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The Peculiar
The sun was completely gone now. The shadows were beginning to slink from behind the rafters, and that made Bartholomew get up. He crawled out of the attic and made his way downstairs, trying not to let the groaning, sagging house give him away. Don’t get yourself noticed, and you won’t get yourself hanged.
At the door to their rooms, Bartholomew paused. Oily yellow light seeped from under it. The rhythmic clank of the mechanical wash wringer sounded dully into the passage.
“Come now, Hettie,” Mother was saying. Her voice was loud and cheerful, the way it was when nothing was well and she was determined not to show it. She was trying to keep Hettie from worrying. “Drink your broth down quick-like, and then off to bed. This lamp’s not got more ’n fifteen minutes in it, and I’ll be needing it another night or two.”
There was a slurp. Hettie mumbled, “It doesn’t taste like anything.”
That’s because it’s only water, thought Bartholomew, leaning his head against the door frame. With wax drippings so we think there’s meat in it. It was why the saucers at the base of the brass candlesticks were always empty in the mornings. Mother thought she was careful about it, but he knew. They were scraped clean by the kitchen spoon.
“Mummy, Barthy isn’t back yet.”
“Yes …” Mother’s voice was not so loud anymore.
“It’s dark outside. It’s past bedtime. Isn’t it?”
“Yes, dearie, it is.”
“I suspect something, Mummy.”
“Oh …”
“Do you want to know what I suspect?”
“There isn’t any salt left.”
“No. I suspect a kelpy got him and dragged him down into his bottomless puddle.”
Bartholomew turned away before he could hear his mother’s reply. She wasn’t really thinking about the salt. She was thinking about where he might be hiding, where she hadn’t searched yet, and why he hadn’t returned. He felt cruel suddenly, slinking around outside their door while she worried inside. Soon she would start to panic, knock on the neighbors’ walls, and go into the night with the last fifteen minutes of the lamp oil. He had to be back before then.
Tiptoeing the rest of the way downstairs, he scraped himself along the wall toward the alley door. A goblin sat by it, fast asleep on a stool. Bartholomew went past him and brushed his hand over the door, feeling for the bolt. The door had a face in it—fat cheeks and lips and sleepy old eyes growing out of the gray and weather-beaten wood. His mother said the face used to demand beetles from folks who wanted to come in and spat their shells at folks who wanted to go out, but Bartholomew had never seen it so much as blink.
His fingers found the bolt. He pulled it back. Then he slipped under the chain and onto the cobbles.
It was strange being in the open again. The air there was close and damp. There were no walls or ceilings, just the alley splitting into other alleys, on and on into the great world. It felt huge, frightening, and endlessly dangerous. But Bartholomew didn’t suppose he had a choice.
He scurried across the alley to the low arch in the Buddelbinsters’ wall. The yard was dark, the crooked house as well. Its many windows had been thrown open. They looked as if they were watching him.
He leaped over the broken gate and pressed himself to the wall. The night was not cold, but he shivered anyway. Only a few hours ago, the lady in plum had stood here, so near where he was standing now, luring his friend to her with blue-gloved fingers.
Bartholomew shook himself and moved on. The circle the lady had poured onto the ground was still there, a few steps to the right of the path. From his attic window Bartholomew had been able to see it clearly, but up close it was very faint, practically invisible if you didn’t already know it was there. He knelt down, pushing aside a tuft of weeds to examine it. He frowned. The ring was made of mush-rooms. Tiny black mushrooms that looked like no sort of mushroom he would want to eat. He plucked one up. For a moment he could feel its shape, soft and smooth against his fingertips. Then it seemed to melt, until it was only a droplet of black liquid staining the whiteness of his skin.
He stared at his hand curiously. He waved it over the circle. Nothing happened. One more hand and his forehead. Still nothing. He almost laughed then. It didn’t work anymore. They were just mushrooms now.
Standing up, he dug his bare toe into the cold soil inside the ring. Then he stomped a few of the mushrooms. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard a soft titter at that, like a crowd of whispers, far away. Without another thought, he leaped up and landed in the middle of the mushroom ring.
A hideous screeching erupted all around him. There was a burst of darkness, and wings were every-where, flapping in his face, battering him. He was falling, flying, a fierce and icy wind tearing at his hair and his threadbare clothes.
“Idiot!” he screamed. “You stupid, stupid, what were you thinking, you—” But it was too late. Already the darkness was subsiding. And what he saw then was not Old Crow Alley or the Buddelbinsters’ yard. It was not anything in the faery slums. Flashing through the wings like scraps of sunlight was warmth, luxury, the gleam of brass and polished wood, and heavy green drapes stitched with leaves. A fire was somewhere nearby. He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there, crackling.
With a desperate lunge, he tried to throw himself free of the wings. Please, please put me back. The magic couldn’t have taken him far in those few seconds, could it? Maybe a few miles, but if he hurried he could find his way back before the faeries and the English filled the streets.
The wings slashed past his face. Gravity seemed to become unsure of its own laws, and for a moment he thought his plan might have worked; he was soaring, weightless. And then the wings were gone. The screeching stopped. His head thudded against smooth wood, and the air was knocked from his lungs.
Bartholomew propped himself up on his elbows dizzily. He was on the floor of the loveliest room he had ever seen. There were the green drapes, drawn against the night. There, the fireplace and the flames. Woodsmoke drifted from the grate, making the air warm and hazy. Books lined the walls. Lamps with painted silk shades threw a soft glow about them. A few feet away from where Bartholomew had fallen, a circle had been carefully drawn with chalk on the bare floorboards. Rings of writing surrounded the circle, thin twining letters that seemed to spin and dance as he looked at them.
That was where I was supposed to land, he thought, feeling the bump that was growing on his head.
Shakily, he got to his feet. The room was a study of some sort. A heavy wooden desk took up most of one end. It was carved with bulbous frogs and toads, and they all looked to be in the process of eating one another. On top of the desk, in a neat row, were three mechanical birds. They were each a slightly different size, and were built to look like sparrows, with metal wings and tiny brass cogs that peeped out from between the plates. They sat utterly still, obsidian eyes staring keenly at Bartholomew.
He took a few steps toward them. A little voice at the back of his mind was telling him to run, to get away from that room as fast as he could, but he was feeling dull and silly, and his head still hurt. A few minutes wouldn’t make any difference, would they? And it was so pleasant here, so shiny and warm.
He walked a little closer to the birds. He had the strongest urge to reach out and touch one. He wanted to feel those perfect metal feathers, the delicate machinery, and the sharp black eyes…. He uncurled his fingers.
He froze. Something had shifted in the depths of the house. A floorboard or a panel. And then all Bartholomew heard was the clip-clip of feet approaching briskly from the other side of the door at the far end of the room.
His heart clenched, painfully. Someone heard. someone heard the noise, and now he was coming to investigate. He would find a changeling in his private chambers, a pauper from the faery slums clearly breaking into his house. A constable would come, beat Bartholomew senseless. Morning would find him swinging by the neck in the hot breath of the city.
Bartholomew flew across the room and wrenched at the doorknob with desperate fingers. It was locked, but the person on the other side would have a key. He had to get out.
Racing back to the chalk circle, he leaped and landed squarely in the middle. His heels struck the floor, the force jarring his legs.
Nothing happened.
He threw a frantic look back at the door. The foot-steps had stopped. Someone was right there, right on the other side, breathing. Bartholomew heard a hand being placed on the knob. The knob began to turn, turn. Click. Locked.
Panic slithered in his throat. Trapped. Get out, get out, get out!
For a moment the person outside was silent. Then the knob began to rattle. Slowly at first but becoming more insistent, getting stronger and stronger until the whole door was shivering in its frame.
Bartholomew stamped his foot. GO! he thought desperately. Work! Take me away from here! His chest began to ache. Something was pricking the back of his eyes, and for a moment he wanted nothing more than to sit down and cry like he had when he was little and had lost hold of his mother’s hand at the market.
The person outside began to beat viciously against the door.
It wouldn’t do any good to cry. Bartholomew ran his hand over his nose. A crying thief would still be hanged. He looked down at the markings all around him and tried to think.
There. A section of the chalk circle was smeared across the floor. The ring didn’t go all the way around anymore. He must have ruined it when he fell.
Dropping to his knees, he began scrabbling the chalk dust together, piling it in a rough line to close the circle.
A dull snapping sounded from the door. The wood. Whoever is outside is breaking down the door!
Bartholomew couldn’t hope to copy all the little marks and symbols, but he could at least complete the ring. Faster, faster … His hands squeaked against the floor.
The door burst inward with a thunderous crash.
But the wings were already enveloping Bartholomew, the darkness howling around him, and the wind pulling at his clothes. Only something was different this time. Wrong. He felt things in the blackness; cold, thin bodies that darted against him and poked at his skin. Mouths pressed up to his ears, whispering in small, dark voices. A tongue, icy wet, slid over his cheek. And then there was only pain, horrid searing pain, tearing up his arms and eating into his bones. He kept down his scream just long enough for the room to begin to flit away into the spinning shadows. Then he shrieked along with the wind and the raging wings.
A carriage was winding its way toward the house through the evening bustle of Fleet Street. Rain was falling steadily. The streetlamps were just beginning to glow, and they reflected on the polished sides of the carriage, throwing tongues of light onto the windows.
The carriage shuddered to a halt in front of Nonsuch House, and Mr. Jelliby ducked out, leaping a puddle to get into the shelter of the doorway. He brought up his walking stick and knocked it twice against the pockmarked black wood. Then he wrapped his arms around himself and scowled.
He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be any-where but here. Scattered on his desk at home were gilt-edged cards and monogrammed invitations that would gain him entrance to a whole parade of lively and fashionable drawing rooms. And what was he doing but standing in the wind and rain outside the house of Mr. Lickerish, the faery politician. There ought to be laws against such things.
Drat these ale meetings…. They were a very old tradition, but that didn’t mean Mr. Jelliby had to like them. Members of the Privy Council, two or three at a time, met at each other’s townhouses for drink and pleasant discussion, in the hope that it would breed fellowship and respect for differing opinions. Mr. Jelliby’s scowl deepened. Fellowship, indeed. Perhaps it had done so four centuries ago when the members still drank ale. But it was all tea these days, and the meetings were frosty affairs, much dreaded by host and guests alike.
Mr. Jelliby stood up straighter. A rattling of locks had begun on the other side of the door. He must at least look as if he didn’t want to be anywhere else. He raised his chin, folded his gloved hands across the head of his walking stick, and assumed an expression of pleasant inquiry.
With a final, thudding clank, the door opened. Something very tall and thin thrust its head out and blinked at Mr. Jelliby.
Mr. Jelliby blinked back. The creature leaning out of the shadows of the doorway must have been seven feet tall, and yet it was so bony and starved-looking it seemed barely able to support its own weight. The pale skin on its hands was thin as birch bark, and all the little knuckles pushed up underneath. He (for it was a he, Mr. Jelliby saw now) wore a shabby suit that ended several inches above his ankles, and the air around him smelled faintly of graveyards. But that was not the oddest part about him. One side of his face was ensconced in a web of brass, a network of tiny cogs and pistons that whirred and ticked in constant motion. A green glass goggle was fixed over the eye. Every few seconds it would twitch, and a lens would flick across it like a blink. Then a thread of steam would hiss out from under a screw in its casing.
“Arthur Jelliby?” the creature inquired. He had a high, soft voice, and his other eye—the slanted, faery eye—squeezed almost shut when he spoke. Mr. Jelliby did not like that at all.
“Ah …” he said.
“Enter, if you please.” The faery ushered him in with a graceful sweep of his hand. Mr. Jelliby stepped in, trying not to stare. The door boomed shut behind him, and instantly he was plunged into silence. The clatter of Fleet Street was cut off. The noise of the rain was very far away, only a faint drum at the edge of his hearing.
Mr. Jelliby’s coat dripped onto black-and-white tiles. He was standing in a high, echoing hall, and the shadows pressed around him, heavy and damp from the corners and doorways. There was not a lit wick to be seen, not a gaslight or a candle. Mildew streaked the paneling in long, green trails. Faded tapestries clung to the walls, barely visible in the gloom. A grandfather clock with little faces where the numbers should have been stood silently against the wall.
“This way, if you please,” the faery said, setting off across the hall.
Mr. Jelliby followed, tugging uncertainly at his gloves. The butler should have taken them. In a proper house he would have, along with Mr. Jelliby’s hat and overcoat. Mr. Jelliby was suddenly aware of how loud his shoes sounded, slapping wetly against the floor. He didn’t dare look, but he imagined himself leaving a slippery trail over the tiles like a massive slug.
The faery butler led him to the end of the hall and they began to climb the stairs. The staircase was a mass of rotting wood, carved with such cruel-looking mermaids that Mr. Jelliby was afraid to put his hand on the banister.
“Mr. Lickerish will be seeing you in the green library,” the butler said over his shoulder.
“Oh, that’s nice,” Mr. Jelliby mumbled, because he didn’t know what else to say. Somewhere in the house the wind moaned. A casement must have been left open, forgotten.
The oddness of Nonsuch House was unsettling him more with every step. This was obviously not a place for humans. The pictures on the walls were not of landscapes or ill-tempered ancestors as in Mr. Jelliby’s house, but of plain things, like a tarnished spoon, a jug with a fly sitting on it, and a bright red door in a stone wall. And yet they were all painted with so much shadow that they looked decidedly sinister. The spoon might have been used to murder someone, the jug was full of poison, and the red door doubtless led into a tangled garden of flesh-eating plants. There were no photographs or bric-a-brac. Instead there were many mirrors, and drapes, and little trees growing from cracks in the paneling.
He was almost at the top of the stairs when he saw a small, hunched-up goblin rushing along the balcony that overlooked the hall. Something was jangling in the goblin’s hands, and he paused at each door, clicking and scraping, and Mr. Jelliby saw that he was locking them, one by one.
On the second floor, the house became a maze, and Mr. Jelliby lost every sense of direction. The butler led him first down one corridor, then another, through sitting rooms and archways and long, gloomy galleries, up short flights of stairs, ever farther into the house. Now and then Mr. Jelliby caught a glimpse of movement in the darkness. He would hear the scamper of feet and the titter of voices. But whenever he turned to look there was nothing there. The servants, most likely, he thought, but he wasn’t sure.
After a few minutes they passed the mouth of a corridor, long and very narrow, like the sort inside a railway carriage. Mr. Jelliby froze, staring down it. It was so brightly lit. Gas lamps fizzled along its walls, making it look like a tunnel of blazing gold cutting into the darkness of the house. And a woman was in the corridor. She was hurrying, her back toward him, and in her haste she seemed to be flitting like a bird, her purple skirts billowing out behind her like wings. Then the butler was at Mr. Jelliby’s side, herding him up a winding stair, and he was surrounded again in shadow.
“Excuse me?” Mr. Jelliby said, pulling himself from the faery’s grasp. “Excuse me, butler? Does Mr. Lickerish have a wife?”
“A wife?” said the butler, in his sickly, sticky voice. “Whatever would he want a wife for?”
Mr. Jelliby frowned. “Well… well, I don’t know, but I saw a—”
“Here we are. The green library. Tea will be served directly.”
They had stopped in front of a tall pointed door made from panes of green glass that were shaped like eels and seaweed and water serpents, all twisting and writhing around one another.
The butler tapped against it with one of his long yellow fingernails. “Mi Sathir?” he whined. “Kath eccis melar. Arthur Jelliby is arrived.” Then he turned and melted away into the dark.
The door opened silently. Mr. Jelliby felt sure the faery politician would poke his head out and greet him, but no one appeared. He poked his own head in. A very long room stretched away in front of him. It was a library, but it did not look very green. A few lamps had been lit, making the room almost welcoming compared to the rest of the house. Chairs and carpets and little tables filled the floor, and every inch of the walls was covered with … oh. The books were green. All of them. They were many different shades and sizes, and in the half-light they had looked like any other books, but now that Mr. Jelliby’s eyes had adjusted he could see that this was indeed a library of green books. He took a few steps, shaking his head slowly. He wondered whether in this strange house there was also a blue library for blue books, or a burgundy library for those of the burgundy persuasion.
At the far end of the room, silhouetted against the glow of a fire, three figures sat.
“Good evening, young Jelliby,” the faery politician called to him as he approached. It was a very quiet call, if such a thing were possible, spoken very coldly. Mr. Lickerish was obviously not about to make a lie of the fact that none of them were welcome here.
“Good evening, Lord Chancellor,” said Mr. Jelliby, and managed a halfhearted smile. “Mr. Lumbidule, Mr. Throgmorton. What a pleasure.” He bowed to the two men, and they nodded back. Apparently they were not going to make a lie of anything, either. After all, they were in opposing parties to Mr. Jelliby’s. He sat down hastily in one of the empty chairs.
A low table had been laid with edibles. The faery butler drifted in with a silver kettle, and then everything looked very respectable and English-like. It didn’t taste English, though. It didn’t even taste French. What had seemed to be proper liver-paste sandwiches tasted remarkably like cold autumn wind. The tea smelled of ladybeetles, and the lemon tart was bitter in a not-at-all lemony way. To make matters worse there were two sumptuous onyx perfume burners on either side of the little gathering, spewing a greenish smoke into the atmosphere. It was so sweet and cloying, and it made Mr. Jelliby think of splitting overripe fruit, of mold, and buzzing flies. Almost like the smell in the chamber of the Privy Council, after Mr. Lickerish’s fingers had twitched in his waistcoat pocket.
Mr. Jelliby laid his lemon tart aside. He stole a look at the other two gentlemen. They didn’t seem to be in any discomfort at all. They nipped at their ladybeetle tea, smiling and nodding as if to show their appreciation for everything in general. When one of them spoke, it was to say something so pointless that Mr. Jelliby could not remember it two seconds afterward. As for the faery, he sat perfectly still, arms folded, not eating, not drinking.
Mr. Jelliby took a small, gasping breath. The green fumes wriggled in his throat, making his lungs feel as if they were being stuffed with silk. A fog began to creep about the corners of his vision. The room felt suddenly unsteady. The floor swayed, bucked, like wooden waves in a wooden sea. Vaguely he heard Mr. Throgmorton asking after the weight of Mr. Lumbidule’s mechanical hunting boar. “It must be shot with a special sort of gun,” Mr. Lumbidule was saying. “… has real blood inside, real meat, and if you are tired of hunting it, it will lie down on its iron back and …”
Mr. Jelliby could take it no longer. Wiping his brow he said, “Forgive me, Mr. Lickerish, but I am feeling unwell. Is there a water closet nearby?” The two other men stopped their blathering long enough to smirk at him. Mr. Jelliby barely noticed. He was too busy trying not to vomit.
The faery’s mouth twitched. He regarded Mr. Jelliby sharply for a moment. Then he said, “Of course there is a water closet. Left of the door you’ll find a bellpull. Someone will come to escort you.”
“Oh …” Mr. Jelliby lurched out of his seat and stumbled away from the chairs. His head was spinning. On his way across the room he thought he might have knocked something over—he heard a clatter and felt something delicate grind to glassy shards under his feet—but he was too dizzy to stop.
He staggered out of the library, fumbling along the wall for the bellpull. His fingers brushed a tassel. His hand closed around a thick velvet cord and he tugged it with all his might. Somewhere deep in the house a bell tinkled.
He waited, listening for the sound of footsteps, a door opening, a voice. Nothing. The bell faded away. He heard the rain again, drumming on the roof.
He pulled a second time. Another tinkle. still nothing.
Fine. He would find the privy himself. Now that he was out of the green library, he was feeling better anyway. His head was beginning to clear, and his stomach had settled. A splash of cold water, perhaps, and he’d be well enough. He began wandering back the way he had come, down the winding staircase and into the passageway below, trying the doors as he passed them to see if there might be a privy behind one. His mind went back to the brightly lit corridor, the woman hurrying down it. He wondered who she was. She hadn’t been a servant. Not with those rich clothes. Nor had she looked like a faery.
