At Elvenwood, Kate meets an assortment of characters, including the practical Lord Geoffrey, the greedy, manipulative Master John,the handsome, standoffish Christopher, and the beautiful and mysterious Queen of the Wood. She learns of the missing Cecily, of strange happenings, of the tales of fey under the well. All the while she is being caught up in these events, without knowing it. Then Christopher makes a devastating trade, and Kate is captured by Master John and given to the fey under the rock, and from there the plot only escalates.
Faeries have been in literature for centuries, not as small, benign, winged things, but as capricious, cruel, beautiful creatures of the stature of humans. While not all sources agree on what exactly faeries are like, there are some common premises:
1. Otherness
All fey in literature are portrayed as separate from humans. This can be shown in a multitude of ways, from pointed ears and exaggerated beauty to segregation and immortality. Fey, often undying, have a sort of timelessness about them that humans don't have. They may wear clothing from a completely different age, they may not count the days or months or even seasons. They often live separate from humans, and there are usually unspoken laws forbidding them from interacting. Fey also sometimes have power denied to humans, call it magic or whatever else you will. They are seen as being more connected to the land, and much older than humans. They are often associated with druids.
2. Heartlessness
Fey for the most part do not experience emotions in the same way humans do. They are often cruel and cold, without a sense of loyalty or family. Of course, there is always the odd faerie who falls in love with a human, but we may disregard him for unrealistic. Let me rephrase. A supposed heartlessness in fey often does not stem from cruelty, but instead from the fact that fey don't understand human emotions, and don't have use for them.
3. Capriciousness
Fey are notorious for changing their minds. Again, I bring back their otherness. They are so different from humans. They do whatever they want, whenever the whim takes them. They often abandon more serious matters to go cavort in the woods in the moonlight. They normally have no regard for gravity or seriousness. They are like children, but they are also as old as time.
I will end with a poem by W.B.Yeats that sums up fey and their role in this book.
WHERE dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand.
