by Hal Duncan
One twerp makes some jibe at that, as none but Foxtrot would’ve got the gist of even, if that twerp hadn’t dropped a gyppo into the Gaelic of his snark.
– Ow! says he, sniggers cutting dead. Who kicked me?
As it happens, it were aktcherly Lily done it, cause she’d had such prejudice sneered at her plenty, thanks, yer pigskin twerps then as now suffering fuckincluectomies when it comes to actual discernment versus discrimination. But even if them scruffs had knowed who dropped em in it, sure as a scofflaw getting stroppy if yer bounces on their bed, they’d have slapped Lily on the back with a Good show! and Nice one! sure as fuck wouldn’t have huffed that it wasn’t them started it.
No, they was peachy with it being started for em. And happy to finish it.
• 6
They almost does finish it, and in five seconds flat, cause the flash in Flashjack ain’t just about his thumbfire trick. He’s got a quarter of them twerps decked with a whirl-whap!-twirl-thunk!-birl-bonk! while Foxtrot, Squirlet and Janie’s only on their first. Ain’t hard to see why yer Stamp’s scofflaw courier always has an hellion escort, and why Foxtrot picked Flashjack as hellion ace for this mission. Another five seconds and they would’ve finished it, no doubt, but then a voice thunders out to scrunch yer bollocks, even them as hasn’t any.
– STOP! THIS! AT! ONCE!
And blow me if them scruffs don’t stop dead with fists inches from fizzogs and knees a tick from knackers, even yer most unbossable Scruffian bosses. Bold black against the blizzard, blasting icier than the wind, that Lady Fay don’t half know how to make an entrance, and if Peter and Lily had knowed our scruffs proper, they’d have sworn her a witch now for sure.
– Boys, boys, boys, comes a voice behind her though – why, it’s the Reverend Blackstone arriving too, word having reached him of two strange waifs in Miss Eilidh’s tea room – this is hardly Christmas spirit!
Now them two marches in, with great tuttings – and noticeably frosty glances at each other – and at a quick signal from Foxtrot to play meek, pax is made, hands shook, bloody noses stuffed and, oh, that should proooobably get looked at. And it seems Lady Fay has her Bentley nearby, so it’s back to Dunstravaigin, where the Brawling Bastables might redeem themselves by helping her find her snuff tin which – and she says this most hinty indycatively – she must have misplaced. Which them scruffs’d find right sporting, as they’s bustled off, if they’d a scooby what she was on about.
– Oh, dear, whispers Peter outside. We’ve landed them right in the drink.
– They shan’t find it, frets Lily. Unless we fly back and hide it pronto!
But as Blackstone dispatches his twerps homeward to lick their wounds, as our two hovers over his head, they’s not the only ones watching them scruffs pile into Lady Fay’s car and scheming. For the Reverend rummages from his pocket an odd O-shaped stone that he peers through.
– Scruffians, he hisses. I knew it! Oh, I’ll have their Stamp, and then I’ll scrub those filthy scruffs. Or my name isn’t Ernst von Schwarzenstein.
• 7
– He must be a German spy! says Lily.
– And I doubt it’s a bath he means when he says scrub, says Peter.
Weaving the winds of the road, they glides behind Blackstone’s car, hand-in-hand so’s not to lose each other, that blizzard abated but them still being invisible. Peter feels awful for the fate of them Bastables, surely in the frame for their mischief. But this so-called Reverend’s clearly got dark designs to put bed-with-no-supper in the pale, so clearing the innocent must wait. Right now there’s the nefarious to be rumbled. Foiled even.
– I’ll bet that stamp’s some Penny Black with a secret message on it, says Lily. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if that Kit Bastable collects stamps – oh, and I bet their father sent it to him just before being captured, to keep it safe.
They floats slowly forward, making sure to linger far enough behind the Reverend, as he tramps through the snow, that it won’t be them getting rumbled. Out into the wilds he’s trekking.
– And he’ll have a radio out here or something, she says, to report back to the Fuhrer. I’ll bet you jam on Sundays!
But it ain’t no radio that ersatz reverend Ernst von Schwarzenstein is traipsing to, through the blanket of snow left by the storm. No, scamps, but rather, up on that island called Skye, up near Garrafad, there’s a little Loch of Enchantment, Loch Shianta they calls it, what’s said to heal yer if yer drinks from it and circles three times widdershins, but woe betides any as tries to fish in it. And it’s this yer occultist Nazi spy has as his destination, a right fishy customer with fishy business on his mind.
– Whatever is he up to? says Lily.
For it’s widdershins he’s circling, but walking backwards, incantating all the while’s he does it, that there Druid’s Glass held to one eye like our Foxtrot’s monocle. And don’t you imagine him incantating in Latin, scamps, like some Harry Potter Masturbatorius! bollocks or all that sadwanky Satanistic tosh going back to some misogynist cuntfucker in yer Middle Ages as had it in for midwives. No, it’s an older tongue he’s talking, summat Peter ain’t been schooled in. Tain’t the Gaelic neither, but an uglier guttural cant, rising to a bellow.
And in the loch’s dark waters, summat rising with it.
• 8
– I think we’d best scram, says Peter.
– Oh, don’t be such a wibbler, Peter, says Lily. We shan’t have another chance if we leave now.
– We mightn’t have any chance if we stay. I think he’s summoning a monster.
And he ain’t wrong, scamps, cause the magic in that loch come from a creature old as the tongue commanding it, and as Blackstone bellowed, the water rippled and bubbled and churned and roiled, and up from the depths it come, thrashing wild, sloughing and sloshing water from every surface, trickling and dribbling with it, till there it loomed. Indescribable.
Invisible.
Oh, they’d had a glimpse of the horror as was the Addanc – cause that’s what it were, an Addanc, though whether it were just an Addanc, whether it were one thing or many, neither Peter nor Lily could even begin to say. For all they’d seen, scamps, in that glimpse, were the mass of writhings and slother, flurryings and snicketings shaped by the water running off a thing no more visible than they was. Only one there as could see it proper were Blackstone, peering through his Druid’s Glass as he paces round it, roaring.
– Addanc! Obey me! Bring me –
But he halts, scamps. And Peter’s and Lily’s blood runs cold, cause in his circling of the loch, he’s on the far side of it now from them, and with his gaze being pointed at the Addanc, it’s pointed through and between its weaving squirmeries. And he’s raising a finger now – fuck! – pointed straight at them sleuths.
– Seize them! shouts Blackstone.
– He sees us! cries Peter.
But, no – Lily sneezes. And Peter he sees her! She’s visible, nabbable, golly gosh grabbable!
– LILY! he shouts as she whomps in the snow.
– Just go, she says. Go, Peter!
Oh, scamps... Oh no.
He flees, does Peter, rockets away in panic. He goes and leaves her.
Fucking chickenshit, eh?
But no, scamps. It ain’t as simple as some’d have it. It’s a twerp who hates boys being girly, and from that reckons Peter a cowardy custard. It’s a twerp who hates girls being boyish, and so reckons Lily an uppity bitch who should’ve scrammed on Peter’s word. Fuck that.
If yer don’t like it, leg it – first rule of Scruffian Club. But mind yer mate’s back, that’s first rule too, innit?
So when yer in a pinch, yer just takes the plunge, scamps.
• 9
So when Lily wakes with a shriek from a nightmare of cold, wet horrors latching limbs and clamping gob and smothering, engulfing – when she wakes thrashing and flapping to get it off, get it off, as she clicks that there ain’t nuffink to get off, and calms down enough to see she’s inside no
w, in a study, no less, first thing she thinks is to kick herself for getting scrobbled – and what of Peter? Oh, what if he scrobbled Peter too, and all because she wouldn’t scram? And fuck it whether she’s right or wrong. Try blaming the fucking scrobbler.
Cause there he’s sat, gluggling port from a decanter, smug in an armchair facing the one he’s plonked Lily in, a wee table betwixt em, and a desk at the window stacked and strewn with paper, bookcases all around.
– Back with us? says he. You had quite a turn, dear child. What magics have you been meddling in? One must be wary of the dark arts, child. Why, had I let you interrupt my exorcism, we might have had a catastrophe.
And oh, the gaslighting that cuntfucker starts on then, playing pious soldier in a war on ancient pagan evils.
He don’t know she’s got him down for Adolf’s arselicker, see. Thinks he can spin her a big fat porkie and fuddle her ickle noggin to help him in his mission. Such heathenry here, says he, like the Faerie Flag of the Clan MacGuffin, a lover’s gift from Titania, he sneers, waved to summon faerie armies, waved twice already, to be taken back the third time with the bearer to Faerie. A Banshee’s Blessing? A Devil’s Bargain, more like! Those faeries? Hellspawn!
Weaves in truth, he does, as the sneakiest porkies do, of his original mission: to snaffle that flag.
– But these Bastables, says he, the ones you... pinched a little magic soor ploom from, perhaps? Or half-inched a pinch of Satan’s sherbert, perchance? Far worse. You mustn’t trust them, dear child. Look to their chest, you’ll see their compact with Old Nick wrought there in black.
Strolled by the desk now in an idle sortie – every inch of instinct in her Scruffian, by fuck – Lily looks up innocently from a map of Skye with THE BRIDGE? written beside an X in red ink, at some place called Dun Scaith.
– They’re terribly... queer, she says.
– Queer, sniffs he. Precisely.
• 10
And what’s that mousey Peter up to, I hears yer ask, while’s Lily’s braving the lion’s den? While’s she’s working her mark – even taking stovies and hot cocoa what he rings a bell for his woman to whip up, cause though she don’t trust him, not one bit, she can’t let him know that – where’s that cowardy custard scarpered to? Why, he’s right outside the window, innit, having got himself safe and turned right round. He’s out there right now, cursing himself for a ninny and a sissy, and sworn that, by crikey, he’ll spring her first chance he gets.
He’s wishing she were sprung, natch. He ain’t no halfwit, savvies wishsnuff should solve this sneezey-peasy. But it ain’t bleeding working. Maybe’s it’s yer Law of Diminishing Returns with elevating sniffables, but maybe’s it’s more, cause when the bowl drops from Lily’s hand, her head plops sleepytime, and his frantic wishes does fuck all, well, first tick Blackstone’s out the room, Peter’s sliding the window up, launching in... finding himself faceplanted on the floor and all too visible.
– Ah, the other, says Blackstone at the door. As I was saying –
– I jolly well don’t care! snaps Peter. Nazi spy!
So, okay, maybe Peter’s not making the best snap decisions presently, blowing Lily’s charade of incogniscience to fuck here. But it’s him who suffers for it as Blackstone snarls:
– Addanc, take him.
And from nowhere Peter feels it, slithering up his legs, under shorts, under shirt, up his shivering back and clinging there, cold and wet. He reaches round to shove his hands down his collar, scrabbling to claw it off, but his nails just digs into his skin, scratches himself.
– Now, dear child, you will do what I command.
– I shan’t, cries Peter.
– You will. Bring me the Stamp.
– To Dunstravaigin, dear child, croons the unctuous cuntfucker. To your master’s bidding.
Then Peter feels the Addanc as skitterings along his sleeves and out the cuffs, as slitherings down his legs, as snakelets around em. Feels it puppet his arms to latch round Lily. He’s sobbing, helpless, a dolly in its clutches. And he’s out the window, in the air, lurching through it, hurtling, like this thing splotched on his back has splattericated out some great mass of monstrous limbs, to hoik itself up, a giant squiddish spidery fuckin nightmare critter, and skitteryslither off into the gloaming.
Off to Dunstravaigin.
Part Three
• 1
When Lily wakes from her second conking-out in one day – three if yer counts Squirlet spiking her – it’s to a blur and babble of, Oh my, laddie! Och, the poor lass! Och, whateffer will Herself say? then, To the bath with her! A warm bath and a posset! And let’s get some soup in you, laddie! and she’s bouncing away, then wibbly on her pins to get her togs off, then the luxury of it, scamps, the floaty, dreamy, splendiferous luxury of a piping hot bath and spicy hot milk (with rum!) to unbefuddle her till she’s herself again.
So presently then, she’s snug in nightie, dressing gown and slippers, peeping into the kitchen to find Peter scoffing down his third bowl of cullen skink, and a clean bowl waiting for herself, and Mrs Macleod with a ladle: In and sit ye down, lass.
As she tucks in, between slurpy gobblings to make Flashjack look refined, she whispers to Peter.
– However did we get back? How did you get me away from...?
Peter slooroops a spoonful of soup and dawdles ever so long over it, before finally gulping.
– The wishsnuff, of course. How else?
He coughs into his hand.
– But whatever did you tell Lady Fay?
– I told her we got a lift halfway to Portree on a tinker’s cart, but got caught in the snowstorm after, and ever so lost on the way back – oh, if only we’d just waited in that nice tea room. You ought to have heard me, Lily. I should lie for England in the Olympics!
– Oh, you’re such a fibber, Peter, but didn’t she find the magic snuff? Oh, do tell me she hasn’t punished the Bastables.
– She has, he laments, and it’s still in my pocket. I feel such a rotter.
As the cook pours em a hot toddy each before bed then – what them poor Bastables is already sent to – Lily fills Peter in on all Blackstone’s queer talk, and they debates in fierce whispers what’s they should do. Should they come clean about the snuff, and spill the beans on Blackstone’s schemes? Oh, but can they trust the witch? Can they trust the Bastables? What if it’s villains on all sides? Demons?
– Marked on the chest? says Peter. So it wasn’t a dream.
– And I didn’t dream that bollard thing either. Peter. That must be this Stamp he’s after.
• 2
Ain’t nothing decided then and there, cause both them tykes’ noggins is awhirl with possibiities. If it were just some Nazi spy after a list of British agents in a microdot on a Penny Black, they mightn’t have proof, but they should surely trust the authorities. But when their guardian and fellow charges might be in league with the Devil... The only thing for it’s to do some further investigatering, innit. Leastways, that’s the consensus they comes to in furtive conspirings in the hall before each slipping into their bedroom.
Lasts all of one sleepless hour for Lily, it does.
– Oh, I can’t keep quiet, says Lily after an endless hour of tossing and turning. I can’t and I shan’t! I won’t believe there’s even an ounce of truth in that Nazi’s rot.
And she sits bolt upright in bed, jumps out, and marches to flick the light switch on, to find Squirlet sat up and peering at her, one hand slipped casually under her pillow – and I’ll leave you to decide whether it’s a syringe or a shiv it’s resting on, scamps, or maybe’s resting between the two, ready to use either if need be.
– Spill, says Squirlet eventually.
So out it all comes then, how Peter and Lily knows there’s more to these Bastables, that they’re something called Scruffians, aren’t they, with strange marks on their chests, and this magical Stamp thing, and – no, they haven’t told anyone, why do you ask? – but anyway, there’s – is that a screw
driver? – a Nazi agent after them to steal it – yes, a Nazi agent! – and he’s a monster at his beck and call, and Lady Fay is a witch, they think, with magic snuff that lets you fly and grants you wishes, and whatever in the goshdarn blazes is going on?
Five minutes later, she’s peeping out the door of the girl’s bedroom at Squirlet rapataptapping on the door of the boys’. At Squirlet muttering under her breath as she does it again: rapataptap; rapataptap; rapataptap. Sorta like... Scruffians STAMP.
Eventually, the door opens and there’s a whingy mumbling from inside: mmfmmfuck is it?
– War meeting, says Squirlet. Bring the twerp.
– Stray. Foxy figgers he’s a stray.
– Just bring him. Five minutes.
– Are you having a pow wow? says Lily as Squirlet swooshes past.
Squirlet shakes her head, but it’s less of a no so much as a for fuck’s sake.
• 3
In the girls’ room, in a blanket fort lit by flames from Flashjack’s fingertips, them tykes’ jaws dropped in cross-pinned laps, Foxtrot savvies Peter and Lily of Scruffians. As he unbuttons his pyjama top to show em his soulscript, he savvies em how once far ago the groanhuffs made a magic doodad called the Stamp, what Fixes yer to stay the same forever, imperishable, ever springing back how yer was Fixed. He slices a shiv across his palm at that, lets em watch the wound heal before their very eyes. Slave labour, they was. Until they nicked that Stamp.
No groanhuffs mustn’t never get their grubby mitts on that Stamp never again, them two learns, least of all Nazis.
– Like yer bleeding Traitor Prince, says Flashjack. Fuckin sixfingers purple-pissy Saxe-Coburg knobs!