Prologue

Introductions, gentle reader, remain in order.

Although I'm really not sure why. I assumed I would only have to write one of these damnable things, after which I fully anticipated that my lord Oberon, having accepted that whatever misunderstandings may recently have passed between us are surely as nothing compared to a timeless, ouroboran eternity of loyal and mirthful service, would welcome me back to his court with open arms.

Spoiler. He didn't. Frankly I expected to be jesting in the invisible palace at the end of the middling road sometime last February and do not know what is taking him so long.

Instead I remain here, trapped in the dreary, damp, culinarily moribund country you recently (well, recently-ish; what's a millennium or so between friends?) started calling England and forced to make my living by recounting for the mass market some of those stories I originally compiled for my master's delight alone.

This is the second of those stories I have chosen to share. If you have not read the first, why not? Do you personally dislike me? Are you determined to see me suffer, interminably and without even the comforts of a scribbler's income to lighten my exile?

I swear, just when I thought my contempt for your species could not sink any deeper.

If you have, like the discerning mortal creature I am sure you are, read my previously published work then you will know that the story in question took place in the year 1814, beginning shortly after the exile of Napoleon to Elba. This new narrative takes place just after his escape a little under a year later, in the March of 1815.

In the few months between my visits, the British burned Washington as part of the confusingly named War of 1812, eight Londoners died in a flood of beer, and a great white serpent arose in the north of England and devoured several villages. What will follow is a tale of beauty, blood sacrifice, and the wonderfully cruel business of granting wishes.

You are, I hope, here primarily for the cruelty. That's my specialty, after all, and if you are not you have chosen a very peculiar era to read about.