Emily held up her hands. “Fine, yes, Mellifera hired me. Over two years ago now.”
“Why did she pick you?”
“I’d just been fired from my job at a university library because of budget cuts, and I was in the train station with a box of all my personal items from work, waiting to go home, when I saw a woman sitting on the edge of the platform, her legs dangling over the tracks. She seemed upset, so I asked her if she was all right, and shared a chocolate bar I’d had in my desk. That was Mellifera. The next day I got a job offer . . . and found out magic was real.”
Sela nodded. “If you show one of the Folk kindness without motive, you will receive kindness in return.”
Emily bristled. “I didn’t get the job just because I was nice. I’m qualified, and I’ve totally transformed the collection. It’s almost entirely catalogued. We’re digitizing and preserving—”
“Peace, mortal. I never meant to impugn your skills. Mellifera is practical, and I’m sure you’re good at your job. I was just curious how a mortal came to hold such a position, and, I confess, I hoped that she’d hired you because you had some deep knowledge of magic.”
“I mean, I know what I’ve read, and been told. . . .”
“Yes. Well. Mellifera is in danger, Emily—”
“Mellifera is the danger! The library was closed by her order.” Mellifera had always been aloof and superior, and was terrible to behold in anger, but she’d always shown Emily a measure of respect and even distant affection. To take away Emily’s job, what she’d expected to be her life’s work, without even a conversation, was immeasurably cruel.
Sela shook her head. “Not of her own free will. Mellifera is not herself, but you might be able to help me fix that, even if you aren’t a sorcerer. I understand that as librarian you have been granted certain powers? That you can summon books?”
Emily nodded. “Yes. The archive is vast, and as part of the cataloguing magic, I can call any volume in the collection to my hand.” She touched the necklace around her throat, where an enchanted pewter charm in the shape of a book dangled.
“Excellent. I need you to call up a volume of poetry called Murmured Under the Moon.”
“Who’s the author?”
“Mellifera.”
“Really?” Emily closed her eyes, murmured the incantation, and held out her hands. No book appeared.
“A shame.” Sela stood, sheathing her cutlass at her belt. “Mellifera’s soldier must have disenchanted your necklace before he shoved you off the island.”
“Wait!” Emily thought of a book at random—one of the volumes from the Subterranean Warfare section, Under Hill and Kill and Kill, a firsthand account of something called the Battle of Fallen Barrow. The hardbound book appeared in the air and dropped a few inches into her waiting hands, and she brandished it. “See? The magic works. I couldn’t call that other book because it was never part of the collection. I’ve never heard of a book like that. I had no idea Mellifera was a writer. I only have a score of books authored by your kind.”
Sela sighed. “Ah, well, it was a long shot. The Folk don’t produce much art, and don’t often share what they do. I thought Mellifera’s vanity might have led her to include the book in the collection, but it seems not. Too bad. Good-bye, mortal.”
“Stop. What is going on? What’s happened to Mellifera?”
“She’s under a powerful enchantment, and I need to save her.”
“Who enchanted her? I thought the Folk were immune to that kind of thing! And what does it have to do with this poetry collection?”
The fairy leaned against the door frame. She looked almost amused. “It’s not just poetry. It’s love poetry. Long ago Mellie fell in love with a mortal, wrote poems to him—in her own hand!—and had them bound, intending the poems as a gift.” Sela shook her head. “One night several centuries ago, during the new moon in October, she opened a passage from our world to the mortal’s house and read her poems to him. She wanted to lure him through, to stay with her forevermore. There is magic in such an act, you know—for a princess of the Folk to murmur such things under the moon. The man refused her, though, choosing his own mortal family instead. He must have had tremendous strength of will, because when Mellie wants to charm someone, they are generally well charmed.” Sela sighed. “Unfortunately, his refusal created a sort of . . . unresolved spell, deeply embedded in the pages of the book. Someone in possession of those poems, with the right knowledge, at the right time, can use it to reopen that passage between worlds and charm Mellie as she tried to charm her would-be lover—by symbolically becoming that lover.”
“Someone got the book and cast that spell?”
“A mortal student of the occult named Rudolph . . . something, I forget. We haven’t had time to gather much information on him. The new moon was two days ago. Mellifera left our realm without explanation, and then directed her subjects to loot our precious works of art and volumes of lore. Obviously, having a princess of the Folk in thrall to a mortal isn’t ideal. I have . . . certain skills, and was tasked with solving this problem. Destroying the book will destroy the enchantment, but since you can’t summon the poems, I’ll have to use other means.”
“I can help,” Emily said. “I have certain skills too.”
“Hmm.” Sela looked Emily up and down. “There could be advantages to having a mortal along. This enchanter may have protections against the Folk that you could more easily circumvent. Very well.” She rose and strode down the hall. Emily went after her, but Sela walked fast, and soon the familiar hallway was gone, the plaster walls becoming dark wood, the hardwood floor turning to stone. The corridor took many sharp right-angle turns, and though Emily moved along quickly, she kept losing sight of Sela, finally calling, “Wait!”
“Hurry!” came the call back. Emily gritted her teeth and ran. When she rounded the last corner she almost slammed into Sela, who stood on a tiny wooden platform in what looked like a cave, with train tracks running out of one tunnel and into another. “Just in time,” Sela said, as a vehicle slid smoothly from the tunnel and stopped before them.
Emily had seen Mellifera’s private train before, a sort of jeweled steampunk Fabergé egg on wheels, but this was something different: Sela’s train looked like an old-fashioned horse-drawn carriage with a closed coach, made of black wood with silver trim. The door swung open, and a folding set of steps spilled downward. Sela climbed inside, and after a moment’s hesitation, Emily followed.