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The man at the front desk peered over his glasses, his mouth pressing into a thin line as they approached. “Can I help you, sir?” his question was pointed at Noel, a cordial demeanor slipping through the second he ignored Grey.
Noel put his hands on the steel table of a reception desk. “We’re hoping to gain access to your library. A friend of ours is sick, and we think that one of the fair folk might’ve cursed her.”
The receptionist tapped a stack of papers against the metal surface before laying them flat. “Spiral staircase behind the wall will take you down a level. There’s an entire corner dedicated to fair folk.” His eyes flicked back to Grey as his voice dropped to a warning grumble. “Please keep your hemomancer in check.”
Noel’s tight smile came with a sharp, “Of course.” He grabbed Grey’s hand and pulled him along. They passed grated shelves and strode over catwalks to the spiral staircase. Grey’s stomach dropped when he glimpsed there were at least two more floors below them, all separated by interlocking metal links welded into frames.
Small tables were tucked into corners on the far edges, away from the catwalks and on solid ground. The soles of their shoes bounced against the floorboards in the midst of the fair folk archives with its stacked, floor-to-ceiling collection of books and journals crammed into every free space.
Noel grimaced, spinning around with increasing worry. “This… is going to take a while.”
* * *
The Great Wild Hunt began at the turn of the 22nd century when Queen Mab awoke during a blood moon and shattered the veil between our realm and the Otherworld. Its destruction spread over most of the globe, save a few small pockets, deemed ‘queendoms,’ kept sectioned off to ensure none of Her Majesty’s new subjects could revolt as she infused the land with renewed magic. Her terror lasted over a decade before she returned to her homeland with a promise that she’d hunt again.
Grey pulled the glove away from his face with a yawn, the leather peeling off his skin. He brushed the hair from his eye and hunched over the book’s yellowing pages.
During her rule in our realm, magic soaked into the land, which eventually gave way to various types of mancers. Magic became a new, primary defense against the fair folk, and iron was further conserved to ward off more vicious, aggressive creatures that would wander out of the woods.
He flipped the page after glossing over the rest, catching on the praise of macharomancers and their gift of channeling through iron. A bitter taste welled up in Grey’s mouth as he read more about their celebrated gifts before turning a few more pages until his sight snagged on hydromancers.
Originally one of the most powerful of the mancers, hydromancers were snuffed out during the first return of Queen Mab. Her Majesty warped the magic flowing through them to confine their power to that of blood: twisting them into beasts during the second Great Wild Hunt. The survivors were outcasted for many years.
Grey stared down at the page, frozen as the words sank in. Hydromancers: the one type of magic that could confine the fair folk to the forests or keep them restricted to their realm. His hand absently moved to the collar resting against his neck. How many people knew about this? Is this why everyone here looked at him like he was an abomination? Was he just some unhinged creature, bending to the whim of the fair folk? He flipped a few more pages, shoving down the uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.
After a century, Queen Mab retired to her realm with the decree of bringing six mancers, one from each sect, to be sacrificed to a Wild Hunt held within her realm. This would be the only way to pacify her, and defying this rule would result in tearing the veil once again. To ensure she received appropriate warriors for her Wild Hunt, we must always be prepared for her selected prey to be summoned to her battleground.
He sat back in the metal chair. His gloved fingers fumbled through the rest of the pages, skimming word after word about the rules of the Hunt, depictions of the fair folk rumored to be involved, and the unfortunate ‘winner’ Queen Mab would send back to signal that her bloodlust was satiated.
Grey snapped the book shut and tucked it back onto the shelf, his gaze wandering over to Noel picking through the rows of books on the opposite end of the nook. He hadn’t sat down for the past ten minutes during his rummaging and skimming through volumes. Grey bit his lip and thumbed over a few more spines until he came across one titled, The Laws of Trade. He leaned back against the table as the book fell open in his hands and the metal shuffling of other library-goers faded away.
Fair folk require trade, whether that be through trade to perform magic or through the simple balance of nature and humanity, there must always be an equilibrium.
He scowled down at the words, thinking of Atticus’s rephrasing of the term to something more appropriate: sacrifice. Pages fluttered together as he tipped the book to skip ahead and stop when images of offerings to fair folk appeared. Expensive bottles of wine, sugary treats, unique trinkets. Grey tried to imagine offering one of those things in place of himself.
Something greater…
The book’s cloth cover rubbed against the table as he set it down to retrieve another—one regarding fair folk’s use of humans.
Humans lured or stolen away by the fair folk and taken to the Otherworld are primarily used as servants. Occasionally, children may be stolen away and replaced with changelings. It’s assumed that these children are possibly used to entertain the fair folk or temporarily raised as their own until reaching a proper age to assist in servitude. However, some humans have been abducted to participate in entertainment akin to the Wild Hunt or for the purpose of one of the fair folk deciding to take a mortal lover.
Grey shivered, his grip tightening against the pages.
Don’t cause a fuss, my little finch.
He prayed the latter wasn’t the case, but the discomfort pooling in his gut didn’t want to risk assuming something less than what it could be. Especially if his freedom was dependent on an offering. For a second, he imagined trying to give this fair folk an actual finch, but he shook the idea from his mind. They could simply get their own finch, right?
Yeah, you.
“Any luck?”
Grey tensed as Noel stopped next to him, dropping his own book on the desk.
“I don’t suppose a really expensive bottle of wine would cut us loose…” he said, folding the tome shut.
“Well…” Noel said, folding his arms over his chest and leaning against the perpendicular edge. “There are things like sacrificial rubies and faerie baubles, right?”
He brought his gloved thumb to his lips, tracing the bottom of it in thought. “Or maybe more amethyst would ward this one off? Maybe I could bargain with them to give them more of my memories or something?”
