Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

This final section fully explores Transactional Versus Unconditional Relationships as Emily realizes the true depth of the relationships she’s forged with the townspeople and completes her personal growth in the story. Wendell’s journal provides his perspective on what occurs in Hrafnsvik when Emily is gone, which provides a less biased view of how the villagers feel about Emily. When he verbally tells her how the townspeople got together to plan her rescue, “[her] imagination failed [her] utterly—mainly because [she] could not picture them caring” (266). Emily’s false belief about herself is that she’s not adept at socializing, and therefore isn’t worthy of being cared about in the way friends and family should care about someone.

Emily doesn’t entirely lose her Apathy and Detachment in Academia, as even when she wakes from her time with the Hidden king, she first worries about her research instead of the townspeople who were in danger last she saw them. Retaining this aspect of her personality shows that she has not lost herself entirely to growth, but that she now has an understanding of how to be empathetic toward others and develop true friendship. This also gives Wendell an upper hand socially as he continues to guide her through the things in life she doesn’t entirely understand on her own. This trait is a permanent facet of her personality. Though she does care for the townspeople and Wendell, her priorities have always been her academics. The second-to-last chapter, where Emily and Wendell attend ICODEF to present their findings, illustrate this thoroughly. Academia will always be a significant part of Emily’s life.

Contrary to Emily’s assumption, Wendell’s journal provides a firsthand account on how “Lilja burst into tears, burying her face in Margret’s shoulder” after hearing the news of Emily’s abduction (276). Wendell admits to lacking hope in the hours after her capture, for his powers might not have been enough against the Hidden king and his court. However, it is the willing help given by the compassionate villagers that renews her hope. Emily cries upon learning that the townspeople care for her enough to rescue her. Unlike her journey to rescue Lilja and Margret, the villagers have nothing to gain from helping Emily. Her entire adult life, “everything that [she] ha[s] wanted or needed doing, [she] ha[s] done [her]self” because no one else has ever looked out for her (280). Up until this point in her life, Emily has known that in moments of true danger, her only options were to rescue herself or die trying. For the first time, her fate is not entirely in her hands, and it is a welcome change.

The relationship and the romance between Wendell and Emily is also further explored in this final section of the novel. When Wendell is disguised as a tailor for Emily, she is thankful that he selects a fabric for her dress that is “neither black nor blue-white” which she has become accustomed to wearing in the Hidden king’s winter court, but rather “evergreen with black-and-white brocade” (262). Though she’s not aware at first that the tailor is Wendell, her reaction to the colors is subtly indicative of her feelings for Wendell. This is because the fabrics he’s chosen are not winter colors, but the colors that represent Wendell himself. When the dress is finally delivered to Emily at the gift-giving ceremony, she considers it “perfect, every inch of it, covering [her] in emerald green drapery that flowed like the boughs of a weeping willow” (282). Her detailed knowledge of Wendell is clear, and this interpersonal awareness allows her to safely escape the Hidden king. Though she still doesn’t give Wendell an answer to his marriage proposal by the end of the novel, she leaves the door open to their evolving romance which will be explored in later installments. Again, she is not ready to entirely change herself from the person she was at the start of the narrative. However, she has experienced significant personal growth resulting in true happiness.

Focus on the weather of Ljosland at the end of the novel mirrors the same focus from the start of the novel. When Emily first arrives in Hrafnsvik, the weather is ominously overcast. Upon learning that her friends from the village will save her from the Hidden king, Emily glances outside and perceives the weather as “a strange and lovely mixture of snow clouds and winter sky; whenever the clouds parted, still spilling their flakes, rainbows alighted upon the mountain peaks. The sunlight turned everything to silver and pearl” (282). The change in the weather foreshadows the success of her rescue, her goodbye celebration with her found family, and her hopeful return to Cambridge.