The Peculiar

by Stefan Bachman

  Penumbral Sylph, read a messy sign under the cage. Semi-elemental. Rare amp; extremely magical. Even a single specimen is a much-desired treasure, can be used for near-instant errands + message deliveries, etc. Price: English: 40? / Faery: no less than the equivalent of one arm and one leg.

  Bartholomew edged up to the cage. It was iron. He could feel it even without touching it, an elusive ache at the back of his head. The creature inside seemed to sense it was being watched. The wings folded back and a delicate white face looked out at Bartholomew. Its mouth was wide and blue-lipped.

  They peered at each other in silence for a moment. The wings opened yet farther. Bartholomew saw the sylph’s body, disproportionally small compared to its wings, twig-thin arms and legs almost lost among the feathers. Then the sylph’s lips curled back over its teeth and it let out a hiss.

  “Changeling,” it said quietly.

  Bartholomew jerked his head back from the cage.

  “Changeling,” it said again, louder this time.

  “Be quiet,” Bartholomew whispered.

  “Changeling, changeling, changeling.” The sylph was pacing now, circling the cage, eyes locked on Bartholomew. Then it let out a shriek and threw itself against the wires, leaving sear marks on its flesh.

  “Changeling!”

  Bartholomew backed away, knocking a tray labeled LIES off a shelf. They fell to the floor and began to expand, blue and emerald bulbs growing bigger and bigger until they exploded in a shower of stinking gas. He turned to run, but a gnome was already bearing down on him from the other end of the aisle. Before Bartholomew had taken two steps, cold fingers took hold of him, digging at the strips of cloth that covered his face. The cloth unwound. The gnome leaped back as if he’d been bitten.

  “Out,” he said, and his voice was just a squeak. “Get out before the customers see you. Take your horridness away from here!”

  Bartholomew ran, past the bean seeds and the puppets, holding his disguise around his face with his hands. He passed the gentleman at the door. The man’s arms were full of pistols, a new hat, a compass, and a very large map. He started to say something, but Bartholomew didn’t wait to hear it. He pushed past him, out of the bazaar, onto the swaying walkway. A troupe of dwarfish faeries in red pointed hats was coming up it. Behind him, Bartholomew heard wings skittering, the titter of voices. He spotted a dark gap between two shop tents and threw himself into it. There he collapsed and wrapped himself into a ball.

  All those faeries thought I was a hobgoblin. That’s why they hadn’t stared. They thought I was like them. But he wasn’t like them. He wasn’t like anyone.

  Mr. Jelliby found him ten minutes later. His head was in his arms. He was shivering a little.

  “Boy?” Mr. Jelliby asked quietly. “What’s the matter, boy? Why didn’t you wait for me?”

  Bartholomew sat up with a start. He wiped his nose on his hand. “Oh,” he said. “Nothing. We should go.”

  Mr. Jelliby was looking at him curiously. Bartholomew didn’t want to be looked at. He wanted to be left alone, and if nobody liked him he wished they would keep it to their own stupid selves. He got to his feet and began to walk away.

  “I got the pistols!” Mr. Jelliby said, hurrying after him. “And a hat. Are you hungry?”

  Bartholomew hadn’t eaten since last night’s supper, but he didn’t say anything. He kept walking, hood pulled low, head down. He had to force himself not to peek over his shoulder to see if the man was following. For a while he simply walked, not really knowing where he was going. Then the gentleman appeared at his side, two crusty pies in his hand. He handed one to Bartholomew.

  Bartholomew stared at it.

  “Go on,” Mr. Jelliby said. “Eat it!”

  The pie was full of gristle, made with some horrid street animal like as not, but Bartholomew gulped it down, bones and all, and licked the grease from his fingers. Mr. Jelliby picked the crust off his and then handed the rest to Bartholomew. He ate that, too. It made him think of the wax-drip soup and Hettie, and that made him want to start running again-anywhere-to find her.

  They left the Goblin Market behind them, pressing onto a walkway that wound around the outermost side of the towering city. “The train station,” Mr. Jelliby had said, “is near the ground.” And that was where they were going.

  They were still hundreds of feet up; Bartholomew could see for miles, all the way to the farm country beyond the city’s edge. The sky was spread out before him, turning copper as the sun set, clouds rolling low and ominous along the arch of the world.

  He paused, staring. There was something in the sky, something besides the endless dusk. A flashing. A burst of black, darker than the clouds, moving at incredible speeds away from the city.

  Bartholomew leaned out across the rope railing. “Look,” he called, waving for Mr. Jelliby. “Look over there.”

  Mr. Jelliby came up beside him. His eyes narrowed. “What on earth. .”

  “It’s the wings,” Bartholomew said quietly. “They’re leaving.” Oh Hettie, he thought. Please be safe.

  Mr. Jelliby saw the change in his face. “Come now,” he said. “Don’t worry. We’ll get your sister. We’ll get her back.” He smiled then-not his wide, Westminster smile, but a real one. “Though if we’re to go off adventuring together, I think we should know each other’s names, don’t you?” He held out his hand to Bartholomew. “I’m Arthur. Arthur Jelliby.”

  Bartholomew didn’t move. He stared at Mr. Jelliby, then at his hand. Then, very cautiously, he took it, and they shook.

  “Bartholomew,” he said.

  Together they turned and hurried down into the darkening city.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Greenwitch

  The train’s pistons plunged, once, twice, and Mr. Jelliby was asleep.

  Bartholomew had hoped he might say something, discuss their plans, or tell him more about the lady in plum, but he didn’t. Oh well. The air was warm, and the seat was plush, and so Bartholomew snuggled into it and pressed his nose against the cold window. The city swam by below in a blue-dark blur, towers and rooftops gone so quick he barely saw them. They crossed the river, chugged among the soaring black flues of the cannon foundries. Then, in the blink of an eye, the city was behind them and they were slicing through the green fields of the country. In a few minutes Bath was only an inky stain on the horizon, growing smaller with every breath.

  Bartholomew looked back and felt an odd ache grow in his chest. He was leaving. Leaving all the few things he had ever known. Going who-knew-where with a gentleman who didn’t eat when there was food to be had and who shook hands with changelings. Somewhere back in that shrinking spot was Mother, asleep in an empty flat. And Hettie. . Hettie was somewhere. Not there, but somewhere.

  He turned his attention to their compartment in the No. 10 to Leeds. Mr. Jelliby had bought first-class tickets just as he always did, and Bartholomew was not so far out of sorts that he didn’t notice how terribly swish everything was. Small framed paintings hung above the seats-happy, comfortable scenes of richly dressed people at tea, or outdoors, smiling vacantly into shop windows and fishponds. On the paneled walls, two lamps were mounted, each with a flame faery imprisoned inside. The one on Bartholomew’s side tapped the glass to catch his attention and began pulling its glowing face into a parade of rude expressions. Bartholomew stared at it a while. When he turned back to the window, the faery set to pounding its fists against the inside of the lamp and spitting little angry bursts of flame. Bartholomew glanced back. It promptly resumed making faces at him.

  Some time later Mr. Jelliby woke up. Bartholomew dropped his head against the window and pretended to be asleep, watching the gentleman through half-closed lids. Mr. Jelliby looked at him once. Then he began unfolding his newly acquired map, spreading it leaf by leaf throughout the compartment.

  Arthur Jelliby’s fingers ran across the thick white paper, bouncing as the train rumbled under him. The map was somewhat different from what he was used to. The En
glish Isle was called “The Withering Place.” London was labeled “The Great Stink-Pile,” and North Yorkshire, “The Almost World,” but he understood it well enough. The train would take them to Leeds in Yorkshire. The coordinates on Mr. Zerubbabel’s scrap of paper were not in Leeds, though. In fact, as far as Mr. Jelliby could tell, they weren’t anywhere in particular. The spot he had marked on the map was not a city, or a hamlet, or even a single farm. It was simply empty open country.

  He frowned at the map, turned it upside down, folded it up, and reopened it. He read the coordinates again, recalculated longitude and latitude. It was all no use. The place refused to move anywhere sensible.

  When the train stopped in Birmingham, an elderly lady in a silver fur pelisse entered their compartment to sit down. She took one look at Bartholomew’s masked face and the pistols on Mr. Jelliby’s belt and turned around in something of a flurry, sliding the door closed behind her. No one disturbed them for the rest of the journey.

  It was well past midnight when they arrived in Leeds. At the loading docks, they were able to bribe a stagecoach driver to abandon his scheduled passengers and take them as close as he could to the point Mr. Jelliby had marked on the map. No roads led within five miles of it. They would have to do some walking that night.

  They left the city by moonlight. The coach was drawn by a pair of unnaturally large grasshoppers, and they ran with reckless abandon, dragging it across stones and ruts until Mr. Jelliby was afraid it would jolt to pieces. A chill wind blew through the chinks in the sides of the coach. Branches tapped against the windowpanes. Soon Bartholomew and Mr. Jelliby were blue with bruises, and cold to the bone. After an hour, the stagecoach stopped. They climbed out blearily.

  “Now then,” the driver said, hunching into his greatcoat and peering out at them with glinting eyes. “Here’s as close as I can get you. There’s an inn about a mile back. The Marshlight. I’ll wait for you there.”

  Mr. Jelliby nodded and glanced at the surrounding country, running his hatband around and around through his fingers. “Don’t speak of us to anyone, will you? And if we’re not back by dawn you may assume that. . that we’ve found another way. Good night.”

  The driver grunted and cracked his whip. The grasshoppers broke into a run and the stagecoach thundered away down the road. Bartholomew watched it go, shivering.

  Mr. Jelliby consulted his compass. Then they set out across a wet green field. A thin mist hovered over the grass, soaking their trousers to the knee. Before long it began to drizzle. Bartholomew’s head buzzed with sleepiness and Mr. Jelliby was limping, but neither of them said anything. On and on they walked, through field after field, over hills and trickling brooks until there was not a muscle in their bodies that did not ache.

  Mr. Jelliby heaved himself over a low stone wall, one eye still locked on the compass. “We ought to be getting there shortly,” he said, and brushed the dirt from his knees. “Wherever ‘there’ is. . ”

  “There,” as it turned out, was a knot of trees in the middle of a wide empty field. It was not a forest. It might have been a forest once, when there were still forests in these parts, but all its arms and legs had been cut down, and now it was simply a great clump of oak and elm rising out of the rolling grass. Mr. Jelliby paused at its edge, staring up into the vaulting branches. Then he walked in, Bartholomew close behind him.

  The air under the trees was damp, but not like in the fields. It was a musty, living damp, heavy with the smell of bark and wet earth. Moss blanketed the ground, and although the trees grew very close together, it was not difficult to walk. After no more than twenty paces, they found themselves in a small clearing. The rain rustled down, and the grass grew tall here. A heap of charred sticks sizzled under the water droplets. And in the center of the clearing, cheery and welcoming as could be, stood a round-topped wooden wagon. It was painted red, with yellow daffodils and primroses on the door and round the spokes of the wheels. Smoke curled up from a tin funnel on its roof. A single window looked out of its side, and scarlet curtains were drawn across the inside of the panes. Warm light shown through them, casting glowing squares on the grass.

  Bartholomew and Mr. Jelliby looked around them uncertainly. There were no monstrous contraptions here, no small graves, or black-winged sylphs whispering in the branches. What could Mr. Lickerish possibly be interested in here, that his bird should fly all this way? Bartholomew hoped, desperately hoped, that Hettie was in that painted wagon. He felt suddenly incredibly impatient.

  Mr. Jelliby climbed the steps to the door at the back of the wagon and knocked twice. “Hullo!” he called, in what he hoped was a commanding voice. “Who lives here? We must speak with you!”

  Something smashed inside. A quick, sharp smash, as if someone had just had a dreadful fright and let a cup or a bowl slip straight from her hands. “Oh, no. Oh no, oh no, oh no,” a frail voice cried. “Please go away. Go away. I have no money. No money anywhere.”

  Mr. Jelliby glanced at Bartholomew, but he didn’t look back. He was watching the door intently.

  “Madam, I assure you we do not want any money,” Mr. Jelliby said. “I received your address from one Xerxes Ya- From a mutual acquaintance. And I need to speak to you. Madam? Are you all right in there?”

  A small shutter snapped open in the door, and a face appeared. Mr. Jelliby stumbled back. It was a gray, wrinkled face framed by a shower of wispy birch branches. An old faery woman.

  “You’re not from the Faery Bureau Inspectors, are you?” she asked. “Or the Court of Thorns? Or the government?”

  “I’m-well, I’m from England,” Mr. Jelliby answered stupidly.

  The faery woman gave a nervous laugh and unbolted the door. “Oh. I’m not. Let’s get you out of the rain, then, shall we? Unless you like the rain, of course. Some folks do. It’s good for selkies, heals boils on nymphs, though I’ve never known it to do anything for- Oh!” Her hands went to her mouth when she saw Bartholomew. “Oh, the poor little Peculiar! He’s thin as a fish bone!”

  Bartholomew tried to peer around the faery, into her wagon. Then he looked at her. Poor little Peculiar? There was no disgust in her voice, none of the fright of the goblin in the bazaar, or the petty evil of the peddler in Old Crow Alley. She sounded more alarmed by his resemblance to a fish than the fact that he was a changeling.

  Yes, well, we don’t have to eat him with parsnips, now do we, Mr. Jelliby thought, as the faery woman ushered them into the wagon. It was tiny inside, cramped and warm, and cluttered with parchments and bottles in pretty colors. Bundles of herbs hung from the ceiling. Candles dripped in fantastical shapes down the shelves. The wagon was too small to hide anyone, and Hettie wasn’t there.

  The old faery busied herself with sweeping up the shards of a pottery bowl from the floor. “Oh, such a mess,” she whined. “Don’t get many visitors, I don’t. Not good ones anyway.” Her voice was creaky and old, a bit like the faery butler’s. Friendlier, though. Perhaps too friendly for one who has just had her far-off clearing invaded by strangers.

  “Madam, we’ve come on a matter of great importance,” Mr. Jelliby said.

  “Have you, at that?” She tipped the shards into a cat dish. It was full of milk. “And how comes it that an old greenwitch like me can help such good sirs as you? Are you sick? Has the cholera gotten one of you? I hear he is quite busy in London now.”

  Mr. Jelliby stamped the wet from his shoes and took off his hat. He? “No, not cholera. We need to speak to you about someone.”

  The faery straightened, joints popping, and hurried a teakettle to the stove in the corner. “Don’t know many someones anymore. Who might it be?”

  “The Lord Chancellor. John Lickerish.”

  The old faery almost dropped the kettle. She wheeled around to face them. “Oh,” she whispered, eyes quivering. “Oh, I meant no harm. Whatever he’s done, whatever he’s doing, I meant no harm.”

  Mr. Jelliby’s hand fell to the grip of his pistol. “We’re not here to accuse you, madam,
” he said quietly. “We need your help. We have reasonable proof that you are connected to Mr. Lickerish, and we must know why. Please, we must know!”

  The faery knotted her hands into her apron and began pacing to and fro, the floor of the wagon creaking with each step. “I don’t know him. Barely at all. It’s not my fault!” She stopped to face them. “You won’t take me away, will you? Not to the cities and their horrid fumes? Oh, I would perish!”

  “Please, madam, calm yourself. We’re not taking you anywhere. We simply need you to tell us things. Everything.”

  The faery’s eyes flicked to the pistols. She looked from Mr. Jelliby to them and back. Then she returned to the stove. Tea hissed as she poured it into blue china cups. “Everything. .” she said. “You’d be dead of old age before I was halfway through.” She brought the tea and slumped into her rocker.

  Bartholomew didn’t take his cup. Hettie isn’t here. Nothing was here but a mad old faery. They should be leaving, running back across the fields to the coachman and Leeds. Not drinking tea. He tugged at Mr. Jelliby’s sleeve, opened his mouth to say something, but the faery saw him and spoke first.

  “Life’s hard out here,” she said, and her voice was petulant. “Folks in the cities, they work in factories, always among the engines and the church bells and the iron. And they lose their magic. I couldn’t do that. Out here I can hold on to bits of it. Just little shreds. It’s not like home. Not really. But it’s almost there. It’s as close as I can get.” Bartholomew knew she was talking of her home in the Old Country. She must be very old indeed.