The Scent Keeper

Among Emmeline’s most precious possessions during her time on the island is a lushly illustrated book of fairy tales, though she notices that several pages have been removed. Only later does she find out what had been excised from her copy: the Hans Christian Andersen story about an emperor and a nightingale. The story, provided in its own chapter (125-126), concerns a beautiful nightingale who lives in the woods and whose wonderfully melodious song delights the emperor to the point that he has the bird captured and caged in his court.

The bird misses the freedom of the woods. One day the emperor is given a gift of a mechanical nightingale studded with exotic jewels. Initially, the emperor is delighted with the gift. Now ignored, the little bird escapes back to the woods and to freedom. But when the mechanical contraption inevitably breaks, the emperor, denied the pleasure of the song, takes to his bed with an illness no court physician can diagnose. Only the return of the nightingale to his bedroom window revives him. The nightingale refuses to remain at court but promises the emperor to return and sing for him.

Emmeline’s father does not want his daughter to read that fairy tale because it repudiates the very premise of John’s research.