by Hal Duncan
– Wherever has Miss Jessel gone?
• 8
Now Lily’s made of sterner stuff, takes after her soldier Papa, so it’s a bristly British harrumph! she gives when it turns out all the clipboard precision of yer evacuation operation at one end ain’t been followed through in arranging actual homes for em at the other. It’s a Well, I never! she mulligrumphs when the six kids is led into a town hall barely more’n a big wooden hut and lined up on a stage for groanhuffs to hem and haw over, gibbering in that inscrutable lilty singsong they calls the Gaelic. She’s near boiling point, volcanic eruption, when –
CRACKOOM! The door of the hut’s whipped smack into the wooden wall by a rising wind what whistles in now around the dark shape striding a grand entrance, all black furs and crow-feather boa, bobbed hair and cigarette holder. Scarlet liptick and emerald eyes. Leather driving gloves peeled off as she sweeps down the line: this way; whirl; that way; twirl. Why, it’s Clan Chief Lady Morag Anne Fay MacGuffin, scamps, of Dunstravaigin Castle.
– I’ll take that laddie! she says in lilty English. That lass! And those two! Och, all of them, blast it! I’ll take all of them!
Well now, Lily looks to them other nippers, wide-eyed and gawping, cause she ain’t sure if she’s terrified of some wicked witch or enraptured by an idol of indomitable spirit, but all em others has multiplicitous looks: Peter petrified; Kit intrigued; Sylvia appreciative; Jack grinning blithely; Janie... well, invisible beneath that hair. And whichever way her own awe ought to fall, ain’t nuffink to be done but go with the flow, which is a huchling out the door, lumbersome with baggage – come now, chop chop! – to the beautiful sleek black panther of a 1939 Bentley parked waiting for them.
– Och, ye’ve a sair stretch to see ye haim, Lady Fay, says the beardy Highlander what helps them stow some luggage in the boot, piles the rest atop the squeeze of em in each other’s laps inside.
– Poppycock, Hector! says Lady Fay. We’ll be home for supper. Modernity! Age of the automotive! We’ll fly, mon, fly!
And fly they do, scamps. With a pinch of snuff from a little tin box and an Onward, ho! they’s roaring off into the night, bounced this way and that by such twisty turns but so smooth the supension, they might almost be flying.
• 9
Well, that weaving as swayed em squidgy over each other leftward and rightwise must’ve been as a cradle’s rocking, and the flashing flicker of headlights catching the twigs of barren tree branches whizzing by must’ve been veritably hypnotic, and the blankety ensconcing of thick mist and snug warmth inside the car must’ve been ever so cosying, cause it could only be that at some point in their hurtling along the unlit roads, each of them nippers nodded off. It could only be that. Cause suddenly they’s all ablinky, juddering at a bump and braking.
– Home at last! says Lady Fay.
And it’s in they go, with baggage seeming made of lead now, so weary they all is at the end of that interminable journey. In they go, to a castle what’s just a looming blackness in yer Stygian mist outside, but oh, which is as couthy as it’s grand inside, with darkwood stairs so broad they can all walk up in a row, and – oooooh! – nosey down on em from the balcony around, before being huchled along up more steps, and another flight, and along a corridor, to finally unlumber in one room for the boys, one for the girls.
There’s a dining room after that, a feast of venison stew they ravishes, Lily scarce noticing Jack Bastable’s unseemly table manners. There’s a drawing room with a grand piano and sofas, where’s Lady Fay has em interduce emselves while sipping their choice of Horlicks, Ovaltine or Bovril. But she’s gladdest, Lily is, of that bedroom, when they’s back there, with hot water bottles for the beds, so blissfully unwindy as she unpacks her togs into her drawers, she scarce notices Janie clambering a dresser to pop a matchbox open, let a spider tippytoe out into a corner of the ceiling.
Peter weren’t half so blithe, meanwhile, in the boy’s room, as he folded his tanktop, placed it daintily upon a chair. Undid his schooltie. And dawdled at unbuttoning his shirt. He were a shy lad, and hated getting changed afore others, didn’t know where to look, and oh, what if someone saw him looking? He were in a right fret already, then, at that sleek Jack Bastable gaily stripping to bare bum, when that... somewhat forgetful scallywag turns to grab his flannel jammie bottoms for stepping into, giving a flagrant display of...
– Stamp, coughs Kit Bastable.
And rolls his peepers.
• 10
Poor Peter didn’t hardly have time though to make sense of glimpsing that black hatchwork of squigglydoodly soulscript on the chest of a scallywag who were of course, in fact, none other than our very own sparkthumbed hellion Flashjack Scarlequin, scamps! No, he’d toot sweet one scamp in a fake ’tache – and monocle now, and a dressing gown as might pass for smoking jacket – taking him by the arm with a Nothing to be alarmed about, old boy.
And Peter feels just ever so slight a prick in his thigh, and then suddenly very tired... woozy even. But merrily so.
– Morphine, says a scrag called Squirlet Nicely, just a little later in the girl’s room, scowling at Janiemalinky Longpins, the Stamp’s fresh-Fixed scofflaw courier. At the tyke now out cold on the rug. At the suitcase Janey slid out from beneath the bed so’s Squirlet could find a proper hidey for their precious charge. The Stamp beside it, cause Janie only gone and dropped the case, didn’t she, with an almighty thump. So when they flicks on a light to see what’s what, there’s Lily stood blinking, all, Whatever is that?
Cause, yeah, it’s Foxtrot and Squirlet, scamps! Duh!
Cause though Foxtrot Wainscot Hottentot III were the savviest scamp ever Fixed, and though Squirlet Nicely had such Mad Skillz at hiding things she run the Opium Trade for centuries, it weren’t till they put their heads together, it sparked as how the Land of Somewhere Safe might not be so unreachable as a dreamland of legend oughta. Put two and two together they had, and circled on a map, before all em crib bosses, the queerest mix up of highlands and islands and skylands. An island called Skye? That’s like a mountain called Ocean, a sea called Desert. Bonkers!
It were a doolally eedjitry, them other bosses says, that just cause they’d banged to rights this pair of ducks – as yer calls such muddled-up illogicality – that just cause an island called Skye were absurd, they should fancy it a gateway to yer topsy-turvy Cuckooine of whimsy aplenty. But Foxtrot, he’d done his homework, scamps, and why, ain’t there a groanhuff tale? Not a fabble, true, but with yer Nazis blitzing London, with invasion coming... a shot worth taking, for the safety of the Stamp.
A tale of a Faerie Bridge, no less, a bridge to Somewhere Safe.
Part Two
• 1
It were a misty ochenin on the island of Skye, scamps – yer ochenin being to the dawn as yer gloaming is to dusk, that half-lit time when the sun ain’t in the sky no more or yet, but it ain’t proper dark yet or no more. A misty ochenin on the 19th of December, only two days to the Winter Solstice, as a boxy black and red van of the Royal Mail rattled along a road a little north of Portree, and parked at a lane for the postie to pop out, pop a letter through the manse’s door.
Inside, the Reverend Earnest Blackstone, in his study, heard his letterbox clatter and looked up from the manuscript he’d just set down to work on. A pious Christian allegory his story were, of a magic land where’s God were an eagle, where’s yer could only enter if yer soul was white, yer blood pure of all corruption. Except Evil had infiltrated, innit, through that slattern Eve’s temptation; why, the Father’s Land were overrun by swarthy hook-nosed goblins and whatnot, so his heroes had to take the throne.
It’d go down a storm with his Christian Cadets, he was sure.
He looked up, and stood up, and merrily whistled a jaunty air from his rambler youth as he strolled his way to the front door to collect this letter – what sparked a peer at some specifical nuances to the crossings of the t’s in his name, a recognition, such that back at his study desk, with the missive un
enveloped, unfolded and flattened on his blotter, why, from a drawer now, he brings out the strangest stone, like a flattened doughnut. And he peers through the hole of this Druid’s Glass, as they calls it here, to read the true message.
And he stands up again, scamps, does Herr Ernst von Schwarzenstein. Cause just as that letter had a true message yer might only see by a peep through a Druid’s Glass, if yer was to peek back at him from t’other side, yer’d see he’d a true name, secret agent of the Abwehr that he were, and not just a German spy but one of Himmler’s Ahnenerbe, on a mission not just covert but occult. And on a new mission now, scamps. Cause in the magical invisible ink he’d read were the message... that the Stamp had come to Skye.
• 2
Where exactly that Stamp might be’s another matter though, innit. Cause as Lily wakes blearily a bit later, ain’t no more sign of that odd stony cylinder than of Squirlet and Janie. Mark my words, it’s stashed away somewhere’s sneaky as fuck, scamps. But she’s such a confuddled memory of last night, Lily’s sure she must’ve dreamt that anyways, so she just slips from bed and swooshes curtains open to gaze out over the Bentley parked below... on a bridge’s battlemented pier, scamps, the driveway reaching over a dried-up grassy moat, and out through woods, toward a glorious dawn.
– Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning, singsongs the plump cook what’s dishing out Peter’s breakfast kippers, in the kitchen Lily finds her way to by the scrumptious aroma. It seems them Bastables has gone off exploring, eh, and the cook woeful of the consequences, for all’s it shows them no lazyboneses. Peter rubs his eyes.
– Aren’t those Bastables a jolly queer bunch though, says he.
– I should say so, agrees Lily. I’d the queerest dream that quiet one had a bollard in her suitcase.
– I’d a funny dream too... But they’ve the right idea in exploring, what?
– I’ll say!
Soon as breakie’s scarfed then, well, it’s off for a nosey round the castle for Peter and Lily too. Down corridors and upstairs and into rooms, they goes, gawping at all the oil paintings, chandeliers and such. And there’s oubliettes and towers and everything. But the temptation as makes Lily’s nose twitch proper is when she spots in the drawing room... why, it’s Lady Fay’s snuff tin. And, see, Lily fancies it fun to try a little.
– But you oughtn’t steal! says Peter.
– If we’re going to have our pockets picked, says Lily, I jolly well don’t see why not!
Well now, scamps, there’s things yer sniffs as makes yer fly metaphorickly speaking. There’s black inkies and Tippex, nail varnish and poppers, speed and coke – all sorts! But see, wishsnuff does it literal like. And what Lily didn’t know as she opened that tin to pinch just a peck of it – just to play, like, in a make-believe as she was the dauntless doyen Her Nibs herself... what she didn’t know was that this were no ordinary snuff, not by half. So it were quite a surprise when she sneezes – atchoo! – and finds herself three feet off the ground.
• 3
– Do you think Lady Fay’s... a witch? says Peter as them two skims the hills east of Dunstravaigin, having took off from the battlements an hour ago, bundled up in greatcoats, scarfs and mittens, having rocketed to a nearby white-capped knoll, swooped to scoop handfuls of powdery crunch, having had a ripping aerial snowball fight, relaxing now.
– Beats me, says Lily. I – look!
Down below, where three roads join, ooh, it’s the Bastables.
– Quick! Higher or they’ll see us! says Peter.
And up they goes, so high even as Janie does look up, all she sees is... whassat?... hawks?
– Oughtn’t we go back? says Lily. It’s getting awful grey.
And that it is, scamps; yer sky above’s right dark now, but Peter’s so enjoying it, oh, to fly like a bird, and they’ve almost crossed the island, and why, look, there’s some soldiers out for an exercise – Polish by the uniforms, Lily reckons, except those who’re Home Guard. Getting a right roasting from their captain too, they are, the two she points out.
– I do wish we could hear what they were say-aaaaaah-atchoo!
And by fuck, scamps, suddenly he can, every bleeding word, clear as a bell.
To be sure, he don’t aktcherly get much benefit in hearing that bespectacled private and his portly mate apologising to their captain, partly cause one downside of wishsnuff granting such gifts is the depletionary effect on flight, making for a right distracting brown trouser moment as Peter drops fifty feet, and partly cause he’s come in at the end of Sir Godfrey’s bollocking Goggles and Tubbs for repeating rumours – rumours – that the old WW1 internment camp on Raasay is now in use for nabbed Nazi spies.
No, he misses the fortuitous expositional happenstance what might well be relevant laters, scamps.
But it don’t really matter anyways, not to Peter, if all he catches is a snatch of summat about Germans on some other island, not half an hour later, when the snowstorm as was threatening before is now full blizzarding and them utterly and hopelessly lost in it, battered by the winds.
– Hold hands, Lily cries, or we shall lose even each other!
But Peter he has a bright idea.
– I do wish I knew where we were, says he.
And with an almighty AAAAAAAAATCHOO! he plummets like a stone, Lily dragged down with him, SPLOSH! into an icy loch.
• 4
It’s a pair of chittery-gnashered shivering tykes, sodden as the snuff in a tin not quite airtight, who enters, with a tinkle of bell, a bitter windblast, and a billow of snow around em, the couthy wee tea room in Portree, to no small hullaballoo from three old biddies in a corner and the buxom lassie serving. There’s many an ochone! and babbling in the Gaelic, even some in English, but them tykes can’t be understood at all through their clattery stammers. So they’s just huchled through to the kitchen stove, half-stripped and blanketed and plonked to thaw.
In a bit, they’s warmed enough to whisper panicky between em, cause the lassie’s been telephoning round to find who these waifs belongs to, and however shall they explain to Lady Fay? And they don’t want to lie, Miss Eilidh here’s been so nice to em, but they’s just dreaming of Dunstravaigin, hot Ovaltine – and lunch.
Oh, half the counter through front is a glass case full of jam tarts and tablet and tiffin and turkish delight... but they haven’t any money.
– Perhaps if we ask very nicely, whispers Lily.
– I couldn’t, says Peter. I couldn’t ever be a scrounger.
Just then, scamps, there’s a tinkle of bell, an icy howl, and who should enter but the Bastables – the scruffs! – the two youngest in front, the elders toddling behind.
– Well, that was a washout, Squirlet’s saying.
– Hmmm, nods Foxtrot.
– Faerie Bridge, my arse, says Flashjack. It were a bleeding junction in the middle of fucking nowhere.
– Squirlet, you’re sure...? says Foxtrot.
– If you know where to hide things, says she, you know where they’re hidden.
– Still, says Flashjack. At least we ain’t likely to get invaded by Nazis up here.
– Don’t jinx it, Flashjack, says Squirlet and Foxtrot whirling together.
Sat through back, amid togs asteam on a clotheshorse by the big iron range, snuff tin sneakily atop it, peeping through the kitchen door and cake cabinet, Peter and Lily ain’t too conspickyerous, but still they ducks down, not sure why but showing good waif instincts when shit gets weird, eh, to keep yer head down till yer knows what’s what. They did both have... weird dreams of em Bastables last night, mind. It’s weirder still when the icklest Bastable walks right up to Miss Eilidh to order four teas, please, in fluent Gaelic. Even Squirlet’s taken aback by that.
• 5
But Foxtrot himself’s finding his curiosity... quite piqued, for with his interductions of the Bastable clan to Miss Eilidh, and his explifications of their evacuation, it soon comes out there’s two bedraggled wretches in back as must be Lady F
ay’s other two charges. And Foxy can’t figger how’s they got here without passing his team on the road. So he’s angling his frown at the kitchen door – was that a sneeze he heard? – but if anyone’s back there, they’s hid as sneaky as if Squirlet done it.
He don’t like it, this new variable to be factored into Operation Faraway.
If he’d harked more’n just peeked, scamps – and let that be a lesson to yer – if he’d targeted his lugs as keen as his peepers, he might have picked up not just one smothered sneeze but two, and some hurried whisperings afore em – I so wish we were invisible! and, I do wish our clothes were dry already! And he might have heard an excited gasp afters, a hushing, rustlings, and maybe’s soon a creak of floorboards, tippytoe footsteps going squeak by squeak by squeak toward the door.
The mousiest whisper, cupped lips to an ear: the bell.
But no.
That bell thwarting Lily and Peter’s scarpering rings anyways just then though, a dozen twerps piling in boisterous, rifles over shoulders, side caps on noggins – a squad of Christian Cadets. As clocks our scruffs. And decides they’s collecting money for the Poor Box, cough up.
– Bad idea, growls Squirlet.
– Impoverished orphan, mate, breezes Flashjack. Ain’t got a tosser to me kick.