Stefan Bachman - The Peculiar

“I don’t want hundreds,” Mr. Lickerish was saying, and his voice was angry and very soft. “I want one. Just one that actually works. I tire of this. I tire of the endless failure. It has gone on far too long, do you hear me? Too much attention, too many people coming to know about it. Last week the Privy Council was convened to discuss this very operation.” He turned back to the window, his face taut. “If you pay any attention at all to what is happening around you, you will have heard that the failed changelings were found. I knew they would be. The river does not keep his dead for long. But that it would cause such a stir! There have only been nine. Nine sniveling, worthless little Peculiars, and the whole country goes into hysterics. It must end. You must find me a changeling that works, one that meets every qualification. I want no more almosts. No more very nears .” Mr. Lickerish stood on the tips of his polished shoes and whispered up into the hair at the back of the lady’s head, so quietly that Mr. Jelliby could hardly hear the words. “ I want one that is everything, Jack Box. Do not bring me another until you are sure.”

The lady shied away again, away from Mr. Lickerish. “I thought I was sure last time,” the voice said. “I was sure. And yet- No. There will be no more mistakes, Sathir . I will make doubly certain this time. Beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

Mr. Jelliby’s leg twitched. It was only a very tiny twitch, of a muscle or a sinew, but it disturbed the cabinet. The padded bench creaked such a little bit. Mr. Lickerish spun.

“Did you hear that?” he whispered, eyes darting around the room.

Mr. Jelliby blanched.

“Yes,” the voice said. “Yes, I heard it.”

Mr. Lickerish took a step toward the cabinet, his lips pressed so tight they were bloodless. He lifted his hand, long fingers reaching for the handle. He was too small to see through the little glass pane, but it made no difference. Another step and he would open the door. He would see Mr. Jelliby cowering in the darkness and then-

A spasm passed over the lady’s face, a flicker under the surface of her skin, and suddenly her expression was no longer blank. Her eyes fixed on Mr. Jelliby’s through the glass. He could see them now, shining bright and full of pain. Then her red lips parted and she was speaking in a creamy soft voice that held the faintest hint of an accent. “It is only the woodwork, my lords. It expands in the heat of the day.”

Her voice stopped, but she continued to stare at Mr. Jelliby, and her mouth continued to move. It formed two words. Two soundless words, just once, but they rang clear as crystal in his head.

Help me.

“Mummy, do you have pennies behind your eyes?” Hettie didn’t even look up as she asked it. Her bony hands were wrapped around a chipped mug of broth, and she was staring at something at its bottom.

Mother said nothing. She was stabbing a woolen stocking with a long needle. Her mind was far, far away.

“Do you have pennies behind your eyes?” Hettie asked again, louder this time.

Bartholomew looked up from his own broth. Normally he would have laughed at her. He would have pinched her under the table and repeated her question in a high, foolish voice until she giggled. But he didn’t think he could do that anymore. He felt old now, and frightened, and laughing and pinching seemed such long-ago things.

The red symbols were not healing. Mother had bathed them in hot water, rubbed them with smelly leaves, packed them with poultices, and wrapped them in the cleanest linens that could be found, but even now, days later, they looked much the same. The flesh around them was not as swollen as before, and oddly enough he only felt them when there was a piercing noise like the creak of a floorboard or the cry of a bird. But they weren’t fading; they weren’t scarring or growing scabs. They were just there, a pattern of bloodred lines whirling across his skin.

“Mother!” It was Hettie.

The needle pricked Mother’s finger just below the nail and she brought her head up with a little gasp. “Hettie, what are these strange ideas you have?” She sucked her finger. “Why would I have pennies behind my eyes?”

Hettie sank her face into her mug. “Someone told me you did,” she said, and her voice echoed. “He said I should pick them out and buy brown-sugar toffee with them.”

Bartholomew sat up. Mother was going to scream at Hettie now, cry and weep, and beg that it wasn’t true, that Hettie hadn’t been talking to strangers. But Mother hadn’t heard the last bit. Instead her eyes lit up with a rare twinkle and she asked, “Oh, and what sort of someone would that be? A little prince, perhaps, upon a wild boar?”

Hettie looked at her reproachfully. “No. A raggedy man.”

“A raggedy man?” Mother knocked her wounded finger once against the table, as if to make sure it was still functioning, and then hunched back over her stitching. “That’s not very enchanting.”

“Of course he’s not enchanting, Mummy, he’s a raggedy man.” Hettie was being very sullen this morning. What did she have to be peeved about , Bartholomew wondered. She hadn’t come within a hairsbreadth of being hanged. She hadn’t had her friend stolen, or been magically written on, or had a dead faery screech at her some nonsense about hooves and voices.

Mother looked at Hettie sadly. “Oh, deary.” She dropped her needlework and gathered Hettie into her lap. “Deary, deary, deary. I do wish you could have real friends. I wish you could go into the street and chase after the wood sprytes and run errands to the market like other children do, but- Well, you just can’t. Folks out there, they don’t- They would. .” Mother trailed off.

They would kill you, Bartholomew thought, but Mother wasn’t going to tell Hettie that. She wasn’t going to tell Hettie that she would never be able to play in the street, or go to market, or chase after the wood sprytes. Not in Bath. Hettie would be snatched up and hanged faster than you could say “gentleman jack.”

“ I’m afraid you’ll just have to make do with made-up friends for a while longer” was all Mother said.

“Mummy, the raggedy man is not my friend,” Hettie corrected her sternly.

Mother lifted Hettie off her lap and set her squarely on the floor.

“Well, why did you invent him then?” she said shortly, and by the sharp way she jabbed her needle into the stocking it was clear she didn’t want to hear the answer.

Hettie couldn’t see that, though. “I didn’t!” she said, going to the wash pot next to the stove and drowning her mug in the cold soapy water. “He came by himself. He comes every night, through the keyhole in the door.” Her voice became quiet. “He sings songs to me. Long, sad songs.” The mug hit the bottom of the pot with a thunk . “They’re not pretty songs.”

Mother set down her needlework slowly. She was watching Hettie, staring at her back. “Child, what are you talking about? Who is this person?”

Bartholomew saw the fear in the lines of her face, heard it in the lowness of her voice. And then everything Hettie had said snapped together in his mind. A stranger. . comes through the keyhole. . comes in the night.

He jumped up, scraping his stool noisily. “That was a fine breakfast, Mother. Don’t mind Hettie, she’s just playing pretend. Should we go find you some sand from behind the house? Should we, Hettie? Come on. Now.”

Mother picked up the stocking again, but she was still eyeing Hettie. “Sand. Yes. Go and get me some. But Bartholomew. .” His mother’s hands were tight round the wool, so tight her knuckles poked up. “If anyone even looks at Hettie you run her back here, d’you hear me? Straight back through that door, sand or no sand.”