Work Text:
The untimely death of Dr. Emily Wilde
Dearest Emily;
I can’t believe it.
You are gone; you really are…
I've tried to write this letter countless times. Each attempt brings madness that crashes over me like a hurricane. Sometimes I even delude myself into thinking that I am writing a normal letter to you, like I did thousands of times during our long marriage. Until I write your name and reality crashes in. I start to weep, then cry, then shout, like the madman I’ve become.
The gods are cruel.
I am afraid to tell you, my dearest, that I might have destroyed our apartments.
The broken furniture is nothing more than a tiny detail in a room in which reality is broken, time has stopped, and the undergrowth has taken form where the shadows of us once were.
The bed remains untouched, because you are still lying there.
Never have I ever felt like this, even when I lost my family. You don’t choose the family you are born into, and, as I told you many times, in a world in which family is the first one to betray you, you tend not to get too attached.
But I chose you, Emily. The day I met you, I could never have imagined the path we would walk together. But in the eight years of our friendship, I learned to know and choose you every day. I knew the day you departed for Hrafnsvik that you had become a part of my world. I didn’t even believe that you would return my affections; I just knew that your name was now carved into my ghost. So I chose you once again.
What a cruel fate the gods had cast upon us, to give eternity to creatures such as us, while giving people like you such fragile bodies and short lives.
What a horrible thing it is to let one meet the other and watch while they find love in each other. How cruel it is that I would not change a thing.
Lucky I have been, hundreds of years of marriage is not something that many people can claim. Especially in the world of the courtly fae.
And what a baffling pair we made. Do you remember when, in Where the Ravens Hide, they would mock our realm, calling it the realm of the scholar and his dog? That was a long time ago.
The queen of When the Moon Will Bear Its Teeth said that our reign would have been like an ink stain on a black cloak, an unfortunate but easily forgettable accident. You responded that her reign would have been like a blood spatter on a crimson cloak. And you were right. How did you know that the Crimson Countess had become her lover? You did explain that to me, but as always, I lost myself half through the explanation cause the only thing I really wanted to witness was the great sounds of the cogs of your mind unravelling. Spies were involved, I think, a pact with a red cap, you offered a wooden comb to a banshee, I believe.
The point is that, by the time the Queen, her son, grandson, and great-granddaughter had fallen on each other's swords in a great civil war for the throne, our realm was still thriving.
And so was your career.
You had become quite the legend in Cambridge, more than you already were. A mysterious professor with a passion for the realm of Silva Lupi, who could not stop herself from revolutionising driadology once every two or three years with new books, theories, and guides.
You did research in other lands, taking pauses from our realm, by traveling far away, much to my dismay. I would wait forlornly for your return. And the realm would wait with me, the branches of the oaks and the elms losing leaves, like they were weeping.
I wonder what they look like right now. The oaks and the elms.
“You don’t need to go out there, you could just get a little more creative,” I would say every time you started to plan for a new trip, and your response would always make me remember why I call you “dragon.”
Someone spilled the beans eventually. It could have been one of the many scholars who came to visit the realm, inspired by your papers, but we both know it probably was a very drunk Ariadne.
Whoever was, revealed the true identity of the king of Silva Lupi and what happened to poor Dr Wendell Bambleby, believed to be lost in the icy lands of the Hidden Ones forevermore.
You came back home that day after escaping a rather messy week in Cambridge. You recounted to me the shock on our colleagues' faces when they realized they lived with a courtly fae under their scholarly noses for eight years straight.
That image got stuck in my mind to the point that on a midsummer day, while you were in Cambridge, I decided to come by, just for a lark. You were not amused. Having your faerie husband and king calling you from the gardens of Cambridge on top of a fairy horse, begging you to come home, was not ideal for a scholar who was still trying to survive her most recent scandal.
You berated me from the window of your office for five good minutes, but you did eventually give in.
Once you escorted me out of the Cambridge grounds, away from the chaos my little stunt had caused, you softened up a little bit. You took my arm and told me that you had missed me.
Our breakfast place was still open, so we stopped and had breakfast like in the old days. The only thing missing was Shadow. He passed away in our arms, ten years after I gave you the word of power to help him.
The years that came after my little stunt at the university were quite cheerful, new colleagues coming and going from the realm, new challenges given from the many attempts on my life by the new king of Where the ravens hide.
That time you came home with a pistol. Em, more than five hundred years have passed from that day, and I still cannot believe you brought that foul thing into our world. What a crass weapon, I told you that verbatim.
“Our neighbors are trying to kill us, Wendell.”
“Why don’t you let me teach you swordplay instead?”
I really wanted to teach you, and you said-
I miss you.
When the years together turned to decades, death became an inevitable presence in our lives. From time to time, someone we knew would die.
Thora was second to Shadow, but she was an old lady who spent every birthday of her last decade hoping for that to be the last one, just to be disappointed the year after.
Rose came after her, and you grieved him, in the way you grieve a colleague and friend, who was also an old man who had spent a long, fulfilling life.
Your parents came next, and that was quite a bumpy road. You cried, and you grieved for all the things left unsaid, for the relationship between the three of you that never fully grew to bloom. But every child has to bury their parents; it would be unnatural to do the opposite.
You stayed strong, returned to your books and research, and when I decided to storm into Cambridge, yet again, you laughed and thanked me. You missed me, once again.
Some deaths were even welcomed.
Your fairy fiancée passed away, killed by none other than his new wife, who had grown tired of his endlessly long-winded and self-important discourse of beauty, fairness, and the ugliness of violence. She thankfully had acquired his chivalrous ways of treating mortals. What a good day that was. I threw a feast that lasted for two months. For all I cared, I could have made it last for a decade if I didn’t know how much you dislike partying.
For some reason, it was a relief for you to be able to walk freely on that icy land. I understood that you wanted to see Poe and the others, but then you decided to meet the new queen. I wanted to argue with you, but once again, I chose peace. I will never truly comprehend your mind, Em, in the same way you will never truly comprehend my nature.
All that mattered was the wonder that filled your eyes every time you came back from your travels and the soft smiles that embellished your face every time you saw me. In those moments, my entire world was alight, and I would thank the gods, because they give us little creatures of the earth, the immense power of falling in love.
Once we reached the fiftieth anniversary of marriage, many of the people of Cambridge, Hrafnsvik, and your own family had reached their mortal ends. It was still normal, because, although it was a pain to see them go, Aud, Ulfar, Thomas, Aslaug, Mord, Eichorn, and DeGray, they were older than you.
Lilja’s death changed the tide. We both came to her funeral. She was ten years younger than you, her age sculpted on her face with a tight net of wrinkles, while you looked a little younger than forty. Margaret was in a wheelchair. At that point, she lost a huge part of her mind and memory, asking who was being buried and where Lilja was. She closed her eyes one last time, the same week. And that was the second-to-last time I saw Ljosland.
When we came back home, you asked me to hold you in bed for a while, an unusual request, but a welcome one. I caressed your hair as you wept, discovering that some of them had turned a bright silver color.
The death of two of your friends was crushing you, and the vision of you going through a pain that I could not destroy with magic or sword fighting choked me.
You still kept going. I learned that sometimes, the only way to mend the sorrow of another is to just hold their hand, while they face the pain of being almost immortal, in a world in which almost nobody shares the same fate.
We made peace with When the ravens hide at last, and before they could resist, you were in their land, interrogating brownies and courtly fae alike, scribbling furiously in your notebook. The new queen looked quite enchanted by you, and before we could fully understand how, we were often visiting her, and your ability to find friends in the most unusual places shone once again.
At that point, the human world had grown quite different from our reign, which seemed quite allergic to change. You talked to me about the modern world with curiosity and a tidbit of nostalgia for the old world. You said that the old ways of doing academia were much better, and I told you it sounded like Rose, and you laughed. You tried at least. The sound that came out was so bitter.
The cottage was still your stronghold, even if our dear friends were gone. Other new friends arrived, and you found some sort of kingship with Niamh, Callum, and some of the other mortals in our court.
We bickered away the years, and slowly you came to understand the new technologies, while still expertly avoiding them, preferring journals to computers, and letters to email. At that point, the strangeness of the world outside infected the inside.
At the start of the new millennium, Ari died. So much time had passed that I had genuinely forgotten about the little fellow. He was a child when I carried him in my arms back to his grieving parents, and now all that was left was an urn. His great-grandchildren were at his funeral; they looked eerily similar to him as a child. That was the last time I set foot in Ljosland.
Some years later, it was Ariadne’s turn. She who avoided death for so long, since she was often our guest, and your favourite student. It wasn’t natural in any way; it was violent, abrupt, and unexpected. It wasn’t illnesses or old age; it was the human world that did it.
After the funeral, I found you in the gardens crying uncontrollably, like never before. You talked to me in Faie. You said you didn’t want to see that wretched world anymore.
So I closed our door and let the cottage crumble.
The years that followed were still joyful, no doubt in that. You grew full of life once more, and you started your publishing work again. Your new interest turned toward the other Irish realms.
And with so few contacts with the human world, time passed without us noticing the years turn to centuries.
We grew old. I mean, you did. I wanted to make sure you didn’t feel like Queen Arna, banished by her husband when she grew old, just to be replaced by a young bride. I played a mere pantomime of growing old. Letting my hair turn grayish and my face wrinkle, my changes were just a specter of what aging feels like. My body was still young and full of energy, while yours started to struggle here and there. This didn’t stop you from creating a perfect web of allies in both our and the other bordering realms, ensuring safety for both of us. You have been my saving grace till the end, Em.
God, I can’t believe it…
In a night like many others, I was forced to face what I had never been strong enough or far-sighted enough to face before.
I woke up in the middle of the night feeling that something had shifted, like a sailor caught by a wind with no name. It was my uncle. I found him in the garden with his husband in his arms. He had wrapped him in a warm blanket, even if it was clear that Callum was dead.
He didn’t say anything, just bowed with his head and looked at me, and his human-like appearance melted away, like a glimmer. His new shape was nothing more than a pit of pure anguish and the most profound desolation. I believe this is the nearest I will ever be to seeing a god cry.
He asked me something with this new shape of his, without uttering a sound. I didn’t tell him that his king was freeing him by his duty. But I meant it, and he understood. My uncle walked in the woods for many, many miles. He found a spot that was special to them, where he lay with Callum, and became an elm, covering the mortal remains of his beloved forevermore.
I understood then, watching him walk away with his great love in his arms, that one day that would have been me. It would have taken a long time, centuries maybe. But the day would come. Even if I could stop time, I couldn’t stop aging.
I would like to say I faced this reality in a composed manner, but it will be a lie. After spending centuries ignoring driadology, I found myself reading, researching, and even embarking on some expeditions on my own, hoping to find a way to make you immortal. I, out of all people, for the first time in my life, felt that the clock was ticking.
You found out immediately, obviously, and at least this new project of mine made you laugh.
Your hair was fully gray at that point. I would help you braid them every morning since your elbows and fingers started to suffer from all the years spent writing in your notebooks.
You held my hands with a gaze that was almost youthful. And you made me promise that I would not have searched for such a thing. If there were a carpet on that wall of the world, I would not have peeled it. That you did not want to fall into those stars.
That was, till this day, our most violent argument. At the end of it, I decided to obey you, even if I was so bitter about it. Because it meant that not only were you okay with dying, but it meant you wanted to die one day. That you were tired.
The day that followed, Niamh was found dead in her bed.
More than a century has passed since that day, and during these years, we settled into this new routine, tailored around your aging body. You weren’t able to go on trips anymore, and even writing had become a painful business. Still, it did not stop you from throwing yourself into a new project, a new and updated collection of the stories and legends of the Irish lands. You wrote many of them in the years, but the object of this new one was to find the ones that were forgotten by scholars and fairy folk alike. Your new area of work was in the archives of our castle, a labyrinth of stories, notebooks, letters, announcements, both private and public, left behind by the many rulers who came before us. We spent hours every day in the archives, working together like we did in the old days. When I wasn’t writing down your thoughts as your scribe, I was singlehandedly fighting the dust and the mice of that god-forsaken place with the help of a single broom and my Oíche sidhe pride. We published the book knowing that it was gonna be the last. Our evenings spent in the archives were replaced by slow walks around Silver Lily Lake.
On our final day together, you asked me if I wasn’t tired of this. If I wanted to turn the page and start a new life with a young body and a new bride. I wish I could say I was shocked by this line of questioning, but after reading the history of marriages between mortals and fae, I don’t blame you for not trusting me fully.
I laughed, even if the way you looked at me fueled me with so much sorrow. I caressed your face. I could have told you many things, proclaimed my undying affections for you in the most flamboyant way, just to make you too flustered to keep indulging in such thoughts. But that was not what you needed.
“Tell me, Emily, where would I be without you?”
I could see by your reaction that you had forgotten that little inside joke between us, surprise, and the most tender joy made your eyes sparkle.
“In a hotel in Germany, near the black forest, still no clue on how to find the door,” we both laughed like teenagers, while passing the threshold of our bedroom.
It happened that night. We were in bed, lying together. Even under all of my blankets, you were cold. I hugged you and used my magic to warm you up. We talked. About the realm, Orga, Delilah, we even mentioned Cambridge and the friends that left us. We bickered again about my mother, who was still alive and well in her cottage. At one point, you rambled about some theories in driadology that haven’t been relevant for at least a couple of decades. It scared me to see your mind slipping like that, but I told myself that your hazy mind was just a new guest in your aging life. Like the back pain, the poor eyesight, the arthritic fingers, and the aching knees. I thought it was just the start of a new phase of our lives…
You gasped, with a sudden look of alarm on your face. You recounted the first time we met. I said that I was there too, with a soft laugh. You laughed too, gave me a kiss, caressed my now fully gray hair, and told me that you loved me, with the sweetest voice.
And then you were gone.
It was not but a moment. The light beyond your eyes faded, dimmed, and then I was staring at the windows of an empty house.
It took me some time to truly realize what had happened. And when I did, there was no salvation for my mind. I turned back time immediately, but all that I got was seeing the moment of your death once again, then twice, then enough times to never be able to forget, not even in a million years. I apologized, crying, because how could I have dared to do that to what was left of you?
I called you, and for many minutes, I convinced myself that if I believed you would have come back, you actually would. Cause who could you be, nothing more than an empty house now, dear? How could such a thing as a person, with their quirks, memories, and sparks, just…go away? How could they leave just an empty structure that kept them inside, when their existence was so magical?
Every time I thought about your death, it was like experiencing it again and again. I think this is when I started to destroy our apartments, reality, and time. I screamed things, Emily, horrible things. Some even directed at you. How dare you cross my path in the first place? Why did you have to bring so much sorrow upon me, just by existing? I said sorry to the walls for the ugliness of my words and cried like a lost child.
I wept because my great love was gone forever.
When our servants came to our door to see what the fuss was about, I screamed that if anybody had taken you away, I would have had the entire palace thrown in the Veil. And the scariest part is that I meant it. I then ordered our apartments to move; they obliged, and now we are here. In the middle of the forest, between the elms, the oaks, and the ferns.
And you are still gone.
I reached the end of my madness, I believe. The grief is unbearable, but fury left me completely, and so did despair. During these final years together, Em, there was always an agonizing thought that often kept me up at night.
What would I do later?
I don’t believe us faeries to be immortal, but it his true that we can reach ages that no human or animal can. Entire books can be filled with the long lives and many deeds a single king can bring to the world, we can be the kindest of tailors and then be caught by madness, like my father was; we can become older than planets and stars, leaving our life on the sidelines of the court, like my uncle.
This means that I will survive this, that I will, eventually, come to grow so old that I will forget you. That this part of my life will be such a small piece in thousands of years of existence. That this moment of insurmountable pain will just be a little bump on a long road.
This does not console me; in fact, this might be the most agonizing part of my madness. I am of an age that the majority of fairy creatures consider to be barely adult.
Many will call me foolish for what I am about to do. But Em, my dear and most beloved Em, I don’t want to be mad, or a star, nor a planet, I wanted to be Wendell, and I wanted to be yours. I have been both.
I get it now, why you wanted the possibility to an end.
I brought our bedchambers back to the castle. I left an official document recounting my last wishes. I fixed the time. I held Delilah and petted Orga one last time, hopefully they will mend each other's pain. And now I am lying next to you. Writing you a letter that you will never read. For posterity, so that our tale, for how short it is, will never disappear. And for myself, so that I could find some solace in the knowledge that this pain is just the end of the most beautiful journey.
The gods are cruel cause many men will never know love like this.
And dear Em, if there is a place after this one, I hope it's the same for humans and fairies, but if it's not and we have to be separated once again, then wait for me, cause I’ll fight Death itself with my bare hands to have you with me again. Cause where your name is engraved is the most beautiful part of my ghost.
With all my love, always and forever, before and beyond the grave
Yours truly, Wendell
Ps: I’ll hold you now, you look so cold.
P.s.s: Let’s be honest, in case we really find ourselves in different places in death, you will probably find me first, not long after you showed Death what fire feels like.
Deliah entered her brother's apartment. She tried at least; the doors didn’t give in when she tried to force them open. After some well-assessed kicks, they finally did.
The woman found herself beholding a magnificent spectacle. The room had been swallowed in wild greenery. Moss covered walls, pavement, and windows. Giant ferns sprouted everywhere. Ivy covered the ceilings, and bluebells peeked out from the broken furniture. Many butterflies, bees, and other bugs took refuge in the room. The new queen of Where the Trees Have Eyes walked toward what was once her brother and his wife’s bed. Now it was a giant rose bush, with beautiful golden flowers. Delilah looked closely, spying between the branches and thorns, and she saw two human shapes covered in moss, lying together in each other's arms.
She walked out slowly so as not to disturb them. With tears in her eyes, she closed the doors.
And in a simple motion, a new era had begun.