Stefan Bachman - The Peculiar

He was in a small sitting room. It held a wardrobe, and a Turkish sofa, and a great many carpets and tasseled pillows strewn across the floor. And there was a girl. Curled up on a cushion of jade-green silk was a changeling. She had a sharp, pointed face. Branches grew from her head. She was asleep.

Mr. Jelliby’s hand fell from the dial. “Hettie?” he whispered, taking a few steps toward her. “Is that your name, little girl? Are you Hettie?”

The child did not stir at his voice. But it was as if she could sense she was being watched, even in her dreams, and after a heartbeat or two she sat up with a start. She looked at Mr. Jelliby with wide black eyes.

“Don’t worry,” he said, going down on his haunches and smiling. “Bartholomew’s here, too, and we’ve come to rescue you. You needn’t be afraid.”

Her face remained taut. For a moment she just stared at him. Then, in a small frantic whisper, she said, “Put out the lights. Quickly, sir, put them out !”

Mr. Jelliby looked at her, confused. Then he heard it, too. Footsteps snapping quickly along the corridor. Not the dancing footsteps of Mr. Lickerish, or the shuffling ones of the hunchbacked gnome. Something heavy and strong was out there, coming straight for the door to the sitting room.

Mr. Jelliby leaped up and wrenched the dial all the way around. The lamps fizzed out, and he flew across the room, plunging into the drapes that hid the window. Someone stopped outside the door. A hand was laid on the key. Then it was taken away again and there was a pause. The door banged open.

Mr. Jelliby could just see a figure come into the room before the door closed again. Whoever it was did not turn on the lights. But the figure had a lamp. A small green orb floated in the darkness. It made a ticking noise, snick-snick-snick , like a clock. It expanded slightly. Suddenly the lamps blazed again. There stood the faery butler, his mechanical eye fixed on the far side of the room, a slight frown creasing his brow.

“Little girl?” he asked, in his oozing, whining voice. “Little girl, tell me something. Can you walk through walls?”

Hettie didn’t look at him. “No,” she said, and burrowed into her pillow.

“Oh.” The faery butler’s frown darkened. “Then why was the door unlocked?”

Mr. Lickerish extended one long finger and touched it to Bartholomew’s chin. Then he crooked his finger sharply, jerking Bartholomew’s face up with it. Bartholomew gasped and bit his tongue to keep from crying out.

“Changelings are of both worlds, you see,” Mr. Lickerish said. “A child of man with blood of the fay. A bridge. A door. Don’t suppose I will explain my plans to you, though, because I shan’t. You’re far too stupid to understand them.”

“Just tell me why it has to be Hettie,” Bartholomew said, twisting against the rat faery’s grasp. He knew this was the end. He would be lucky to leave the room alive. There was no point being timid anymore. “Why wasn’t it one of the others? Why wasn’t it the boy from across the way?”

“The boy from across the way? If you mean Child Number Nine then it was because he was a flawed, degenerate creature just like the eight before him. Descendants of low faeries, the lot of them. Sons and daughters of goblins and gnomes and spriggans. The door did open for them. It did work. But it was such a small, weak door. And it opened inside them.”

The fire crackled in the hearth. Mr. Lickerish laughed softly and released Bartholomew’s chin, settling back into his chair. “Perhaps you heard that the changelings were hollow? Surely you did. The papers made such a fuss over it. What did they have to be shocked about, I wonder. Some faery, going about his business in the Old Country unsuspecting as you like, found himself suddenly confronted with a heap of steaming changeling innards. They were not enough, those other nine. They were too common. Too faerylike, or too human. But Child Number Eleven. Hettie. She is the daughter of a Sidhe. She is perfect.”

Bartholomew swallowed. “I’m her brother. He’s my father, too. I’ll be the door.”

“You?” The faery politician sounded as if he were about to laugh. But then he paused, and gazed at Bartholomew. Bartholomew thought he saw surprise in those black eyes. “You want to be the door?” the faery asked. “You want to die?”

“No,” Bartholomew said quietly. “But I want Hettie to live. I want her to go home. Please, sir, I’ll be the door, just let Hettie go.”

Mr. Lickerish looked at him a long while. A smirk played at the corners of his mouth. Finally he said, “Oh. What a foolish thing to want.” And then, turning to the rat faery, “Take him back down to the warehouse and dispose of him. I thought he might be dangerous. He is not dangerous. He is not even strong. He is simply peculiar.”

The rat faery peered at Mr. Lickerish, rats slithering and squeaking. “Melusine,” he said quietly. “What of Melusine?”

“The warehouse, Jack Box. Now.”

The rat faery pushed Bartholomew toward the door.

“Where is Hettie?” Bartholomew shouted, struggling against the rat faery’s grip. “Where’s my sister?”

But Mr. Lickerish only took a great malicious bite out of his apple and gave no reply.

Mr. Jelliby remained perfectly still behind the drapes. The swaths of black velvet wrapped around him, stifling him, smothering him with their odor of old wax and withered petals. Sweat broke across his forehead and the drapes stuck to his face, hot and itching. He pressed himself farther back into the window well, all the way until he felt the cold panes against his cheek. Drat. The door had been locked from the outside. It was dead proof someone else was in the room.

On the other side of the drapes, the faery butler’s green eye began to flick back and forth along the walls, clicking and buzzing as it focused on everything. The wrinkle in the carpet, the indents in the pillows, the fingerprints on the porcelain dial. .

“Troutbelly? Are you here? Little girl, did that degenerate gnome come in?”

Hettie gave no answer, and the faery butler didn’t wait for one. He strode across the room, looking into the wardrobe, opening drawers, kicking at the plump silk pillows.

“Jack Box? Selenyo pekkal! This is no time for games!”

The faery butler was directly in front of the drapes. Mr. Jelliby could hear his wheezing breaths, feel his presence like a weight on the other side of the velvet. The faery butler’s green eye narrowed. He reached forward, ready to throw open the drapes. Mr. Jelliby had his hands in fists. One second more and he would leap out, swinging like a maniac. But then a speaking machine rang from the wall, shrilling and rattling like an angry bird.

The faery turned abruptly and picked up the mouthpiece.

“Mi Sathir?”

The rat faery was very quiet as it herded Bartholomew down the corridor. No taunting, no threats. Bartholomew had expected it to begin the moment they were out of earshot of the study, but Jack Box’s mouth remained clamped shut.

They walked down the curving staircase, toward the hall of the airship. The rat faery moved behind Bartholomew, claws scuttling, pinning his arm to his back.

“Mr. Lickerish isn’t going to help you, you know.” Bartholomew’s voice was sharp. “I don’t know why you think he will. I don’t know what’s wrong with the lady in plum, but Mr. Lickerish doesn’t care. He just keeps you to do things for him.”

“Shut up,” the rat faery spat, and yellow teeth pinched into Bartholomew’s back, his wrists, and shoulders. “Shut up, boy, you don’t know-”

Bartholomew wanted to cry with the pain, but he didn’t. “He’s not going to help you, can’t you see? You’re going to die when that door opens. You’re going to die just like everyone else. Mr. Lickerish doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself.”