Stefan Bachman - The Peculiar

The old faery’s smile turned sly. “Oh, you are clever. So clever and tall. How did you get your hands on the Lord Chancellor’s messenger bird, hmm? If he ever finds out he’ll have you killed.”

He already tried, Mr. Jelliby thought, but he said, “Look madam, we haven’t time for nonsense. Tell us what the door looks like and where we’ll find it, and we’ll leave you be.”

“Oh, but I don’t want you to leave me be! Don’t go! I can’t tell you those things. I can’t, it would be bad, so bad. Or perhaps I could. Perhaps a little. My memories of the last one are very dim, that’s all. So dim and faraway. I woke in my bed in the crown of a tree, and. .” The greenwitch’s eyes clouded over. “Mama. Mama was packing bags. She was telling us to hurry because there was a great wonder under way by the City of Black Laughter. And I remember walking, walking. I was very young then. It seemed to me we walked a hundred nights, but it couldn’t have been long at all. And then there was a door in the air. It was like a rip in the sky and its edges were black wings flapping. Feathers fell around us. We went through it, but I don’t remember how it looked from the other side. I didn’t look back, you see. Not once. Not until it was too late. The door could have been huge or it could have been tiny. Thousands of us fit through it at a time, but it was all magic, that door; it might have been no bigger than my nose.” She wiggled her nose. “The London door could be anything. Anywhere. It could be a mouse hole or a cupboard. It could be the marble arch in Park Lane.”

She smiled, wistful, her thumb rubbing the chip in the rim of her teacup. “I want to go back, you know. To the Old Country. Home.” She looked at Bartholomew, her blue eyes faint and watery. Then she set down her cup and put her hands to her ears. “Best not to think of it. Best not. Won’t think about it! Nothing good will come of Mr. Lickerish’s plans. Not for me. Not for me, and not for anyone.”

The wagon was silent for a minute. The fire crackled inside the little stove. Outside in the trees, an owl hooted mournfully.

Then Mr. Jelliby stood. “Indeed. We’ll be leaving now. Thank you for the tea.”

The greenwitch began to speak again, stumbling out of her chair, trying to keep them a little longer, but Mr. Jelliby was already unlatching the door. He stepped out into the night. Bartholomew followed, pulling his hood down low.

Out in the clearing, Mr. Jelliby took a deep breath. He turned to Bartholomew. “Cracked as an egg, that one. Let’s be off then, if we’re to save the world.”

They trudged out of the circle of warmth from the wagon, out into the heavy damp of the wood.

“I don’t care about the world,” Bartholomew said under his breath. “All I want is Hettie.”

The old faery climbed down from her wagon and watched them go, gazing after them until long after they had been swallowed by the night.

Hours passed. She stood so still she might almost have been mistaken for a tree herself. Finally a clockwork sparrow swooped down into the clearing and alighted on the dewy grass by her feet. She scooped it up. Cradling it in her palm, she undid the brass capsule from its leg and took out a message.

Rejoice, sister, it read, in Mr. Lickerish’s familiar, spidery handwriting. Child Number Eleven is everything. Everything we hoped her to be. Prepare the potion. Make it your strongest yet and send it to the Moon. The door will not fail this time. In two days’ time, when the sun rises, she will stand tall and proud over the ruins of London, a herald to our glorious new age.

And a symbol of the fall of man.

The sun will not rise for them.

The Age of Smoke is over.

The old faery’s face split into that wide, wide grin. Slowly, she rolled the note back into the capsule. Then she took a gun from under her apron. It was new, Goblin Market-bought, one of a pair. The other was in the wagon, hidden quickly behind the stove. She raised the gun, pointing it at the place where the two figures had disappeared into the woods.

Boom, she mouthed, and giggled a little.

“Mi Sathir, they have her !” A small bearded man stood in front of Mr. Lickerish’s desk. The man’s nose was bandaged and his face was paper white, but he looked otherwise quite calm, completely at odds with the ragged, desperate voice that had spoken. “They have my Melusine!”

Mr. Lickerish did not answer at once. He had a game of chess laid out in front of him and was carefully touching black paint onto the ivory pieces with a little brush.

“Who?” he asked at length, barely glancing at the faery’s new guise.

“The police. They caught us. We-”

“They caught her. You, apparently, have escaped. That is good. Is the other half-blood dead? Our little visitor?”

The faery inside Dr. Harrow’s skull hesitated. For a full minute the only sound in the room was the ever-present thrumming noise and the faint scritch-scritch of Mr. Lickerish’s brush bristles against the chess piece.

“No,” he said at last. “No, Child Number Ten is still alive. And so is Arthur Jelliby.”

Mr. Lickerish dropped the chess piece. It fell to the desktop with a sharp clack and rolled away, leaving a pattern of black paint across the wine-colored leather.

“What?” The word was uttered with startling force, a savage, guttural sound like the snarl of a wolf. Mr. Lickerish’s face cracked into a mask of wrinkles and white lines and he stared at the bearded man, his eyes glittering, furious. “Turn around and look at me, you coward. What happened?”

The doctor turned slowly, revealing the dark and shriveled face on the back of his bald head. “He escaped. I don’t know how. I don’t know how it could have happened, but it’s not my fault. He survived the magic and escaped, and now Melusine-”

“Arthur Jelliby cannot be alive,” Mr. Lickerish said, rising from his chair. His long white fingers were shaking, rattling like bones against the wood of the armrests. “He will compromise us! He knows too much. Too much. He cannot be alive,” he said, as if trying to convince himself.

“It’s not my fault!”

The faery politician spun on the bearded man. “Oh, Jack Box, believe me, it is your fault. You were to kill him. I told you to kill him !”

“I thought I had. I couldn’t have known he would survive. Sathir, I did everything you asked of me. I brought you the new child, did I not? I cast the spell on the house on Belgrave Square, and went back for Child Number Ten. You must help me! Melusine must get out!”

“Melusine.” Mr. Lickerish’s voice was dark with contempt. “I don’t care a bat’s eye what happens to Melusine. Whether she lives or dies will be entirely up to you. She will stay in prison. She will not go anywhere until you have done what I ordered you to do. And if it takes you a thousand years, she will rot there.”

Jack Box took a trembling breath, and something very like tears sparkled in the corners of his eyes. “No,” he said. “No, you can’t leave her there. She won’t survive without me. She’s dying! Send a letter. Wire them. They will let her out the instant you say so!”

“But I won’t say so.”

Jack Box stared at Mr. Lickerish. Mr. Lickerish stared back coldly. Then he cocked an eyebrow and picked up the fallen chess piece with pale fingers.

“Child Number Ten. That is what you called our little visitor, was it not? You will find him. You will find them both, Arthur Jelliby and the half-blood. And since it appears you are an utterly useless and woebegone faery if ever I saw one, you will bring them to me alive. I will deal with them myself.”