The Rookery

by Deborah Hewitt

  Alice put her head down and hurried across the road, turning into a narrow side street of more upmarket shops. She passed the darkened windows of E. M. Saphier: Shoemaker, The Belladonna Bookshop and Dashwood’s Fireplaces, splashed with a sign saying, Coal too messy? Firewood too smoky? Electricity too expensive? Heat your home with our no-fuel fireplaces! Finest House Ilmarinen Craftsmanship – prices starting at only fifty sovereigns! The last on the row was Barrett’s Musical Instruments, trying to entice customers with a sandwich board chained up outside, offering Self-playing instruments for the busy musician. Something to suit every magical legacy – clarinets, guitars, ocarinas and rainmakers – just ask!

  ‘Alice, wait!’ shouted August from behind. ‘For God’s sake, I’m a smoker. I don’t have the lung capacity for a city-wide chase.’

  She turned another corner and found herself standing in front of Mowbray’s Perfumery, the moonlight glancing off rows of glass bottles in the window. A sign stretched above them announced a discount on Mowbray’s famous poppy and lavender water for members of House Mielikki. Typical. Even the shops showed favouritism here.

  Alice sighed and rested her back against the window, her coat clutched in her arms. She’d grown to love this strange city, despite its foibles and its nepotism. The Rookery had been built as a sanctuary for the Väki, a magical race of people who had been fleeing the persecution they’d suffered in their native Finnish homeland during the Crusades. Their descendants had claimed this space for themselves and founded a city on it. For hundreds of years, as the city had grown, they had modelled its architecture on London, right up until the 1930s. Buildings demolished in London lived on in the Rookery. Newgate Prison, Christchurch Greyfriars, Baynard’s Castle . . . The Rookery housed the brick-and-mortar ghosts of London’s past.

  Alice arched her neck to peer again at the perfumery’s sign – 10% reduction for House Mielikki! – and shook her head. The original four Finnish master builders who had created the Rookery were called Ilmarinen, Pellervoinen, Ahti and, of course, Mielikki. Each had an affinity for certain forms of magic and had formed their own Houses for those who shared their legacies. Those skilled with water were typically members of House Ahti. Pellervoinen welcomed the architects, the wielders of stone and brick and the talented travellers of the doorways. Ilmarinen was for the metalworkers and fire-wielders, and House Mielikki took those skilled with flora and fauna.

  The reason Mowbray’s poppy and lavender water was so famous was because they’d used the magic of their House to enhance it. The scent was said to be so blissfully relaxing the Runners had tested it to ensure it wasn’t illegal opium. Far from dampening Mowbray’s sales, they’d subsequently rocketed.

  ‘What did Mawkin say?’ puffed August, finally catching her up.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, pushing off from the shop window. Her balance swayed for a moment and her fingers tightened on the coat for support. ‘Mawkin can’t help,’ she continued, starting off down the road. ‘Tonight was a waste of time.’

  He raced ahead of her and spun round, blocking her path.

  ‘Alice, this stuff about your dad – look, your DNA is the least important part of you,’ he said, putting his hands on her shoulders. ‘Whatever demons you’re wrestling, you—’

  ‘I am the demon,’ she said with a dark laugh. She shrugged him off and stumbled away, feeling off-kilter. It was no use August counselling her; he didn’t know that her father’s genes were actually poisoning her – no one did. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him, because telling him meant telling Crowley. Crowley had sacrificed his sister for Alice – and for what? Alice was dying anyway.

  ‘If you keep racing away, eventually I’m going to stop chasing you,’ August called after her.

  She ignored him and turned the corner into a residential street. Sandwiched between two houses was a tiny tobacconist’s with a green door, which she intended on opening.

  There was a muffled curse and then pounding footsteps from behind. August caught up with her, wheezing like a busted accordion. She stopped by the metal railings of a house and leaned against them. A flash of pain shot through her arm and she stumbled away, rubbing the sting from her elbow with an angry hiss.

  August nodded at the railings. ‘Sadistic bastards, aren’t they? House Ilmarinen’s newest home security invention – electric shocks running right through the iron. They only work against non-members.’

  Alice nodded, barely listening. Her breath was too shallow and her tongue buzzed with pins and needles. Not a good sign. It usually meant a dizzy spell was incoming. She turned her face from August and closed her eyes, trying to push away the light-headedness. Breathe.

  ‘What aren’t you telling me?’ he asked.

  Her eyes flicked open to find him frowning down at her.

  ‘August,’ she said wearily, ‘there are a million things I’m not telling you. Because I don’t have to. I’m not your landlord and you aren’t renting the space in my head.’

  He nodded, and reached for his tobacco box. ‘Speaking of landlords, Crowley—’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No Crowley. You promised, and I’m holding you to it.’

  He sighed. ‘All right. Let me walk you back to the university.’

  Alice raised a sardonic eyebrow. She’d been living in staff accommodation at Goring University for months; she certainly didn’t need August’s help to get back there. If she had to pause on the way, to slide down a wall and sit with her head on her knees, catching her breath and trying to push the stars from her eyes, then she didn’t want an audience. She’d managed to keep her bouts of illness hidden from her other friends, Sasha and Jude, during their monthly catch-ups, and she didn’t plan on slipping up now. There was no point burdening anyone else with this – no one could help her.

  ‘What?’ said August. ‘Let me walk you. It’s late, it’s dark, and this city’s no safer than London.’

  Her mouth quirked involuntarily. He was worried about her safety? Hers?

  ‘I don’t know how to tell you this, August, but a year ago, I almost destroyed this city and everyone in it,’ she said, a hint of exasperation in her tone. ‘If my death awaits me down a Rookery alleyway, I won’t be greeting it with a scream – I’ll be greeting it with twenty-odd years of missing Father’s Day cards.’

  She was aiming for flippancy. Sometimes, if she pretended at breeziness, it was enough to stop her from dwelling on the skin-crawling guilt about Marble Arch and her part in Jen’s death.

  August lit his cigarette and waved away the smoke with a breezy hand. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Then you walk me back to the university.’

  He grinned at her and reached for the green door of the tobacconist’s. As he pulled it open, a gust of chilled air poured over them, pinching her cheeks. The open door didn’t lead to the tiny shop’s interior; it led to the void, a dark, barren space between worlds, a corridor like a wind tunnel between the twin cities of London and the Rookery. Alice sighed into the cool air, enjoying the momentary relief. But then it was too much – too cold for her fever to cope with. She shivered, hugged the coat against her chest and stepped through the doorway.

  Wind drove into her limbs, chipping away at her skin. She shook out the coat and rammed her arms into the sleeves as August stepped in behind her. He swung the door shut, plunging them into blackness, and when her fingers reached out to check, the door they’d used for entry had vanished. Unable to see, August rested a hand on her elbow, and with the other she sensed him groping at the air for a new door handle. Billowing gusts ruffled her hair and she bowed her head into the pressure. There was a click, and the newly formed door flew open, framing August as he stepped out of the void and onto a worn grass track. Alice took a moment to steady herself before joining him.

  ‘Wasted a cigarette,’ August grunted, flicking ash off his jumper. ‘Bugger it. Come on then.’

  Regimented fir trees surrounded them; clutches of vibrant purple geraniums and bluebells grew thickly at their bases. The
lawned university gardens rolled outwards, a colourful riot of scented wildflowers and manicured trees.

  The door they had exited – a glossy black door with an iron ring – belonged to an old janitor’s storeroom several miles away from the tobacconist’s. Alice found it strange that she didn’t consider travelling to be noteworthy any more. The ability to move across the city in minutes, reducing miles to inches . . . It was odd how quickly her mind had expanded to make it part of her normal reality.

  ‘What do you mean, “come on”?’ said Alice with a tired grin. ‘This is where your night ends. You can’t come back to my room.’

  He frowned. ‘Why? I’m not planning to steal your virtue.’

  ‘Rules of using staff accommodation,’ she said. ‘No overnight visitors on campus and no sub-letting.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Well I’ve never been a stickler for rules and I’ve no plans to start now.’

  She shook her head. ‘Goodnight, August.’

  ‘Will you be okay?’ he asked, brow furrowed.

  She hesitated, her mouth curving into a brittle smile. ‘Of course I will. But thanks. For tonight – for trying.’

  ‘You said it yourself: it was a waste of time,’ he said, scratching at his straw-like hair. He found the blue paper umbrella still nestled behind his ear and plucked it out.

  ‘Yes,’ said Alice. ‘But I needed to hear it. I needed to know what my options are.’

  Only one option now.

  August glanced up at the towering university building. ‘You could come back with me, you know. To Coram House. You could just . . . come home.’

  Alice exhaled shakily. Home? How quaint. She’d lost every home she’d ever had: her old flat in London with Jen, the family home she’d grown up in in Henley, her parents’ newest cottage in Mayo.

  Alice turned away. She had no home.

  ‘Night, August,’ she said, moving off through the grass. ‘And thanks – I mean it.’

  Goring University’s sprawling campus was made up of imposing stone buildings and cobbled patios next to rolling lawns and wild mulberry gardens. Alice worked in the Magellan Institute, on the ground floor of the Cavendish Building, one of the four edifices that formed a quadrangle around a large cobbled square. The other university buildings were Sydenham, Whiston and Arlington.

  Arlington – home of the humanities faculty – was the first place she’d ever seen in the Rookery, a limestone structure with a domed roof and two jutting wings. One wing housed a two-storey library, while the other held the dining hall on the ground floor and the staff accommodation on the second. She’d been lucky enough to be offered housing when she’d accepted the job; vacancies were like gold dust, but a previous tenant had recently died and they’d wasted no time in finding a replacement.

  An unpleasant thought came to her before she had time to extinguish it . . . How quickly would they find her replacement if she died? Her shoulders slumped and she trudged onwards, desperate to rest her aching limbs and put the whole night to bed.

  Alice gripped the edge of the sink so tightly her fingers blanched. The wave of nausea grew, a soft ache in her abdomen sharpening into a stabbing cramp. She squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth. I should be used to this by now. Her shoulders bunched in anticipation as the spasms knifed her stomach, the pain clawing itself higher. Muscles clenching and unclenching, she leaned into the agony, pressing into the edge of the basin. Here it comes. The pain twisted and burrowed deeper, needling into her senses. She gasped and her eyes flew open. The toilet cubicle see-sawed around her. Her chest heaved. A jet of hot bile shot up her throat and splattered the porcelain. Her stomach cramped again and she shuddered. Blisters of sweat beaded on her forehead and she snatched a quick breath. And again.

  She retched, brown hair swaying over the sink with every tremor, but her stomach was empty. Then she spun the taps with trembling fingers and washed away the foul residue. She straightened up and leaned against the bathroom mirror, her back cooling on the reflective glass.

  A harsh buzz from the doorbell announced an early visitor, and Alice wiped her mouth on a towel. She staggered into her bedroom, stripping off her pyjamas and squinting up at her clock. It was barely 8 a.m.

  ‘Give me a minute,’ she managed. Pulling on a pair of work trousers and a shirt, she lumbered over to the door and swung it open.

  A young woman – athletic, with platinum-blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail – was standing in the doorway with a bored expression. Her sailor pants and fitted floral blouse reminded Alice of something a pre-war model might wear on her day off; they were pristine next to Alice’s rumpled outfit.

  ‘I’m here for my book,’ she said.

  Alice frowned, momentarily confused.

  ‘Holly?’ she murmured. ‘What are you . . .?’

  The visitor took advantage of her disorientation to move past her, into the room. She peered around Alice’s quarters with interest.

  Like the other four staff lodgings on this part of the floor, it was small, with a kitchen-diner open to the bedroom, and the very definition of utilitarian. The magnolia walls were bare and the wooden furniture was solid and unfussy. Old kitchen appliances were stacked by the window; their yellowed plastic suggested they’d been purchased in the 1970s, which made them positively youthful compared to the age of everything else in the Rookery.

  When she’d moved in, there hadn’t been anything for Alice to eat on, so she’d persuaded the janitor, Eugene Reilly, to let her have the broken flip-top desk and chairs he’d been storing in his outhouse. The room’s only extravagances were the huge window that overlooked the gardens near the Whiston Building, a small shelf for her sketchbooks and the avocado-coloured carpet, which was so thick she lost her toes in the pile. She was also lucky enough to have her own toilet – though she did have to use the communal bathroom for showering. Alice didn’t care about the cramped size or the terrible furniture; she loved the lodging because it was hers. What she didn’t love was having it invaded by the second-most-abrasive person in the Rookery – the first, of course, being Crowley.

  Alice’s lips thinned as Holly moved towards the chest of drawers, which was cluttered with personal belongings: Alice’s hairbrush; a small ring box her mum had given her when she’d left Ireland; her main sketchbook, filled with dozens of annotated nightjars; and a cricket bat. The bat had been mouldering in the humanities faculty’s lost property box; she’d claimed it because owning something capable of smashing skulls had seemed common sense for a woman who lived alone.

  Holly’s green eyes swept over the mess and Alice eased past her, tipped the ring box into the top drawer, tossed the hairbrush onto the bed and stacked the rest more neatly. She threw Holly a challenging look, waiting for the anticipated remark about her untidiness.

  ‘Are you pregnant?’ asked Holly, studying her with a raised eyebrow.

  Alice’s mouth dropped open. ‘What?’

  Holly shrugged. ‘The walls are thin. I heard you throwing up and it’s early. Do you have morning sickness?’

  Alice was too shocked to reply.

  ‘If you’re pregnant, you’ll have to rescind your application. You can’t sit the test; it’s dangerous for the baby.’

  ‘There is no baby,’ said Alice. ‘I’m not pregnant, Holly. I’m ill, for God’s sake, that’s all.’

  Holly’s eyes drifted over her, coolly assessing. Finally, she gave a sharp nod. ‘Fine then. I’m here for my book.’

  Alice turned away, careening a little as the room tilted with her – a movement that did not go unnoticed by her visitor. Holly Mowbray was her next-door neighbour. A standoffish twenty-something, just a few years younger than Alice, who worked in the Faculty of Medical Sciences. It was an appropriate place for her to work: Alice had never met anyone so clinical. In ordinary circumstances, their paths might never have crossed. However, alongside the fact that they shared a corridor and a party wall, they had both applied for membership of House Mielikki.

  The
re was no chance at all that Holly would fail in her bid. She was the youngest of the Mowbray family, who were not just a dynasty of talented perfumers and herbalists but also one of House Mielikki’s most prominent families.

  The success of Alice’s bid was much less guaranteed. Her skills as an aviarist were utterly distinct from the House system. Aviarists didn’t inherit their magical gift, and they had no specific House. Like necromancers, they were a genetic accident. Though some anomalies, like August, had found a conventional home; his water legacy had recently won him a place in House Ahti. And Alice knew she had the same potential. There was no doubt she had Mielikki’s legacy – but whether it was strong enough to win her a place in the House was another matter.

  A vision floated across her memory of the ivy she’d conjured to swaddle her parents’ house in Mayo: at her touch, its waxy star-shaped leaves had unfurled from strong vines, wrapping around the stone to whimsical effect. Alice had been so proud; the place had been rundown when they’d moved in but they’d revived it together. Growing ivy over the old walls had been the finishing touch. And then the vision was swept away, replaced by the memory of daisies rotting between her fingers and, soon after, the ivy withering on the brickwork, its stems turning brittle and thin. As Alice had sickened, so had the plants she’d grown.

  ‘Did you make this?’ asked Holly, moving to examine the ornate window frame.

  Alice frowned, distracted. ‘What?’

  ‘Did you make this?’ Holly repeated slowly.

  ‘Oh. Yes,’ she said. ‘A fortnight ago.’

  The frame’s design had been as plain as the rest of the room when she’d first arrived, but Alice had spent months practising on it like a canvas as she researched her potential.

  She’d worked hard – coaxing life from its surface until whip-thin branches had sprung from the knots of wood, teasing and curling them into entwined swirls and laying them flat around the window with their leaves artfully fashioned either side. It hadn’t been her intention, but from a certain angle, it looked like a piece of living baroque architecture, all theatrical leaf scrolls and winding branches.