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Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands

Book by Heather Fawcett · 4 quotes · Faerie, Fairy Realm, Heroine

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Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands Quotes

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”