49 pages • 1 hour read
Heather FawcettEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 19-27Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary: “—? November”
The next morning, Emily wakes to the aurora overhead bleeding white light. Emily sneaks out of camp with Shadow, leaving Wendell behind. In her internal narration, Emily reveals that Shadow is not a typical dog, but a glamoured Grim loyal to Emily. They cross through a door into the faerie world, where they find a festive faerie market with Lilja and Margret in attendance. Many faeries gather around Emily to gawk at her cloak, which she discovers has been enchanted by Wendell to “flow fetchingly around [her] legs” and keep her comfortably warm (174). Among them are Lilja and Margret, whom Emily pulls to her side; Shadow extends his own fae abilities and protects all three women from faerie enchantment, additionally pulling Lilja and Margret out of their trance.
A beautiful man approaches to disperse the crowd, isolating Emily. He threatens to reveal her lack of enchantment to the surrounding faeries if she does not give him her enchanted cloak. He gives her a white fur cloak in exchange, enchanted to supply its wearer with whatever they need. Emily and Shadow escape with Lilja and Margret, using a compass the cloak provides. They search for hours, but do not find a door back into the human realm. They settle in for sleep while Shadow continues to search.
Chapter 20 Summary: “20th November”
This chapter is from Wendell’s perspective. He writes in Emily’s diary after the events occur and while she is asleep. In the entry, Shadow locates a door and enters the human realm, where Wendell has been waiting for Emily to return. Wendell learns the truth about Shadow. Unable to find a door back into the faerie realm, Wendell instead rips a hole in the realm with his power to retrieve her. There, he’s shot with an arrow by the man who took Emily’s coat and uses his magic to turn back time, undoing the injury.
The man engages in combat with Wendell. Emily, remembering an Irish Folk story of Deirdre, who “collected the tears of [her] dying people and froze them into a sword” (187), stabs herself and cries into the snow, forging a sword that Wendell uses to slay his attacker.
Chapter 21 Summary: “22nd November”
Emily’s strength is greatly diminished by the powerful enchantment used to make the sword, and she must rest when they return to Hrafnsvik. The town has learned of Wendell’s faerie identity, which Wendell seems mostly unbothered by despite Emily’s anxiety over his reputation and safety. They now have enough research compiled to leave for the ICODEF conference immediately, but Emily is still intrigued by the pattern of missing people in Hrafnsvik and desires further research.
Chapter 22 Summary: “23rd November”
Lilja and Margret stop by the cottage to give Emily their thanks and stay so that Lilja may teach Emily to chop wood. Emily invites the women in for tea afterward, and Margret asks if Emily and Wendell are romantically involved, which Emily denies. When asked about past relationships, Emily is hesitant to admit that she’s only had one past relationship—with a fellow Cambridge researcher—and they split amicably when their research took them different ways. Emily, who does not usually enjoy socialization, has a pleasant time and agrees when Lilja offers to return the following day to help teach her how to better perfect her wood chopping.
Chapter 23 Summary: “26th November”
Aud stops by the cottage to ask what gift would please Wendell, as a token of gratitude from the townspeople. Emily surmises a silver sewing needle and a few mirrors will do. After scouring the stories she knows of the fae, Emily discovers why the Hidden Ones keep stealing townspeople. The changeling child acts as a beacon of great power, a “lantern” which draws the courtly fae to town. Emily speaks with Aud and Thora; they decide they must banish the changeling before the Hidden Ones return and take another villager.
Chapter 24 Summary: “26th November — Late”
Wendell has been going on secretive walks in the forest lately, but upon his return, Emily delivers Aud’s gifts which are greatly appreciated by Wendell. Emily requests his help in banishing the changeling, as they need to discover its true name in order to do so. She uses the white fur cloak to provide her with what she needs: a doll from the changeling’s home. The stories she knows speak of how tokens such as the doll can weaken or vanish a changeling if stolen and can thus be used to threaten them.
The ploy works and Emily learns the changeling’s real name. Emily and Wendell reunite him with his mother, who reveals that the cruel queen who currently rules sealed their benevolent old king in a tree and his people now “share in his downfall and misery” (219). Emily discovers that the changeling is the king’s child, sent to the mortal realm to escape the queen who might kill him to keep the throne. The faerie returns the real child, Ari, who Emily and Wendell return to a delighted Mord and Aslaug. Back at the cottage, Wendell admits his feelings to Emily. To prove his love to her, he proposes marriage and offers her his true name. Emily denies the latter offer, and while she reciprocates his feelings, she doesn’t yet know how to respond to the former.
Chapter 25 Summary: “2nd December (?)”
The shadow ring on Emily’s finger turns to ice, bringing her completely under the tree’s enchantment. She fights the enchantment long enough to wield the axe and cut off the digit before it could drag her to the white tree.
Chapter 26 Summary: “3rd December (?)”
Emily visits Poe and uses her third question to ask how the king became imprisoned in the tree. Poe claims that the queen gave him “a cloak woven from all the seasons” but cut out the winter when he fell asleep (239). She buttoned it up securely, trapping him inside as it transformed into a tree.
Emily returns to the cottage to bandage her hand and leave a note for Wendell, claiming that she has broken the white tree’s enchantment but has “gone to release the king in the tree” (236). When she arrives at the tree with her own free will, unbeknownst to the king, Emily realizes that the king expects her to come up with a way to free him. She speaks the Word of Power—which retrieves buttons—over and over, undoing the buttons of the cloak within the tree and freeing the Hidden king. The king kisses her and claims that a seer told him he’d be locked up by his people, then saved by a scholar whom he’d marry. He summons a castle made of ice for them to rule from.
Chapter 27 Summary: “4th December (?)”
The Hidden king’s display of power is disturbing, for summoning the ice castle causes a deadly avalanche on a nearby town. However, the king plans to order the release of every mortal in his people’s possession, which pleases Emily. Emily begins to lose memory and time.
Chapters 19-27 Analysis
In this penultimate section, the plot reaches its climax. Romantic tension soars, action abounds, and Emily’s accumulated knowledge of the Folk is put to the ultimate test.
The Power of Stories is extremely influential in these chapters, as this portion of the plot is when Emily must interact with a variety of different faeries. Not only does she rely on her vast knowledge of stories to navigate these encounters, but Emily actually becomes part of the story herself when she begins to lose her impartiality as a scholarly observer. Prior to being taken by the Hidden king, Emily believes finding the answers in stories to be easy. She believes this about tricking the changeling into revealing his true name, and though her confidence is warranted and the endeavor successful, Wendell tells her that “These things are not as easy as they are in stories” (210). Emily will soon learn this for herself when even her stories cannot aid her in her personal faerie story, in her escape from the Hidden king’s ice castle.
When Shadow is revealed to be a Grim, Emily describes how she used adept storytelling to trick the boggart holding Shadow captive into thinking she’s related to its master, “a feat which had required extensive research into local lore” (183). She then bribed him with seashells after remembering “some obscure story about a boggart whose secret fantasy was to travel the world, boggarts being bound to their crumbling ruins” (183). Grims are considered intimidating and dangerous hunters of the dead. Shadow’s loyalty to Emily, gained through stories, illustrates the great power they have, especially over the Folk.
As the plot develops, Emily is forced to reevaluate her relationships with everyone—from Wendell to the townspeople to even Poe. Transactional Versus Unconditional Relationships becomes central to Emily’s life, and her personal growth in her character arc continues to progress. When she visits Poe prior to seeking out the white tree, he names her his fjolskylda—a human that a common faerie cares about enough to lend them aid. This relationship is still transactional as fjolskylda expect to make “fair exchanges” with their chosen mortal (237), but it’s more significant than any other faerie relationship Emily’s ever had and the most relational connection that a faerie like Poe can offer. The offer greatly impacts Emily, who tears up in response to the huge kindness it implies.
Emily is also caught off guard by her rapidly growing relationships with the townspeople, who are intent on not becoming just another one of her transactions. This pertains to Lilja and Margret in particular, who show gratitude for their rescue by giving Emily woodcutting lessons and conversing about their personal lives over cups of tea. They put significant effort into forming friendships with Emily, which makes the act of socializing not necessarily easy, but easier than it has ever been before.
Wendell makes a concentrated effort to show his love for Emily once it’s out in the open. Through handwritten entries he leaves in her personal journal while she recovers from rescuing Lilja and Margret, Wendell reveals the surprising selflessness of his love, which goes beyond the normal capabilities of most faeries. He heals Lilja, not just because of her genuine kindness but because of all the suffering Emily’s gone through to save both women. To ensure Emily has not done so in vain, Wendell heals “the lover of the only woman who has ever spurned [him]” but yet does not “expect praise from [Emily’s] direction” (183). This is the second explicit instance in the novel where Wendell does a notable favor for Emily without expecting anything in return. This evidences that the relationship he wishes to form with her isn’t transaction-based, but one forged from true connection and the desire to put her best interests at heart.
Emily returns this love for Wendell through putting great thought into the gifts Aud chooses to reward him with after the rescue mission, but not taking credit or asking for anything in return. Emily’s slow submission to the whims of authentic relationships is evidenced when she admits to her journal that she finds Wendell’s presence restful, because “it is always restful to be around someone who does not expect anything from you beyond what is in your nature” (224). In these chapters, Emily gets her first taste of what unconditional relationships can be, and how much more fulfilling they are than the transactional ones she has spent her life chasing.
