Stefan Bachman - The Peculiar

“And I need to live!” the faery woman wailed. “I’m just an old greenwitch and nobody wants my help anymore. Faeries come once in a while out of the big cities when their young ’uns cough blood, but they can’t pay much. And I had to sell poor Dolly for glue, so there was no more traveling the circuits. I need to live, you know!” A strange spark came into her eyes. “The Lord Chancellor sends me gold.”

“Does he,” Mr. Jelliby said coldly. “And did you know he’s been killing changelings? Or does he pay you so well that you don’t care? I will thank you to tell us now what this is all about. In honest words. What is the Lord Chancellor planning?”

The greenwitch looked about to cry; Bartholomew suspected it was more because of the disapproval in Mr. Jelliby’s voice than because of any of his actual words. “You don’t know?” she said. “You’re trying to stop him, aren’t you? That’s why you’re here. And you don’t even know what you’re trying to stop?”

Mr. Jelliby gulped at his tea. He didn’t know. All he had was fragments and pieces-the bird, the message, the conversation in Westminster-but they didn’t really add up to anything.

The old faery scooted her chair a little closer to him. “He is going to open another faery door, of course.”

Mr. Jelliby blinked at her from over the rim of his teacup. Bartholomew made a little sound in his throat, partway between a gasp and cough.

“You didn’t know that?” She giggled, scraped even closer. “Yes. The faery door. He’s going to open another one. Very soon, I think. Tomorrow. The last one happened by itself, see. A natural phenomenon brought about by a lot of unfortunate coincidences. There have always been cracks between the worlds. Things have always been slipping back and forth, and there are many tales of humans who have found themselves in the Old Country quite by accident. But this new door won’t be a crack. It won’t be an accident. John Lickerish is engineering it. Commanding it into existence. A massive gateway in the middle of London. In the middle of the night.”

Mr. Jelliby set down his teacup sharply. “But it’ll be carnage!” he exclaimed, aghast. “Ophelia, and Brahms, and- It’ll be Bath all over again!”

“It’ll be worse,” the faery said, and her face split into a smile then, so bright and toothy it made Mr. Jelliby’s skin crawl.

“It won’t work,” he said, looking studiously at a braid of garlic above the faery’s head. “The bells. The bells will stop it. They’re always ringing. Every five minutes. Mr. Lickerish won’t be able to get a spell in edgewise.”

“Ooh. The bells.” The faery continued to grin. “Bath had bells. Bath had iron and salt, and not a few clocks and it was still blown six miles north of the moon. Bells don’t help against magic like that. They might stop a pisky from giving you a wart or muddle a minor enchantment, but they won’t keep a faery door from opening. Not a road to the Old Country.”

“Then what do we do ?” Mr. Jelliby almost shouted it. “We can’t just sit here! How do we stop it?”

“ I don’t know.” She was so close now. Mr. Jelliby was certain he could smell her-flowers and smoke and sour milk. “It’s a complicated process, opening a faery door. I don’t understand it. I don’t want to understand it. All I know is that Mr. Lickerish needs a concoction. Plants and animal parts. I give it to him. It’s a binding potion, that concoction is. It lures a sort of faery called the penumbral sylph, can pattern whole flocks of them and make them do what someone tells them to. But I don’t know what he needs sylphs for. I’m just a tiny thread, see. A tiny thread in a great big spider’s web.” She made a scuttling motion with her fingers.

“He sends me his notes in a mechanical bird. A bird out of metal, did you ever hear of such a thing? And I do what they tell me. But those changelings. .” Her grin fell from her face, and she shrank back into her chair. She looked suddenly frightened and sad again. “I don’t know what they’re for. Poor, poor creatures. I don’t know why he’s killing them. I’ve sent nine bottles to London. A lot of little ones as well. Little bottles. So little. And. . and last I heard there had been nine deaths. You are from London, yes? I saw it from the dirt on your shoes. Perhaps he’s been trying over and over again to open that door. Nine times over. Nine times you could have died in your bed and were spared.” Her gaze turned to the window. “I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt. I didn’t, truly. And when I heard about the changelings in the river, I knew right away it was him. But, oh, don’t make me think about it. I couldn’t do anything. What could I have done?” She asked it almost pleadingly.

Bartholomew looked up from his boots. He was glaring. “What d’ you mean, what could you have done?” The greenwitch turned to him in surprise. He hadn’t spoken in hours and his voice was rough. “You could have done nothing , that’s what you could have done. You could have stopped helping him. He has my sister now, did you know that? She’s next, and it’s your fault. It’s your fault as much as anybody’s.”

The old faery stared at him a moment. The firelight danced in her eyes. When she spoke her voice was soft. “It wasn’t my fault. Oh, it wasn’t. Mr. Lickerish was the one doing the killing. All I did was stir my little pot in my little clearing. Won’t think about it. Won’t think about it! ”

Mr. Jelliby started to rise. The greenwitch jerked around to face him. She smiled again. “But in the end I suppose it is my fault, isn’t it. Oh, I am sorry. Do you know? When I first learned of John Lickerish’s plan, I thought, ‘Why not?’ Why should I care what happens to London? It’s about time the faeries broke free, about time the English learned their lesson. But I changed my mind. Would you like some more tea? I decided that Mr. Lickerish was not doing it for the faeries. He’s not doing it for anyone, really. No one but himself. He says he doesn’t like walls and chains, but he really does. As long as he builds the walls and makes the chains. Because you see, when the faery door is opened he isn’t just going to let it go. He’s going to guard it like a great watchdog, and it will be his. It will always be open, but he’ll decide what goes in and what comes out.”

Bartholomew stared at her. What is wrong with her? It was as if her mind were twisting and shoving and telling itself lies. She kept gazing at Mr. Jelliby, little twitches under her eye and in her fingers, that ghastly smile on her face.

“A great many creatures will die when it opens,” she said. “Humans and faeries, all dead in their beds. Twenty thousand perished in Bath. A hundred thousand in the aftermath. Do you remember the Smiling War? Tar Hill and the Drowning Days? Of course you don’t. You’re too young, and too well fed. But I remember. Years and years after the door opened, and there was still nothing but confusion and bloodshed. It’ll all happen again. New faeries will come, and they’ll be wild and free, and they’ll dance in the guts of the people and the silly, tired, English faeries. Because the faeries who are already here won’t know what to do. They don’t remember how they once were. I think they’ll all die, don’t you? Die along with everyone else. And Mr. Lickerish will watch it all from some safe place.” She looked at Mr. Jelliby adoringly. “But you’ll stop him, won’t you. . ”

Mr. Jelliby pushed aside his teacup. “I don’t know,” he said shortly, and took from his waistcoat pocket the scrap of paper Mr. Zerubbabel had given him. “I have one more address from Mr. Lickerish’s messenger bird. The address is in London somewhere. It’s the place, isn’t it? Has he told you? I believe the messenger birds connect Mr. Lickerish to all the points of his scheme-Bath and the changelings, you. Then back to London.”