I blinked. “You had elves do your remodeling?”
“Can you think of a more practical way to fit an entire functional ecosystem in a single story of a New England colonial?”
“I really can’t.”
“The duck pond on the third floor is much deeper than the ceiling on the second,” he said. “They overlap without either losing any space. It’s a neat trick.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed that.”
“Well then. The Annwyn works in a similar way,” Jackaby said. “It’s here, all around us, but mere mortals like us can never pierce it. The Seelie Court has taken it upon themselves to maintain the barrier at all times. The portals are theirs alone to open.”
“What exactly are they protecting behind their barrier?” Finstern asked.
Jackaby came to a stop at last. We were looking at a great grassy mound in the earth. It was nothing more than a rather geometrical hill, as though an oversized globe had been half buried and then covered in sod. “Us,” Jackaby replied, setting down the satchel. “They’re protecting us.”
“How are they protecting us,” Charlie asked, “if they’re the ones who can come and go as they like and we’re the ones locked out?”
“Not every creature can come and go,” Jackaby answered. “The Seelie Court are peacekeepers by nature. The Unseelie Court are . . . not.” He glanced to Owen Finstern, who was circling the mound, transfixed. Lowering his voice, he added: “Your own ancestors, Mr. Barker, were born of a marriage between humans and Seelie fae. Werewolves, in contrast, were born of a marriage between humans and the Unseelie. That might be part of what makes you an exceptional officer of the law and what makes them monsters. It’s the nature of the beast.”
“So the barrier keeps all the bad creatures inside?” I said. “It doesn’t work very well then, does it? We’ve got redcaps and vampires and all sorts of things running around New Fiddleham.”
“The barrier is not perfect,” Jackaby said. “It is to be expected that a handful of creatures slip through each year. Too many recently, it’s true—but a fraction of those that lie beyond. It is the duty of the Seelie Court to seal the cracks as they occur. Think of that pond suspended above your bedroom on Augur Lane. Those creatures are like the tiniest drips beginning to form. They are nothing compared to the deluge that would await should the whole barrier ever collapse.”
“That doesn’t make me feel especially comfortable about our poking about here,” I said. “Or about my sleeping arrangements, for that matter.”
“I—I can feel it!” We all looked up. Finstern was nearly at the top of the mound when he flew back as though slapped by a giant invisible hand. He tumbled gracelessly, head over heels, until he landed, half-dazed, at the bottom of the hill.
“Mr. Finstern?” I rushed to his side.
“Observable phenomenon. Measurable reaction. Quantifiable.” The inventor sat up, swaying slightly. He was smiling madly. “It’s real.”
My employer clambered up the mound. It was not overly large—ten, perhaps fifteen, feet from its base to its highest point. He stood where Finstern had been and felt the air all around him.
Nothing happened.
“I can’t feel it. I still don’t see anything.” He looked down at the inventor with a critical eye. “Your father,” he said. “What did your mother call him again?”
“Her magic man.” Finstern sneered. “You can’t feel it? It’s in the air. I can feel it from here. It’s humming like a generator.”
Jackaby slid back down the mound. “No,” he said. “I don’t feel it. This mound is both a door and a lock, but neither one is meant for me. You, on the other hand . . . Whoever your father was, Mr. Finstern, I do believe the barrier exists to thwart his kith and kin.”
Finstern pushed himself to his feet. “You’re saying my father was part of your Unseelie Court?”
“I’m sorry,” Jackaby said. “He may have been your mother’s magic man after all; just not necessarily a good one.”
“Good. Bad. Subjective,” said Finstern coldly. “He made a bastard of me and left my mother ruined. You don’t need to apologize to me for calling him a monster. How do we get inside?”
Jackaby nodded thoughtfully. “I wonder,” he said. “Charlie, do you feel anything?”
Charlie stepped forward. “I don’t know what I should be feeling, sir.”
“Why don’t you give it a try? Just there.”
Charlie pulled himself up the grassy slope, reaching out in front of him as he climbed. Finstern’s eyes narrowed as he watched. “I don’t feel anything,” Charlie said. “The Om Caini have always been neutral, sir. I’m sorry, but I don’t think—” Charlie’s outstretched hand suddenly vanished up to the elbow. He pulled it back abruptly. “Mr. Jackaby?”
We climbed up the mound behind him. Charlie reached forward again, and the air rippled like a mirage around his hand, swallowing it up to the wrist.
“There.” Jackaby said. “Try to open it.”
“Are we sure that’s advisable?” asked Charlie.
“Nothing about my line of work is advisable,” said Jackaby. “There are questions I need answered, and the people to answer them cannot be reached through standard channels.”
“I don’t know how,” Charlie said. “I have no idea what I’m doing, sir.”
“Please, Mr. Barker. Try.”
Charlie took a deep breath and closed his eyes. For several seconds nothing happened, and then the hole in midair grew larger. It pulsed, stretching wider inch by inch. A wave of warm air washed over the mound, dancing through the tall grasses. It smelled sweet, like burnt sugar. Charlie’s hand was suddenly lit from behind with sparkling sapphire and emerald light, and for a moment I feared we had opened a hole under some great magical lake, but then my eyes adjusted and I realized I was looking into a thick, vibrant wood.
“I really don’t think I can—” Charlie opened his eyes and staggered back. Jackaby caught him before he tumbled down the hill. The portal was an archway now, rounded smoothly at the top and as tall as a church door. I stepped around it. From behind it was nothing at all. I saw only the dumbfounded faces of my companions gazing into thin air. I came back around to the front.
Finstern, in spite of the jolt it had given him earlier, was the first to step through the door. “Wait!” Jackaby called after him, but the inventor went on ahead, peering to the left and right.
“Charlie,” Jackaby said, “I need you to stay here.”
“Not a chance,” Charlie replied. “You have no idea what you’re walking into.”
“What I know is that I’d like to walk out of it again. Do you know what heroes who enter the Annwyn are most known for?”
Charlie shook his head.
“Staying there,” said Jackaby. “Whether they wanted to or not. Neither Miss Rook nor I can open this portal, Mr. Barker, and there’s no telling if even you will be able to reopen it from the other side after it closes. I need you to maintain the doorway for all of us. You’re the only one who can.”
Charlie’s eyes hunted for any alternative, but they found none. He turned to me, instead. “You know it isn’t safe,” he said. “You don’t have to go.”
I leaned forward on my toes and kissed his cheek. “We’ll be back before you know it. I promise.”
Jackaby stepped through the opening. “One more thing, Mr. Barker,” he called back. “Try not to let anything out.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Annwyn was vivid. I don’t mean my experience of it—but the actual colors of the realm. The woods were strangely deep and intense, as though the whole forest had been painted by artists who refused to temper their vibrant hues. I spun around, taking it in. The leaves might as well have been cut from actual emeralds. Purple buds on the nearby bushes were so brilliant they almost seemed to glow, and even the sky above us was less of a robin’s egg blue and closer to that of a ripe blueberry, although I could see only a few glimpses of it through the foliage.
The
light filtering through the branches danced across my skin in patches of turquoise, flickering suddenly with the flap of wings high above us. All around, the chirps and squawks and constant rustle of wildlife layered into a steady, droning hum. If we had come looking for the land of the dead, it seemed as though we had taken a wrong turn. I had never been anywhere that felt so alive.
Finstern had already wound out of sight, and I hastened to keep up with Jackaby as we hurried after him. The forest was dense with ferns and ivy and all manner of brush, but there was a trail of sorts, where the plant life had been beaten back over time. I read a book once about an explorer in the islands who followed just such a path right into a den of angry wild boars. The only defense at my disposal was my employer’s slim, ivory-handled silver knife, which was tucked in the pocket of my skirt, its sheath slapping lightly against my leg as I ran. The weight of it was a faint comfort, although it began to feel more and more like a letter opener and less and less like a real weapon the longer I thought about the sharp tusks and gnashing teeth that might lie ahead.
Here and there massive red stones littered the landscape. Some of them stood twenty feet tall, tilted upright like great crimson monoliths. As we passed by one of these, a glimmer of something white as snow just behind it drew my attention. I looked again, but there was nothing beyond the stone but the darkness of the forest. Another hint of white danced in my peripheral vision, but vanished the moment I turned my head. I shook my head. The forest was playing tricks on my eyes.
Gradually the trees thinned and the ground grew thick with a tapestry of roots. Braids of living wood wove like heavy ropes in and out in inscrutable almost-patterns, overlapping and widening until each was so thick my fingertips could not have touched had I encircled one with both arms. At the center of it all was the largest living thing I have ever seen.
The roots spun around and around each other, coiling upwards until they melted into one trunk. It was a yew, though no ordinary tree had ever grown so massive. Its bark was a rich, raw umber, and the base of it was wider than a city block. Its branches stretched forever, until they seemed to fade away into the deep blue sky.
“They’re like conduits,” said Finstern from directly behind us, his Welsh accent colored with unmasked awe. “A battery of living cables. The earth as a single power cell. Genius, really. The principal is so simple. Can you not feel the energy field, Detective?”
Finstern climbed forward, stroking the bulging red-brown roots like a stable master might pet a prize stallion. Jackaby did not respond right away, but I had to admit there was an intangible energy about the place that sent prickling goose pimples up my arms like static electricity.
“There.” Jackaby pointed toward the base of the impossible tree. A hundred meters off, nearly enveloped by the roots, two of the mighty red stones we had seen along the way stood like roman columns on either side of a deep knothole in the trunk. “That’s where we’re headed.”
We clambered over the curling, weaving landscape. Jackaby was struggling over a root nearly as tall as he was when I caught sight of a patch of milk-white fur near the edge of the surrounding forest. It vanished again the instant I locked eyes on it, but I was certain I had seen it this time, a solitary shock of pure white in an oversaturated canvas of colors.
It occurred to me that spotting wildlife in a forest was not so peculiar. What was peculiar was not spotting any. The clamorous buzz of animal life had gradually died away as we neared the tree. Aside from that skittish beast, the fauna seemed to have given this tree a wide berth.
I was peering into the shadows in the underbrush and not watching my footing when my next step abruptly landed on nothing at all. I half dropped, half slid almost straight down, landing on my backside in a deep valley in the roots. The gap appeared to be natural, the coils of the yew simply having grown around the space, rather than showing any signs of having been cut or trampled. It formed a clear, straight path of dry earth, leading directly toward the crimson pillars.
Jackaby and Finstern joined me with slightly more finesse, and together we walked the last few yards toward the red pillars at the base of the tree. It was difficult to tell just how deep the knothole between them went. The wood formed a slit about three feet across at its widest and nearly as tall as myself. If it weren’t for the red rocks on either side, my eyes might have dismissed the opening entirely as just another dark shadow in the unfathomable mess of intertwining roots.
“Watch your step,” said a deep, dry voice.
I froze. Jackaby and Finstern drew up on either side of me. A little trickle of water snaked along the path, disappearing into the shadows at the base of the tree. I squinted.
There, amid the sprawling roots, sat a man. He wore ragged, red-brown robes and was leaning on his elbow; his back was hunched over the little flowing stream. We stepped forward cautiously, careful to skirt the trickle as we neared. The man was gaunt and almost as pale as Pavel. He held a bright green leaf in his slender fingers, lifting it over and across the water. His fingertips never quite reached past the edge of the shadow, but the sun shone bright on the very tip of the leaf. He touched it to the earth for a moment, and then brought it back, lowering it to the ground again on the shady side. He repeated the motion rhythmically.
As we closed the gap, I could finally make out a long line of ants leading up to the rivulet. With each pass, the thin man scooped up one or two ants and helped them over the trickle to the shaded side of the water, where an identical line was already marching steadily into the darkness of the tree.
“Why are you doing that?” Finstern asked.
“Because,” said the man, his voice deep and rough, like the grating of heavy stones, “it gives me purpose.” He pushed himself up with great effort and stood. He was bone thin, with eyes shrouded in black shadows that only added to his skeletal countenance.
“Charon, I presume?” Jackaby stepped forward. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
“Not especially,” replied the man. “Everyone does. Eventually.”
“Yes, well,” Jackaby said. “Expected or not, it’s still a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for most of us, isn’t it?”
“The end of it,” the man agreed.
“With just a few exceptions, of course. I imagine it’s been a long time since anyone chartered a round trip, though. Who was the last mortal you met who hadn’t shuffled off the old mortal coil? Herakles, Orpheus, Persephone?”
“Jack.”
“Ah. Also good. I expect you’ve met a few of those, haven’t you?”
“There are rules.”
“Rules?”
“The four of you seek passage. There are rules.”
“Three of us, Mr. Charon, sir,” I said, instantly wishing I hadn’t spoken. “Sorry—Charlie stayed behind.”
“Four,” repeated Charon. He looked at Jackaby meaningfully. “The bag.”
“What?” Jackaby stumbled for a moment, but then caught on. “Oh!” He retrieved Jenny’s brick. “Oh, this? I’m afraid we had a bit of a rough situation earlier. I don’t think Miss Cavanaugh will be joining—”
“She is here.”
As he said it, the roots around the gap seemed to quiver in the same way the pipes on Jackaby’s boiler rumbled when it was bubbling to life on a cold morning. In a blink, Jenny was suddenly standing beside Jackaby. She gasped, looking as surprised as the rest of us.
“Jenny!” I said. “Are you all right?”
“Where on earth . . . ?”
“No,” Charon answered her flatly. Finstern gaped and stared at the ghost, peering at her this way and that as a jeweler might a rare diamond. She was still translucent, the faintest outlines of the roots beyond her visible through her silvery features, but she looked more whole than I had ever seen her. Charon’s haggard head cocked to one side. “What else is in the bag?”
Jackaby’s eyes darted to Finstern and back to the robed figure. “Odds and ends,” he hedged. “Some odder than others.”
“
It is a wrong thing.”
“Which is why I’m keeping it out of the wrong hands.”
Finstern, whose mouth had been open since Jenny’s arrival, finally made use of it. “Wait. My machine? You have it?”
Jackaby frowned and sighed. “Yes. And my abode has suffered greatly for its safekeeping.”
Finstern eyed the satchel suspiciously. “It can’t be. Your bag is much too small.”
“You said you studied Welsh folklore. Ever heard of Rhiannon? You see, she had a sack—”
“Gentlemen,” I interrupted. “I believe we’re getting a bit off topic, don’t you? You have very nice toys, both of you, but we are at the gates to the great abyss right now.” I turned toward Charon. “Or knobby wooden hole to the great abyss. You were saying something about rules?”
“No second chances,” he said. “That is the first rule. You may ask for time, you may ask for favors, you may ask for mercy—but you are given what you are given. Make the most of it. It is all you will get.”
“Understood,” said Jackaby.
“Nobody enters the gate. This is the second rule.”
“You might have opened with that one,” Jackaby said. “Why have a gate at all, then?”
“Doesn’t everybody enter?” I asked. “Like you said, eventually?”
“No. Everyone enters. Every soul, but no body. If you enter, you must leave your flesh behind you.”
“Well then,” said Jenny. “For once I think I’ve got a leg up on the rest of you.”
“You may enter if you wish, Jennifer Cavanaugh,” Charon’s voice rumbled. “But if you do, you may never return to the land of the living. You belong below. You are a soul without a shell. Heed the first rule. This is your chance, your reprieve. You will not be given another.”
“It’s fine,” said Jackaby. “You stay topside. I’ll bring the answers back to you.”
“Only mortals may pass. This is the third rule.”
“Yes, that’s all right. I am mortal,” said Jackaby.
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