Stefan Bachman - The Peculiar

Somewhere in Mr. Jelliby’s mind a little bell rang. The coffeehouse on the corner of Trafalgar Square. A glinting brass capsule and a note dashed with ink. “Send it to the Moon,” it had read.

“Your sister is on the moon,” he said. “Whatever that means. Good luck. I need to go now.” He began to walk.

Bartholomew kept pace with him. “She’s not dead then?”

“I don’t know !” Mr. Jelliby walked faster.

“Will you help me find her? Will you take me with you?”

Mr. Jelliby stopped. He wheeled around to face Bartholomew.

“Look, boy. I’m very sorry. I’m sorry for your loss, and all your troubles, but I can’t be bothered with them now. Evil machinations are under way and I fear I have very little time to stop them. Finding the lady is the only way I know how. Now, if you know where she is staying, do not hesitate to tell me. Otherwise kindly leave me alone.”

Bartholomew wasn’t listening. “I’d be hardly any trouble at all. I could walk behind you, and half the time you wouldn’t even know I was there, and then when we find Hettie-”

Mr. Jelliby began to turn away, a look of apology on his face.

Horrid, aching panic seized Bartholomew when he saw it. “You can’t go,” he cried, grasping at Mr. Jelliby’s sleeve. “She’s with the lady in plum! If we find her we’ll find my sister! Please, sir, please take me with you!”

Mr. Jelliby stared at Bartholomew in alarm. He couldn’t take a changeling with him.

“Your mother,” he said. “Your mother will never allow it.”

“I told you. She’s asleep. I don’t know when she’ll wake up. But if she does and I’m here and Hettie’s not, she could never bear it.”

Mr. Jelliby didn’t like the way the child spoke. There was something tired and sad and old about it. “Well, surely you have lessons,” he said, somewhat more sharply than he had intended. “Lessons are very important, you know. You must attend to them diligently.”

Bartholomew gave Mr. Jelliby a look that said he thought him very stupid. “I don’t have lessons. I don’t go to school. Now will you let me come with you?”

Mr. Jelliby made a face. He pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked up at the sky and over his shoulder. Finally he said, “You will have to disguise yourself.”

Bartholomew was gone in an instant. Three minutes later he was back, wearing a shabby woolen cloak and hood of forest green. It was a hobgoblin’s cloak, taken from the cupboard of the sleeping doorkeeper. On Bartholomew’s feet was a pair of knob-toed boots, much too big for him. He had wrapped a strip of cotton around his face, over and over again, until only a narrow slit was left for him to look through.

Mr. Jelliby thought he looked like a leprous dwarf. He sighed.

“Let’s be on our way, then.” The faery slums had wasted enough of his time already. Even by rail, the next of Mr. Zerubbabel’s coordinates lay many hours’ journey from Bath.

He set off down the alley, and Bartholomew clumped after him.

They had barely gone seven steps when something caught Bartholomew’s eye. He paused, looking up. The sky between the roofs was the color of pewter. A single black feather was drifting down, down. . It looked like a flake of dark snow, falling from the angry clouds above. Slowly, it spiraled toward him.

He turned to Mr. Jelliby. “Run,” he said. And a moment later the alley was filled with wings.

They ran, fighting their way out of the shrieking wings and pounding down the alley. Bartholomew threw a glance back over his shoulder just in time to see the tall form of the lady in plum sweeping out of the blackness. Her face, half hidden in the shadow of her hat, turned toward him. Then he was around the corner, running with all his might after Mr. Jelliby.

“Why are we running?” Mr. Jelliby yelled as they dashed across a little court, under the branches of a gnarled old tree. “Changeling, what were those wings? What is happening ?”

“The lady,” Bartholomew gasped, trying to keep up. “The lady in plum! She’s back, and she wouldn’t come for noth-”

I know you’re here, a dark voice said, sliding silken into his head. Child Number Ten, I can feel you.

A searing pain exploded in Bartholomew’s arms, tracing like the tip of a knife along his skin. He almost collapsed in his tracks.

“The lady in plum?” demanded Mr. Jelliby, stopping short.

Bartholomew collided with his back. Wrenching up a sleeve of his cloak, he saw that the red lines were swollen, raised, pulsating with a ruddy light.

You are running, half-blood, the voice said, mildly surprised. Why do you run? Are you afraid of something? A snicker echoed in Bartholomew’s skull. Surely you don’t have something to hide from me.

“But that’s excellent!” Mr. Jelliby was saying. “I’ve been searching for her for weeks ! And your sister is with her, you said! I must speak to her at once.” He gave a resolute stamp and turned on his heel.

Bartholomew ran full force at Mr. Jelliby, shoving him into a doorway. “You don’t understand,” he said, gritting his teeth against the pain in his arms. “She’s not the same all the time. She does dreadful things. Don’t you see, she’s the murderer!”

Mr. Jelliby frowned down at him. “She asked for my help,” he said. Then he shook Bartholomew off and began walking back the way he had come, shouting, “Miss! Oh, miss!”

“You can’t do this !” Bartholomew cried frantically, running after him. But it was too late.

A gust of black wings filled the mouth of the street and there was the lady in plum, velvet skirts swirling around her. Something twitched under her skin when she caught sight of Mr. Jelliby. Something like a tiny snake wriggling through bone and sinew.

“You,” the voice said, and this time it was not only in Bartholomew’s head. It slithered up among the houses, prickled in his ears. The lady began to move.

“Miss!” Mr. Jelliby called. “Miss, I must speak with you on a matter of great urgency! You asked for my help, remember? In Westminster? I was in the cupboard and you-”

The lady did not slow down. Lifting one blue-gloved finger, she slashed it viciously through the air in front of her. Mr. Jelliby was swept off his feet and hurled against the wall. Bartholomew spun back into the doorway just as something like a swarm of invisible birds rushed past his face.

“How did you survive?” the voice spat at Mr. Jelliby. The lady’s finger was still pointing at him, pinning him to the wall. His feet dangled several strides above the cobblestones. “Why are you still alive? No one has ever survived that magic before!” Mr. Jelliby began to gag, his hands clawing at his collar.

Quickly and stealthily, Bartholomew crept out of the doorway and pried a loose cobblestone out of the street. Then he moved toward the lady’s back, weapon raised.

There was a warning cry. The lady reached behind her head and parted her hair. Mr. Jelliby crumpled to the ground. Bartholomew froze.

The other face, the tiny leathery one, was looking straight at him, its eyes glittering points inside the folds of flesh. Thick brown tentacles writhed through the lady’s hair. It opened its mouth in a sneer.

“Child Number Ten,” it said. “The boy in the window.” Bartholomew hurled the cobblestone.

A howl of pain tore through the alley, so loud it sent a flock of jackdaws wheeling into the sky. The lady raised three fingers, no doubt to finish them both off, once and for all, but Bartholomew was already running, skidding around the corner at Mr. Jelliby’s heels.