by James Somers
The bailiff and two other guards led us from the small courtroom to another cell. “Wait here.” He smiled, showing his yellow teeth. “You’ll have your turn as soon as the ropes are through with the first lot.”
I sat with the other boys upon a wooden bench. This wasn’t a formal cell, but rather more of a waiting pen. I knew exactly what we were waiting for and I didn’t like it one bit. I still could not speak, and Tom had said nothing further to me. I thought of grabbing the older boy and shaking him, demanding that he undo whatever he had done to take away my ability to speak. Still, I had no proof, and he’d already shown himself stronger back in our cell.
I sat staring at the small barred window fixed high within the heavy wooden door where the guard had passed moments before. All I could see were dark clouds hovering over. However, I heard everything occurring: the charges being read, the sentence handed down by the judge and the jeers from the assembled crowd. I knew that crowd. They had to be the same sort of rabble who had watched with me as the young boy had been hung. How quickly I had made the journey from spectator-among-the-innocent to guilty-as-charged and ready to swing for their pleasure.
“Do you suppose it will hurt much?”
I turned to find one of the other boys next to me rubbing his throat. He looked at me with tears in his eyes.
“It will be over quickly won’t it?”
I hadn’t been thinking of the pain necessarily. I remembered how the boy in the square had struggled, unwilling to surrender his life to the rope. The boys waiting below him had latched onto his legs in order to add weight and complete the deed more quickly. I tried to speak again, but remained mute.
“Course it will, Charlie,” Tom said. “Don’t blubber about it. Take your dues like a man. That’s what Sinister would say, ain’t it?”
Charlie looked down as though ashamed. The jeering crowd called out beyond the cell door leading onto the courtyard before the jail.
“But then…Sinister’s not the one about the swing…is he?” Charlie looked at Tom again.
Tom remained impassive, dismissing the comment with a wave of his hand.
We heard the click and release of the lever as the crowd grew silent. We heard the floor give way then the drop. It had probably been my imagination, but I thought I heard a sickening crack inside my head, as though my own neck had just snapped out there on the gallows.
I suddenly felt sick to my stomach although I hadn’t had any food since my kind benefactor had brought me the mysterious blanket roll with its food, drink and fire. How I longed to be back there in that moment. I would gladly have traded my present predicament for a lifetime living in that alley.
The heavy cell door flew open, revealing the guard who had left us here. “Come on, you lot. It’s time to meet your maker.” He grinned fiercely. The two other boys made pretense of resisting. The guard came for them despite their pleas for mercy. He took them by their manacles and thrust them from the holding cell into the courtyard where the hands of more guards waited beyond.
I stood and followed. Tom came after and then the guard. He pulled a black sack over his head with two cut eyeholes in the front to peer at us as we marched toward the wooden gallows. Guards, all in black hoods, flanked our group of four on either side. Another stood upon the platform at the switch.
I said muted prayers to the Heavenly Father as we walked. I could not understand how I had supposedly been chosen for some great work here in London, as the nameless angel has said, and yet my life was about to end—as a criminal no less. One thought lifted my spirits. Soon I would see my father again. Surely he would be waiting with my mother to welcome me into Paradise. Despite the misjudgments of men, the Righteous Judge knew the truth and would hold me guiltless of these trumped up charges.
Our chained wrists clanked as we paraded before the jeering crowd—a reminder of established guilt and punishment soon to be executed. Charlie and the other boy shed their final tears as they walked before me. Somehow I had none. Soon I would stand in a realm beyond human sight vindicated and safe with my parents and my Savior. Only the promise of pain kept a smile from my face.
I knew Tom would not cry. He seemed fearless—no—disinterested probably described his attitude better. For all that had happened, the most interesting thing to him had been our run-in over his eyes and ears. I didn’t look back at him or acknowledge the stare I felt must be boring into the back of my skull.
We reached the gallows and began to climb the wooden stairs. A hooded guard came to receive us in turn. We crossed the floorboards and I felt them bend. The drop-away floor no doubt. My eyes shot to the wooden pole protruding out of a groove in the floor. It held a simple metal catch on a gear.
The guards arranged us in a line. We turned and faced the crowd. A noose hung before each of us. I looked up to the crossbeam and saw that there remained two extra grooves where ropes could be held if needed.
Two hooded guards moved among us in the line. One of them placed the noose over my neck and pulled out most of the slack. The rough fibers chafed my skin. This would hurt—I knew it. There was no going back, no getting out of my fate. I heard the young boys milling below us, ready to add their weight to those who struggled. I closed my eyes hoping to drown out the scene.
Something hit me in the chest. I opened my eyes as a tomato fell away, leaving its red seedy pulp behind on my shirt. The crowd began its taunting. I tried to shut them out. They were wrong, only they didn’t know it. I wondered if this might be how Christ had felt upon the tree—falsely accused yet going through with the deed anyway. My end would be quicker and less painful by far.
“Well, Mr. West, look what you’ve stumbled into,” Tom said next to me.
I turned my head. Tom grinned at me. Without his hat, his disheveled hair stood out in all directions. His pointed ears barely jutted through the tangles into the sunlight. I decided not to answer him.
He stifled a laugh. “Aren’t you afraid of dying, Mr. West?” He was badgering me, hoping to get a reaction.
I couldn’t help myself. “No, I’m not!” My voice had returned! I leered at him.
He smiled again, more brightly this time. “Got your tongue back did you?”
“You did something, didn’t you?”
He turned toward the crowd as the charges began to be read over us. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He didn’t even try to sound convincing.
My anger grew. I stammered for some better way to accuse him, but he cut me off, derailing my malice.
“Why aren’t you afraid to die?” he asked, curiously this time.
I stopped short and thought a moment. “Because my faith is in the Lord.” My confidence surged now. “No matter what has happened to me here, I know that upon my leaving I will go to be with my parents in Heaven. Why should I fear that?” I was surprised by my answer…not the facts, but the assurance in my voice.
Tom seemed to consider it briefly before answering.
“Don’t pack your bags just yet,” he said.
I was about to ask what he meant by that statement when I heard the bailiff stop reading and the crowd hush before us. The moment had arrived already while I wasted my last breaths bickering with Tom. The hooded man pulled the lever, the gear turned, the latch gave way and the floor fell away from beneath my feet. I dropped through, my eyes wide with horror. I felt the remaining slack in the rope pull tight on my skin. I looked down as events unfolded before me in slow motion.
Beneath my feet, the children swam like sharks waiting to grab my legs. Then they were gone—replaced by a blue sea. The taut rope allowed me to pass through. I fell much farther than it should have taken to reach the ground. Had I passed out? Had a mirage of safety taken my frenzied mind away from my body dangling at the end of a rope before Fleet Prison?
“Hold on, Brody!” Tom shouted gleefully.
I turned my head and found Tom falling beside me. I hit the water and swallowed a mouthful as I went under. This was no
dream. I fought the waves and struggled toward refracted light above me. I coughed up water as I breeched the surface. My hands were free of manacles now, so I paddled my arms and legs to remain afloat.
Tom came up beside me giggling.
“Woohoo!” He nudged me with a soggy elbow. “How did you like that? I told you not to pack your bags just yet.”
I gasped, looking toward the sky, searching for the hangman’s noose around my throat, the gallows, the hooded guards and jeering crowd, but found none of these things. All of it had fled away somehow. My lips trembled. I couldn’t believe what had just happened.
“Where are we?”
Tom’s giggling subsided as he turned in the water to face me. “Mr. West, welcome to Faerie.”
Faerie
Tom and I treaded water as my eyes searched all around us. There appeared to be no land in sight. The answer Tom had given me to my inquiry had not registered at all. I had never even heard of a place called Faerie. But even if I had, I still would not have believed we were there.
“What happened to London? Why aren’t we dead?”
I had a lot of questions and began rambling on without waiting for the answers.
Tom raised his hands out of the water. “Hold it, hold it.”
I tried to calm down and listen.
“Now,” he began, “You are technically still in London, but at the same time you are not.”
This answer only puzzled me further, though by Tom’s expression it seemed like the most logical explanation in all the world.
“The reason we are not dead is that I’ve brought you into my realm, my world where most mortals never venture.”
I tried to piece the puzzle together.
“This place is called Faerie?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Now the ears and eyes, more puzzle pieces, had something to fit together with. “So, you are not human like me?”
“Not exactly.” He tapped one of his pointed ears. “You see, most mortals never notice us. But you’ve got the sight—you’re special. That’s why I saved you. Mr. Sinister will want to meet you, Brody.”
“Who is Mr. Sinister?” I asked. “Someone like you?”
Tom smiled. “Oh, greater than me by far, but you’ll meet him soon. Now we must carry on.”
Tom made a gesture with his left hand to the air. I wondered why I should be able to see these things. My encounter with the angel two nights ago came to mind.
“What about your friend, Charlie, and that other boy?” I asked. “What happened to them?”
“They’re dead, of course.” Tom didn’t seem the least bit remorseful.
I thought of another question, but my mind lost it immediately when I saw thick bare tree branches piercing the surface of the water behind Tom. They looked like the grisly hands of some gigantic sea monster rising from the depths. I turned round and round in the water and saw them coming up on all sides.
Then the top of a building emerged. Water cascaded off of a queer looking clock tower. The oblong clock had at least five different hands all pointing different directions and moving independently of one another in a manner of timekeeping I could not fathom. Some of the bare branches suddenly bloomed with green leaves and pretty pink flowers. Others bloomed in similar fashion in every color I could imagine.
Ever more came up through the water: shrubbery and stone walls along with a few other small buildings. In the far distance I saw even more, but remained too far away to identify it all. Birds appeared from holes in the trunks of trees—birds I’d never laid eyes on before. Most took flight as the water cleared their homes, flapping two wings or four wings or whatever variety they happened to be. Streams of colored light trailed behind them as they criss-crossed the sky above.
My feet touched the ground, and I realized these things had not come up, but the water had gone down around us. Tom planted his feet just before I did and walked toward me, sloshing through chest-high water. As the water level slipped down further, it revealed an entirely different set of clothes on the boy. He appeared in finery greater than any I had seen in London. His hand shot up from the water carrying another fancy silk hat, only this one was spotless and of the finest quality.
Tom reached onto the surface of the falling water and peeled a portion of it up in the shape of an oval pane before me. The water cast a perfect reflection showing me a mirror image of myself in similar attire to what Tom was wearing. I looked down as the water revealed my person. Indeed, fine garments had replaced the filthy clothes I had been wearing before. What’s more, the clothes were as dry as a bone left in the sun. The water soon leeched away completely from everything around us as though it had never been there at all.
We were standing in the midst of a lush garden shadowed by tall multicolored trees, dense green shrubbery and a large fountain gushing rainbow colored water from a statue of a Pan flutist. The clock tower leaned at an odd angle, as though it had been poured from some weird mold rather than built straight up brick by brick. The entire landscape seemed queer to me though at the same time immensely beautiful—certainly better than the scenery we had left back in London on Fleet Street.
Tom started to walk down a cobblestone path through the trees. I stopped him with further questions.
“I still don’t understand all of this,” I said. “How were we able to escape the hanging like that?”
Tom rolled his eyes. “Honestly, Brody, do you have to understand everything? Can’t you just accept things as they are?”
His answer threw me off for a moment. Of course, I had been thrilled not to actually be hanged, but that feeling simply couldn’t answer my growing curiosity.
“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, Tom. I am very happy to be alive. But I can’t help wanting answers. After all, this is so unbelievable!”
Tom smiled at me, placing his hand on my shoulder. “I can’t give away secrets so easily, Brody. After all, you aren’t one of us. Sinister will tell you what you need to know. Maybe he’ll even take you in rather than killing you.”
A lump gathered in my throat. “He might kill me?”
Tom dismissed my anxiety. “Ah, I wouldn’t worry about that…I saved you from the rope didn’t I? That means you owe me a life. I wouldn’t let anything happen to you before you got the chance to repay my generosity.”
He started down the cobbled path again waving me to follow. I looked around me at the surreal scene: the awkward buildings, strange animals and the radiant foliage. I had no idea how I’d been brought here and certainly knew no way out except for Tom’s guidance. I didn’t know what might lie ahead, but one thing was certain. The nameless angel’s prophesy had been right so far. I hadn’t died like I had expected. So, I set one foot in front of the other and started after Tom.
We came upon a gate set in a stone wall that stood nearly ten feet high. Tom had to direct my attention as my eyes wandered over everything I could take in. If I had been asked to envision paradise, this may have come close. Still, a feeling nagged at my mind that all was not right. I couldn’t place my finger on it, though simply the fact I was walking in another dimension should have been enough to console me.
The gate stood taller than either of us, made of intricately crafted wrought iron with an Egyptian scarab placed at the top. I puzzled over the design as Tom stepped toward the latch. The gate somehow sensed us there and opened itself away from us. I looked at Tom for reassurance, even though it certainly wasn’t surprising to me. Oddities had become the norm since meeting this boy.
I followed Tom through the gate which shut behind us. On the other side, the tall stone wall stretched in either direction all the way to the horizon. I hadn’t remembered it appearing so from the other side, but dismissed it. The region beyond the wall resembled a barren wasteland.
Dry packed earth stretched out before us, dusted by minute pebbles. I turned in order to get a last look at the lush garden where we had come from, but the gate had disappeared, leaving only the
solid wall.
“What happened to the gate and the garden?” I asked. “Must we go this way? It’s so desolate.”
“Perhaps we’ll visit the garden another time…it’s mine you know. I designed it—a little getaway from the city when I feel like it. I always enter Faerie by my own door.”
“So it’s a door and not actually Faerie?”
He smiled. “Faerie can be many things—anything really. But don’t be deceived, Brody. It is always dangerous for those who don’t belong here.”
A distant rumble of thunder resounded. A dark thundercloud was approaching from the horizon. I felt the lump returning to my throat.
Tom stretched his right hand toward the storm cell in the distance. “What you’ve seen isn’t really Faerie at all. It’s a dark and glorious place.”
“Are there many of your kind there?” I asked.
“Fae, Brody—we are the Fae and there are many of us, though not as many as should be. Perhaps we shall take in a Faerie ball sometime. But for now, I’m taking you through several doors. Sinister is waiting, after all, and we mustn’t keep him impatient.” He waved his hand toward the horizon.
The storm cloud in the distance surrendered to Tom’s will and zoomed across the sky toward us. I noticed also that the ground rolled beneath my feet despite the fact that we were standing perfectly still. The entire scene raced past as the storm clouds rolled in above us and a mist flowed in over our feet.
Trees dashed toward us, as well, before Tom lowered his hand again, satisfied. As the scene slowed and stopped, we found ourselves standing inside an old forest. The trees groaned and swayed slightly as if restless. There was no wind whatsoever.
Tom began walking among them. I followed. White vapor boiled around my feet. A thick muscular arm knocked me to the ground. Tom went on the defensive as a gray streak shot toward him. Tom called to the forest for help. A thick bough swung down from a nearby tree and scooped up what appeared to be a man covered in gray mud. He howled out his indignation, but I couldn’t understand a word of his garbled language.
My heart pounded in my chest as Tom reached out his hand to help me up.