenna Miller, The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill

“She thought of the wax-white knook and shivered as she brushed against a pale pink tree branch. Was nothing the proper color here? Even the greens were more brilliant, more like paint than nature, the kinds of outlandish color she usually tried to temper in her own artwork.
If she stayed, she thought absently, she could paint with the trees themselves, learn to sculpt petals and dew, hone even an animal into an ideal she created for it. She could craft beauty more rare and arresting than she ever could with watercolor and oil. She'd craved more of the world on the other side of the veil, wanted to taste the kind of success and belonging Alaine had, wanted recognition for her talents. Perhaps she could make that for herself here. Perrysburg, Pierce--- those had been poor illusions blurring what she really wanted.
It would not be all pain, would it? Trading herself for Emily? All the places she had ever wanted to go, all the things she had ever wanted to see, all the art she had ever wanted to create--- didn't this place outstrip anything in her own world for beauty and discovery?”
― Rowenna Miller, The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill

“He smiled. "This is all going into your book, isn't it?"
"I was not even thinking about my book," I said defensively--- I was only half lying. With my encyclopaedia complete, I have, as Wendell knows, turned my attention to another large project--- creating a mapbook of all the known faerie realms, as well as their doors. Such a book will be a patchwork thing, unavoidably so--- faerie realms are often attached to specific geographical locations in the mortal world, though only a few have been explored in a meaningful way--- but I wish to use it to argue Danielle de Grey's point: that the realms are more interconnected than previous scholarship has suggested. Finding evidence of the nexus would be the linchpin of the entire project.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands

“I had several sketches drafted for my mapbook--- my intention for the first edition was to focus on the best known faerie kingdoms of Western Europe, scouring the literature for references to their doors. Some doors have been documented; more have not, or exist as rumors. While it's true that many faerie kingdoms are tied to specific mortal regions, others are more nebulous, and a tale may place one at the edge of a village a hundred miles from the setting of a later iteration of the same story.
I am aware that mine is no easy task, given that faerie doors can and do move, and what I will accomplish is likely to be a mere snapshot of Faerie during this particular era. Even so, it will be a monumental achievement for scholarship, something for others to build upon--- particularly if I can produce evidence of such disputed doors as the nexus.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands

“We seemed to have emerged upon a snowy curve of mountainside below a glacier--- I believe we were in Faerie, for there were two little stone houses tucked in amongst the jagged icicles at the glacier's edge, with smoke curling from their chimneys. One had an apple tree in its yard, the apples coated in a rind of ice. The icicles themselves were like a forest of glittering trees, through which the fox faerie was darting, deeper into the glacier.
"Hurry up!" the faerie called.
I hurried, against my better judgment I might add, but then that is almost always the case when interacting with the Folk; stumbling into an impossible forest of icicles is not the most ill-advised thing I have done in my career. The forest made little plinking sounds and reflected our darting shapes strangely. In the distance, there was music.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands

“We will be taking a long sabbatical from Cambridge, both of us. Wendell does not believe he will return, and why would he? The scholarly life was for him merely the means to an end, the end being finding a way back to his home. But I know that I will, if only from time to time. Perhaps a semester here, a semester there. A tenured scholar has a great deal of freedom, after all, and once the article I have written on my journey into the Silva Lupi (much redacted and condensed, of course) appears in next month's issue of Modern Dryadology, Cambridge will be all the more eager to retain me. Rose, who acted as co-author, and actually deigned to allow my name to appear first in the publication, is certain it will send the scholarly community into a tizzy.
And also--- I will have my mapbook to publish.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands

“Wendell pushed the door open.
Light.
It was full morning, and my vision flooded with color. Primarily green, but there was also the yellow of moss and lichened stone, the violet of bluebells clustered at the edge of the forest, the gold of sunbeams, and the rich azure of the sky. The door opened onto a hill in a small clearing, beyond which a wall of trees nodded their boughs in the wind, as if in greeting. The air was wet from a recent rain and heavy with the smell of green and growing things--- all as I remembered.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales

“Wendell rested his hand on one of the cherry trees in an absent sort of way, gazing over the landscape. The tree began to flower, buds bursting forth in a riot of purples and blues, and the leaves grew so green they resembled crushed emeralds. It matched Wendell's expression, somehow, as he swept his gaze over the view, a contentment that seemed to radiate from him, cheering all in his vicinity. Two servants carrying what looked like a newly minted silver mirror stepped more lightly, their faces brightening, and a fat leprechaun sprawled against a nearby boxwood chuckled in his sleep.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales

“I found myself noticing familiar plants and features as we travelled through the woods. Some brownies, for instance, had stone dwellings built into the earth--- closer to cellars than houses, to my eye--- roofed in densely interwoven fern fronds. Doubtless others dwelt in the canopy, for when I looked up, I saw the telltale silver gleam of impossibly narrow bridges connecting the trees like spiderthread. But as we moved away from the castle, I saw less of this glittering architecture, and more of the humble, cellarlike variety. I also noted that I was growing increasingly adept at spotting moss-brownies, as I had begun to call them in my head, for the mossy caps they wore. These small, black-eyed creatures, whose bodies were often covered in moss as well, could be seen peeking at us from behind branches, or sometimes in plain view upon a green stone or bough, where they were surprisingly difficult to detect.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales

“I remembered what Callum had said about Queen Arna--- that she had taken the poison within herself and somehow infected the realm with it, as a mortal might pass on a cold. It was a mad idea, of course, and yet simultaneously--- as is often the case in Faerie--- there was a sort of logic to it. Monarchs of Faerie do not merely inhabit their realms; they are thought to be intricately entwined.*

*Wentworth Morrison's Folk-Lore of Scotland, Volume III: Thrones of Faerie (1852) remains the definitive resource on this topic, but Farris Rose's exhaustive investigation of Cornish faerie stories (in particular his Atlas of Tales, 1900) provides additional insight. Cornwall holds the record for the sheer number of interactions between mortals and monarchs of Faerie (Rose's "Comparative Analysis of the Faerie Markets of Bodmin Moor," published in Dryadological Fieldnotes in 1902, offers several intriguing theories as to why this might be so). In many of the tales recorded by Morrison and Rose, a faerie monarch's power is also their Achilles' heel: while they control the landscape and weather, they can be defeated by being trapped and removed from their homes, as a flower dies when uprooted from its soil.

It was both a threat to Wendell's rule and the perfect revenge against him. He who had evaded the same poison was now forced to watch it consume his realm.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales

“I followed his gaze to the lakeshore. A hundred tiny lights dotted the forest--- more than a hundred. A thousand? They kept appearing among the shadows, different in size and luminance depending on the lantern. I hadn't realized the forest was so full of Folk. And among the trees, the silver faerie stones began to glow.
"All this for a mortal queen?" I muttered, flushed and overwhelmed.
"Too much?" Wendell made a gesture, and the faerie stones dimmed, retaining only a faint luminescence. "That's as much as I can do. The small Folk will keep to their traditions--- they would be greatly offended if I ask them to put their lights out before morning."
"Very well," I said. It was easier to bear without the faerie stones, which I've always found eerie, the way they hang untethered among the treetops like a strangely shaped mist. I know the curator of Cambridge's Museum of Dryadology and Ethnofolklore would give her eye teeth for just one of the things--- none have ever been smuggled into the mortal world, and their form and size makes them unique among faerie stones.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales