Stefan Bachman - The Peculiar

All those faeries thought I was a hobgoblin. That’s why they hadn’t stared. They thought I was like them. But he wasn’t like them. He wasn’t like anyone.

Mr. Jelliby found him ten minutes later. His head was in his arms. He was shivering a little.

“Boy?” Mr. Jelliby asked quietly. “What’s the matter, boy? Why didn’t you wait for me?”

Bartholomew sat up with a start. He wiped his nose on his hand. “Oh,” he said. “Nothing. We should go.”

Mr. Jelliby was looking at him curiously. Bartholomew didn’t want to be looked at. He wanted to be left alone, and if nobody liked him he wished they would keep it to their own stupid selves. He got to his feet and began to walk away.

“I got the pistols!” Mr. Jelliby said, hurrying after him. “And a hat. Are you hungry?”

Bartholomew hadn’t eaten since last night’s supper, but he didn’t say anything. He kept walking, hood pulled low, head down. He had to force himself not to peek over his shoulder to see if the man was following. For a while he simply walked, not really knowing where he was going. Then the gentleman appeared at his side, two crusty pies in his hand. He handed one to Bartholomew.

Bartholomew stared at it.

“Go on,” Mr. Jelliby said. “Eat it!”

The pie was full of gristle, made with some horrid street animal like as not, but Bartholomew gulped it down, bones and all, and licked the grease from his fingers. Mr. Jelliby picked the crust off his and then handed the rest to Bartholomew. He ate that, too. It made him think of the wax-drip soup and Hettie, and that made him want to start running again-anywhere-to find her.

They left the Goblin Market behind them, pressing onto a walkway that wound around the outermost side of the towering city. “The train station,” Mr. Jelliby had said, “is near the ground.” And that was where they were going.

They were still hundreds of feet up; Bartholomew could see for miles, all the way to the farm country beyond the city’s edge. The sky was spread out before him, turning copper as the sun set, clouds rolling low and ominous along the arch of the world.

He paused, staring. There was something in the sky, something besides the endless dusk. A flashing. A burst of black, darker than the clouds, moving at incredible speeds away from the city.

Bartholomew leaned out across the rope railing. “Look,” he called, waving for Mr. Jelliby. “Look over there.”

Mr. Jelliby came up beside him. His eyes narrowed. “What on earth. .”

“It’s the wings,” Bartholomew said quietly. “They’re leaving.” Oh Hettie, he thought. Please be safe.

Mr. Jelliby saw the change in his face. “Come now,” he said. “Don’t worry. We’ll get your sister. We’ll get her back.” He smiled then-not his wide, Westminster smile, but a real one. “Though if we’re to go off adventuring together, I think we should know each other’s names, don’t you?” He held out his hand to Bartholomew. “I’m Arthur. Arthur Jelliby.”

Bartholomew didn’t move. He stared at Mr. Jelliby, then at his hand. Then, very cautiously, he took it, and they shook.

“Bartholomew,” he said.

Together they turned and hurried down into the darkening city.

The train’s pistons plunged, once, twice, and Mr. Jelliby was asleep.

Bartholomew had hoped he might say something, discuss their plans, or tell him more about the lady in plum, but he didn’t. Oh well. The air was warm, and the seat was plush, and so Bartholomew snuggled into it and pressed his nose against the cold window. The city swam by below in a blue-dark blur, towers and rooftops gone so quick he barely saw them. They crossed the river, chugged among the soaring black flues of the cannon foundries. Then, in the blink of an eye, the city was behind them and they were slicing through the green fields of the country. In a few minutes Bath was only an inky stain on the horizon, growing smaller with every breath.

Bartholomew looked back and felt an odd ache grow in his chest. He was leaving. Leaving all the few things he had ever known. Going who-knew-where with a gentleman who didn’t eat when there was food to be had and who shook hands with changelings. Somewhere back in that shrinking spot was Mother, asleep in an empty flat. And Hettie. . Hettie was somewhere. Not there, but somewhere.

He turned his attention to their compartment in the No. 10 to Leeds. Mr. Jelliby had bought first-class tickets just as he always did, and Bartholomew was not so far out of sorts that he didn’t notice how terribly swish everything was. Small framed paintings hung above the seats-happy, comfortable scenes of richly dressed people at tea, or outdoors, smiling vacantly into shop windows and fishponds. On the paneled walls, two lamps were mounted, each with a flame faery imprisoned inside. The one on Bartholomew’s side tapped the glass to catch his attention and began pulling its glowing face into a parade of rude expressions. Bartholomew stared at it a while. When he turned back to the window, the faery set to pounding its fists against the inside of the lamp and spitting little angry bursts of flame. Bartholomew glanced back. It promptly resumed making faces at him.

Some time later Mr. Jelliby woke up. Bartholomew dropped his head against the window and pretended to be asleep, watching the gentleman through half-closed lids. Mr. Jelliby looked at him once. Then he began unfolding his newly acquired map, spreading it leaf by leaf throughout the compartment.

Arthur Jelliby’s fingers ran across the thick white paper, bouncing as the train rumbled under him. The map was somewhat different from what he was used to. The English Isle was called “The Withering Place.” London was labeled “The Great Stink-Pile,” and North Yorkshire, “The Almost World,” but he understood it well enough. The train would take them to Leeds in Yorkshire. The coordinates on Mr. Zerubbabel’s scrap of paper were not in Leeds, though. In fact, as far as Mr. Jelliby could tell, they weren’t anywhere in particular. The spot he had marked on the map was not a city, or a hamlet, or even a single farm. It was simply empty open country.

He frowned at the map, turned it upside down, folded it up, and reopened it. He read the coordinates again, recalculated longitude and latitude. It was all no use. The place refused to move anywhere sensible.

When the train stopped in Birmingham, an elderly lady in a silver fur pelisse entered their compartment to sit down. She took one look at Bartholomew’s masked face and the pistols on Mr. Jelliby’s belt and turned around in something of a flurry, sliding the door closed behind her. No one disturbed them for the rest of the journey.

It was well past midnight when they arrived in Leeds. At the loading docks, they were able to bribe a stagecoach driver to abandon his scheduled passengers and take them as close as he could to the point Mr. Jelliby had marked on the map. No roads led within five miles of it. They would have to do some walking that night.

They left the city by moonlight. The coach was drawn by a pair of unnaturally large grasshoppers, and they ran with reckless abandon, dragging it across stones and ruts until Mr. Jelliby was afraid it would jolt to pieces. A chill wind blew through the chinks in the sides of the coach. Branches tapped against the windowpanes. Soon Bartholomew and Mr. Jelliby were blue with bruises, and cold to the bone. After an hour, the stagecoach stopped. They climbed out blearily.

“Now then,” the driver said, hunching into his greatcoat and peering out at them with glinting eyes. “Here’s as close as I can get you. There’s an inn about a mile back. The Marshlight. I’ll wait for you there.”