Stefan Bachman - The Peculiar

All at once the rat faery threw Bartholomew against the banister and collapsed, rolling and tumbling down the steps. Bartholomew watched it come to rest at the foot of the stairs, a wretched trembling mass.

He glanced back up the stairs. Should I run? Someone might be watching. Some little pisky peeking down from the chandeliers, or a wooden face inside the wainscoting. And where would I run to?

Bartholomew approached the rat faery slowly.

“What is wrong with Melusine?” he asked. He tried to make his voice gentle. “If we stop Mr. Lickerish you can help her. That’s the only way you can help her.”

The rat faery looked up at Bartholomew. Its face twisted in surprise, then suspicion, then confusion. Bartholomew thought it would say something, but its mouth just opened and closed over its uneven teeth.

“Who is she?” Bartholomew asked, stooping down next to him. “Who is Melusine?”

There was an instant when some of the rat faery’s hardness came back into its face. Bartholomew flinched, sure it was going to get up again and drag him on. But the hardness was gone again as quickly as it had come, replaced by something Bartholomew had never seen in a face so inhuman. A wistful look, sad and faraway.

“I met her in Dublin,” it said, and its voice was a rasp in its throat. “She was shopping for ribbons on Nassau Street, and she was so fair. So fair. And I so ugly, watching from the shadows. I cast a spell on myself, a powerful glamour that in a wink made me the most handsome creature in all the world. I strolled up beside her and told her how pretty the purple ribbons would look with her hair. We began to talk. She introduced me to her parents and I was invited to dine with them. .

“We were going to be married in May. But the stupid maid. . Silly superstitious thing with an iron ring on her finger night and day. Or perhaps not so silly. She saw through my magic from the start. She saw me for what I was, a horrid knot of rats slinking at her mistress’s side. For a while she thought she was mad. Then she confided in the footman. The footman told the cook, the cook told the housekeeper, and eventually the tale reached the ears of Melusine’s father. He was always such a kind man, even to me, and he loved his daughter very much. The rumor disturbed him. A faery hunter was sent for from Arklow, to divine whether there was magical deception at work in the house, and Melusine’s father called her to him, told her of his fear. But I had spoken to her first. I turned her mind against him. She called him a liar and a heartless monster, and we fled together into a gathering storm, taking the ponies across the hill.”

There was a pause, and the airship went very still. The flames in the gas lamps flared and dimmed silently. Only the hum of the engines made any sound at all.

Bartholomew’s mind was racing. I don’t have time for this. I need to find Mr. Jelliby, find Hettie before she is turned into some horrible door. He wondered how strong the rat faery still was, what it would do if he tried to run. His fingers wrapped around a spindle in the banister. He could wrench it out, he thought, and beat the rats with it.

But then the faery was looking at him again, and its eyes were wet and deep and unbearably sad.

“We went to London,” it said, not really to Bartholomew. Not really to anyone. “We sold her jewels for wine, and danced until our feet were sore. I thought everything was going grandly, but not Melusine. Not my fair, fair Melusine. She missed her parents. She missed Ireland, and the high green hills. She is such a young thing, after all.” Bartholomew let his hand slip from the spindle. “And I knew then that she would never really be mine while the deception lasted. She didn’t love me. The thing she loved was an illusion and a lie, and so one day I shed my glamour. I showed her what I was.”

The rat faery looked away. When it spoke again its voice was choked. “And she hated me. She hated me for my ugliness. She ran. Ran to the door, crying and screaming, but I couldn’t let her go. I couldn’t. I knew it would kill her. I knew the rats would eat into her and she would never be the same again, but how else was I to keep her with me? I couldn’t let her leave me! ” The rat faery jerked on the floor, as if all its many legs were hurtling in different directions. Then it curled around itself like a snail, hiding its head. “I met Mr. Lickerish then,” it whispered. “In the street in the night. He told me of his plan, how he needed someone to fetch him changelings. If the faery door were opened, he said, all would be well again. Magic would be strong in England and I would be able to keep Melusine from dying. I would be able to cast a glamour so strong and deep that not even the maid’s iron ring could help her see through it. And all this. .” He raised a rat-tail hand, and waved it blindly. “All this would seem like an evil dream. And so I did it all. Everything he asked of me.”

Bartholomew said nothing. He didn’t like what he had heard. He wanted to find Hettie and he wanted to hate Jack Box. He wanted to think him a monster for all the pain he had caused. But a nasty voice had crept into Bartholomew’s head and was saying, A monster? But he’s just like you. Just as ugly, just as selfish. You’re no different from him. Wouldn’t you kill a million people to save Hettie?

Bartholomew closed his eyes. “But Melusine,” he said, trying to sound calm. “She’ll live now that you’ve left her. Bath is so far away. She’ll be safe now.”

“Safe.” The faery’s voice was a bare, rattling whisper. “Safe from me. Safe forever.”

Bartholomew stared at him.

“No one helped her. Not the police, or Mr. Lickerish, even though I begged him and did everything he asked of me. One day, she lasted, perhaps two. And then she died, all alone on that chair, in that white room under the earth.”

Mr. Lickerish spoke quickly into the brass speaking apparatus, excitement glimmering at the edge of his voice. “The greenwitch’s elixir has arrived at last. Take Child Number Eleven down to the warehouse and give it to her. Make certain she drinks every drop. And then hurry. The sylphs will come quickly. You will have only minutes before the door begins to destroy the city. Hurry back to the Moon , and do not delay. I will need you in the world of tomorrow.” He set down the mouthpiece, nibbling thoughtfully at the end of his silk watch ribbon.

“Sathir?” the faery butler’s voice crackled through the device. “ Sathir, are you there? Is there anything more you wish to say?”

Mr. Lickerish picked up the mouthpiece again. “Yes. Yes, I believe there is. Jack Box has become. . unstable. He is on his way down to the warehouse as we speak. Make sure he stays there.” And without waiting for a reply he slammed the mouthpiece into its cradle.

The faery butler replaced the speaking apparatus slowly.

“Very well,” he said to no one at all, and shooting one last suspicious look about the room, he took Hettie by the hand and pulled her toward the door.

“Come along, half-blood. Are you thirsty? I imagine you must be parched.”

“I’m sorry she’s dead,” Bartholomew said softly. In an odd way he really was sorry. She had always seemed a phantom and a witch, a symbol of all the evil that had intruded into his life. She had started it, walking into the alley and whisking away the Buddelbinster boy. But it hadn’t really been her at all. When he had edged up to her under the eaves of the house on Old Crow Alley, that was when he had met the true Melusine. He had heard her soft voice and silly notions of valets and peaches and cream. He would never forget the shining pain in her eyes when she had seen the rat faery, racing across the cobbles toward her. Tell Daddy I’m sorry, she had said. Tell Daddy I’m sorry.